Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars—this year there are 35 features plus 15 short films (three fewer than last year). Usually, I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why), but I'm also going to do myself a favor and skip the live-action short films. As a group they tend to be terrible every single year, and then for some reason the worst one usually manages to win.
This year prior to nominations everyone spent a lot of time saying this is the strangest year ever and saying that the nominations were going to be a huge surprise with so many categories wide open. This turned out not to be true, and the reason for that is that the Academy mostly consolidated nominations in a number of films, giving more nominations to fewer films rather than fewer nominations to more films. This is a thing I dislike intensely. I want the nominations to spread the wealth, to encourage people to see more movies, and to draw attention to individual achievements within movies. For me, giving two song nominations to Emilia Pérez is unnecessary overkill. Draw attention to the great songwriting for the movie Blitz instead! But this is true across the categories. This year, the top five films of the year got 49% of the nominations, and the ten Best Picture nominees account for 70% of the total nominations. Even two of the nominations for Visual Effects are shared among the Best Picture nominees. That's just boring.
But, well, this is kind of a boring year. And I am disappointed to say that my top ten looks very different from the Academy's. (I've also seen 15 more movies for 2024 than I had at this time last year for 2023.)
I am still excited about several of these films, though, and three of my top films made into the Best Picture lineup. In any case, the Oscars are a jumping-off point for discussion. So let's discuss!
I will go film by film discussing each movie individually rather than by category—beginning with the movies most beloved by the Academy this year. If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, their previous nominations will be listed next to their name in parentheses. This year's nominees:
13 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Jacques Audiard (1st time nominee)
- Actress: Karla Sofía Gascón (1st time nominee)
- Adapted Screenplay: Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Nicholas Livecchi, Léa Mysius (all 1st time nominees)
- Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña (1st time nominee)
- Film Editing: Juliette Welfling (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
- Cinematography: Paul Gilhaume (1st time nominee)
- International Feature: France (Les Misérables, Mustang, A Prophet, The Class, Joyeux Noël, Les Choristes, Amélie, The Taste of Others, East-West, Ridicule, Indochine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Camille Claudel, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Betty Blue, Three Men and a Cradle, Entre Nous, Clean Slate, The Last Metro, Une Histoire Simple, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Madame Rosa, Cousin Cousine, Lacombe Lucien, Day for Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Hoa-Binh, My Night at Maud's, Stolen Kisses, Live for Life, A Man and a Woman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sundays and Cybele, The Truth, Black Orpheus, Mon Oncle, Gates of Paris, Gervaise, Forbidden Games, The Walls of Malapaga, Monsieur Vincent)
- Original Score: Camille & Clément Ducol (1st time nominees)
- Sound
- Makeup & Hairstyling
- Original Song – "El Mal": Audiard, Camille & Clément Ducol (all 1st time nominees)
- Original Song – "Mi Camino": Camille & Clément Ducol (1st time nominees)
Cast: Saldaña, Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro, Emiliano Hasan
First, let's just recognize all the first-time nominees in this group above. This is exciting either way—that a movie made by people with almost no prior nominations got thirteen nominations. As for the movie, I really enjoyed myself. It was a wild ride, and I give it extra points for sheer audacity. But it was really also just quite fun. I was especially here for the “Estoy Enamorada” song. Audiard’s work is sure-footed and strong, and the whole thing jells together well. It does at times feel as if Emilia Pérez has bit off more than it can chew, but then Audiard always pulls it back from the brink and delivers. This film is doing the most, that’s for sure. But to my mind it does all of what it does well.
Meanwhile, since it has received 13 nominations, the film's detractors all have their claws out. This is mostly very boring to me. I didn't love this movie, but I certainly appreciated its ambition, and I definitely enjoyed myself. And honestly, I wonder if the film's detractors are really offering us transphobia instead of real critique. It's as if the audacity of the film opens it up to more criticism than usual. A movie like A Complete Unknown, which is very conventional and not remotely as interesting as Emilia Pérez, doesn't open itself up to nearly as much criticism, and yet we could find plenty of criticisms for that movie, too, if we wanted. Audiard swung wild with this movie, and the Academy loved it (they certainly loved it more than I did), but now the film's haters are swinging wild too. There is a lot to appreciate in this movie. So why do the haters hate it so much? I suspect they're not quite being honest with themselves. (New personal attacks on Karla Sofía Gascón herself have made this clear.)
Will win: Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress, International Feature
Could win: Director, Editing, Score, Sound, Song
My rating: #22 out of 93
10 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Brady Corbet (1st time nominee)
- Actor: Adrien Brody (The Pianist)
- Original Screenplay: Corbet & Mona Fastvold (1st time nominees)
- Supporting Actor: Guy Pearce (1st time nominee)
- Supporting Actress: Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything)
- Film Editing: David Jancso (1st time nominee)
- Cinematography: Lol Crawley (1st time nominee)
- Production Design: Judy Becker (American Hustle) & Patricia Cuccia (1st time nominee)
- Original Score: Daniel Blumberg (1st time nominee)
Cast: Brody, Jones, Pearce, Isaach de Bankolé, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Alessandro Nivola, Stacy Martin, Ariane Labed, Emma Laird, Michael Epp, Zephan Hanson Amissah, Charlie Esoko, Peter Polycarpou, Maria Sand, Jonathan Hyde
I was drunk off of this movie when I first watched it, and honestly I haven't stopped thinking about it or talking about it. It's large and unwieldy and ambitious in its own ways that are, in fact, quite comparable to Emilia Pérez, although I think maybe The Brutalist is held together less by excellent direction than by an unforgettable central performance by Adrien Brody. (I don't care if he already has an Oscar; I want him to win again.) Is the film a little messy, especially in its second act? It is. But there's so much to appreciate here. The amazing score, the wonderful production design, the sprawling, epic screenplay. My other favorite performance in the film, aside from Brody's, was Alessandro Nivola's work: he created a character nearly as rich and complex and mysterious as Brody's Lázslo Tóth in his few scenes. I loved this movie, and I think it's doing amazing things, and even if it doesn't always work I appreciated the way it demanded my attention and really aimed toward being a masterpiece. This film, too, has its Oscar detractors, of course, and there is a controversy now about the editor's use of generative AI to get Brody's Hungarian pronunciation just right, and perhaps even some use of AI to help design the Brutalist buildings in the film. I have absolutely no time for these critiques. None of this diminishes my affection for the film, and I don't see how this is any different than ADR or CGI or color correcting or any other use of technology to give a film the look that the filmmakers want from it. Still, I expect this to win quite a few Oscars. It's more respectable than most of the other films in the Best Picture lineup, and I think it will feel more important to Oscar voters.
Will win: Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Original Score
Could win: Picture, Cinematography, Production Design
My rating: #10 out of 93
10 nominations
- Picture
- Actress: Cynthia Erivo (Harriet)
- Supporting Actress: Ariana Grande (1st time nominee)
- Film Editing: Myron Kerstein (Tick, Tick... Boom!)
- Production Design: Nathan Crowley (Tenet, First Man, Dunkirk, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige) & Lee Sandales (1917, War Horse)
- Original Score: John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon) & Stephen Schwartz (Enchanted, The Prince of Egypt, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas)
- Costume Design: Paul Tazewell (West Side Story)
- Sound
- Visual Effects
- Makeup & Hairstyling
Cast: Erivo, Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Andy Nyman, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James
I liked this movie. You can read my original review of the movie here. I completely object to the category fraud that puts Ariana Grande as a supporting player in this movie (or Zoe Saldaña in hers). These are just lies; and their presence here gets in the way of some amazing supporting performances by other actresses this year. I am also very, very annoyed with this movie's Original Score nomination, which is frankly offensive. This is a film almost completely dependent on music from another source, namely the Broadway musical on which it is based, and so to nominate this movie's "original" score is disingenuous at best. But, listen, there is much to love about Wicked: Part I, not least its amazing popularity with audiences and its real connection with the cultural zeitgeist, and so I think we should all hold space with Wicked, at least until Part II arrives. Design-wise, this movie looks gorgeous, and it looks expensive, and the designs are really beautiful. If Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales don't win (neither of them has before), I certainly expect Paul Tazewell to take home his first Oscar.
Will win: Costume Design, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling
Could win: Production Design, Score, Sound
My rating: #36 out of 93
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