This year's nominees are:
1 nomination
- Visual Effects
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein, Adam Loxley, Niamh Finlay
For some reason this is a movie about sadness? Like, everyone, in Jurassic World: Rebirth is so sad and unhappy, and it was really difficult for me to invest in any of these people. This has some cool sequences, but it’s such a downer. It’s Jurassic Park as a disaster film, and because it approaches its subject matter earnestly, this means feeling every loss in the disaster and taking time to mourn the fallen characters whom we never got to know in the first place. The leads are competent—Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, and Rupert Friend are all great and perfect in their parts. But there’s also an annoyingly earnest B-plot, with four actors I’ve never seen before. They all do a fine job, but Gareth Edwards doesn’t introduce them to us until 25 minutes into the movie, so they feel like an afterthought for the rest of the running time, though I think Edwards thinks they’re supposed to be the emotional center of the movie or something like that. The whole thing is ridiculous. And the big bad at the end is disgusting-looking. Mostly, though, I just don’t understand why an adventure–monster movie needs to be so deeply invested in processing depression and lack of fulfillment. Why couldn’t this be more fun? Why make a monster movie that’s a drag? This ends up being one of the worst movies of the year.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #95 out of 98
1 nomination
- Visual Effects
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson, Kimberli Flores, Levi McConaughey, Kay McConaughey, John Messina, Kate Wharton, Danny McCarthy, Spencer Watson
Fellow visual effects nominee The Lost Bus is an infinitely better film than Jurassic World: Rebirth with a bigger movie star, but this was an AppleTV+ film and so almost no one saw it. This is very very unfortunate because The Lost Bus is really strong. It’s a fast-paced action film that mounts tension expertly and beautifully pays off. McConaughey and the rest of the cast are excellent, but the star here are the extraordinary effects and the sure hand of Paul Greengrass, who has been giving us great politically focused action movies for two decades. It's a movie about climate change without being a movie about climate change, and it highlights the very hard work that real firefighters, schoolteachers, and other real people (not politicians or finance executives) did to save lives during the Paradise fire in California. This movie's great. Unfortunately none of us can watch it on big screens.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #21 out of 98
1 nomination
- Makeup & Hairstyling
Cast: Yoshizawa Ryo, Yokohama Ryusei, Takahata Mitsuki, Terajima Shinobu, Kurokawa Soya, Koshiyama Keitatsu, Tanaka Min, Ken Watanabe, Nana Mori, Takahiro Miura, Ai Mikami, Masatoshi Nagase, Shimada Kyūsaku
Epic! At three hours this is a bit of a prohibitive watch, but it's filed with excellent performances and—especially—some wonderful kabuki on film. The central figure in this is a bit of an enigma, and perhaps because the film jumps temporally as much as it does, we get less insight than we probably should into who he is. We get much, much more insight into his partner's world, the man who is not nearly as good of a kabuki performer in the film. Yokohama Ryusei is wonderful in this. The movie itself is messy, but it kind of doesn't matter. The whole thing is immensely compelling. (Incidentally, Kokuho means national treasure, which makes sense in the context of the film, but of course one could never call this film "National Treasure" in English.) One more thing: it's odd that gender doesn't come up at all in this movie except for two little moments at the end of the second act and beginning of the third. An audience member assumes that Kikuo is a woman and wishes for something more but then becomes violent when he understands that he's a man; then two scenes later two men refer to a 90-year-old onnagata as "the old lady" but then correct themselves. These are intriguing moments, but the film itself does nothing with them. Lee Sang-il is simply not interested in the complex gender experience of these men who play women onstage. And I guess that's a little weird to me, but the movie's definitely still worth watching.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #32 out of 98
1 nomination
- Makeup & Hairstyling
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Lyndsey Gavin, Zoe Kosovic, Oleksandr Usyk, Satoshi Ishii, James Moontasri, Yoko Hamamura, Paul Cheng, André Tricoteux, Marcus Aurelio, Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu, Jerin Valel, Raja Flores
This is a weird film. It’s weird because—in the first place—it’s a sports film that really avoids quite a few of the sports-movie tropes, and this makes the movie better than those movies but not quite as satisfying emotionally as most of them. It’s also weird because—in the second place—Safdie is invested in us having complex feelings about his characters and the things they do, and we aren’t used to that. I don’t know, though… for me this was good but not great. It has some excellent elements—the sound is incredible, the score is so great, the makeup is amazing—but much of The Smashing Machine consists of melodramatic, petty fights. And those were not very interesting to me. (Except for this one moment when The Rock smashed a door in a room where there really should not have been a door in the first place.) In any case, The Smashing Machine doesn't build tension the way a usual Safdie Brothers movie would. This is a true story, and its dependent on its real subject matter, but I suspect that the screenwriter amped up the Emily Blunt part so the actress could have more to do. This works well for Emily Blunt, but it makes the movie a good deal less enjoyable; she really shouldn't be the focus of this movie.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #44 out of 98
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11. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!
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