Brian Cox calls out Oscars as Gary Oldman remembers the year’s win that also played Winston Churchill (and it got ‘better’)

veteran actor brian cox
He slammed the Oscars, recalling when Gary Oldman won for Best Actor for his role as Winston Churchill. With a career that spans decades, Cox has a wide range of helming roles, including the television series Succession, the 2008 drama thriller The Fugitive, and the 2000 Canadian-American series Nuremburg. It has gained recognition. Despite winning a Golden Globe for his role as global media titan Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession, the Scottish actor has yet to receive any Academy Award recognition.

Cox’s career is a testament to his versatility and talent, with roles that have consistently demonstrated his talent for embodying complex, larger-than-life characters on stage and on the big screen. However, the actor recently went public with his dissatisfaction with the Oscars, criticizing the politics and timing behind his path to recognition. Cox said the Academy disproportionately focuses on studio-backed, high-profile films released during “Oscar season” from Thanksgiving to Christmas, ignoring equally worthy performances that fall outside this narrow box. claimed to have done so.

Brian Cox criticizes Oscar for Gary Oldman’s Darkest Hour win

His film “Churchill” was ignored that year.

Cox recently criticized the Oscars, recalling Gary Oldman’s win for Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, the same year Cox gave his own take on Winston Churchill. . In 2017, Oldman gave a lauded performance as Churchill, ultimately winning him the Academy Award for Best Actor. That same year, Cox also played the role of Churchill in the small independent film Churchill, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. But while Oldman’s film received wide recognition during awards season, Cox’s portrayal received little attention.

Cox’s complaints highlight a general criticism of the Oscars. At the Oscars, independent films released outside of the traditional awards season often struggle to compete with big-budget, studio-backed campaigns. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cox candidly reflected on the disparity and didn’t hold back in criticizing the Oscars, especially in the year he competed against Oldman. he said:

Our movie came out in the summer and was a relatively independent movie, so the studio power wasn’t there. The Oscars are complete nonsense because everything that is judged at the Oscars is not a year’s worth of work. It’s a piece that comes out right between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think these awards are a huge misconception because there are so many other great films going on outside of what we call Oscar season. So even though my movie was never seen, I still think my acting is better.

What this means in our darkest hours

Gary Oldman’s movie received better reviews than Churchill

Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes score alone, Darkest Hour is by no means a failure. It received an 84% Certified Fresh rating among over 300 critics and an 82% approval rating among viewers. Cox’s Churchill received pretty poor reviews overall, scoring a not-so-high 49% on the Tomatometer and 54% on the Popcornmeter. The gap between the critical reception of the two films may be part of the reason why Cox was not as well received as Oldman. Whether the Succession actors agree or not is another story, but there’s no denying that Darkest Hour received much better reviews.

That said, Cox makes a good point about how much release date affects a film’s success at the Oscars. Darkest Hour was released on December 22, 2017, right in the time period Cox describes as “between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” In fact, seven of the nine films nominated for Best Picture that year were widely released after Thanksgiving. Cox is right that release date is not necessarily an indicator of Best Picture winning, but it is a mainstream trend. Churchill was released from prison in June 2017, making him ineligible for this lucrative award.

Our take on Brian Cox’s Oscar criticism

An increasingly important challenge to Oscar norms

Cox’s complaints may resonate with many performers and filmmakers whose big-budget films, often released in late fall, are overshadowed. As competition for recognition in Hollywood intensifies, the power and timing of marketing continues to overshadow equally worthy works. This is especially important as the Christmas Day release date approaches for various Oscar nominees, including James Mangold’s “The Complete Unknown” and Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.” Regardless of award recognition, Cox’s accomplishments as an actor are undeniable, and his willingness to criticize the industry has made him an integral part of the conversation surrounding Hollywood visibility and independent work. .

As this awards season heats up, it’ll be interesting to see if this year mimics Darkest Hour’s awards year in other ways. For example, the Oscars also seem to favor biopic performances with great impersonations. This also applies to Oldman in Darkest Hour, who attempts to imitate Churchill in his hair, make-up and acting. This year’s foray into that kind of performance is Timothée Chalamet’s Complete Unknown, in which the young actor plays singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. So it will be interesting to see how this year’s Best Actor race compares to last year.

Source: THR