Last Cinema Standing

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Picture

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best Picture

The nominees are:

American Fiction

Anatomy of a Fall

Barbie

The Holdovers

Killers of the Flower Moon

Maestro

Oppenheimer

Past Lives

Poor Things

The Zone of Interest

For the second year in a row, the winner of the big prize feels like a foregone conclusion, and as I predicted last year, this time around, it doesn’t bother me so much. Because Oppenheimer is an excellent film and a worthy winner, even if it’s not the winner I’d pick necessarily, this whole process has mostly been a pleasant stroll through an excellent year at the movies.

This kind of Best Picture winner is becoming less and less common as the years go on: a big-budget historical epic from a marquee studio that prioritizes the theatrical experience and makes boatloads of money. The Academy Awards have been in indie-land for a while now, which has produced some excellent Best Picture winners but has perhaps diminished the award in the eyes of a public baffled by some of the more arty and outré choices.

But, a movie like Oppenheimer is exactly the kind of movie the average moviegoer imagines when he thinks of a Best Picture winner. Over the years, people have complained a lot about the scourge of “Oscar bait,” but my impression is that most people don’t actually know what they mean when they say that. Sure, the occasional Judy will slip through the cracks, but by and large, the Academy Awards are far different today than they were even 20 years ago.

While there is plenty of room for improvement, the stories and storytellers are more diverse, the styles of the nominated films are more daring, and the variety of films being rewarded is greater than ever. It’s a golden age for the gold standard of Hollywood filmmaking, and the industry is better off for it.

There is a pretty clear consensus on this year’s winner, but in an effort to give every nominee its moment in the sun, we will still rank them here from least likely to most likely to win:

Past Lives

This has become a more common occurrence since the Academy expanded its lineup to 10 nominees – the small, well written indie sliding into the Best Picture slate on the strength of members’ general love for the film. These films don’t usually show up in the crafts categories. Sometimes, they pick up an acting nomination or two. Sometimes, they don’t. Regardless of any of that, the filmmakers can always say they had a Best Picture nominee, and that’s not nothing.

American Fiction

If Cord Jefferson keeps making movies with this much wit and heart and intelligence, he’ll keep getting invited to the Oscars. American Fiction is exactly the kind of movie that benefits from this kind of awards attention. I know people who would never have sought it out but for hearing that it was in the mix for a couple Oscars. That’s the power of the Academy Awards. That’s also why it’s so important for the Academy to recognize different voices and amplify voices that otherwise would be drowned out by the din of a fast-moving industry. I look forward to whatever Jefferson makes next.

Maestro

It’s going to happen one of these days. Bradley Cooper is going to make his Oppenheimer, a film that is undeniable, that will finally carry him up onto the Oscars stage. He’ll probably win for directing, maybe even acting, too. That future is out there because Cooper is too talented and cares too much to stop making the art he loves. His movies really haven’t hit for me yet, but I’m never going to knock a filmmaker for following his passion.

Barbie

On paper, it’s pretty remarkable that Barbie made it to the dance at all. On paper, it’s a two-hour toy commercial produced by Mattel. On paper, it’s another chink in the armor that keeps art safe from the data-driven, finance-bro hell the rest of us find ourselves living in. But, that’s on paper. Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren’t worried about how things might look on paper. They were concerned with bringing to life a smart, funny, insightful fantasy about how hard it is to be human, even if you’re a doll. It’s a beautiful statement and further proof that Gerwig is one of her generation’s finest filmmakers.

The Zone of Interest

There should be a place for something this experimental every year. Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama looks different from any World War II movie you have ever seen. It sounds different. It feels different. Largely, that’s because Glazer just is a different kind of filmmaker, unafraid to take chances, to challenge the audience, and to reflect the worst of our shared history back at us. This is a monumental achievement that will be studied and discussed for years to come.

Anatomy of a Fall

From 1946-2010, just 10 films won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and got nominated for Best Picture. Of the past 12 Palme d’Or winners since 2011, it has happened five times. Anatomy of a Fall is the latest film to pull this impressive double act and further evidence of expanding tastes within the Academy and a willingness to look beyond American shores for great films. And, make no mistake: Justine Triet’s courtroom thriller is a great film. Simply put, it’s one of the best of the year.

Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film might be one of the best examples of: Once you’re in the club, you’re in the club. How else to explain the love for a two-hour sci-fi fantasy about a woman’s sexual and spiritual awakening that features more explicit sex scenes than you can count on your two hands? The Academy embraced Lanthimos’ The Favourite back in 2018, itself more subversive than it might first appear, and now he’s in the club, which is great if it means he’s going to bring more weirdos like this along with him.

The Holdovers

This is the kind of quiet, generous movie that people can love easily, and it will appear near the top of a lot of ballots, if not right at the top. If Oppenheimer somehow doesn’t win a majority of votes from the first ballot, interesting possibilities open up, like everybody’s second-favorite film of the year possibly moving into pole position. I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but it’s far from the least likely scenario.

Killers of the Flower Moon

A favorite discussion type among film fans is: What director has the best four-film run? Or, what director started their career best? Or something similar. A rarely discussed topic is: What director ended his career on the best run? Unfortunately, even great directors have been known to toss out a few clunkers toward the ends of their careers. That’s why Quentin Tarantino has been adamant about retiring after 10 films. He wants to protect his legacy.

With that in mind, look at Scorsese’s four most recent films: Killers of the Flower Moon, The Irishman, Silence, and The Wolf of Wall Street. I want Scorsese to continue making movies forever, but if he announced his retirement tomorrow, there’s an argument to be made that this is the greatest closing chapter to a career ever. None of those movies will have won Best Picture, but Scorsese is beyond needing our validation. It’s his world. We’re just lucky to live in it.

Oppenheimer

Going back to 2018, Oppenheimer slots in quite nicely behind Parasite as the second-best winner of Best Picture in recent times. It’s a little tougher to challenge the winners from 2013-2017, when the Academy went on what I believe to be an all-timer run: 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, Spotlight, Moonlight, and The Shape of Water. Not a clunker among them and at least two among the greatest Best Picture winners of all time.

Anyway, it’s probably too early to start talking legacy. Let’s let Christopher Nolan and team celebrate their moment without viewing it through the lens of history. There will be plenty of time to talk about that later. For now, we can simply marvel at a movie that so captured the imagination of the public that for about a month there, we were all talking about J. Robert Oppenheimer (and Barbie, too). That’s what great movies do. They capture the imagination. And, that’s what great Best Picture winners do, too. Oppenheimer will be a great Best Picture winner.

Will win: Oppenheimer

Should win: Killers of the Flower Moon

Should have been here: All of Us Strangers

A note about my favorite snub: I named Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers the best film of the year, so yes, I think it should be in the Best Picture lineup. Even when there was buzz around the actors and the screenplay, a nomination in the top category was always a long shot. That’s okay. Not every great film makes it to the big show. I hope more people check out this gem of a film anyway. It’s a life-changer.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

Best Director

The nominees are:

Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things

Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon

Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

Glazer is one of the most fascinating filmmakers of the 21st century. He has made just four features in 24 years. Each one of them is a penetrating psychodrama largely about humanity’s worst impulses. He’s also probably most recognizable as the director of the landmark music video for Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity,” one of the defining videos of the ‘90s.

The Zone of Interest is exactly the kind of film the Directors Branch of the Academy likes to nominate in that Glazer’s directorial stamp is all over it. Films are, of course, collaborative, and the acting, sound design, production design, cinematography, and everything else on this picture are superb, but there is not a frame in this movie that does not have Glazer’s authorial hand guiding it. It’s a Holocaust movie, and it’s an experimental art picture, but it’s also a probing domestic drama. Only Glazer could make all of those things fit into one package and make that package as perfect as this.

Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things

Lanthimos is one of the giants of international cinema right now and one of my favorite filmmakers working today. He broke into the public consciousness with his second solo feature, 2009’s Dogtooth, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. He pretty quickly made the leap to English-language features with 2015’s magnificent The Lobster, and his recent creative partnership with Emma Stone seems to have been invigorating for both. Every time she accepts an award for this film, she credits her friend “Yorgo” with bringing out the best in her.

Poor Things is a Lanthimos film, through and through. It is highly stylized, darkly funny, and sometimes just plain weird in the best ways. But, it may also be evidence that Lanthimos is lightening up a little bit. Films like Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer have had laughs, but they have always been couched in a weary despair, a bleakness that reminds of Lars Von Trier, among others. Poor Things, on the other hand, offers a joy of discovery, a wonderment that his other films lack, a note of hope that maybe this world could be a little better. It’s an interesting color on Lanthimos. I think I like it.

Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

A Nolan Oscar win has felt inevitable for quite some time now, and I don’t just mean for Oppenheimer specifically. I mean the general air around Nolan is that he is the kind of filmmaker who should have an Academy Award. He represents exactly what the Academy and the industry at large want to be. He is a filmmaker who makes smart, critically acclaimed work that makes a ton of money every single time out, a perfect nexus between art and commerce.

Oppenheimer is the apex of that experience: a three-hour historical drama that asks serious questions about war, science, and humanity’s capacity for violence but one which also made just shy of a billion dollars at the global box office. Perhaps it goes without saying that it is also superbly mounted, an epic tale that makes space for real human drama. It’s a truly remarkable achievement.

Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon

This makes an even 10 Best Director nominations for Martin Scorsese, breaking a tie with Steven Spielberg as the most nominated living director. Woody Allen is sitting at seven, and those are the only three living directors with more than even four nominations. It’s an exclusive club, is what I’m saying, and Scorsese sits at the head of the table. William Wyler is the most nominated director ever with 12. It’s not off the table for Scorsese to get there, but let’s not get greedy. It’s enough to appreciate what’s right in front of us.

And, what’s right in front of us is one of the greatest filmographies of any American director in the history of the medium. Here are some of the movies he was not nominated for Best Director for: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, After Hours, Cape Fear, and Silence. Any one of those would be the best film on almost any other director’s resumé. That’s not even to mention Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed, or The Wolf of Wall Street.

The point is that we have to stop ourselves from getting complacent with a director like Scorsese – or, I should say, with Scorsese; there are no other directors like Scorsese. Killers of the Flower Moon is a masterpiece. It’s not normal for a director just to be churning out masterpieces. This is special in a way we are unlikely ever to see again. It’s an event. It’s a privilege to live at a time when he is making new movies. It’s important that we acknowledge that.

Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

Lina Wertmüller. Jane Campion. Sofia Coppola. Kathryn Bigelow. Greta Gerwig. Chloé Zhao. Emerald Fennell. Triet. Those are the eight women ever nominated for Best Director. Hopefully, in the near future, the list will be too long to include without looking foolish. As always, it also feels fair to point out that Zhao is the only woman of color on the list, and among the six black directors ever nominated for this award, none has been a woman.

The honor is well-deserved for Triet, who also joined Campion in 2023 as the only women ever to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Anatomy of a Fall is a masterwork of tension and storytelling, one of the finest courtroom dramas ever made, and a brilliant psychological thriller. It’s the kind of calling card a director can point to for the rest of her career and say, ‘If you give me what I need, I can give you one of these.’

The final analysis

It’s a little surprising that this is just Nolan’s second nomination for Best Director, given his status within the industry, but I think there’s a part of the Academy that has always been a little wary of the director’s weirder impulses. Films like The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar perhaps veered too closely to science-fiction for the high-minded Directors Branch. Even with the respectability Nolan lends them, superhero movies like the Dark Knight trilogy are outside the Academy’s wheelhouse.

No, they needed him to make something like Oppenheimer to feel comfortable fully embracing him. Well, he has made that now. And, here they are, ready to fully embrace him. It’s his time.

Will win: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Should win: Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon

Should have been here: Emerald Fennell for Saltburn

A note about my favorite snub: I could have gone with Gerwig here, too, or Radu Jude for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, but it feels like Saltburn got a bad rap from the beginning. Critics thought it was beneath them and kind of buried it, apart from the many internet memes it inspired. The Academy didn’t bite. It seems in some circles, it’s almost embarrassing to admit you like this candy-coated thriller. That’s, of course, silly. Like what you like. I like Saltburn, and Fennell has the goods. And when the tide turns on this movie in five years and folks try to claim they were on board from the beginning, don’t let them forget how they missed the boat.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Annette Bening in Nyad

Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall

Carey Mulligan in Maestro

Emma Stone in Poor Things

Annette Bening in Nyad

Bening is one of the more prominent cases of Oscars bridesmaid syndrome, having been nominated for an Academy Award now five times without a win over four consecutive decades. Nyad represents her first nomination since 2010 for The Kids Are All Right, though for my money, she was absolutely robbed for career-best work in Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women in 2016.

Diana Nyad is an interesting figure. She’s prickly and difficult and hard to love, and Bening makes the decision not to soften any of the edges, engaging directly with the kind of intensity and single-mindedness it would take to pull off the athletic feats she does. It’s actually an incredibly daring choice for the performer, which is not even to get into the physicality of the role. Of course, portraying a top-level athlete exacts an immense physical toll, and Bening went all the way there, as well.

Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

It’s telling that in a Martin Scoresese picture also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, Gladstone is the standout. Her Mollie Kyle is the heart of the story, and Gladstone is the heart of the film. She demonstrates a remarkable stillness and reserve that contrasts perfectly with the weasley operator played by DiCaprio. It’s a star-making part that should put Gladstone in a position to do whatever she wants with her career.

Throughout this season and throughout the promotion of the film, she has spoken eloquently about the history of indigenous portrayals in Hollywood, the treatment of native peoples by the government, and the need for greater representation in all media. It cannot be easy to be thrust into the position of speaking for an entire population, but Gladstone has handled the responsibility with dignity and grace. Here’s hoping this marks a real turning point for indigenous actors in the industry.

Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall

From my piece on the best performances of 2023, where I placed Hüller’s performance at the top of the list: “I have heard this character called cold. Some have suggested she is a sociopath. These are simplistic readings of a woman who will not be pinned down so easily. The script by [Justine] Triet and her partner, Arthur Harari, is of course superb, but it is Hüller who makes every moment sing. The tension derives from the disconnect between what we see in this character, what we know about her, and what we can never know, and few actors are as capable of living in that kind of tension the way Hüller does here. Love her, hate her, that’s not the point. Because of Hüller, we understand her, and that is so much more interesting.”

Carey Mulligan in Maestro

I can’t say with any certainty that Bening will ever win one of these things, despite being a wonderfully talented performer. However, I feel fairly certain Mulligan, who is on a similar trajectory, will eventually get over the hump. This is Mulligan’s third career nomination, all for Best Actress. Her previous nods came for An Education in 2009, when she was just 24, and for Promising Young Woman in 2020.

Across dark dramas and thrillers like Wildlife, Shame, and Drive, she has proven herself one of the most adept performers in film at digging into the psychology of a character and making that inner life manifest on screen. She is one of my favorite actresses working today. I would not call Maestro one of her best roles, though she does a wonderful job with the material she is given. It is a highly technical role, calling for an incredibly specific accent as well as all manner of tics and mannerisms. But, the character is rarely given the opportunity to shine apart from her effect on the protagonist of the film.

Emma Stone in Poor Things

From my piece on the best performances of 2023, where I placed Stone at No. 2: “There is nothing studied about Stone’s take on Bella Baxter, which is important since Bella begins as a character unstudied in just about everything. The beauty of the performance comes in the joy of discovery. Bella lives in the here and now because as far as she knows, she has no past and the future is boundless. Stone makes us believe she is learning everything in the moment it comes to her – the freedom of dance, the pleasures of the flesh, the sting of inequality. … With Poor Things, the 35-year-old performer has planted her flag on the mountaintop. No doubt, there will be future mountains to climb and flags to plant.”

This is Stone’s fourth acting nomination at the Oscars. She is also a nominated producer on Poor Things, making her just the second woman ever nominated for both awards for the same film. She joins Frances McDormand, who won Best Actress and Best Picture for Nomadland in 2020. Stone has one previous win for Best Actress for La La Land in 2016. Her other prior nominations came for Supporting Actress in Birdman and The Favourite.

The final analysis

This is the only major race with some manner of intrigue, and it will be difficult to know exactly who has the edge here right up until the envelope is opened tomorrow night. It’s a battle between Gladstone and Stone, though of course, to call it a battle adds a competitive element that is fun for us but does not exist between the two performers. As the awards season has gone on, they have been nothing but gracious in interviews and thrilled for each other when winning awards, which has happened a lot.

At the Golden Globes, Stone won for best actress in a comedy, while Gladstone took home the drama award. Gladstone delivered a tremendously powerful speech that in most years would have sealed the victory for her. Then, Stone won the Critics Choice Award and the BAFTA, while Gladstone was not even nominated by the BAFTAs. The momentum seemed to be swinging that direction, but then Gladstone triumphed at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and that flipped things back toward her.

So, at this stage, I would call it neck and neck, with a slight edge to Gladstone after the SAG win. The SAG winners have matched the Oscar winners 4-for-4 in each of the past two years. Last year, Brendan Fraser’s SAG win was how we knew he had pulled away from Austin Butler in Best Actor, while Jamie Lee Curtis’ win was the way we learned she was inching ahead of Angela Bassett in Supporting Actress. So, I’m predicting Gladstone here for what will be a historic win. She would be the first indigenous winner of Best Actress in Academy history, and it would be well deserved.

Will win: Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

Should win: Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall

Should have been here: Julianne Moore in May December

A note about my favorite snub: Moore was actually campaigned in Supporting Actress for this performance, but I don’t have to play that game. May December has three leading performances, and Moore gets my nod just ahead of Natalie Portman, who is also tremendous in the film. Moore’s performance is just so psychologically complex and difficult to pin down. We can never be sure how much the character knows or understands about her situation, but we always have the feeling that Moore knows, which is all we need to stay anchored in this shifty story. Once again, Moore proves she’s one of the best in the game.