Since the best things come in threes, and 2023 was the year that hot dumpster fire of a film Everything Everywhere All At Once swept the awards for all the wrong reasons, we’ll need to wait until next year to know if there truly is a sea change in the culture. For now, I just want to bask in the moment’s glory of the feeling that the most popular film awards felt more significant than a popularity contest or a political sideshow.

Yes, it was still way too long, it featured a weird and mediocre James Bond tribute that made absolutely no sense and A Complete Unknown is way too good of a film to walk away with nothing. But, that’s okay. Timothee Chalamet may have been robbed this time, but that boy is destined for Oscar glory.

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Despite these imperfections, the Oscars really pulled it off last night. Here’s why:

1. Actual Best Films Won the Big Awards

Small, independent and fantastic feline-led Flow beat out big studio favorite The Wild Robot in the first surprise of the night. Later on, the great I’m Still Here beat the terrible Emilia Perez for Best International Film.

And in between it all, the little film that could, a Quixotic tragicomic love story about a stripper, a spoiled kid, and a goon with a heart of gold won five of the biggest awards of the night, including Original Screenplay, Editing, Directing, Actress (condolences to Demi Moore, who was the favorite) and Picture.

Anora’s win feels like a vibe shift - more so than Parasite in 2019, or CODA in 2021. Writer-director-producer-editor Sean Baker walked away with four statues. That is insane! The fact that an auteur picture which cost less than $10 million, made outside the studio system, can win so big is truly remarkable and so, so, refreshing. It just happens to also be my favorite film of the year so the fact that more people will now discover it is an extra kick.

2. Love of Movies Drowned out the Noise of Politics

From the host, to the presenters, to the acceptance speeches (barring one, very relevant, exception) there was just about no trace of any politicking going on. Jimmy Kimmel’s bouts of Trump Derangement Tourette’s was not missed, and apart from one clever-ish comment on Russian leaders and a softly spoken, quickly forgotten ‘Slava Ukraine’ from Darryl Hannah, there was no grandiosity, no political filibustering, no “I have to use this platform to raise awareness about this thing that has nothing to do with movies” cringe moment.

That just left room for the love of movies to dominate. Independent movies beating big studio fair, Baker’s beautiful message about the importance of watching movies in movie theatres, and humble speeches about the love of the craft and the Hollywood community. That’s what it should be all about at the Oscars.

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3. The Most Important Award of the Night

No Other Land winning Best Documentary was the exception to the rule of no politics, and rightly so. The film is, after all, depicting the devastating true story of what’s happening in real time in the West Bank - Israel’s illegal settlements and gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinian population.

The filmmakers, Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham gave heart-wrenching speeches, bravely calling out one of the biggest international crimes that the US is very much complicit in. The two young filmmakers are shining examples of how it’s possible for people to work together as long as they respect and value one another. “Can’t you see that we are intertwined?” Yuval says at one point, word that still break my heart, just as the film did.

I hope this win - a welcome shock given the dominant pro-Israeli environment and context of Hollywood- can bring a little more attention to this ravaged corner of the world.

4. Conan Nailed It

One of my favorite comedians, Conan O’Brien, did not disappoint in his first (and hopefully not last) hosting gig. He was his self-deprecating, hilarious best - with many laugh out loud moments.

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From telling Timothee Chalamet that he won’t get hit on his bike tonight because of how he's dressed to poking fun at the Karla Sofia Gascon’s controversy, and telling us, the viewers, that if we’re still watching the show we have “something called Stockholm Syndrome” - he was brilliant.

He also played into the Oscar tradition of wasting time with a ridiculous song called “I Won’t Waste Your Time” which was more entertaining than any other live performance. And he kept it apolitical, like a good ol’ regular entertaining master of ceremonies should. I want him back!

5. Most Nominations Doesn’t Mean Most or Biggest Wins

Collectively Emilia Perez, Wicked and The Brutalist had a massive 33 nominations to start the night, and ended up walking away with just 6 wins. Not only does this make Anora’s sweep even more special, it goes to show that getting the most nominations doesn’t necessarily mean the film will get the most or the biggest wins.

Of the six they did win, Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldana) and Best Actor (Adrien Brody, who stole it from Chalamet but I digress) felt like the biggest ones. The Brutalist also picked up Cinematography (stolen from Nosferatu) and Score (that’s deserved), and Wicked picked up a couple of predictable technical ones (Costume and Production Design). Anora triumphed over them all for the biggest prizes.

And so it ends, on a pretty wonderful note. If next year is as satisfying as this one and the previous one, I’m going to start getting really worried. How do you make fun of something that’s actually…pretty good?

Better late than never, they say. Except maybe in the case of writing about the Oscars – which, as the years roll on, feel more and more irrelevant in the grand scheme of cinematic things – never may soon be better. The days of me excitedly waking up before the crack of dawn or staying up all night to watch who takes home the gold on “Hollywood’s biggest night” are a distant memory.

Over the past decade, my interest has steadily dwindled. Poisoned by the politics, corroded by the campaigns, and disillusioned by the Great Deception. The kind that squints at us with the appropo amount of indifferent disgust, like Clint Eastwood's William Munny in Unforgiven, reminding us all that deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.

The frivolous nature of the Oscars is becoming so apparent to me, that even when artists I love deservedly get nominated or even win, it doesn’t register like it used to. Christopher Nolan finally got his Oscar last year, and Oppenheimer deservedly swept up some big awards, but none of that fundamentally changes the quality of the film, or my perception of it. And I say this as someone who, against all odds, actually enjoyed last year’s Oscars quite a bit. After a few happy hangover days, though, I was over it.

Now, with only a handful of films that I feel earned their place based on cinematic merit alone, I am anticipating the 97th edition of the Academy Awards on Sunday with the same level of excitement one has when looking forward to a new pair of socks for Christmas.

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The whole thing is all just one big, stale, fame game. A glitzy and glorified reality show, where the superficiality and elitism stick out like moldy caviar on a silver platter. Who gets nominated, who wins, who cares? Only the people in that room are actually affected by any of it, really, and even then, sometimes not even them. What happened to Halle Berry after she won in 2002 for Monster’s Ball, a movie no one remembers? Or Cuba Gooding Jr.’s when he won in 1997 for Jerry Maguire? Jean Dujardin won Best Actor in 2012 for The Artist, and now he’s more famous for doing Nespresso commercials.

Similarly, had Daniel Day Lewis or Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson or Christopher Nolan or any other timeless artist of the silver screen never won an Oscar, they would still be regarded amongst the GOATs of their generation. If Timothee Chalamet doesn’t win on Sunday, he will too.

As sad fate would have it, we lost two such icons in 2025. And both deaths feel like an exclamation point to my disillusionment, driven deep into my cinephilic heart. Gene Hackman, a five-time nominee and two-time Oscar winner (Actor for The French Connection (1971) and Supporting Actor for Unforgiven (1992)), and David Lynch (three-time nominee and recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2019) have taken a piece of authentic cinema with them.

These giants among pygmies cared little for the spotlight and the circle jerk, and certainly didn’t feel compelled to use the Oscars as a “platform” to telegram some out-of-touch elitist political gobbledygook to the masses. Just look at the genuine, humble, no-fuss-no-muss acceptance speech by Hackman in 1972.

These are the kind of artists that just got on with it, and were simply thankful if they ever got an award. Their contribution to cinema will live on and inspire future generations for as long as the artform exists. Compared to something like that, the Oscars themselves are nothing but hollow pageantry, fading ever quicker to black.

So. On that lovely note, let’s talk about something that doesn’t matter - this year’s Oscar show. I, the hypocrite that I am, will likely watch the Oscars this year only because I want to see how my favorite late night talk show host Conan O’Brien does as a first-time host.

If the show itself is as funny and apolitical as last year’s, it might be a good time. That said, this year’s nominees and the snubs have left a lot to be desired.

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The Underwhelming Nominees

A big reason why I’m more interested in Conan O’Brien than who actually wins is because of the films that are getting celebrated with the most nominations.

International musical mess Emilia Perez leads the pack with an insane 13 nods, including a historic-first Best Actress for transgender actor Karla Sofia Gascon. I don’t have a problem calling her a she, I just a have a problem with calling her performance any good. She has essentially stolen the spot of so many more deserving ladies (more on that later) because Hollywood craves headlines.

But wait, at least the film is good…right? Wrong. The film is a dog’s breakfast in terms of story, character and, ironically, music - with not a single memorable song, and many you wish you’d never heard. The musical drama about a Mexican cartel boss who has a sex operation has pissed off every community it tried to sensationalise, with most critics rightfully hating on it ever since it premiered in Cannes. Yet somehow… it has 13 fucking nominations, a la Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring? Yeah, no.

The Brutalist and Wicked (ew…another musical!) are right behind with 10 nominations apiece. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a three-hour epic attempting to channel The Godfather and There Will Be Blood auras. It is a very good film, with some breathtaking imagery and pure cinema sequences, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of film it aspires to be. The story of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Jewish architect who escapes the Holocaust in an effort to make it in America, is well made, well acted, and well predictable.

For all the new ground it tries to break by telling a story of the pain inherent in the human condition through the lens of architecture, it is shackled by tiring tropes (the struggling artist, the illusion of the American Dream) and tiresome archetypes (the Suffering Jewish, the Evil Baron). It is, in the end, just another edition to the long list of films about the post-WW2 Jewish experience where the main character is defined by persecution. Been there, seen that.

Having just sat through Wicked, watching it as objectively as one who is completely outside its target demographic can, I am unhappy to report that it’s a grossly over-nominated film. It’s a better musical than Perez, it deserves the technical nods, but Cinematography? Acting? Picture? Too generous. The film is a gaudy, self-indulgent spectacle that mistakes excessive enchantment and narcissism for emotional depth. It also doesn’t help that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have been nauseatingly cringe in the interviews, on the red carpets and at the award ceremonies.

Conclave is an eight-time nominee, and with a recent SAG Ensemble win, one of the favorites to take home Best Picture. Though very accomplished and polished in technique and performance, it just feels far fetched in how it reaches its controversial conclusion and quite contrived - dare I say, woke? - as a thinly veiled allegory on power dynamics in geopolitics. In the similar vein of The Brutalist, this papal mystery also beats a familiar dead horse in the form of Catholicism. Can any other religions take a bit of a beating for a change?

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The Overwhelming Snubs

Dune: Part Two has five nominations, including Best Picture, but somehow missed out on Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress (Zendaya or Rebecca Ferguson), Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Editing, and Score. The most egregious of these snubs is Denis Villeneuve missing out on Director. There’s just no universe in which Emilia Perez is a better directed film than Dune: Part Two. Indefensible.

The Best Actress race is between Anora’s Mikey Madison and The Substance’s Demi Moore (with Fernanda Torres a spectacular dark horse for I’m Still Here), so Gascon doesn’t stand a chance, but this category is the darkest graveyard of overlooked talent. Nicole Kidman campaigned hard for Babygirl - a fearless film about a CEO who succumbs to her dark kinks - but she couldn’t muster up enough votes, even though it’s one of the best performances of her legendary career.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste gave what is perhaps the greatest individual performance of the year, male or female, in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths and got overlooked in the most shameful of snubs. Zendaya (Challengers), Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Amy Adams (Nightbitch) all gave powerful, nuanced performances that would’ve made infinitely more sense than Gascon or Erivo.

Then there are the great movies that got completely shut out. Challengers, Hard Truths, Babygirl, All We Imagine As Light, Vermiglio, Kneecap, Furiosa and Hit Man could’ve and should’ve all been contenders in at least one category or more. The fact that they get overlooked while Emilia Perez and Wicked have 23 nominations gives me the same heebie-jeebies that that hot garbage Everything Everywhere All At Once gave me two years ago.

None of this is okay, so what’s the point of even watching?

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Reasons to Still Watch

Once we pass the weakest of the Oscar heavyweights, we do get to some good stuff.

A Complete Unknown and Anora, nominated eight and six times respectively, are pure-hearted artistic expressions, alive with a youthful exuberance that feel like breaths of fresh air in an otherwise stuffy and crammed crowd of mundane Oscar bait.

Anora is my favorite film of the year so I’d give it everything it’s nominated for (including Yuriy Borisov for Best Supporting Actor, the first time a Russian has been nominated in over five decades!). I’d also give Chalamet the Best Actor Oscar over Brody in a heartbeat; the kid is a generational talent and comes as close to tapping into the very soul of a real life artist as anyone I’ve seen. These two films do have a fighting chance to take home some of the night’s biggest prizes so that suspense alone makes it worth it.

The unpredictability of it all this year does also give the Oscars a new kind of shine. Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Animated (get in there, Flow!) are all pretty tight races. I also haven’t been following all of the precursors as much, so all the other big categories (save for the Supporting Actor and Actress, which are 100% locked in) do have a fair bit of room for suspense.

Ultimately, much like last year, who wins and who doesn’t is almost secondary to the actual show itself. If the host is good (come on Conan!!), if they leave the politics out of it (yes, yes Donald Trump is Hitler who will bring about the end of the world bla bla bla) and if they make it fun and funny, then it might actually all be worth it. At least for a few days, before we forget all about them all over again.

Rare events happen. Witnessing a full solar eclipse from the exact spot you’re on now. Finding a four leaf clover. Surviving a plane crash.

We can now add ‘feeling satisfied after watching the Oscars’ to the list of rare but possible life occurances.

As I made clear in my lead up piece to the show, I wasn’t exactly filled with optimism. Jimmy Kimmel was the host, it’s election year and Hollywood’s number one orange supervillain Donald Trump looks set to make a comeback, overrated critical darlings Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon were poised to spoil a big category or two, and well, it’s the Oscars. Hollywood’s biggest night doesn’t exactly have a sparkly resume when it comes to unbridled entertainment.

Much like the welcome strength of this year’s Best Picture nominees, last night defied odds and expectations. Oh, Jimmy Kimmel still bombed for the most part – mollycoddling the crowd with humor that makes watching paint dry look like Eddie Murphy’s Delirious in comparison. Kimmel couldn’t resist taking a dig at Trump towards the end of the night, despite being advised not to, but that just made it feel like a desperate last-ditch attempt at salvaging a stale performance than a well thought-out punchline.

But.. everything else was kind of great? Even the one biggest undeserved win of the night (Cord Jefferson winning Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction amongst nominees that were literally all superior) became a distant afterthought by the end of the night. Turns out it’s not so complicated to make a good night out of biggest of all awards nights.

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Five Reasons Why The Oscars Smashed It

1.     Despite Kimmel, It Was Actually Funny

Whoever wrote all the bits that Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t saying deserves a raise. From a naked John Cena presenting cosutmes and opening with the line “Costumes! They’re super important” to Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt needling each other over Barbenheimer, Kate McKinnon and Steven Spielberg having a moment over some ‘tasteful nudes’, the night was filled with laugh-out-loud moments and sizzling comedic chemistry.

Even Gosling’s ‘I’m Just Ken’ performance was a blast.    

2.     No Politics, Just Great Speeches

Kimmel couldn’t resist it, but everyone else did and it was so refreshing. The two political speeches came from Jonathan Glazer who accepted the Oscar for Best International Film (The Zone of Interest), distancing himself from Israel’s over-the-top reaction to October 7th, and Mstyslav Chernov, who won for Best Documentary (20 Days in Mariupol), saying he wished he never had to make the film as the Ukraine-Russia war rages on. Both speeches were buzz kills, no doubt, but both were powerful and felt absolutely right considering their respective films.

The night’s biggest winners (Emma Stone, Cilian Murphy, Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Robert Downey Jr, Justine Triet and Cord Jefferson) all delivered heartfelt speeches, without using the stage to make a grandstanding lecture.

3.     Welcome Surprise Winners

Jefferson’s Oscar for American Fiction was the biggest ‘WTF?’ win of the night, but not a massive surprise - Billie Eilish winning Best Original Song for ‘What Was I Made For?’ was also not a big surprise but absolutely among the best wins of the night. That Barbie ballad is now my favorite thing about the film.

Aside from those coinflip wins, the two biggest surprises were The Zone of Interest winning Best Sound over Oppenheimer and – for the night’s biggest nail-biter – Emma Stone (Poor Things) winning Best Actress over Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon). Both inspired wins, both very welcome.

4.     A Proper Celebration

A big part of what made the night special was how the focus that’s usually reserved for political correctness shifted to something that makes way more sense: celebrating themselves. That’s kind of the point of the whole thing isn’t it?

Emma Stone’s speech about collaboration, Christopher Nolan’s humble thanks to being considered as someone making worthy contributions to the art of cinema, and even the way the acting categories were presented – previous winners introducing each nominee with a personal spin –was all very touching, filled with a sincere kind of love and respect.  

5.     Deserving Winners   

Gladstone was picking up steam after her SAG win, and many thought she’d take home the big one – but what ended up being the moment of the night, Emma Stone won for her brilliant (and far superior) performance as a reanimated woman with an infant’s brain in Poor Things.

Oppenheimer swept with seven awards (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Editing and Score) – all predictable, all very well deserved. In some other year, Paul Giamatti might’ve won an ‘overdue’ type of Oscar, but nope. First-time nominee Cillian Murphy wins for a performance that’s not showy whatsoever, but filled with nuance and intelligence.

The two most overrated Best Picture nominees Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon had 15 nominations between them, and walked away with one win (Best Original Song).

My favorite film of the year, Anatomy of a Fall, won Best Original Screenplay and while in a perfect world, Sandra Hüller would’ve won Best Actress – it’s hard to deny Emma Stone deserved to win just as much.

It was just that kind of night – where almost all the winners felt right. And at the end of the day, that’s really the most you can ask for when it comes to any awards show.

Jump straight to:

• The Mediocrity of Recent Best Picture Nominees

• A Promising Trend Emerges

• A Closer Look at the 2024 Best Picture Nominees

• Ranking the 2024 Best Picture Nominees Worst to Best

The 96th Academy Awards will close the loop on another awards season tomorrow and put a firm full stop on the 2023 movie year. Host Jimmy Kimmel will make his safe and silly jokes, pandering and placating to the millionaires and billionaires in the room while also trying to connect, in his constipated way, with whoever is still watching from home.

Yes, it’s the most gratuitously glad-handing, phenomenally fake and supremely superficial night in all of Hollywood. Most people with a good sense of what intelligent and confident humor is and the clarity of mind to know what and who they’re watching will spend most of their time missing Ricky Gervais’ run as Golden Globes host.

The show is likely going to suck. But! There is a silver lining and it’s breaking through in the most unexpected category of all. The mother of all categories. The category that has time and time and time again never failed to disappoint cinephiles of good taste worldwide.

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The Mediocrity of Recent Best Picture Nominees

The Best Picture has historically missed the mark so many times, with its nominees and/or its eventual winners, that it’s become a bit of a joke for serious film lovers. Merit and artistic quality have nothing on campaigns, socio-political trends and historical (over)corrections. Like William Munny (Clint Eastwood) says in the brilliant Unforgiven - winner of Best Picture and Best Director in 1993, 30 light-years ago - “Deserves got nothin’ to do with it”.

Don’t believe me? Let’s refresh our memories…

Apart from a few notable exceptions from each year1, this is as spectacularly bland a mix of forgettable and mediocre movies as you can imagine from the last decade. The same decade which coincided with, wellwaddayaknow, Oscar’s TV ratings tanking harder than The Marvels at the box office.

Cinematic masterpieces driven by riveting storytelling, characters that feel alive, innovative direction and hard-to-describe soulful performances prove to be exceptions to the rule. The one that dictates Best Picture Oscar nominees must be cookie-cutter, run-of-the-mill, entirely unspectacular entertainment, destined to be forgotten within a year’s time if not less. Like Jimmy Kimmel and his jokes.

My generous math tells me a mere 21 out of the total 88 movies nominated between 2014 and 2023 have the cinematic weight of ‘Best Picture’ worthiness. This abysmal 23.8% success rate paints a very sad picture. Is it any wonder that TV ratings for the Oscars took a massive nosedive between 2014 and 2023, recouping some losses in the past few years but nothing for the suits to clink glasses and snort lines over?

It’s been four years since we’ve had a truly deserving winner (Parasite, 2020). After that, no doubt helped by the general malaise of the pandemic, to the proverbial question “What about the Oscars?” audiences simply said, “Eh..fuck ‘em”

I was one of those people. Losing interest with each passing year, tuning in (some years, just scrolling the news or Twitter the next day) just to see what happened to the one or two categories or movies I cared about.

Well, remember that silver lining? 2024 is different. After a dormant decade of hibernation, my interest has been piqued like a bear waking up to the smell of cocaine in a bad Elizabeth Banks movie.

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A Promising Trend Emerges

Parasite winning in 2020 felt like a breakthrough, but 2021 was one of the worst years in a long time. Since then though, in 2022 and 2023, a promising trend started to emerge. For two years in a row, 30% of the films nominated were truly ‘Hall of Fame’ worthy. Drive My Car, Dune and Licorice Pizza were among the very best films of the year in 2021 - all making my personal top five - and The Banshees of Inisherin was my number one film of 2022. None of them ended up winning, but...looking at it glass half-full these were still good signs.

Now, in 2024, the glass is looking even fuller. Out of the 10 nominees, 5 are must-watch near or full-blown masterpieces fully deserving the nomination. The favorite to win the whole thing is among those five. From the remaining half, one is excellent, one is better than expected, one is very good and two are overrated, with only one of those being an of-its-time-destined-to-age-like-vinegar film.

In terms of pure cinematic craft, intelligent storytelling, genuine emotional depth and every other antithesis you can think of to the typical schmaltzy Oscar-baity dreck, this is the strongest year in Best Picture nominees since the category’s expansion from 5 to up to 10 entries in 2010. In fact, it’s the strongest group of nominees since No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton made up three fifths of the contenders for the prize in 2008!

After more than 15 years of mostly mediocre Best Picture nominees (The Post.. remember that one? Me neither) and mostly woeful winners (The Shape of Water beating Phantom Thread and Three Billboards sounds like an urban legend told around film campfires to scare young cinephiles to death), we have a cracking group of nominees.

Just how cracking? Well…

A Closer Look at the 2024 Best Picture Nominees

It’s fun to try and connect thematic dots between any given year’s Best Picture nominees and see what form the shape takes. Like opening the door of culture ever so slightly for the rays of the Zeitgeist to shine through, looking at the ten nominees through that lens makes even the weakest of the bunch that much more interesting.

The theme that threads through all ten nominees is some shade of ‘the authentic self’. I promise this is the first and last time I get all academic and philosophical, but this concept was big with the existentialists, particularly Martin Heidegger.

As ChatGPT 4.0 tells us;

Heidegger's concept of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) involves living in a way that is true to one's own self, as opposed to conforming to the expectations or norms imposed by society. For Heidegger, authenticity is about acknowledging one's freedom and responsibility to make choices that reflect one's true being.2

The 10 films in the race for Best Picture this year all tell stories about characters confronting, confounded by or conforming to their true selves. Yes, yes, maybe you can make that case for every single film or story ever told - maybe! - but that is still the most tenable connection between these radically different films so I’m sticking to it.

The sense of freedom and responsibility is the engine that powers all of the character’s actions. Their choices - from the most heartfelt to the most vile - are at the core of each story.

I go through each one below, in a worst-to-best-according-to-yours-truly order - not according to their chances or expectations of winning the Oscar tomorrow. By the end of it, you’ll hopefully see why I think that, as a group, this is as good as we’ve had it at the Oscars since 2008.

Ranking The 2024 Best Picture Nominees Worst to Best

10. Barbie

Searching for the Authentic Self: A Plastic Satire

Barbie’s existential crisis in Barbieland and her quest to understand her true self is a brilliant concept on paper, but in reality suffers the delusion of thinking it’s satirising a contemporary real world, not an 1980s one.

Ryan Gosling - in a delicious bit of irony only the cosmos can provide - is the film’s MVP (and the film’s most deserving Oscar nominee). Though filled with good ideas and genuinely funny moments, the film just ends up perpetuating the stereotype of feminism, not the idea of it.

9. Killers of the Flower Moon

Authentic Americana and its disingenuous bonds.

Scorsese’s most pronounced film about identity politics where, sadly, the birth of the FBI (a big theme in the book it’s based on) is treated like an afterthought. Instead, the film’s epicentre is a hard-to-believe love story amidst the backtrop of the ‘Reign of Terror’ Osage Indian murders of the 1920s. Important history, for sure, which makes the film’s tonal shifts in the second act all the more jarring.

A good film, with great performances and moments of pure Scorsesian sorcery, but ultimately very much a mid-tier effort from the iconic director, who is sadly beginning to show his octogenarian wrinkles.

8. American Fiction

Searching for the Awfentic Self: A Basic Satire

Jeffrey Wright was born to play the role of Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, a serious author caught in the publishing world’s whirlwind of political over-correctness. His journey to finally getting published for a stereotypical caricature of the African-American experience is filled with refreshing takes, and quite the clever ending.

Unlike Barbie this is a satire that feels right for our time, but even with everything it has going for it, you always feel like it could’ve dug in just a bit more into examining America’s obsession with exalting the faux-authentic through race-colored glasses. 

7. Maestro

A portrait of an authentic artist as a married man.

Never mind that Bradley Cooper’s become a bit of a self-generating meme when it comes to his eagerness during award season. If we separate his passion project Maestro from its doomed, slightly sad, Oscar narrative you get a pretty innovative biopic, similar to Oppenheimer in how it focuses on a singular man’s workaholism. 

Cooper and Carey Mulligan knock it out of the park, and the unexpected move of putting Leonard Bernstein’s marriage in the foreground colors the whole movie with a Bergman-esque brush. 

6. The Holdovers

Authentic Americana and its genuine bonds.

The easiest nominee to recommend to casual movie watchers, Alexander Payne’s nostalgia-infused Christmas holiday movie is a time capsule to a simpler time. A time when no one cared how offensive the comedy was, as long as it was funny - and The Holdovers is by far the funniest film in the group.

Paul Giamatti shines as a curmudgeonly professor in a reunion with his Sideways director, delivering zingers with the aplomb of a man who’s been cast aside by life and stopped caring a long time ago. Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, both fantastic, complete the trifecta for a truly touching story devoid of all pretension about how three strangers can form a bond that’ll last a lifetime. This one’s for all the outcasts, misfits and inbetweeners out there.

5. The Zone of Interest

Authentic detachment

The paradox of watching Jonathan Glazer’s new film rests on balancing two opposing truths simultaneously.

First truth: you’ll probably never want to see it again. A Holocaust movie told from the perspective of a Nazi officer’s family (including their very happy dog) living next door to the screams of the gas chambers is as mortifyingly morbid and chilling as it sounds. Especially because of how true to their evil selves mama and papa Hoss are.

Second truth: The film is a goddamn masterpiece. Glazer hasn’t made a full feature since Under the Skin (2013) – another unforgettably uncomfortable experience dripping with genius – and with The Zone of Interest he has reminded the world just how good he is at using the language of cinema to send shivers down to our very core.

4. Past Lives

Authentic attachment

On the polar opposite end sits Celine Song’s directorial debut Past Lives. Unlike American Fiction, it’s harder to believe that this movie can be anyone’s first. It packs an incredible amount of emotional intelligence and lasting power thanks to a refreshingly mature screenplay (which Song is, deservedly, nominated for) and three soulful performances from Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro.

It's a love story, but not that kind of love. A deeper love than the kind of love we’re used to seeing on screen. An attachment that can only be properly expressed through the power of art.

The most touching slice-of-life film of the bunch, and a good reminder that epic set pieces, complex narratives and cerebral cinematic innovation aren’t mandatory ingredients for a top tier film.  

3. Poor Things

Searching for the Authentic Self: A Fantastic and Based Satire

I’m famously (if you know me) not big on Yorgos Lanthimos. He’s been a festival darling among critics ever since he broke out with Dogtooth (which was, until recently, my favorite of his) but I felt like his pretentiousness as a “look at how weird and cool I am” filmmaker always overshadowed anything meaningful he was trying to say with his movies. Until Poor Things.

An inspired take on the Frankestein story, where instead of critqueing scientic ambition it aims at social norms, Poor Things is a hilarious, gorgeous, intelligent and absolutely fucking insane satire. Emma Stone gives the performance of her career, and Mark Ruffalo is (unsurprisingly) perfectly suited to playing a narcissistic dick. But the secret sauce to why the film works so well is how much Lanthimos’ pretentious style fits the story he’s telling. Fantastical, unforgettable and very much alive.

2. Oppenheimer

A portrait of an authentic scientist as a haunted man.

Christopher Nolan looks to be well on his way to finally winning Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It’s been a long time coming. But what makes this one especially sweet is that it goes against the trend of awarding people for subpar work only because they’re overdue (see Leonardo DiCaprio and The Revenant). In terms of Nolan’s formidable body of work – read my deep dive into that here – Oppenheimer is very much above par.

A near-three hour epic with lots and lots of talking that passes by in a flash and keeps you glued to your seat is no easy task. The Fusion/Fission narrative construct, its play with timelines, its black and white IMAX innovation, and so much more gel so well together to create a complex portrait of one of 20th century’s most important figures.  

1. Anatomy of a Fall

Dissecting the authentic.

Much like The Zone of Interest, the inclusion of this international film (both, coincidentally, starring Sandra Huller) in the Best Picture mix adds a lot of sophistication to this year’s race, and cements the nominees as the best we’ve had since 2008. You wouldn’t know it from all of the Barbie outcry but a woman is nominated for Best Director this year – and it might just be because she directed a good movie and not because - cue audible gasps - she’s a woman.

Justine Triet won the Palme D’Or for Anatomy of a Fall – an absolutely mesmerising story of a woman accused of her husband’s death – and, just like Bong Joon Ho and Parasite, that success has withstood the test of awards season time and translated into the biggest Oscar nominations.

A gripping did-she-or-didn’t-she tale – excavating the theme of the authentic self in ways that will make you think about the bonds of relationships and marriage, the nature of parenthood and doghood, and all the individuals and creatures in those orbits, deeper still.