2023's Oscar Nominees

1. Poor Things
2. Past Lives
3. Oppenheimer
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Anatomy of a Fall
6. Zone of Interest
7. The Holdovers

All 4 to 4.5 stars imo, gonna try to see American Fiction soon

"Slight" is a good word, as I wanted to love Past Lives, but regrettably found its writing lacking. For a film with basically only 3 characters, they are all remarkably thin -- could you give three adjectives to describe each? I doubt I could. I desperately wanted to see them (her) outside of these relationships: in class, working, etc. It seemed like the writer started with the concept and worked backwards from there -- and to literally hit you over the head with it in the final piece of dialogue was too much.

Acting was very good though, as was the cinematography and pacing, which reminded me of another recent film I liked quite a bit more, Aftersun.

one of the funniest things that happens in any of these films is the reveal in past lives that the husband's hit novel is called boner

I liked Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives. I really liked The Zone of Interest.

Teo Yoo was the only one of that acting trio I lament not making it to his category's final five

I need to see Glazer's film, but for now it's easily Scorsese's for me.

Yeah, Zone is the other one (aside from Poor Things) i still have to catch up with. Current ranking:

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Past Lives
American Fiction
Oppenheimer
Maestro

I've seen all but two -- possibly a new record for me. My ranking:

Killers
Oppenheimer
Anatomy
Zone

Past Lives
Holdovers

Barbie
Poor Things

re: my Past Lives post last week, I agree with this take

https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1751670472771530851
https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1751674428050559028

Not entirely wrong. I responded:

I like it slightly better than you b/c I respected its director's attempt to handle silence and the unspoken. But it's nowhere near my top 20.

— Moderna Love Gets Me to the Church on Time (@SotoAlfred) January 28, 2024

Poor Things joins a number of other Nat'l Society best film picks that feel very much the result of a deadlock between the old guard and vanguard punks, likely pleasing no one all too much

LOL oops, meant Past Lives

However, to insult the audience is uncharacteristically Josh.

people on the internet love doing that

There is an article by Mick La Salle in the SF Chronicle about how to predict the best actress winner that I thought was interesting.

He has staked out an idea that best actor/actress roles either represent an apotheosis, namely inward performances that draw their power from who the actors are as people - or chameleonic performances, where the actors are in disguise as someone else. I like that idea

He thinks that chameleonic performances almost always go on to win the academy award

“Bening is certainly different from her usual manner in “Nyad,” but it’s arguable whether she’s different enough. Put her as a maybe.”

“Sandra Huller, the fantastic German actress who stars in “Anatomy of a Fall,”…doesn’t transform. She’s just like Sandra Huller in everything, which is absolutely great as far as I’m concerned but will not win an Oscar.”

“I see “Maestro” as the apotheosis of a certain kind of Carey Mulligan role….but she’s probably out of the running” (I would have added that it is also because it is a terrible movie)

He narrows it down to Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone. One performance is an apotheosis and one is chameleonic

He concludes that “Emma Stone is entirely chameleonic in “Poor Things.” Her labored performance shows us a side of her that we’ve never seen before — namely, the side that can’t act, but the academy won’t mind that. They’ll be impressed.”

He predicts that Emma Stone will win, with Lily Gladstone a close second. I haven’t seen “Poor Things” yet so don’t want to dismiss it, but I hope Lily Gladstone wins.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/oscars-best-actress-prediction-18628570.php

If any of you haven’t seen Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women”, it is an interesting film and she is great in it

(great in a very quiet way)

Yes, she's great in it. And Emma Stone will win her second Oscar b/c the voters consist of mostly older male voters who love this kind of performance.

went with my gut and voted holdovers

killers and poor things tied for second

maybe should've waited until seeing anatomy of a fall, that one feels very up my street

There is so long even still before the Oscars actually happen that I think whatever juice there was in Gladstone’s campaign will have long ago evaporated. Clearing the way for Emma Stone to somehow have as many lead acting Oscars as Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda.

and Hillary Swank

and Luise Rainer

I was surprised by how much I liked "American Fiction." It was a lot more low-key than I expected.

Seeing it tonight!

Ooooooh, that was GOOD.

I've actually been thinking about it a lot. There's a lot of clever stuff going on, imo.

Not a fan but I don't begrudge Jeffrey Wright the Oscar nom.

I feel he's been ill-served by his various oft-egghead roles, but this suited him well.

I thought this movie had a lot to say about who gets to tell their story and how. I found it intriguing that the central drama - and it is largely a drama, interrupted by the occasional broader satiric beat - not only depicts a relatively under-represented on-screen group (upper middle class Black family) but simultaneously riffs on broken family tropes through that prism (as opposed to the broken family street cliches Monk abhors). And I thought it clever that a lot of said family drama stuff also happens to be the cliche purview of so many run of the mill (white) indie dramas. The parent with Alzheimer's, the family member coming out, the struggling novelist, etc., all of which I could imagine the subject of movies starring Paul Giamatti, the kinds of prestige movies that get awards instead of box office, which plays into the film's sort of central conflict. Not sure how much of that was intentionally, but given the chaotic/cynical nesting doll aspect of the conclusion ... maybe!

I don’t know about Oppenheimer, it seems like an embiggened version of The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, aka a middlebrow biopic movie about a genius scientist, but with famous actors in cameo roles. I think it is slightly better than those, but is it a Best Picture? It probably is according to the academy

Sidebar:

The Board of Governors of the AMPAS announced a new competitive Oscar category for best achievement in casting, for films released in 2025, beginning at the 98th ceremony in 2026. https://t.co/G36WifGSzP pic.twitter.com/9mWDDXth1L

— Variety (@Variety) February 8, 2024

And this year's non-Barbie controversy du année, the fact that there aren't enough American celebrity documentaries nominated for documentary feature:

https://slate.com/culture/2024/02/oscar-nominations-2024-best-documentary-michael-j-fox.html

still catching up watching these but i loved the holdovers so much

Whoa @ the best casting announcement.

of the ones I’ve seen, best to worst. I at least like all of them

killers

poor things
anatomy of a fall

barbie
oppenheimer

― truly humbled underdog (k3vin k.), Tuesday, January 23, 2024 12:18 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

saw the holdovers earlier this week, a sweet movie but bottom tier for me of these

Funny how all the comments on that announcement are mad Oscars don't have an award for best stunts

This “give stunts an Oscar” movement is unwell and will never go away

I have been blissfully unaware of it until today

Yes, we need 257 different awards for the same performances each year but one for stunts is just ridiculous.

There are awards for stunts too, just sayin'

SAG has a stunt ensemble category

I set up a quiz for my Zoom trivia group on quotes from Best Picture winners. For me, easy as could be, but none of the six groups did better than 1.5/10. (Half-mark for the first question if you answer...you'll figure it out.) I removed the decade clues.

Quiz: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AEcuixP0H4_vRBBciKaYT2St4n9uOMZPjV_1avTvedY/edit?usp=sharing

Answers: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WHkAs75SHO6l_POdK1Kjh91G7NIUns8qSeShwxaU4CQ/edit?usp=sharing

The Zone of Interest
The Holdovers*
Killers of the Flower Moon
Anatomy of a Fall
Poor Things
American Fiction
Past Lives
Barbie
Oppenheimer

*i saw it alone, with low expectations, a few days before xmas, and i smuggled one very large can of beer into the theater. so my having had the perfect viewing experience for this movie def influenced my rating of it

"Best stunt" is probably a good idea for an award? It gives you a fun clip to play during the awards, it's something most people actually somewhat seem to understand (unlike something like "best editing") and it probably will give some nominations to some box office successful movies.

I'm saying it's a good idea from the Oscars standpoint, I personally don't really care

The Holdovers' trailer just seemed to go to such lengths to convince me that there's nothing to surprise me in the film. It'd be rude not to take it at its word!

I love Anatomy Of A Fall. I heard the Bacao and Steel Band version of "P.I.M.P." somewhere else recently. In a TV series, I think. I wish I could remember where. Hearing it caused my heart rate to immediately get elevated, stressful association with that song!

https://www.indiewire.com/awards/consider-this/2024-oscars-the-zone-of-interest-chances-1234951371/

This isn't the first time this week I've seen people saying it's Zone of Interest that's the stealth candidate to upset Oppenheimer. I mega doubt it, but hey, whatever keeps things interesting for (checks calendar) another entire month of this.

I guess I don’t get the implication?

i'm no huge scorcese fan, but in watching KotFM i saw his continued focus on the kinds of psychopathic men who most easily rise to positions of power as a feature, not a flaw. that is the big story he is fascinated in and imo it deepens all of his work to see him depicting similar patterns of behavior in a different social microcosm. i can understand not enjoying the depiction, but asking scorcese to focus on the osage women's point of view is asking for him to be a totally different kind of director

yup -- otm

Yeah, plus also the source material (as I understand it, I haven't read the book) is mostly about the white characters and their nefarious doings, not about the Osage. So if there's a flaw, it's structural in the sense that once you adopt that framing, even with all the obvious efforts to involve Osage advisers and present at least some of their perspective, you're still going to be mostly telling the story of Bad White Men. Which is what the movie is (and does a good job of imo).

My main objections to Zone of Interest are also structural — it's not to do with the mostly imaginative filmmaking and fine acting, it's just to do with the story the film decided to tell. The flaw was in the conception, not the execution.

I thought KotFM was more successful than Zone of Interest in doing the thing it set out to do, but criticisms of both really revolve around the stories they chose to tell rather than how they told them or how "good" they are in their filmmaking.

I was mostly put off by DeNiro playing that character *again*. For that matter, I think, general subject aside, Scorsese has done this stuff before and better, too. The montage of murders, the pressure to turn on your dangerous benefactor, the slow-burn wait for the hammer to come down, DeNiro's character doing that thing were he is menacing while asking for something mundane. "It's nothing, just sign the paper, just a formality." "It's down at the end of this alley here. Yeah, just down the back." Like, I think there's a good movie in here, for sure, and this one isn't bad, but I think it would have been better in different hands. I liked the suggestion that it might have been better had Plemons and Leo swapped roles.

you guys are so funny lol. anyway as is well known at this point leo originally signed up to play plemons’ character, but they realized it wasn’t working and recast the whole story

Yeah, no way I'd want Plemons and DiCaprio to switch roles (again) - DiCaprio made the right call and made the film much better IMHO. Just picturing him as the heroic law enforcement agent of few words just seems dull and bland.

uh shutter island

plemons should've played ernest and sturgill simpson should've played the fbi agent

clapton should've played layla

I was mostly put off by DeNiro playing that character *again*. For that matter, I think, general subject aside, Scorsese has done this stuff before and better, too. The montage of murders, the pressure to turn on your dangerous benefactor, the slow-burn wait for the hammer to come down, DeNiro's character doing that thing were he is menacing while asking for something mundane. "It's nothing, just sign the paper, just a formality." "It's down at the end of this alley here. Yeah, just down the back." Like, I think there's a good movie in here, for sure, and this one isn't bad, but I think it would have been better in different hands. I liked the suggestion that it might have been better had Plemons and Leo swapped roles.

― Josh in Chicago,

I beg to differ: https://slate.com/culture/2024/02/killers-of-the-flower-moon-robert-de-niro-oscars-2024.html

On the contrary: Scorsese has rarely been this subtle, this poignant towards the purported victims, who never feel as such because he gives them plenty of room. I think of that beautifully staged funeral scene. This is the Scorsese of Silence, my favorite picture of his of the last twenty years, who finally figured out how to stage intense faith.

*poignancy

I agree Scorsese shows a lot of empathy for the victims, a lot more than, say, the montage of punchline death toward the end of "GoodFellas." I like his run of the past 10 years a lot more than the preceding 10 years.

I also agree DeNiro's not bad in it, I guess I just don't find the character or portrayal particularly notable in his rogue's gallery of baddies.

I actually thought Isbell might have been my favorite (male) actor in this, tbh.

what run is that in goodfellas?

the mobsters double crossed and purged?

lad do you know how to watch a movie at all i honestly have to ask

Yeah, the montage of people getting killed. I was reminded of that by something similar iirc at the beginning of this one. Unless I wasn't watching it right.

Seems to me like focusing on the inconsequently minor similarities between two very different DeNiro characters is just looking for something to get annoyed about, he's very impressive in this. And I thought the casting throughout was pretty spot on.

Maybe! I didn't dislike my viewing, but at the end I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed. That's all, really. I have been surprised by how many people I know that just didn't like it at all, but perhaps that works in the movie's favor.

you guys are so funny lol. anyway as is well known at this point leo originally signed up to play plemons’ character, but they realized it wasn’t working and recast the whole story

they also shifted the focus of the narrative. the biggest difference between book and film is that the book is more of a mystery solved by the fbi, with a much bigger role for the plemons character. in the film, you know pretty much know right away who did it, so it doesn't have the same kind of tension.

I thought that was a really intriguing, almost subversive change, tbh. I wonder if this could have been successfully made with a focus on the whodunnit. I bet it would have been more generic, that's for sure.

No way!

damn, who could have been killing the native people who were forcibly relocated to oklahoma who came
into oil money? I’m sure the book draws out the mystery but, yikes

maybe they were all huffing oil fumes that their white spouses instinctually avoided

uh shutter island

COMPLETELY different characters. The only thing they had in common was that they were in law enforcement. Same with The Departed. Plemons character isn't anguished or mentally coming apart at the seams from his own ethical dilemmas.

and LOL

I actually never read the book (despite being a fan of Grann), but - and it's been a while - I could have sworn that was a criticism I heard from a few friends, that because there's no mystery, because you know what's going on, or at least because it's obvious against the framing of an investigation, it becomes a bit of a slog. Tbc, I don't see how a good movie could even be made about this as a "mystery," since it's *not* a mystery, though I could totally see lesser hands trying and the response to the "reveal" being a bored "well, yeah."

the book is just ok and is way too long, and the ending (last 50 or so pages) is terrible

that said the first 3-4 chapters are compelling but yeah it becomes super obvious