{"id":3831,"date":"2024-02-12T09:19:28","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T17:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2024-03-06T11:07:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T19:07:03","slug":"seymour-movies-oscars-chalkiest-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3831","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Movies: Oscar’s Chalkiest Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

The one thing I can still remember poor Jo Koy saying at his much-derided hosting stint at this year\u2019s Golden Globe Awards came at the very end when he exulted, \u201cHollywood is back!\u201d Not even crickets could be heard acknowledging this statement, which made me, at least, wonder whether even Hollywood thinks it\u2019s back. A Socratic temperament might press for terms to be defined: What do you mean by \u201cHollywood\u201d? What do you mean by \u201cback\u201d? \u201cBack\u201d from what? From COVID? From the contract disputes? From the looming specter of A.I.? And is this what being \u201cback\u201d looks like?

It is a certainty that all those who work in the Factory of Dreams are back at their jobs, which means they can campaign and vote in all their various trade competitions leading up to the Academy Awards. But if by \u201cHollywood,\u201d you mean, the \u201cscrewy, ballyhooey Hollywood\u201d of klieg lights, big screens, and its ersatz royalty of big stars\u2026well, only a sentimental na\u00eff wouldn\u2019t have by now figured out that gossamer myth dissipated into the ozone several decades ago and whatever tiny fragments remain are deflating hour by hour in a post-Millennial universe where, as somebody on the recently-completed fifth season of FX\u2019s Fargo<\/em> might put it, we all get to create our own reality while feeling empowered to throw big, sharp rocks at everybody else\u2019s.

How can any movie, Hollywood or independent, presume to grab a lion\u2019s share of a consensus audience in a determinedly fragmented world like ours? For a while this past summer, Barbie<\/em> appeared to have pulled it off triumphantly enough to have given Warner Bros. a breathtaking surge in its profit margin. But before long, we stopped having serious fun with the movie and started getting frivolously solemn over whether it was OK to enjoy ourselves so much over such a conspicuous, if cheekily self-referential example of \u201cproduct placement.\u201d And we\u2019re still arguing about it with one side of the room grousing about Oscar keeping both the movie\u2019s star Margot Robbie and its director Greta Gerwig out of the running while others bloviate about arrested development and whether the whole thing was post-feminist or post-post-feminist, or yet another marker in civilization\u2019s dreary slouch towards Bethlehem.

I shall, of course, deal further with Barbie<\/em> in the text below. As far as how I liked it, I need only quote the indispensable cultural critic Robert Warshow who is famous for saying the following: \u201cA man watches Barbie<\/em>, and the critic must acknowledge that he is that man.\u201d OK, I made up the Barbie<\/em> part. But somehow the original quote<\/a>, a standby among cinephiles for generations, makes more sense when put this way, at least to me.

The critic that I like to think I still am enjoys the ongoing threads and conversations as they unspool on various platforms. But conversation, after a while, gives way to a kind of annoying \u201cknow-it-all\u201d-ism requiring nothing more than loud, emphatic assertions of opinion with little to no room for challenges or even questions from the floor. Often, it\u2019s jaded contrarianism without portfolio (literally) as if standing in opposition to the crowd, or merely believing that you do, is all you need to bring to the microphone. I want more than that. And we should, too, without worrying about how our opinions look to others and how our judgments will be judged in turn.

And if we do like something that everybody else likes, we shouldn\u2019t have to apologize for it in the same way we shouldn\u2019t have to apologize for liking things nobody else cares for. All that is part of what used to be the romance of moviegoing and in romance, looking or feeling foolish is always a liability. But you don\u2019t move anywhere without such risks and neither does art. If we could stop being so self-conscious about what we wear in the digi-verse, we could all come back to the rapture we felt when we first sat down in a dark room waiting for transport. The movies, as we knew them, could truly be \u201cback\u201d \u2013 and so, maybe, could Hollywood.

Wait for it\u2026wait for it\u2026

Naaaah!

You know the drill by now. Projected winners are in bold<\/strong> and FWIW<\/strong> (For Whatever It\u2019s Worth) asides will follow some predictions, as needed.

Best Picture<\/strong>

American Fiction<\/em>
Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>
Barbie<\/em>
The Holdovers<\/em>
Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>
Maestro<\/em>
Oppenheimer<\/em><\/strong>
Past Lives<\/em>
Poor Things<\/em>
The Zone of Interest<\/em>

As Barbie<\/em> continued to dominate industry chatter well into the new year, I wondered whether Academy voters would do the Wild Thang (sic) and give it the top prize, partly to mollify those who think director Greta Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie got skunked out of nominations and mostly to give props to its galvanic impact on the Almighty Bottom Line. But devoted followers of this site will recall that a year ago, I believed Top Gun: Maverick<\/em> would reap voters\u2019 good will for its olly-olly-oxen-free shoutout to audiences that it was not only safe, but mandatory to return to the multiplexes in the pandemic\u2019s wake. I\u2019m not making that mistake a second time. Oppenheimer<\/em> fits the Oscar prototype for a major movie whose significance surfaces before the movie even begins. The same can be said, even more so, for Scorsese\u2019s Good Fellas of the Purple Sage<\/em> (my own name for it and I mean no disrespect.). Voters have tended to seek the comfort of Big Important Topics as a way of putting the industry\u2019s best possible face forward into its future. I\u2019m opting now for the one whose importance would have been timelier back in the 1980s in the last tense days of the Cold War. But never mind. Right now, its front-runner status here is secure, even after more than half a year.

FWIW<\/strong>: Despite pundits\u2019 best efforts to coax this year\u2019s categories into wire-to-wire finishes (as they are prone to do), I suspect this is one of those Years of Foregone Conclusions as far as handicapping Oscars is concerned. In other words, chalk is your wisest investment. The past year has so exhausted the industry that it\u2019s hard to imagine any of the nominated films, their casts and crews suddenly catching fire towards the finish line. There\u2019s been enough excitement from all these shutdowns and strikes this past year, thank you very much. Let\u2019s just worry about catching up and getting back to whatever this New Normal in the industry is concerned because there\u2019s an awful lot of stuff to make everybody nervous about the future. So, who needs horse races? Let\u2019s leave them to actual horses.

In case anybody\u2019s interested, Poor Things<\/em> would get my vote, simply because I had a blast watching all that grotesque slapstick and baroque comedy slithering out of the screen like tentacles. Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 movie goes about its sticky, gnarly business the way Willem Dafoe\u2019s deformed Doc Baxter went about his: so absorbed in its own process as to be coolly indifferent to the effect it\u2019s having on its incredulous onlookers. It won\u2019t win here, but I\u2019m tickled that I saw it if for no other reason that it gives me added incentive to actually read more Alastair Grey this year. Lanark<\/em>, I think.


Best Director<\/strong>

Jonathan Grazer, The Zone of Interest<\/em>
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things<\/em>
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer<\/em><\/strong>
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>

Nolan has been so routinely unpopular with segments of the critical community (not an oxymoron) that I sometimes think his haters invent reasons not to like any of his movies, even when they work well. With me, it\u2019s always been case by case. Liked Insomnia.<\/em> Hated Tenet<\/em>. Admired, without loving, Dunkirk<\/em>. Loved, without admiring, Interstellar<\/em>. And on and on. With other directors, as well as craftspeople in various disciplines, it\u2019s a different story. They\u2019ve likely been waiting for just the right moment to give him a party favor and if he doesn\u2019t get it for this one, it\u2019s hard to imagine another chance coming up. Except that directors like him outlast almost everybody else, even, and especially, critics like us.



Best Actress<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n


Annette Bening, Nyad<\/em>
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em><\/strong>
Sandra H\u00fcller, Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>
Carey Mulligan, Maestro<\/em>
Emma Stone, Poor Things<\/em>

All these contenders went all-out in their performances, and each would have been sure bets in other years with weaker competition. History, however, is opening a wide, clear path for Gladstone to repeat Michelle Yeoh\u2019s coup of a year ago by becoming the first Indigenous American to win a lead-acting Oscar. And, as with Yeoh\u2019s becoming the first Asian-American last year, Gladstone has earned it.

FWIW<\/strong>: Still, part of me wishes I could airlift Bening\u2019s nomination to another year with weaker competition. I thought she deserved to win 13 years ago for The Kids Are Alright<\/em>, which was her fourth and, till now, most recent Oscar bid in more than 30 years. She\u2019s not quite Glenn Close as far as hard-luck Oscar nominees go, but one fears she\u2019s getting there.


Best Actor<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n


Bradley Cooper, Maestro<\/em>
Colman Domingo, Rustin<\/em>
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers<\/em><\/strong>
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer<\/em>
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction<\/em>

People look at Holdover<\/em>s\u2019 promotions and all they can see and hear are other, lesser nostalgic prep school comedies with cranky adults buddying up with drippy students; the most notable example brought up is 1992\u2019s Scent of a Woman<\/em>, which finally got Al Pacino his Oscar well into the \u201cShe\u2019s-got-a-GREAT-ass!\u201d phase of his career. This essay by Olivia Rutigliano<\/a> says everything that needs saying about why both the movie and Giamatti\u2019s performance are different \u2013 and why he\u2019ll be rewarded for it.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

FWIW\u00a0<\/strong>(2\/25\/24): Or maybe not. Murphy’s SAG and BAFTA awards, in swift succession,\u00a0 now make him the prohibitive favorite — and the movie’s cast award can only accelerate his movie’s chances for a Oscar night sweep.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n





\"\"<\/a>




Best Supporting Actress<\/strong>

Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer<\/em>
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple<\/em>
America Ferrara, Barbie<\/em>
Jodie Foster, Nyad<\/em>
Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers<\/em><\/strong>

Randolph\u2019s already a front-runner, principally because she so deftly conveys the complex, mercurial nature of loss, a theme that makes the movie stand out from others in its sub-genre. Also, the way her character\u2019s aching vulnerability is contained beneath\u00a0 dry, if pliable layers.<\/p>\r\n

FWIW:\u00a0<\/strong>I still wish there were a way to train more attention on some of the other worthy nominees here, especially Ferrara, who to my mind had an even greater challenge in her overall characterization than the people playing dolls.\u00a0

Best Supporting Actor<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n


Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction<\/em>
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer<\/em><\/strong>
Ryan Gosling, Barbie<\/em>
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things<\/em>

I see this as, essentially, Iron Man vs. The Hulk. Iron Man wins.

FWIW<\/strong>: If Wright hadn\u2019t been nominated for Best Actor, I would have liked to see his vulpine rendition of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in Rustin<\/em> given its due here. Problem is, everybody else in this category is so formidable that there wouldn\u2019t have been any room for his nomination.


Best Adapted Screenplay<\/strong>

American Fiction<\/em>
Barbie<\/em><\/strong>
Oppenheimer<\/em>
Poor Things<\/em>
The Zone of Interest<\/em>

In case you\u2019re still wondering what Barbie<\/em> is doing here, this will provide the (illogical, unsatisfying) answer.<\/a> Whichever category it landed in, the script would have been well-positioned to allow co-writer Gerwig to get the statue for which director Gerwig wasn\u2019t allowed to compete. Too bad in a way because the other \u201cAdapted\u201d nominees are all especially worthy contenders\u2026

FWIW<\/strong>: \u2026especially Cord Jefferson\u2019s script for American Fiction<\/em>. Even though he\u2019s been scolded by some for paring down the serrated edges of his source material (Percival Everett\u2019s acerbic satire Erasure<\/em>), he managed to fashion an all-too rare and persuasively level-headed depiction of an upper middle class Black family, balanced, humane, and still witty enough to stand out from anything that came beforehand, if you can think of what that could be.

Best Original Screenplay<\/strong>

Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>
The Holdovers<\/em><\/strong>
Maestro<\/em>
May December<\/em>
Past Lives<\/em>

David Hemingson\u2019s script for Holdovers<\/em> isn\u2019t perfect. But it makes for the kind of movie that holds its elements loosely enough for voters to cozy up to. Story, structure (of a sort), snappy dialogue, emotional impact. It checks enough boxes to breeze through here.

FWIW<\/strong>: Then again, there\u2019s always the (very slight) chance that a sleeper like Past Lives <\/em>could ease its way to the front of the pack for having greater, if subtler emotional weight.<\/p>\r\n


Best International Feature<\/strong>

Io Capitano<\/em>
Perfect Days<\/em>
Society of the Snow<\/em>
The Teachers Lounge<\/em>
The Zone of Interest<\/em><\/strong>

Great Britain\u2019s entry is Jonathan Glaser\u2019s chilling, prize-winning depiction of the banality of evil near one of the Nazi death camps. As with recent winners in this category, it also has a Best Picture nomination, which usually means an inevitable win here.


\"\"<\/a>


\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Best Animated Feature<\/strong>

The Boy and the Heron<\/em>
Elemental<\/em>
Nimona<\/em>
Robot Dreams<\/em>
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse<\/em><\/strong>

By far, the most competitive race on the docket with predictions weaving back and forth between the new meta-Spidey adventure and Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s Boy and the Heron,<\/em> the latter of which has already collected a Globe along a rasher of critics\u2019 prizes. The other three, including Diz-Pix\u2019s latest, could legitimately be regarded as classics, especially the smart and daring medieval\/urban fantasy Nimona<\/em>, which almost didn\u2019t make it into any kind of distribution. Even with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) edging towards eclipse at the moment, I\u2019m going to put my chips on Miles Morales, even though it\u2019s plausible that Oscar will wait for the third installment of that series to drop before full acknowledgment.

Best Documentary Feature<\/strong>

Bobi Wine: The People\u2019s President<\/em>
The Eternal Memory<\/em>
Four Daughters<\/em>
To Kill a Tiger<\/em>
20 Days in Mariupol<\/em><\/strong>

Each of these selections carries enough urgency in their socio-political themes to illuminate a whole nation state. All of them deserve to win and any of them could. I’m betting on the AP\/Frontline <\/em>entry whose depiction of a Ukraine city under siege is wrenchingly, frighteningly intimate in its accumulation of raw detail.\u00a0

Best Cinematography<\/strong>

El Conde<\/em>
Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>
Maestro<\/em>
Oppenheimer<\/em><\/strong>
Poor Things<\/em>

The relentless march of Oppenheimer<\/em> ensures that Hoyte Van Hoytema will likely get his first Oscar after his previous work with Nolan\u2019s Dunkirk<\/em> and Interstellar<\/em> was nominated but did not win (NBDNW). It\u2019s by no means a lock, but…\u00a0


Best Original Score<\/strong>

American Fiction<\/em>
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny<\/em>
Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>
Oppenheimer<\/strong><\/em>
Poor Things<\/em>

Of course, I would love it if Robbie Robertson would get some posthumous love for his haunting, old-weird-America score for Killers;<\/em> his interludes fit so seamlessly with the scratchy, tinny archival recordings weaved into the soundtrack that you almost believe it all came from the same old 78-RPM records. But it\u2019s easier to imagine Ludwig G\u00f6ransson\u2019s second win being part of the Oppenheimer <\/em>wave.

Best Song<\/strong>

\u201cThe Fire Inside\u201d (from Flamin\u2019 Hot<\/em>)
\u201cI\u2019m Just Ken\u201d (from Barbie<\/em>)
\u201cIt Never Went Away\u201d (from American Symphony<\/em>)
\u201cWahzhazhe\u201d (from Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>)
\u201cWhat Was I Made For?\u201d (from Barbie)<\/em><\/strong>

Outside of production design, this has to be the only sure bet on the table for Barbie<\/em>, plus it\u2019s already nabbed a Grammy for Song of the Year.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  The one thing I can still remember poor Jo Koy saying at his much-derided hosting stint at this year\u2019s Golden Globe Awards came at the very end when he exulted, \u201cHollywood is back!\u201d Not even crickets could be heard acknowledging this statement, which made me, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[1228,1223,284,1229,435,1211,1224,1222,1230,1225,1226,1227],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-annette-bening","tag-barbie","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-davine-joy-randolph","tag-greta-gerwig","tag-lily-gladstone","tag-margot-robbie","tag-oppenheimer","tag-robert-downey-jr","tag-robert-warshow","tag-willem-dafoe","tag-yorgos-lanthimos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3882,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions\/3882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}