When my 9-year-old self saw Emmett (Chris Pratt) become “The Special” and join the ranks of the greatest master builders to defeat Lord Business’s (Will Ferrell) regime, I thought it was one of the greatest movies of all time. Ten years later, I hold a similar opinion. Having recently rewatched “The Lego Movie” for old time’s sake, I realized that the film should not be taken at face value. 

Daughter of a jewelry designer born into the peaks of British high society, Emerald Fennell made a career transition from acting to writing and directing with her television series “Killing Eve” and has since received many accolades and awards and great recognition for her work. Fennell’s sophomore project “Saltburn” is a film that aims to provoke, much like her debut “Promising Young Woman.” The latter film, for which Fennell received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – one of the more puzzling decisions on behalf of the Academy in a history of many puzzling decisions – was sold as a poppy, high-brow feminist take on the rape-revenge film. However, in reality, it was a film composed of empty platitudes and pulled punches, with little to say about its subject matter.

Every year at the Academy Awards, there are a few types of films that are bound to be nominated: the blockbusters that dominated the box office, the arthouse hopefuls and the little indies that could.

There is a scene in “The Holdovers’’ in which boarding school teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) asks Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a troubled student whom he is the guardian of over winter break, what the bottle of pills on his bed is for. Angus quickly brushes them off as being for his “low energy,” to which Paul bluntly responds, “You mean for depression?” Angus changes the subject and walks out of the room while Paul takes a few of the pills.