One other Oscar-nominated film Bill and I streamed recently was The Triangle of Sadness. I'm not going to delve deeply into this one. It was way too long. It was disjointed: you think the main characters are a handsome but somewhat daft male model and his conniving social-media influencer girlfriend, but many more characters come on board during a cruise and even take the story's helm, including a drunken ship's captain (Woody Harrelson), a militaristic cruise director, and a garrulous Russian, leaving the young couple's story with much less impact.
A lot of riotous and gross scenes occur in connection with the Captain's dinner, which is served during rough seas. I don't want to include spoilers, but I will say that after some wild, gross, and weird stuff happens, the characters wind up marooned on an island.
There's a bit of "Gilligan's Island" in this film, with the daft male model serving as a Gilligan of sorts, the girlfriend a Ginger Grant type, the Russian as Thurston Howell III, and the ship's cruise director a Mary Ann type. But that's where the Gilligan comparison ends.
One "below decks" cleaning crew member suddenly assumes power as "captain" of the marooned group, causing all sorts of division, grumbling, and sneaky behavior. She has her eye on the male model, making the influencer jealous. When the influencer decides to explore the rest of the island, the self-appointed captain realizes that her grip over these rich or gorgeous people will end quickly, unless she ensures that they don't learn what the influencer discovers.
Unfortunately, the ending is left for you to decide, which teed me off, but I understand why.
As the credits rolled, Bill shouted, "Give this one a 2! It's been done already and a whole lot better." After that, he put on his shoes and stomped out. He's a bit weary of my determination to see every single film nominated for an Academy Award, since very few have been enjoyable or entertaining. Actually, The Banshees of Inisherin and Top Gun Maverick are the best of the bunch in terms of "enlightenment" or "entertainment," but we have not seen Women Talking.
The Pat-Oh-Meter gives The Triangle of Sadness a 3, primarily for bits of brilliant humor and social commentary. It makes good points about social status, class, money, and power. And the theme of putting an "underling" in a position of power reminds me of something that happened during one company retreat I attended 20 years ago. The staffers and managers were supposed to team up as equals for a scavenger hunt. The lone staffer on our team took the clue sheet and, without going over the clues with the rest of us, ran off wildly to find everything herself. The rest of our team, all managers, stood at the starting point, since we had no clue where to go. Needless to say, our team lost. The underling did apologize later, saying something about how she didn't know what got into her. Well, this film says it all: the desire for power.
To see top critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, go to this link. Some of them share Bill's low-ball opinion, but not all are bad. If you enjoy silly, gross, quirky, dark, satiric humor with lots of vomit, poop, dead people, disgusting food, and a disabled German woman who can't speak, give this a try.