Critical Darlings: Sentimental Value and Belated Oscar Breakthroughs with Joe Reid

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions / Talkhouse

Tv & Film, Film Reviews, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we’re in hygge mode, uncovering traumas in our generational home with the host of This Had Oscar Buzz, Joe Reid! One of the breakout Oscar films of the year is Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a warm, realist Norwegian film about a difficult but brilliant director (Stellan Skarsgard), his two daughters (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), and an American actress cast in the auteur’s new film (Elle Fanning). All four performances earned Oscar nominations, along with nominations for Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay. Sentimental Value also highlights a recurring phenomenon in Hollywood, wherein the Academy will pass over a director’s breakout film but shower the follow-up with nominations. In Trier’s case, his previous film The Worst Person in the World received nominations for Best International Film and Original Screenplay but, in our opinion, deserved many more. We try to break down how and why this happens, whether films about filmmaking have an innate appeal to Oscar voters, how Fanning’s star power helps bridge the international gap for voters, and the film itself, including its deft intermingling of artistic expression and sublimated generational trauma. With Joe's guidance, we also check in on some of the Oscar-buzziest films of the year that didn't pan out, check in on the state of the acting category race and some potential upsets, and celebrate The Secret Agent's breakout star Tânia Maria and her new role as Burger King spokeswoman. Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Critical Darling's, a conversation about the award season conversation.
0:13.0	One contender at a time.
0:17.0	Please welcome to this stage, your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore.
0:26.2	Marie, thank you as ever for your spirited introduction.
0:29.8	We are once again joined with producer Ben.
0:31.9	Hello, Ben.
0:32.6	Hello.
0:33.2	And we have a special guest from Vulture, Allison's coworker, and the host of this head of Oscar Buzz, the podcast.
0:41.8	Joe Reed, hello.
0:42.5	Hi, thank you for having me.
0:44.1	Well, we're glad you could make it.
0:45.9	Me too.
0:46.2	Especially because you're in a really busy time of your working life right now.
0:50.4	Yes.
0:51.1	People don't know every year, Joe does a ranking of every film,
0:56.4	if short or feature, right, nominated for an Oscar. So you have to watch a ton of shit.
1:01.3	50 of them this year. And I'd say shit deliberately. Sometimes. A lot of times there's bad stuff.
1:05.5	Uh-huh. Live action short has not covered itself in glory for many, many years. I feel like...
1:09.8	No, is it any better this year?
1:11.0	No, as I was saying to Allison earlier, there are fewer things that feel like absolutely terrible and awful. You know, there's usually some, like, incredibly treakily, like, animated short or whatever, or, like, a lot of action short. And it wins. Right, and it inevitably wins. there's none of those, but there's also none of like the one or two that are like, oh, this is really great. Right. There's one animated short called Butterfly that I think looks incredibly beautiful. It's, and they like painted on glass to like do the animation. And I'm like, this is really, but what animated short tends to do for me is, like, it really highlights how samey animated feature tends to be every year where it's just like...
1:50.7	Even when there's like, like, Arco looks different than Zootopia 2 or whatever.
1:55.2	But then you look at the animated shorts and it's like, oh, there are so many different ways to do animation.
	...

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