My Best Picture Ballot

Ever since fourth grade me watched Jack Palance do a one-armed pushup next to his trophy, the Oscars have been a valued event in my life. Yes, it's a political popularity contest that gets things wrong more than right, but as a film fan, it's just FUN. The nominations inspire people to SEE MOVIES, and how is that a bad thing? The nominations stir up heated debates that force enthusiastic cinemaniacs to fervently defend and attack other people's opinions, and come on: THAT'S ALSO NOT A BAD THING. 

I love the Oscars. I love occasionally hating the Oscars. It's Hollywood prom with more expensive dresses, but somewhere between awkward presenter banter and the battle between the play-off orchestra conductor and a winner on a mission to thank everyone in his group chat by name, we get to celebrate cinema. 

On that note, I made it my mission this year to watch all of the Best Picture nominees. And much like the preferential ballot that has Academy voters rank their picks, I decided to do the same, starting from the bottom.

But with more talking. The orchestra would DEFINITELY crescendo by the time I got to #7.

10. F1: The Movie

I'm not going to say F1 is a badly made film. It used its immense budget to look good and sound even better (said by someone who watched this movie on a plane). I can even accept that it's on the Best Picture ballot because I get it: the way I'll watch anything about killer dolls or sociopathic children is the same way many MORE people will squeal at expensive and fast cars going vroom vroom. To each their own. Fine.

I'd love to just stop there, but there's that nagging voice in the back of my brain that just can't accept how easy this movie is. F1 offers no surprises. Every single thing you think will happen, happens. Every conflict plays out exactly how you'd expect it to. Brad Pitt's character can't make a wrong move if his baby blue eyes depended on it. It's exhausting. 

Maybe I'm being too hard here. Kerry Condon? A pleasure. Javier Bardem? Always welcome. Newcomer Damson Idris? Charisma ooze. As someone with next to no knowledge about Formula 1 racing, I at least learned something new here. But as soon as the last scene ended, as SPOILER ALERT, savior Brad Pitt comes to Mexico to save their style of racing, I wanted to dump out the 160 minutes that had just occupied my brain to make room for something of value. That could have been TWO Bloody Birthdays!

9. Frankenstein

I love Guillermo del Toro as a force for genre cinema and filmmaker freedom. I love his stance against AI, his devotion to craft, his unyielding pure geekiness for horror. But I sadly did not like Frankenstein.

It looks GREAT. The costumes, the sets, the framing, the makeup...all awards-worthy, and yes, they sure make the nearly 3-hour runtime a bit more bearable. But what is this Frankenstein really doing that dozens before haven't? The shame is that there are two great ideas in the story here: the toxicity of bad fatherhood and the outsider feelings that both the creature and Elizabeth find suffocating. The problem? Those should be two separate movies. When you toss in the completely unnecessary subplot of Christof Waltz's character and the repetitiveness of Victor's faults, you get an overlong mess. But boy is it pretty!

8. Marty Supreme

I went to see Marty Supreme in a theater so I could give it my full attention (and, you know, because it wasn't streaming). By the halfway mark, I found myself accepting two truths: this is an incredibly well-crafted film, and it was simply not for me. I was ready to not be mad when it won a few awards over movies I preferred, because it would feel like a matter of taste. 

Then I got to the ending. And oh boy: I was angry.

About a week before this, I had the pleasure of seeing If I Had Legs I'd Kick You followed by a Q&A with writer/director Mary Bronstein (who coincidentally, is married to Marty Supreme's co-writer and producer). It's a disturbing, hilarious, unusual masterpiece about the messiness of motherhood, starring an all-in Rose Byrne as a woman who doesn't necessarily deserve or care to have our sympathy. Sound familiar?

Marty Mauser is, much like Byrne's Linda, functioning at a level that is deliberately exhausting to the audience and people in his life. He's unapologetic about his goal, and hustles his way to get it no matter the expense (mass manslaughter, for example?). Watching the movie, I felt a distance to the character but respected the swing. Then we get to the final scene (SPOILER ALERT) where this selfish prick of a man suddenly has a revelation that he's a dad. 

I first assumed I was misreading the ending, that maybe director Josh Safdie intended the ending to be more open. But no. I've since read an interview where he really does say, "Marty is a dad now and understands what really matters."

Kill me. 

Marty Supreme has nine Oscar nominations. A movie about another crappy dad has four more. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, just one. 

I really did intend to write these all up as one paragraph summaries on my general feelings. And here we are. Because time and time again, the Oscars celebrate certain viewpoints and mostly ignore others. So a flashy film about an asshole suddenly redeemed by doing no work is rewarded 9x more than a far more unique and challenging story by and about a woman. 

I hated the ending of Marty Supreme so much that I just wrote a mini essay. And yet, I can still FULLY concede that it's kind of a remarkable film. So. That's that.  

7. One Battle After Another

One of the cinematic discoveries I made over this past summer was coming to appreciate Robert Altman. I was hoping that enthusiasm would flow over to one of his biggest fans, Paul Thomas Anderson. 

It's been mixed.

One Battle After Another has been the awards season favorite. I sat down to watch it a few months ago when the hype had already soared. That did not help things.

This is a very good movie. Much like my feelings on Marty Supreme, I would never argue that there aren't great performances and incredibly skilled filmmaking at play here. But I just don't know what I'm missing in a world where critics had hailed this the movie of the decade. The politics felt fuzzy, and while the action was thrilling, I can't shake the sentiment that a lot of dudes like this movie because it's about a crappy dad becoming a slightly less crappy dad. That obviously doesn't apply to everyone's review, but so much of the discourse has been about Leonardo DiCaprio's arc that it's hard to not, again, scream, "BUT HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT MARY BRONSTEIN DID WITH IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU?"

I know, I'm insufferable. The orchestra has stopped trying to play me off and has instead activated USC's marching band to stomp me offstage. 

6. Bugonia

I've never not had a grand time with a Yorgos Lanthimos film. Bugonia is probably near the bottom of my rankings for that weirdo's output, but, well, it's still a Yorgos Lanthimos film, filled with black humor that simultaneously loves the possibilities of humanity while having no patience for its failures. Classic Lanthimos, just not at the same level as his best.

5. Train Dreams

How wonderfully ironic is it to realize that Train Dreams, which covers the longest stretch of time of any of the Best Picture nominees, is also the shortest. Clocking in at just 103 minutes, this is a simple story about an unexceptional man's life. That's really it! Beautifully shot in the Pacific Northwest, it feels more like a meditation than movie. I found it touching and deeply human.

4. Sentimental Value

There's always a movie like this in a Best Picture lineup that you know is going to be good, but you also don't exactly leap to watch it with a bowl of popcorn and unbridled enthusiasm. You assume it's an actors' movie, and you'll exit it with approval but maybe not adoration.

That was not the case for me with Sentimental Value. The story of two grown sisters who have processed their complicated relationship with their famed filmmaker father in different, unresolved ways shouldn't necessarily be something that we can all understand, but it's Joachim Trier's specificity that makes the film all the more effective. There's a deep truth to this family that I found myself leaning so far into that by the end, I was shocked at how much I felt. 

3. The Secret Agent

Having virtually no knowledge base of modern Brazilian history, The Secret Agent felt a bit daunting at first, particularly with a 2:40 runtime (look, I know I'm complaining about the length of these films BUT THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH TIME IN A DAY AND THESE MOVIES ARE VERY LONG). Thankfully, The Secret Agent is riveting. I had been impressed by writer/director's Kleber Mendonca Filho's Bacurau, and while The Secret Agent is a bit more restrained in its violence, it still shows an incredible level of skill and more importantly, something truly unique. Star Wagner Moura might be the most charismatic actor working today. The film doesn't make anything easy for its audience. It tells us a linear story only to veer to the side halfway through in a way that comes together in a rather haunting ending that leaves you putting pieces together. Of all the films here, this is probably the one that I'll most often find my brain returning to, and that in itself is a huge triumph. 

2. Hamnet

Recency bias: I watched this movie yesterday. I am still emotionally navigating.

I knew Hamnet was the movie that made people cry. I knew it was about the death of a child and parental grief, and while I trusted the general critical consensus that it was a Great Movie, it seemed like something prestige that probably wasn't made for me. In some ways, this is a similar approach/surprise I had back in 2006 with Atonement. I went in expecting Oscar bait only to leave with something deeply rich and challenging. 

For the first 70 minutes or so, I thought Hamnet was perfectly fine. Beautifully crafted, heartstring-tugging, and you know, fine. But then I hit that final act and suddenly, there are heavy drops of salty water cascading down my rosy cheeks. 

This is not a story about a cute little boy dying too young. It's a much richer, kind of transformative experience exploring how art can save us from each other and ourselves. It hit me, and it hit me hard. 

1. Sinners

Here's my take: Sinners is a great film, but only an okay horror film. BUT IT'S STILL A GREAT FILM.

Around these parts, we're obviously going to hold the genre to a bit of a higher standard. lf there's a flaw to Ryan Coogler's jazz opus, it's that the actual vampire siege doesn't quite hit as hard as you would want it to in a movie with this premise. But take that nitpick away, and what are we left with? A true independent vision with clear roots. There's so much here, and I can't wait to come back to it.

We'll see how closely my tastes line up with the Academy tonight. I will be ready.

Time Flies

 

It's sometimes hard to believe that for a good dozen years, zombies were not cool. Just try to bring your VHS copy of Dawn of the Dead to a '90s middle school slumber party. I certainly did. A LOT. 

No wonder I wasn't usually invited back. 

2002 was kind of a game changer. After a long draught, we suddenly got two fairly successful big screen releases that seemed to give us the classic Romero-esque feeling with fresh new rules (and yes, the irony of saying 'Romero-esque' when the king himself was fired from Resident Evil is not lost on me). 

28 Days Later rewrote what the genre could do, and its followup gave us a promising continuation that sadly stopped in its tracks. Skipping 28 Months, we somehow ended up, two dozen years later, with a back-to-back release of the long-awaited third and fourth chapters. 

Here we go. 

Quick Plot: In the early days of the rage virus, a small town in the Scottish Highlands does its best to protect the children. Only young Jimmy survives. His minister father heartily embraces the end of the world, as Jimmy watches the infected tear the man apart. 

Some 28 years later (TITLE!), we learn that the outbreak of 28 Weeks Later was contained to Great Britain. Any non-infected there have been left to survive on their own, creating their own societies or being absorbed by the far angrier ones. 

One Scottish community has built a fairly well-run system of isolation. Citizens are welcome to leave and return via the ominous causeway, but there's a signature 10 second delay before you're let back in with a bloody eye check. 

The most common trip is a coming of age ceremony reserved for teen boys. Spike (the wonderful Alfie Williams), a sensitive and capable 12-year-old, embarks on the journey with his father Jamie, much to the protests of his ailing mother Isla (equally pristine Jodie Comer). Their trip is a bit more eventful than either was hoping, but they make it back safely. 

Having now killed a few infected and seen a different part of the world, Spike is not okay. His celebratory party turns sour when he witnesses his father's affair and discovers that there's a doctor living in fairly close, albeit extremely dangerous proximity. Could he help cure Isla? There's only one way to find out. 

Spike and Isla embark on their own trip towards Dr. Kelson (a fascinating Ralph Fiennes). There are quite a few surprises along the way that I wouldn't dare spoil, but I suppose it's important to note that the zombie scares aren't really the priority. Boyle spares nothing in showing both their decay and growth (and penises; so many glorious infected penises). But much like the first film in this (now) series, this is a story more interested in what it means to stay human when the world has moved towards violence.

28 Days Later was a groundbreaking film for big screen horror. Coming out just a few months after Resident Evil, it seemed to remind the mainstream that zombies were not just viable monsters, but that they could be interpreted in different ways. Yes, this launched a rather insufferable online discourse that went on for several years about whether the undead can run (a debate rekindled two years later with the Dawn of the Dead remake) and whether Danny Boyle's infected even qualified as zombies. 

I can't overstate this: you could not MENTION this movie without having to give your opinion on this topic.

But guess what? Alex Garland's script for 28 Years Later ACTUALLY USES THE Z-WORD so we'll never have to argue about this again.

Back in 2002, 20-year-old me went to the theater THREE TIMES to see 28 Days Later. I can still remember the thrill of watching 28 Weeks Later's opening scene and thinking, "WE'VE GOT A FRANCHISE!" 

Well, part 2 took 5 years. Part 3, another 18. 

And that's just fine, because it feels like Garland and director Danny Boyle took that entire lifetime between and let their world evolve. There are certainly political elements to 28 Years Later that feel immediate, but there's also a deep meditation on life and death that feels timeless. 

Oh, and the zombies are pretty neat.

High Points

I say this a lot, but that's because it's always true: making your characters good people goes such a long way in making your movie good

Low Points

Knowing the sequel had already been filmed, I wasn't bothered by the film's wild last minute tonal switch that leaves you hanging, but I can fully understand why most viewers would reach that last reel and say, "what the fu-?"

Lessons Learned

Watching the Teletubbies in conjunction with the most violent moment of your life will have some pretty kooky effects

Berserk is a better term than alpha any day

Iodine is the body lotion you didn't know you needed

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had a grand time with 28 Years Later, but that definitely comes from having, well, 24 years of a deep relationship with this almost-series. I'm quite curious how it plays for more casual fans. See you all in the Bone Temple!

Dirty Pillows For All

 

I will always give a good deal of grace to a movie whose opening credits use the Buffy font.

Let's go.

Quick Plot: Tamara is a misfit high school student with a deep crush on her English teacher and an inability to cleanly tie her hair back in an appealing early aughts style. When her article about steroids hits the front page of the school paper, she becomes an even bigger target of the cool kids.

A few jocks decide to play a sadistic prank on the poor girl: luring her to a hotel room under the guise of a date with her sweet English teacher crush, only to film her nakedly crying when she discovers the ruse. As is often the case in these kinds of movies, things turn violent and hospitality furniture proves to have deadly sharp corners. Tamara is killed in a chaotic fight, and her drunken pers decide the only way forward is to bury her and move on.

Kind Chloe is reluctant and voices her reservations, but it's not enough to overpower the gang (especially as most of them are likely taking regular doses of HGH). 

What the kids don't know is that Tamara had been flirting with dark magic. She was just about to finish a love binding spell but couldn't bring herself to spill her own blood. Thankfully that hotel desk took care of it, and she's back with bouncier hair, bouncier breasts, and an ability to control the bodies of whoever she touches to do terrible things to themselves. 

Yes, it's essentially another Carrie, but so what? Directed by Jeremy Haft from a script by Final Destination godfather Jeffrey Reddick, Tamara is shockingly fun and far smarter than its cover art suggests. Jenna Dewan works well as the title character, even if her first act mouse calls to mind the horrors of a ponytailed She's All That. 

As someone who would use one of her genie bottle wishes for an adaptation that gives us a fat Carrie as the novel intended, I am used to this. 

Size 2 aside, Tamara is fun! When the violence kicks in, it's creatively wild in very surprising ways. We also understand Tamara's trauma (alcoholic leering dad, cruel classmates) well enough to make her specific choices fully understandable, straight down to forcing two alpha male bullies to hook up. 

There's a part of me that wishes Tamara went deeper into its dissection of high school psychology. One fellow geek gets some rough treatment early on when Tamara uses his past suicide attempts to show off her new powers, and her female bully harbors her own body dysmorphia. There are heavier depths to the story, but Tamara's ultimate style moves a bit more to camp than substance. 

That's okay! Considering what else we were getting in this very rough era of teen-centered horror, I'll take it. 

High Points

High school movie girls are often cruel beyond reason, but one of Tamara's strengths is that it makes its female characters surprisingly human. Sure, villain Keisha is cruel, but she's also bulimic (which makes for a pretty creative act of violence) and clearly suffering, while Chloe serves the Sue Snell role of having and acting on a real conscience 

Low Points

Okay fine: Jenna Dewan is still too conventionally beautiful to fully be a believable pariah

Lessons Learned

Bewitched male minions are shockingly easy to kill

An English teacher's arsenal is literary quotes

Just because you're a social outcast with flat hair doesn't mean you can't rock a clean manicure

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was pleasantly surprised by Tamara. It's not a forgotten classic or glistening lost gem, but for a 2006 barely-known genre film, I found it packed some creative visuals, reasonable character work, and an overall satisfying 90 minute watch. See if you agree! It's streaming now on Amazon Prime (and probably Tubi; this feels very much like it would be streaming on Tubi).

I'll Spin You a Yarn

Welcome to The Shortening! For February, we adjust the height on our camera to focus on movies featuring vertically challenged villains. If you have your own blog or podcast and plan to do the same, be sure to leave a note in the comment with your links!

Fairy tales are the most public of all domains, but it still feels risky to tackle a property so perfectly immortalized on film already.

Quick Plot: Tim and Emma have recently moved from NYC to a sprawling country estate. Pregnant Emma is taking a break from her successful interior design, while Tim continues to run his wholesale yarn business. 

They are a very, very dynamic couple.

Life gets wild when Emma discovers a basket of yarn sitting in a corner. HOW COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN? she wonders, not satisfied with Tim's casual suggestion that maybe the previous owners forgot to pack it up. She stresses even more when she reads about a bear attack nearby, prompting my favorite cinematic rule: Chekhov's Law of Bear Traps.

Tim has his own reasons to worry. Buried in the yarn is a mask, and as we all know, nothing is more irresistible than putting a mysterious bit of plaster over your face.

Rumpelstiltskin is born! I guess?

Pop quiz: what do you know about this fairy tale? It's certainly one of the darker stories we tell children, teaching them to not make promises they don't intend on keeping (that IS the moral, right?). A quick recap:

A miller brags about his daughter, embellishing her talents to claim that she could spin straw into gold. A jerky king takes him up on it with the bet being his daughter's life or marriage (coincidentally, this is also how I met my husband). The young woman is devastated to realize she's about to be executed when salvation comes via a mysterious imp who does the job for her on one condition: his payment will be her firstborn child. Fast forward to the happy couple's pregnancy interrupted by the little magician coming to collect. He agrees to break the contract if she can figure out his unusual name. Thankfully, this guy is an even bigger braggart than the new princess's father, revealing himself to be Rumpelstiltskin in a drunken dance. She names him, he explodes, and everyone else lives happily ever after, save for the day they have to explain to their children what brought them together. 

Anyway, Rumpelstiltskin is a pretty messed up tale for children. But it's also pretty rad, hence why we have some great adaptations (Faerie Tale Theater, I'm looking at you). It's PERFECT fodder for a cheap horror movie. 

And yet. 

This is bad. This is very, very bad. So bad that it doesn't even understand how to use a public domain horror story to just direct its script. Did writer/director Brett Bentman just see open a library book to a picture of Rumpelstiltskin that showed an imp, pregnant woman, and loom and think that these were the keywords of the story? There's no bargain or bragging. Our only reference to gold comes in Emma's yuppie friend's husband who has a lot to say about crypto, then dies while filming most of his scenes in a completely different location than his killer. 

But that's not the worst of it.

I don't know how to say this easily, so I'm going to take an acting lesson from Rumpelstiltskin's star. Picture me mumbling, shifting weight on my feet, and scrunching my nose as I quickly blurt this out:

This Rumpelstiltskin is not short. 

When Tim, a man of average height, dons this mask, he simply morphs into it and goes about killing at his 5'9 frame. 

It's bullshit.

You may be thinking, "Emily! How can you close out the Shortening with such a villain?" and I excuse myself with three defenses:

1) The character is still constantly referred to as an imp

2) This was the second attempt I took at watching a low budget short-powered horror movie only to discover the killer was NOT SHORT. Folks, I watched a Canadian horror comedy called Scared Shitless which is mostly what you think it was (though slightly better than it sounds). I couldn't do this again

3) By the time I realized this movie wasn't going to pay for any kind of effect to change the height of our villain, I was more than halfway done with the film. Time, like me, is short. I wasn't going to waste it. 

So that's that. 

High Points

At a mere 78 minutes long, I can thankfully say that even if you (for whatever insane reason) decide to watch this movie, at least it won't take much time out of your life. Also, bear traps

Low Points

The fact that I'm trying to remember how the movie ended, and if indeed it actually ended, might be one of many

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate expense reports

The worst spun yarn gives the best stitch definition 

Sometimes you can judge a movie by its cover

Rent/Bury/Buy

I've had a surprisingly successful run of cheap-looking movies being way better than their titles and posters suggested this month. That ends here. If you're STILL a glutton for punishment, you can watch this on Peacock or, not surprisingly, Tubi. Don't say I didn't warn you. perfectly immortalized on film already.