Oscar Nominations 2024: 1 of 11

Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars—this year there are 35 features plus 15 short films (three fewer than last year). Usually, I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why), but I'm also going to do myself a favor and skip the live-action short films. As a group they tend to be terrible every single year, and then for some reason the worst one usually manages to win.

This year prior to nominations everyone spent a lot of time saying this is the strangest year ever and saying that the nominations were going to be a huge surprise with so many categories wide open. This turned out not to be true, and the reason for that is that the Academy mostly consolidated nominations in a number of films, giving more nominations to fewer films rather than fewer nominations to more films. This is a thing I dislike intensely. I want the nominations to spread the wealth, to encourage people to see more movies, and to draw attention to individual achievements within movies. For me, giving two song nominations to Emilia Pérez is unnecessary overkill. Draw attention to the great songwriting for the movie Blitz instead! But this is true across the categories. This year, the top five films of the year got 49% of the nominations, and the ten Best Picture nominees account for 70% of the total nominations. Even two of the nominations for Visual Effects are shared among the Best Picture nominees. That's just boring. 

But, well, this is kind of a boring year. And I am disappointed to say that my top ten looks very different from the Academy's. (I've also seen 15 more movies for 2024 than I had at this time last year for 2023.)

I am still excited about several of these films, though, and three of my top films made into the Best Picture lineup. In any case, the Oscars are a jumping-off point for discussion. So let's discuss!

I will go film by film discussing each movie individually rather than by category—beginning with the movies most beloved by the Academy this year. If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, their previous nominations will be listed next to their name in parentheses. This year's nominees:

Emilia Pérez

13 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Jacques Audiard (1st time nominee)
• Actress: Karla Sofía Gascón (1st time nominee)
• Adapted Screenplay: Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Nicholas Livecchi, Léa Mysius (all 1st time nominees)
• Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña (1st time nominee)
• Film Editing: Juliette Welfling (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
• Cinematography: Paul Gilhaume (1st time nominee)
• International Feature: France (Les Misérables, Mustang, A Prophet, The Class, Joyeux Noël, Les Choristes, Amélie, The Taste of Others, East-West, Ridicule, Indochine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Camille Claudel, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Betty Blue, Three Men and a Cradle, Entre Nous, Clean Slate, The Last Metro, Une Histoire Simple, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Madame Rosa, Cousin Cousine, Lacombe Lucien, Day for Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Hoa-Binh, My Night at Maud's, Stolen Kisses, Live for Life, A Man and a Woman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sundays and Cybele, The Truth, Black Orpheus, Mon Oncle, Gates of Paris, Gervaise, Forbidden Games, The Walls of Malapaga, Monsieur Vincent)
• Original Score: Camille & Clément Ducol (1st time nominees)
• Sound
• Makeup & Hairstyling
• Original Song – "El Mal": Audiard, Camille & Clément Ducol (all 1st time nominees)
• Original Song – "Mi Camino": Camille & Clément Ducol (1st time nominees)

Director: Audiard

Cast: Saldaña, Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro, Emiliano Hasan

First, let's just recognize all the first-time nominees in this group above. This is exciting either way—that a movie made by people with almost no prior nominations got thirteen nominations. As for the movie, I really enjoyed myself. It was a wild ride, and I give it extra points for sheer audacity. But it was really also just quite fun. I was especially here for the “Estoy Enamorada” song. Audiard’s work is sure-footed and strong, and the whole thing jells together well. It does at times feel as if Emilia Pérez has bit off more than it can chew, but then Audiard always pulls it back from the brink and delivers. This film is doing the most, that’s for sure. But to my mind it does all of what it does well. 

Meanwhile, since it has received 13 nominations, the film's detractors all have their claws out. This is mostly very boring to me. I didn't love this movie, but I certainly appreciated its ambition, and I definitely enjoyed myself. And honestly, I wonder if the film's detractors are really offering us transphobia instead of real critique. It's as if the audacity of the film opens it up to more criticism than usual. A movie like A Complete Unknown, which is very conventional and not remotely as interesting as Emilia Pérez, doesn't open itself up to nearly as much criticism, and yet we could find plenty of criticisms for that movie, too, if we wanted. Audiard swung wild with this movie, and the Academy loved it (they certainly loved it more than I did), but now the film's haters are swinging wild too. There is a lot to appreciate in this movie. So why do the haters hate it so much? I suspect they're not quite being honest with themselves. (New personal attacks on Karla Sofía Gascón herself have made this clear.)

Will win: Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress, International Feature

Could win: Director, Editing, Score, Sound, Song

My rating: #22 out of 93

The Brutalist

10 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Brady Corbet (1st time nominee)
• Actor: Adrien Brody (The Pianist)
• Original Screenplay: Corbet & Mona Fastvold  (1st time nominees)
• Supporting Actor: Guy Pearce (1st time nominee)
• Supporting Actress: Felicity Jones  (The Theory of Everything)
• Film Editing: David Jancso (1st time nominee)
• Cinematography: Lol Crawley (1st time nominee)
• Production Design: Judy Becker (American Hustle) & Patricia Cuccia (1st time nominee)
• Original Score: Daniel Blumberg (1st time nominee)

Director: Corbet

Cast: Brody, Jones, Pearce, Isaach de Bankolé, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Alessandro Nivola, Stacy Martin, Ariane Labed, Emma Laird, Michael Epp, Zephan Hanson Amissah, Charlie Esoko, Peter Polycarpou, Maria Sand, Jonathan Hyde

I was drunk off of this movie when I first watched it, and honestly I haven't stopped thinking about it or talking about it. It's large and unwieldy and ambitious in its own ways that are, in fact, quite comparable to Emilia Pérez, although I think maybe The Brutalist is held together less by excellent direction than by an unforgettable central performance by Adrien Brody. (I don't care if he already has an Oscar; I want him to win again.) Is the film a little messy, especially in its second act? It is. But there's so much to appreciate here. The amazing score, the wonderful production design, the sprawling, epic screenplay. My other favorite performance in the film, aside from Brody's, was Alessandro Nivola's work: he created a character nearly as rich and complex and mysterious as Brody's Lázslo Tóth in his few scenes. I loved this movie, and I think it's doing amazing things, and even if it doesn't always work I appreciated the way it demanded my attention and really aimed toward being a masterpiece. This film, too, has its Oscar detractors, of course, and there is a controversy now about the editor's use of generative AI to get Brody's Hungarian pronunciation just right, and perhaps even some use of AI to help design the Brutalist buildings in the film. I have absolutely no time for these critiques. None of this diminishes my affection for the film, and I don't see how this is any different than ADR or CGI or color correcting or any other use of technology to give a film the look that the filmmakers want from it. Still, I expect this to win quite a few Oscars. It's more respectable than most of the other films in the Best Picture lineup, and I think it will feel more important to Oscar voters.

Will win: Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Original Score 

Could win: Picture, Cinematography, Production Design

My rating: #10 out of 93

Wicked: Part I

10 nominations

• Picture
• Actress: Cynthia Erivo (Harriet)
• Supporting Actress: Ariana Grande (1st time nominee)
• Film Editing: Myron Kerstein (Tick, Tick... Boom!)
• Production Design: Nathan Crowley (Tenet, First Man, Dunkirk, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige) & Lee Sandales (1917, War Horse)
• Original Score: John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon) & Stephen Schwartz (Enchanted, The Prince of Egypt, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas)
• Costume Design: Paul Tazewell (West Side Story)
• Sound
• Visual Effects
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Erivo, Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Andy Nyman, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James

I liked this movie. You can read my original review of the movie here. I completely object to the category fraud that puts Ariana Grande as a supporting player in this movie (or Zoe Saldaña in hers). These are just lies; and their presence here gets in the way of some amazing supporting performances by other actresses this year. I am also very, very annoyed with this movie's Original Score nomination, which is frankly offensive. This is a film almost completely dependent on music from another source, namely the Broadway musical on which it is based, and so to nominate this movie's "original" score is disingenuous at best. But, listen, there is much to love about Wicked: Part I, not least its amazing popularity with audiences and its real connection with the cultural zeitgeist, and so I think we should all hold space with Wicked, at least until Part II arrives. Design-wise, this movie looks gorgeous, and it looks expensive, and the designs are really beautiful. If Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales don't win (neither of them has before), I certainly expect Paul Tazewell to take home his first Oscar.

Will win: Costume Design, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling

Could win: Production Design, Score, Sound

My rating: #36 out of 93

More posts coming soon:

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers is Jacques Audiard's first English language film, and it has lots of great stuff in it. It's a sensitive, thinking man's western – but maybe more of a feeling man's western than anything else. In any case, it moves away from much of the genre's standard tropes.

And yet... it doesn't quite succeed. Jake Gyllenhaal is miscast, or at the very least plays his role in a stilted kind of way (and I love Jake Gyllenhaal). The Sisters Brothers is also occasionally too slow, and it doesn't fully develop its focus on its most enigmatic character (a typically genius Riz Ahmed), even if it does end up taking us to some great places.

I suppose its worst sin is that it can't live up to Audiard's previous stuff. I know that it's not fair to say that The Sisters Brothers is no Un Prophète, but... well, it's no Un Prophète. In fact, I'd say that Audiard is at his best in Sisters Brothers when he's leaning fully in to the criminal activities of his protagonists or fully in to the emotional nuances of his characters.

Still, act three is marvelous; I found myself quite moved throughout The Sisters Brothers' third act. And the final sequence is absolute perfection.

Telluride at Dartmouth #3

Last night's movie was called Rust and Bone and it will not be France's official selection for the Foreign Language Oscar. The film in competition will be Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano's Intouchables.

And, frankly, who cares, because Rust and Bone is an excellent picture, no matter what kind of crowdpleaser the French Film Academy selects.

What is important for you to know is that the Jacques Audiard – the director of Un Prophète, Sur Mes Lèvres, and De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrêté – has made another tough-as-nails picture about working-class people trying to make their way in a world that doesn't want them to succeed. Rust and Bone is about a pugilist with a young son and his affair with a woman who trains killer whales in a Sea-World-like theme park.

The boxer is played by the awesome Matthias Schoenaerts (who was in Bullhead from earlier this year and whose praises I've been singing), and the orca-trainer is played by Marion Cotillard.

Rust and Bone is a plot-heavy drama, filled with reversals, and knowing nothing about the movie, I was constantly surprised by what happened as the film moved forward. I don't think Rust and Bone is quite as extraordinary of a picture as Un Prophète, but Audiard is an excellent storyteller, and he loves his characters, even when they make terrible decisions.

Audiard's films are also always concerned with class and with the material situation of his characters. They do what they do because of the tight financial constraints placed upon them and he never lets an audience forget that about his characters.

I don't want to spoil anything about the plot, so I'll be quiet about what happens, but I can say with confidence that both Schoenaerts and Cotillard are superb in Rust and Bone. Cotillard proves, again, that she is a serious actor that demands attention, and Schoenaerts is plainly an actor who is here to stay. Bullhead was not a flash-in-the-pan performance. This guy is fantastic.

Michôd, Un Prophète, et un Hommage à Van Sant

David Michôd's Animal Kingdom is a story of a crime family--a group of petty criminals, actually--who sell drugs, rob banks, kill policemen, and randomly threaten hapless civilians. The story is told from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old nephew who has lived outside of the family for most of his life. Sounds good, right?

Well, to be honest, it really isn't. Part of this reason is one of the last movies I saw was Jacques Audiard's Un Prophète, which doesn't quite tell the same story, but does cover the not dissimilar narrative of a young male naïf who learns the ropes and then rises meteorically to run the criminal show. Un Prophète, however, is a far superior movie to Animal Kingdom.

Michôd's film tells its story in fits and starts, pausing to lovingly shoot a walk down a hallway in slow motion, and covering what could be illuminating dialogue with its score (which is, admittedly, probably Animal Kingdom's most interesting component).

The more I think about Animal Kingdom, in fact, the more I think that it wishes it were a Gus Van Sant movie. But Gus Van Sant would appear to know a lot more about building tension, casting, and cinematic poetry than David Michôd does. Too, Van Sant is not really interested in cold movies. His films have real affection for their protagonists and, indeed, for their supporting characters.

Michôd is highly critical of his characters, while simultaneously employing a Van Sant style of shooting those characters. The effect is bizarre to say the least, and I kept waiting for Animal Kingdom to lurch into real action, to ramp up its brutality, to ratchet up its tension. But the film simply never goes there. It is content, instead, to behave as though it is an emotional character study, revealing the inner workings of masculinity and family dynamics in an Australian crime family, when it is clearly nothing of the sort.

Two more things:
I want to point out that Michôd includes a direct homage to Van Sant in Animal Kingdom, when he has one of the characters sit watching the music video of Air Supply's "All Out of Love" after his friend has been murdered. I took this as a direct reference to the scene in Last Days when Van Sant shoots the video of Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" almost in its entirety.

The other thing I wanted to underline before I finish talking about Animal Kingdom is the fact that Un Prophète is totally great. It's a French prison movie about a young Arab (a naïf, like the young man in Michôd's film) who goes to work for the Sicilian mafia while in prison, learns to read, then learns Italian, then starts running his own setup while still in the clink. It's also simultaneously brutal, poetic, intelligent, and incredibly tension-filled, with a stellar central performance by Tahar Rahim. I highly recommend it.