During Jennifer Lopez’s Office Romance promotion, I learned some new stuff about her. Like, I honestly didn’t know that she’s a Ted Lasso fan, and a Shrinking fan. She said that when she began working with Brett Goldstein, she asked him for updates and spoilers on those shows. We’re also learning that Jennifer really does consume a lot of movies and TV shows overall, and she has a lot of thoughts about them. She discussed those thoughts when she appeared on Brett’s podcast, Films to be Buried With. One moment of the interview is causing a lot of talk – apparently, J.Lo loathed Nomadland, the film which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (for Chloe Zhao) and Best Actress (for Frances McDormand) in 2021.
Chloe Zhao’s drama “Nomadland” may have been an Oscars favorite, winning prizes for best picture and more, but it wasn’t one for Academy member Jennifer Lopez. During a recent appearance on her “Office Romance” co-star Brett Goldstein’s podcast, “Films to Be Buried With,” Goldstein asked: “What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?”
“It’s hard to say ‘worst’ because it’s a beautiful film,” Lopez prefaced before naming “Nomadland,” which also picked up Oscars for best actress and best director. Lopez elaborated that the indie drama is her “worst type of film.”
“You can tell from my taste in movies what I think about this,” Lopez said, listing musicals and comedies as her favorite genres and highlighting the likes of “West Side Story” and “Flashdance.”
“It’s not why I go to the movies,” the actress-singer explained. “I like musicals. I like romantic comedies. I like thrillers, you know? And [‘Nomadland’] is a slow-moving thing about grief, and there’s no escapism to it. And I do like some movies like that… but that one I just didn’t.”
Based on Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” Zhao’s movie stars McDormand as Fern, a widow in her 60s who loses everything in the 2007-2009 recession and begins living in her van and traveling across the U.S. Lopez added that she appreciated McDormand’s “amazing” performance and said “there’s no surprise” that the movie won the actress her third and fourth Oscars: “She deserves all the Oscars. But I just didn’t enjoy it. It’s just not for me.”
“It’s just a taste thing,” she continued. “And I know we need movies about grief! I understand.”
Goldstein responded, “You just don’t wanna watch them,” to which Lopez agreed, saying it was similar to her reluctance to watch horror films, the only exception being Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s “Together,” which convinced her the genre had “evolved.”
She’s being totally clear that this is her subjective opinion, and that personally, she just doesn’t enjoy those kinds of bummer movies. I agree, actually – I’m occasionally up for a bummer movie, but only under certain circumstances and Nomadland didn’t do it for me either. I wouldn’t call it bad, it just wasn’t my taste. I didn’t watch Zhao’s latest either – I completely skipped Hamnet because I knew it felt like grief p0rn and I wasn’t in the right head space for it. I tend to avoid those sort of “we only made this super-sad movie to get awards” films. You can hear Brett’s pod interview with Jennifer here.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
