We are scraping the bottom of the barrel, nomination-wise, with these five films. These are traditionally the categories that include the worst films, but we will start with a movie that I think everyone liked:
1 nomination
Cast: Kamiki Ryūnosuke, Hamabe Minami, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Andō Sakura, Sasaki Kuranosuke, Yamada Yūki, Aoki Munetaka
This was pretty good. Godzilla looks really amazing in this—he’s a kind of perfect throwback to 1950s Gojira without looking too cheesy—and the script explicitly links the fight against G to Japanese national performance and postwar economics. I found the non-action sequences a little long though, and they telegraphed too much about the final showdown to the audience ahead of time, so it didn’t have the surprise it should have. But, look, I love Godzilla/Gojira (I love monster movies in general), so I enjoyed all of the time I got to spend with the big guy. It's just that Kamiki Ryūnosuke sure did spend a lot of time crying in this. So many tears!
Will win: N/A
Could win: Visual Effects
My rating: #38 out of 81
1 nomination
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Maria Bakalova, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Stallone
I liked the plot of this. It’s smart for a while. But the third act really drags, and at one point I was like oh god there’s still another hour?? I’m into the film’s approach to animals, but at one point the whole thing just becomes too preposterous. And also I didn’t know who a good thirty percent of the characters were. There’s a dog that speaks English? A whistling dude? And they fly a kind of planet-ship with its own ecosystem and gravity? Who lives on this ship with them and why? I don’t know. The stakes of this were lost on me. I get that these Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are made for people who understand the lore a lot better than I do and who, I presume, have seen the other films more recently than I have (the last one came out literally 6 years ago—I’m supposed to remember it?), but I do wish this studio would make its films more accessible to people who aren’t steeped in their lore. But I do love Bradley Cooper. I love him in everything, and I love him in this.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #66 out of 81
1 nomination
Cast: Helen Mirren, Camille Cottin, Liev Schreiber, Lior Ashkenazi, Rami Heuberger, Rotem Keinan, Dvir Benedek, Ellie Piercy, Henry Goodman, Ed Stoppard, Dominic Mafham, Ohad Knoller
Nope. Honestly, after Guy Nattiv won an Oscar for his horrible live-action short film Skin, I don't know why anyone would give him money to make a movie. Well, they didn't give him much—Golda was definitely made on the cheap—but still. This movie is awful. In many ways, this is basically the same movie as Rustin. It’s a kind of live-action Wikipedia entry with questionable filmmaking, a terrible screenplay, and famous actors in the roles of recognizable historical figures. Golda just has ultra conservative politics instead of Rustin’s vaguely left-of-center politics. What's almost totally insane about the movie is that it has no connection to soldiers or battles. This is a movie about a war that has no soldiers even as characters; instead, Nattiv gives us the battle sequences with blurry animated footage that is actually impossible to follow. At one point, we watch a battle in a windowless control room, and the score is completely gloom and doom, and we stare at Golda Meier, and she looks miserable, and I thought for sure that things were going very poorly for the Israeli military, but then everyone starts cheering and celebrating. Apparently I was supposed to understand the weird animated footage I had been watching to be a positive thing. It's a mess. There's no reason to watch this movie.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #81 out of 81
1 nomination
This was not interesting. I think maybe it’s because the film really doesn’t give us access to Jon Batiste, the man at the movie's center at all. In many ways it’s a very cold look at Jon Batiste. Like, obviously the filmmaker loves him, but he doesn’t seem interested in getting any deeper into what makes him tick or what moves him and mostly just stays at the level of oh wow this man is very cool. I mostly feel like not very much happened in this movie, if I’m honest. I mean, sure, there were events, but they are transmitted to us more like news than a personal journey. Jon Batiste gets married, his wife has cancer, and the two of them cope with that together—and also frequently apart. He also works on composing his symphony, although we really don't see any of this process and don't know anything about the music or how he figures out what the music sounds like. I really just don't know anything about this guy after this movie. It feels really odd.
Will win: N/A
Could win: Original Song
My rating: Unranked
1 nomination
- Original Song – "The Fire Inside": Diane Warren (Tell It like a Woman, Four Good Days, The Life Ahead, Breakthrough, RBG, Marshall, The Hunting Ground, Beyond the Lights, Pearl Harbor, Music of the Heart, Armageddon, Con Air, Up Close & Personal, Mannequin)
Cast: Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez, Emilio Rivera, Vanessa Martinez, Dennis Haysbert, Tony Shalhoub, Pepe Serna
This is a movie about a guy who came up with a brand so he could sell more chips. The brand succeeded, and so did he. We are in a very strange moment of capitalism in which viewers are expected to root for a brand. The issue with this movie, though, is simply that not one thing in it feels authentic. The acting is terrible, and the whole thing just feels completely fake. Flamin' Hot occasionally leans into its mythmaking silliness, but not enough. It believes its own story way too much to work. I did like the part where Montañez tells his father off; movies always want to tell us that family is the most important thing, so I appreciated that. I also thought that Montañez's little boy was super cute. We needed more of him. But mostly Eva Longoria's film is a flamin' hot mess. Of course, that doesn't much matter when Diane Warren has written a song for your movie. You're gonna get nominated anyway! Warren has been nominated nine out of the last ten years for the Original Song Oscar, and Flamin' Hot marks her fifteenth nomination. She has never won, and I'm beginning to suspect she never will. The music branch just nominates her every year. I expect to be writing the same thing next year. The reason she's never won, though, is that if you look at the movies she's been nominated for in the last ten years you also won't find anything good. The movies themselves are bad, and she has to know it. I find the Diane Warren nomination to be a very strange annual tradition.
Will win: N/A
Could win: N/A
My rating: #78 out of 81
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