Alexander Larman

Traditionally, the Super Bowl advertising spots are not only the most prestigious and expensive of the year, but also serve to showcase the movies that will be the biggest and most thrilling blockbusters of the coming summer. Since the advent of social media and streaming, there is no longer the same giddy thrill at watching a few seconds’ footage, which is usually taken from a more expansive and detailed trailer, but it’s still a clear calling card for studios to suggest which of their forthcoming films they’re most excited by, and which have been quietly set aside. (Awful though I think it looks, however, James Gunn’s Superman, which lacked a new spot, did at least have a short clip with the hoped-for breakout star Krypto the Superdog.

Of the many inevitables of Oscar season, one certainty is that the film or filmmakers perceived to be the front-runner will find themselves in a spot of difficulty before the awards ceremony. There is a legion of highly paid, aggressive publicists whose job is not only to promote their clients’ interests, but also to rubbish the competition. Granted, an Oscar is no longer the path to box-office success it once was — I’m not sure that anyone was rushing out to see CODA or Nomadland after their awards, not least because there was so little competition in the pandemic era — but it will add millions to an asking rate, instill lasting gravitas and ensure a movie’s lasting reputation. Many people really, really want to win an Oscar.

Had the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Flight Risk, which topped the US box office last weekend with a modest but far from disastrous $12 million gross, been directed by most competent journeymen filmmakers, then it would have been a case of job done, box ticked and onto the next project. If you were told, however, that it was made by an Oscar-winning filmmaker whose previous movies have been large-scale dramatic epics — and who, frankly, would have done a far more interesting job with The Brutalist, although its overtly Jewish themes may have given him considerable difficulty — then the first question most people would ask is “Why?” And then when you’re told the director in question is Mel Gibson, the response is usually “Ah” and “Oh.

Shortly after Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon was released in American cinemas in 1975, it was mercilessly parodied in the satirical publication MAD magazine. Over seven pages, “Borey Lyndon,” as it was called, was treated as an embarrassing flop, something to be ridiculed and regretted. The opening caption set the tone: “So you think Historical Movies are a thing of the past?! So you think no one wants to see Costume Epics any more?! So you think they’re too dull and slow-moving to hold your interest?! Then you probably just woke up after seeing this latest dull extravaganza! Well... here’s a chance to be put back to sleep — with MAD’s even duller version of ‘Borey Lyndon’!

This year’s Oscar nominations were always going to be more low-key than usual, overshadowed as they inevitably have been both by the fires in Los Angeles — which has led to repeated delays in their announcement — and by Donald Trump’s inauguration, the after-effects of which are still rippling in Hollywood circles days later. It was therefore amusing to see that The Apprentice, the highly controversial biopic of the young Trump, has been Oscar-nominated for two of its actors, Sebastian Stan as Trump and the much-admired Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn. Strong faces quite a challenge in the Best Supporting Actor from, among others, his Succession co-star Kieran Culkin, who is widely tipped to win for his performance in A Real Pain.