It’s Oscar time and, as usual, I have seen almost none of the nominees–currently I’ve only seen Barbie.
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
I do plan, this weekend, to watch Oppenheimer although I still think it’s going to be a bit sexist for me. I very much want to see Past Lives. Most of my book club loved Maestro but it just doesn’t call to me. My son told me I would not like Killers of the Flower Moon and I suspect he’s right.
Have you seen any of these? What are your thoughts? What do you think should win Best Picture?
I’ve seen 5 of them and plan to see another 2 in the coming week. I loved Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, and Barbie. Killers of the Flower Moon was too long and didn’t do the story justice. Scorsese could have edited at least an hour out of it. The book kept you in suspense as to who was behind the killings, but unfortunately Scorsese let you know up front which made it a less powerful story. I did like the radio show at the end. I found Maestro well acted but boring.
I’m going to see Poor Things and American Fiction this week. I have heard really good things about Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, both foreign films sharing the same lead actress, so I’m going to try to find them streaming somewhere. Don’t know much about Past Lives.
At this point in time, my vote would go to Oppenheimer. Really hoping both Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr get the Oscar for their acting too.
I like to make a point of seeing as many Oscar nominated movies/performances as possible, though this year I will not see Zone of Interest because its content upsets me. I have seen 6 Oscar films already, and so far my favorites are Killers of the Flower Moon and The Holdovers. I wanted to like Oppenheimer, but ultimately I felt it was too self-important. I liked Barbie a lot. The 2 noms I wanted for it were Gerwig for Best Director and Gosling for Best Supporting Actor, and I was 1 for 2. I did not enjoy the screenplay as I didn’t think it held together. The others I saw were Maestro and Past Lives. Maestro was so overwrought that it was kind of funny. And Past Lives… I am in the minority on this one, but I thought it was … fine, I guess. But not worthy of an Oscar nomination. I’ve had a long argument about this with a friend who is a film studies professor, but it just fell flat for me.
I cannot wait to see American Fiction and Poor Things. I am less excited about Anatomy of a Fall but will give it a try.
I am looking forward to The Color Purple. I am a huge fan of Danielle Brooks (Taystee was my favorite character on Orange Is the New Black).
Killer of the Flower Moon, to me, sounds like a no fun movie and given its length, it’s a hard sell for me.
I ended up streaming Killers of the Flower Moon as I’m old and didn’t want to sit for almost 4 hours without a bathroom break. If film makers are going to keep making loooong movies, I wish they would go back to the practice of putting an intermission in the middle of the movie. Every year or so, I like to rewatch Around the World in 80 Days (David Niven version) or My Fair Lady, and love the intermissions in the middle.
Otherwise Killers of the Flower Moon was a good movie and is a story that needs to be told. I just feel that if Scorsese had done some things differently, it would have been a better movie.
“Poor Things” was a tour de force for Emma Stone, but I cannot tell you how much I hated it.
If someone said, “You have to either spend the rest of your life in the worst prison in the world OR watch “Poor Things,” i’d advise you choose prison.
It’s depressing, distorted (lots of fish-eye shots), and deeply unpleasant.
It calls to me not one whit. It’s a man’s idea of female sexuality and sounds just messed up. If I want to see Emma Stone kick ass and take names, I’ll rewatch Easy A and LaLa Land!
I’ve seen and enjoyed Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer. Poor Things is A Choice. Maestro is uh…not good and does not mesh well with recorded history.
So far I have only seen Barbie. I went into it with high expectations and unfortunately, I was underwhelmed. I thought the look of the Barbie land was very amusing but the message of the movie felt a bit bombastic. I doubt I would watch it again. I liked Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird and Little Women much better. Of the other movies, I hope to watch The Holdovers, Oppenheimer, and Past Lives. Maybe Anatomy of a Fall. I’m not sure about Killers – why can’t Martin Scorsese make a movie of standard length? The trailer for Poor Things looked intriguing but I didn’t care for The Favourite (by the same director) and fear that Poor Things will be too bizarre for my taste.
I agree with you about Barbie. It was fun up to a point, but the messaging was heavy-handed, and the ending was a head-scratcher for me.
The only other film I’ve watched is Killers of the Flower Moon. Luckily, I was able to watch it at home, streaming it over two nights. To me, it was a powerful, disturbing film, and it is worth watching if you haven’t read the book. I did think 30 minutes could have been edited out to speed things up. The acting is great, especially Lily Gladstone’s. However, David Grann’s book is excellent, and has more information about the Osage and the FBI team and how they cracked the case. I found those parts really interesting, so I highly recommend the book. My book club just read it in October, and we all appreciated it and had a great conversation about it.
Thank you for your comments about Killers of the Flower Moon. I haven’t read the book and I do have the streamer it is on so I could watch at home. It sounds like I might actually appreciate it more by not having read the book!
I disagree in that I think movies like that OUGHT to be bombastic because of the world we’re being confronted with on a daily basis.
Different strokes. That is exactly why I don’t want to see the film. The news is enough bombast for me!
Yeah, I think a lot of people would totally agree with you. However, “Barbie’s” message is hardly ground-breaking, thought-provoking, or original.. If you don’t agree that people–including both Barbie and Ken– should be treated with respect, preaching is not going to do the trick. I was entertained by the originality and liveliness of the first half of “Barblie,” but was bored by the rest. Does anyone think fifty years from now, people will watch “Barbie,”as they do for “Some Like It Hot, ” even if it had been nominated and won “Best Picture”?
American movies are bloated, violent, obvious, cheaply shocking, and depressing–and attendance reflects it. When you compare the winners–or even, the nominees–for “best picture” in the past to those of the present, you can see what today’s movies lack.
The Academy increased the number of “best picture” from five to ten solely to increase box office. That was a lot easier than holding the line for quality.
For me, I think – knowing a lot of younger people who saw it – different people saw it with different eyes. It’s feminism 101 to older folks, but many younger ones I know found it a groundbreaking watershed moment.
But that’s just been my experience in seeing others consume the film.
I saw it with my daughter and she liked it far more than I did, so I think you are on to something, Lisa!
Literally, I know of younger women who realized they were in terrible relationships because of that movie; I know people who realized things about themselves because of it!
There were a number of pieces over the summer of young women breaking up with boyfriends because of their reactions to Barbie. This piece in HuffPost covers a lot of that phenomenon.
Oh I think the positive power of “Barbie” is so interesting! I know that I am very critical of movies, having seen thousands, probably, so your pointing out its effect on younger people is something I hadn’t considered.
I just wish that more movies were better written. I did adore “Rustin” on Netflix–great acting about a real gay civil rights’ organizer who worked with MLK. However, this kind of thing is my cuppa, and is not everyone’s.
I saw “Boys in the Boat” today and because it was optimistic, I liked it. I know that no one has ever said this about a movie, before, but let me be the first. The book was better. <G>
I’ve not seen most of the nominated films, but I did see Barbie and Oppenheimer in theaters opening weekend. I watched Barbie first (laughing from beginning to end) and then went to see Oppenheimer the next day. I’ve been a pretty ardent feminist for all of my life but the juxtaposition of those two films was remarkable, even to me. There was not a woman in a position of power or expertise anywhere in Oppenheimer. From to Barbie to Oppenheimer in 24 hours was such a visually stunning reminder that women in the U.S. have indeed come a long way in the last 70 years. Kudos to Christopher Nolan for hewing to the historical record and so clearly displaying that there was indeed a time and place in this country when women were valued solely for our ability to satisfy men’s sexual proclivities. Only three types of women existed (sluts, spinsters – who by definition never got to have sex and were therefore irrelevent – and silent, but long-suffering homemakers).
Barbie may have started out life as a mindless clothes-horse of a toy for girls, but I’ll take life in Gerta’s bombastic, heavy-handed, amusing but ultimately hopeful world over Oppenheimer’s history any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
It isn’t hard to understand where those “awful”, sexually-twisted, bodice-ripper romances came from in the 1970s when one considers just how small women’s roles – and sexuality – were until the 1970s.
THIS is why I haven’t seen Oppenheimer. The whole Florence Pugh naked, Cillian Murphy clothed irked me.
My problem with Oppenheimer is more fundamental. The movie makes much of Oppenheimer’s crisis of conscience when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The point is he had no qualms developing the bomb when he thought it would be used against the Germans. The movie never addresses the morality of massive killing of civilians using bombs. It is too much in thrall of genius men brilliantly advancing the frontiers of science; the villains here are the politicians and bureaucrats.
As an aside, it is in that nude sex scene that director Christopher Nolan inserts the quote ‘ I am become death, destroyer of worlds’ from the Hindu scripture Bhagwad Gita. Many Hindus were offended but I found the scene risible. Oppenheimer knew Sanskrit and had studied many of the Indian texts in original Sanskrit and in English translations. Apparently, he did quote that passage at some point. Why Nolan thought it would make a good filler during a post-coital pause is beyond me.
It was never going to be an easy story to tell. I plan to watch it this week. I’ll check back in about it when I have.
Yeah, I was pretty put off by her nudity while it was happening onscreen – before I even realized how few women were pertinent to the story. It felt really gratuitous. And what a waste of Pugh’s talent in general.
I find it kind of hilarious that the film (Oppenheimer) is nominated for a best picture and Nolan as best director, given how convoluted his editing of the film is. Having read Richard Rhodes’ fascinating (and prize winning) nonfiction book, The Making of the Atom Bomb, I was pretty familiar with the parts of the story about the actual making and dropping of the bomb. But Nolan’s telling of the aftermath (McCarthism and the other political/subcommittee hearings) was very confusing in the film. I had to come home to read the actual history to make sure I understood the film. (Basically, the scenes are out of order and it is hard to tell some of the committees apart.)
OTOH, I do think the film is interesting/worth seeing. And Robert Downey Jr.’s performance was/is spectacular.
I’ll watch it this week.
It does make me think about the hilarious scene in Barbie where a Ken natters on about Scorsese. He, Nolan, Cameron, and other famed male directors have their experimental work taken very seriously, even when it doesn’t really make sense. Don’t even get me started on Wes Anderson!
I don’t know how many of those have opened in the UK yet – our local cinema is a small independent, and I suspect that many of those films pass us by, and going to the local multiplex is such a faff and expensive – plus the experience nowadays is not always a pleasant one. I used to be an avid movie goer pre-kids, but now I’m woefully out of touch. I do want to watch Maestro because, well, Bernstein, and I’ll probably watch Barbie now it’s streaming (my girls both saw it and loved it). But honestly, if I want to spend a couple of hours immersed in fiction these days I’d rather read a book.
Ahaha! I love this, and same so much.
I also have only seen Barbie but I’m hoping to watch The Holdovers (it’s on one of the streamers I have), and I want to see American Fiction and Poor Things. The director of Poor Things is definitely an acquired taste but I really enjoyed The Lobster and it’s stuck with me for literally years. But it’s also one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen.
I’ve only seen one of them, ‘Oppenheimer’. But I liked it so much that I saw it twice with a running time of 181 minutes!. It has many of the things I love in a movie and nowadays I think it’s one of the best movies ever done. At least in the US cinema.
Nevertheless, I think that a couple of scenes could be uncomfortable from a female point of view. It’s curious that I have seen the movie the first time with my son and the second wirh my husband and neither of them found those scenes problematic.They don’t see in those scenes what I see.
But you know, it’s Christopher Nolan, his forte is not passing the Bechtel test.
That’s an interesting standard. According to the website, https://bechdeltest.com/, in the Best Picture Nominees:
Barbie and Past Lives both pass the test.
Oppenheimer and Killer of the Flower Moon and The Holdovers do not.
They did not rate the others.
I have also only seen Barbie. Just bought the movie on DVD for my daughter’s birthday too! On average I’ve seen about 1 of the many movies nominated in any category in any given year. But I still watch the awards (usually).