The Oscar Nominated Short Films Ranked

Ever since I started following the Academy Awards in earnest back in 1997, the one section of my Oscar viewing that has always been the most difficult to complete has been the nominees in the three short film categories – Live Action, Animation, and Documentary. Back when I started taking film more seriously, there weren’t many venues for short film distribution outside of film festivals and the occasional screenings on cable TV and compilation DVDs. But once SHORTS began exhibiting the Oscar Nominated Short Films theatrically across the country, it gave every movie lover who enjoys following the Oscars each year the opportunity to see short films on the big screen they would have never been able to view before.

Now celebrating 20 years of sharing these short films with audiences across the country, SHORTS is bringing the 2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films to theaters beginning this weekend. As is the case with the nominees each year, the films are a mixed bag. So here are my rankings in each category.

Animated Short Film

1. Magic Candies, Directed by Daisuke Nishio
  This is such a charming and sweet film about a lonely child who discovers magic candies that allow him to communicate with inanimate objects, hear the inner thoughts of others, and start to feel less alone. I went in expecting something goofy and slight, but I was surprised by how poignant and moving this turned out to be. This was hands down my favorite film in the animated section.
2. Yuck!, Directed by Loïc Espuche
  A group of kids hanging out together at a campground run around making fun of the adults kissing and being otherwise amorous within eyesight. When two of the kids discover their own nascent romantic feelings, what results is a lovely reflection on growing up and discovering what we share in common with the rest of humanity. The animation is simple and childlike, a really lovely little film.
3. Beautiful Men, Directed by Nicolas Keppens
  Three brothers travel abroad to receive hair transplants, and a mistake in scheduling pits their very distinct temperaments against one another. The puppet animation is stunning, and there’s a quiet melancholy to the film, even if I’m not sure it fully holds together. I still found much of it compelling, and it’s one that I may want to revisit.
4. Wander to Wonder, Directed by Nina Gantz
  An eerie and macabre short about tiny creatures attempting to survive after the human who cared for them has died, this is a film that is told in snippets and fragments, never fully committing to the surreal aspects or the linear narrative. It’s a short that feels more like a proof-of-concept for a feature-length film, which I always find disappointing. There’s still much that’s compelling here, but it feels incomplete.
5. In the Shadow of the Cypress, Directed by Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani
  With beautiful and unique animation, this short tells the story of a man struggling with PTSD and his daughter who discover a beached whale near their home. I appreciate the attempt to show what living with PTSD is like for the individual and the family, but the father’s abuse and violence is so great, and the film takes such pains to have us sympathize with him, that any concern the film has for the daughter’s well-being is overshadowed by the filmmakers’ desire for reconciliation. It’s a film that is content to overlook men’s abuse and ignore consequences – leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Documentary - Short Subject

1. Incident, Directed by Bill Morrison
  Bill Morrison, a filmmaker who regularly works with found footage, takes the footage from police body cameras, patrol vehicles, traffic cameras, security cameras, and cell phones, to reconstruct the ways that police murdered a Black man and attempt to avoid blame in the immediate aftermath. It’s tense, gut-wrenching, and difficult to watch, but it’s such an important act of cinematic journalism. This is an exceptional documentary and one of the great works of archival reconstruction – a vital and important film.
2. I Am Ready, Warden, Directed by Smriti Mundhra
  An absolutely heartbreaking exploration of the death penalty in America, this is a short film that confronts us with the reality of what it means when we execute someone for their crimes. No punches are pulled – the crime is horrific. But the film also shows how perpetrators change over time and the ways that state-sanctioned murder rarely gives the victims of these crimes the justice they were seeking. It’s a powerful, difficult documentary.
3. Instruments of a Beating Heart, Directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki
  On the one hand, there’s something incredibly sweet about this film that shows children practicing for a concert welcoming younger students to the school. We see them all struggling to learn their parts, going through their daily routines – it’s very touching. On the other hand, I do wish the filmmaker would have taken a more skeptical eye toward the expectations placed upon these children and the pressures that we can see them facing. With the cultural differences between the US and Japanese education systems, I didn’t expect to see a film that fully critiques the Japanese system, but I would have liked to see some more questions raised about the interactions between teachers and students.
4. The Only Girl in the Orchestra, Directed by Molly O’Brien
  Orin O’Brien was the first woman to play as a member of the New York Philharmonic. This short looks back at her life and contribution to the world of music as O’Brien retires and moves from her longtime home. While O’Brien is an incredibly charming documentary participant, there’s no actual story to this documentary profile and the end result is a flat and lifeless portrait of a really remarkable individual.
5. Death by Numbers, Directed by Kim A. Snyder
  My least favorite of the documentary nominees follows Sam Fuentes, a school shooting survivor, as she reflects on her experience and confronts her assailant during his trial. The film is best when we see her talking extemporaneously to the camera or to family and friends about her feelings. It’s in these moments that the film wrestles with actual questions about how society should hold these perpetrators accountable for their actions. Unfortunately, most of the film is composed of Fuentes’s journal entries and poetry, which may have been essential in her own healing journey, but aren’t as profound as the film makes them out to be. And, coming off the heels of I Am Ready, Warden, the film’s stance on the death penalty feels shockingly regressive.

Live Action Short Film

1. I’m Not a Robot, Directed by Victoria Warmerdam
  After being unable to complete a CAPTCHA, a woman begins to worry that she may, in fact, be a robot. This is a hilarious, dark, and troubling short film about our sense of self, technological anxieties, and the acquisitive approach so many men have when it comes to their relationships. This is exactly what I want from a short film – it gets me to think and reflect on the world we’re in, and it never belabors its point.
2. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, Directed by Nebojša Slijepčević
  As authoritarianism rises here in the United States, this Croatian film that depicted the Štrpci massacre of 1993 is incredibly powerful. It tells the story of a Serbian paramilitary group that has stopped a train to detain Muslin passengers, and the one Croat man who stands up to them. The film is tense and gut-wrenching, a powerful reminder that even in the darkest of times, we have examples of people who have had the moral courage to stand up against the violence and cruelty.
3. A Lien, Directed by David Cutler-Kreutz and Sam Cutler-Kreutz
  Another nominee that is speaking directly to present day realities, A Lien explores the way that ICE agents use green card interviews to lure and arrest undocumented individuals for deportation. The film is shot in handheld closeups, giving it an immediacy and urgency that propels the tension and suspense throughout. As our country pursues ever-more inhumane immigration policies, it’s a film that stands as a stark reminder of the human cost of those policies.
4. The Last Ranger, Directed by Cindy Lee
  Inspired by the real-life story of Thandi, a rhino who survived a poaching attack in South Africa, this short looks at the crisis of poaching in South Africa and the rangers who put their lives on the line to save the animals under their protection. The film is a bit too overwrought for my tastes, with the poachers rendered as one-dimensional, cackling villains. And its ending reduces what could have been a complex and moving film into a propaganda commercial for conservation, hitting us over the head with ending text in case we missed the point of the film.
5. Anuja, Directed by Adam J. Graves
  Another film that plays as a commercial for nonprofits doing very good and important work, this short is the very definition of poverty porn. We’re shown a young girl in India who is clever and smart, but she is forced to work in a sweatshop with her sister because they can’t afford testing fees. The film charts their attempt to get together the money for the fees. There are some very charming and playful moments, but the film ends in the middle of the action and once again provides an onslaught of onscreen text to hammer home the point of the film because the filmmakers don’t trust the audience.

While there may be a few films among the fifteen nominees that I didn’t think worked, overall, it’s a compelling slate of nominees this year. And if you want to see them before the Oscars, make sure to check out the SHORTS website (http://www.shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/) to find a screening near you.

Favorite Discoveries and First-Time Watches of 2024

As we come to the end of another year of film viewing, it’s time once again to take stock of those cinematic experiences that have shaped the past year, fed us spiritually, emotionally, and artistically, and enriched our lives in so many ways. Out of the more than five hundred films I watched in 2024, nearly three-quarters of the movies I saw were released in earlier years. So, I always like to kick off my lists of favorite films with a look back at my favorite discoveries and first-time watches – films that weren’t released in 2024, but were new to me and that I found particularly compelling, moving, or significant.

1. The Films of Nobuhiko Obayashi

My introduction to the films of Nobuhiko Obayashi was through his classic of ”campy horror” – House. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it wasn’t until I watched a collection of his later anti-war films this year that I was able to truly appreciate the pathos underneath the comedy and horror. He’s become one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers – blending a fiery political commentary with high theatricality and playful cinematic experimentation, wrapped up in a warm humanism that allows for deep emotional resonances. I’ve only seen a handful of his films, but the titles I watched this year (Beijing Watermelon, Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Seven Weeks, and Hanagatami) have me eager to see as many of his films as I can track down.

2. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, by Wang Bing

Wang Bing is another filmmaker whose work I’ve only just begun to explore. His first documentary, a nine-hour exploration of an industrial district in Shenyang, China, shot between 1999 and 2001, is difficult to track down (I feel forever grateful to my library’s interlibrary loan system), and shows the plight of workers in one community as their factories are closed, their homes demolished, and their neighborhood slowly becomes emptied. In spending so much time with this community, the magnitude of loss is felt even more acutely by the end. Wang begins his film with an expansive view of the district and begins to narrow his focus ever more sharply in each of the film’s three parts, so that, by the end, the story becomes the personal story of a father and son displaced by the wealthy industrialists who have decimated their homes. It’s a gut-wrenching film that is all too relevant more than twenty years later.

3. Betty Tells Her Story, by Liane Brandon

On its surface, it’s a fairly simple short film. A woman speaks into the camera and recalls a story about buying herself a nice dress for an event and subsequently losing it. But as Brandon has her participant tell the story a second time, it unlocks something profoundly moving and heartbreaking in the retelling. It’s an incredible work of short nonfiction filmmaking, a wonderful work of feminist cinema, and a beautiful insight into memory and human nature.

4. i hate myself 🙂, by Joanna Arnow

Arnow’s documentary debut is a brisk 56 minutes, but her unflinching self-portrait is filled with a raw and painful honesty that is at times difficult to watch, but she always finds humor in the exploration of her relationship with an abusive boyfriend. The way she additionally layers her filmmaking process into the actual documentary gives the film a meta-textual resonance that I find extraordinarily compelling as well.

5. Ukraine Is Not a Brothel and The Royal Hotel, by Kitty Green

I loved Kitty Green’s The Assistant, so I was excited to catch up with her most recent film, The Royal Hotel, and her debut documentary, Ukraine is Not a Brothel, earlier this year. Both films explore the plight of women living in male-dominated spaces, seeking ways to push back against their oppressors and reclaim their agency. While one is nonfiction and the other is a thriller, both show women attempting to burn down the systems that oppress them.

6. The Heartbreak Kid and Ishtar, by Elaine May

I’ve been slowly working my way through the films of Elaine May, and this year I came up to the delights of her second and her final feature films. She continues to skew masculinity and gender dynamics in both films, showing the delusions and selfishness of American men. While The Heartbreak Kid is an undeniable masterpiece, even within the uneven Ishtar, there are moments that contain some of the funniest bits I’ve seen onscreen this year.

7. The Dead Nation and Short Films by Radu Jude

I’ve been a big admirer of the ways that Radu Jude combines dark Romanian humor with a fierce political bite and documentary passages, so over the last few years, I’ve tried to catch up with as many of his films as possible. This year, more of his short films and documentaries were made available, and I loved everything from the bleak comedy of his early shorts (The Tube with a Hat, Shadow of a Cloud) to his documentaries that use archival materials to explore Romania’s fascist history (The Dead Nation, The Marshall’s Two Executions, Caricaturana) and the brilliant absurdity of Semiotic Plastic. He’s a filmmaker whose work I will continue to seek out whenever I can.

8. Rat Film, by Theo Anthony

Theo Anthony’s documentaries open up the possibility of what nonfiction filmmaking can be. They take one subject and turn it around from every possible angle – even exploring the filmmakers’ own biases – to craft wholly unique, meditative works that are surprising, thoughtful, and have some unexpected humor throughout. Rat Film takes a rodent infestation in Baltimore and uses it as a jumping-off point to explore segregation, redlining, racism, poverty, and more. It’s a stunning work that draws you in deeper the more you watch.

9. Clotheslines, by Roberta Cantow

At 32 minutes, Roberta Cantow’s Clotheslines is a masterpiece in concision, exploring so many facets of women’s labor in such a short runtime, all by looking at women’s relationship to laundry. The documentary footage captured is stunning, drawing us in as we watch an activity that is so often invisible. And the interviews that play out over the footage give us such a range of women’s experiences with clotheslines and the act of washing and drying clothes – from the artistry of arranging the lines to barely suppressed anger over their lot as housekeepers.

10. The First Films of Jean Eustache

I started to explore the films of Jean Eustache this year as many of them finally became more widely accessible. I’ve only just begun to dive into his filmography, but what I’ve seen (Robinson’s Place, Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, The Virgin of Pessac) has me captivated. I love the way that Eustache pokes at many of the archetypes of French New Wave masculinity and shows just how destructive and toxic the traits are that other filmmakers in the movement celebrate. I’m eager to keep working my way through the rest of his filmography.

11. Happy Hour, by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

A five-and-a-half hour Japanese drama about the lives of four friends, each at a crisis point in their lives (their marriages, their careers, their friendships), Happy Hour is a monumental work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi. The four women at the center of this film embody the challenges that women face in contemporary Japan, but Hamaguchi is such a rich, humanist filmmaker that it never comes across as a polemic or political statement (though the politics are evident throughout the film). The lengthy runtime allows us to settle into a rhythm and fully immerse ourselves in the world with the characters so that we feel the emotional impact of their choices and struggles more fully. It’s a lovely, singular experience.

12. Saint Maud, by Rose Glass

Before I saw her latest film, I knew I wanted to finally catch up with Rose Glass’s debut feature, Saint Maud, after hearing rave reviews from people I trusted. But nothing could have prepared me for this scathing and deeply unsettling exploration of obsessive piety, religious fanaticism, and loneliness wrapped up in the trappings of psychological horror. The blind certainty of the film’s protagonist and the horrific tragedy that it provokes is something I won’t soon forget.

13. Birth, by Jonathan Glazer

It’s a film I saw come and go during my years as a video store clerk, one that I had unfairly written off due to trailers and a subject matter that (to my mind) bordered on the absurd. However, as the film’s reputation has grown over the years, I’m happy to have had my prejudices proven wrong. Birth is a stunning film whose mysteries continue to shift in my mind the more I think about it. From the way that Nicole Kidman is gradually drawn to this child over the course of the film, to the humiliating outburst of anger and violence toward the child from Danny Huston and the aching melancholy of the ending – it’s a film that I look forward to revisiting to continue pondering its mysteries.

14. This Magnificent Cake!, by Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef

It’s only 44 minutes long, but the vignettes in the stop-motion animated film This Magnificent Cake!, explore the brutal consequences of colonialism on both the colonized and the colonizers. It’s a searing indictment of indifference and cruelty, of Western nations’ impulse to claim land that isn’t ours. Some sequences are gut-wrenching and awful to watch, others absurd and funny, but there’s a bitterness to the entire film that feels incredibly appropriate.

15. Paprika, by Satoshi Kon

I’m continuing to work my way through the films of Satoshi Kon, and Paprika is the last of his features I had on my list (I’m still eager to catch up with Paranoia Agent). While this may not ascend to the heights of his other films, it still is a singular experience. I loved the way animation allows Kon to fluidly move between dreams and reality, and while the film traffics in stereotypes and tropes more than his other work, the use of dream and fantasy allows him to undercut these tropes and call them into question.

16. The Films of Rithy Panh

Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh spent part of his childhood in the prison camps of the Khmer Rouge. His work often explores his country’s history, his own memories, and his life growing up during the Cambodian genocide. The two films of Panh’s I watched this year, The Missing Pictrue and Exile, were rich documentaries that employed archival material, miniatures and models to create reenactments, and highly theatrical sets that allowed him to explore a past that has been stolen from him. These are deeply moving films that show just how beautiful and poetic nonfiction filmmaking can be.

17. Your Name., by Makoto Shinkai

Makoto Shinkai’s animated science fiction drama works more on the level of magical realism than most anime sci-fi films – we’re carried along by the characters and their emotional connections to one another, and the fantastic elements here serve to set this profoundly moving story in motion. The tale of two teenagers who wake up one morning inhabiting each other’s body, one living in a rural fishing community and the other in bustling Tokyo. It’s a film that I found charming, incredibly sweet, and with Shinkai’s particular brand of melancholy that causes us all to ponder missed connections and friendships from the past. It’s a lovely film.

18. Black River, by Masaki Kobayashi

I love the films of Masaki Kobayashi, the fierce political anger in his post-war filmmaking and the deep humanism that holds such empathy for those caught up in broken systems. And I love that I still have so many of his films to discover. This tale of corrupt landlords, abusive men, and the insufficiency of good, liberal intentions, feels just as relevant now as it did when it was made nearly seventy years ago. Like so many of his films, it’s a bitter pill, but it’s one that I think still has value for us today.

19. The Documentaries of Christine Choy

I watched a handful of Christine Choy’s more than 20 films over the past year. The films I watched explored the history of Chinese immigrants in the United States (From Spikes to Spindles), the plight of incarcerated women (Inside Women Inside), the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the United States (Bittersweet Survival), and the families torn apart at the end of the Korean War (Homes Apart: Korea). All of her films are anchored in a rich empathy and desire to tell stories that have often been left untold, and all of her documentaries feel personal and deeply poignant.

20. IWOW: I Walk on Water, by Khalik Allah

Ever since I caught Khalik Allah’s Black Mother at the Portland Film Festival a few years before the pandemic, I’ve been entranced by his poetic approach to documentary filmmaking, and his more than three-hour opus is no exception. Capturing snippets of life from his interactions with the people that most of our society ignores or turns away from, his film gives us a panoramic view of contemporary life on the streets through still photography, asynchronous audio conversations, and lush, humanist images. It’s a rich, moving film that shows how to work within marginalized communities without exploiting them.

Oscar 2024: Predictions and Preference, Spoilers and Snubs

The 96^th Academy Awards are upon us, and that means it’s time for everyone to pull out their Magic 8-Balls to make their annual Oscar predictions. And with the number of guild awards that occur prior to the Oscars, it is getting so much easier to predict the winners than ever before. The Academy’s switch to ranked choice voting can sometimes create an upset or a surprise on Oscar night, but in most years there’s an air of inevitability about the proceedings.

Of course, every year there are countless masterpieces that are overlooked by the Academy for any one of a number of reasons, and every year there are films that win awards that call into question the whole process of the awards apparatus, but even with all of its faults and flaws, I still love the Oscars and enjoy the journey through cinema it sends me on each and every year.

As studios and theater push for a return to normal after the pandemic closures, due to my own health limitations and disabilities, I wasn’t able to see quite as many of the nominated films this year as usual. Four films were inaccessible to me: Io Capitano, The Boy and the Heron, Robot Dreams, and Godzilla Minus One. But all things considered, this year’s Oscar run was fairly successful.

So, I’ll try to present a brief overview of each category, my thoughts on who will win, any possible spoilers, my preference, and any film that I think should have been nominated and made the final cut.

And now, without further ado…

Best Picture

Much to my chagrin, this year is undoubtedly Oppenheimer’s year to take home the Oscar – it’s one of the safest bets you can make. I’m lukewarm about the film and don’t believe it’s Nolan’s strongest work, presenting the illusion of moral complexity while serving up a crowd-pleasing finale that absolves its protagonist of the guilt the film purports to wrestle with. And the stylistic flourishes and editing juxtapositions, when they work are lovely, but when they don’t work, serve as distractions meant to dress up what is otherwise a standard biopic.

Among the nominees, I much prefer Killers of the Flower Moon – it’s an exceptionally crafted film that is propulsive and heartbreaking at the same time. Three and a half hours fly by because of how expertly the film is structured, shot, scored, and especially performed. And it’s a film that reminds white audiences of our complicity in the horrors which have been done to Native Peoples in this country.

Complicity is also a word I’d use when reflecting on another film I’d be happy to see win, The Zone of Interest. I’m impressed that the Academy nominated a film with such a formalist approach. It’s a challenging film, mainly because the horrifying sound designed that’s juxtaposed opposite scenes of almost serene family life. It’s a film that forces us to examine our own complicity in the horrors of the world that we knowingly turn a blind eye to each and every day.

While I have a clear favorite, I would be very happy if Anatomy of a Fall wins. It’s such a precise and exacting legal thriller that explores the ways any relationship can look strange or suspect when held under a microscope – and the ways any woman who acts in a way that isn’t socially proscribed is automatically labeled as deviant or dangerous.

I do like many of the other films up for Best Picture, and I wouldn’t be heartbroken to see these come through in an upset on Oscar night. Past Lives is a tender and delicate romantic drama about choices made and lives unlived. Barbie is a wonderful comic satire exploring what it means to be a woman under the pressures of patriarchy and coming to find who your truly are. The Holdovers is a charming and deeply moving coming-of-age comedy about three souls who are stuck – emotionally as well as physically stuck together over the holidays. American Fiction is a compelling dramedy exploring race, family, and the expectations placed on Black creatives.

As for the final nominees… I normally love the films or Yorgos Lanthimos, but Poor Things is my least favorite film he’s directed. I like much about the film (its exploration of the ways men attempt to control women and their sexual agency, the performances, the design), but so many of the film’s conflicts are resolved with very little effort and it doesn’t seem to take seriously the real danger that these men actually pose to women. It’s so much of a fantasy that it loses the bite and edge that I’ve come to expect from Lanthimos’s best work.

Maestro is the film that I don’t believe should be on this list of nominees. It’s a film that doesn’t know what kind of story it wants to tell about its subject, it elides important moments in his life, and it falls into the trap of telling us key things have happened without showing us how the characters arrived there. It’s poorly constructed, poorly written, and inconsistent in its stylistic techniques.

There are films that I wish would have made the cut instead of Maestro and Oppenheimer. Origin is an outstanding look at the development of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, and does much of what Oppenheimerattempts to do (visualize the life of the mind, of developing theories and coming to conclusions, joining the past and the present and memories together), but does so seamlessly. I would have also loved to a film like All of Us Strangers make the final list of nominees. It’s such a heartbreaking and tender film with a supernatural tint probably turned off Oscar voters.

Prediction: Oppenheimer
Spoiler: None (though there is the possibility that The Zone of Interest or Anatomy of a Fall could make it through due to the Oscar’s international voters, and Barbie has a slight chance because of people hoping to correct the Greta Gerwig snub)
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon (though I’ll be happy with The Zone of Interest or Anatomy of a Fall)
Snubs: Swap out Oppenheimer and Maestro for Origin and All of Us Strangers, and this would be an outstanding Best Picture lineup.

Best Director

Once again, Christopher Nolan is practically a shoo-in for Oppenheimer – though I don’t believe this is his strongest work, but instead gives in to his worst tendencies as a filmmaker (needlessly convoluted story and editing structure, the desire to undercut even more intimate moments by going bigger and louder). My preference is still for Martin Scorsese and Killers of the Flower Moon – late-period Scorsese is filled with incredible meditations on the consequences of our violence against others, and here he has such a firm hand on the tone and pacing to make sure that a film this long never drags or even slows down. Jonathan Glazer also has a firm and steady hand with The Zone of Interest, using a surveillance style of filming to keep us at a remove from the performers, just as they keep themselves at a remove from the victims of their atrocities. It’s easy to underestimate the skill it takes to craft a legal thriller as skillfully as Justine Triet does with Anatomy of a Fall, but her work in building the precise rhythms of a nerve-racking trial, while never losing sight of the personal toll is takes on those involved, is incredible. While Yorgos Lanthimos certainly creates a unique and heightened fantasy world in Poor Things, it’s a film that feels far removed from his signature style and plays things far safer any of his previous work.

Of course, one of the big snubs in this category is Greta Gerwig’s direction of Barbie. Her script is incredible, but her directorial choices really bring the film to vibrant life. And Celine Song’s direction in Past Lives is exquisite, taking a very simple, quite story and telling it with such eloquence, grace, and patience. Finally, Ava DuVernay’s work in Origin is some of the best direction of the year – fluidly moving between past and present, memory and fantasy – and it really should have been recognized this year.

Prediction: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Spoiler: None (though the international voters could get Justine Triet and Anatomy of a Fall to make an upset)
Preference: Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon (though I’ll be happy in the unlikely event that The Zone of Interest or Anatomy of a Fall win)
Snubs: I’d love to see them take Nolan and Lanthimos off of this list and replace them with Gerwig for Barbieand DuVernay for Origin.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

We’re three for three with Oppenheimer here, as I’m certain that Cillian Murphy will win for his performance in the titular role. He’s very good and it will be a fine win, but at the end of the day it feels like a safe biopic performance. Paul Giamatti is playing is usual curmudgeonly character in The Holdovers, but there are so many layers and shades to his performance that I truly hope he wins. I’d be equally happy if Jeffrey Wright wins for his more restrained performance in American Fiction, a truly compelling turn playing an author in the midst of an artistic and family crisis. I’m always impressed by Coleman Domingo, and his work as a pioneering Civil Rights leader was excellent in Rustin. I’m less impressed by Bradley Cooper’s performance in Maestro, a performance that relies heavily on makeup for the act of physical transformation, and one that is often mimicry rather than inhabiting the character.

I am sad to see that Leonard DiCaprio wasn’t recognized for his excellent work in Killers of the Flower Moonplaying a ruthless and opportunist redneck who nonetheless loves his Indigenous wife – the contradictions he plays in each scene are really fantastic. And Andrew Scott is phenomenal in All of Us Strangers, playing a writer who has the opportunity to meet with his dead parents and come out to them.

Prediction: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Spoiler: Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers (though it’s highly unlikely at this point)
Preference: Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers (though I’m find with anyone winning except for Bradley Cooper)
Snubs: Replace Bradley Cooper with Leonardo DiCaprio or Andrew Scott (I’d even be okay with omitting Cillian Murphy from this list, he’s done so much better work in other films)

This is one category where my predictions and preferences line up – at this point, it looks like Lily Gladstone will win for her subtle and heartbreaking work in Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s an outstanding performance that plumbs a powerful depth and range of emotions, and without her performance, the film doesn’t have the weight needed to show us the emotional consequences of the murderers’ actions. Sandra Hüller is also outstanding in Anatomy of a Fall, walking a very fine line in portraying a character with a strong set of ethics and values, whose rigid inflexibility could very well be her undoing. Before watching Nyad, I was skeptical of Annette Bening’s inclusion among the nominees, but her performance as a prickly and insufferable athlete attempting the impossible is truly fantastic. I expected to love Emma Stone’s performance in Poor Things, and while I think she’s fine, I also think this is a case where bigger and showier acting isn’t necessarily better acting – though I do think she has the biggest chance to win over Gladstone, based on previous award wins. Carey Mulligan is the best part of Maestro, but the fragmented nature of the film’s structure means she isn’t given enough of a character arc to do more than have a few big acting moments.

I’m most upset that Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor didn’t get nominated for her extraordinary work in Origin. She effortlessly shows us the interior life of a woman working to put the pieces together of an important intellectual discovery, and she navigates joy and pain and hope and heartbreak.

Prediction: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Spoiler: Emma Stone, Poor Things
Prediction: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon (though Sandra Hüller is also fantastic)
Snubs: Take out Carey Mulligan and replace her with Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and I would be very happy.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

The Best Supporting Actor category is one of the best set of nominees this year. There are so many ways I’d love to see this end up, but this will most likely be another win for Oppenheimer. Robert Downey, Jr. turned in a solid performance and showed that he could break out of the Marvel bubble, so it’s looking like he’ll be rewarded for this transitional role. I may not have loved Poor Things, but Mark Ruffalo’s performance is so delightfully unhinged that I hope he wins for absolute insanity he brings to the screen. I would also be very happy to see Robert De Niro win for the quite menace he brings to Killers of the Flower Moon, a brilliant late career performance that has his character insinuating himself within the Osage community while manipulating others to commit terrible atrocities. Ryan Gosling provides the comic center of Barbie and is such a wonderful counterpoint to Margot Robbie, giving a lovely insecurity and vulnerability to character who becomes infected by toxic masculinity. And Sterling K. Brown is a nice foil in American Fiction, providing a comic and humane warmth to counterpose Jeffrey Wright’s prickly antagonism.

I was so sad that Charles Melton was left off the list of nominees this year – his performance in May December grounds the film in an emotional reality that is shattering and heartbreaking.

Prediction: Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer
Spoiler: Ryan Gosling, Barbie (though it’s still a longshot)
Preference: Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things (though I’d be happy with most of the nominees winning in this category)
Snubs: I’d be very happy to swap out Robert Downey, Jr. and replace him with Charles Melton.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

One of the other sure-fire winners this year, also my preference, is Da’Vine Joy Randolph for her incredible work in The Holdovers. Her transformation as a grieving mother – the vocal cadence and dialect, the way she physically moves, and the way she inhabits grief – is what holds the film together. It’s beautiful work. Danielle Brooks is also extraordinary in The Color Purple, reprising her performance from the Broadway production and truly standing out amongst an incredible cast of performers. Jodie Foster helps to ground Nyad with a subtle and no-frills performance that nonetheless is anchored to caring for her friend and trying to help her achieve her dream while protecting her life. America Ferrera is lovely in Barbie, giving the film’s key monologue and making it believable and anchored in real, lived experience. The real outlier here is Emily Blunt’s nomination for Oppenheimer – like most women in Christopher Nolan films, she isn’t given much to do except get drunk and show how sad and resolved she can be.

I do wish that Julianne Moore had been nominated in this category for May December – it’s a brilliant performance that shows how someone can use fragility and weakness as a form of power.

Prediction: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Spoiler: None
Preference: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Snubs: Let’s replace Emily Blunt with Julianne Moore, and that would, again, be a great lineup.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The momentum in the Adapted Screenplay race has certainly been heading in American Fiction’s favor, but after finishing the novel, I can see the ways in which the film sands down the book’s prickliness and more incisive humor and delicate handling of themes to produce a crowd-pleasing dramedy that will appeal white liberals without forcing us to truly examine our own complicity in racist power structures. My favorite script in this category is Barbie, a stunning achievement that on the surface shouldn’t work, but manages be a feminist primer poking fun of Barbie while embracing all that Barbie can represent. The adaptation for The Zone of Interest is quite removed from the plot specifics of its source material, but it does have strong thematic ties with the book in exploring the ways individuals choose to ignore atrocity and concern themselves instead with their petty and selfish dramas. Poor Things captures the novel’s broad strokes, but while I was watching it I could feel the narrative elisions keeping the film from fully cohering – in reading the novel, I’m seeing where the cuts occurred and kept the narrative and character arcs from being as fully developed as they should have been. The adaptation of Oppenheimer was a monumental task, one that I still have reservations with as the film does more to lionize and purge Oppenheimer of his guilt than truly have us wrestle with his acts.

Missing from this list is the brilliant adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon, one that shifts the focus of the film from the nascent FBI and the author of the book to the marriage of Ernest and Mollie Burkhart and the victims of the Osage murders.

Prediction: American Fiction
Spoiler: Barbie (this is a little bit of a longshot, but hope springs eternal!)
Preference: Barbie (though I’d be very happy with The Zone of Interest winning)
Snubs: Replace Oppenheimer with Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Original Screenplay

This is another stacked category – if you were to remove Maestro from the list. At this point, it looks like Anatomy of a Fall is the frontrunner, and it’s really the best of a really stellar bunch of scripts – it’s a tightly constructed thriller that doles out information at just the right time, is filled with meaty roles… it’s an outstanding screenplay. May December hits all the right notes in its exploration of the ways the media exploits and sensationalizes tragedy. Past Lives expertly navigates the sorrows of what could have been, placing them alongside the joys of what is. The Holdovers uses familiar tropes and recontextualizes them, crafting a story that could have been told during the New American Cinema movement of the ‘70s. In a field of exceptional nominees, Maestro is the outlier – a script that deliberately elides narrative beats to present snapshots with big acting moments.

I know Wes Anderson has fallen out of favor with the Academy, but it seems impossible that his script for Asteroid City wasn’t nominated, a heartbreaking an incredibly funny film about grief, loss, and the meaning of life.

Prediction: Anatomy of a Fall
Spoiler: The Holdovers
Preference: Anatomy of a Fall (though I’d be okay with any of the scripts winning – except Maestro)
Snubs: Replace Maestro with Asteroid City

Best Cinematography

We’re back to Oppenheimer with the Oscar for Best Cinematography, and while I appreciate the Southwest vistas, the black-and-white senate hearings, and the muted East Coast tones – I find the cinematography here uninteresting, if technically strong. The cinematography for Killers of the Flower Moon is rich and vibrant, the thick darkness swallowing our antagonists, the brilliant colors capturing the life of the Osage people contrasting with the muted palate of the white interlopers – every shot helps tell the story. El Conde’s lush, black-and-white cinematography makes the film feel like a classic horror film, even as the pitch-black humor and mordant political satire places it firmly in the here and now. The cinematography for Poor Things is compelling and off-kilter, though the use of fish-eye lens is applied inconsistently throughout the film – as intriguing as the effect may be. I appreciate the textures and compositions in Maestro’s cinematography, but here’s another case where stylistic approaches to the visual language of the film are applied inconsistently across the film.

Even though the film contains a tremendous amount of artifice, the cinematography in Asteroid City is incredible, with each layer of the film’s intricate framing devices containing its own unique visual look and style.

Prediction: Oppenheimer
Spoiler: Killers of the Flower Moon
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon (though I’d be very happy to see El Conde win)
Snubs: Swap out Maestro with Asteroid City

Best Editing

As is often the case with Oscar categories, voters tend to confuse most editing with best editing. And we’re most like to see Oppenheimer take home the award because of all the minute edits and cuts between time periods and memories within each scene – regardless of whether the juxtapositions make thematic sense or resonate with each other. I personally think that the editing in Killers of the Flower Moon is exceptional, keeping the pace and tone of the film propulsive and knowing how to manage the rhythm of a film that needs to move quickly, but then slow down and mourn the dead. Anatomy of a Fall’s editing is also guided by an expert’s hand, especially in the ways the courtroom scenes are assembled – moving from defendant to prosecutor to witness to the defendant’s child – it’s masterful. The Holdovers is a solidly assembled comedy, the edit emphasizing comic bits, meaningful reaction shots – going for the laugh or the pathos. Poor Thingshas some wonderfully edited sequences, montages that are hilarious and punctuated with a delightful gag, but it also has sequences that needed stronger shaping.

I’ll return again to the brilliance of Origin and the ways it weaves together past and present, memory and history, as a film that I believe should have been nominated for Best Editing.

Prediction: Oppenheimer
Spoiler: Anatomy of a Fall
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon (though I’ll be very happy if Anatomy of a Fall wins)
Snubs: Replace Poor Things with Origin

Best Costume Design

The race for Best Costume Design is most likely a race between the toy-inspired accoutrements of Barbie and slightly off-kilter period trappings of Poor Things, but I do think that this is one of the categories that will go in Barbie’s favor. I definitely think it would be a wonderful winner – the contrasts between Barbieland and the real world are perfectly realized in the costuming. My choice is still Killers of the Flower Moon due to the ways they worked with the Osage people in developing period and culturally appropriate costumes, setting them in relief against (and sometimes melding them with) the costuming for the white antagonists, showing the deadly clash of cultures in the way characters dress. Poor Things has strong, memorable costumes that create a unique world and tell us that the story we’re watching is a work of fantasy, unmooring us from reality. Napoleon’s costuming may be more period specific, but the detail work for the film’s extensive cast is truly extraordinary. Oppenheimer also has incredibly detailed period costume designs, and I’m sure a close reading of the film focused on the costumes would reveal more nuances about the costume choices.

Prediction: Barbie
Spoiler: Poor Things (Oppenheimer if the film sweeps everything)
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon (though I’ll be fine with most of the film’s winning in this category, especially Barbie)
Snubs: I didn’t see anything egregious this year.

Best Production Design

I believe the Award will once again go to Barbie – a film whose production design is so beautifully realized that it’s almost impossible to resist the joy and delight upon entering Barbieland – or the hilarious symmetry of the Mattel offices. In my preferences, I continue to lean toward Killers of the Flower Moon – the period details are vivid and striking, and the film’s production design captures class and racial disparities through the signs of distress on buildings and signifiers of wealth within white and Indigenous homes. The production design in Poor Things adds to the film’s disorienting sensibility, keeping the narrative in its own hermetically sealed world where this parable of gender dynamics can play out. Napoleon uses sets of incredible scope and scale as a way to contrast the petty impotence of the film’s central figure. With Oppenheimer’s production design, it’s easy to overlook the meticulous recreation of the Trinity testing site, Los Alamos, the congressional confirmation hearing – it’s all very solid, work.

I do find it disappointing that Asteroid City and its incredible production design wasn’t nominated – from the delightfully artificial science camp to the crater and the observatory – every meticulously designed element in the film ties together perfectly in a way that allows the characters to have their emotional revelations.

Prediction: Barbie
Spoiler: Poor Things (or, once again, Oppenheimer if there’s a sweep)
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon
Snubs: Swap out Oppenheimer for Asteroid City

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

From the moment that the first trailer arrived, we knew that Maestro would be winning the award for best makeup – from Bradley Cooper’s nose to the old age makeup, it was a given. Even if there are times when the makeup is less convincing than others. I’d really like to see this award go to Society of the Snow, a film I didn’t love, but one that featured exception makeup and hairstyling work to show how the survivors of a plane crash were weathered and emaciated after weeks in the mountains. Oppenheimer’s makeup and hairstyling are impressively subtle – the old age work is barely perceptible, but combined with the actors’ performances, assists the film beautifully. The makeup and hairstyling in Poor Things is delightful and very fun to watch, contributing to overall tone of the film. Golda’s makeup and hairstyling are transformational, making Helen Mirren look almost exactly like Golda Meir, but it’s the type of makeup transformation that I tend find myself annoyed with in films – I don’t need total accuracy, I just need a good performance.

I don’t think there are any egregious snubs here, but I’d be happy to see Golda off the list and replaced by something with more sci-fi roots like Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

Prediction: Maestro
Spoiler: Poor Things
Preference: Society of the Snow
Snubs: Again, nothing major, but I really disliked Golda and would have loved to see it replaced by something like Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

Best International Feature Film

This is one of the few categories in which I haven’t been able to view all of the nominees, so my preference will come from the films I’ve seen. The International Feature Film category is stacked with incredible films – all of the ones I’ve seen are either solid or incredibly strong. I do believe that, with multiple other nominations this year, the winner will be The Zone of Interest, a well-deserved win for an incredible film. I was also quite taken with The Teachers’ Lounge, a gripping workplace thriller about an idealistic teacher trying look out for the well-being of her student while larger systemic issues (and her own naivete) create chaos on campus. Perfect Daysis a beautiful, deceptively simple film about an older man who lives a life of routine, taking pride in his work, and the individuals who interrupt that routine in beautiful and unexpected ways. Society of the Snow tells the story of a Uruguayan ruby team that crashes in the Andres and must survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment – there are wonderfully poetic touches throughout the film, but with such a large cast, the filmmaker don’t do enough to differentiate the individuals and make the losses and meaningful as they should be. I’m really looking forward to Io Capitano, I’ve appreciated the director’s previous films, and this fairy tale the explores Europe’s immigration crisis looks incredible.

I wish we’d have more representation from across the globe in this category – a film like the gorgeous Mami Wata would have been a great substitution for Society of the Snow.

Prediction: The Zone of Interest
Spoiler: Perfect Days
Preference: The Zone of Interest
Snubs: Swap out Society of the Snow with Mami Wata

Best Animated Film

Here’s another category where a few of the titles have been inaccessible to me. I do believe that regardless, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be the winning film in animation – it’s won most of the awards it’s been up for and it’s a solid sequel, even if the narrative is little more convoluted and messier than its predecessor. Out of the films I’ve seen, I’d prefer to see Nimona win the award – it was such a surprising and delightful film with lovely animation and a wonderful message about moving away from fear and toward acceptance and understanding. I appreciated the exploration of immigrant families in Elemental, but it’s all wrapped up in a standard Pixar story with predictable story beats. I’m really looking forward to both The Boy and the Heron and Robot Dreams, two animated films that are not part of the American animation system and look to be much richer and more thematically resonant than some of the American offerings – especially the Miyazaki film.

Prediction: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spoiler: The Boy and the Heron
Preference: Nimona
Snubs: I know there are a few animated films that folks were hoping to see on this list, but I haven’t been able to see them yet, so I’ll reserve judgment until then.

Best Documentary – Feature Film

This is a pretty stacked category, and it’s nice to see a category filled with international documentary titles rather than the safe (and frankly boring) American titles that were expected to make it into the category this year. The presumptive winner is 20 Days in Mariupol, a harrowing look at the war in Ukraine – the footage is incredible and difficult to watch, but I’m not as sold on the voice-over narration and some of the early framing, which I think undercuts the dramatic power of the footage that’s been captured. My preference would be Four Daughters, a brilliantly constructed documentary about a woman who lost two daughters to radical Islam, using actors and recreation to uncover her own culpability and the ways she was part of the system that led them to their decisions – it’s an incredibly moving, heartbreaking film. I was also deeply moved by The Eternal Memory, a lovely reflection on aging and Alzheimer’s, following a prominent Chilean couple intimately as they grapple with the changes in their life circumstances. To Kill a Tiger is a riveting and devastating film that follows a father in a small Indian village seeking justice after his daughter was raped – while everyone else in the village wants him to move past the crime. Finally, there’s much that I appreciate in Bobi Wine: The People’s President – it’s a compelling political documentary – but because the filmmakers are so embedded with Bobi and his campaign, there’s much of the story that is missing, and it feels more like a piece of propaganda than a documentary.

I am very sad that one of my favorite documentaries, and one of my favorite films, of the year, The Mother of All Lies, was missing from this lineup. A young filmmaker brings together her family and former neighbors to use models and puppets in order to recreate their past and shed a light on the abuses of their government and her grandmother. It’s an outstanding film.

Prediction: 20 Days in Mariupol
Spoiler: Four Daughters
Preference: Four Daughters
Snubs: Replace Bobi Wine with The Mother of All Lies

Best Documentary – Short Subject

I’ve already written extensively about all of the nominees here, but I believe that, due to the Academy’s focus on issues rather than the quality of the filmmaking when it comes to documentaries, they will most likely go for The ABCs of Book Banning.

Best Music – Original Score

After listening to the nominees for Best Original Score, I really do think that the winner should be clear, but I’m pretty certain this will be another win for Oppenheimer, even though the score is essentially just Hans Zimmer-lite (who himself is often just Philip Glass-lite). There are a few nice touches – creating the sound of the atom smashing in music is one – and I appreciate that it isn’t slavish when it comes to period specificity, but this isn’t a particularly memorable score. I do think that Robbie Robertson’s score for Killers of the Flower Moon is exceptional – it’s propulsive and, along with the editing, helps move the film forward. The blending and contrast between traditional Native American music and instrumentation and white Americana and folk music shows the competing forces at work within the community. The score for American Fiction is surprisingly complex – weaving together soft and melodic jazz and moves into dissonance as the film’s protagonist comes to crisis points in the film. Poor Things uses traditional instrumentation from the period to create something strange and uncanny – almost fractured – in keeping with the sideways and fractured world onscreen. The worst score of the list is John Williams’s score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a score which recycles material from Williams’s other (better) scores and fundamentally misunderstands leading characters in the film.

Prediction: Oppenheimer
Spoiler: Killers of the Flower Moon
Preference: Killers of the Flower Moon
Snubs: I’m sure there were some better scores out there to replace Indiana Jones and Oppenheimer, but I’d need to watch some of this year’s films with the score in mind.

Best Music – Original Song

It’s pretty much a given that one of the songs from Barbie will end up winning the race for Best Song, but my money’s on “What Was I Made For?” It’s a song that speaks to the heart of the film, that is heartfelt and deeply moving, and will be a wonderful and well-deserved win for the film. I’d love to see “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon win the award – it’s a song from the Osage people about connecting to the past and about remaining and resilience in the face of adversity. As much as the other song from Barbieis its heart and soul, “I’m Just Ken” is an absolute delight, and while it’s a simple song without much substance, it will be fun to watch Ryan Gosling perform it at the awards. “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony is a lovely song that speaks to the resilience of love in the face of adversity, one of the film’s core themes. And finally, we have the obligatory Diane Warren song, “The Fire Inside,” a forgettable pop song from the forgettable Flamin’ Hot.

I’m very sad that “Dear Alien (Who Art in Heaven)” from Asteroid City was cut from this list in favor of the obligatory Diane Warren nomination. It’s a much better song that is beautifully incorporated into the film and speaks to its existential anxiety.

Prediction: “What Was I Made For?”
Spoiler: “I’m Just Ken”
Preference: “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)”
Snubs: Cut “The Fire Inside” and add in “Dear Alien (Who Art in Heaven)”

Best Sound

While Best Sound often goes to the loudest or biggest sound, I do think that the sound this year will go to The Zone of Interest, whose intricate and horrifying sound design was essential in conveying the horrors of the Holocaust and juxtaposing it with the scenes of idyllic family life. The sound in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is impressive work, melding the action, dialogue, and score into a pulse-pounding adventure mix. I’m not as fond of Maestro’s mix – yes, the orchestra mixing is important, but it doesn’t set it apart from the other nominees. The Creator does serviceable mixing and sound effects work for a subpar sci-fi film, but there’s nothing that really remarkable about what it does. Oppenheimer does have some remarkable sound design, but like all Christopher Nolan films, the ham-fisted dialogue is buried by the punishing sound mix.

Prediction: The Zone of Interest
Spoiler: Oppenheimer
Preference: The Zone of Interest
Snubs: There are plenty of solid films with good sound design that could have made the cut, but The Zone of Interest is heads and tails above them all.

Best Visual Effects

This is the final category in which I’ve missed a nominee – and I’m pretty certain that it’s the film that will win for Best Visual Effects. The story is compelling (they accomplished great effects on a tiny budget, it’s a first nomination, etc.) and it really seems like a well-deserved and timely win for Godzilla Minus One. Out of the films I’ve seen, I keep going back-and-forth on a couple of the nominees, but I’ll finally land on Napoleon. The visual effects are seamless and so well integrated with the production design and costumes that it helps to provide the film’s sense of scale (and Napoleon’s violent rage). I’m also impressed by the mix of practical and digital effects used in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning to convey the breathtaking stunts and death-defying action sequences. And I fully enjoyed the effects used in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 – while they were mostly CGI, they were some of the most effective I’ve seen in a blockbuster in years. The Creator does have some effective, low-budget effect, though the film wasn’t very good and that may have biased me against its nominations.

It would have been nice to see Poor Things get a nomination in this category – the effects work is really a tremendous part of the entire world-building effect.

Prediction: Godzilla Minus One
Spoiler: The Creator
Preference: Napoleon
Snubs: Swap out The Creator with Poor Things

Best Animated Short Film

I’ve already written extensively about the animated short films. I think War Is Over will be the winner – mainly due to the involvement of John and Yoko’s son and the pedigree of the creators behind the film.

Best Live Action Short Film

As before, you can see my thoughts about the live action shorts in my previous post. But here, I believe that Wes Anderson’s establishment as a director will work against him, and I believe that that award will, unfortunately, go to The After.

Oscars 2024: The Oscar Nominated Short Films

Every year when the Oscar nominations roll around, my favorite categories to check are the short film nominees – Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Short Film (Animated), and Best Short Film (Live Action). While these are all titles that made the Academy Awards’ Shortlist earlier in the season, these tend to be some of the most unpredictable nominees of the ceremony. They are also notoriously difficult to predict. I don’t care who is telling they have the answer, with the short films, there are almost always surprises.

This year’s nominees are a mixed bag – there are a few incredibly strong standouts in each category, and even one or two masterpieces among them, but there are a fair number of dreadful choices this year as well.

Best Documentary Short Subject

I really wanted Sheila Nevins’s The ABCs of Book Banning to be a much better than it was. I agree with everything the filmmakers are trying to convey, but the methods they use aren’t effective. By showing the books that have been banned, challenged, or restricted without context for why those challenges have been issued, the filmmakers have done a grave disservice to the viewers. We’re left to interpret the reasons a particular book has been challenged, based on what we know of the content and the author’s identity. But there are times these bans are for reasons that are not immediately obvious. So, while I enjoyed hearing from the students who were touched and moved by these banned books, the structure and omission of essential facts makes the film come across as misleading propaganda – propaganda from a side I happen to agree with, but propaganda, nonetheless.

John Hoffman and Christine Turner’s The Barber of Little Rock is a hopeful and inspiring portrait of one man’s attempt to make changes within his community through education and making the systems of finance more accessible within the Black community. It’s beautifully shot, filled with compelling interviews, and lays out intriguing methods for change within historically oppressed and marginalized communities. As part of Turner’s overall project of documenting Black lives making an impact within their community – through art or activism, through care or compassion – this is a really lovely addition to an already impressive body of short documentaries.

Leo Chiang’s Island in Between is an intriguing short documentary about the Taiwanese islands of Kinmen just two miles off the coast of mainland China, and the tensions residents face in navigating a fraught political situation. Chiang gracefully explores the complexities of Taiwanese feelings about China – from the hopes for reunification to the defiance of any perceived Chinese aggression, any everything in between. The film could have benefited from a slightly tighter structure grounding the disparate threads, but even so, it’s still a compelling work of short nonfiction.

Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers’s The Last Repair Shop is a profoundly moving short documentary. It’s especially effective in the ways it moves between student and instrument repair person, looking at the kids who need the repair services, while really digging deep into the histories of those whose labor is often invisible to us. The individual narratives within the film are varied and move from the poignant to the hilarious, and the overall impact is incredibly powerful. The filmmakers’ choices around identifying some musicians and leaving others anonymous in the final recording session is mystifying, blunting the emotional impact of what should be a stirring finale. That’s a minor complaint, but it stands out in a short that is otherwise magnificent.

Sean Wang’s Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó is such a charming and enjoyable little doc. While the subject may not cover wide-ranging, major social issues, it is a poignant look at aging and what it takes for elderly folks to be able to live independently. There’s a liveliness and vivacious energy to the two grandmothers in this film that is a joy to watch, and the editing and camera work match their wry sense of humor. At the same time, the film never loses sight of their sense of mortality and the painful losses they’ve felt. This is a wonderful short documentary.

Prediction: The ABCs of Book Banning
Spoiler: The Last Repair Shop
Preference: The Last Repair Shop (though I’d be happy if The Barber of Little Rock or Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó won as well)

Best Short Film (Animated)

Tal Kantor’s Letter to a Pig is an absolutely stunning animated short. The animation is gorgeous and haunting, a reflection on a what a Holocaust survivor went through o escape the Nazi’s. But the story quickly turns into something darker and more menacing as the film reflects on the ways the oppressed can become oppressors, the ways that the traumas of the past can make us hardened and cruel, passed down through the generations – all told through beautiful and surreal animation.

The use of fabric textures as part of the animation is stunning in Yegane Moghaddam’s Our Uniform. It helps tell the story of enforced clothing restrictions growing up as a girl in Iran. The narrative may be slight, but the exploration of clothing as an extension of identity is beautifully rendered – as are the ways that more patriarchal and restrictive communities and cultures use clothing to restrict and tamp down women and girl’s identities and individuality. This is a very compelling piece of short animation.

Stéphanie Clément’s Pachyderm is a stunning memory film that follows a young woman reflecting on childhood vacations spent with her grandparents. The animation is truly wondrous, and the narrative continues to grow and evolve until we understand the scope of the story and the hidden truths behind the narrator’s childhood fears. It’s an incredibly beautiful and absolutely haunting film.

Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess’s Ninety-Five Senses is a solid animated short that uses multiple animators employing different styles for each segment exploring the body’s senses. The film carries us along its spare narrative by slowly opening itself and revealing more and more about the narrator with each subsequent lesson about the senses. The film makes a significant misstep in attempting to force the audience to have more sympathy for a man who has committed terrible violence on others than those he inflicted that violence upon. It keeps what could have been a truly heartbreaking film about consequences and the mistakes of our past from fully landing.

Dave Mullins’s WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko is a wretched work of nepotism. The trench warfare, the pigeon passing chess moves between enemy lines, the battle… While it’s competently constructed, it all smacks of cheap sentimentality. And when the John and Yoko song comes on – a song that doesn’t fit with anything we’ve just seen – it’s saccharine and emotionally manipulative. None of these elements work together – the World War I setting, the comic beat, the carnage and brutality, especially the song… And yet, because it appeals to Boomer nostalgia and viewer sentimentality, it receives award nominations.

Prediction: War Is Over
Spoiler: None
Preference: Letter to a Pig (though I’d be very happy is Pachyderm or Our Uniform won)

Misan Harriman’s The After is an abysmal short film. Opening with a horrific act of violence is one thing but staging it in such a clumsy and insensitive way shows a profound lack of awareness and understanding of trauma on the part of the filmmaker – an understanding that this film is purportedly attempting to foster. The middle section of the film is where it’s the strongest, dipping in and out of passengers’ lives, all of whom are unaware of the pain that their driver is carrying (though every scene in which he is alone is shot like music video or the “before” scene in a car commercial). But the ending is the real clincher – it once again shows a profound lack of understanding about how people process and move through trauma and grief. This is a wretched film.

Vincent René-Lortie’s Invincible is a solid enough short film, even if the narrative bookends don’t completely work – foreshadowing the ending the way it does may create a sense of doom, but it also undercuts all subsequent sequences in which the protagonist makes any real progress. It also leaves us questioning many of the assumptions the narrative makes – that the protagonist is the one and only kid in this reform program who shows real potential for change, the one with a natural talent for poetry… There’s no real exploration of why he leaves the program, what behavior got him sent to the reform program in the first place – just that he’s a brilliant but troubled kid who wants to leave. It’s beautifully shot and well-performed, but it merely skims the surface.

Lasse Lyskjær Noer’s Knight of Fortune is an incredibly charming short exploring grief and loss, what it means to let go someone you love. The performances in here are all wonderful, and the narrative twist at the film’s midpoint is delightful. This is the type of short that could have easily become too saccharine or mawkish. But it consistently uses droll humor to undercut cheap sentimentality and come to a genuinely moving ending about the need to let go. This is a really wonderful little film.

Politically, I agree with everything that Nazrin Choudhury’s Red, White and Blue is trying to say – and the film is even very well-acted and decently shot and constructed. But this is a film that is so clearly constructed as a piece of propaganda that, when the “shocking” twist happens toward the end of the film, it left such a sour taste in my mouth. This is blatant emotional manipulation, a commercial for abortion rights in a time when all rights are being stripped away, using the crassest possible tools to shock people into supporting the cause. And as others have said, we need to be telling the stories of ordinary women who are being denied abortions, not just sensationalizing the issue by highlighting the most extreme cases. This is an exploitive film that does nothing to truly further the cause.

Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a masterful and inventive adaptation of literature, incorporating prose into the performers’ dialogue and performances, utilizing the trapping of the proscenium stage with set pieces that roll into place, emphasizing the artifice of the production, the tools and tricks of filmmaking and theatrical staging. And the artifice only heightens the emotional power of the central narrative, a redemption story told through multiple narrative digressions buried within narrative digressions. It all moves so fast that by the time we realize what Anderson is doing, it’s too late and we find ourselves caught off-guard by the emotional power and resonance of the story. This is a beautiful, wondrous little film.

Prediction: The After
Spoiler: I’d love to see The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar win, but I don’t think the Academy voters will give Wes Anderson an award for a category they feel is for beginning filmmakers, so I think, unfortunately, the spoiler will be something like Red, White and Blue.
Preference: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

While you can find some of the films on various streaming platforms right now, all of the short films are available as part of the 19th Annual Oscar Nominated Short Film releases, presented by ShortsTV. You can find a theater playing the programs near you at http://www.shorts.tv/theoscarshorts.

The animated shorts program also include two highly commended shorts, Wild Summon and I’m Hip.

Karni Arieli and Saul Freed’s Wild Summon is an incredibly inventive and truly harrowing animated short. Personifying the life cycle of wild salmon by transforming them into human figures swimming through creeks and streams, making their way to the ocean and back to their spawning grounds, underscores how difficult their lives are and how horrific human treatment of animals can truly be. The blend of live-action and animation is stunning and leaves us reflecting on questions of intelligence and suffering within the animal kingdom.

John Musker’s I’m Hip is a perfectly pleasant music/comedic short taking aim at those who wear their sense of being cool and hip on their sleeve – the insufferable pretentiousness that can be found in college dorms, coffee shops, or anywhere men are eager to over-explain things to anyone eager to listen. It’s all pretty surface-level satire, and the joke begins to wear thin after first minute and a half. But it’s fun for the most part.

2024 Online Sundance Film Festival: Day Two

I began my second day of the online edition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival by finishing out the animated short film package I had started on the first day and continuing on with four more feature films touching on themes of grief and connection, technology and authenticity. After getting a little waylaid my first day with a broken projector and household errands, day two allowed me to finally feel like the festival was finally under way.

Starting off with the four feature films…

Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a far richer and much more moving film than I first expected. It understands the ways in which mental health, grief, and generational trauma can intersect and manifest within people in vastly different ways – sometimes in ways that can cause jealousy or bitterness to creep into relationships. Revisiting the past to begin healing the present (or at least to begin making things better for the next generation) is a beautiful, subtle thread that runs throughout. Connection and reconnection are shown to be the way to find your way through your pain, no matter how raw or how unremarkable it may seem. And the ways that the film captures real places, letting us sit with a past that has been erased or papered over, is incredibly powerful. All this, and it still manages to be an incredibly funny film with great performances from the entire cast.

Thea Hvistendahl’s Handling the Undead is a masterfully constructed, slow-burn of a horror film. I love the way it uses the narrative trappings of the zombie genre to explore grief, loss, and what it means to let go of (or try to hold onto) those you love. Told in three intersecting stories, all three narrative strands are exceptionally compelling, each dealing with different periods in the loss of a loved one. There’s a subtlety to all the performances that keeps the film emotionally grounded – especially helpful when the dead are literally coming back to life onscreen. The score is equally subtle, creating a quiet eeriness that works hand-in-hand with the unsettling visuals – low light and obstructed views keep us wary and afraid that something in lurking in the hidden spaces on screen. And yet, in the midst of the film’s disturbing beauty is a hope that keeps it from ever tipping into absolute despair.

Sam and Andy Suchero’s Love Me, the story of a weather buoy and a satellite falling in love, ended up being one of the most divisive films at this year’s Sundance, and I can totally understand why this wouldn’t work for everyone. But I was completely onboard from the film’s opening few seconds as the filmmakers show us the history of the Earth (the Big Bang through humanity obliterating ourselves) in hilarious Timelapse stop motion. The mix of techniques – computer animation, internet clips, live actors – creates a truly unique viewing experience as the film interrogates personal authenticity in an age where everything is posed and edited for public presentation. And by overlaying our own anxieties onto the technology we create, the film asks intriguing questions about the ethical responsibilities we have toward artificial intelligence and the information we send out into the world that will outlive us all.

Jazmin Jones’s Seeking Mavis Beacon is an exceptional documentary exploring the ways tech companies exploit the images and likenesses of Black bodies for profit without fairly compensating individuals, while at the same time acknowledging that these products end up providing much-needed representation for Black children. The film takes on the form of a detective story as Jones and her creative partner attempt to track down the model for the Mavis Beacon typing software, but their investigation has them exploring the nature of privacy, the gendered and racialized development of voice assistants, and what it means to ease yourself digitally. The filmmakers practice incredible transparency throughout the filmmaking process, and the use of archival material is outstanding. This is a film with so much on its mind that it can feel a bit muddled by the end, but anchoring the narrative in the participants and their personal journey keeps this more experimental documentary grounded.

Finally, some quick takes on the animated shorts…

- - Daniel Zvereff’s Drago is comprised of gorgeous, hand drawn animation that conveys such a depth of emotion with each brushstroke we see, each shudder of the frame. It’s a simple, but deeply moving story of refugees relocating and building a new life for themselves – even if it isn’t the life they had planned.
  - I can appreciate the craft and the surreal imagery at play in Kerstin Zemp and Bianca Caderas’s Matta and Matto. I can even appreciate the central idea that we long for human connection so much that we’re willing to sacrifice just about anything to make those connections. But the film is a thinly veiled COVID/anti-mask/anti-precaution metaphor. As someone who is medically vulnerable, who continues to be as high risk, who cannot just go out drop all my precautions because I face the very real possibility of death or further disability, I find this kind of patronizing filmmaking and propaganda to be incredibly frustrating and deeply offensive – no matter the skill or craft on display.
  - Maks Rzontkowski’s Martyr’s Guidebook has a playful and cheeky tone throughout as it examines the ways we’re encouraged to sacrifice and martyr ourselves, to help others at the expense of our own needs so we can be a “good” person. The animation has a low-res, computer-generated quality mixed with the color saturation and image softness of 1960s Eastern European animation – making this work of magical realism feel like a fable from another time.
  - Catapreta’s Dona Beatriz Ñsîmba Vita makes fascinating use of surrealism to retell a historical narrative, looking at the ways revolutionary leaders sacrifice themselves for their people. I appreciated the ghostly imagery used to depict the white oppressors and the solidity given to Dona Beatriz and her copies. I do think the film is missing some of the connective tissue that would help it hit on a deeper level.
  - I love the mix of stop-motion and painted animation in Alisi Telengut’s Baigal Nuur – Lake Baikal, retelling of the formation of Lake Baikal. And pairing the gorgeous imagery with words from an endangered Mongolian dialect adds to the film’s beauty and poignancy.
  - I normally have problems with animated shorts that are tests of animation software – seeing how far you can push it until it breaks down. Takeshi Murata and Christopher Rutledge’s Larry worked a bit better for me than most because of the extreme anxiety these animation loops create – we want to see Larry be able to waddle down the hall without breaking down or getting held back by an infinite number of his doubles. But he’s forever stuck.
  - Flóra Anna Buda’s 27 is an outstanding short exploring the feelings of malaise for young adults living in a capitalist economy in which there are few economic prospects. The film captures the rich inner life of a young woman – her fears and anxieties, her fantasies and insecurities. And the animation is stunning.

2024 Online Sundance Film Festival: Day One

This is my third year attending the Sundance Film Festival online. The first year they made their offerings available virtually I was beginning to address the health issues that would later necessitate that I attend Sundance, or indeed, any festival or film screening, remotely for the foreseeable future. But I started attending religiously during its second online year, and even in these past two years with slightly limited remote viewing options, it’s still the best virtual festival around for those of us with medical vulnerabilities and disabilities that keep us from other festivals. As most festivals across the country are closing or limiting their virtual offerings, Sundance still offers virtual screenings for all of their competition titles, short films, and a handful of other titles that the either the filmmakers or the distributors want to ensure receive the widest exposure possible.

Despite some technical difficulties on this first day of the online festival – of course my projector bulb would explode at the start of Sundance! – I was able to get my viewing schedule back on track with offerings from the NEXT section, the World Dramatic Competition, a Premiere, and the start of my look at short films at the festival. NEXT has often been one of the most intriguing sections at Sundance, narratively daring work that pushes the boundaries of what cinema is capable. I discover some of my favorite films each year in the World Dramatic section, so the titles here are always ones that I look forward to seeing. And premieres are often the buzzier films of the festival – big name directors or stars launching or attempting to sell their films for the first time.

Jack Begert’s Little Death (from the NEXT section) has an incredibly fascinating structure. The film is a narrative diptych exploring addiction, the pursuit of authenticity, and interpersonal relationships through two tonally disparate sections. In the first story, a screenwriter’s inability to face his own role in his growing unhappiness (not to mention his misogyny and his constant grievances) keep him locked away from any possibility of change. In the second story, two young adults caught up in unexpected violence discover the possibility for second chances through empathy and connection. One story uses surreal touches (including computer and AI-generated animation) to place us inside the character’s neurotic headspace. The other story is far more grounded and naturalistic, albeit with touches of comedy and absurdism. The two pieces may not fully fit together, but it’s certainly an intriguing experience.

Daniel Hoesl and Juliane Niemann’s Veni Vidi Vici (from the World Competition) is a ruthlessly dark comedy about the ways in which the wealthy are able to prey upon society. The film is filled with absolutely striking visual compositions – brilliant and eye-catching color (or the absence of it), the use of static frames and precise staging to suggest the film’s varying levels of power and hierarchy. Because the narrative is so firmly situated from the point of view of the rich family, we’re never given the victim’s perspective, and the film is missing some of the pointed class critique that it seems to be attempting. When it comes to examining systems that enable the wealthy to maintain their power, it’s just scratching the surface. Still, there are some pointed jabs at the ways the wealthy attempt to shape society and pass their own warped and twisted family values (mainly their entitlement) on to their children. It’s a very enjoyable, if deeply flawed satire.

Josh Margolin’s Thelma is an absolutely charming action/comedy about a 93-year-old woman determined to retrieve the $10,000 scammers stole from her. From the pitch-perfect score and the brilliant editing rhythms to the delightful ways action movie tropes are reimagined for the nonagenarian set, the film is such a lovely viewing experience. June Squibb is magnificent in the titular role, exuding a fierce, prickly independence that is contrasted by the warmth and kindness she can show her grandson (and strangers on the street she is certain she’s met before). The film also manages to provide a thoughtful meditation on aging (and the limitations that come with it) without ever getting maudlin. What a wonderful film.

From the shorter side of things, today I caught Phoebe Jane Hart’s Bug Diner, a clever and funny, crude and yet tender work of short animation. The animation is wonderful, the pacing and quick cuts are fantastic. However, once the main joke of the film is revealed, the short quickly overstays its welcome, but it’s still thoroughly entertaining.

Favorite Films of 2023

The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic, by Teemu Nikki | The Tuba Thieves, by Alison O’Daniel
Killers of the Flower Moon, by Martin Scorsese | The Mission, by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future, by Francisca Alegria | Trenque Laquen, by Laura Citarella
Asteroid City, by Wes Anderson / Barbie, by Greta Gerwig
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, by Raven Jackson / A Thousand and One, by A.V. Rockwell
Fremont, by Babak Jalali / Sometimes I Think About Dying, by Rachel Lambert
Anatomy of a Fall, by Justine Triet / Fair Play, by Chloe Domont
I’m a Virgo, by Boots Riley / We Grown Now, by Minhal Baig
Milisuthando, by Milisuthando Bongela / The Mother of All Lies, by Asmae El Moudir
The Holdovers, by Alexander Payne / Showing Up, by Kelly Reichardt
De Humanis Corporis Fabrice, by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor / Plan 75, by Chie Hayakawa
May December, by Todd Haynes / Saltburn, by Emerald Fennell
All of Us Strangers, by Andrew Haigh / Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, by Tomás Gómez Bustillo
Past Lives, by Celine Song / The Quiet Girl, by Colm Bairéad
American Fiction, by Cord Jefferson / Incident, by Bill Morrison
The Potemkinists, by Radu Jude / Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Quartet
Shortcomings, by Randall Park / You Hurt My Feelings, by Nicole Holofcener
In the Rearview, by Maciek Hamela / Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles, by Dmytro Sukholytkyi-Sobchuk
Bottoms, by Emma Seligman / Theater Camp, by Nick Lieberman and Molly Gordon
Full Circle, by Steven Soderbergh / Pacifiction, by Albert Serra

Oscars 2023 – Directing, Other Feature Films, and Best Picture Nominees

Here we are, the home stretch for our Oscar viewing and predictions. And here we come to, not only Best Picture, but Best Director and the three other feature length categories – Best International Film, Best Animated Feature Film, and Best Documentary Feature Film.

When determining my preferences in each of these categories, I often look for the film that not only has something to say about the human condition and can speak into our present moment while standing the test of time, but I also look for films that embody the unique vision of their creators – be it a comically bleak view of human relationships or a mythic outlook on the nature of family.

And while many of these categories can be predicted based on the momentum of awards that have come before, there’s always room here for a surprise or two – and there are always categories (like Best Documentary Feature) that don’t have the same consensus as some of the others. It’s all part of what makes awards season so much fun!

Best Directing

Martin McDonagh’s work in The Banshees of Inisherin sees the filmmaker and playwright returning to Ireland and showing restraint and control over both his camerawork and stylistic flourishes to settle into an unsettling fable reminiscent of his stage work, filled with careful (and gorgeous) visual compositions. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert bring the frenetic energy and nonstop pace of their music video work and manage to blend the action and science fiction spectacle with a deeply moving family drama that has more emotional resonance than you’d expect from the premise (and some of the more outlandish sequences). Directors everywhere are plumbing the depths of their childhood to craft their memory films, and Steven Spielberg shows considerable vulnerability in exploring his parents’ divorce alongside his burgeoning love of cinema in The Fabelmans – a master filmmaker at the top of his game. While he may have started with intimate chamber dramas, with Todd Field’s direction in TÁR, the filmmaker expands on his storytelling prowess to craft a densely layered, richly conceived exploration of power and consequence for the abuse of power. Ruben Östlund has made a career out of confrontational, discomfiting cinema, and with his first English-language feature film, Triangle of Sadness, he expands upon this by forcing his audience to confront our assumptions about class, power, wealth, and privilege – and the ways this can all shift due to circumstance.

Prediction: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Preference: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once (though this is another category where I’d be happy with any of the nominees winning)

Best International Feature Film

Edward Berger’s adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front manages to show the horrors of war without ever letting us off the hook by making the violence exciting or thrilling or heroic – it’s a brutal and grueling anti-war film. In Argentina, 1985, director Santiago Mitre has crafted a predictable and crowd-pleasing courtroom thriller about the civilian legal team who brought the country’s former military dictators to justice. An overly manipulative coming-of-age drama, Lukas Dhont’s Close tells the story of two boys with a wonderfully close friendship who find classmates and school pressures attempting to drive them apart. Veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski tells the story of EO, a heartbreaking and gorgeous series of vignettes about the titular donkey as he makes his way through Europe and intersects with human kindness and cruelty. The only film this Oscar season I wasn’t able to see was Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl, but from those who have seen it, I have heard that this story of a young girl sent to live with distant relatives is absolutely beautiful.

Prediction: All Quiet on the Western Front
Spoiler: Argentina, 1985
Preference: EO

Best Animated Feature Film

Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Pinocchio is stunning – and it’s one of the few interpretations of the work that refuses the original’s neat and tidy message to allow for a powerful indictment of conformity and the way this conformity empowers fascism. With Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Dean Fleischer Camp has crafted a lovely blend of stop-motion animation and live action that explores the beauty and life-affirming power of community. The latest film in the Shrek franchise, Joel Crawford’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish unexpectedly explores mortality and aging – though it does dip into the frenetic action so common to today’s animated features. Director Chris Williams crafts a compelling fantasy world in The Sea Beast, and the film’s message of tolerance and understanding is lovely – even if it does follow some of your standard family film beats to get there. Turning Red is a delightful comedy about identity and adolescence, and Domee Shi infuses her film with joy, humor, pathos, and cultural specificity that grounds the film in a very real and lived experience – in spite of the story’s fantastical elements.

Prediction: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Spoiler: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Preference: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Documentary Feature Film

Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is a gorgeously shot eco-documentary about brothers who rescue injured black kites – the message is timely, and the visuals are beautiful, but I found the film to be unfocused. At first glance, the exhilarating artist biopic All the Beauty and the Bloodshed seems far afield from Laura Poitras’s usual political documentaries, but the more you sit with the film and Nan Goldin’s activism, the more you see how perfectly suited filmmaker and subject are to one another. Taking the footage and photography of Katia and Maurice Krafft, Sara Dosa has created a stunning rumination on love and scientific discovery in the beautiful and heartfelt portrait Fire of Love. A House Made of Splinters is a heartbreaking work of cinéma vérité, and director Simon Lereng Wilmont patiently observes orphans and troubled children who have lost their families due to violence in eastern Ukraine or due to parental neglect. A taut documentary thriller profiling Putin’s political rival, Daniel Roher’s Navalny is a thoroughly compelling portrait of the titular politician’s career and life in exile, but it barely touches the more complicated aspects of his political life and alliances.

Prediction: Navalny
Spoiler: All That Breathes
Preference: Fire of Love (though I’d be very happy if All the Beauty or A House Made of Splinters won)

Best Picture

I was struck by the way the filmmakers behind All Quiet on the Western Front managed to craft a truly anti-war film – it is harrowing and stomach-churning from the opening shots, contrasting the idealism of the young characters with the grim realities of war while never allowing us vicarious thrills or excitement through the violence onscreen. Avatar: The Way of Water may be filled with gorgeous visuals, but the story at its center is predictable and trite, the dialogue stiff and repetitive, the gender politics regressive and exasperating, and the use of real-life Indigenous cultures as inspiration thoughtless and condescending. The bitterness of a friendship coming to an end in The Banshees of Inisherin has ripples for the entire community, and this mournful dirge of a comic fable has deep emotional resonances for our own fractious time. History told through a funhouse mirror, Elvis is a hyperactive musical biopic told by an unreliable narrator that explore the price of fame and the way it can chip away at your sense of self. Anchored on the premise of exploring all the lives we could have led but didn’t (in order to save the universe!), Everything Everywhere All at Once is an absolute delight from beginning to end – action film, sci-fi mindbender, heartfelt family drama – and makes incredible strides for Asian representation in cinema. Steven Spielberg’s memories of family and his love of cinema make The Fabelmans a true love letter to the craft of movie making and an honest portrait of what it’s like to life your life as an artist, to stand outside of events as you observe and collect experiences to transform into art. With TÁR, we have an extremely compelling character portrait (anchored by a phenomenal performance) exploring the ways someone with power delights in wielding it over others, watching her delusions and self-justifications for the destructive choices she makes, and seeing her wrestle with the potential consequences for her actions. An extremely well-crafted action film, Top Gun: Maverick is perfectly calibrated to hit the right plot points at key moments, to tug on our heart strings with nostalgia… and it’s also a toxic male fairy tale that pretends to reflect on aging and mortality but really rewards men who refuse to know their limits or gracefully pass their mantle on to the next generation. While Triangle of Sadness certainly has moments where it’s interested in skewering the wealthy, it’s more pointedly a razor-sharp satire about power dynamics and the ways those can shift based on circumstances, work culture, prejudice, or even a twist of fate. And finally, Women Talking is a gripping series of conversations between women in an isolated religious community who have all been raped by the men in their midst and must decide on whether to leave or stay – the performances are rich and powerful, the story urgent and timely.

Prediction: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: The Banshees of Inisherin
Preference: Everything Everywhere All at Once (though I’d be happy if Banshees, Fabelmans, TÁR, Triangle, or Women Talking won – it’s an incredible slate of nominees this year!)

Oscars 2023: The Music, Writing, and Acting Nominees

Now we come to the section of our Oscar ballots where we start to get into some of the more “prestigious” nominees – and the nominees with a bit more glitz and glamor. With music nominees, we have both your classical film composers and your more recent pop and rock musicians who have taken to scoring film. And of course, in the original song category, we have popular musicians, movie songwriters, and even occasionally musical composers trying their hands at composing catchy ballads and dance numbers for the big screen. In both cases, I’m interested in seeing how the composers and songwriters use their medium to help support the narrative and mood of the film – rather than just swooning over the song or score that I find the most pleasant.

The writing awards encompass both original and adapted screenplay, and they can often be seen as the consolation prize for films that the Academy wants to recognize but aren’t going to award with Best Picture. With original screenplay, I’m looking for a film that has depth and substance, that has well-rounded characters and rich thematic resonance. With adapted screenplay, I’m looking for all of those elements, but I’m also looking to see how well it takes its source material and translates it to a new medium, a sequel, or a remake of the original work.

Finally, with the acting categories, we have the movie stars that often draw people to watching the Oscars in the first place – especially since they’re decked out in all of their awards season finery. While I know that the bigger and the more histrionic the performance, the more likely they are to win the award, I tend to gravitate to smaller and more intimate performances, performances with more subtlety and nuance.

As far as predictions go, we’ve had a number of precursors lean heavily in favor of some of the nominees, so there are some nominees who are very likely to win, but there are others who are tossups and we will have to make our best educated guesses based on how Oscar voters have behaved in the past.

Best Music (Original Score)

Volker Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front is harsh and unnerving, keeping the audience on edge and uncomfortable throughout the horrific scenes of war and violence. The haunting, slightly out-of-tune melody that anchors the Manny and Nellie theme in Babylon provides a melancholy contrast to the blaring jazz-infused energy of Justin Hurwitz’s score, capturing the energy and excitement of early Hollywood, as well as the film industry’s rotten and exploitive foundations. Carter Burwell’s melancholy, dark and foreboding strains serve as the musical foundation of The Banshees of Inisherin’s bittersweet black comedy, never overpowering the film and giving it a universality that extends beyond its Irish setting. Capturing the epic scope of a multiverse adventure, while remaining grounded in the family drama at the film’s center, Son Lux’s score for Everything Everywhere All at Once is a masterful blending of the grandiose and the intimate and is just as playful and moving and as the film which contains it. John Williams is one of the titans of movie music, and his score for The Fabelmans is lovely and captures the emotions of growing up and watching your parents divorce, as well as the joy of discovering what it is you’re called to do with your life.

Prediction: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Babylon
Preference: Babylon (though I’ll be very happy if Banshees or Everything Everywhere wins)

Best Music (Original Song)

“Lift Me Up,” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, is definitely an earworm of a song – catchy, pleasing to listen to, and it musically captures the right emotion for the end of the film, but the lyrics are too generic to fully match everything that came before. Everything Everywhere All at Once’s “This Is a Life” perfectly encapsulates the film’s themes and ideas about family and possibility, its whimsical and adventurous mood and tone, and yet it works as a song that can stand on its own as well. In film that is filled with wonderful musical numbers, RRR’s “Naatu Naatu” is an absolute treat that serves as a potent (and delightful) showdown between our heroes and colonial arrogance – not to mention the fact that the song’s rhythm becomes an integral way for the two protagonists to communicate with one another. Tell It like a Woman is the worst film I’ve seen this Oscar season (maybe the worst film I’ve seen in the last few years), and the song that’s been nominated from it, “Applause,” is a milquetoast anthem filled with bland self-affirmations that don’t connect to any of the themes in the film – plus we have to listen to the song a full three times over the course of 20 minutes. Finally, “Hold My Hand” is a perfectly fine power ballad, but once again, there’s nothing about the song or its lyrics that connect to the themes or narrative in Top Gun: Maverick.

Prediction: “Naatu Naatu”
Spoiler: “Lift Me Up”
Preference: “This Is a Life” (though I’ll be very happy if “Naatu Naatu” wins)

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, and Ian Stokell’s adapation of All Quiet on the Western Front is the first German adaptation of the novel, and most of the changes to the source material drive home the disparity between the ruling classes starting the wars and the lower classes sent off to die. Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Knives Out, Glass Onion, is a delightful murder mystery that once again skewers wealth and those with power in society, taking Benoit Blanc and playing with this character audiences grew to love in the first film, only to reveal that nothing happens in this film series without a good reason. In Living, Kazuo Ishiguro’s adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Ishiguro transplants the original from post-war Japan to post-war Britain and crafts a sweet and faithful narrative, though it misses much of emotional heft by trying to condense it by 45 minutes – and there aren’t enough new ideas brought to the adaptation to justify merely changing the cultural context. The writing team behind Top Gun: Maverick has engineered a taut, effective blockbuster working off of the DNA of the original film, but every time there’s a chance to dig deeper into character and his mortality, the writers take the easy way out and veer off into the male fairy tale of ageless virility and strength. Finally, Sarah Polley’s adaptation of the novel Women Talking is exquisite, taking a book that in form consists of meeting notes and transforming it into something cinematic and heartbreaking and deeply moving.

Prediction: Women Talking
Spoiler: Living
Preference: Women Talking

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)

Martin McDonagh’s screenplay for The Banshees of Inisherin is haunting, poetic, funny, and incredibly sad – telling of the rupture between two friends during the Irish Civil War and yet managing to have deep resonance for our own fractious times. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert tell a multiverse sci-fi tale with their own blend of wit and humor, keeping the life-or-death stakes grounded in a deeply personal story about family and the immigrant experience. While The Fabelmans is ostensibly Steven Spielberg’s memory film, his script with Tony Kushner manages to excavate deep family wounds, explore his love of cinema, and avoid painting it all with a sentimental sheen. TÁR is a richly layered, deeply complex film – not just because of Todd Field’s visual language, but also due to his densely layered script that gives a rich, challenging role to its central performer and is filled with rich symbolism and allusions that only deepen your appreciation for the film the more you consider it. A satire of power and the way power shifts (in relationships as well as in society), Triangle of Sadness is a sharp, hilarious comedy that uncomfortably points out the hypocrisies in our culture and in our own lives.

Prediction: The Banshees of Inisherin
Spoiler: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Preference: The Banshees of Inisherin (though this year I’d be happy to see any of the nominees win)

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett is stunning in her performance as a composer and conductor facing the consequences of her abuses of power in TÁR, not only conveying the character’s imperious defiance but also her willful self-deception and growing dread. As Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, a fictional retelling of the actress’ life, Ana de Armas walks a tightrope in allowing for a measure of artifice to seep into her performance, yet still convey the psychological toll taken on so many of the women working within the film industry. To Leslie is a story of addiction and recovery, and Andrea Riseborough’s performance hits many of the expected beats and emotional registers, though when the film allows her moments of stillness and quiet, we can see what a magnetic, subtle, and powerful performer she can be. Playing Spielberg’s troubled and unhappy mother in The Fabelmans, Michelle Williams is often too false and performative, though there are some lovely nuances that rise to the surface the further into the film we get. Michelle Yeoh’s performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once gives the cinema veteran so much variety and depth to explore – a meaty mother/daughter relationship, a failing marriage, incredible fight sequences, moody romance, comedy – and she manages to pull off every version of her character with a grace and aplomb that is stunning to see.

Prediction: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Cate Blanchette, TÁR
Preference: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Actor in a Leading Role

In Elvis, Austin Butler manages to bring the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to life without merely putting on a shallow impersonation, but by making his Elvis Presley a fully realized human being. Colin Farrell’s work in The Banshees of Inisherin is masterful, turning in a performance that is soulful, sad, and hilarious (sometimes all at the same time) as he attempts to repair the rift in a friendship that has ended. With his performance in The Whale as an obese man attempting to reconnect with his daughter, Brendan Fraser gives an openhearted, emotionally vulnerable performance that ends up being much stronger than the movie it’s in. Paul Mescal is stunning in Aftersun portraying a father on holiday with his daughter, showing a loving and troubled, kind but difficult man who can be inscrutable even as his child tries all the harder to understand him. Living features the always wonderful Bill Nighy as an office clerk who attempts to truly start living toward the end of his life, and the slight modulations and the emotional arc he finds within his British reserve is incredibly moving.

Prediction: Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Spoiler: Austin Butler, Elvis
Preference: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin (though I would be very happy to see Paul Mescal win for Aftersun)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

As the other half of the feud which occupies much of The Banshees of Inisherin, Brendan Gleeson has the task of being less sympathetic and remaining more taciturn throughout the film – yet he still manages to make us care about the depth of longing he conveys and the sadness that has permeated so much of his life. Brian Tyree Henry is the best part of Causeway, bringing depth and subtlety and nuance to a script that is wooden and stiff. While he may not have much by way of screen time, Judd Hirsch’s performance in The Fabelmans is lovely and charming, exuding warmth and compassion. The Banshees of Inisherin’s most heartbreaking character is played by Barry Keoghan with such a deep well of sadness and rage and pain that it can be easy to overlook the actor’s comic timing and the way he manages draw us in with a tossed off line of dialogue or a moment of stillness. As the emotional core at the center of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ke Huy Quan expertly shifts from dowdy husband to suave heartthrob to action hero and finds lovely moments of connection with all of his fellow castmates.

Prediction: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Preference: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Angela Bassett provides so much of the emotional catharsis necessary in order for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to work as well as it does – she brings a gravitas to this comic book film and, in her character leading a nation to mourn for the death of their king, she helped us mourn the loss of Chadwick Boseman. While The Whale’s script is mawkish and maudlin, Hong Chau is one of the other performers who manages to come off well, bringing kindness and warmth to her caregiver role, but also a tough-as-nail practicality and bitterness that is rooted in grief and tragedy. As the woman caught between feuding friends who is fed up with the ways their drama is hurting everyone around them, Kerry Condon’s performance in The Banshees of Inisherin expertly hits notes of loss, longing, exasperation, and resignation. Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic as the IRS agent auditing the central family in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and like all of the cast members, she gets the opportunity to try on multiple roles and bring lovely depth and nuance to her performance in this otherwise over-the-top cinematic extravaganza. The second nominee from Everything Everywhere All at Once, Stephanie Hsu, plays the second half of the film’s mother/daughter pairing that is central to the film’s narrative and emotional stakes, and Hsu is able to convey the sense of loss and sadness that are key to understanding just how dire things can truly get.

Prediction: Angela Basset, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Spoiler: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Preference: Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Oscars 2023: The Craft and Technical Nominations

When it comes to the Oscar ceremony, there are no categories so routinely snubbed by the telecast than the craft and technical awards. And while I can understand the average moviegoer’s lack of interest in awards that don’t feature their favorite celebrities, the craft and technical awards recognize some of the most foundational aspects to the art of cinema. Without cinematography and editing, we don’t have movies at all. Costumes, makeup and hairstyling, and production design help to build the worlds we inhabit for two hours at a time. And sound and visual effects can allow us to stay fully immersed us in those worlds.

Whenever I think about who I believe should win in these categories, I’m often trying to consider what nominees’ work best serves their film. I know it’s easy to get swept away by beautiful shots of the gorgeous countryside, but I’m always looking to see the ways lighting and shot composition serve the narrative and thematic concerns of the film, or the ways the film’s makeup choices help to tell the story.

It has become a bit easier to predict most of these categories if you pay attention to the guild awards during the leadup to the Oscars – though there can still be some surprises and some difficult calls since the guilds can define their categories a little differently than the Oscars. But given the history of the Oscars and this year’s nominees, I’m still fairly certain in my predictions here.

Best Cinematography

James Friend captures the horror of war in his cinematography for All Quiet on the Western Front, using a desaturated color palate and harsh, unforgiving lighting for the trenches and battle sequences – many of which use a handheld or shoulder-mounted camera to place us within the chaos. With BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Darius Khondji combines moments of documentary realism with absurdist fantasy and surrealism, extravagant parties and harsh barren landscapes – all of which required their own unique visual style and camera techniques (loose and handheld at one moment, flowing long shots the next). Showbiz glitz and glamour – as well as its carnivalesque atmosphere – is breathtakingly captured in Mandy Walker’s cinematography for Elvis, revealing an artificiality and menace below the surface of success and fame. There’s a luminous classicism to Roger Deacon’s work in Empire of Light, a warmth and glow that captures the nostalgic magic of the moviegoing experience, though his lighting of Black characters often leaves them shadowed and obscured next to their white costars. The lead character in TÁR begins the film with an icy and aloof detachment that allows her to feel superior to everyone around her, and Florian Hoffmeister’s cinematography manages to convey that iciness and remove through the cooler color grading, while still making room for the moments of psychological terror she experiences to be conveyed primarily through the interplay of light and shadow.

Prediction: Elvis
Spoiler: All Quiet on the Western Front
Preference: TÁR (though I’d be very happy to see BARDO win)

Best Editing

Mikkel E.G. Nielson’s editing for The Banshees of Inisherin isn’t showy or ostentatious, but it is essential to conveying the rupture between the two friends at the film’s center – especially in scenes where they occupy the same physical space but are rarely in the same frame, relying on the edit to show their growing enmity. The frenetic and dizzying pace of Elvis’s nonstop propulsion couldn’t have been achieved without the meticulous editing of Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond, knowing how to subtly tone the rhythms down when needed, only ramp them back up into overdrive. Paul Rogers’s editing choices in Everything Everywhere All at Once are essential to, not just the mood or tone of the film, but the entire narrative as they masterfully cut between every possible life Evelyn (and the other members of her family) could have lived while still managing to craft a heartfelt, emotionally potent adventure. The subtlety in Monika Willi’s editing for TÁR belies the skill it takes to convey so much of the film’s meaning through assembling its visual language – cutaways to brief reaction shots or observational views that put us at a remove from Lydia and distance us from the myth she makes of her own life. We’re often drawn to notice the editing in action films, and Eddie Hamilton’s work in Top Gun: Maverick is solid and dependable action editing that, unlike so much modern action, allows us to clearly follow the characters in geographical space at every point in the film while still putting us on the edge of our seats.

Prediction: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Top Gun: Maverick
Preference: Everything Everywhere All at Once (though I’d be happy to see Banshees or TÁR win in this category as well)

Best Costume Design

While Mary Zophres’s costume design for Babylon takes real-life inspiration from 1920s Hollywood, she also finds ways to match the film’s “ecstatic truth” by embellishing the costumes to suggest character, as well as the decadence and decay at the heart of the film industry. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ruth Carter continues to build on the work she began in the first film and expands it to include designs for the kingdom of Talokan, crafting a magnificent visual look for each of the characters onscreen. The costumes in Elvis, designed by Catherine Martin, are all painstaking in their detail, recreating the singer’s iconic looks for the screen and surrounding him with character costumes in a kaleidoscope of color. Shirley Kurata’s costumes for Everything Everywhere All at Once run the gamut from Chinese movie star, Peking opera singer, chef, frustrated laundromat owner, to a universe of people with hot dogs for fingers – and each costume not only evokes the lives left unlived, but perfectly encapsulates who the characters are at each moment in the film. With Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Jenny Beaven’s costume designs fit the more traditional, lavish period costume tropes, and while they may look gorgeous, there’s nothing especially substantial about the designs other than the beauty of the gowns.

Prediction: Elvis
Spoiler: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Preference: Everything Everywhere All at Once (though I’d be equally happy if Babylon won)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

All Quiet on the Western Front covers its performers in blood and mud, making the horrors of war tangible on the bodies of everyone who appears onscreen. The world of Gotham is a shadowy, grimy underbelly of crime and corruption, and the makeup work in The Batman projects this by giving characters a wan look – but let’s be honest, it’s also nominated because of the special effects makeup and prosthetics used for the Penguin. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, makeup and hairstyling are used in conjunction with the costuming to build the stunning sci-fi/fantasy worlds of Wakanda and Talokan. Elvis’s makeup team also makes use of a fat-suit and prosthetics to achieve some of their intended effects – and the period styling certainly helped secure its nomination. Perhaps the only reason The Whale was nominated in this category is due to, yet again, a fat-suit and extensive prosthetics for the film’s lead.

Prediction: The Whale
Spoiler: All Quiet on the Western Front
Preference: All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Production Design

The stark horror of the trenches of World War I are meticulously recreated in All Quiet on the Western Front, as are the contrasting luxurious environs for the men who send others off to die. Avatar: The Way of Water borrows heavily from existing Indigenous cultures for much of its new production design, creating a thoughtless hodgepodge of imagery devoid of meaning. Between the lavish Art Deco decadence on display and the early silent film backlots, the production design of Babylon is a rich, layered pleasure to watch throughout. While, once again, there is some historical accuracy in the production design of Elvis (especially in recreating some of the more iconic stage shows), there’s also an aspect of the funhouse mirror that distorts and warps it just so, in keeping with the film’s unreliable narrator. There’s a classical elegance to the designs in The Fabelmans, recreating Spielberg’s childhood homes and schools without a sense of artifice or guile.

Prediction: Babylon
Spoiler: All Quiet on the Western Front
Preference: Babylon

Best Sound

The use of sound in All Quiet on the Western Front is masterful – the din of war overwhelms one moment, followed by an eerie quiet and stillness in the aftermath – and it all comes together seamlessly. Avatar: The Way of Water makes solid use of action movie sound mixing, and over the course of its runtime produces a lovely variety of sonic textures. With jump scares, bombastic chase scenes, and your standard fist fights, The Batman is a unique superhero offering and has an unsettling soundscape to match. The sound in Elvis not only includes the live musical performances that make the film come alive, but it also includes the mixing of contemporary musicians with Elvis’s songs and the dream sequence sounds as we see the story through the eyes of Colonel Tom Parker. Roaring jet engines, air passing by the cockpit, the sound of the pilot’s heart beating in their chests – all of these elements help the sound in Top Gun: Maverick keep us enthralled during the film’s spectacular action sequences.

Prediction: Top Gun: Maverick
Spoiler: All Quiet on the Western Front
Preference: All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Visual Effects

The visual effects in All Quiet on the Western Front are a mix of practical and computer-generated effects, seamlessly integrated to create the necessary scale and atmosphere for the film. The groundbreaking computer-generated effects work for Avatar: The Way of Water created some stunning, photorealistic CGI characters and environments. The Batman also used a combination of practical and digital effects to craft incredible action sequences and a moody, noir-infused Gotham city. The visual effects work in Elvis is used to help fill out the environment, add depth to the crowds, and assist in recreating many of the period details. Top Gun: Maverick also uses an impressive mixture of practical and digital effects to achieve its pulse-pounding action sequences, mixing in real aerial photography with digital explosions and digitally compositing the actors with Navy pilots – among other impressive feats.

Prediction: Avatar: The Way of Water
Spoiler: Top Gun: Maverick
Preference: All Quiet on the Western Front (though I must grudgingly admit that I’m very impressed by the effects work in Top Gun, much as I didn’t care for the movie)