Best Picture Oscar Nominees 2024 – Reviewed!

(Presented in alphabetical order true to the list on Oscars.org)

American Fiction

I’ve never seen a movie so uninterested in its own premise. Ostensibly, this is a social satire about a Black man named Monk (Jeffrey Wright, doing his best with a dim script) who’s disillusioned with stereotypical literary depictions of the Black experience; he sees them as serving guilt porn to white people. So, as many a struggling author would, he writes an accidental bestseller by pretending to have lived all the stereotypes he maligns. Great premise, lots of potential! But the film pulls an utterly bizarre, mind-bogglingly boring bait and switch – this is about 1/3 social satire and 2/3 family dramedy about a family I could not possibly care less about. The actual plot of the film kicks in at about the 40 minute mark; before and a significant chunk after is spent meandering from one boring person with nothing to say to the next. The lack of resolution for the themes the film addresses is somewhat excusable – it’s purposely asking questions about Blackness and its representation without taking a solid stance, instead allowing the viewer to reckon with it themselves (though the ending is a disjointed copout that isn’t a quarter as clever as it thinks it is). The lack of resolution for everything else is egregious. Every member of the family takes up a significant amount of screentime and literally none of them have more than a sliver of an arc; instead they’re used as tangential props in a simplistic attempt to humanize Monk.  I hate that this movie presents such a novel idea and acknowledges a societal theme that’s so rarely addressed and decides to do next to nothing with it. Performances can’t transcend bad writing and nobody is an exception to the rule here; I don’t think anyone stands out in a positive way. Wasted potential is an understatement, especially when such talent is involved (Cord Jefferson wrote what??? Some of the best TV shows of the past decade?!). Slot Cord into the Noah Hawley camp for ingenious TV minds who have awful cinematic debuts. 

Anatomy of a Fall

Sometimes the best way to satirize is to simply depict. This French courtroom drama examines every inch of a woman’s life in order to determine whether she murdered her husband or whether he defenestrated himself somehow. It’s deadly serious with a touch of absurdity – the loose debate style of the French court system is just as on trial as Sandra is. The film feels researched to perfection and the script is refined to a sheen and it all comes together in this glorious chaos of tangential courtroom arguments and emotional diatribes. At the centre of it all is the brilliance of Sandra Hüller, one of two outstanding, revelatory parts for her this year. She walks the line between charmingly tortured and passively manipulative; paired with Justine Triet’s ingenious script you’re constantly second guessing your own assumptions and predispositions. The film positions the audience as the jury and in doing so implicates us – the jury of popular opinion combined with the literal jury. We are voyeuristically peeking into the intimate details of this woman’s life; does anyone deserve to be examined to this extent, scrutinized to the point where a portrait of a person is painted in place of the person themselves? It’s uncomfortable, it’s riveting, it’s devastating; Anatomy of a Fall is easily one of the most impressive films of 2023. 

Barbie

Barbie is more than it should’ve been and less than it could’ve been. On the one hand, it’s just a great comedy – a shocking theme of this year’s nominees. On the other, it’s a striking audit of the patriarchy by peering into a hidden matriarchy, an extremely clever tactic that comes as no surprise since Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are at the helm. But on its third hand (this is some hypothetical Frankenbarbie), the movie is a corporate product that’s too afraid to say anything too revolutionary at the risk of angering Mattel, the corporate overlords who make a superfluous and far too silly appearance in this otherwise tight and fun package. It’s both on the nose in its messaging and imprecise in its execution, confusing some rather straightforward themes with its lengthy, borderline boring conclusion. This is a Barbie movie, though, so let’s take what we can get – a highly enjoyable movie with a heart of gold and a couple hilarious lead performances is more than enough. It all just feels a tad plastic if you poke it too hard.

The Holdovers

Alexander Payne has followed up his overstuffed, insipid, insulting nadir known as Downsizing with a simple, traditional story told really, really well. No, I don’t quite understand how either. There’s something so predictably satisfying about The Holdovers; you know from the beginning that these two clashing personalities will slowly warm up to each other and find themselves through their differences but that doesn’t take away an ounce of its emotional weight. It’s wholesome as hell, and anyone who knows me knows I hate wholesome for the sake of it. But The Holdovers is wholesome when it’s called for and when it’s earned, not any sooner or any later (except perhaps that skating montage; give me the editing job on this and I cut that slightly saccharine sequence). Some touching performances across the board round out a movie that I could easily see being this generation’s iteration of a movie about a troubled young man and an older not-quite-father figure who helps him find his potential through unconventional means. 

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese is 81 and still making some of the best work of his unparalleled career. Killers of the Flower Moon, on the surface, feels like his tried and true formula: The glorious rise and the tremendous fall of a powerful man. But this rise is far from glorious and the eventual downfall feels like a slap on the wrist when put up against the atrocities committed by Leonardo diCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart and Robert de Niro’s William Hale, two real people who decimated an entire Native American population in 1920s Oklahoma. This 3.5 hour long film wastes little time making the audience despise these two murderous leeches and yet the film is enthralling for its entire runtime; it’s fascinating and appalling to witness such true evil strangle an entire group of people until their last breath. It has all the hallmarks of the great Scorsese works before it but Marty is uninterested in revisiting ground he’s already tread; it’s incredible to see his style used to tell such a devastating new story. Lily Gladstone is phenomenal as Ernest’s initial love interest but inevitable object of torment, making the casual barbarity all the more personal. This is a brutal watch but a worthwhile one, first for the story itself and then to witness one of our best directors at yet another career peak. 

Maestro

This is how I’ve been describing Maestro to everyone who asks: A good 80 minute movie stretched to a 129 minute snoozefest. Here’s Joey’s Maestro cut – remove everything that doesn’t directly have to do with Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre’s (Carey Mulligan) relationship. That means removing Sarah Silverman’s character. That means removing the extended scene of Bradley Cooper masturbating in front of a mirror – uh I mean the scene where Leonard conducts an orchestra for what feels like half the runtime. Yes, that even means removing the torturous third act in which Felicia finds herself cancer-stricken since that inexplicably barely holds any emotional value whatsoever. I’ve seen plenty of complaints online about how this is less of a biopic of Leonard Bernstein and more of a relationship drama – yes! And it should be far more of that! We don’t need another indulgent Oscar-bait biopic and yet that’s precisely what this is at times. The problem, really, is Bradley Cooper himself. He wants an Oscar so so so so so bad. And it gets in the way of good filmmaking, good writing, and good acting. The thing is, I know he’s good at all those things; I liked A Star is Born a lot! But his performance is over the top – he becomes Leonard to a fault; it feels like I’m watching an impression rather than a performance. The film is overwritten; everyone says so many words but so few of them have value. Narrow your scope, Bradley, and this is a good, dare I say great movie. But it’s too scattered and too try-hard and too boring at the end of the day to bring its best elements – namely, the film’s visuals and Carey Mulligan’s performance – to the forefront. 

Oppenheimer

This is the most locked down Best Picture win of the century so far – and it’s well deserved. Nolan said in a recent interview that he feels he has an obligation to use his unparalleled blank-check-household-name status to make the biggest and best movies he possibly can and Oppenheimer delivers on his promise (and makes up for emphatically not delivering with regards to Tenet). It feels massive. In scope, in subject matter, in emotion, in score, and in ambition. I love movies like this: it’s the story of a man who changed history with the history itself as a backdrop for the crushing inner conflict that comes with enacting such a colossal shift. It’s most comparable to Damien Chazelle’s First Man, an underappreciated biopic of Neil Armstrong many mistook for a predictable moon landing film (despite the fact that it’s literally called First Man, was anyone paying attention at the time?). The incessant score builds a frenzied tone that I’ve heard described as making the movie feel like one long trailer; I think it’s clever, new, and adds a sense of tense inevitability – you know what’s going to happen and not a damn thing can be done to stop it. An understated performance from Cillian Murphy expertly maneuvers a man with crippling control over the future of our planet but so little control over the people closest to him. It’ll win all the Oscars and I don’t think I’ll argue one bit; it’s probably tied with five other films for my favourite of the year.

Past Lives

This is the Aftersun of 2023, the only problem is that I felt a deep connection to Aftersun and much less of a connection to Past Lives. It’s not Past Lives’ fault, it’s not Greta Lee’s fault, and it’s not my fault (I don’t think). It’s a fantastic movie that I…just didn’t quite get. I mean, I get it but I don’t get get it, you know? All the emotional beats hit me from a great writing and filmmaking standpoint but less from a personal standpoint; I didn’t feel my heartstrings tugged in the directions many, many others did. As a result, I don’t have nearly as many thoughts about this one as I do the others. I have no major complaints nor major compliments as much as I would love to praise the film to high heaven. Perhaps I loved it in another life. 

Poor Things

The alchemical formula to end all formulas: Lanthimos + McNamara = Gold. Yorgos Lanthimos is a boundary-pushing director and McNamara might just be the best screenwriter we have right now so it nearly went without saying that Poor Things would be one of the best movies of the year. The Favourite feels like a testing of the waters for Lanthimos and McNamara, a merely excellent warmup round for the wallop of magnetizing weirdness that is Poor Things. It’s a feminist fairytale of sexual freedom and hilarious debauchery with a thematic epicentre that’s more concerned with human nature, specifically our propensity towards innate violence. Describing the film doesn’t do it nearly enough justice – you have to see it and be fully immersed in a most wonderfully nonsensical world with absurd architecture and customs and characters and so so so much unhinged sex. Emma Stone, despite having excelled in myriad roles already, is at her absolute best here as the initially infantile but eventually erudite Bella, and Mark Ruffalo is beyond hilarious in his desperate attempts to rein in that which cannot and does not want to be tamed. Poor Things even includes the hallmark of every brilliant film: An over the top silly dancing scene (see: Ex Machina, The Favourite, After Yang)! In writing this segment I think it’s become clearer to me: this is my favourite film of 2023. 

The Zone of Interest

I mean no offense whatsoever to my wonderful friends – I don’t think an arthouse holocaust drama that highlights the monotonous mundanity of evil was the right call for a movie night. Despite the glowing reviews, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, his first film in over a decade, is not for everyone. It makes one strong point and you either connect with it and can appreciate the tedium or you…don’t. And I did. The everpresent smokestacks, the distant gunshots, the screams: they add a dimension beyond what’s on the screen, forcing the viewer to imagine the horrors happening concurrently with, say, a conversation between Nazi Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller in her second incredible appearance on this list) and her mother about how much she loves and cares for her garden. It’s arresting not in what’s there but in what’s not, and the film’s inspired ending brings the concept to a head. Depicting, finally, the inside of the concentration camps in the modern day as the custodial staff go about their routines is a profound way to understand the weight Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) feels as his legacy comes into vivid focus. It may not all be engaging, per se, but The Zone of Interest is the freshest and most quietly terrifying take on the Holocaust I’ve seen in years. 

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I had an entire outro written and ready to get out the door before I’d even watched American Fiction. I was raving about how incredible it is that the worst Best Picture nominee of 2023 was Maestro and that’s a 6/10, what a genuine triumph! So thanks a lot, American Fiction. First for wasting my time, second for forcing me to completely rewrite this part of my post. 

That being said, I think it’s still the best crop of Best Picture nominees I’ve been alive for. I’ve never seen so many of my favourite films of the year represented on the year’s most important list and it’s satisfying to see (I can’t be too mad about Beau is Afraid and Asteroid City being left off, they’re a little too out there for the Academy and I respect that). I’ve hated on the Oscars a lot in recent years, and I do mean a lot, but one must give credit where credit is due and they decidedly killed it this year. I am tentatively giving the Oscars my much sought-after respect – wait – what’s that? Oh, May December isn’t on this list? No, that can’t be right, read it again. And Natalie Portman isn’t nominated for Best Actress, yeah ok bud, that’s a good one. GOOD GOD you’re serious?!?!?! I TAKE BACK EVERY NICE THING I’VE SAID, THIS CEREMONY IS A SHAM AND WE SHOULD ALL BOYCOTT!!! #FUCKTHEOSCARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!