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.
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.
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