Oscar Nominations 2023: 6 of 9 (Animated Features)

For some reason, each of the animated feature films only received one nomination. Usually one or two get an Original Score nomination or an Original Song nomination, and sometimes screenplay nominations or even Best Picture, but not this year. The other key thing about 2023 – and every year – is that you can generally expect the movies to be split between the studios. This is why there's almost always a random Netflix nominee you've never heard of, one nominee from Japan, and another nominee from Europe in addition to the big studio usual suspects from Disney–Pixar and Dreamworks. I assume this is because the Animation branch votes in blocs. Anyway, here are this year's five nominees.

Spider-man: across the Spider-verse

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Jason Schwartzman, Oscar Isaac, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Jake Johnson, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, Greta Lee, Amandla Stenberg, Jharrel Jerome, Andy Samberg, Jack Quaid, Rachel Dratch, Ziggy Marley, Jorma Taccone, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, J.K. Simmons, Donald Glover, Elizabeth Perkins, Kathryn Hahn, Ayo Edebiri, Nicole Delaney, Antonina Lentini, Atsuko Okatsuka, Peter Sohn

This is very very cool for all of its running time. It's unexpected and interesting, and it has more surprises up its sleeve than you can basically ever imagine. The animation for this film – as with the original – is inventive and almost shocking. It places different styles next to one another in such a brilliant way that it makes the totally incongruous seem natural. In many ways this is just a genius piece of moviemaking and more-than-worthy sequel to the first film, Into the Spider-verse. But... and this is a very large but... the ending drove me nuts. I went with a friend, and when it was over we looked at one another and said "shame about the ending". The filmmakers opt for a cliffhanger, but it feels inept, and because I wasn't expecting a cliffhanger, I was very disappointed by this choice. Still, this is a good movie, and I would say it's the favorite to win the Oscar (though it is not what I'm going to predict). Also, I have a question: when all of the spideys are in the world with all of the spideys instead of in their home-worlds, who's guarding the home worlds? They're just all hanging out in a different dimension and leaving their worlds to go to hell? I wouldn't mind this idea so much except that this Spider-man series sees the world as intensely dark and filled with peril. To take this series at its word, the world is on the absolute brink of ruin and evil. Anyway, it's something I've been wondering.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #34 out of 78

The Boy and the Heron

(君たちはどう生きるか)

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Keiko Takeshita, Jun Fubuki, Sawako Agawa, Karen Takizawa

I really, really liked this and it's the highest ranking of the animated features for me this year. It's surreal and imaginative and beautiful and striking and magical. This is also an extraordinarily adorable take on the multiverse and the ways that grief fragments the experiences of our lives. I say adorable because this vision of the multiverse (and we had a few this year with Past Lives, The Boy and the Heron, Spider-man, and Robot Dreams) thinks about the different ways that loss affects us, and the different ways that those we love and lose can live on within us or around us. This is a film about family and legacies, but it's also about how we process the loss of a loved one. And it does that in typical, surreal, Miyazaki fashion, with goose-stepping parakeets and shattering castles and souls reborn. This is wonderful.

Will win: Animated Feature

Could win: N/A

My rating: #13 out of 78

Elemental

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Peter Sohn

Cast: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara, Mason Wertheimer

This is cute. It’s completely predictable in every imaginable way, but it’s kind of irresistible anyway. This is, first and foremost, a story of immigrants and growing up with immigrant parents, and although it would seem to indicate some kind of specific allegory for the immigrant experience of one group, it's trying to do something more inclusive and, perhaps (I'm not quite sure) more interesting. It's intensely clever in its world building, and I liked much of it, especially the world itself. It definitely has its problems, though. For one thing, the main character, "Ember", spends most of the film as an anxious ball of fire (if you will), and she's uptight and kind of annoying. The young water-man who loves her, "Wade", is perfect and understanding and does all of the right things. This makes for a movie that is off-kilter. She is hard to like and he is easy to like. I think it's just a kind of basic androcentric position that filmmakers often take. I think my other problem with movies like this (predictable romantic comedies, I mean... or maybe I mean animated movies that are aimed at young people) is that “doing the right thing” is so obvious. The audience knows what the right thing to do is way before the characters figure it out. This makes us feel good as viewers, of course – we are so much wiser than these fools/kids on the screen – but I find it very boring. And nothing like real life. And more often than not, parents are not quite as open to change as these narratives would like to imagine. But, hey, this is a fable about fire-people and water-people, so we can live in the fantasy.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #60 out of 78

Robot Dreams

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Pablo Berger

Cast: Ivan Labanda, Tito Trifol, Rafa Calvo, José García Tos, José Luis Mediavilla, Graciela Molina, Esther Solans

This is much better than the cuteness of Elemental. Pablo Berger's film is a very cute story about coping with loneliness and meeting a friend instead. Or perhaps it's about falling in love instead of friendship. Actually, yes; it's about falling in love. There are several wonderful things about this. First, it's done as a film without dialogue; there's sound, of course, so it isn't a silent movie, but the whole thing is done without anyone talking. Second, this movie is called Robot Dreams, and it is quite literally that. It lives in the multi-verse world that so many of this year's films live in, where we are inside the dreams of a robot for some of the film's running time. These dreams are sweet and sad and sometimes wonderful. The whole thing is inventive and delightful, and then it takes a turn in the third act. This turn is nothing short of extraordinary, and because I wasn't expecting it, I still feel surprised by the wistful regret and wisdom that Robot Dreams offers its audience. It's a really lovely movie. Now, let's talk about release dates. I do not understand why a distributor would release a movie for a single week in theatres in December so that it can qualify for the Oscars and then not release the film in wider release during the six weeks it's nominated. Literally Robot Dreams will never be as popular as it is right this second, and yet Neon is planning to release the movie in May or June well after either The Boy and the Heron or Spider-man: across the Spider-verse will already have taken home the Animated Feature Oscar. Why? What is the logic here? It makes absolutely no sense to me. So, anyway, this is impossible to see on either a big screen or a streaming service right now, and actually it makes me kind of mad. (Mind you, I'm annoyed with the distributors of Io Capitano and Perfect Days, too; Cohen Media is doing this in addition to Neon.) And I really don't like bootlegging things – they actually deserve my money – but I got frustrated and found the movie here.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #49 out of 78

Nimona

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, Frances Conroy, Lorraine Toussaint, Beck Bennett, RuPaul, Indya Moore, Julio Torres

Oh dear. I wrote my thoughts on this already here. This is very gay, and I'm glad it's very gay, but it's also predictable and boring and has some "very important" lessons it's interested in teaching us. No thanks. As much as I like gay things, I would like them to be better than this.  I will say that I love Riz Ahmed and I love this very gay cast (except Chloë Grace Moretz; I haven't forgiven her for this really offensive act of outing she pulled in 2018), but Nimona is not a good movie. My friend Caleb says that the original graphic novel is very good, and he even mailed me a copy, so I'm gonna read that and hope it's better than this nonsense. I recommend that you do that too.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #76 out of 78

More posts coming soon:

1. Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Maestro

2. Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, The Holdovers, American Fiction

3. Napoleon, Past Lives, Nyad, Society of the Snow

4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, The Creator, Rustin, May December

5. The Color Purple, El Conde, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

7. Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Golda, American Symphony, Flamin' Hot

8. Animated Short Films

9. Perfect Days, The Teachers' Lounge, Io Capitano

Far-too-quick 2015 Movie Roundup

I've been seeing a ton of stuff over the last two weeks, cramming everything that is in wide release (i.e. in theatres in Orlando) in before I get to Los Angeles, so that I can spend time seeing the limited-release stuff like Youth and Carol and 45 Years while I'm there. I have already posted about Creed, so I won't review that, but here's some other good stuff. Almost all of these movies are really good, so get out to the movies.

Brooklyn is a beautiful, small picture with some absolutely lovely performances. Saoirse Ronan is a lock for a best actress nomination, and she carries the picture with her deep, beautiful eyes and enigmatic smile. But, in truth, the movie itself doesn't need a lot of carrying. It is elegantly scripted by Nick Hornby, and the supporting performances are all spot on thoroughly enjoyable. Julie Walters, in particular, is very funny while simultaneously feeling richly created; she takes a simple part and makes it into something legitimately fascinating. Domnhall Gleeson, too, gives his usual excellent performance, quietly moving through his role with sensitivity and care. But for me the breakout here is Emory Cohen, who plays an Italian boy Ronan meets in Brooklyn at an Irish dance. Cohen's performance is buoyant, endlessly lovable, and overwhelmingly charming. I was in love with him in under five minutes, but he looks at Ronan with such love in his eyes and half-smile that it seemed to me impossible not to love him back. It is, perhaps, a relatively simple role, in what turns out to be a relatively simple movie, but I found the whole thing emotionally satisfying and wonderfully romantic.

Oscar possibilities for Brooklyn: quite a few, I'd wager. Actress, picture, adapted screenplay, score, costumes. And that's a conservative estimate.

* * *

The Good Dinosaur... was better when it was called The Lion King. The plot is simple and clichéd, like most kids movies, I guess. The look of the film is its most interesting feature – which isn't to say that it is good because the look of the film is decidedly odd.

The scenery in The Good Dinosaur is hyperrealistic. Beautiful water, gorgeous trees and sunsets. And then there are storms and weather: all of these are done pristinely, as though this were CGI for a Marvel movie, ready to be inhabited by basically realistic-looking humans and animals. But then the dinosaurs in The Good Dinosaur, and the other animals as well, all look like they were drawn by an intrepid sixth grader. All of the actual inhabitants of the world of this film look like cartoons. Cartoon creatures and humans living in a carefully crafted realistic world. The effect is bizarre, to say the least, and contributes to a kind of constant, nagging confusion I had while watching the movie. Still, the script is charming and funny (particularly the sequences with Sam Neill and Steve Zahn), and I quite liked The Good Dinosaur while never quite feeling comfortable with it.

Oscar possibilities for The Good Dinosaur: a definite nomination in the animated feature category. That's it, though.

* * *

I loved Spotlight, on the other hand. Directed by Tom McCarthy, who has directed some excellent movies over the years (The Station Agent, Win Win, The Visitor), this is his best film yet. Spotlight is an ensemble picture that follows the story of the sex-abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese of the Catholic church. I honestly don't think I have much to say about this because I just thought it was solid, and I enjoyed it completely.

In truth, if I am honest with myself, Spotlight is a sort of conventional movie about truth and justice and doing the right thing and making the bad guys pay, but it felt so much more than that while I was watching it. McCarthy ratchets up the stakes, and for me Spotlight came to be about the way that each of us allows injustice to continue in the world because of (a) devotions and loyalties to various dogmas and traditions, (b) apathy and indifference about the real sufferings of other people, (c) actual fear that people might not like us, and (d) greed and self-interest. We watch the film's central characters struggle in different ways with all of these qualms and difficulties, and these miniature character studies are all very interesting, even compelling.

I enjoyed Spotlight from start to finish, admiring the filmmaking (it's shot cleverly and without ostentation) and the powerful ensemble work from Keaton, Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams, Brian d'Arcy James, Len Cariou, and Billy Crudup. And I like the film's subject matter, too. It is so easy to cover up something instead of truly dealing with it, so simple (especially if you're getting your pockets lined) to choose to kowtow to the powerful and the wealthy instead of telling the truth. By the time Spotlight's end title cards rolled around, the sheer scope of the conspiracy that this team of reporters exposed bowled me over. This is a conventional film but a stunning story.

Oscar possibilities for Spotlight: This is currently the Best Picture frontrunner, so that means all of the nominations that go along with that: editing, screenplay, cinematography, supporting actor (Ruffalo? Keaton? who knows), and director.

* * *

I shall leave you on a sour note. I had crossed Trumbo off of my list because the trailer looked so... whimsical, but then the Screen Actors Guild nominated it for ensemble, best actor, and best supporting actress, and then the Golden Globes followed suit with nominations for best actor in a drama (even though it is a comedy) and (again) best supporting actress. So, I put Trumbo back on my list and headed over to the cineplex.

Trumbo is an awful film. It is ostensibly the story of Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted screenwriter of Roman Holiday and The Brave One and Spartacus, and I guess it is that, but this movie is so all over the place that one is never quite sure what it's about. It covers an enormous span of time, and its opinion about its protagonist shifts rather a lot, but this isn't really the problem with Trumbo. The problem is that the script is terrible, the acting is hammy and nonsensical, the makeup is too thick, the cinematography is inept, and the whole thing feels so phony that even though this is apparently a true story, one comes away from the film feeling as though it was rather a nice story, but not that our government actually, you know, was fascist and used violence and imprisonment to silence political dissidence. It is all designed to feel so charming: the good guys won. Of course they did. This is America! Utter nonsense.

Oh, and if you think this film might be about mid-century politics? Like Communism or Fascism? You would be wrong. Fascism in Trumbo is a mere plot device. Fascism in Trumbo is just an excuse for John Goodman to get laughs by swinging a baseball bat around an office and for Helen Mirren to say fuck.

I am not Spartacus, but I play him in the movies.

There is more to say about how bad Trumbo is, I guess, but it seems to me that perhaps the most egregious thing about this movie is Hollywood's obsession with having younger actors play famous bygone stars of yesteryear. Trumbo boasts Edward G. Robinson, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Otto Preminger, and Hedda Hopper as characters, so that younger actors do their best impressions of these Hollywood royalty, but it always feels so fake. Michael Stuhlbarg, a fine actor, does a rather awful Edward G. Robinson impersonation as it turns out, and although Dean O'Gorman and David James Elliott do very good impressions of Kirk Douglas and John Wayne (respectively), the impression is all they do; characterization is non-existent, as though because they're trying so hard to play the famous face they forgot how to play humans. As for the two racking up nominations, Bryan Cranston growls his way through his part, and as far as I can tell all Helen Mirren does to get into the part of Hedda Hopper is simply to half-heartedly drop her British accent.

As for old Hollywood itself? In Trumbo (as in Saving Mr. Banks and Hitchcock before it) 1940s and '50s Los Angeles looks like a candy store. It's as though the entire purpose of these movies is to increase nostalgic tourism in the city of Los Angeles. Trumbo looks nothing like the real world in either the mid-twentieth century or the early twenty-first. Avoid at all costs.

Oscar possibilities for Trumbo: I honestly don't see any. The Globes and the Actors Guild are fine, but I predict that Trumbo will follow its predecessors (Banks and Hitchcock) and score a single nomination in some below-the-line category. For Trumbo I predict costumes. The film is so bad that if it scores any more than a single nomination in January I'll be shocked. It could happen, of course, but I just can't see it.