What Should Win Best Picture?

I have never before felt quite as on the pulse as I did when this year's Academy Awards nominees for best picture were announced. Oh, I thought. I've seen most of those movies. I have opinions on them, ranging from "yay!" to "eww". So clearly, it's my time to weigh in.

Here are the nominees: 

• Bugonia
• F1
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• The Secret Agent
• Sentimental Value 
• Sinners
• Train Dreams 

Since that announcement, I've seen them all. Please clap. 

 

There are some incredible gems in here, some utter filth, and a few that I feel more conflicted about. Most elicited pretty strong feelings in me, so without further ado, here are my VIEWS:

BUGONIA

This one is my favourite. Impeccable performances, beautiful visuals, insane plot, and a perfect combination of funny, upsetting, and truly shocking. This is the movie of all time, and I dearly hope it wins, because this is the best movie. 

I think what I want most of all from an Oscar winner is a certain level of complexity. Sure, the Academy is known for nominating crushingly simple period pieces with nothing much to offer beyond transparent and dull emotionality (and there is such a disaster on this list...), but listen, Bugonia represents the ultimate pleasures of filmmaking. Here we have confusing characters that unravel in interesting ways. Here we have a lofty plot. We are doing some ambitious things here. And Emma Stone is at the centre of it, being Emma Stone and being bald. Hello? Need I say more? She's literally bald. Give her an award. Give the movie best picture.

★★★★★

F1

Girl, why is this here? Why is a stinky video game style movie about masculine weirdo Brad Pitt doing the typical uninspired individualist bravado bullshit while competing in a team sport here in this list? What are we doing? This could be the worst of the lot, but luckily, somebody made Train Dreams. Get this thing outta here and trap Brad Pitt in a hole immediately. Thank you.

★☆☆☆☆

FRANKENSTEIN

I can, at the very least, appreciate the Tim Burton style nasty 2008 cartoon goth graphics in this thing - they are a choice, and I know one human steampunk Bugs Bunny is out there, somewhere, loving it. But as frequent readers of this blog will already know, I hated this movie. Guillermo del Toro warped this juicy, searing story of misery and self-actualisation and big strong blokes into a sort of idiotic Death Note fan-fiction with dull, weird characters and a Frankenstein who does roars. It's a bad cartoon with hideous CGI and an unappealing, slimy Dr. Frankenstein who looks like he's making 45 worrying Craigslist posts a day. I don't know why it's nominated. It's not best picture.

★☆☆☆☆

HAMNET

I wanted to like Hamnet. I thought a story about Shakespeare's dead, dying, super dead son was a cool idea and I was pumped up to find it very sad and sweet. Unfortunately, I found myself unable to connect with any of the threadbare characters, and despite some wonderful acting on the part of the Hamnet child, I was uninspired and bored at best watching this empty slog. Even Jessie Buckley, one of my favourite women, couldn't offer much here. It's a slap in the face to make a point of not naming William Shakespeare directly in the script in an attempt to centre and humanise and big up his wife (who didn't write Hamlet, sadly) only to make her a character bereft of personality beyond collecting flowers and being sad about her child dying. The book also suffers from this problem in some slightly better and some slightly worse ways. I didn't like either. Whatever.

★☆☆☆☆

MARTY SUPREME

Yeah man, I love Marty Supreme. Chalamet is perfectly cast as this wiry little freak bouncing off the walls, causing as much destruction as he can muster in relentless, unmasked pursuit of his base desires. I love how the movie makes this hateful little devil someone you cheer for. Yesssssss. Fuck it up, Marty. I hate you so much. Steal MORE. I wouldn't mind if this won, because it's just so adept at creating a world of pure chaos. It does, however, feel sort of similar to:

★★★★☆

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Like Marty Supreme, this movie is crazed. The pace is exhilarating, the performances are freakish and often very funny (Sean Penn purse your lips even more), and some of the scenes here just sizzle. I love the weird, incredibly stupid white supremacist club stuff, Perfidia is amazing and I yearn for more of her, and my jaw was on the floor for most of the movie. It's just dazzling. This would be my second choice for the win. It's complex and insane and big, and while there are a few elements that let it down (I don't care about the daughter literally at all, and DiCaprio's character could be much improved), I love how inventive and wacky and scary it is. There's a distinct creepy atmosphere to it that feels so delicious. My eyes were glued to the screen. What a movie. I think this one will be the winner.

★★★★★

THE SECRET AGENT 

This and the next two movies in this list are ones I have mixed feelings about. The Secret Agent is lush and at times tense, but ultimately I felt the story was meandering. The whole thing leads to an interesting ending which utilises an odd framing device that removes us from the main narrative, and this seems like what the movie is most interested in: lost information and the uncovering of, or dismissal of, buried corruption. Great theme and all, but the execution just didn't work that well for me. While there are some good moments, and some very pretty shots, I didn't feel very connected to this secret agent.

★★★☆☆

SENTIMENTAL VALUE

This one is good, but I just wish it went a little further. The story is concerned with the nebulous relationship between artistry and auteurship and brilliance and family. We meet a troubled actress with an annoying, distant, revered director father. He's making a new movie. Elle Fanning is in it. Netflix is funding it, which I love, because the movie gets to complain about Netflix and Netflixification. Very good.

Ultimately, while it was very effective, I felt like the emotional exploration of these fraught relationships was lacking something. You might want to kick the dad in the head while watching, and that's the point, but still... the reverence and love the movie offers him seems a bit wrongfooted to me. A very interesting movie, but with some unsatisfying holes. 

★★★★☆

SINNERS

I expected something bigger with Sinners. I liked the first thirty minutes - the set-up, the interesting different characters, the dynamic of the community, etc -, and of course, I liked that special central music scene in the middle. It was like watching Coco (a very good movie touching on some of the same ideas!). But after the flimsy fantastical introduction of the vampires, the movie kind of bottomed out and seemed to have no idea what to do with itself. It felt like a Marvel movie where the Marvel characters are all trapped in a room for forty-five minutes, saying "oh no". They break into dull combat, we stay in ugly dark scenes for the rest of the film, and the allegories for racism, music, and ancestral connection which started out so promising tumble into nothingness. There was potential here, but it didn't stick the landing.

★★☆☆☆

TRAIN DREAMS 

Train Dreams sucks. It's so bad. A guy is sad. We see him being sad. We watch him be sad while walking amongst trees. But the thing about this is that we don't even do anything with it. He's just a sort of stony man doing masculine sadness for the whole movie. It's like watching a screensaver. I hate it. I despise Train Dreams. If this wins, I'll eat my own hands off.

★☆☆☆☆

***

Those are my tasty takes on each nominee. I'm hoping for Bugonia, but betting on One Battle After Another. Both excellent. But perhaps it will go to Sinners, a movie I thought was simply okay. We shall see. Place your bets now.