The awards season this year was particularly gnarly. Timothée Chalamet’s bid for an Oscar spawned its own genre of meta-commentary, and the breakout stars were in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. At the ceremony this past Sunday, red carpet interviews, led mainly by influencers angling for a viral clip, were a mess. You can’t have the people on both sides of the mic trying to promote themselves.
One particularly bad question, posed to the British actress Charithra Chandran, was “What does it smell like?,” which made me long for the now unchic “Who are you wearing?”
As for the ceremony itself, the results were deeply mixed. Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons? Sure, why not. Sean Penn didn’t even show up to accept his statue—opting instead to hang out with the Ukrainian president. And Javier Bardem wore a picket sign on his lapel to protest war. Groundbreaking stuff all round.
But just when I think I’m out of love with the movies, they pull me back in. Ryan Gosling has come out with a true sci-fi stunner. I know the Oscars were just last weekend, but I’m calling it now: Project Hail Mary should win all the awards next year. My campaign starts now.
The Best Thing About ‘Project Hail Mary’ Is Its Humanity
The second time I shed a tear because a pile of rocks said something moving to Ryan Gosling, I thought to myself, Sister, get it together. Then it happened twice more. The space part of Project Hail Mary, the sci-fi thriller that dropped this week, is secondary to the sheer scale and humanity of it. Which is especially impressive since the lion share of the movie features just one human: a science teacher turned astronaut, Ryland Grace, played brilliantly by Gosling. He’s been recruited by an international space organization and tempted out of retirement after mysterious “space dots” showed up and began to cloud out the sun, dropping the earth’s temperature and imperiling the entire population.
