Welcome back to Roar: The Podcast. In this round table podcast, sophomores Angel Mollinier and Frey Ryan-Jensen and juniors Audri Berdeen and Asher Rae Aguirre discuss the 2026 Oscars and what the nominations mean for the future of the film industry. This podcast was recorded prior to the Oscars.
Speakers:
- Sophomores Angel Mollinier and Frey Ryan-Jensen and juniors Audri Berdeen and Asher Rae Aguirre
Angel: The Oscars are an award show addressing every facet of the film industry. In this podcast, we will cover some of our top picks for Best Picture, the most prestigious award of the show, and what they mean for the future of the industry.
Angel: Hi. Welcome to SCHS’s podcast, The Roar. My name is Angel Mollinier, and I’m a sophomore.
Audri: My name is Audri Berdeen. I’m a junior.
Frey: My name is Frey Ryan-Jensen. I’m a sophomore.
Asher: My name is Asher Rae Aguirre, and I’m a junior.
Angel: This year the nominees are: “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Bugonia,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “F1,” “Sinners,” “Train Dreams,” “Frankenstein” and “One Battle After Another.”
Angel: Our first pick is “Marty Supreme,” a movie about Marty Mauser, who actually is a real person but very loosely based off of his life. He has a dream of becoming a big time table tennis player. He goes through many trials and tribulations in pursuit of greatness, and that’s adapted from Letterboxd.
Angel: To get us started, I’m gonna start with a little fun fact. “Marty Supreme” actually made the most money out of any A24 movie, $147 million to be exact.
Audri: I feel like it definitely was a good quality of movie to make that $147 million and for an A24 movie, they’re pretty… I wouldn’t say niche because they’re growing constantly especially to this day, but for one that isn’t at the top, say Warner Brothers and stuff like that, for a movie to come out this well made – I mean all their movies are well made. I’ll just say that – but this one was really good. To be getting an Oscar nominee was a really good accomplishment for the studio.
Angel: I know A24 is known for being more indie. Obviously people don’t like when smaller things go more mainstream, but I think “Marty Supreme” was a really important movie for them. I think it introduced a lot of people to A24.
I’d like to go into the movie itself. Honestly, if you’re gonna watch it, it’s definitely not what you’re expecting. I feel like that’s easy to say without spoiling too much. It’s about table tennis for like 20 minutes.
Audri: It took a big turn. I went into it thinking it was going to be another sports movie, maybe like the “F1” movie, or something like that, where it was solely going to be on the player and their sport. But this took a completely different turn. There were so many different plot points that all actually meshed into each other in the end. I thought that was really good.
Angel: I think that’s what makes it so great. It’s about table tennis, but it’s also about so much more. Little spoiler here, but what I thought was really fun is that the movie starts with a scene where the main character, Marty, gets someone pregnant and the movie actually ends with that pregnancy being his son. I think that is a fun way to put the timeline of the movie like that.
Audri: It was a good loop around that actually gave the movie structure because it started with it and then ended with it.
Angel: It really comes full circle.
Audri: I also think that the cinematography and just the way the movie was filmed was really good. The colors were great. It didn’t have that Netflix lighting that a lot of people are talking about with modern movies and stuff like that. I didn’t feel like that at all. I think all the colors were really great. Some were bright when they needed to be. Some were very dull when they needed to be. It was really good. The pacing of the movie, I thought it was really fast, but I feel like, for this movie, it worked. Having stuff slow down at necessary times was good, but it was good to keep this fast pace going, especially for how this movie was playing out.
Angel: I definitely agree with that. I think at first it kind of overwhelmed me when I was watching it, but it did end up really working for the movie. I think that’s what made it so funny, this guy’s life, so much is happening – it’s too much. That’s really what gives the movie its charm.
Audri: I want to move on to the cast because… I’m just gonna say it: I do think Timothee Chalamet is a little overrated. I get it. He’s a very good actor, and he’s been in a lot of really good movies, like “Dune.” I really liked that set of movies, but I always feel like he’s been in way too much stuff. I do think he was actually really good casting for this movie in particular because I feel like he really embodied the character a lot – and all the characters did. But I think Timothee Chalamet did a really good job for this movie and this character. There was also the little Tyler the Creator cameo, and that was really fun too, seeing him.
Angel: That’s actually also what made me want to watch the movie because Tyler was going to be in it. Back on Timothee, I think the person that the character is based on had acne in real life, and then Timothee Chalamet had acne. That was a detail I noticed. They were getting really close to his face, and that was a detail that stood out to me. I was like, “Is it real, or is it fake?”
Audri: Overall, I think “Marty Supreme” was a pretty good movie. Like, rating out of what? 5? 10?
Angel: Out of 10. I would say between a 7 and an 8.
Audri: I would say, solid 8. Yeah, solid eight. It was a pretty good movie. Great casting, great cinematography, great story.
Angel: The second film that we’re gonna be looking at is “Train Dreams.” This film is about a logger named Robert Grainier who lives all of his years in the forest of the Pacific Northwest, working on the land, helping to create a new world at the turn of the 20th century. That’s adapted from IMDb.
Frey: I feel like the opening scene, when I first saw it, I was like, “This is so insanely good.” I loved the opening. Okay, this is gonna be a very spoiler review. I feel like he keeps going back to that opening scene and adding on to it as his life goes on, and I feel like it is such a cool way to open it. I think they revisit it so many times. It reinforces this really cool cinematography and really cool editing and color choices and all that kind of stuff.
Asher: I agree with the aesthetics of the film. I think the film was focused on aesthetics, which I did enjoy as someone who does generally enjoy watching movies for their aesthetic, but I also really enjoy plots of movies. I feel like this movie kind of lacked a depth of plot away from, spoiler review… from the death of his wife and his child. I feel like it could have had more substance.
Frey: As a movie, it’s not really focused on plot. It’s one of those character-driven ones, where you’re looking at a really in-depth study of this guy’s life. It’s so much about him that I think there isn’t necessarily an overarching villain in this except for the need to take care of your family and those kinds of battles. It’s not like, “Oh, the big evil corporation is coming for him,” or something. It’s very much just this guy’s life, looking at a realistic life, and seeing him go through those states of depression and finding his life again and finding his meaning – the purpose that he finds after this major event for him. I think in some ways, that’s really powerful because you don’t see that a lot in movies. A lot of movies are: this is the big antagonist. Our character has to deal with them, and that’s all we’re gonna do. It’s nice to be able to see that kind of real indie, real unique, not necessarily mainstream, view of storytelling and of movie-making.
Asher: On the topic of characters, I feel like the characters didn’t really fit together, or fit the time period. A lot of them were out of place. Maybe it was casting, but I don’t think it was the casting, but maybe that was it. A lot of the characters, their depth was a little bit more modern, and I didn’t feel like it matched the vibe of the movie.
Frey: I get that. Despite enjoying a lot of the movie, I think I could immediately get an ick about it because I could feel the moderness. When people say, “Oh, this character has seen a smartphone.” That’s kind of what it felt like. I know that these characters are very modern, and I could tell. It wasn’t as immersive in the sense of, this is a person from the industrial era, this is a person from the South, or whatever. It (didn’t really have)that kind of feel to it, which is one of the major flaws of it: the writing. It’s beautiful, but it’s very modern in the storytelling. This could have taken place in the current era, except for the fact that he lives in the middle of nowhere. I think it could be very much a modern movie set in right now.
Asher: I think that that is important to emphasize. The movie in the description puts a lot of emphasis on the time period and his circumstance, and I think that it wasn’t really important to what the real plot was, which was grief…With that in mind I thought that the modernization of it was very interesting, considering it seemed to me, a movie that focused a lot on an indie film audience, and it wasn’t really a movie with a widespread audience that was interesting for the majority of people. I watched this with my mom, and from her point of view – because she doesn’t really go really in depth on movies – she thought it was boring. I think that was a general opinion of a lot of people, except for those cine-bro kind of people.
Frey: I really like this movie, but I don’t think it’s gonna win. I like it a lot, but I think it’s honestly the closest to an indie movie we have because A24 has mostly become a corporate movie house. They’re so big at this point that they kind of lost some of the indie feel to it. I think their movies have a little bit of an indie feel, but they’re not the same as this kind of thing, where this is kind of experimental. It seems like this movie wasn’t meant to be an Oscar winner. It seems like this movie wasn’t meant to be on the Oscar stage. It seems like it was meant for a specific audience that enjoys this kind of movie, so I don’t see it winning. I think, honestly, “Hamnet” or “Marty Supreme” or maybe “Frankenstein” might be the winners. But I do just really like this movie.
Asher: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think this was its place in the Oscars, but I think it’s not exactly what I’d like to see for the future of cinema in the mainstream sense, but I do think it was a really good indie movie example.
Angel: Next up, we’re going to be discussing “Hamnet.” This film is about William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, celebrating the birth of her son, Hamnet, but tragedy strikes and Hamnet dies at a young age. This actually inspires Shakespeare to write his timeless masterpiece, “Hamlet.” This is adapted from IMDb.
Asher: I want to start by saying this movie was my favorite. I think like “Train Dreams,” it was very beautiful to look at, just a gorgeous movie overall.
Audri: I thought it was too. I wasn’t able to finish it because I didn’t have enough time, but my first impressions of the movie were: this is beautiful. The cinematography, the actors themselves, were beautiful. The colors, everything was amazing about this movie.
Asher: I thought “Train Dreams” didn’t have a lot of substance, so I think this one was a really good change, as it had a lot more substance. It felt like one of those movies that feel like the best thing you’ve ever watched while you’re watching it, but then in real life, maybe you’re like, “Oh, that wouldn’t make it into my top movies.” But when you’re watching it, you’re just thinking, “This is so amazing. I feel like this is the best thing I’ve ever watched.”
Audri: I remember reading the reviews on Letterboxd and online and all that and seeing the four stars, the five stars across the board. I’m like, “Wow, I have to watch this movie.” Even with the limited time that I watched it for it, I (was) like, “Wow, not only is this beautiful, but you could feel how the characters were acting, how the characters were interacting with each other.” They were really making this movie feel like it was just a painting on television.
Asher: I think a common theme throughout all of these Oscar nominee movies, not just the ones we’re covering today, is deep emotions, and this one being primarily grief and also just love in general, whether that’s romantic or familial. I think that’s really important to recognize. I love this emphasis on deep emotions, but I also know a lot of people think it’s too heavy. What do you think about that?
Audri: I think it all really depends on the audience and the people that are watching it because people are definitely gonna have preferences. A lot of people are gonna want to choose more comedic movies that want to win Oscar nominees, but then a lot of people are going to be like, “Well, we should get more into the deeper emotion like that.” But I feel like if the deep emotion is conveyed well enough, I feel like it should be recognized by all people that this movie was able to convey it well and why they deserve to win because of it. I feel like, even if you prefer different styles of emotion told through movies, you should still be able to see this movie and how well it conveyed that motion.
Asher: On the topic of casting, Jessie Buckley was amazing in this film. I don’t think I know her from anything. I don’t think I’ve seen anything else that she’s in, but I think my mom did, and she was like, “Wow, this is so different from what she normally does.” I (was) amazed because it’s this woman that I’ve never seen in my life, and then I’m just in awe because she’s so talented. It just felt so real. I think on the topic of Paul Mescal, who I have seen in other things, I think this was his best performance I’ve seen. The emotions were so well-portrayed. It did a really good job of making a very traditional story of “Hamlet” into something that’s more easy to understand without making it shallow and boring. A thought I had while watching it – and this was even in my Letterboxd review – was that words don’t mean anything unless you put humanity into them. I think that really showed it because a lot of people when teaching Shakespeare or reading it, don’t watch Shakespeare’s stuff, and that is what it was made to do – it was made to be watched. I’m just really happy this portrayed it in a way that was easy to understand for other people but also not dumbing it down.
Audri: Overall, I think that Hamnet definitely has a big shot at winning Oscars, and it deserves to. Casting, cinematography, the whole movie itself, the story, the emotion, everything was so great about it. It definitely has that chance to win, and it deserves to win. We got so many great movies for this year’s Oscar nominees, but I feel like “Hamnet” is definitely one of the ones that should win.
Asher: Yeah, I agree. It is definitely what I’d like to see for the future of cinema in the sense it’s very broad in its audience. It touches those indie aspects but also those more mainstream aspects. It really brings everything together.
Angel: The final movie we’re going to be looking at is “Frankenstein.” This film is about a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a monstrous creature to life in a daring experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation. This is the summary adapted from IMDb.
Audri: I’m gonna start off by saying that “Frankenstein,” I liked it, but I didn’t love it. There are a lot of opinions out there about how good it was, (also) how lacking the story was. What I usually look for in movies… I love a good story, but what I always look for is the cinematography. For me, for “Frankenstein,” that hit the mark. “Frankenstein” hit the mark for cinematography, character design. It really did that for me, but the plot was lacking. It took away from some of the original story stuff – some of it didn’t really make sense. But I know a lot of people loved it, and I can see why a lot of people loved it. For me, again, I liked it. I didn’t love it.
Frey: I’m gonna preface this by saying that I stopped, I think an hour, maybe an hour and a half in, most of the way through the “Frankenstein” book. I feel like by the time I got an hour into this almost three hour film, I was pretty much done with the main, actual book, (the) “Frankenstein” plot line. I think it is a very beautiful film. I think if this was up for a nomination for cinematography, I think it has a great chance at winning. It had that kind of almost animated feel about it – the characters felt so well-designed, and the costumes were amazing. I especially loved the take on “Frankenstein.” I think he looked really cool. I know that the actor who played “Frankenstein,” he put a lot of effort into learning a special Japanese dance or something to learn how to move in that way. I think that was really cool. But it’s an almost three-hour-long time commitment, and there wasn’t enough plot. It was moving very, very slowly for what it was. I think a single scene would last 30 minutes, and I just couldn’t give that much of a time commitment to this film.
Asher: I really loved this movie. I watched this movie before I watched “Hamnet,” so at the time when I watched it, this was my favorite movie of the picks. I thought that the length of it was fitting. I didn’t feel like it was excruciatingly long. I remember watching this late at night, and sitting down to start it and being like, “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this movie” because I was really tired. But I made it through it, and I remember being enthralled with the film. My eyes were glued to the screen the whole time because I thought it was really beautiful – the colors were so pretty. It’s worth noting that the colors in it are very different from a lot of the other movies, which are more warm-toned. I thought the colors were really pretty. I haven’t read “Frankenstein” as a book. It is something I really want to read, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. I totally hear what you’re saying that it probably doesn’t measure up to certain things there, but I thought it was a really good adaptation. I’ve seen other adaptations of “Frankenstein,” and I think this is probably my favorite,
Frey: To speak on the way they adapted the book, I think we’re on a wave in the industry of adapting classical novels, like with “Wuthering Heights” for example, which is a bad example because it was horrifically bad, I’ve heard. But, we’re on a roll of that. These classical books, there’s so much expectation built up in them, and they’re so central to literacy and all these things that it can be really hard to make something new out of it, or just show it on screen. There’s so many “Frankenstein” adaptations that I get that they had to do a lot of work to make something unique. I do see the ways they tried to do that, and I recognize it’s a hard story to adapt for the upteenth time. This is in some ways an achievement for them to make such a beautiful, unique version of the original story.
Angel: Building off what Frey said, I have not watched “Frankenstein,” but going off his tangent about books being adapted to movies, I definitely agree. It’s such a hard thing to do. From a person who reads books, you understand the character so much better because you’re definitely inside them in a book. So I definitely see how it’s hard to transition that into movies. Maybe that’s where “Frankenstein” kind of fell flat. I don’t know. I didn’t really watch it.
Audri: I do think a lot of people nowadays really expect that adaptations of books to stick it with the movies. I do understand that fans who have been long-term fans of those books do set their expectations really high. But I feel like the creators of “Frankenstein” were allowed to have that creative leniency, and they executed it well. They took a twist in their own story. Yeah, it made a lot of people upset because – I don’t want to say they didn’t do it correctly – but they did it in their own way that made people be like, “Huh? That’s weird. I don’t like this.” But because of that, that’s kind of what made the movie pretty good. It’s kind of hard to explain because there are good things about the plot of this movie, and there are bad things about the plot. Part of me is saying, “Well, I’m disappointed that they didn’t go with the original ‘Frankenstein’ and just incorporate this new cinematography to it.” But at the same time, I’m happy they didn’t just kind of make a copy of the book into a movie version, and I’m happy they had their own creative leniency with it.
Asher: Speaking of creative leniency, I really loved the casting for this movie. I don’t love Jacob Elordi’s work. Something about him just makes me very queasy, but I think with that in mind, him as the character of Frankenstein (Frankenstein’s creature) was so perfect for me as a viewer because he has a very unique look. I think putting him in that position was really smart of the creators. I also thought Mia Goth was gorgeous in it. A lot of the costuming also reminds me of one of the nominees from last year, “Poor Things.” I think that was last year…something like that. I wanted to go into what do we think of this movie in terms of the future of cinema?
Frey: I’m sure by this point, pretty much everybody knows this, but movies are getting genuinely so long. I’ll go in at like, 10:00 p.m. to a movie, (and) I won’t get out till 1:00 a.m. At this point, I know that if I go to a movie theater, I’m not leaving until late, late, late at night. I think it’s a lot to expect from people. You need to also be conscious that we can’t be having these movies. If you have an amazing story to tell, that’s amazing. That’s what sequels are for. That’s what multi-part trilogies are for. You can have these amazing stories and connect with these audiences, but you don’t need to do it in a single movie that’s three hours long. You can do that in two movies, three movies, however long you need to tell that full story. A lot of these movies could benefit from that. I think sequels are, in a lot of ways, a good thing. I think there’s bad handling of them.
Asher: I think that’s a good point. I do think movies are definitely getting so long. I think all of the nominees this year were two hours or more. Your bringing up of sequels is really important. I do think sequels are a really useful tool, but I do think there are a few movies that sequels don’t fit them. I think “Frankenstein” is one of those. I think a sequel would have not made sense for this movie.
Frey: I get that sequels don’t work for everything, but I think at the same time, they’re getting too big. If you’re telling that very long story with so many elements, I think you can do it in a more reasonable time limit, like two hours. That’s a fine time limit, but these stories get so stretched out, and not in every movie but a lot of them, it’s this plot that would have been maybe an hour long or an hour and a half, like a regular film. The time lot is getting stretched to fill this longer time limit. I feel like in some ways, having a longer film has kind of been equated to a more complex film. That’s not necessarily true, but I think that it’s influencing people to be like, “Okay, I should make my film longer because it makes it seem more important or more complex.” And that’s not necessarily the case.
Audri: I want to add on to that, how you were talking about how sequels are needed and it should be shortened down. I do think that if you are going to have a three-hour-long movie, you can do it. I don’t think there should be as many as there are now, but I feel like if you are able to make a three hour movie, you should at least make it so the people and the viewers will be engaged the entire three hours. I think that’s why “Frankenstein” started falling off because the plot was lacking, which made you walk out because you just started getting bored. That’s kind of what happened with “Train Dreams.” “Train Dreams” wasn’t that long, but it was all about the plot, not making people engaged, where “Marty Supreme” was two and a half hours, about, and the plot was always having something without being too much and without being too little. The viewer was always engaged, which made me, and probably other people, want to stay in that movie. I feel like too many movies nowadays are making their movies too long without good enough things to make those movies worth watching, and you should start focusing on the actual plot rather than the actual length of the movie.
Asher: Main takeaways of movies lately: too long, and also they are a lot of adaptations.
Frey: And aesthetics over quality writing.
Asher: So that’s about it.
Angel: This has been another podcast from your student reporters here at The Roar. We hope you enjoyed it, and stay tuned for more podcasts like this one.