Oscar Nominations 2024: 3 of 11

 The next three movies on our list are heavy hitters below the line:

The Substance

5 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Coralie Fargeat (1st time nominee)
• Actress: Demi Moore (1st time nominee)
• Original Screenplay: Fargeat (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Fargeat

Cast: Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Christian Erickson, Oscar Lesage, Robin Greer, Edward Hamilton Clark, Gore Abrams

This movie wasn't my favorite—mostly I was frustrated with the way it kept acting like it was very deep when all of its analysis felt very shallow to me. This was especially evident in Dennis Quaid's cartoony characterization. (Which isn't to say that he's bad in it; only that his character lacks dimension.) But the news here is that a horror-adjacent movie is doing well with the Oscars and that Demi Moore has had an extraordinary, wonderful comeback. I am actually very glad that Margaret Qualley missed on a supporting actress nomination here because it just lets Demi Moore be the film's shining light. Perhaps more surprising is Coralie Fargeat's nomination in the directing category. I don't quite understand this nomination, but who can be mad about it? The Substance is an instantly iconic movie—drag queens were already doing the Demi Moore look last Halloween—and Fargeat's direction is grotesque and outrageous. This film is a fan favorite, and its five nominations (quite a haul, actually) are a way of honoring one of the year's most iconic wild rides. 

Will win: Actress

Could win: Original Screenplay, Makeup & Hairstyling

My rating: #68 out of 94

Dune: Part Two

5 nominations

• Picture
• Cinematography: Greig Fraser (Dune: Part One, Lion)
• Production Design: Patrice Vermette (Dune: Part One, Arrival, The Young Victoria) & Shane Vieau (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Sound
• Visual Effects

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Charlotte Rampling, Giusi Merli, Alison Halstead

Well at least one of the best films of the year—and probably the epic cinematic event of the year—was nominated for five Oscars. Dune: Part Two is extraordinary, deeply pleasurable, visually stunning, emotionally rich, and brilliantly crafted. The acting is great, the effects are spectacular, and I've been listening to the original score since the movie came out (somehow the nepotistic music branch failed to nominate Hans Zimmer, but I guess it's ok since he already has a dozen nominations and two statues, including one for Dune: Part One). I do wonder how you get off a sand worm, though. It's one thing to board the old girl for some trans-planetary travel, but how does one dismount? Extra points for the sequences in grayscale under that planet's black sun. What a visually stunning choice!

Will win: Cinematography

Could win: Production Design, Sound, Visual Effects

My rating: #11 out of 94

Nosferatu

4 nominations

• Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse)
• Production Design: Beatrice Brentnerová & Craig Lathrop (1st time nominees)
• Costume Design: Linda Muir (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling
  

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Simon McBurney

I've already written about my problems with the film's real lack of eroticism here (despite its ranking as #69 for me for the year), so I won't belabor the point again. But let's take time to talk about the production design and costume design, which really were breathtaking. At one point my companions and I were really stunned by how real the town looked as Nicholas Hoult walked to work. It looked to me as if it was built from scratch, and it looked absolutely gorgeous. The costumes were exquisite. The suiting was impeccable. The whole thing looked so good and perfect that Nosferatu can best be compared to a slow, vaguely scary, sexless Wes Anderson movie. Like imagine the immaculately designed intricate detail of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but with no jokes or songs.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Makeup & Hairstyling

My rating: #69 out of 94

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

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

Nosferatu (2024)

IIIIIII ammmm an appettttttiiiiiiitttttte. Nothing moooooooorrrrrrrrrre. 

Eggers’ movie is beautifully designed and very expensive. The sound is awesome, the costumes are lovely, the scenery (which looks to be actually fabricated) is very cool.

Other than that… well, it’s an adaptation of Dracula. Renfield’s there, the count, Von Helsing, Mina Harker, etc. They all go by different names here (just like they did in Murnau's 1922 horror film), and this is a film much more interested in desire, shame, lust, and satiety than Bram Stoker’s novel. 

“I am an appetite. Nothing more” was my favorite line in Nosferatu, and I think it sums up what Eggers likes about this story. It's certainly a new approach to the material, one that is invested in our desire for the monster, our own love for the plague, for what terrifies us, for the abject. But I guess I wish I had felt some of that desire instead of simply being told about it or seeing that others experienced it. Maybe this is just me—my companion found the movie very erotic, but none of those feelings transferred to me. So while I know that’s what this Nosferatu is about, I don’t feel like it took me there.

The Lighthouse

I would like The Lighthouse better if it weren't all so obviously supposed to mean something. Thomas (Robert Pattinson) is a younger man doing a few weeks of work on an island, working at a lighthouse doing gruntwork and laboring in the service of an older, craggy former sea-captain also named Thomas and played by Willem Dafoe. They both begin to go insane – or maybe it is just Pattinson's character who goes insane and Dafoe's character is the cause of it. The older man is also keeping the younger man from accessing the shining light at the top of the long, winding staircase inside the lighthouse. It is clear from the beginning of The Lighthouse that the younger man wants to behold the light, to tend it and care for it in the way the older man is able to do, but the older man locks the grate and keeps the younger man out.

Robert Eggers' newest film, then, is about a descent into madness – fine; I think that's super interesting, and it makes for an intriguing follow-up to his earlier film The Witch, also about madness and an inability to trust what one sees. 

But in The Lighthouse, Eggers gives us a descent into madness that is supposed to be symbolically weighted with meaning: The man who sees the sun must die, and Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods must have his liver eaten by eagles (seagulls in this film's final tableau).

I thought this movie was fun (and actually quite funny) to a certain extent. But I found most of its attempts at a depth of profundity to be shallow. The real depth in the film is in its beautiful photography and excellent production design – in other words, on the film's surfaces.

As for deep meaning, one could try to suss some out, and the movie itself seems to prompt this. You can google and find webposts that say things like "the end of The Lighthouse explained! – maybe the two Thomases are really the same man, or perhaps the two Thomases and the seagull are all the same person, or perhaps the younger Thomas is haunted by demons he brings to life himself, or maybe the whole thing is an intense allegory à la Mother! – but the surfaces of The Lighthouse are always more interesting than its purported depths.

I'll be honest: Willem Dafoe isn't really my cup of tea. I think he's really fun in comedy, but as a serious actor, for me, he overdoes things. I think Pattinson is great; that's not really up for debate. But the movie as a whole... eh.

The Witch: a New-England Folk Tale

 

Well that was super fucked up and interesting. I was really into this. The Witch is not a horror movie, though, it should be noted. Robert Eggers' film is a character study about desire and religion. There are definitely horrifying things in this, and The Witch is certainly suspenseful and occasionally scary. But its subject matter is all too real. I had a great time watching this.