4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident
Sirāt
Avatar: Fire and Ash
K-Pop Demon Hunters
This year's nominees are:
2 nominations
- International Feature: Spain (Society of the Snow, Pain & Glory, The Sea Inside, All about My Mother, The Grandfather, Secrets of the Heart, The Age of Beauty, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Course Completed, Double Feature, Carmen, Begin the Beguine, The Nest, Mama Turns 100, That Obscure Object of Desire, My Dearest 'Señorita', Tristana, Bewitched Love, Los Tarantos, Placido, La Venganza)
- Sound
Cast: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Ahmed Abbou, Abdellilah Madrari, Mohamed Madrari
I loved this movie. As soon as it ended I wanted to start it over and watch it again, which isn’t to say it’s a fun watch at all. In fact, it’s harrowing, like a kind of 21st century insane Wages of Fear. But Óliver Laxe’s film also has a different kind of pulse, like fasting or being on drugs or some other kind of spiritual high. This film is a kind of madness. Sirāt is also fundamentally about loss, about grief and mourning for a lost child and about holding others close as you teeter on the edge. In a way, it tries to make you feel physically and emotionally the kind of loss or grief—that vertigo and emptiness—that a film like Hamnet is only about. In this way Sirāt is better than almost every film this year, and it has a firm spot in my top ten. It's worth saying, while we're here that four of the five International Feature nominees are in my top ten, and this is a sign to me that the Academy is making good choices this year. There were many more sentimental options for the International Feature award—Belén from Argentina, All That's Left of You from Jordan, and Late Shift from Switzerland were all on the shortlist—but the Academy chose much better films with more powerful punches to the gut for its five slots. This movie is simply not to be missed. I'm a little sad that Kangding Ray's pulsing score didn't make it into the Original Score nominees, but we all know the music branch is the most conservative (by which I mean insular and nepotistic) branch in the Academy, so I was not really expecting him to get in, even though he was shortlisted. Anyway, go see this movie. And if you see it at home, turn the sound up and pour yourself a whiskey.
Will win: N/A
Could win: Sound
My rating: #6 out of 94
2 nominations
- Costume Design: Deborah Lynn Scott (Titanic)
- Visual Effects
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Jack Champion, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, David Thewlis, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss
This needed more fire and more ash. Here's the deal: I already saw this movie once when it was called Avatar: the Way of Water, and I loved that movie! But this movie is the same movie. Fire and Ash has lots of cool visuals, to be sure. But it also retreads every single emotional beat from the second film. I think I’m chiefly disappointed that there was no real world-building around the Na'vi clans who played with fire. This was such a missed opportunity. The water clans introduced us to an entire new world and way of being with water. The fire-folk don’t seem to harness the energy of the fire or dwell with it or learn from it in any real way; they just light their arrows on fire and seem to like torching shit. Like, what if they had developed cool fire technologies, or spoke the language of fire, or understood something wild and new about lava or tempering metal or surviving extreme heat. What I love about the first two Avatar movies is the insanely imaginative production design and true world-building. This one is just an extension of Way of Water. Cameron still crafts a cool final battle. And I mostly liked act three, but I can’t say it follows any real in-world logic. This is a good movie, but compared to the first two, it was decidedly a disappointment.
Will win: Visual Effects
Could win: N/A
My rating: #51 out of 94
2 nominations
- Animated Feature
- Original Song - "Golden": EJAE & Jeong Hoon-seo & Joong Gyu-kwak & Yu Han Lee & Nam Hee-dong & Teddy Park & Mark Sonnenblick (all 1st time nominees)
Cast: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Ahn Hyo-seop, Yunjin Kim, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun, Daniel Dae Kim, Joel Kim Booster, Liza Koshy, Alan Lee, Rumi Oak, SungWon Cho
This was so much fuckin fun. I can’t wait for the sequel. And the soundtrack? Forget about it. I literally rewound “Free” during the movie and watched it again. And “Soda Pop” is a Soda Bop. I listened to this soundtrack for weeks and weeks after the movie came out. And everyone was listening to it! Students were popping into my office singing along with this soundtrack. I don't even think "Golden" is my favorite of the film's songs, but it doesn't matter. It's great. I want it to win, and I think it will win. I also think this is the best animated film of the year, so I think it should win that too. There is one animated film I haven't yet been able to see—Sylvain Chomet's A Magnificent Life—so I can't totally judge, but this movie is a blast.
Will win: Animated Feature, Original Song
Could win: N/A
My rating: #11 out of 94
More Oscar posts:
4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident6. 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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