Part 1: Roma, The Favourite, Vice, A Star Is Born.
Part 2: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Part 3: Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Cold War.
Part 4: Can You Ever Forgive Me?, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Part 5: Never Look Away, Mary Queen of Scots, Isle of Dogs, The Wife.
Part 6: Detainment, Marguerite, Skin, Madre, Fauve.
Part 7:Part 2: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Part 3: Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Cold War.
Part 4: Can You Ever Forgive Me?, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Part 5: Never Look Away, Mary Queen of Scots, Isle of Dogs, The Wife.
Part 6: Detainment, Marguerite, Skin, Madre, Fauve.
1 Nomination
- Actor: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project, Shadow of the Vampire, Platoon)
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Dafoe, Oscar Isaac, Rupert Friend, Emmanuelle Seigner, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, Niels Arestrup, Anne Consigny
This is really uneven. There are some extraordinary sequences when Van Gogh goes off into the woods or into the fields and the music swells and we just sort of experience nature with Van Gogh – these sequences work great. The rest of the movie is less successful. Schnabel tries to give us the experience of a kind of descent into madness. This works ok, or it would work ok except that for Schnabel, madness means repeating all of the dialogue we've just heard in the previous sequence and then overlaying that on a sequence where we watch Van Gogh crumble. It's just that the written dialogue in this movie is really bad! Every single line spoken by any one of these great actors actually landed for me with a thud. It's a stilted, clunky script, and we have to hear a lot of it more than once. This nomination was a big surprise on January 22nd, and while I am perhaps less surprised now that I've seen the movie, I certainly wouldn't have nominated this performance. Dafoe is a great actor, but he's miscast as Van Gogh. He's much too old for the character, and this means that the queer nuances that Schnabel tries to explore in the film with Vincent and Théo (his brother) and with Vincent and Paul Gauguin don't work for this reason. Language in this movie is also really strange. At Eternity's Gate is, like Mary Queen of Scots, quite a theatrical film in the way it just assumes the audience will go with whatever is onscreen. But listening to characters who are speaking French simply switch into English was jarring to me. I needed the film to help me with this. Similarly, people pronounced Vincent's name numerous ways depending on which language they were speaking. This all struck me as directorial inexactitude.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 68
First Reformed
I was into this movie for a while... and then I wasn't. It's just a little too ponderous and too self important for my taste, I think. It works for a while and then it stops working. It seems likely that Ethan Hawke just missed a best actor nomination for First Reformed, and if Paul Schrader keeps directing things like this, I think we'll see him in this category again soon. I don't think there's much else to say about this movie. This was on many, many critics' top ten lists for the year, and it references lots of film history, but I didn't love it.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #36 out of 68
Shoplifters (万引き家族)
My favorite movie of the year. I cannot say enough good things about it. As always, Kore-eda is excellent at getting beautiful performances out of children, but Andō Sakura, who plays the mother, is just incredible in this film. I loved everything about this. It's a perfectly calibrated story with surprises and twists, as well as a moving film about poverty in Japan. As with many of Kore-eda's films, this is also a movie about family, about what makes a family, and about how to keep a family together. I loved this movie. It isn't going to win the Oscar, and that's ok. It's already won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and a great movie is its own award.
Will Win: N/AThis is really uneven. There are some extraordinary sequences when Van Gogh goes off into the woods or into the fields and the music swells and we just sort of experience nature with Van Gogh – these sequences work great. The rest of the movie is less successful. Schnabel tries to give us the experience of a kind of descent into madness. This works ok, or it would work ok except that for Schnabel, madness means repeating all of the dialogue we've just heard in the previous sequence and then overlaying that on a sequence where we watch Van Gogh crumble. It's just that the written dialogue in this movie is really bad! Every single line spoken by any one of these great actors actually landed for me with a thud. It's a stilted, clunky script, and we have to hear a lot of it more than once. This nomination was a big surprise on January 22nd, and while I am perhaps less surprised now that I've seen the movie, I certainly wouldn't have nominated this performance. Dafoe is a great actor, but he's miscast as Van Gogh. He's much too old for the character, and this means that the queer nuances that Schnabel tries to explore in the film with Vincent and Théo (his brother) and with Vincent and Paul Gauguin don't work for this reason. Language in this movie is also really strange. At Eternity's Gate is, like Mary Queen of Scots, quite a theatrical film in the way it just assumes the audience will go with whatever is onscreen. But listening to characters who are speaking French simply switch into English was jarring to me. I needed the film to help me with this. Similarly, people pronounced Vincent's name numerous ways depending on which language they were speaking. This all struck me as directorial inexactitude.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 68
1 Nomination
- Original Screenplay: Paul Schrader
Director: Schrader
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Cedric the Entertainer, Amanda Seyfried, Philip Ettinger, Victoria Hill
I was into this movie for a while... and then I wasn't. It's just a little too ponderous and too self important for my taste, I think. It works for a while and then it stops working. It seems likely that Ethan Hawke just missed a best actor nomination for First Reformed, and if Paul Schrader keeps directing things like this, I think we'll see him in this category again soon. I don't think there's much else to say about this movie. This was on many, many critics' top ten lists for the year, and it references lots of film history, but I didn't love it.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #36 out of 68
1 Nomination
- Foreign Language Film: Japan (Departures, The Twilight Samurai, Muddy River, Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior, Sandakan No. 8, Dodes'ka-den, Portrait of Chieko, Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, Koto, Immortal Love, The Burmese Harp, Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, Gate of Hell, Rashomon)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Cast: Lily Franky, Andō Sakura, Kairi Jyo, Matsuoka Mayu, Kiki Kirin, Sasaki Miyu, Ikematsu Sōsuke
My favorite movie of the year. I cannot say enough good things about it. As always, Kore-eda is excellent at getting beautiful performances out of children, but Andō Sakura, who plays the mother, is just incredible in this film. I loved everything about this. It's a perfectly calibrated story with surprises and twists, as well as a moving film about poverty in Japan. As with many of Kore-eda's films, this is also a movie about family, about what makes a family, and about how to keep a family together. I loved this movie. It isn't going to win the Oscar, and that's ok. It's already won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and a great movie is its own award.
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #1 out of 68
1 Nomination
- Foreign Language Film: Lebanon (The Insult)
Director: Nadine Labaki
Cast: Zain Al Rafeea, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Yordanos Shiferaw, Kawsar Al Haddad, Fadi Yousef, Haita Cedra Izzam, Alaa Chouchnieh, Nadine Labaki, Elias Khoury
I really liked this movie. I don't really think it has a chance of winning, though. The foreign language category this year is filled with powerhouses, including one film that's nominated for best picture and two films that are nominated for best director. This is as it should be. I have been complaining for years that the Academy is way too Anglophone in its scope. It has skewed toward films made in the U.S. and the U.K. for as long as I can remember. To my mind, the Academy needs to expand its way of thinking. We need more foreign films in all categories. I took my older sister to see Capernaum in the theatre. She doesn't watch foreign films very often. She loved this movie, and her response when it was over was "I forgot they weren't speaking English. I didn't even notice." She is exactly right. I've never understood people who say that they don't want to read a movie. It's not at all like reading. Your brain keeps up! The new Academy, which has enlarged its ranks by inviting a larger, more diverse group of people to be a part of its numbers, is much more international, so I think perhaps this is why we are seeing the foreign language films doing better in other categories. As far as I'm concerned this is all to the good. P.S. I love Nadine Labaki, and I'm glad she's finally getting some Academy recognition: her film Caramel is wonderful.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #24 out of 68
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