This year I managed to watch all ten Best Picture nominees before the winners are announced. Huzzah! Below are my thoughts on them, starting with the ones I liked most and descending from there. Here’s my usual warning: there may be some plot details revealed below. If you are spoiler-averse, beware!
Sinners (4 stars)
More than any movie I’ve seen in a long time, this gets across the twisted, bloody history of the United States while also testifying to the music that can come out of so many cultures colliding and mixing in ways that are loving, hating, oppressive or transcendent. Michael B. Jordan’s dual roles are fascinating, Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo are deeply sympathetic, and Miles Caton is a phenomenon as the blues guitarist who attracts vampires with his otherworldly playing and singing. There’s a lot going on in this film. One could argue too much. But it does things that no other movie has done, and that is an achievement.
The Secret Agent (4 stars)
This was gripping and also puzzling for many reasons, primarily due to my cluelessness about Brazilian history, but also because of the time jump to the future that happens partway through the film and then goes back and forward again a few times. Lack of narrative control would be my go to explanation for many films, but in this case it fits with the sense of a society going off the rails and no one knowing what the rules are anymore. The ending left me with a feeling of sadness but also hope for the future. Complicated!
Sentimental Value (4 stars)
A traumatized, messed up family finds some healing through art. My feeling was: who cares about the dad (played by Stellan Skarsgård), this is all about the sisters. I cried when Agnes brought Nora the script.
Marty Supreme (3.5 stars)
This had far more gunfire and dire peril and less ping pong than I was expecting. I gather it is only very loosely based on the real Marty Reisman, and his family is not happy about how this movie portrays him. It is entertaining to watch, though. After the first crazy thing that happens, you realize that there’s no way to predict where things are going, so it becomes pretty suspenseful! Probably the least believable thing in it is that a woman of Kay Stone’s stature would have anything to do with a scrawny, conniving weirdo like Marty, but Gwyneth Paltrow does great things with the part.
Hamnet (3 stars)
My experience of this movie had two contradictory themes: eye-rolling annoyance at poor characterization and implausible events (Agnes intentionally giving birth alone in the woods being the most egregious) and genuine emotion at portrayals of grief and catharsis. The good parts were in the latter half, which initially made me rate this at 3.5 stars, but then I remembered earlier bits that greatly irked me, so I subtracted half a star. My favorite performances were by the two kids who played Hamnet and Judith. The scene where Judith views her brother’s body and says, “It doesn’t look like him. That’s not him!” took me back to my own experience of seeing my father’s body after he had died and knowing on a deep level that what made him him was gone. For me, this was the true center of the film, and a piercingly emotional scene.
As for the Shakespeare of it all, it bugged me the entire time that he was never named. For all we can tell until the ending performance, he is an irresponsible, uncommitted father and a poor husband, which I do not think gives him his proper due. To see Agnes’s reaction to Hamlet is a welcome correction, though it seems unbelievable that it took her so long to understand what he had been doing with himself all those years.
One Battle After Another (3 stars)
There was not as much “there” there as I had been led to believe, but the time did pass quickly while watching. I did really like Benicio Del Toro’s nutty performance. Between this and The Phoenician Scheme, he’s on a roll of playing these abstracted, understated funny guys, and I’m into it.
Bugonia (3 stars)
Another Lanthimos joint, which means… weird, messed up, depressing most of the time. But it also pulls you in, making you wonder, WTF? I did not like this as much as The Favourite or Poor Things, but it kept me engaged, even though I had been spoiled on a key plot point ahead of time.
Train Dreams (2.5 stars)
The “vibing” approach to telling this story did not work for me. Characters appear briefly then disappear, events happen then fade away, with their importance seemingly being only to make the main character more morose. I’m sorry, but I wanted to know: What happened to the dogs? What happened to the friendly Indian shopkeeper? Why did Robert start walking in winter and end up at Claire’s fire tower in summer? Where did the two horses and the cart go? Was there actually a girl with a broken leg, or was he crazy? I could go on and on. If the intent was for me to have my heart broken by Robert’s lonely sadness, I need better attention to detail and the particularities of experience, and a better actor than Joel Edgerton for it to work. And get rid of that damn voiceover!
F1 (2.5 stars)
It’s the Shark / Ninja / Expensify movie! Branding ridiculousness aside, it’s… OK, I guess. But way too long and predictable. Not sure how it was nominated for Best Picture.
Frankenstein (2 stars)
Oof, this was a slog. It depresses me to think of how much time del Toro spent on improbable set design and gross special effects vs. meaningful interpretation of the source material. And what’s with the softening of the ending? The Creature is craving death at the end of the book, not resolving to make the most of life and rescuing hapless sailors from the ice. I stand with my previous position that Danny Boyle’s stage production is the best adaptation of this story, and far superior to this movie.
