Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!
I typically barely finish the Oscar movies by the end of the year. I was a little concerned when it came to Aftersun because I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere. And suddenly it appeared on the Hoopla service, sparing me the necessity of signing up for a free week on something like Max. This is a film that I don’t think I will find easy to write up for a number of reasons. It’s the sort of film that brings up emotions that are difficult to put into words. It’s a film that is wrapped in a sense of melancholy and of realization, a realization of the sort that someone you knew was going through something terrible years ago and you only now became aware of that truth.
This is also a very strange nomination in a lot of respects. Oscar does this now and then—nominating a film or performance kind of out of nowhere. In fact, at the last Oscars, there was a great deal of stink about the nomination for Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie because it was such an obscure film. Paul Mescal’s nomination feels very much the same way, although with less controversy surrounding it. It feels like an example of Oscar telling itself that it’s still hip and cool, edgy enough to nominate something like this, even though it has no chance of winning.
