I’m of two minds about the Oscars.
On one hand, they get people talking about movies, and I like talking about movies.
On the other, they warp the way we talk and think about movies. I’m sorry, but if your response to a movie you love is “That should win an award!” rather than “That was a great movie and I wish more people would see it,” well, that's just weird! As for the individual categories, they award displays of effort over craft, and make more sense if you substitute “most” for “best”: Most Acting, Most Directing, Most Editing,
Nevertheless! Let’s talk about the Oscars today, since they’re happening this Sunday. Will you watch them? (I won’t, but I’m not gonna be a buzzkill about it.) Have you seen these movies? Did you love 'em? Hate 'em? Wish other movies got nominated?
I’m gonna go a little longer than usual in today's prompt, in lieu of writing a whole other story about my Oscar picks. I don’t care enough about industry politics to guess what will win, but here’s what I think should win.
- Here’s how I’d rank the Best Picture nominees, from best to worst: Anora - Nickel Boys - Conclave - Dune: Part Two - I’m Still Here - Wicked - A Complete Unknown - The Brutalist - The Substance - Emilia Perez. (I've got capsule reviews of all 10 here.) I think the top two are great movies; from there it’s varying degrees of good-to-OK-ness till you get to The Substance, which would be a funny winner because voters would be supporting the kind of gross out movie they usually can’t stand, and the tuneless schlock transploitation of Emilia Perez, which would be an embarrassment.
- Best Actor is a dull lot: Timothée Chalamet pretending to be Bob Dylan, Sebastian Stan pretending to be Donald Trump (he’s much better in A Different Man), Coleman Domingo trying too hard (maybe give him the award so he relaxes), Ralph Fiennes moping, Adrian Brody moping with a funny accent. For Best Supporting Actor, I like Yurly Borisov because I liked Anora, I didn’t care about Jeremy Strong in The Apprentice because I don’t care about Roy Cohn’s feelings, Kieran Culkin is a funny guy and A Royal Pain could have been a great comedy, Guy Pearce is a two-dimensional rich guy in a two-dimensional epic, and Edward Norton does a nice Pete Seeger impression. If this is the best the men had to offer in 2024 (it’s not, but you know how the Oscars are), then bring on the women.
- Best Actress is better, with Mikey Madison in Anora and Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here both turning in great performances, though neither was as good as Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths. I won’t complain if Isabella Rossellini gets Best Supporting Actress trophy for her ironic little curtsy in Conclave, but Ariana Grande was truly wonderful in Wicked.
- A lot of my other picks are boring because they're tautological: The best movie has the best directing, and the best acting, and the best cinematography and so forth, because those are the elements that make a movie good. Sorry! I know this isn’t any fun and I'm not playing the game right. So generally I want Anora to win most of the categories because that's the movie I liked the most.
- Still, I am rooting for a few select favorites in the other categories. I want the cute Latvian cat adventure Flow to stomp all over Pixar’s Inside Out 2 for Best Animated Feature. No Other Land, about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, should win Best Documentary Feature, not because it's about an important subject (there are lots of mid docs about important subjects) but because it's a brilliantly composed catalog of horrors that also demonstrates the limits of empathy and humanitarian universalism through its depiction of a strained Israeli-Palestinian friendship. (Incidentally, I thought best doc nominee Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat didn't quite make its case, but it should absolutely have been nominated for Best Editing.)
- Some of the categories are absolute whiffs this year. Absolutely none of the nominees should win Best Original Song—in fact, no one should ever even have to listen to those songs. And the Best Cinematography noms show how constrained the Academy's idea of filmmaking is. The Brutalist's Lol Tolhurst could well win for his grand but empty images because he's doing "great cinematography," and in VistaVision no less!
- And another thing... OK, I'll stop. Argue with me, ignore me, see if I care!
As always, feel free to ignore this prompt and talk about whatever you want. This is your Open Thread, after all.
Oh yeah, also: Don't buy anything today!
