Speaking of actors with two notable films this year, Saoirse Ronan has entered the chat. She has two films out this fall, addiction drama The Outrun, which opens next week, and Blitz, Steve McQueen’s period drama about a family during the London Blitz of World War II, which opens in the extremely award-friendly month of November.
This is McQueen’s first feature film since 2018’s Widows—though he did make the excellent Small Axe anthology of films for Prime Video in between—and it looks stunning. It’s Steve McQueen, the man couldn’t make a bad-looking film if he tried. Thematically, it looks like a tearjerker centered on a young boy’s journey to reunite with his mother after being sent away during the Blitz (movie children: always trying to get their parents killed). But physically it looks beautiful and lush, which of course raises the old adage about war films, and how you can never truly make an anti-war film because the inherent glamour of cinema will always be there.
As for Ronan, playing a mother during wartime who is stressed about her kid AND speechifying AND going dancing AND working in a factory AND looking like Saoirse Ronan is practically a rubber stamp into the Best Actress race. Her husband, Jack Lowden, was recently an Emmy nominee for Slow Horses (shout out if the Emmys is how you found out Jack Lowden and Saoirse Ronan got married), and now Saoirse is entering the Oscar race in a big way. Could they go two-for-two, and become a trophy trail power couple?
Here's Saoirse at BBC Studios in London earlier this week.
