1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
This year's nominees are:
9 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Josh Safdie (1st time nominee)
- Actor: Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown, Call Me by Your Name)
- Original Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
- Film Editing: Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
- Cinematography: Darius Khondji (Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Evita)
- Production Design: Jack Fisk (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood) & Adam Willis (Killers of the Flower Moon)
- Costume Design: Miyako Bellizzi (1st time nominee)
- Casting
Cast: Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'Zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler the Creator, Emory Cohen, Fran Drescher, Géza Röhrig, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jilette, Sandra Bernhard
This is tons of fun. It's a non-stop ride of bad mistake after bad mistake (in the vein of the other Safdie Brothers movies). This one feels much more fun than Good Time, Uncut Gems, and The Smashing Machine, and I think a lot of that is the way that Chalamet is able to enjoy himself and project his own pleasure through the difficulties of the character. Marty is a fantastic character, and he's played beautifully here. Which is to say that I don't normally think we associate what Chalamet is doing in this movie with "acting" as such, but I think he's doing an incredible amount of work here that doesn't come across as "honesty" or "vulnerability" or whatever else we might associate with good acting. He's, well, a star. I hope he wins Best Actor. The film has stumbled in recent days with various negative campaigning aimed at it, so I think it is probably not winning any other Oscars, but I'd still like to see Timmy take this one. I also think it should win casting. This is a kind of genius casting job. I think putting Géza Röhrig in that orgy scene with the honey was flat out brilliant. Ok also... that honey scene. Can we talk about it?
Will win: Actor, Casting
Could win: Editing
My rating: #15 out of 89
9 nominations
- Picture
- Adapted Screenplay: Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth)
- Supporting Actor: Jacob Elordi (1st time nominee)
- Cinematography: Dan Lausten (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
- Production Design: Tamara Deverell (Nightmare Alley) & Shane Vieau (Dune: Part Two, Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
- Original Score: Alexandre Desplat (Little Women, Isle of Dogs, The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
- Costume Design: Kate Hawley (1st time nominee)
- Makeup & Hairstyling
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley
Beautiful production design—or as a friend recently said "most" production design—and lots and lots of sumptuous, jewel-toned light. The costumes are gorgeous, the music is pretty, but this movie is fairly boring. I thought Oscar Isaac did good work in this, and David Bradley is great as the Creature’s friend, but the film itself just doesn’t have anything to add to the Frankenstein narratives we already have. Elordi is, of course, cheating by campaigning in the supporting actor category, but the Academy didn't seem to mind it here the way they minded Paul Mescal's category fraud (see below). Elordi is a rising star and everyone seems to love him. He's made a bunch of movies that have done well recently, and he's working hard, so I guess that pushed him over the edge here. I am a little baffled by this, but, then, I'm also baffled that anyone liked this movie. For something so shiny, it manages to be quite dull.
Will win: Production Design, Makeup & Hairsyling
Could win: Cinematography, Costume
My rating: #61 out of 89
8 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
- Actress: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
- Adapted Screenplay: Maggie O'Farrell (1st time nominee) & Zhao (Nomadland)
- Production Design: Fiona Crombie (The Favourite) & Alice Felton (The Favourite)
- Original Score: Max Richter (1st time nominee)
- Costume Design: Malgosia Turzanska (1st time nominee)
- Casting
Cast: Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, David Wilmot, Justine Mitchell
My friends Kody and Dayne have been dragging me for weeks for liking this movie as much as I did. But I found this to be a beautiful meditation on grief. I liked all of the early stuff with the Agnes and Will falling in love, too. I think the real issue for me is that I just love Hamlet, so I loved all the little touches of it throughout the script – goodbye, goodbye, goodbye and other small places where it appeared. The problem with Hamnet is that it is too committed to grief and mourning; it plays this same note way too long. And you might say, yes, well, that's how grief works, but Sirāt is a film that has a similar meditation on the losing of a child, and it works much better. And when I think about it more, Hamnet is doing something as silly as giving us an origin story for an intellectual property we all love—like this is Becoming Jane Austen or something like that. Will Shakespeare reciting "To be or not to be" was way overboard. (I say this as someone who still really liked the film!) And another thing. The film really stumbles at the end. Whoever decided to use “On the Nature of Daylight”, that same Max Richter song from Arrival and Shutter Island, is a fool. In fact, I'm surprised it didn't disqualify Richter from getting his first Oscar nomination. Using old music like that is a big no-no for the Academy. Having that song at the end of the movie immediately pulled me out of the film—it belongs to a wholly different world—and of course I already know it, so rather than the ending of Hamnet feeling unexpected and new, the film moves into familiar territory. Not smart. There’s so much good stuff in this movie, though, and once I bought into the fiction of it (this does not accord with theatre history at all), I enjoyed myself. I guess I should say one more thing about Paul Mescal standing just off the medal stand over there. He's pretty great in this movie—I think he's pretty great in everything, honestly—but he attempted true category fraud. He (or his management) thought the supporting actor race was less crowded than the best actor race, and he was right about that, but it's a hard sell to say that he wasn't the lead actor in this film no matter how good he is in it.
Will win: Actress
Could win: Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Casting
My rating: #30 out of 89
More Oscar posts:
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams
4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident
5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters
6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab
7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
8. Animated Short Films
9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine
10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!
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