Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 7 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
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

This year's remaining Animated Feature nominees are:

Arco

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Ugo Bienvenu

Cast: Margot Ringard, Oldra Oscar Tresanini, Nathanaël Perrot, Alma Jodorowsky, Swann Arlaud, Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel, William Lebghil, Sophie Mas, Frédérique Cantrel, Oxmo Puccino

This is wonderful. There's nothing like it this year, and it's imaginative and narratively innovative in a way that I wasn't expecting at all. This is—finally—a movie about kids that is not about the anxieties of parenting. Instead it's about friendship and the need to explore, and the desire to be allowed to make decisions for oneself as a young person. The film exists in two very different futures from our own, but they don't feel very far away at all, and this makes Arco also feel richly related to our own time despite being set in the distant future. What's more, Arco also continues a really powerful conversation about artificial intelligence, the humanity of robots, labor, and education. This just has a great deal going for it. Everyone else thinks so too because this film has won the "Best Animated Feature" award from nearly every critic group. I don't think it will win the Oscar, but it's a worthy contender for it, and it might surprise on Oscar night after all. Unfortunately, I had to see this in the theatre with the American cast—I know why they do this: it's really hard for kids to read subtitles, and this is definitely a movie for kids—but I really wanted to see it in the theatre. If you're watching at home, I recommend listening to the French cast.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #16 out of 95

Elio

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi

Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Remy Edgerly, Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Brandon Moon, Jameela Jamil, Young Dylan, Jake T. Getman, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ana de la Reguera, Atsuko Okatsuka, Shirley Henderson, Naomi Watanabe, Brendan Hunt, Anissa Borrego, Shelby Young, Bob Peterson, Kate Mulgrew, Tamara Tunie

I shared some of my thoughts on this movie here already. Elio is an absolute delight, and it's very funny. The two kids at the center of this movie, little Elio and little Glordon (a very sweet alien who just doesn't want to grow up and be mean and uncaring and violent), are truly adorable and I loved them both. I don't think a lot of people went to see this movie for some reason, but everyone is missing out. This is very fun and I laughed out loud numerous times. The animated features this year are pretty good, with only one that's middle of the road. I think this category is finally getting to a respectable place.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #23 out of 95

Zootopia 2

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard

Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson, Danny Trejo, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Michelle Gomez, David Fane, Joe Anoa'i, Phil Brooks, Stephanie Beatriz, Wilmer Valderrama, Jean Reno, Alan Tudyk, Macaulay Culkin, Brenda Song, John Leguizamo

This was unobjectionable and unremarkable. It even got a few laughs out of me! As it turns out, the people of Zootopia need to learn all of the same lessons in film 2 that they really ought to have learned in film 1. As with the first film, this Zootopia has a solid mystery to it, and it moves quickly with lots of fun action. It's way more sentimental than it needs to be. But I guess the makers of Zootopia believe that sentimentality is how one fights racism. In any case, this is mostly fine.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #67 out of 95

Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes

(Little Amélie or the Character of Rain)

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Han Liane-cho, Maïlys Vallade

Cast: Loïse Charpentier, Victoria Grobois, Yumi Fujimori, Cathy Cerda, Marc Arnaud, Laëtitia Coryn, Haylee Issembourg, Isaac Schoumsky

I read somewhere that critics have understood this movie to be about nostalgia, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes tries to do is give us the narcissism and wonder of a child. It’s a beautiful film drawn in gorgeous 2D animation in pastel hues with the character almost of pastels themselves. In no way is this about adults or looking back. Instead what we get is the perspective of the child herself. What I appreciated so much about Amélie is that it’s about the narcissism and entitlement with which we are born—and the realization that we must inevitably come to: that the world doesn’t exist for us alone. This realization, of course, comes with a feeling of loss, and by the end of the film what we have come to is a way to process that loss. It’s quite a beautiful little piece.. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #35 out of 95

All 2025 Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
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. Live-action Short Films

10. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

11. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Elio (2025)

Elio was so damn cute. I was grinning from ear to ear for most of this. It's imaginative and fun and playful, with absolutely delightful characters. 

I suspect some are tiring of hearing about this, but I argued in my book Love Is Love Is Love and I say all the time that Pixar movies (and most animated movies in general) are about the queer child and about parenting, and... Elio is no exception. The two queer children at the film's center are misunderstood by their parents, who have trouble connecting with them and can't figure out what to do with their very strange kids. This is usual for a Pixar movie—cf. Inside Out and its sequel, Turning Red, Luca, Soul, Elemental, etc.—but what is different about Elio is that although parenting is in focus here, the experience of the child is much more important to the narrative. The parents are still the heroes in this, but what I love about Elio is that it articulates the way the child wants to do more, to be more, indeed to be an adult or not be treated like a child. 

Perhaps disappointingly, Elio is also deeply invested in the biological family rather than (as I also discussed in Love Is Love Is Love) the chosen family politics that permeate films in the 1990s. But this is not too big of a deal, and the film tries to strike a balance between friendship and family that I appreciated. 

In any case, this is really really fun and super charming. And I adored little Elio and little Glordon. 

P.S. The name Elio puts me in mind of the young Elián González, whom the U.S. treated as an alien. More importantly, perhaps, the film riffs on "aliens" and US Latinos in a clever but not overtly political way. This is a film in which the US Americans in the film are Latinos and the "aliens" are somewhere else.

Oscar Nominations 2022: 7 of 9 (Animated Features)

 This year's nominees:

Pinocchio

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Guillermo Del Toro, Mark Gustafson

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro

I loved this movie, and I think it's the best animated film of the year, but it is a Guillermo Del Toro movie, not a Disney Pinocchio tale. Del Toro's film is a very interesting and constantly surprising meditation on death, grief, loss, and the violence of war. Especially intriguing is the Blue Fairy's opposite, a terrifying and wise sphinx figure whom Pinocchio meets in the afterlife. This is also a film with songs, and I have to say that I think I would have liked it better without the musical elements, but it didn't damage my affection for Del Toro's engaging take on this old story. I am predicting this movie to win best animated feature, but I have to say I'm skeptical of my own prediction. Everyone was expecting Pinocchio to do much better on nomination morning than it did. Nominations were predicted for sound, adapted screenplay, and other categories, but it only managed this one. Even music-branch-golden-boy Alexandre Desplat missed a nomination for his Pinocchio score. All of the nominees for best animated feature this year are only nominated in this one category. This is unusual. I think, in the case of Pinocchio, it indicates that the Academy likes it a lot less than critics did. This might mean that Marcel can pull off a win.

Will Win: Animated Feature

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #13 out of 67

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Cast: Jenny Slate, Fleischer Camp, Isabella Rossellini, Lesley Stahl, Thomas Mann, Rosa Salazar

I really liked this. I liked Marcel when he was a YouTube sensation – I don't know how many times I watched that video – and I liked him again now. This is a very intriguing pandemic movie. It feels like a pandemic movie, like something made to cope with loss and grief. This is what the animated feature category is about this year – coping with mortality and trying to come to terms with grief and loss. Marcel has a very cute way of doing this, and this film is super charming. I was sort of surprised to hear how emotional people got over Marcel, though. It just didn't do that for me. In terms of the academy and its short film and animated feature branch, this movie is quite an anomaly, and it signals a new approach in considering animation. I think five years ago, this movie would not have been legible as an animated feature. This nomination, though, really opens things up for how the branch is understanding and honoring work in animation, and I think this is very positive.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #27 out of 67

Puss in Boots: the Last Wish

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Joel Crawford

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén, Wagner Moura, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo, John Mulaney, Da'Vine Joy Randolph 

This is really fun! It's also gorgeously animated, with a witty and cleverly changing set of styles, used in various ways and for different effects. In case you haven't understood the theme, this too is a mediation on death. Puss is, for the first time, terrified for his life, and the film deals with death humorously for a time (perhaps the way most of us do) before moving into quite serious territory. The Last Wish, unfortunately, moves inexorably toward easy clichés and toward melodramatic solutions to its very intriguing problems, but for most of its runtime this is a fun, handsomely animated film, and Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas are great.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #38 out of 67

Turning Red

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Domee Shi

Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Tristan Allerick Chen, Mia Tagano, Lori Tan Chinn, Lillian Lim, James Hong, Sherry Cola

I've already written about Turning Red. If you follow my Instagram, you probably know that I'm obsessed with red pandas, and so I was very ready to be in love with this. It is, indeed, very good, and I had a pretty great time with it. For me, Turning Red is, like many children's movies these days, about the child who is weird, whose desires and impulses don't accord with those of her parents', and who finds herself strange even to herself. [I explore this concept of the queer child as central to recent animated features in chapter five of my new book – link below.] I definitely liked how this movie was about turning against tradition, about deciding to follow a different path. It does have some weird choices in it, though. I am not sure why it's set in the past, and especially not sure why they didn't draw the red panda to look more like the way a real red panda looks – they have beautiful black bellies and black boots, but the animated character is all red. Mostly, this movie makes a very strange homophobic choice that just didn't sit well with me. The movie's still good, but that moment stuck with me and I had trouble letting it go.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #46 out of 67

The Sea Beast

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Chris Williams

Cast: Karl Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Kathy Burke

This nomination was a total surprise, and I really don't know how it came to be, because this movie is a complete retread of How to Train Your Dragon. I've already seen How to Train Your Dragon, and this is the same damn plot as the first one except that they're sea dragons instead of flying dragons. Now, I'm sure that lots of kids like this movie. It's cute enough, and it's harmless. But I was annoyed with it, despite my affection for Karl Urban's handsomeness and my love for Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 67

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Elvis

2. The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

3. Avatar: the Way of Water, Triangle of Sadness, The Whale, and Babylon

4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun

5. To Leslie, Blonde, Glass Onion, and Causeway

6. Argentina, 1985, Eo, The Quiet Girl, and Close

More posts coming soon:

8. Animated Shorts

9. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

I'd love it if you checked out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

Turning Red and Seeing Red

There's this very weird moment in Domee Shi's new movie Turning Red. It's early in the film around minute four. The four main girls are all staring at Devon, the 17-year-old convenience store clerk, and Meilin's three friends swoon over Devon, but Meilin says he's gross, makes a barf face, and then says besides he looks like a hobo. And then she does that homophobic broken wrist thing (a gesture that has been reworked and recoded by queer communities on TikTok) that means Is he... you know...? I guess I wouldn't have noticed this except that she says the word hobo, which sounds a hell of a lot like homo. And who calls someone else a hobo anyway? Coupled with the gesture, it sticks out very weirdly.

Now, Meilin does make a limp wrist gesture earlier in the movie, to be fair. When she first gets on the bus (near the two-minute mark) she says I don't mean to brag, but... and makes that broken-wrist gesture. It is, here, designed to indicate a kind of pretentiousness, I guess. Meilin imagines herself a grown up even though she's plainly not, and she's putting on airs.

But what in the world is this hobo thing doing there? It puzzled me the entire film. It feels like a strange, homophobic moment that the filmmakers just let sit there. It's made doubly weird since the entire plot of Turning Red is a kind of large-scale queer allegory. It's about the messiness of puberty, about choosing your friends and your desires over those of your family. And then the film's big lesson is about how we all have messy parts of ourselves that we hide or don't want to admit to – you know, like sexual interests that feel abnormal – but that we need to learn to incorporate them into our subjectivities.

Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 9 of 11

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: At Eternity's Gate, First Reformed, Shoplifters, Capernaum.
Part 8: Spider man: into the Spider-verse, Incredibles 2, Mirai, Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Part 9:

Bao

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Domee Shi

This is very cute and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. I really love the strange – even slightly creepy – comparison of children to dumplings. I really enjoyed this in its entirety. It's sort of the perfect thematic pairing to Incredibles 2, with which it screened in cinemas, but its also smarter than that film in many ways, and I think smart in general about parenthood and its discontents. I was really into this. Also it made me want dim sum. Actually, I always want dim sum.
Will Win: Animated Short Film
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #3 of 5

Animal Behaviour

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: David Fine, Alison Snowden

Cast: Ryan Beil, Taz Van Rassell, Leah Juel, Andrea Libman, Toby Berner, James Kirk, Snowden

Ugh. This one had a few good jokes, but this has nothing new to say about animals, about group therapy, or anything else. It's just a set of inane jokes (half of them about assholes (seriously) or overeating, for some reason). Also, the animation is not very attractive. If I laughed occasionally through this, I also just felt icky afterward. I dunno... people's psychological problems just kind of aren't that funny to me at the moment. This is silly, and I should probably just have let myself go and enjoyed it, but this really isn't my kind of humor.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Animated Short Film
My Rating: #4 of 5

One Small Step

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Andrew Chesworth, Bobby Pontillas

Ok. This one is the most boring of the five, but it's also probably the most heartwarming of the five, as well. This is about a girl and her father. He repairs her shoes (one small step) and she wants to go to the moon (one small step, indeed). Her name is Luna, so I really feel like it was probably this young woman's destiny to go to the moon; don't know why she ever doubted herself. In any case, One Small Step is the kind of do-it-for-dad sweet little bit of emotional fluff that feels totally predictable at this point in history. You will see every single plot point coming a mile away.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #5 of 5

Late Afternoon

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Louise Bagnall

Cast: Fionnula Flanagan, Bagnall, Niamh Moyles, Aislin Konings Ferrari

So, so good. This movie is absolutely lovely. It's beautifully animated and beautifully acted. The animation is honestly just gorgeous. I loved it. This is a story of a woman with Alzheimer's as she tries to remember some events in her past. This inability/ability to remember is animated with beautiful large colored blobs as our main character soars amid the colors and snatches of memory come to her as she floats. It's a beautiful little film.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #2 of 5

Weekends

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Trevor Jimenez

This was my favorite of the five. It's a deeply personal film – or at least feels deeply personal. A boy goes back and forth between his father and his mother, and we see his experiences in both locations. The film is about space and how spaces become homes, but it's also about growing up with parents who don't quite pay attention to you as much as you'd like them to, and it's about figuring out how to carve space for yourself within their self-absorbed worlds. Weekends is a lonely, occasionally very sad film that is run through with a lovely, innocent, and wonderful sense of humor. It is purely Chekhovian in the way that it couples laughter and sadness together. The animation is done in gorgeous watercolors, and every single piece of this feels beautifully considered and carefully constructed. I absolutely loved it.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #1 of 5