WELCOME to the first weekly Sunday Oscar summary. There are two parts of the this post. The first part is where I give you a brief take on every film nominated for best picture. The second part is my hypothetical Oscar ballot, my picks for all the major categories, and a few other thoughts thrown in. I’m providing some extra context for films I loved that didn’t get best picture nominations, mostly because they were too cool.
ALL THE BEST PICTURE NOMINEES IN FIVE SENTENCES OR LESS
Parasite: a glorious winner. Electric, important, fun, deeply felt. Makes me believe in the importance of cinema.
Ford v Ferrari: absolutely pointless. A boring movie for boring men. So happy I didn’t pay money to see this movie.
The Irishman: I spent too much time thinking about Martin Scorsese in 2019 to be in anyway objective. Somehow not disappointing even after watching every other film he directed in the months leading up to its release. Lots of things that are easy to make fun of — the length, how little Anna Paquin talks, how they all move like old men — actually makes it more interesting to me.
Jojo Rabbit: folks, I don’t know. I’m not mad at it, but I also don’t think it has much to say. Very stylish. Truly don’t get it.
Joker: this is what’s wrong with America. A remake of King of Comedy in bad super hero drag. Embarrassing.
Little Woman: I have no sentimental attachment to this book, but I had a great time watching this movie. Stellar cast, makes the story feel very contemporary but not in a forced way.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: fun movie to spend time with if you don’t think to hard. Great soundtrack, real movie star performances, really great mood, kind of vile at the heart. I like all the quiet parts, but that ending! Yikes!
MY PICKS
BEST PICTURE
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The Souvenir
Parasite
Pain & Glory
Knives Out
Midsommar
Hustlers
The Irishman
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Us
1 & 2 are very close here, they’re both wonderful films by exciting women directors. Portrait of a Lady is a beautiful romance, and the last film I got to see in a theater. It’s stunning. The Souvenir is a much quieter movie, about a film student in the 80s, and it’s very much drawing on director Joanna Hogg’s life to create something very textured and lived in. It’s a coming of age story, and it’s about making movies and finding a way to tell your story that I find thrilling.
ACTOR
Antonio Banderas — Pain & Glory🌟
Adam Driver - Marriage Store
Tom Burke - The Souvenir
Song Kang-ho - Parasite
Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems
I had never seen a Pedro Almodovar movie before fall 2019, but then in the lead up to Pain & Glory coming out I decided to fix that, and discovered one of my favorite directors. In Pain & Glory Banderas plays an aging film director who’s hit a creative block that’s lead him to do things like look up old boyfriends and experiment with hard drugs. Banderas, who got his start in early Almodovar films, is very much playing a stand-in for the director, and the whole film is speaking back to Almodovar’s body of work in fascinating ways. But when I saw it in theaters having seen like two of his movies, I still loved it. It’s kind, and beautiful, and the ending is perfect.
ACTRESS
Lupita Nyong’o - Us🌟
Florence Pugh - Midsommar
Honor Swinton Byrne - The Souvenir
Noémie Merlant - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Adèle Haenel - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Lupita gives two absolutely dynamite performances in Us. She’s absolutely vital, and the movie only works because she makes it work. It gives her so much to do, and everything she does — the way she speaks, the way she moves, the differences in the way the versions hold themselves — is absolute perfection.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brad Pitt - Once Upon A Time in Hollywood…🌟
Joe Pesci - the Irishman
Tom Hanks - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Jonathan Majors - The Last Black Man in San Fransisco
Willem DaFoe - The Lighthouse
Sometimes the Oscars get it right, because sometimes it’s just wonderful to see a movie star do movie star things for like two and a half hours. (I did not look up the run time, but I remember it being very long.) I
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
J. Lo. - Hustlers🌟
Luàna Bajrami - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Billie Lourde - Booksmart
Laura Dern - Marriage Story
Margo Robbie - Once Upon A Time in Hollywood…
Sometimes the Oscars get it very wrong. I saw this movie way late, at the cheep theater in Hopkins with my pals, and I remember how absolutely thrilling it was when she entered the film, and basically anytime she did anything. I think about the scene on the roof where she’s wearing the fur coat absolutely all of the time.
DIRECTOR
Bong Joon-ho - Parasite
SCORE
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
DOCUMENTARY
Hail Satan?
ANIMATED
Toy Story 4
PICTURE OF THE CAT
WHAT I WATCHED YESTERDAY
I watched a good made for tv documentary, Women of Troy, about the early 80s women’s basket ball team at USC. Their star player was Cheryl Miller, who’s generally considered one of the best women’s basketball players of all time. And yet at the end of her college career there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go. Before the WNBA women’s player’s just disappeared after college, to play overseas or to live ordinary lives. Miller suffered an Achilles injury shortly after graduation, and the lost potential of what she could have done if given the opportunity is really staggering to comprehend. This documentary gets to the transitional generation that were instrumental in making women’s basketball a thing but didn’t fully get to enjoy the opportunities they created. One of the most interesting threads it follows is Cynthia Cooper, who was on those same USC teams, spent a decade playing in Italy, and then came back to be the MVP of the WNBA’s inaugural season. The lack of opportunities for women in sports makes me really angry and sad, but this documentary is good. Or, it’s an adequately well made presentation of interesting material.
I also watched Robert Zemeckis’s Contact, and can I challenge Robert Zemeckis to a duel? I didn’t hate this movie. I actually think I enjoy it, even if it is too busy, and Jodie Foster and Mathew McConaughey have no chemistry. There’s a point in watching a lot of movies from a director where you understand their bag of tricks, and sometimes that understanding deepens your appreciation and it becomes thrilling that you can see the gears operating under the surface with more clarity, there’s a sense of everything falling into place, maybe you even change your mind and start celebrating habits that used to bug you. But then sometimes you just want to fight them. And I’m at the point where I want to fight Robert Zemeckis.
SONG OF THE DAY
This song came up on shuffle yesterday and it was stuck in my head when I was trying to sleep at like 6 in the morning.
Great stuff!