GoKawiilWe're heading into Oscars weekend, and looking at all the nominees, it's a stacked card this year. One of the movies I've got an eye on is One Battle After Another. Leonardo DiCaprio is the star of Paul Thomas Anderson's 10th movie. Overall, the film has racked up 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson and Best Actor for DiCaprio.
These past weeks, I've been inundated with Oscar-themed emails pitching different streaming suggestions tied to the glitzy ceremony. I decided to home in here and discuss one of DiCaprio's less appreciated movies. It's a film that was the beginning of what I like to refer to as "DiCaprio's Schlubby Era."
This movie features an absolutely stacked cast and delivers its message loud and clear. I rewatched it last night, and I still found it thoroughly entertaining. I'm in the minority, though. You see, the film I'm talking about was a victim of circumstance, as it lifted a mirror to society at a terribly fraught time.
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about Netflix's Don't Look Up. It was directed by Adam McKay, and while it is absolutely a comedy, the disaster satire hit streaming at the wrong time. If you don't recall, the film -- which was meant as a dire warning about climate change and society's apathetic response to it -- hit the streamer at the height of the pandemic.
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Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio star in Don't Look Up. Niko Tavernise/Netflix
Everyone was stuck inside, looking for light-hearted, feel-good entertainment like Ted Lasso. A movie about a pending catastrophe that would end the world and its entire population was a tough pill to swallow. Perhaps it still is? I'll circle back to that thought in a bit.
Needless to say, it was sharply panned by critics for its subject matter and tone. Don't Look Up received four Oscar nominations, and even if you think about the lackluster affair that was the 2022 Academy Awards, it showed there is merit to the polarizing comedy. And I'm going to talk about it.
Don't Look Up follows scientist Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and his PhD student Kate DiBiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) as they try to relay the urgency of their discovery of a giant comet barrelling toward Earth. In roughly six months, an extinction-level event triggered by the comet's impact will obliterate humanity and the planet.
Mindy and DiBiasky face an unexpected uphill battle, though. Each person in power they speak to, from the news media to the President of the United States, ends up downplaying the warning. Instead of focusing on the well-being of the American people, they end up focusing on how the pending disaster can ultimately benefit them.
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