The New Yorker Radio Hour - Richard Brody Presents the 2025 Brody Awards

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

David Remnick is joined by Alexandra Schwartz, the co-host of the podcast Critics at Large, and The New Yorker’s august film critic Richard Brody. They talk about the past year in film and predict the victors of the Academy Awards. Brody dismisses “The Brutalist”—a film that merely uses the Holocaust “as metaphor”—and tells Remnick that “Wicked” might win Best Picture. “I think there’s a huge desire for cinematic comfort food that makes a billion dollars.” Continuing the Radio Hour’s annual tradition, Brody discusses nominees and selects the winners of the coveted award that we call The Brody. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and it is that time of year again. It's awards season, and I'm joined by two of the New Yorkers critics, Alexandra Schwartz, co-host of our podcast, Critics at Large, and film critic Richard Brody. We're going to talk about the past year at the movies and the prospects for the Academy Awards, but much more importantly, Richard Brody will pick the winners of the award. we call the Brody. The Brodies are far more exclusive and more coveted than the Oscars, of course, though they don't have the little statue guy to go with it. This is an annual tradition here at the New Yorker Radio Hour. Richard, how many years have we been doing the Brodies? Seven, eight? Seven or eight years? My God. We're getting close to a decade. It's true. Now, first, let's talk about the other award show, the Oscars. So let's have Alex talk to the Brutelist. Why would the Brutalist be

a favorite because you've written about it quite wonderfully for the New Yorker. Yes, I profile the director Brady Corbe. I mean, it's a small movie comparatively. It was on a $10 million budget, but it is a huge movie both thematically and in its form. It is close to four hours when you include its 15-minute intermission. And rather than scare away audiences, this seems to have enticed people. You know, it's an immigration story. It's the story of a Jewish architect following World War II. So it has a lot of themes that Hollywood might like, or, you know, it's an immigration story. It's the story of a Jewish architect following World War II. So it has a lot of themes that Hollywood might like, or consider certainly to be serious. And it's really being hailed as a filmmaker's film. So, uh-oh. As opposed to a shoemaker's film? Well, as opposed to, as opposed to, you know, Brady Corby, both in his profile to me and more generally has talked quite a lot about how much importance he gives to creative control to having final cut. This was a theme of his speech at the Golden Globes, where he won for best director, for instance. He does not wish to, you know, compromise his filmmaking ideals to make a

movie that might be more palatable to studios or to audiences. For once I want, don't you want to see a director get up and say, I'm a complete compromiser. I'm absolutely compromising from the word go. As opposed to the shy, retiring, and modest Christopher Nolan. All right. Now, Richard, you put Francis Ford Coppola's Megaloplas as the third best movie of the year. That is not a universal. I'm well aware of it. I think that Megalopolis has been reviewed for its publicity rather than for what's actually on screen,

that the story of Francis Ford Coppola, spending $120 million of his own money, and above all, the greatest Hollywood sin of all, not caring whether he gets it back, has cost that film significantly in reputation. What Oscar nomination actually surprised you the most, Richard? Dune Part 2. Okay, I'm with you on that. Doom Part 2 shocked me because I think it's a terrible movie.

I think it's a sludgy movie. Dune Part 1 at least had an impressive sandworm. This one is an extreme close-up of a vacuum cleaner hose. And the pacing of it is... And you can literally get that at home. The pacing is lugubrious. The dialogue, you know, it's like written to fit into cartoon bubbles. Okay, we'll come back to some of the Oscar favors.

But let's get into the main event here, the presentation of the Brody Awards. Our first category is Best Actor. Alex, who was nominated. The nominees for the Brody Award for Best Actor are Adam Driver for Megalopolis, Ethan Harisi for Nickel Boys, James Maddieo for The Featherweight,

Glenn Powell for Hitman, and Jason Schwartzman for Between the Temples. And Richard, the winner is? The winner is Adam Driver for Megalopolis. Adam Driver is the actor of his generation. He's almost like John Wayne or Carrie Grant. He is inevitably always himself. And that to me is an enormous virtue,

especially in a movie like Megalopoulos, where he's playing such an extravagantly composite character, essentially a Leonardo da Vinci of urbanism. And yet he brings a real, like, physicality, a real command to this role and takes this $120 million and essentially puts it on his back with the sheer force of his personality. I have this sneaking suspicion.

that Timothy Salome is going to win for his Bob Dylan. And you're upset about it, aren't you, David? Look, he's a perfectly good actor, but he's too sweet. He's a sweetie pie. Bob Dylan is many things, but he's not a sweetie pie. See, I actually thought that Adrian Brody had it kind of locked up for the Oscars until this recent controversy around generative AI being used to help perfect the Hungarian accents of Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones, who played the main couple in The Brutalist.

Wait a minute. We went back in time and we inspected, I don't know, the Polish accent in Sophie's choice of Merrill Streep, would we get perfect, beautiful Polish? The problem that people are having is that it's not about the perfection, the imperfection, the fact that it was perfected using AI. Some people say, well, it's just using, you know, using a tool to augment the work of an actor, not to replace the work of an actor. And other people are coming in and saying, it's not fully his performance. He can't get the Oscar. Bunch of Luddites. Okay.

Now, essentially, in this category, it's, you know, the brutalist versus the cutelist. I think the cutelist is going to win. Yeah, I think the cutelist has a very good chance. If I have to hear one more time how in five years he learned how to play four chords, I just, it's enough already. I thought he was pretty good, but, you know. Grump, grump, grump, grum. I'm talking about the year in movies with Richard Brody and Alex Schwartz. We'll continue in a moment.

Now, Alex, moving on to the next category for the Brodies, the nominees for Best Actress Are? Yes, they are Joanna Arno for that feeling that the time for doing something has passed. Maria Dizia for Christmas Eve and Miller's Point. Leah Drucker for last summer. Carlos Sophia Gascon for Amelia Perez. And Carol Kane for Between the Temples. And The Brody goes to... It goes to Maria Dizia for Christmas Eve and Miller's Point.

A film that relative... relatively few people have seen, and almost everyone who's seen loves it. Oh, you don't get rid of the police. You keep the police. Like what are they, nuts? You get rid of the bad guys, right? The bad people. You keep the good.

Huh? That's the way it's always been. And always will be. Is if not, chaos, an insurrection. Okay, Bruce. One actress who made the Oscars list but didn't make yours, is Demi Moore, who's back with the substance. She won the Golden Globe. It seems like she's a strong contender for best actress at the Oscars.

What do you think about her Oscar nomination, and why is she not on the Brodies list? I think Demi Moore is a wonderful actress, and I think part of the problem in the acting categories is that pretty much everybody is a wonderful actor or actress. The technical level of acting now is extremely high. That they simply have a level of training that makes them virtuosi. And I think that Demi Moore is in a special category. I think she is essentially sort of like the Joan Crawford of her generation. She really excels in melodrama. I felt that way ever since seeing her in St. Elmo's fire in the 1980s.

The problem is she came of professional age in an era that made very few melodramas. And so the best years of her life, of her professional life, were spent in something like a wilderness. When she went up to collect the Golden Globes, Demi Moore, she was not only overcome, but she said that she had been told that she was essentially not a serious actress. I forget the phrase that she used for it. Popcorn actress, yeah. Popcorn, that's it.

So she had been diminished in some way and then given the chance to have a quote-unquote serious role, she embodied it, she fulfilled it, and she won the award. What do you think of that narrative, Richard? I think it's a correct assessment of the industry's complete misuse of her talent over the last 30 years. The substance is not a popcorn movie,

but I don't think it's a movie that really shows the range of her art. Now, Alex, the next award? Okay, we're getting to the big ones. It's our third category. Richard, who are your nominees for Best Director of the Brodies? Zia Anger for my first film. Francis Ford Coppola for Megalopolis. Ramelle Ross for Nickel Boys.

Paul Schrader for O Canada and Tyler Taramina for Christmas Eve in Miller's Point. And the Brody goes to... Goes to Ramele Ross for Nickel Boys. Wow. How would you do it? Well, I wouldn't run into the swamp. Hiding the coast is cleared and hitch a ride somewhere west or north.

All right, that's how they get you. Richard Ramele Ross didn't even get nominated for Best Director. But this picture was really innovative, and not only for its use of point of view, what happened? What makes it innovative also makes it seem to some viewers, even in the industry, somewhat unorthodox, somewhat inherently unpopular by design. Like what's distinctive about what he does in Nickel Boys

is that all the dramatic sequences are filmed from the point of view of one of its main characters. Has that been done before? Oh, it's done many times before. In Hollywood in a movie called Lady in the Lake, directed by Robert Montgomery in the mid-1940s. I think that's the premise of the Blair Witch Project,

if I'm not mistaken. But those films treat it like a gimmick for Nickel Boys, it has a philosophical dimension. And I don't use that word loosely. Ramele Ross is something of a cinematic philosopher. We've seen many, many movies in which horrific inflictions beset the protagonist, in which the main characters suffer terrible fates

at the hands of brutal overseers. The difference in Nickel Boys is that the way that the technique is deployed by Ross and the cinematographer, Joe Mo Frey, you actually feel as if you are in the minds and in the bodies of the characters. I agree. It's essentially history being created from within. I thought it was the most extraordinary new release I saw this year.

Now, the Academy nominated 10 films again this year for Best Picture. We've talked about a few of them, Nickel Boys, Amelia Paris, a complete unknown. Sigh. Let's add to that. Anora, the brutalist, Conclave Dune Part 2, and I'm still here. Any thoughts on any of those films before we give out the last brodie, Alex? Well, you know, Anora is a movie that has been so critically beloved

and I think also loved by audiences who have seen it. Sean Baker's movie about a sex worker in Manhattan Club who can get swept away in a romance question mark with the son of a Russian oligarch. And it's been called insanely to me a Cinderella story. As I remember, Cinderella has a happy ending, but never mind. But, you know, I just feel I loved Anora. I don't think it's going to get any Academy love.

And as we know, that's okay. We do not need the Academy to validate our feelings critical and otherwise. But still, you know, it hurts me a little to see it come up totally short. But that's what I'll say about that. And I thought Anora had one of the great enigmatic closing. scenes of any film I've seen in recent years. Yeah, I'd agree with that. And one actor who's key to that scene is

Yuri Barsov, who is nominated as a best supporting actor. I'm rooting for him. I think he has a shot. Forget it. But not a big one. Yeah, I don't do. Richard, you're amends amends on Anora,

if I remember right. Yeah, I mean, I found Nora, you know, fairly superficially entertaining, but indeed superficially entertaining. That's what people say of me all the time. It's a relatively incurious film. In other words, it's a film about a sex worker that has very little to say about her life as a sex worker. It's a film about a descendant of a Russian immigrant family that has nothing to say about her life as a Russian immigrant.

In other words, I don't think it's a bad setup for a movie. I think that it's done for entertainment value rather than for actual curiosity about the conflicts faced by its protagonist. Can I say something about the brutalist? Oh, yes, Richard. Slaughter it here on life. I'm actually somewhat shocked by the enthusiasm for the Brutalist. And I get the impression that Brady Corbe is far more interested in Laslo as a heroin addict, Erchebett as a suffer of osteoporosis, and Shofia as someone who can't or won't speak,

then actually about their experiences in the Holocaust. It's Holocaust as metaphor. So the Brutalist is a contender at the Oscars, maybe, but not at the Brodies. Let's get back to the nominees for the big prize of the day, the Brody Award for Best Picture. Okay, the nominees for Best Picture are between the temples, Blitz, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point. The feeling that the time for doing something has passed, it's not me, juror number two, Megalopolis, My First Film, Nickel Boys, and O Canada. And the Brody goes to... unsurprisingly, to Nickel Boys.

Nickel Boys was really head and shoulders above the competition. It's a film that I think will, you know, mark the year in history. Alex, you agree? I love Nickel Boys. I think it's a terrific movie, and I wish more people had seen it.

I understand maybe why they didn't. I think there's an expectation that you're going into a movie about pain and about black pain specifically, and it might be preferable to hold off on that. It has been nominated for Best Picture. It has no chance at the Oscars.

I would love to see it nominated for Best Director also, but mainly I just hope people see it. What's going to win? Ooh, good question. I think the brutalist has a shot. The brutalist or Wicked? Oh. Shut up.

I think shut up. The Wicked might win? Wicked might win. I think there's a huge desire for... I'm holding space for that. Cinematic comfort food. That makes a billion dollars. Ah, there's that. There's that. Alex Schwartz, Richard Brody. As always, it's a great pleasure. Thank you so much. You can find Richard Brody's column on film.

front row and Alex is writing all at New Yorker.com, and you can hear her hosting the New Yorker podcast, Critics at Large. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. And speaking of awards, not to brag, but documentary short films produced by The New Yorker have been nominated for two Academy Awards this year. Not bad. You can watch those films at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Hope you'll join us next week. Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour, is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.