Well, hi everybody, it’s nice to see you. Smell that in the air? It is the absolute hunger for the golden statue that promises much for the careers of those involved. That’s right, another Oscar season is ending. Soon we shall know which blood sacrifices to Hollywood’s golden calf yielded results and which tithes were proved false.
It felt somehow shorter and longer at the exact same time. It must be the strangeness of the never-ending pandemic brain fog. Time has no meaning, but at least there were some choice movies nominated for the industry’s highest back-patting ceremony. I kid because I love. Or maybe as Erasure once sang, “how I love to hate you.” Or maybe I hate to love them?
Either way, I am upset at the total shutout for The Green Knight. Sure, it was probably too esoteric for the Academy, but a little pretension should be adhered to for these things. I mean, c’mon, that film managed to take a romantic poem from high school English class and do surprising and fascinating things with it. (For the record, I read it and enjoyed it then and own Tolkien’s translation of it.)
Maybe time and
history will be kinder to David Lowery’s unique spin on the Arthurian legend
than the 2021 award season was, but we’ll just have to wait and see about that.
Having ribbed the voters and aired some grievance, let’s dig into what made the
ballot this year.
Best Picture
The Nominees: Belfast; CODA; Don’t Look
Up; Drive My Car; Dune; King Richard; Licorice
Pizza; Nightmare Alley; The Power of the Dog; West Side Story
The nominees are ranked in a preferential ballot. Here is how I would rank the nominees:
- The Power of the Dog
- Licorice Pizza
- Drive My Car
- Dune
- Nightmare Alley
- West Side Story
- CODA
- King Richard
- Belfast
- Don’t Look Up
Look, at this point you’re either all in on Adam McKay’s style of ‘respectable’ filmmaking or you view it as a choir-preaching, unsubtle bit of yelling. I am in the latter camp. I view his prominence during the past decade as the semi-comedic auteur who gains prestige, see previous example David O. Russell. Much like Russell, I view his films as sloppy, messy affairs that need an outside voice to edit and finesse the material into more manageable shape. In short: Don’t Look Up sure was a movie I had to watch for this series.
Belfast feels like a film tailor made to caress the older members of the Academy to toss golden statues at it. A heavily sentimental affair that demands the audience “feel good” while simultaneously providing a murky narrative. Just what exactly is the father’s demanding job? Is this really a twee film about the Troubles? That third act confrontation with the IRA leaves a dissonance that Belfast cannot reconcile. At least that final scene, belonging to Dame Judi Dench, hits it out of the park.
King Richard is a highly manipulative “feel good” sports drama in which greatness is treated as a predestination and the subject matter is too closely involved. The truth of a lot of the situations feels rubbed smooth of the harder edges and disinterested in engaging with its subject matter in any meaningful way. There is no pushback but rather a reframing of Richard Williams, a form of course correction that nearly bolts a halo over the crown it places upon his head. This lack of curiosity or critical engagement with its subject matter leaves it as a hallow “crowd pleaser” that demands uplift and unearned sympathy.
And now we can finally get to the stuff I enjoyed! CODA is another family-friendly crowd-pleaser and while it is heavily sentimental, at times to a fault, I did overall enjoy it the most out of that group of offerings. It is a very sweet little movie that at times plays a bit too tropey but provides ample room for a very talented group of deaf actors to shine. Not only that, but Emilia Jones gets a plum role that demonstrates how destined for bigger, better things she is. As it wraps up though, CODA reveals itself as another indie darling that finds its various strands tied-up entirely too neatly and formulaically. It needed more moments of transcendence like the one where father and daughter share a personal moment of connection built from the lived experience of the deaf community.
Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story succeeds the most when it grapples with the material and reconstructs it with added nuance and sensitivity. I will fully admit that while Spielberg reveals himself largely as a strong musical director some of his choices do leave something to be desired. The new placement of “I Feel Pretty” doesn’t work and his choice for Tony (Ansel Elgort) leaves a gaping hole in the center. Sure, the central romance has always been the weakest spot in the material, but Elgort doesn’t give much. Still, there is so much to enjoy (newcomers Rachel Zegler, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Ariana DeBose dominate the screen) and the material demonstrates how sturdy its bones are that it can remain so enthralling after all these years and revisions.
A pair of literary adaptations are next up. While I have Dune listed above Nightmare Alley, they are about equal in my mind. Dune is an impressive display of directorial control and various technical crafts. The sheer size and spectacle of it is enthralling and breathtaking. It is a deservedly praised adaptation of roughly half of the first novel in the series. If there is one knock against it, it is that while the film manages to find a coherent endpoint for Part One, it does feel a bit like cinematic blue balls. There is a lot of planting without payoff just yet. We’ll get that in Part Two.
Nightmare Alley is another technical marvel of a literary adaptation. Director Guillermo del Toro feels right at home in the carnival scenes during the first section of the movie. Already an incredibly bleak story, the novel is one the darkest examinations of the American psyche gone to rot I’ve ever read, del Toro ups the ante on the psychological and physical violence of the tome. Strangely enough, I think I preferred the 1947 adaptation a little bit more. I need to watch this again to decide, but the original film was already a perfect adaptation (except for the Code enforced happy ending) and this one doesn’t shy away from what that one had to merely flirt with. Although Cate Blanchett as a rattlesnake in immaculate clothing is divine.
I do not know what I expected from Drive My Car, but I knew that a three-hour runtime seemed daunting. Well, color me pleasantly shocked that not only did those hours whiz by in a swirl of images both ghostly and physical, but in a narrative that was so compulsively absorbing because it was so ephemeral for the first 45 minutes or so. By the time more information is slowly dolled out to us as a viewer, we’re already locked and loaded into the peculiar rhythms and narrative styling of the piece. This was my first interaction with the cinema of Ryusuke Hamaguchi and I cannot wait to go back and discover his previous works and see where he goes from here. Truly, one of the best films of 2021 and in the upper echelon of those nominated for picture.
Plenty of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have pointed the camera at eccentrics, but few have found as much screwball comedy with hints of danger and inequality nibbling at the edges as Licorice Pizza. A paean to the Los Angeles of the 1970s, think of it as the growing pains love story to Inherent Vice’s elegy for the changing times, Licorice Pizza introduces us to two new actor stars in the making (Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman) who carry the film on their sensitive, playful shoulders. It is the gulf between the two leads, ever expanding and contracting, that gives the film its thrust and tension while finding ample room for jam sessions with a slew of guests, both major names and beloved character actors. It is in the way he manages to sneak the arsenic into a tangy dessert that marks this one of Anderson’s highest achievements in a career not lacking in them.
Leave it to Jane Campion to take a novel from a deeply closeted man and craft one of the most artistically sensual and probing westerns in recent memory. Those surfaces, particularly the entombing Montana ranch house that feels more like the setting of a Gothic yarn, cover-up the writhing passions, addictions, secrets, and miseries of the four main players. This tale was always going to end in violence through the subtle clues and hints Campion peppers throughout The Power of the Dog. What a movie! Much like Campion’s prior Oscar success and masterpiece, The Piano, this feels like a movie I will revisit continually throughout my life just to get reabsorbed in its potent imagery and lyrical examinations of the prisons of masculinity.
Best Director
The Nominees: Kenneth Branagh (Belfast); Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car); Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza); Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog); Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)
Kenneth Branagh made it in over the likes of Denis Villeneuve, Joel Coen, Guillermo del Toro, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Ok. For some reason the Academy loves to nominate him as he now has been nominated in eight separate categories, but they don’t love to award him. Anyway, Belfast didn’t make much of an impression on me, but it is certainly Branagh’s most personal film to date. Any love for the film was going to translate to accolades for him.
After so many years of making movies a dad would love, Steven Spielberg emerges with one of his biggest late-career achievements with West Side Story. There are a few issues with the new handling of the material, but Spielberg demonstrates a confidence and sure hand with musical numbers that is shocking. Who knew he had it in him? Plenty of great directors fumbled when trying their hand at a musical. He also manages some shots that are among the greatest of the year (Tony’s stomping on a puddle, the rival gang’s shadows locking like fingers).
Ryusuke Hamaguchi manages to make a three-hour trip through one man’s grief a compelling journey. It is amazing how Drive My Car never drags or loses interest but instead quietly, slowly compels you into its character study. We infer and learn so much about these characters long before they explain the origins of their pain or lifestyles. Hamaguchi provides ample details through clothing, set design, and various tiny elements that say far more in establishing the inner and outer lives of these people long before the narrative turns them from temporal to concrete. Praise be to the international contingent of the Academy for continually honoring directors like Hamaguchi in recent years.
What is amazing about Paul Thomas Anderson’s directorial work on Licorice Pizza isn’t that it is rollicking while his previous two efforts were coiled, but it is in how he manages to take his clear influences and filter them through his prism. A scene with Sean Pean wouldn’t have been out of place in a Fellini film, while Bradley Cooper’s extended cameo plays like sweaty, coked out 70s Scorsese, and the gigantic cast of bit players recalls the best of Altman. He manages to make mini symphonies out of scenes with one-off characters like Christine Ebersole or Harriet Sansom Harris that also build out the feeling of hazy memories that is emblematic of the film as a whole.
I have loved Jane Campion for so long that it would be
easy to just say I think she deserves this because I’m a fan. Partially, that
may in fact be correct, but her work in The Power of the Dog rivals, if
not surpasses, that in The Piano. Always a filmmaker with an eye for
sumptuous visuals, gothic flourishes, sensuality, and unique casting, Campion
makes a masterpiece of her western treatise about masculinity, alcoholism,
sexuality, and violence. I cannot wait to revisit this one to catch more
details and smaller moments that hint at the shocking moments to come.
Best Actor
The Nominees: Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos); Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog); Andrew Garfield (tick, tick… BOOM!); Will Smith (King Richard) Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
Javier Bardem is a charismatic devil in Being the Ricardos capturing Desi Arnaz’s wit, smarts, and playfulness. But he can’t seem to wrap his mouth around Aaron Sorkin’s formulaic and hyperactive verbosity. He managed well enough to find the rhythm in Woody Allen, but there does seem to be something lacking here. I wouldn’t entirely put the blame on Bardem. It’s clear that Sorkin has affection for Lucille Ball (who doesn’t?) and her exacting standards and tips the screenplay into her favor and giving her more to say, do, and emote. Bardem does get one great scene in a flashback where he reminds Lucy that he was great in Bataan, and it didn’t matter in the end. The business is the business, and she is a cruel, fickle mistress.
Denzel Washington brings his inimitable star power and charisma to a unique take on the Bard’s oft filmed tragedy. This version casts Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as older than typically seen and it brings a new layer, a weariness and desperation, a last grasp for power that Washington excels at conveying with minimalist choices. His reading of “dagger” scene before killing Duncan is a wonder of escalating paranoia and steeling resolve. Speaking of inimitable star power, Will Smith is legitimately great in King Richard. He doesn’t disappear into the role in the sense that we typically think of as “great acting,” but instead gives a great movie star performance. The movie sidesteps the thornier aspects of the real Richard Williams and instead gives Smith the chance to display weariness, fatherly protection, deep-seated pain, and some accent work.
But it was the British contingent that knocked me out in this category. These two have suspicious first nominations (The Imitation Game, Hacksaw Ridge) despite doing much better, edgier, darker work elsewhere that deserved the spotlight more. Benedict Cumberbatch in particular displays a range of feeling and control that makes several of his other performances seem route and by-the-numbers in comparison. It is a nice change of pace because he seems too often cast as a charming asshole, see Sherlock and the MCU, and here he plays a real person that is series of contradictions, alternately a rough cowboy tied up in a masculine prison and a sensitive queer man with a talent for music and public speaking. Jane Campion’s eye for casting is always fascinating and she manages to get shocking work out of actors you wouldn’t expect it from, and that trend continues here.
Marrying his off-stage unbridled theater kid energy with
a role that is tailor made to funnel, if not channel, that energy into
something powerful, Andrew Garfield gives one of the finest, most complete
performances of his career to date in tick, tick… BOOM! His Jonathan Larson is alternately
single-minded in his pursuit of theatrical greatness and complete sincerity, if
not effervescence in pursuing the artistic life. Garfield is unafraid to show
Larson’s vanity and ego fraying at his personal relationships in his blinkered
life-or-death quest for recognition and success. By forsaking the choice to
portray Larson in a hagiographic manner, Garfield manages to make a
recognizably real and true portrait of someone who knows they have much to
offer but flailing about in their struggle to communicate it. He deserves the
gold for his efforts.
Best Actress
The Nominees: Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye); Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter); Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers); Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos); Kristen Stewart (Spencer)
Nicole Kidman never quite gets that grating yet lovable Lucy Ricardo voice down, but she still manages to capture a truthful essence without easy mimicry. Actually, she manages to do that for Lucille Ball as well. Ball’s natural speaking voice was lower and rougher, and only got more so with age and a lifelong smoking habit, in comparison to the beloved TV staple’s whine. Kidman essays a Ball that is hardened, exacting, a perfectionist who knows the business is fickle and as a woman she must work doubly hard to keep her position. It some of the best character work in Kidman’s career that already telegraphs what Sorkin feels he must spell out for the audience. Kidman carries Being the Ricardos above the TV movie vibe that Sorkin as a director has yet to shake off, and I wouldn’t be shocked if she won her second Oscar for her trouble.
As a film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a hollow exercise in offering a great actress a lot to do in much the same way that Judy and The Iron Lady did. Will Tammy Faye give me the pleasure of seeing Jessica Chastain finally win an Oscar? Maybe. Would I be upset if she won? Not at all. Yes, she has the vocal mimicry, the pounds of makeup (both literally with the latex and figuratively with Faye’s gaudy look), and the physical mannerisms down, but she also finds moments of truth to express the drive, love of people, and ability to connect and put you at ease that made her such a beloved pop culture figure. It is a showy turn, sure, but it also a pleasant reminder of what a force Chastain can be as an actress when given an appropriate vehicle to let it rip.
I remember everyone shitting on Kristen Stewart during the heyday of Twilight backlash as a limited, dour actress, and getting made fun for maintaining that no, she was a talented performer. And now here we are with Stewart on her first nomination after a post-Bella career in various arthouse and indie films gaining critical acclaim and prestige. Not only do I feel vindicated, but I feel amazed at the depth of her emotive capabilities in Spencer. The film doesn’t entirely work for me, but she is transcendent here. Some of her best moments are ones entirely without dialog like the first scene of her washing her hands after forcing herself to throw up. Stewart’s eyes are closed, her breath is ragged, and she meticulously, nearly robotically, washes her hands while projecting an air of a spirit receding into the background.
Olivia Colman is just one of the best currently working. Not only is she completely different here than her previous nominated (and winning) performances, but she manages to carry entire passages of the film in her face as it displays unknowable, often perplex thoughts and actions. Colman never bothers to try and make her character likable and seems to revel in playing the thornier, opaque aspects of this woman. Leda in The Lost Daughter is the type of character that large chunks of the audience are prepared to judge, if not outright scorn, for her actions and her boundaries, but Colman manages to make these decisions and the character’s lived experience of them understandable.
Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar has been one of the most interesting and strange cinematic partnership working for a while. They do beautiful work together routinely, and Almodóvar looks at this screen siren and sees not only a Sirkian leading lady but a Joan Crawford melodrama queen, a crazed obsessive, and a self-sacrificing mother, depending on the project. Parallel Mothers combines all of those various moods and modes into one role and one film and they two of them are in such lockstep with each other that it is a wonder to behold. Cruz’s calibration of emotional torrents is always in service of her director’s vision, and she knows just how to make his language punch with its fullest power. Parallel Mothers is another career high for the both of them, and for that, she gets my vote.
Best Supporting Actor
The Nominees: Ciarán Hinds (Belfast); Troy Kotsur (CODA); Jesse Plemmons (The Power of the Dog); J. K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos); Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)
I’m not sure if J. K. Simmons in Being the Ricardos is a case of a strong performance or just a smart decision by the casting director. The beloved character actor fits the part of an exhausted, rascally veteran like a glove, but how much of this is just knowing that Simmons was a “type” that fit the part? He’s often so good that you don’t appreciate or see his technique, but this one doesn’t have the power of his monstrous teacher in Whiplash. This slot should’ve gone to Mike Faist.
Ciarán Hinds is great in Belfast as the grandfather. The role doesn’t ask too much from him – be charming and dispense advise – but he does it so effortlessly and with such lived-in authenticity that I get his nomination. It is the type of role that allows for the Academy to bestow a longtime character actor with his flowers. In a similarly lovable patriarch vibe is Troy Kotsur in CODA. Kotsur quickly establishes himself as the true heart-and-soul of the film. Between playing some of his scenes for broad comedy and breaking your heart with his love for his family, Kotsur manages to make a fully realized and lived-in portrait of an honest man trying to lead his family through a crossroads. He’ll probably win, and I cannot begrudge him the award since he is just so damn good.
The Power of the Dog duo is a nice contrast of what great supporting work can do for a film. Jesse Plemmons is in a muted performance mode here. Plemmons disappears into the background in a way that feels authentic to his character, and he remains the solidly dependable one surrounded by flashier, colorful characters. He never overplays instead seemingly working in communion with his fellow actor to make their scenes all the richer. While Kodi Smit-McPhee gets a Norman Bates on the prairie role and knocks it out. Smit-McPhee has already displayed a remarkable sense of charm and versatility dating back to his work in The Road and the X-Men franchise, so I wasn’t surprised he was so good here. What I was surprised about was how mature his performance was. His physical carriage alone in a scene where he is taunted and harassed in a campsite wanted me to hurl the Oscar through the screen at him. Consider it a golden star for a job well and a promise of more great things to come.
Best Supporting Actress
The Nominees: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter); Ariana DeBose (West Side Story); Judi Dench (Belfast); Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog); Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
Let us all take a moment of silence for Ruth Negga (Passing), Marlee Matlin (CODA), and Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth), three supporting players who deserved a moment of glory. Instead, we got Judi Dench in Belfast. Having knocked out costar Caitríona Balfe, who seemed primed for a first nomination, Dench’s nomination feels like rubberstamping from the Academy to an acting legend. Dench isn’t bad, I mean, she’s Dame Judi Dench, but aside from the stellar closeup she has at the end, the role doesn’t give her much to do but be a sweet grandmother. Frankly, Balfe was better and deserved it more.
Jessie Buckley had the unenviable task of trying to match up the work and performing style of Olivia Colman, one of our greatest actresses currently working. By playing the younger version of the same character, Buckley had to look at what Colman was doing and scale it back to what the youthful version might have been like. The degree of difficulty was high as tailoring a performance to another actor’s style can lend itself too easily to simple mimicry or outright mockery, but Buckley manages to delicately balance it.
Aunjanue Ellis is a subtle, quiet knockout in King Richard. Her role is a bit of “long-suffering wife,” but she also exists on the screen as a fully lived-in and real person. I immediately recognized the type of woman she was playing and knew variations of her from throughout my life. It is in her ability to appear not to be trying, not to be maintaining any effort that Ellis wraps you up in her power before turning around having to find the nuances in torrents of dialog. At once supportive, exhausted, frustrated, and nurturing, Ellis’ is a deserved nomination for the type of performance that does a lot by doing very little.
Kirsten Dunst should be on a multiple nomination and not a first, but that is a discussion for another day. Her work in The Power of the Dog is not the flashy, showy stuff, but rather a deeply felt piece of character work. She builds her character’s isolation, depression, and alcoholism in such a way that many scenes find you cringing and grimacing at her actions as you are powerless to help her and can only watch in horror. Truly, I have not been able to get the scene where Cumberbatch embarrasses her for failing to play the piano at a party out of my mind since watching the movie. It was some of the best silent acting I’ve seen in quite some time.
Anita is a firecracker of a part, and any actress is bound to wind up for awards consideration provided they don’t mess it up. Ariana DeBose did not mess it up. She walks into the film and completely owns the part and the film. Her DeBose is a wryer Anita than Rita Moreno’s sassy version, but just as heartbreaking in the series of escalating scenes leading to her near gang rape by the Jets. DeBose’s “A Boy Like That” is particularly impressive as are the smaller scenes where she expresses her dreams, demands they practice their English, or argues with Bernardo. Oh, and what a dancer! Sometimes the Oscar is coronation for ingenue and the promise of a future career, think Jennifer Hudson or Barbra Streisand, and that is what it will be here.
Best Screenplay – Adapted
The Nominees: CODA; Drive My Car; Dune; The Lost Daughter; The Power of the Dog
Sure, I enjoyed CODA but the script is not exactly the feature I would highlight as its most glorious element. It is best when it keeps its focus narrowed down to the family and the daughter’s combination of frustration and love for them. So, it’s a shame that several of its episodes flirt a bit too close to sitcom territory, mainly those involving her classmates, crush, and supportive teacher. CODA is a lovely, heartfelt minor work, but it wouldn’t say its script is one of its merits.
The Lost Daughter’s screenplay is something of a mixed bag. At once capturing the mysterious essence of the novel’s prose while also rendering those mysteries moot by over explanation, it never seems to completely trust its audience. Do the prolonged flashbacks add much to the overall portrait besides neat underlines and a “why” to explain the central character? Not entirely. Sometimes leaving things obscure and trusting the audience to intuitively grasp what is being said makes for stronger, better art.
I mentioned this early, but one cannot shake the feeling that Dune is only half a story. Granted, they announce it at the beginning with a Part One subtitle, and that was fairly ballsy given that Part Two hadn’t been given the green light yet. It manages to take a complex series of warring families, vocabulary, disparate worlds, and make it understandable and enjoyable. It explains where it needs to and lets the audience decipher the rest as necessary. But still that nagging feeling remains that we’re only getting half a story despite this one having a successful beginning, middle, and ending on its own.
Drive My Car is based on a short story and what the writers of the film manage to wring out of that short story is nothing if not astonishing. They leave the first hour or so nothing but metaphorical, as if these characters are merely specters wafting through the sets and their lives, before slowly filling them in with grounding elements. Drive My Car takes its time and builds slowly, confidently, and never bothers to condescend to its audience or assume they are stupid. It is as mysterious and powerful as it is corporeal and haunted.
My favorite scripts in this category refuse to explain
and handhold the audience about every single narrative detail. The Power of
the Dog is one of those scripts. It speaks in ellipsis and whispers instead
of big shouts. So much is left between the lines of dialog or inferred through
silences and actions that it engages you in a way that many of the others do
not. Praise be to this script for assuming we as an audience are intelligent
enough to go on this journey. It deserves this award.
Best Screenplay – Original
The Nominees: Belfast; Don’t Look Up; King Richard; Licorice Pizza; The Worst Person in the World
About 45 minutes too long, which means that the more cohesive ending point for the script just kept going and didn’t meet with a judicious red pen, Don’t Look Up is another McKay joint that is intermittently hilarious, condescending, and mistaking hysterical volume for competent satire. There has been a certain smugness in all of McKay’s films up to this point that doesn’t trust the audience to gather information on its own but instead must spoon feed them. A pair of Morning Joe parodies say that they like to “keep the bad news light,” and at times McKay and his co-writer get to that point themselves. Often, they’re barely scratching the surface of material that is rich with potential.
I don’t have much to say about Belfast’s script. It is heavy on the sentiment and its nomination here is a bit laughable given that it feels like dozens and dozens of films we’ve seen before. And that were better. I lump this one in with the likes of The King’s Speech and Green Book – films your older relatives love and insist are great. You can also consider me agnostic about the script for King Richard. The script never engages with its subject matter in an interesting way instead it merely concedes that he was right all along, even in his more questionable choices, and we should all be so lucky. A generic sports film to boot in its “underdog makes good” premise, King Richard is something we’ve seen before.
It is an absolute joke that The Worst Person in the World is only nominated here when it so deserved consideration in categories like Picture, Actress, and Supporting Actor. But the Academy wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous this year with the nominations in certain categories, so I can only talk about what a wonderful movie this is right here. Something of a romantic comedy in crisis or one that reflects upon itself, Worst Person is an intimate character study that will make you laugh, think, and maybe even cry. Throughout is an intense sense of truth as Julie (Renate Reinsve) navigates her directionless life and engages in her own maturation along the way.
What is astounding about Licorice Pizza isn’t that it manages to play like a ‘greatest hits’ of adolescent memories at the moment when adulthood becomes less of an ethereal idea than a concrete transition, but that it manages to so fluidly move through so many styles and vignettes with such confidence. It bares more in common with a picaresque novel than Paul Thomas Anderson’s previously tightly wound and controlled films like The Master and Phantom Thread. This is perhaps the most loose-limbed script that Anderson has blessed us with in some time, and Licorice Pizza remains one of the year’s finest achievements.
Best Animated Feature
The Nominees: Encanto; Flee; Luca; The Mitchells vs the Machines; Raya and the Last Dragon
Disney and Pixar’s stranglehold on this category remains strong as they occupy 3/5 of the nominations. Normally, this category manages to diversify amongst major studio (again, mainly Disney/Pixar) and arthouse stuff. Not this year, despite arthouse features like Belle, Cryptozoo, and The Summit of the Gods getting decent notices from audiences and critics. Sure, the eventual winner would’ve inevitably been the Mouse, for he lords over all, but this category is a bit dull this year when it didn’t have to be.
Raya and the Last Dragon is what happens when Disney tries to ram a Studio Ghibli film into their own house style and tone. Visually, it is an enjoyable and consistently beautiful journey, but the narrative is a mishmash of well-worn tropes and recalls a bit of either Avatar: The Last Airbender or a JRPG in which the hero travels to different lands, gains companions and pieces of the much-needed superweapon, and reunites the kingdom in the end. If you feel as if you’ve seen this one before in a different skin, well, you definitely have.
Presumptive winner Encanto is another entry in Disney’s increasingly overcrowded slate of films about a teenage outcast trying to display their worth and value to their family. Granted, there are plenty of merits to the film, chiefly the strong song score from Lin-Manuel Miranda, but the whole thing feels like you’ve seen it before. It also a bit too long as the midsection sags as Mirabel repeatedly claims the magic is dying, sees what others cannot, and tries to find the source of the problem. Oh, and her uncle Bruno flints about the edges as a mirror image figure who has been martyred for his failure to comply with the wishes and demands of the matriarchal figure.
Refreshingly small scale and more of an intimate character piece, Luca is a shaggier entry in Pixar’s canon and a welcome scaling back. The whole thing plays like a more explicitly queer adaptation of The Little Mermaid with Luca wanting to be part of the human world and Alberto being his malaprop spouting guide. Sure, the fish-monster metaphor is a bit vague leading to a catch-all quality of the narrative machinations, but there’s a picturesque and picaresque charm to the whole thing. What remains afterwards is a warm, fuzzy feeling and endearing characters that are fun to spend time with.
The Mitchells vs the Machines is a blast with a limber animation style that calls to mind Into the Spider-Verse, Sony’s previous winning entry in this category. At the heart of the story is a queer film nerd and her slightly obtuse father learning to reconnect and understand each other, and that makes even the most overdone action spectacle have stakes and depth of feeling. The film’s entire aesthetic seems cribbed from the imagination of its main character as doodles and edits appear that comment on the action. Oh, and Olivia Colman is clearly having a ball voicing the Siri-proxy that has decided to remove humanity from the equation. Honestly, a charming, if overly long, little movie.
Any sane voting body would take one look at Flee
and anoint it with their golden statue. Not only does Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s
documentary reveal a specific immigrant story but displays universalities of
the human experience. But the Mouse rules this category in a near monopoly so
I’ll be bummed to watch this whiff as Encanto takes home Oscar. Flee’s
animation is rudimentary for the most part, but that is fine. The Flash-like
animation style gives way to plenty of moments of moody, expressionistic
flourishes. Interspersed throughout are news footage and images captured from
the ground-floor, Flee not only lets one man lay out his refugee story,
but bare his soul in the process.
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