96th Academy Awards thread

I'm sure I'll have more comments on the nominees later, but I did want to say that I will be disappointed if Lily Gladstone doesn't win Best Actress. She was phenomenal. She held her own in a movie with De Niro and DiCaprio. It's no easy feat being the "emotional glue" of a film like that. I also wouldn't be opposed to Margot Robbie. I don't know what I was expecting with Barbie, but I ended up really enjoying it. I unfortunately haven't seen as many of the nominees as I would have liked this year. I was going to *finally* watch Oppenheimer the other day, but didn't quite get to it. I'm hoping to do that this weekend. Great comments on these films as always!

The Academy Award for Best Picture is selected based on a ranked-choice system in which members list the ten nominees in order from their favorite to their least favorite. I am not a member of the Academy, but, if I were, I would vote for the films in the following order:

Barbie

Last year, I noted that the top-eleven grossing films in the United States in calendar year 2022 were the following:

1. Sequel
2. Sequel to Superhero
3. Sequel to Superhero
4. Sequel
5. Sequel
6. Sequel
7. Superhero
8. Sequel to Superhero
9. Sequel to Superhero
10. Sequel
11. Superhero

Let me see how far I need to go for calendar year 2023 before I get to a film that is not a sequel, a superhero film, or a sequel to a superhero film.

1. Barbie

If you like sequels, superhero films, and/or sequels to superhero films, there were plenty to choose from, but it is nice that an original film outgrossed them all.

There was some whining about "snubs" involving Greta Gerwig not getting a Best Director nomination and Margot Robbie not getting a Best Actress nomination. (Gerwig is nominated for Adapted Screenplay, and Robbie is nominated as a producer.) I reject the idea of a snub. The Academy did not set out to exclude Gerwig and Robbie. It simply found five performances that it liked better.

While I do not like to use the word "snub," I reserve the right to disagree with the Academy. I personally did not find five lead actress performances better than Robbie's and did not find five directing performances better than Gerwig's even though, in each case, I have seen the five performances that the Academy preferred.

Overall, this is a fun film. I like the fact that it was different from typical films, and I am glad that such a film was a huge financial success. This might be part of the problem that the film had with the Academy. A large portion of the Academy prefers to honor prestigious films such as historical epics, biopics of Great Men (and, I hope someday, Great Women), adaptations from great literature, and socially-relevant dramas that are not too socially relevant.

Last year, the Academy slipped and awarded Best Picture to another original film: Everything Everywhere All at Once. That was great, but it looks like two years in a row is a bit much to ask.

I have to stretch to find any issue with the film. There were times when it appeared that it had something to say, but, if it did, it could have been a bit clearer. For example, there was a speech about how Barbie creates unrealistic body standards, but the film did not go anywhere with this. Flat feet and cellulite motivated Barbie to go on her quest. These issues were forgotten.

Oppenheimer

It looks like the Academy will give Best Picture to a prestigious film. Given that, I am very pleased that it looks like the Academy will give Best Picture to an excellent prestigious film. This is a well-written, well-directed, well-acted, well-produced, etc. film and is clearly a worthy film even if there is a nominee that I like a bit more.

There was a bit of criticism of this film because it did not depict the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This film is not about the atomic bomb. It is about Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was nowhere near Hiroshima or Nagasaki when the bombs were dropped. Besides, Oppenheimer was three hours long. I doubt that the problem was that it was too short.

In the right hands, a film about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be very good. Films like In This Corner of the World and Labyrinth of Cinema touched on this issue. However, a film focusing directly on the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be a separate film from a biopic of Robert Oppenheimer.

Killers of the Flower Moon

There has been a lot of talk about Lily Gladstone being the first Indigenous [blank] to [blank], but people seem unclear what the blanks are.

There have been Indigenous people nominated for Academy Awards. Buffy Sainte-Marie won an Academy Award for Best Song for An Officer and a Gentleman. Graham Greene received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Dances with Wolves. Keisha Castle-Hughes received a Best Actress nomination for Whale Rider. Yalitza Aparicio received a Best Actress nomination for Roma. This year, Robbie Robertson received a nomination for Best Original Score for this film. Sainte-Marie's indigenous status is disputed. Greene and Robertson are from Canada. Castle-Hughes is from New Zealand, and Aparicio is from Mexico. It appears that Gladstone is the first person born in the United States with open, undisputed Indigenous ancestry to be nominated for an Academy Award.

I already commented on this film in another thread. Here is a summary:

While some believe that the film should have taken a different perspective, Martin Scorsese decided to make a villain-protagonist film. While a great film could be made from the perspective of the investigators or the victims, Scorsese's decision worked.

I have a pet peeve about actors who are significantly older or younger than their characters. In this case, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio are at least a couple decades older than their characters, and that changes the story to some extent.

I liked the epilogue scene in this film, particularly the cameo at the end.

Poor Things

I like weird. Twin Peaks is one of my all-time favorite television shows. Being John Malkovich is one of my all-time favorite films. This is why I have grown fond of Yorgos Lanthimos's work. This is not his weirdest film, but I like it anyway.

American Fiction

If you see just one film about an African-American writer working on a book while dealing with family issues including then this is the film to see. If you want to see a second, Origin will do. This is the superior film of the two and did a much better job at combining the two storylines and in saying what the film was trying to say.

This film is a satire, and some aspects are clearly exaggerated for comic effect. The sad part is that these aspects are not as exaggerated as one might think. There is apparently a lot of truth in how this film depicts the publishing industry. There have also been real-life cases in which a person created a fictitious persona as the "author" of an allegedly semi-autobiographical novel. One such instance is profiled in the documentary, Author: The JT LeRoy Story.

The Zone of Interest

This is another villain-protagonist film that worked. There seems to be a requirement that commentators quote Hannah Arendt on the "banality of evil" because this film is a good illustration of the concept. Evil in the real world does not necessarily consist of overly elaborate plots committed by green-skinned monsters with misshapen facial features. The perpetrators do not twirl mustaches, nor do they practice evil laughs. Real-world evil comes from normal-looking people who, if seen out of context, would seem no different from anyone else.

I like the way that this film kept the horrors of Auschwitz in the background, mostly from random sounds that carried over the walls. Of course, this is no substitute for films that do show the horrors.

Anatomy of a Fall

One thing that I like about non-American films is that they give me a view into a different culture. Of course, this depends on how accurately the film reflects the culture in question. When watching this film I had thoughts like, "There is no way that a prosecutor in an Amercian trial would be allowed to showboat like the one in this film." However, a prosecutor in an Amercian film would be allowed to do so. Is the same difference between films and reality going on here as well? I also noticed that the evidence against the main character would be too flimsy to justify a trial in the United States. Does France require much less evidence before going to trial or is this another deviation from reality?

Past Lives

One of my favorite genres of film involves the following formula:

1. Create two interesting characters.
2. Hire very good actors to play them.
3. Let the two characters interact naturally given who they are as characters and their setting.

This is not my favorite film from 2023 that fit this mold (for example, I preferred Sanctuary and Falcon Lake), but it is quite good. I appreciate that the film knew the clichés involved in the situation and addressed them directly.

Maestro

There was a bit of a hullabaloo over non-Jewish Bradley Cooper playing Jewish Leonard Bernstein with a large prosthetic nose. I generally reject the idea that the actor needs to fall in the same categories as the character. Acting is all about playing a character who is not necessarily similar to the actor. There are a few exceptions. For example, if a character has specific skills and abilities, then, ideally, the actor should have such skills and abilities. For example, if the Bernstein character were fluent in Hebrew and/or Yiddish and spoke it frequently, the actor should also be fluent in Hebrew and/or Yiddish.

Makeup technology has advanced to make an actor look a lot like the historical figure that the actor is playing without interfering in the actor's ability to emote. This is not a bad thing. If Cooper is to play Bernstein, he should wear a prosthetic nose to match the size of Bernstein's nose. No larger, no smaller.

The Holdovers

A curmudgeon and a kid are thrown together against the wishes of the curmudgeon. I wonder, will they clash in the beginning? Will they bond over the course of the film?

This might be my #10 film out of ten nominees for Best Picture, but it is not a bad film. The past couple of years, the Academy nominated one film per year based on what they were trying to say rather than on how well they said what they were trying to say (i.e., Don't Look Up and The Triangle of Sadness). This year, Saltburn looked like it was competing for that slot, but the Academy resisted.  This film is a better #10 film than those films were.



There are a couple of other Oscar-bait films that I wanted to talk about.

Napoleon

This is another film where the difference between the age of the character and the age of the actor bugged me. The difference was somewhat understandable because the film covered about a quarter century of history. Unless Ridley Scott decided to use the Boyhood technique and film this over 25 years, it is inevitable that actors will be significantly older or younger than their characters at some point in the film. The problem is that Joaquin Phoenix was in his late 40s when he played the title character. Vanessa Kirby, who played Joséphine, was in her early 30s when she made the film, 14 years younger than Phoenix. In reality, Joséphine was six years older than Napoleon. This meant that their relative ages were off by 20 years. I guess that the filmmakers found it inconceivable that a man would be drawn to a woman who was not significantly younger than him.

I also saw an older Napoleon biopic last year that is also called Napoleon. At 157 minutes, the newer one is the shorter of the two. The other was 5 ½ hours long. However, that is a bit misleading. The surviving footage was only 5 ½ hours long. Originally, it was eight hours long. Furthermore, it was just the first installment in what was planned to be a five-film series. The other four films were never made.

In other words, there is a lot of material that one can put in a Napoleon biopic. The problem is deciding what to include and what to cut out. This year's film did so by jumping around from scene to scene without connecting them. For example, one of the set pieces was the Battle of Austerlitz when Napoleon defeated a larger combined Austrian-Russian army. The film did not bother explaining why France was fighting Austria and Russia at the time or describe any of the events that led up to the battle.

Another aspect of Napoleon's life cut from the film was his role as a reformer. Many of the reforms that he instituted in captured territories are still in effect today.

In the lead up to this film, some commentators suggested that Napoleon was depicted to be like either Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump. I do not see the similarities either in the film or in real life. All three of them were white men who had large egos and craved power. Hitler and Napoleon went on conquering binges but, other than that, they do not have much in common. Napoleon was very complex. The other two were not. Napoleon was very competent at what he did, at least until his ego caught up with him. The other two were not.

Ferrari

I wonder why Adam Driver was cast in the lead role. After House of Gucci, did he become typecast as a rich, Italian man, or did the casting department just look at his last name and decide that he would be perfect for an auto-racing film?

There is a stereotype of auto-racing fans who are just interested in the accidents. The trailer for this film makes it look like there is a similar stereotype for fans of auto-racing films. I will not give any spoilers as to the body count in the climatic race, but, historically, the Mille Miglia averaged four deaths per race.

This film had a serious problem. A few years ago, there was a very good film, Ford v Ferrari, that climaxed in a long-distance auto race in which Ferrari was the Goliath and Ford was the David. This year's film took place a few years earlier than Ford v Ferrari and climaxed in a different long-distance auto race. Still, it is difficult to see Ferrari as the underdog here just because the Ford v was dropped from the title.





Finally, I will post this: