I think the most interesting race is Best Animated Feature. Spiderverse 2 honested be damned is my favorite film of the year. And yet I am kind of rooting The Boy and the Heron. Spiderverse 1 won, and I expect spiderverse 3 to win. But give Miyazaki an Oscar for his swan song
I liked The Boy and the Heron okay, but as a “never ever ever give out career Oscars masquerading as honors for one individual effort” purist, I’ll be rooting for Spider-Verse. That award could definitely go either way though.
My rankings:
Best Picture
Past Lives
Poor Things
Barbie
American Fiction
The Holdovers
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Anatomy of a Fall
The Zone of Interest
Maestro
All-timer line up of movies. Very refreshing after the dumpster fire that was last year’s set. I’d definitely take anything in the top 7 over my #1 from last year (and could be convinced to go as far as including #s 8 and 9). Looks like there’s no drama here unless Poor Things can pull a two-outer. But at least we’re guaranteed a great movie as our winner.
Best Actress
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Annette Bening, Nyad
Hüller isn’t going to win, but she has two great performances in two BP nominees encompassing three languages. That feels like it deserves some recognition. In one of the only awards that seems to be competitive, I’m fully on Team Emma, but I won’t hate it if Gladstone wins.
Best Actor
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Not much to say here. All five are good performances. Not a ton of difference between #1 and #5 for me.
Best Supporting Actress
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
As much as I didn’t like the actual movie, Jodie Foster absolutely carried Nyad. Randolph is going to win; no problem with that.
Best Supporting Actor
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
RDJ was good, but I don’t understand why he’s 99% to win here. I’m probably judging De Niro too harshly because I don’t think he should have been cast in that role at all.
Best Director
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
I’d put Greta at the top if I could. She got absolutely screwed here.
Best Original Screenplay
Past Lives
The Holdovers
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro
May December
Really hoping for an upset here. Past Lives deserves this, even more than it deserves BP.
Best Adapted Screenplay
American Fiction
Barbie
Poor Things
Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest
Much stronger lineup than Original Screenplay. I know that Oppenheimer is going to win a ton of awards, which I’m fine with. I just hope it doesn’t sweep everything.
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What’s that?
Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs? did a rendition of Fast Car at this year’s Grammys that was fantastic. It finally ended up getting posted in full to youtube.
This year’s batch is elite and in the convo for best post-expansion field yet, and definitely beats last year’s field overall, but I take a somewhat more charitable view of the 2023 nominees. I think if I combined the two years my rankings would look something like:
Worthy of Being a Best Picture Winner
- Oppenheimer (2024)
- Killers of the Flower Moon (2024)
- Past Lives (2024)
- Tar (2023)
- The Banshees of Inisherin (2023)
- Poor Things (2024)
Worthy of Being a Best Picture Also-Ran
- Top Gun: Maverick (2023)
- The Holdovers (2024)
- American Fiction (2024)
- Anatomy of a Fall (2024)
- The Zone of Interest (2024)
- Elvis (2023)
- Barbie (2024)
- Avatar: The Way of Water (2023)
- The Fabelmans (2023)
- Triangle of Sadness (2023)
- Women Talking (2023)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (2023)
Unworthy of Being Nominated
- Maestro (2024)
- All Quiet on the Western Front (2023)
Also, shoutout to the following films that would have definitely cropped up in top-line categories this year if the year wasn’t so absolutely stacked:
All of Us Strangers
The Iron Claw
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
While I would like to say that Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers is a snub for Best Actor, I’m not sure I’m actually willing to sub out any of those who actually did get nominated to put him in, and frankly I tend to think Leo got screwed too and has just begun to have his greatness taken for granted. Again, there was just too much good stuff. (Many will tell you that Zac Efron should have been nominated for Best Actor too for The Iron Claw; I don’t particularly agree.)
If I were actually going to sub someone in, it would probably be Rachel McAdams for Margaret, taking the place of Blunt or Ferrera. And honestly I’d probably put Julianne Moore in May December in over them as well. Really like both Blunt and Ferrera and am generally happy to see them nominated, but I didn’t think either of them really did anything too spectacular from an acting standpoint with these roles.
Yeah, I just did not like last year’s batch of nominees at all.
Since I made it a point to start watching all of them, I think I’d rank the years (judging all nominees as a set with no reward or penalty for what actually won) :
Elite tier
2023 (current)
2020 (Nomadland)
2015 (Spotlight)
Quite good
2016 (Moonlight)
2013 (12 Years a Slave)
2014 (Birdman)
2019 (Parasite)
Below average
2021 (CODA)
2018 (Green Book)
Bad
2022 (EEAAO)
Horrendous
2017 (Shape of Water)
I’ve got Parasite year as the only one that has an argument against this year’s field in the expansion era. I think this year attained higher highs and I tend to be inclined to give it the nod, but it’s incredibly close. I’ve got Spotlight’s field rounding out the podium, but without being particularly competitive with the two years I’ve named. Of course, I might feel differently about it being uncompetitive if I got to watch this actually good rendition of Fury Road that everyone else seems to have been able to get their hands on.
Oh that I thought it was a reference to something else my bad
Parasite and Marriage Story are outstanding. 1917 a hair below. The other 6 movies are very good, but I’d stop short of calling them great. I’ll give the year credit for having perhaps the best “worst movie” of any other year in the past decade.
Upon review, I definitely goofed in putting 2014 ahead of it.
I give an 8+ to 7 of the 9 films from that year, with Jojo Rabbit on the borderline. And yeah, agree, Joker being the weakest in the field and still having a really strong lead performance to recommend it is almost certainly my best worst movie in these fields as well.
I’m especially impressed when a movie like 1917 is able to land as well as it did for me since my attitude going in is usually, “, another one of these Oscar-nominated war movies. Whatever.” But this is definitely one of the better ones.
Didn’t work. Gladstone was delightful on Maron and was of course really strong in Killers of the Flower Moon, but I don’t care; she simply didn’t have the best lead actress performance this year.
Give Emma the damn trophy please.
If anyone happens to know of a river, I would be obliged.
Kimmel killing it as the host? Huh.
When the Jo Koy thing happened, I wondered, “Is it just that all awards monologues are horrible and I’ve forgotten?” But no. Loving this.
The intro to animated shorts is all feature length films lol
Don’t think Boy and Heron over Spiderverse was the right call
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