Last Minute Thoughts Before the Oscars
"If I start to become a star, I'll lose contact with the guys I play best" - Gene Hackman.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
Thank you for this great rundown and agree with so much of what you write. The Oscars don’t really interest or excite, compared to Cannes, for example, which still seems to focus on quality and artistry.
The most cinematically and humanely beautiful film for me this year was I’m Still Here, and Fernanda Torres was spectacular. Actually going to see it for a second time.
Thought the The Brutalist was appallingly bad, ugly and pointless on all levels.
Loved Kneecap and surprised it’s completely ignored too.
Of course, rooting big time for Yura Borisov!