321 – Ben Is Back

This Had Oscar Buzz

Joe and Chris

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2024

⏱️ 119 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Guess who’s back in the house?! We finally close the loop on the 2018 troubled son trifecta of films with Ben is Back, a grim Christmas tale of a family in the throws of addiction recovery. Lucas Hedges stars as the titular Ben, who returns home from a recovery center for the holiday, and against the advice of his sponsor. Ben’s presence is somewhat unwelcome, even with the complicated feelings of his doting mother (played by Julia Roberts), and it’s not long before the demons of his addiction come to haunt. The film lingered just outside of predictions in a competitive year before an unceremonious and short-lived December release.

This episode, we talk about the film’s portrait of the opioid crisis and the career of writer/director Peter Hedges. We also talk about the 2018 Best Actress race, the film’s very quiet TIFF premiere, and the unfulfilled potential of the August: Osage County adaptation.

Topics also include “that’s Ben,” being an uncle, and the AARP’s Best Intergenerational Film.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, award season came in like a wrecking ball. Did it not?
0:04.6	It did. You say that because Miley Cyrus is thoroughly in the race for the original song for The Last Showgirl, a movie that is not good.
0:14.0	The movie that's not good, but a song is pretty good, so I'll take it.
0:17.4	Yeah, Golden Globe nominations were Monday, and then Critics' Choice nominations were Thursday, and not only are those two of the – I refuse to call the Critics' Choice a pillar of award season, but what I will say is for movie fantasy league purposes, they offer probably the biggest bounty of points, certainly so far, certainly like,
0:42.4	you know, to date. There's just a lot of points available on those two days. And a lot of those
0:49.6	points went to, I would say, the handful of maybe five films that have emerged as sort of award season
0:57.5	MVP so far. You've got your Amelia Perez. You've got your wicked. You've got your brutalist.
1:04.5	You've got your... Anora.
1:08.0	And then what would we say? Is the fifth the substance? The fifth honestly might be the substance.
1:12.0	Did you say Wicked?
1:13.3	Yeah.
1:14.1	Yes.
1:14.8	I do wish that I had a...
1:16.1	Conclave, I think, is your fifth.
1:17.5	And then, like, substance is kind of...
1:18.7	Because Conclave had a good day, both with Globes and Critics' Choice.
1:22.6	Led Critics' Choice, along with Wicked, which you would know, not only if you've been following the news,
1:29.4	but if you listen to our basically daily updates over at the Patreon. We've become a daily
1:34.9	podcast on the Patreon, where we're just like updating awards season day by day.
1:39.9	I should have started them by being like, I'm Michael Bobarro and blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:45.4	Welcome to the daily.
1:46.9	Yes.
	...

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