55 Days at Peking (1963)

55 Days at Peking begins as a kind of epic colonial war–melodrama in yellowface starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven (none of these three actors is in yellowface, but Flora Robson, Leo Genn, and Robert Helpmann are). It's exciting enough for a time in its orientalist way, and John Ireland is excellent. By this film's end, though, 55 Days at Peking has become laughably absurd. The rescue sequence that comes at the film's 11 o'clock hour is nearly hilarious it's so stupid. And I fail to understand why we are supposed to be rooting for these eleven imperialist countries who are in China for their own profit.

There's Always Tomorrow (1956)

There's Always Tomorrow is a beautifully shot (in sparkling black and white) Douglas Sirk film that explores a man's mid-life crisis. Fred MacMurray is married to Joan Bennett, and he has three obnoxious children who take all of her attention – so much so that even when he is trying to communicate his deep existential crisis to her she cannot be bothered to give him any time or even acknowledge that he is in crisis. Into this void steps Barbara Stanwyck, a gorgeous fashion designer from New York who was an old flame and who still loves him. 

You know how this ends. It's 1956. I loved this melodrama because it's Douglas Sirk and it's gorgeously made, but it does a very bad job of selling us all on the idea that MacMurray makes the right choice by going back to the ungrateful group of assholes he calls a family. At the film's end, although MacMurray seems satisfied that he's done the right thing, even for his own happiness, I felt trapped, and I felt that he was trapped in this unhappy situation.

Stanwyck is incredible in this. She gives a cracking good performance that steals every scene she's in. It's a brilliant role and she's amazing.

Charly (1968)

Charly is a 1968 film based on the story Flowers for Algernon, and it's a very 1960s film. It does these split-screen double shots seemingly for no reason at all other than because it can, and when it should use them near the end for emotional payoff, it chooses not to. It's also sometimes filmed rather like a horror film – or perhaps I should say rather like a Frank Perry film. This definitely has the vibe of a film made by the Perrys – constantly telling a story that isn't scary as if it's terrifying. Charly's ethics, too, are suspect, and it approaches its central character with a gaze I found frequently hostile. Charly won Best Actor in 1969 for Cliff Robertson, and this was the very last of the 1968 Oscar nominees I needed to see. Well, I've seen it now. Meh.

Man Hunt (1941)

I love a WWII movie made during WWII. Man Hunt was made before the U.S. entered the war, and it's a sharp noir film directed by Fritz Lang. In it, a sharpshooter slash big-game hunter has Hitler in his sights, is tortured by the Nazis, and then is chased through London by a Nazi George Sanders. There is lots to love here, including a very young Roddy McDowell, who is excellent. Joan Bennett is very strangely miscast as a working-class Londoner, but overall this is an exciting and fun picture with lost of surprises up its sleeve.

Finian's Rainbow (1968)

Very strangely, Finian's Rainbow is one of two films I need to see before I'm done with all of the movies nominated for Oscars in 1968 (I've seen most films from most years, and I'm close on a lot of them.) But Finian's Rainbow is a musical, and so I should have seen it a long time ago. I think there's a reason I haven't. This is... a weird thing. It's a kind of Brigadoon meets... well, I don't know what it meets. The music feels simultaneously 1960s and 1940s. It's sort of nominally about fighting racist prejudice, but its main song – one that keeps recurring – is about some fantasy version of Ireland. And although this is quite a stagey musical, with a very weird episode of non-musical, non-minstrel blackface involving turning a racist white man Black, this is directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who would, of course, make The Godfather just four years later. Honestly, this felt like it had a lot of cool elements, and the songs were also good, but they felt mashed up oddly in this movie.

Oscar Nominations 2022: 9 of 9 (with Final Predictions)

My predictions are at the bottom of this post, but this year, frontrunners have not emerged, so this may be an enormous year for surprises. This is very exciting, I think, but also means that my predictions probably suck. This year's final five nominees:

Bardo: Falsa Crónica de Unas Cuantas Verdades

(Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths)

1 Nomination

• Cinematography: Darius Khondji (Evita)

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Íker Sánchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio

I loved this movie, and although it only got this one Oscar nomination, it probably deserved many more. It's a surrealist, epic, ambitious sort of thing that explores Mexican history, colonialism, grief, parenting, art, money, and almost everything under the sun. For some audiences, these things didn't all work together very well, for me this worked very very well and I was enraptured by this movie from start to finish. It's on Netflix, by the way, but it deserved to be seen on a large screen. The production design is absolutely incredible, and Darius Khondji absolutely deserves his cinematography nomination. As I say, the movie's not for everyone, but I really loved it.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #11 out of 68

Empire of Light

1 Nomination

• Cinematography: Roger Deakins (1917, Blade Runner 2049, Sicario, Unbroken, Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Monica Dolan

I loved this movie too, and maybe we should all sense a pattern: movies that are gorgeously shot are usually going to be rated well on my end. I love it when a movie does beautiful things with light and camera work. This one was, of course, shot by Roger Deakins, so we all know to expect breathtaking visuals. This movie was better than that, though. It also boasts a brilliant performance (another in a line of brilliant performances) by Olivia Colman, and I thought it also had an excellent screenplay. I found this heartfelt and moving, and it was mostly unsentimental in its approach to British nationalism (by which I mean white supremacy), aging, mental illness, and grief. Tanya Moodie is also excellent in Empire of Light, and I enjoyed this movie a lot.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #7 out of 68

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

1 Nomination

• Costume Design: Jenny Beavan (Cruella, Mad Max: Fury Road, The King's Speech, Gosford Park, Anna and the King, Sense and Sensibility, The Remains of the Day, Howards End, Maurice, A Room with a View, The Bostonians)

Director: Anthony Fabian

Cast: Lesley Manville, Ellen Thomas, Isabelle Huppert, Jason Isaacs, Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo, Rose Williams, Anna Chancellor

I confess to having watched the Angela Lansbury–Omar Sharif–Diana Rigg version of this, titled Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, many many times as a young person, so I was pleasantly surprised to find they were remaking it, and even more pleased to find that they remade it so well. This film is a charming little bit of fluff, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The costumes are, of course, gorgeous. I love Jenny Beavan and feel devoted to her because she worked with Merchant–Ivory for so long in all of those wonderful 80s and 90s films. Everyone is great in this, and the whole thing is enjoyable. This is also modified from the Angela Lansbury version – they shifted the end, and it makes the entire thing cuter. As I say, it is a bit of fluff, but I had a good time.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #41 out of 68

RRR (Rise Roar Revolt)

1 Nomination

• Song: Chandrabose & M.M. Keeravaani

Director: S.S. Rajamouli

Cast: NTR, Ram Charan Teja, Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Olivia Morris, Shriya Saran, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody 

This was impossible not to like. I am not sure why I phrase it like this, except that this movie is absurd and insane and a completely and totally predictable melodrama musical. I liked most of it, although it has an underlying Hindu nationalism that it is selling, it seems to me. In any case, its stars are attractive and clever, the songs are catchy and fun, the dancing is great, and the whole thing is fun. The outrageousness of all of the giant setpieces in this movie make for wonderful viewing. It's really nuts and that's great. Maybe this will win original song? For a while, certain Oscar watchers had been predicting that RRR would be in the spot that All Quiet on the Western Front is currently in – that it would grab a whole bunch of nominations and would finally be the crossover Bollywood hit that the Academy would embrace. Those hopes/predictions did not materialize, but this song, "Naatu Naatu", definitely deserves its nomination, and perhaps Bollywood's recognition by the Academy will come at some point. 
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #33 out of 68

Tell It like a Woman

1 Nomination

• Song: Dianne Warren (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)

Director: Silvia Carobbio, Catherine Hardwicke, Taraji P. Henson, Mipo Oh, Lucía Puenzo, Maria Sole Tognazzi, Leena Yadav

Cast: Eva Longoria, Jennifer Hudson, Marcia Gay Harden, Cara Delevigne, Margharita Buy, Anne Watanabe, Leonor Varela, Jacqueline Fernandez, Brandon Win, Nate' Jones, Alex Bentley

This is the worst movie I saw this year. The Academy's music branch has been doing this bizarre thing where they nominated a Diane Warren song in a movie no one has heard of or seen every single year. They've literally done this 8 times in the last 10 years. It's madness! The movies are uniformly awful, and then, of course, Dianne Warren doesn't win the Oscar anyway. What is this about? Meanwhile, the Academy is wringing its hands over Andrea Riseborough scoring a nomination. Let's take a look at the music branch's shady behavior, y'all. Anyway, Tell It like a Woman is a complete waste of time, and honestly I have no idea what the title means. "Tell it"? Is this an injunction for us all to do something? This is an anthology movie, and there is one good short in it and two fine shorts, but mostly this is just painful. And the Dianne Warren song? It's nonsense! Give yourself some applause, you deserve it. Girl, what? The song is basically "Treat yourself".

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #68 out of 68

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

7. Animated Features

8. Animated Shorts

Final Predictions:

Picture: Everything Everywhere All at Once (天馬行空)

Director: Everything Everywhere All at Once (天馬行空)

Actor: The Whale

Actress: Everything Everywhere All at Once (天馬行空)

Adapted Screenplay:

Original Screenplay: Everything Everywhere All at Once (天馬行空)

Supporting Actor: Everything Everywhere All at Once (天馬行空)

Supporting Actress: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Film Editing: Top Gun: Maverick

International Picture: Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Cinematography: Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Production Design: Elvis

Score: Babylon

Costume Design: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Sound: Top Gun: Maverick

Visual Effects: Top Gun: Maverick

Animated Feature: Pinocchio

Animated Short: My Year of Dicks

Make-up & Hairstyling: The Whale

Song: Top Gun: Maverick

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

Oscar Nominations 2022: 8 of 9 (Animated Shorts)

I am skipping the live-action short films this year. They're just always so torture-porn heavy, and then the winner is always one of the stupidest ones. But you should definitely watch the animated shorts. There are always some gems, and this year is no exception. Plus, for the first time, you can stream them all at home without having to deal with Shorts.tv and their weird distribution model. This year's nominees:

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Peter Baynton, Charlie Mackesy

Cast: Jude Coward Nicoll, Tom Hollander, Idris Elba, Gabriel Byrne

This is gorgeously drawn. I was totally in love with the animation, and I also loved the mole and fox characters especially. They both behaved in intriguing, rather wonderful ways. But this film did not work for me. It's about an orphan boy who meets and befriends a mole while they look for the boy's home. Much of the film's dialogue consists of little bumper-sticker phrases like "you are loved" and "what do you want to be when you grow up? / Kind." And actually, this is all the film is interested in doing: churning out little phrases worthy of wall art at an AirBnB. There is really nothing else to its screenplay. This is sweet, as far as it goes, but it left me very empty. See... the film takes place in a complete social vacuum. The boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse don't live in a world at all. There are only small indications of any outside forces: the snare that someone laid for the fox, the "other horses" who made this horse feel bad, the people who presumably live in the beautifully lit Thomas Kincaid houses across the little creek. So all of this "wisdom" that the horse and fox and mole and boy share with one another is hermetically sealed. They don't actually need to use any of it except with one another, and among one another they subsist only on love and without conflict. So for me, this movie was a series of cute poetic phrases with no relation at all to any real world that they're supposed to be helping the boy navigate. I still kinda think this will win the Oscar. It's beautiful, and at over 30 minutes it feels fully realized. It also boasts some very famous voices. You can watch this short on AppleTV+.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Animated Short Film

My Rating: Unranked

My Year of Dicks

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Sara Gunnarsdóttir

Cast: Brie Tilton, Jackson Kelly, Klarissa Hernandez, Chris Kelman, Laura House, Chris Elsenbroek, Sterling Temple Howard, Mical Trejo, Sean Stack, Dylan Darwish, Pamela Ribon

This was endlessly charming and completely sweet. I fell in love with the characters and was completely taken with the style, the story, and the idea. This is the tale of a young woman attempting to lose her "virginity" in five chapters. She keeps trying to hook up with various guys, and it's a cute, sweet, little odyssey with a whole range of animated styles that look like a girl's diary. It's been animated so that it's sketchy and surreal and corresponds to the narrator's experience. It's funny and lovely, and I kinda think it will win. I am going to predict it, even though it's not the favorite. I know that this film's title received laughs on nomination morning, and the title is funny, but the film is so much more than a dick joke, and I think anyone who watches it will be taken with it. I recommend it wholeheartedly. And you can watch it at Sara Gunnarsdottír's website here: https://www.saragunnarsdottir.com/coming-in-2022

Will Win: Animated Short Film

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Unranked

Ice Merchants

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: João Gonzalez

This is my favorite of the animated shorts. It's beautifully drawn in a pencil-sketch style, and it's a very sweet story about loss and grieving that follows a father and a son who have lost their mother and partner but are loving one another and coping. These ice merchants freeze water overnight high on a mountain cliff, and then they dive into the city to sell their ice in the morning. It's a surreal, magical kind of story. But unlike the hermetically sealed film The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Ice Merchants takes place in a world all-too real. These characters are dealing with actual loss, and there's a larger loss for which the woman's death is a kind of mise-en-abyme, that of our planet's changing climate and the loss and devastation this will wreak on the world. I loved this. I don't think it can win, but it's my favorite of the five. You can watch it on YouTube thanks to the New Yorker here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhj74ZjfaQ8.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Lachlan Pendragon

Cast: Pendragon, John Cavanagh, Michael Richard, Jamie Trotter

This short film is really really cool. Its message is perhaps a little trite, but its style is so cool that I didn’t mind one bit. In this film, an animated character comes to understand that he's animated. From the beginning, however, the film is showing us the equipment and technology used to animate him, so it's always clear – or almost always clear – that the character is correct. This is amusing and insanely clever, even if I'm not sure it really takes us anywhere. I totally recommend this, though. It's so much fun, and I loved the ostrich. You can watch An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/796231519
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Unranked

The Flying Sailor

1 Nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby

This is the least interesting of the nominees. A sailor's life flashes before his eyes during an explosion. Meh. However, if you're feeling like a completist, you can watch The Flying Sailor on YouTube via the New Yorker here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rj3FG8vFtk.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked

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

7. Animated Features

More posts coming soon:

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!

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!

Oscar Nominations 2022: 6 of 9

This year's nominees:

Argentina, 1985

1 Nomination

• International Film: Argentina (Wild Tales, The Secret in Their Eyes, The Son of the Bride, Tango, The Official Story, Camila, Truce)

Director: Santiago Mitre

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Santiago Armas Estevarena, Alejandra Flechner, Gina Mastronicola, Jorge Varas, Laura Paredes

I was into this. I know it's mostly a procedural courtroom type thing, but I didn't mind. I liked it a lot. It felt exciting to me to learn this much about fascism and the guerra sucia in Argentina. I knew a lot about it already, but this was satisfying in lots of ways, and I thought it was very well acted. Unlike many of the international nominees, this film is on Amazon Prime, and so it is easily accessible. I will say I am a bit surprised that this got nominated over the many other possibilities that were submitted by various countries – especially Mexico's Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Venezuela's The Box, and France's Saint Omer. It's good, but all of those are better. Still, it's a fair choice, and the Academy loves Ricardo Darín.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #24 out of 67

Io (Eo)

1 Nomination

• International Film: Poland (Corpus Christi, Cold War, Ida, In Darkness, Katyń, Man of Iron, The Young Girls of Wilko, Nights and Days, The Deluge, Promised Land, Pharaoh, Knife in the Water)

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Sandra Drzymalska, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Lorenzo Zurzulo, Isabelle Huppert, Andrzej Szeremeta

This was my favorite movie of the year. I've written about it already here, so I won't say too much more about it, but it really blew me away. I think my favorite part of how this film works is the way that it asks us to think about things from the perspective of the non-human... and that the film tries to do this cinematically and not just narratively. This isn't Homeward Bound or something like that. This is a film that treats the world as a violent, awesome place but that also asks what the role of animals is in this world that we have made. It's an awesome film, and I love it. It's now streaming exclusively on the Criterion Channel.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #1 out of 67

An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl)

1 Nomination

• International Film: Ireland

Director: Colm Bairéad

Cast: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Michael Patric, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Joan Sheehy, Tara Faughnan, Neans Nic Dhonncha, Carolyn Bracken

This movie is not playing anywhere near me, and I have no way to see it. I am very annoyed about this. Somehow I have managed to see eleven of the ninety-three films submitted in the International Feature category, and yet this film that made the shortlist and then got lucky enough to be nominated is only playing in a few select cities. This is especially dumb because right now is the time when interest has to be the highest for this film. It should be in way more cities. Once Oscar night rolls around on March 12, no one is going to care about this movie. (This happened last year, for example to Lunana: a Yak in the Classroom). All that to say, I have no idea if this movie is good or not. It is the only one of the nominees that I won't be able to see before Oscar Sunday. I'm salty, obviously.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Unranked

Close

1 Nomination

• International Film: Belgium (The Broken Circle Breakdown, Bullhead, Everybody's Famous, Farinelli: il Castrato, Daens, The Music Teacher, Paix sur les Champs)

Director: Lukas Dhont

Cast: Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker, Kevin Janssens, Igor van Dessel, Marc Weiss, Léon Bataille

I had a feeling from the trailer that this was going to be one of my favorite films of the year, and I waited and waited and waited for it to be in a theatre near me. When it finally got here I made sure to go to the movie by myself because I knew I was going to be a sobbing mess. All of my predictions were right, although I didn't actually know what this movie was going to be about, and how it works is actually rather surprising. Close is about two boys who are like brothers, physically close and intimate with one another in the most beautiful, extraordinarily loving way. They're both beautifully acted, too, and so you fall in love with them as an audience... and you fall in love with their relationship. We see them first in the sort of edenic throes of their affection, and then the two go off to school. What they meet there is homophobia, suspicion, and hostility: the school is a place of hostile masculinity and demands that they account for their relationship. They are bullied as sissies and weaklings, and the movie studies the boys and their responses to this very closely. I will say no more about this movie, but it absolutely broke my heart, and, like Lukas Dhont's last movie, this one is a finely crafted portrait of young people dealing with emotions for which they have few words and even fewer coping mechanisms. Close carefully sets up its scenario, and it's deeply felt and wonderfully humane.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #12 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

More posts coming soon:

7. Animated Features

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!

Oscar Nominations 2022: 5 of 9

I think before we get into the Andrea Riseborough of it all, we should perhaps talk about the way that the nominating process works. First things first, the academy has 17 branches. And each branch nominates in specific categories. A member can only be a member of one branch, and if she is invited to join more than one branch, she has to choose. There is an actor branch, a costume designer branch, a casting director branch, a director branch, a music branch, a writer branch, a documentary branch, etc. And there are ten more: cinematographers, executives, film editors, sound, makeup artists and hairstylists, marketing and public relations, producers, production design, visual effects, and animation and short films (which are grouped together for some reason). There are also two member-at-large groups – one for artists and one for agents. During the nomination process, each of the 23 Oscar categories is nominated by the branch responsible for it. If you're a costume designer, at this stage you get to vote to nominate two Oscar categories only: costume design and best picture. For actors that is more: there are four acting categories plus best picture. Music has two plus best picture; so do the writers. You get the picture. (International film has a whole other complex process that has changed a lot over the years.) But there is a very specific key to the nominating process: You get to vote for a slate of 5 nominees in each category, but you rank them. And only one of your votes counts. 

If you want BTH to get nominated, you put his name at the top.

Let's take my list of nominees for Best Supporting Actor this year: I would have voted for 1. Anton von Lucke in Great Freedom, 2. André Holland in Bones and All, 3. Jeremy Strong in Armageddon Time, 4. Albrecht Schuch in All Quiet on the Western Front, and 5. Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin. When they count the ballots, they put them all in large piles. So: let's just assume that most people voted for Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Gleeson. They get nominated and all the votes that put them at the top get removed. (If you voted for one of them at the top of your list, that's who your vote counts for. No one else on your list matters.) Next: they take the people got the least amount of votes (like Anton von Lucke) and they redistribute. Now they put my vote in the André Holland pile, but of course, he's also eliminated quickly, so they move it to the Albrecht Schuch pile. Maybe my vote never counts at all, or maybe my vote ends up in the Barry Keoghan pile. (There's no ballot anyway, since I'm just an amateur Oscar fan.) But if you're really, really set on someone, you put that name at the top and you move the big names – who you love but are less passionate about – lower on your ballot. This is how Paul Mescal got an Oscar nomination, and Brian Tyree Henry got an Oscar nomination, and Stephanie Hsu ended up with a surprise Oscar nomination. And this, of course, is how Andrea Riseborough got one. There's one in every category, actually. The fifth slot ends up working exactly the opposite of how you'd expect it to. Rather than it being a consensus vote – where the eventual nominee would be the person everyone sort of likes but no one is obsessed with – it is a passion vote. The eventual fifth nominee in each category is mostly unexpected; it represents a surge of affection within (in this case) the acting branch of the Academy. You can see this in other categories too: for the writers with Glass Onion (the film's only nomination), for example, or for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris in the costume category.

This year's nominees:

To Leslie

1 Nomination

• Actress: Andrea Riseborough

Director: Michael Morris

Cast: Riseborough, Marc Maron, Allison Janney, André Royo, Owen Teague, Stephen Root, James Landry Hébert, Catfish Jean, Marc Brandt, Matt Lauria

I think it's a generally good thing that a bunch of celebrities figured out how to beat the bushes – avoiding all of the usual campaigning – in order to get a film with no powerful distributor this surprise nomination. I refer to nomination morning my Christmas morning because I'm in it for the surprises. This was an enormous surprise, and the whole thing is very interesting. As it turns out, Riseborough is great in To Leslie – she's great in almost everything she does – and the movie itself is pretty good too. It's a story of addiction and potential redemption that I felt managed actually to work despite the clichéd pitfalls surrounding this narrative. The "scandal" of her nomination will be one for the Oscar history books, but it isn't really a scandal at all. The scandal, it seems to me, is that usually the Academy just sees a handful of about 30 movies all year (if that), and they're the movies the big studios tell them to watch. They send them screeners and campaign to get them to watch them, and then the critics groups and other awards organizations fall in line and nominate around 20 films for everything. It becomes boring and predictable, and it just goes to show how few movies these experts are actually watching. The To Leslie campaign tried something else, and what do you know? It worked! I guess I find it pretty remarkable. And the movie's actually good.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #29 out of 66

Blonde

1 Nomination

• Actress: Ana de Armas

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Armas, Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams, Julianne Nicholson, Dan Butler

I can't believe this movie got made. Well, of course, I guess I can, but it's one of the most sexist, offensive pieces of shit I've seen in a while. This movie purports to be a kind of inside-the-mind version of Marilyn Monroe, where we see much more from her perspective. It isn't that. Instead, we watch Marilyn from the perspective of the many men in her life. One early example is when she auditions for a part and then leaves the room, and we sit with the men while they talk about how great her ass is. It's outrageous. There's another sequence where we sit at the bar with DiMaggio, who has been given naked pictures of Marilyn. He becomes enraged and we sit with him while he gets angry, then we follow him home, he slams the car door – the camera is following his perspective – and he comes home, finds Marilyn in her bedroom, surprises her, and slaps her so hard he knocks her off the bed. How can this film justify showing us all of that from this man's point of view? In a movie purporting to be from hers! I was enraged; I'm getting enraged all over again just thinking about it. Add to that the truly absurd talking fetus (what the fuck was that?), Ana de Armas's inaccurate accent, and the fact that this abomination is three hours long, and I wanted to rip my eyes out. I'll say two positive things about this movie: Adrien Brody is excellently cast as Arthur Miller, and Blonde did actually try something – it failed, but it tried something, and this makes it just slightly better than The Whale. 

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #65 out of 66

Glass Onion

1 Nomination

• Adapted Screenplay: Rian Johnson (Knives Out)

Director: Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Madelyn Cline, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Hugh Grant

This was a very boring movie. I know a lot of people liked it, but I just was very bored the whole time. It's weird: I used to really like Rian Johnson, and I've always thought he was good at mysteries (I was very into Brick in my twenties). But for me these new mysteries he's doing are not interesting. They feel too formulaic and glossy to be of any actual interest. That said, I think it'll probably win the adapted screenplay Oscar. What I want to talk about is how this is an adapted screenplay. In short, Glass Onion isn't an adapted screenplay. You know what else isn't an adapted screenplay? Top Gun: Maverick. Both of these films, instead, involve characters who have appeared in other places. But their storylines, their dialogue, and a majority of their characters are original. These scripts are actually not adapted from another document the way Living or All Quiet on the Western Front or The Whale or Blonde are. (I've already made known my feelings about Triangle of Sadness being considered "original".) This is a very odd policy in regard to writing that the Academy has had in place since around 2004, and I think it makes no actual sense. It has meant "adapted" nominations for completely original scripts such as Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Before Midnight, and most insanely, Toy Story 3. It makes no sense. How are these scripts that remix characters and do new things with them any different from scripts considered "original" that use old characters like Midnight in Paris or The King's Speech or The Trial of the Chicago 7. That last film had to be adapted from actual transcripts from the actual trial, for example, with the screenwriter adapting some speeches wholesale from historical documents. Yet that is an "original" screenplay and Glass Onion, which is literally not based on anything; it merely repurposes a single character from a different film to follow a new, convoluted story with original dialogue, an original scenario, and a dozen original characters. It's nonsense. 
Will Win: Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #61 out of 66

Causeway

1 Nomination

• Supporting Actor: Brian Tyree Henry

Director: Lila Neugebauer

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Henry, Linda Emond, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jayne Houdyshell, Russell Harvard

This is pretty good! I liked this even though I don't really like Jennifer Lawrence. But she's perfectly cast in this, and Linda Emond and Brian Tyree Henry are great. This surprise nomination for him is really excellent, and I'm glad he snagged it. The movie is a small thing – the story of two people but mostly Jennifer Lawrence's character. It might have been a better movie if it had been the story of two people but mostly Brian Tyree Henry's character, but this is how this filmmaker decided to go about things. Anyway, this is worth a watch. The acting is very good, and if there's not much of a story here or any kind of real takeaway or conclusion, it's an intriguing double character study with some excellent sequences (I won't spoil it, but the scene at the prison is a highlight). P.S. As far as I can tell, the title makes no sense whatsoever.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #41 out of 66

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

More posts coming soon:

Bonus post about the animated shorts

6. Argentina, 1985, Close, Eo, and The Quiet Girl
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, Turning Red, and The Sea Beast
8. 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!

Oscar Nominations 2022: 4 of 9

This year's nominees:

The Batman

3 Nominations

• Sound
• Visual Effects
• Make-up & Hairstyling

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Paul Dano, Andy Serkis, Peter Sarsgaard, Jayme Lawson, Barry Keoghan 

This movie was visually very cool, and I love me some Robert Pattinson. I must confess that this film was too long, but it looked interesting the whole time: cool lighting, intriguing sound design, great score. I was interested, too, in the sort of anti-Joker turn it took, where the villain became a terrifying army of people who idolize people like the Joker. For me the Catwoman character really didn't work as a plotline with any interest – or maybe I find Zoë Kravitz boring, who's to say? As for the Colin Farrell of it all? It's sort of mindblowing that he played Oswald Cobblepot in this. He's completely unrecognizable. Anyway, this is a slick bit of business. It's been a very long time since I've seen it, but it's good. I don't think it'll take home any trophies, but maybe the Academy will like the (far superior) make-up of this film over The Whale's prosthetics.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Make-up & Hairstyling

My Rating: #28 out of 65

Women Talking

2 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley (Away from Her)

Director: Polley

Cast: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Ben Whishaw, Michelle McLeod, Frances McDormand, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, August Winter

I came to this place for magic, and instead I got Women Talking. Y'all, this movie. The women talk, but they only say things you've already heard. They debate, but the terms of the debate are without any intrigue. They weigh various consequences for their actions, but none of that feels remotely real. The plot of Women Talking is apparently based on real events that happened in a Christian religious community slash cult in South America. The events have been fictionalized by novelist Miriam Toews, with the events transplanted to the United States. This transposition makes things seem very odd. It's clear that we are in 2010 – a man in a truck blares the date over a loudspeaker to make sure we catch it – but it sure doesn't look like a place in the U.S. in 2010. Well, that's because it isn't. It's a fiction invented in order to debate a question that is not a question at all. This wouldn't have bothered me really if it was designed to get me to think differently about something. But it isn't. It is designed, instead, to confirm a bunch of things I already know: the gender binary and assumptions deriving from the gender binary are harmful and deeply inequitable; violence against women and sexual violence can be profoundly traumatic; bonds between women can often be very, very strong when fighting the oppression of men; women often develop separate cultures in order to preserve their own safety, enjoy themselves, create space for themselves, and for other reasons; it is difficult to love someone who is a member of a class who oppresses you as a member of another class, and yet this is the conundrum of heterosexuality. Women Talking has all of these ideas embedded in it, but it actually doesn't interrogate any of them. It's quite a bad film, actually, and I find myself rather stunned that it snagged a best picture nomination.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #57 out of 65

Living

2 Nominations

• Actor: Bill Nighy
• Adapted Screenplay: Kazuo Ishiguro

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Cast: Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Barney Fishwick, Adrian Rawlins, Oliver Chris, Hubert Burton, Patsy Ferran, Lia Williams, Zoe Boyle, Jessica Flood

This is gorgeous. Bill Nighy is completely incredible – his performance is not just the kind of stuffy British thing you might be imagining; instead it's wonderfully vulnerable, simple, and beautifully nuanced. This entire film is filled with nuance, and it boasts a truly excellent performance from Aimee Lou Wood, as well. Ishiguro's screenplay is also a beautiful standout here. The film brims with the deep feeling and impossibility of speaking at which Ishiguro excels so wonderfully. He understands this period of British life with utter perfection, and I found this movie unpredictable and moving, despite the fact that it's based on Kurosawa's Ikiru. I don't think this movie will win the two Oscars for which it is nominated, but if you haven't seen this movie, I think you should. And if you love Bill Nighy in this, you should also check him out his great performance in Their Finest.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #19 out of 65

Aftersun

1 Nomination

• Actor: Paul Mescal

Director: Charlotte Wells

Cast: Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Brooklyn Toulson, Spike Fearn, Harry Perdios, Ruby Thompson

Honestly I haven't stopped thinking about this film. It's such a beautiful piece, and it explores form in a pretty wonderful way. This is a film about memory – of a woman's attempt to understand her father by remembering a vacation they took when she was a child. The entire film is filtered through her memories but not as memories, instead we see the memories through the media that help her remember and, indeed, limit what she can remember. What complicates this is that she hasn't really known her father all that well, although she has loved him intensely and still does. Her father – perfectly, beautifully played by Paul Mescal – possesses a deep, powerful sadness for which he has developed some coping mechanisms but which seems always to threaten to overwhelm him. I loved this film. Paul Mescal's nomination was a bit of a surprise: he and Andrea Riseborough and Brian Tyree Henry (more on them in the next post) and Stephanie Hsu all got surprise Oscar nominations this February, but Mescal's is perhaps the strangest of these. It's not a showy part, and he doesn't have any really big Oscar-winning moments. Instead, Mescal just lives truthfully in this character in a way that feels heartbreaking and profound. I'm so glad he got nominated.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #6 out of 65

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

More posts coming soon:

5. Blonde, To Leslie, Glass Onion, and Causeway
6. Argentina, 1985, Close, Eo, and The Quiet Girl
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, Turning Red, and The Sea Beast
8. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

Hey!

Check out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!