The phony baloney National Bored of Review has announced its winners. Studio A24 picked up four big wins with Best Actress, Foreign Film, Animated Film, and Directorial Debut. Why? I’ve told you before, countless times: David Laub, head of marketing for A24, sits on the NBR board. That’s all you need to know. This is an annual disgrace. Not only did A24 get the four major awards, they got 3 of the top 10 independent films.

“Top Gun Maverick” won Best Picture because Annie Schulhof wants Tom Cruise front and center. And now she’s got him! (This ensures “TGM” not getting the Oscar, kids.) She gave “Banshees” some awards because Searchlight, which she used to snub, is now part of Disney.

Steven Spielberg won Best Director for “The Fablemans.” He’s won about 45 times with the NBR. They love him, who doesn’t? (They didn’t love him enough to give his actors awards, however, or Tony Kushner’s screenplay.) Otherwise, Universal Pictures didn’t do too well. Shocking that there was nothing for George Clooney or Julia Roberts for “Ticket to Paradise”! And nothing for Universal Focus’s “She Said” or “Tar.” Nada. I guess Universal didn’t pony up!

The big joke is that the brilliant Danielle Deadwyler got “Breakthrough Performance.” This is the traditional NBR category for Black actors. Deadwyler joins Jennifer Hudson, Gabourey Sidibe, Dev Patel, Terrence Howard, Viola Davis, Royalty Hightower, Abraham Attah, Quvenzhané Wallis and so on in this group. This is what the NBR does with POC to make themselves look good. It’s also very shameful.

See the full list of winners below.

Best Film: “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures)

Best Director: Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures)

Best Actor: Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures)

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)

Best Supporting Actor: Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures)

Best Supporting Actress: Janelle Monáe, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Netflix)

Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell, “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Netflix)

Breakthrough Performance:  Danielle Deadwyler, “Till” (Orion/United Artists Releasing)

Breakthrough Performance: Gabriel LaBelle, “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures)

Best Directorial Debut: Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun” (A24)

Best Animated Feature:  “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” (A24)

Best International Film: “Close” from Belgium (A24)

Best Documentary: “Sr.” (Netflix)

Best Ensemble: “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Claudio Miranda, “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures)

NBR Freedom of Expression Awards: “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (Neon) and “Argentina, 1985” (Amazon Studios)

Top Films (in alphabetical order):

• “Aftersun” (A24)
• “Avatar: The Way of Water” (20th Century Studios)
• “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures)
• “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
• “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures)
• “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Netflix)
• “RRR” (Variance Films)
• “Till” (Orion/United Artists Releasing)
• “The Woman King” (Sony Pictures)
• “Women Talking”

Top 5 International Films (in alphabetical order):

• “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Germany)
• “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina)
• “Decision to Leave” (South Korea)
• “EO” (Poland)
• “Saint Omer” (France)

Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order):

• “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (Neon)
• “All That Breathes” (HBO)
• “Descendant” (Netflix)
• “Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” (Sony Pictures Classics)
• “Wildcat” (Amazon Studios)

Top 10 Independent Films (in alphabetical order):

• “Armageddon Time” (Focus Features)
• “Emily the Criminal” (Roadside Attractions/Vertical Entertainment)
• “The Eternal Daughter” (A24)
• “Funny Pages” (A24)
• “The Inspection” (A24)
• “Living” (Sony Pictures Classics)
• “A Love Song” (Bleecker Street)
• “Nanny” (Amazon Studios)
• “The Wonder” (Netflix)
• “To Leslie” (Momentum Pictures)

One thing you don’t want to do in the comic book movie world is make changes. Change equals Kryptonite especially in the world of DC Comics. Nothing upsets the fans like zigging when you said you were zagging.

So now there’s chaos because The Hollywood Reporter says that newly minted DC chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran may be chucking everything and starting over. No “Wonder Woman 3” from Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot. No to the “Superman” sequel with Henry Cavill, even though the actor reassured fans he was coming back. “Black Adam” sequel? Maybe not. “The Batman, Part 2?” Who knows?

Gunn tried to allay fans’ fears. He tweeted today:

“So. As for the story yesterday in the Hollywood Reporter, some of it is true, some of it is half-true, some of it is not true, & some of it we haven’t decided yet whether it’s true or not.

“Although this first month at DC has been fruitful, building the next ten years of story takes time & we’re still just beginning. Peter & I chose to helm DC Studios knowing we were coming into a fractious environment, both in the stories being told & in the audience itself & there would be an unavoidable transitional period as we moved into telling a cohesive story across film, TV, animation, and gaming.

“But, in the end, the drawbacks of that transitional period were dwarfed by the creative possibilities & the opportunity to build upon what has worked in DC so far & to help rectify what has not.

“We know we are not going to make every single person happy every step of the way, but we can promise everything we do is done in the service of the STORY & in the service of the DC CHARACTERS we know you cherish and we have cherished our whole lives.

“As for more answers about the future of the DCU, I will sadly have to ask you to wait. We are giving these characters & the stories the time & attention they deserve & we ourselves still have a lot more questions to ask & answer.”

Florian Zeller’s The Father with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman was so clever and well constructed, full of surprises, you had to admire it. Sir Anthony won the Oscar, which was exactly right. The whole movie was a gem.

So what does Zeller follow it up with but “The Son.” All the originality is gone. It’s “Ordinary People” without a purpose or hope. The acting is professional tidy, with Laura Dern stealing whatever there is to be taken. Hugh Jackman is somber (although he shines during an inspired dance moment). But yikes, want to feel bad? “The Son” is for you.

So Hugh is a high powered Manhattan lawyer who left his wife (Dern) and their teen son for a younger woman. The new couple has a new a baby. But back in Brooklyn, Dern is dealing with the morose, severely depressed son (Zen McGrath) who is clearly going to kill either himself or someone else before this thing comes to an end.

Zeller depicts the parents as clueless, as if they’ve never seen “Ordinary People” or read about all the incels who’ve shot up schools, etc. Jackman and Dern’s divorced parents don’t seem to have any connection to the real world and make all the wrong choices despite their education, wealth, and living in the most sophisticated city in the world. Only Kirby as the second wife senses the danger they’re all in, but no one will listen to her.

This movie season is just full of good acting in well made films that don’t make sense. I don’t know why. I’ve said this before: no one seems to think them through. “The Son” has no arc. It’s just a set up for disaster than ends in disaster. They should have followed the arc of the bombing raid in “Top Gun Maverick.” You fly into the steep valley, get close to the ground, release your bombs, and the climb out quickly. In this case, they just fly in, drop the bombs, and then crash into the mountain.

Dern just knows how to play a conflicted mother in pain with subtlety and grace. If you follow her, the film is torture. Jackman brings the gravity but he can’t find his way out of this mess. Newcomer Zen McGrath, who’s Australian, makes an appealing debut despite struggling with an American accent, and Kirby is a fresh addition to an old formula.

But “The Son” is not “The Father,” even with a cameo from Hopkins as Jackman’s cold-hearted father (a much different character from the first movie). Let’s hope there is no third chapter.