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dougo ([personal profile] dougo) wrote2025-03-02 06:12 pm
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Oscar 2024 picks

Every year since 2021, I've managed to see every single Oscar-nominated film before the Academy Awards ceremony. Last year, I was introduced to the Oscars Death Race, which is both a useful site to keep track of what you need to watch and also a leaderboard for some friendly competition; I finished in 137th place. A couple weeks ago, I saw the 50th film nominated for an Oscar this year, which put me in 36th place! (I had some help from a fellow Death Racer, who slipped me some short films that were otherwise unavailable before the Oscar Shorts packages hit local theaters, but she had already finished in 13th place so I'll take the assist.)

Below is my ranking within each category; note that these are my personal preferences, i.e. the way I would have filled out the ballot were I a member of the voting Academy. The number in parentheses is my rating for that movie (out of 10). I also made predictions for who will win but that's less interesting. (I think those aren't visible until the ceremony starts, for some reason. Sorry about that, for those of you reading this in the next hour...)

Best Picture

  1. Dune: Part Two (8)
  2. Conclave (8)
  3. Nickel Boys (8)
  4. Anora (7)
  5. A Complete Unknown (7)
  6. I’m Still Here (7)
  7. Wicked (6)
  8. The Substance (5)
  9. The Brutalist (4)
  10. Emilia Pérez (3)

See my thoughts in the previous post. It didn't feel like an especially great year for movies, but this is actually the best field in years, with six films that I'd be happy to see win. The last two years, my least favorite nominee ended up winning, and for a while it was looking like Emilia Pérez was the frontrunner, but hopefully that streak will end.

Best Director

  1. Sean Baker, Anora (7)
  2. James Mangold, A Complete Unknown (7)
  3. Coralie Fargeat, The Substance (5)
  4. Brady Corbet, The Brutalist (4)
  5. Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez (3)
As usual, I'm just picking my favorite movies, because I don't really know how to judge a director's work apart from whether I liked the movie.

Best Actor

  1. Ralph Fiennes, Conclave (8)
  2. Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown (7)
  3. Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice (5)
  4. Colman Domingo, Sing Sing (5)
  5. Adrien Brody, The Brutalist (5)
Fiennes is always great, but his understated but forceful performance in Conclave was my favorite. Chalamet and Stan both did better than expected in portraying well-known real people. Domingo was fine, I just felt that Sing Sing was kind of aimless and his performance didn't rise above it. Brody's accent in The Brutalist was a bit too much, and I never quite got past the artificiality of his line delivery.

Best Actress

  1. Mikey Madison, Anora (7)
  2. Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here (7)
  3. Demi Moore, The Substance (5)
  4. Cynthia Erivo, Wicked (6)
  5. Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez (3)
Not a lot to say about these; Madison, Torres, and Moore were all solid, but I don't feel any of them were standout performances. I've liked Erivo in other things but her Wicked performance seemed more about singing than acting. I expect she'll complete her EGOT soon, if not this year.

Best Supporting Actor

  1. Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown (7)
  2. Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (7)
  3. Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice (5)
  4. Guy Pearce, The Brutalist (4)
  5. Yura Borisov, Anora (7)
This is a strong slate (no pun intended). Culkin is the heavy favorite, and he was great, but it didn't feel like this role was much of a stretch for him. Whereas Norton really nailed the spirit of Pete Seeger; I'd love to see a full biopic about him! I'm not sure why Borisov is here; Mark Eydelshteyn seemed to be the standout supporting performance in Anora.

Best Supporting Actress

  1. Ariana Grande, Wicked (6)
  2. Isabella Rossellini, Conclave (8)
  3. Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown (7)
  4. Felicity Jones, The Brutalist (4)
  5. Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez (3)
I always love to see Rossellini, but her Conclave role was pretty backgrounded for much of the film. Grande was just delightful as the ditzy Glinda. Barbaro was very good as Joan Baez, but I was a little more impressed by Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo. People have been down on Jones's performance in The Brutalist but I thought her presence popped off the screen when she arrived after the intermission. I just didn't much like what she was given to work with.

Best Original Screenplay

  1. A Real Pain (7)
  2. Anora (7)
  3. September 5 (8)
  4. The Substance (5)
  5. The Brutalist (4)
This is kind of a tough one; I enjoyed September 5 as a movie about process, and it was well put-together (especially the way it weaved in the real footage of Jim McKay), and I guess the screenplay plays a part in that, but the dialogue wasn't particularly memorable. I don't know how much of Culkin's performance was improvised or had been written as part of Jesse Eisenberg's script, but either way it worked.

Best Adapted Screenplay

  1. Conclave (8)
  2. A Complete Unknown (7)
  3. Nickel Boys (8)
  4. Sing Sing (5)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)
As I mentioned in my Best Picture thoughts, I found the story presented in The Complete Unknown to be enlightening in several ways. But Conclave just crackles as an engaging story, while also slipping in just enough thought-provoking speeches without dragging down the action. The strong suit of Nickel Boys was the cinematography, and probably the direction, but somehow it wasn't nominated in either category; the screenplay contributes to the intriguing structure of the story, but I just don't remember much about the dialogue.

Best International Feature

  1. Flow (8)
  2. I’m Still Here (7)
  3. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (7)
  4. The Girl With the Needle (7)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)
Flow was my favorite of all the nominated films this year, and my #5 film overall, so this is an easy pick. I didn't expect to love a wordless movie about computer-animated cute animals, but it won me over with its sheer sense of wonder. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a great tense thriller, both a family drama and a political critique, but the fairly silly final act pulls it down a peg. The Girl With the Needle is a compellingly filmed and told story, but with each reveal it gets bleaker and bleaker, kind of an anti-fable; the biggest jump-scare is the end title saying it's based on a true story, yikes.

Best Animated Feature

  1. Flow (8)
  2. Memoir of a Snail (8)
  3. Inside Out 2 (7)
  4. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (6)
  5. The Wild Robot (3)
I was kind of dreading watching Memoir of a Snail, because I expected it to be as twee as Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, but it was absolutely not that. Quite adult and dark, yet also funny and twistedly charming. Just not quite enough to displace Flow for me. On the other hand, I got a bad feeling from the trailer for The Wild Robot, but I heard universal raves about it so I eventually went to see it... and utterly hated it. Saccharine humor that didn't land, coupled with a clunky metaphor about how hard it is to be a parent, and I was all the way out. Unfortunately I think it will win, oh well.

Best Documentary Feature

  1. Porcelain War (8)
  2. Black Box Diaries (6)
  3. No Other Land (6)
  4. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (6)
  5. Sugarcane (5)
Five very tough subjects, all handled appropriately in terms of communicating the toughness, but with a wide range of success in terms of storytelling. The beautiful art of Porcelain War made it the clear standout for me. I enjoyed all the jazz music in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, but the connections were very tenuous to the historical story (which was also told confusingly out of order).

Best Animated Short

  1. Wander to Wonder (7)
  2. Magic Candies (7)
  3. Yuck! (6)
  4. In the Shadow of the Cypress (6)
  5. Beautiful Men (5)
Nothing really wowed me here, but Wander to Wonder was twistedly funny and Magic Candies was heartwarming without being too treacly. In the Shadow of the Cypress was probably the deepest, but I found it too hard to grok, perhaps because I didn't have the appropriate background knowledge of Persian culture.

Best Live-Action Short

  1. I’m Not a Robot (8)
  2. The Last Ranger (7)
  3. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (6)
  4. A Lien (6)
  5. Anuja (5)
I'm Not a Robot was my clear favorite, better than most Black Mirror episodes. The Last Ranger was sad and a bit horrifying but the beautiful vistas saved it from being a complete downer.

Best Documentary Short

  1. The Only Girl in the Orchestra (8)
  2. Incident (7)
  3. Instruments of a Beating Heart (6)
  4. I Am Ready, Warden (5)
  5. Death by Numbers (5)
My uncle Jim played bass in the Boston Symphony Orchestra for many years, and has met and even shared the stand with the subject of The Only Girl in the Orchestra, so perhaps I should recuse myself. But I found her delightful to watch, and her story was compellingly told. Incident chillingly presented many different angles of live footage on a terrible incident, yet I still felt a little manipulated by how it was cut together—proof that even a seeming presentation of "just the facts" is still susceptible to ambiguity and confusion.

Best Cinematography

  1. Dune: Part Two (8)
  2. Nosferatu (8)
  3. Maria (6)
  4. The Brutalist (4)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)
I'm running out of time and steam so I'm going to breeze through these below-the-line categories. Hard to judge the technical merits so I'm mostly just going from the gut.

Best Editing

  1. Anora (7)
  2. Conclave (8)
  3. Wicked (6)
  4. The Brutalist (4)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)

Best Visual Effects

  1. Dune: Part Two (8)
  2. Wicked (6)
  3. Better Man (6)
  4. Alien: Romulus (7)
  5. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (5)

Best Production Design

  1. Dune: Part Two (8)
  2. Conclave (8)
  3. Wicked (6)
  4. Nosferatu (8)
  5. The Brutalist (4)
This is the hardest category; all five have great design. But I'll stick with my favorite.

Best Costume Design

  1. Wicked (6)
  2. Conclave (8)
  3. Nosferatu (8)
  4. A Complete Unknown (7)
  5. Gladiator II (6)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

  1. Nosferatu (8)
  2. Wicked (6)
  3. The Substance (5)
  4. A Different Man (6)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)

Best Song

  1. “Like a Bird,” Sing Sing (5)
  2. “Mi Camino,” Emilia Pérez (3)
  3. “El Mal,” Emilia Pérez (3)
  4. “The Journey,” The Six Triple Eight (4)
  5. “Never Too Late,” Elton John: Never Too Late (7)
The song category is always bad but it seemed especially dire this year. I guess I'm actually rooting for Diane Warren's "the Journey" to finally win her participation trophy.

Best Score

  1. Conclave (8)
  2. The Brutalist (4)
  3. Wicked (6)
  4. The Wild Robot (3)
  5. Emilia Pérez (3)
Challengers was the biggest snub here, my #3 film of the year largely because of the Reznor & Ross score and how it was used.

Best Sound

  1. Dune: Part Two (8)
  2. A Complete Unknown (7)
  3. Wicked (6)
  4. Emilia Pérez (3)
  5. The Wild Robot (3)
Civil War is another big snub, but I can't say no to all of Dune's weird sound effects.