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 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.
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