Oscar Bait: Nuremberg and Rental Family
This is likely to wind up being a series. We’re entering the season where prestige movies and big tentpole flicks vie for your attention and the Academy’s. These are not predictions, by the way. However, I wouldn’t and won’t be surprised if a number of titles and names show up on Oscar Night. I should also add that “Oscar bait” doesn’t necessarily infer an unworthy or even bad film. It just serves to delineate some of the elements that AMPAS voters seem to reward movies for, often over and against other, better films or. performances. For example, by no metric that I can think of is Nuremberg a bad or unworthy film. It’s actually quite good, if somewhat too prestige-y for its own good. It’s a tight film dealing with an important historical event - Herman Göring’s surrender to Allied forces and subsequent trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, and subsequent suicide. The story unfolds via Göring’s psychological assessment by Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly. Russell Crow as...