Posts Tagged ‘Sean Penn’

98th Academy Awards took place on Sunday 15th March 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Oscar winners 2026: Full List of Winners

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan – Sinners

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan – Weapons

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler – Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another adapted from the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.

Best Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw – Sinners

Best Costume Design: Kate Hawley – Frankenstein

Best Make up & Hairstyling: Frankenstein

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: Fire and Ash

Best Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen – One Battle After Another

Best Sound: F1

Best Production Design: Frankenstein

Best Documentary Feature:  Mr Nobody Against Putin

Best Documentary Short Subject: All the Empty Rooms

Best Original Score: Ludwig Goransson – Sinners

Best Original Song: K-Pop Demon Hunters

Best Animated Feature Film: K-Pop Demon Hunters

Best Animated Short: The Girl Who Cried Pearls.

Best Live Action Short Film: The Singers & People Exchanging Saliva -Tied Winner

Best International Feature Film:  Sentimental Value directed by Joachim Trier (Norway)

The 32nd Actor Awards (Screen Actors Guild Awards), honouring the best achievements in film and television performances for the year 2025, were presented on Sunday March 1^st 2026, at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles, California.

Actors Awards in the Film Category:

Best Cast: Sinners – Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, Lola Kirke, Saul Williams  

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan – Sinners

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan – Weapons

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

The British Academy Film Awards –

The 78th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFTAs, were held on 22nd February 2026 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2025.

Best Film: One Battle After Another          

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Robert Aramayo – I Swear

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

Best Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku – Sinners

Best British Film: Hamnet

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler – Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Costume Design: Frankenstein

Best Foreign Language Film: Sentimental Value directed by Joachim Trier

Rising Star Award: Robert Aramayo

One Battle After Another

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Leonardo di Caprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti, Tony Goldwyn, Wood Harris, Alana Haim

Running Time: 2 hours and 41 minutes

Film Rating: 9 out of 10

Acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson who produced such brilliant films as The Master, Phantom Thread and There will be Blood returns to the big screen with his most audacious and relevant film One Battle After Another starring Oscar winners Leonardo di Caprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro.

One Battle After Another is set in a semi-satirical world of America in which migrants have flooded into sanctuary cities and there is an urban terrorist group called the French 75 who are anarchists and there to disrupt any conventional authority whether this is freeing the migrants from internment camps or blowing up banks and federal buildings. Within this radical environment a love affair develops between Perfidia Beverly Hills and Bob, a paranoid loser who is incredibly good at explosives.

Perfedia Bevely Hills is a full on radical urban terrorist, brilliantly performed by Teyana Taylor (Coming 2 America) who deserves a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Perfedia is a strong and militant black woman who has an affair with the blue eyed Caucasian Bob, excellently played with the right balance of zealous and uncertainty by Oscar winner Leonardo di Caprio (The Revenant) who channels a similar crazy energy to his role in The Wolf of Wall Street except this time swapping the Wall Street suits for a dirty nightgown and black sunglasses. Di Caprio just hits the right amount of panic and paranoia especially as the film develops and he is the one looking after their love child, their daughter of the revolution, Willa superbly played by newcomer Chase Infiniti.

Auteur Paul Thomas Anderson always paints a broad and multi-dimensional cinematic canvas and in this film he creates the perfect villain in the form of Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw played with precision and brilliance by two time Oscar winner Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River) and he definitely deserves an Oscar for this role.

Penn is absolutely electrifying as the fanatical army colonel who is out to destroy the French 75, the dangerous lunatics, the scum of the earth that has stained the heart of white America. Lockjaw is one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s best characters, an evil and slightly kinky army colonel who had the military on his side but whose fanaticism drives him to join a secret society of men that cherish racial purification involving a bizarre scene featuring Tony Goldwyn as the suave, yet sinister Virgil Throckmorton.

Lockjaw’s aim is to capture Bob and his daughter Willa and soon a bizarre and bloody chase ensues which ends in some startling revelations.

On one level One Battle After Another acts a satirical film about the social ills of 21^st century America from immigration to gun control, but on another it is a perceptive exploration of patriarchy and the woman that resist it, with names like Jungle Pussy and Perfidia Beverly Hills.

With an original script by Paul Thomas Anderson and outstanding performances by Di Caprio, Penn and del Toro, One Battle After Another is an exhilarating ride through the dark and deceptive underbelly of American society touching on every facet from racism to urban terrorism, from military power to the flaws of an underground movement that has lost its agency.

With a brilliantly shot car chase scene near the end to the captivating musical score by Oscar nominee Jonny Greenwood (The Power of the Dog, There will be Blood), One Battle After Another is an outrageous satire on contemporary America packed with dark humour and ominous warnings.

Drawing inspiration from Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson creates a modern day masterpiece with One Battle After Another about subversion, conversion and the product of a love affair during the heady time of social revolution.

One Battle After Another gets a film rating of 9 out of 10 and is original cinema, expertly crafted with some memorable scenes which will imprint on the viewers psyche forever. Highly recommended viewing and a definite 2026 Oscar contender.

The Gunman

Director: Pierre Morel

Cast: Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone, Jasmine Trinca, Peter Franzen

Taken director Pierre Morel brings to cinematic life an above average thriller The Gunman based upon the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette pairing Oscar winners Sean Penn (Mystic River, Milk) and Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) together for the first time.

Set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, England and Spain, Penn plays an off the books Mercenary who is unwillingly hired to assassinate the Minister of Mines in the DRC after his announcement that the war torn country would be limiting foreign owned mining companies from operating in the ravaged but mineral rich central African country formerly the Belgian Congo.

Dubbed operation Calvary, once the assassination takes place in 2006 Terrier was to leave the country and the continent and also that of his love interest, NGO worker Annie played by Italian actress Jasmine Trinca.

Fast forward eight years to 2014 and Terrier is targeted back in the DRC by some mean looking machete welding men and soon hightails it back to London after a narrow escape. Back in England, he confronts the mastermind of operation Calvary, the shady British businessman Cox played by Mark Rylance (Anonymous, The Other Boleyn Girl).

Terrier soon realizes that all the men involved in operation Calvary have been killed only leaving himself and boozy Spaniard Felix played by Bardem. The action thankfully moves to the fabulous Catalonian capital of Barcelona where things really heat up as Trinca realizes that her former flame is alive and well. After a very bloody shootout in a Spanish villa, Terrier travels to the British protectorate of Gibraltar to finally confront the real culprit in this scandalous and dangerous international cover up.

Unfortunately director Pierre Morel’s film The Gunman despite having two A list actors in it, suffers from the wait of its own importance and does not nearly come close to such masterpieces as the brilliantly directed Fernando Meirelles thriller The Constant Gardener based on a John le Carre novel.

The Gunman has all the right ingredients including shady Multi-Nationals plundering Africa’s vast mineral wealth, a covert operation which went horribly wrong and a doomed love affair which is finally reconciled.

Penn gives an impressively muscular performance as the mercenary Terrier but Bardem and even Golden Globe nominee Idris Elba (Mandela, Pacific Rim) are wasted in this overlong meandering thriller which despite the exotic locations could have been neatly edited. The script needed an incisive treatment by Oscar winning scriptwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, Rush).

The Gunman is an average thriller and although at times exhilarating lacks a clear vision and less contrived plot, although the bullfight sequence at the end certainly is inventive. Recommended viewing for those that enjoyed The November Man and The Constant Gardener. Look out for cameos by Ray Winstone (Noah, Snow White and the Huntsman) and Finnish actor Peter Franzen as the crazed gun for hire.

The 61st Golden Globe Awards

Took place on Sunday 25th January 2004 hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Golden Globe Winners in The Film Categories:

Best Film Drama: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Film Musical or Comedy : Lost in Translation

Best Actor Drama: Sean Penn – Mystic River

Best Actress Drama: Charlize Theron – Monster

Best Actor Musical or Comedy: Bill Murray – Lost in Translation

Best Actress  Musical or Comedy: Diane Keaton – Something’s Gotta Give

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins – Mystic River

Best Supporting Actress: Renee Zellweger – Cold Mountain

Best Director: Peter Jackson – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Foreign Language Film – Osama (Afghanistan)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/61st_Golden_Globe_Awards

2003 Venice International Film Festival Winners

Venice International Film Festival, known as the Biennale di Venezia takes place annually
in late August, early September and is the oldest Film Festival in the World.

Winners of the 2003 Venice International Film Festival are as follows: –

Golden Lion (Best Picture) – The Return directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

Silver Lion (Best Director) – Takeshi Kitano for Zatōichi

Best Actor – Sean Penn – 21 Grams

Best Actress – Katja Riemann – Rosenstrasse

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_International_Film_Festival

Gangster Squad

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Cast: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Holt McCallany, Michael Pena, Sean Penn, Sullivan Stapleton, Nick Nolte, Mireille Enos, Josh Pence

Based upon the fascinating non-fiction book, Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman, the beautifully yet violent cinematic rendition of the story of how an elite group of LA cops formed a Gangster Squad to tackle the effects of organized crime in post-wars Los Angeles, is thrilling to watch, engrossing and thoroughly entertaining. Featuring an all star cast including Ryan Gosling as Jerry Wooters, Josh Brolin as Jack O’Mara, Emma Stone as Grace Faraday and Sean Penn as the malevolent gangster Mickey Cohen who terrorized the Hollywood Boulevard in the early days of the city of angels growth is both visceral and heartfelt.

Giovanni Ribisi and Michael Pena also star as electronics expert Conwell Keeler and Officer Navidad Ramirez respectively in this brotherhood tale of elite cops fighting the influences of organized crime in the form of the vicious New York immigrant Mickey Cohen. Whilst Paul Lieberman’s novel goes into a truly in depth analysis of the origins of organized crime in Los Angeles, before and after the 2nd World War especially as California and Nevada become ripe for the East Coast families to increase their criminal activities. In this case Chicago crime emissary Jack Dragnet, played by Jon Polito is soon wiped out by Mickey Cohen who will go to any lengths to become Los Angeles’s crime boss.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer, Gangster Squad skips over much of the social history in favour of making a sleek, glamorous and violent film about the sharp shooting and mischievous Squad which successfully undermined Mickey Cohen’s grip on the city of Angels in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Not nearly as measured and brilliant as Barry Levinson’s film Bugsy about Bugsy Seigel’s establishment of Las Vegas in the late 40’s, Gangster Squad comes off more as a nostalgic pastiche of all great Gangster films from the same genre most notably The Untouchables, Bugsy and the brilliant L. A. Confidential.

Gangster Squad features a smooth talking Ryan Gosling in what is really an ensemble piece about a group of men who go to any lengths to undermine the mob king in their town often at their own personal costs. Gosling’s screen time with Emma Stone is fabulous along with some particular brilliant and captivating action sequences, Gangster Squad is held together by a brilliant cast, fabulous sets and a superb retelling of an emerging city out of the clutches of crime and into those of glamour and cinema, which is what Los Angeles is more famous for today.

Recent more grittier films about Los Angeles downtown crime film like End of Watch also starring Michael Pena shot in a Southlands TV series style has not changed the image that LA is still a city plagued by foreign criminal organizations or crazy criminals as immortalized in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and not so much by East Coast immigrants as it was in the first half of the 20th century.

Paul Lieberman’s book Gangster Squad is a brilliant read as his detailed history of the city of Angels in the mid 20th century is perfectly captured and exceptionally well researched.  The Hollywood film version of Gangster Squad is by all respects a brilliantly recreated 1940’s handsome cinematic experience complete with Slapsy Maxies also starring Nick Nolte as Chief Parker and Anthony Mackie as Officer Coleman Harris and worth watching for the quirky dialogue, well orchestrated action sequences,  and will surely delight those fans who loves similar styled mobster movies!

81st Academy Awards

22nd February 2009

Oscar Winners at the 81st Academy Awards

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor: Sean Penn – Milk

Best Actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight (received Oscar posthumously)

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black – Milk

Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Foreign Language Film: Departures directed by Yojiro Takita

Best Documentary Film: Man on Wire – directed James Marsh

Best Original Score: A. R. Rahman – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Costume Design: Michael O’ Connor – The Duchess

Best Film Editing: Chris Dickens – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/81st_Academy_Awards

76th Academy Awards

29th February 2004

Oscar Winners at the 76th Academy Awards

Best Picture: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Director: Peter Jackson – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Actor: Sean Penn – Mystic River

Best Actress: Charlize Theron – Monster

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins – Mystic River

Best Supporting Actress: Renee Zellweger – Cold Mountain

Best Original Screenplay: Sofia Coppola – Lost in Translation

Best Adapted Screenplay: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh & Philippa Boynes – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Foreign Language Film: The Barbarian Invasions directed by Denys Arcand– (Canada)

Best Documentary Feature: The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara by Errol Williams and Michael Williams

Best Original Score:  Howard Shore – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Cinematography: Russel Boyd – Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World

Best Costume Design: Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Film Editing: Jamie Selkirk – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Best Visual Effects – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/76th_Academy_Awards