Hi everyone! Today I’m revisiting the topic of my very first Substack post last year – ranking this year’s Best Picture nominees! There were, of course, a lot of notable movies from notable directors this year, which I think contributed to an uncharacteristically strong Best Picture lineup – each nominee is, at the very least, interesting in some way, even if I don’t particularly like some of them.
10. Maestro
Despite its firmly mixed reception, I truly did want to like Maestro – after all, one of the main characters is a woman living out my childhood dream of being married to a gay man! Unfortunately for Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), that does not turn out to be such a fantasy scenario, and unfortunately for Maestro, the movie offers little genuine insight into either her or her husband’s emotions and experiences. I admire that Cooper – who writes, directs, and stars as the titular maestro – attempts to resist standard biopic trappings in his depiction of Leonard Bernstein, almost entirely eschewing Bernstein’s career to center his relationship with Felicia. But the film’s significant time jumps and reluctance to actually show the audience how they established and negotiated their relationship mean that the film gives as little insight into their marriage as it does into Bernstein’s career and relationship to music. While Mulligan does deliver a wonderful performance, Cooper’s significant prosthetics tend only to distract from and inhibit his capacity to act. It seems to have become a hot take this awards season to say that I like Bradley Cooper, but I do – I think he gives a terrific performance in A Star Is Born, and could have done the same here if given better material. Of course, he is also the one to blame for the inadequate storytelling on display in Maestro – there are interesting directorial flourishes, some of which worked for me (the dream ballet) and some of which did not (shooting the crucial fight scene entirely in a static wide shot), but I feel that Maestro fundamentally fails on a script level, and the central performances are not enough to redeem it.
9. The Zone of Interest
I have already aired my grievances with The Zone of Interest, and will spare you by not relitigating them here. I will say that, at the very least, The Zone of Interest is stunning on a technical and visual level, and it is remarkable that a provocative art film with very little in the way of traditional plot is so widely nominated this year, including in Best Picture. I definitely would not have predicted at the beginning of last year that Jonathan Glazer would receive a Best Director nomination for his first movie in a decade!
8. Past Lives
To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to say about Past Lives. It is a movie derived from the truly beautiful concept of In-Yun that struggles to tell a story as compelling as the concept itself – the virtual connection that Greta Lee’s Nora and Teo Yoo’s Hae Sung experience is not sustained by their in-person chemistry. Lacking a strong narrative, I feel the movie compensates by relying on the audience’s own experiences – who has not experienced a sense of “what if” towards some person or another? – to provoke emotion. It is an all-around fine movie – fine performances, fine cinematography and direction – there is nothing particularly remarkable, but also nothing worthy of complaint. The film approaches something interesting in Nora’s husband, Arthur (John Magaro), and his simultaneously anxious and laissez-faire attitude towards Hae Sung and Nora’s connection, but his perspective is not explored in as much depth as it could have – or perhaps should have – been.
7. American Fiction
Like Maestro, American Fiction suffers the most on a screenplay level. Unlike Maestro, which was generally lacking in engaging subject matter, my primary issue with American Fiction is how much writer/director Cord Jefferson attempts to accomplish in a single film. I have not read Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, which American Fiction is based on, but I suspect that the film’s myriad plotlines are given more space to breathe and to be fully developed in novelistic form. The film’s intentions are noble – to demonstrate that Black people’s stories should not be reduced to the stereotypes that protagonist Monk (Jeffrey Wright) satirizes in his unintentionally successful book. However, in a relatively short film, giving each character their own in-depth storylines while simultaneously attempting a wide-ranging satire of the publishing industry and academia becomes overwhelming, and dilutes the impact of each individual storyline. The movie does have uniformly excellent performances (Wright in particular nails the role of a cerebral, slightly awkward academic); the satire, while not the most fresh, generally worked well; and the individual storylines are generally effective and moving. However, the film would likely have been more successful had it cut a couple of those plotlines and given the story as a whole a bit more room to grow, allowing both the performances and the film’s commentary to reach their full potential.
6. Barbie
What a fun time at the theatres! It was so refreshing to see a comedy that had real, honest-to-god jokes – and then those jokes were actually funny! And then a big studio comedy got nominated for Best Picture! What a time to be alive. It would be great if we could do that again, but have the comedy in question not be an extended toy commercial. It really is impressive that Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were able to do so much with a movie that could easily have been an utter disaster. Of course, having a cast anchored by Margot Robbie (bringing pathos and realism) and Ryan Gosling (bringing pure enthusiasm and commitment) helped them considerably, with each performer fulfilling exactly what is asked of them. The production and costume design – so vivid and fun and beautifully realized – are also crucial to the movie. While the real-world segments of the movie are mostly ineffective, and definitely have the most mandated-by-Mattel vibes of the whole movie, the Barbie Land segments are finely calibrated enough to mostly transcend what doesn’t work. I am begging Hollywood to PLEASE give us more movies that have the feeling of classic technicolor musicals – especially if they also actually have musical numbers!
5. The Holdovers
I also don’t have much to say about The Holdovers, which is simply the most solid movie of the year, a movie that pretty much anybody could see and enjoy, but one that still feels a little prickly. Great performances, great atmosphere, a nice blend of lighter comedic moments and poignant, heartfelt drama. A special shoutout to Carrie Preston, who gave a performance so radiant and gregarious that I have forgiven her for the fact that the seemingly inescapable (albeit intriguing) ads for Elsbeth have actually impeded my ability to do my job – they have so thoroughly invaded IMDb that I couldn’t save webpages for various Bradley Cooper movies without Elsbeth’s foam-statue-of-liberty-clad head blocking key details. Anyways, her performance is great and the movie is very good!
4. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is undoubtedly a feat, in terms of screenplay, performance, and technical achievement. Distilling a 700-page tome into a movie – even a three-hour one – is an astonishing accomplishment on Nolan’s part, and Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame keep the film engaging and propulsive throughout its entire runtime. It helps that they have a sprawling, supremely talented cast to portray the many physicists and politicians that appear throughout the story. Of course, the most prominent of these actors is Cillian Murphy as the title character, and Murphy is indeed marvelous; he conveys Oppenheimer’s angst and anxiety while simultaneously capturing his magnetic charm. He was the last cut in my top 10 leading performances of 2023, and he just as easily could have made the list – I truly love his performance as Oppie. Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are serviceable – they are given much less to do, but Blunt makes the most of her standout scene later in the movie. The supporting male actors are given much more opportunity to shine – everyone from Robert Downey Jr. to Josh Hartnett to Alden Ehrenreich seems to have an innate understanding of what the film requires from them, and rises to the occasion. Perhaps most effective is Casey Affleck in his single-scene appearance as Boris Pash, lending the character an immediate sense of menace and danger. Oppenheimer is an extremely watchable, even entertaining, movie about a period in American history with truly catastrophic consequences, largely for people living outside of the country. It is these consequences that I wish the movie had grappled with more.
Nolan had his reasons for not outright depicting the effects of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the film is a biopic of Oppenheimer, after all, and is very much told through his perspective. I do feel that this is where Nolan’s dedication to practical rather than digital effects harmed the movie; in the sequence where Oppenheimer imagines the faces of his cheering colleagues and their families undergoing the effects of radiation, there is a limit to how adequately makeup and practical effects can capture the true horror of a nuclear blast. Presumably, Oppenheimer’s later internal conflict is rooted at least in part due to his understanding of the effects of nuclear warfare; giving the audience a better sense of those consequences would lend more power to the film’s later sequences. I may just be soapboxing here, but I’m not convinced that modern audiences fully understand just how truly, truly devastating the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were for residents of those cities, and therefore I don’t know how many audience members brought that knowledge to Oppenheimer.
Perhaps actually seeing these horrors more fully realized wouldn’t be necessary if the character of Oppenheimer were less of a cipher. As in the other Christopher Nolan movies I’ve seen, I felt an increasing emotional remove from the title character throughout the film – maybe this is because the real Oppenheimer was also inscrutable, but it makes the film less compelling when we are increasingly uncertain as to what our protagonist is thinking and feeling. While it is certainly an entertaining movie, I ultimately felt that Oppenheimer lacked true insight into either its protagonist or the effects of his actions.
3. Anatomy of a Fall
I will always cherish the memory of seeing Anatomy of a Fall at a film festival last September. The movie’s opening interview between writer Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and a young grad student struck such an odd tone, vaguely uncomfortable and yet strangely flirtatious, giving the audience very little context as to who these people are and why their dynamic is so unusual. On top of that, the interview is interrupted by the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band’s phenomenally catchy cover of “P.I.M.P.,” which Sandra’s husband Samuel blares through their French chalet. The opening scene felt so fresh and exciting, and that energy permeated through the movie’s irreverent and chaotic courtroom proceedings, which examine the death of Sandra’s husband immediately after that fateful interview.
I have seen Anatomy of a Fall twice more since that initial screening, and unfortunately it has diminished a little bit each time, the incredible energy of the opening scene fading a little bit faster with each viewing. The performances, particularly from Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner as her son Daniel, and, of course, breakout star Messi the dog as Snoop, remain outstanding, easily some of the year’s best acting. The comic elements of the courtroom proceedings, while not as impactful as on first viewing, tend to still land, particularly in Antoine Reinartz’s delightfully hateable performance as the head prosecutor. Most of all, the climactic fight scene, and much of Machado-Graner and Messi’s work towards the end of the film, retain their tension and emotional impact, while also building the movie’s exploration of truth and subjectivity. However, the earlier half of the film tends to lag, neither the comedy nor the drama heating up until the case finally enters the courtroom. Despite the diminishing returns across my viewings of Anatomy of a Fall, though, I retain my fond memories of that initial viewing, and still wholeheartedly recommend the movie – hopefully in a year or two my memories of how everything unfolds will fade, and I will be able to recapture some of its initial, vibrant magic.
Anatomy of a Fall is one of my sister Grace’s favourite movies of 2023 – here is what she has to say about it:
“Stunning Sandra Slays in Self-Assured Serve!”
2. Poor Things
My friend Liam described Poor Things as “a Disney movie for film festival people,” and I have yet to come across a more apt description of Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film (which I’ve already written about in a short essay). Superficially, Poor Things appears as provocative as Lanthimos’s earlier work, given the film’s nudity and sex scenes, its lack of emphasis on realism, and its characters’ bold social transgressions. Movies like The Favourite and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, though, were genuinely thorny, genuinely challenging – their endings did not alleviate tension, their characters were often cruel and callous. In contrast, Poor Things does indeed resemble a Disney movie – though Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) might encounter bumps along the road on her journey, she seldom faces real challenges. Those that she does encounter – such as her discovery of the world’s cruelty and subsequent turn towards socialism – are ultimately dropped in an ending that ties things up quite neatly, but leaves the audience little to grapple with afterwards.
All that being said, I adore Poor Things and it is now the movie that I’ve seen the most times in theatres, ever! It’s an incredibly pleasurable movie, with gorgeous costumes and production design, and great performances across the board. Emma Stone is truly phenomenal as Bella – the movie that would completely fall apart if the lead actress were not very capable and on the exact wavelength of the director, and given Stone’s ongoing collaboration with Lanthimos it appears they are very artistically aligned. While it may not be as challenging as Lanthimos’s earlier works, it is still an engaging and interesting movie that I thought about a bit differently each time. While some critics have argued that the movie reduces female self-discovery merely to sex, I feel that this is a reductive interpretation that conveniently ignores the second half of the movie, in which Bella develops interests outside of sex and subsequently becomes less appealing to those who viewed her purely as an object of desire. I also don’t feel that the movie is necessarily about specifically female self-empowerment at all. In my opinion, it seeks more broadly to show how we must discover the world, and our place within it, for ourselves, and that this is a constantly-evolving process – as Bella says, “I’m a changingable feast, as are all of we.” I love Bella Baxter’s curiosity and constant desire to learn more about the world around her – like Bella, I “find being alive fascinating,” and I love Lanthimos’s depiction of her journey.
Grace is the resident Willem Dafoe stan in our household, and here are her thoughts on Poor Things:
“Wonderful Willem Wows!”
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese’s epic is truly excellent, and is far more effective than The Zone of Interest at depicting the mental state of those who commit terrible crimes, driven equally by bigotry and greed. Much of the criticism and public discourse about the film has focused on the fact that it does not adequately centre the perspectives of the Osage people, the victims of the horrifying crimes depicted in the film. It is true that the film is told from a white male perspective; however, I feel that this may be the film’s greatest strength, rather than a weakness. This is a movie about the lasting genocidal roots of the American nation, a story that should already be known but is easily ignored. To me, if the film focused fully on Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) and the other Indigenous characters, the murders at the film’s centre could also be easily dismissed as tragedies, as sad incidents that provoke audience sympathy without forcing us to dwell on them for too long. By instead centering Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and William Hale (Robert De Niro), Scorsese gives no room for the audience to look away from the perpetrators of these crimes – the types of men who are still largely in charge of the nation to this day. It is true that Ernest is an unpleasant character to follow for three and a half hours, but this is by design – Scorsese forces us to sit in the character’s actions, to acknowledge that people who commit crimes like this are not masterminds, but are instead people who simply value greed more than they do compassion, love, or even their own children. While the story may not be told entirely from the Osage perspective, Gladstone’s Mollie is still very much the beating heart of the film, the one who propels the momentum through her insistence on justice for herself and her family; her grief – and the grief of her mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) – grounds the film in the real consequences of her husband and Hale’s actions. The film’s steady, assured pacing, stellar production and costume design, and expansive perspective on the community as a whole make it an immersive, engrossing perspective, even as it is also a difficult watch in many instances. If anything, I think more white directors should make movies that indict American colonialism – Scorsese certainly has a bigger budget and more notable collaborators than any Indigenous director would likely receive at this point. I would certainly love to see more Indigenous stories in film, but I would hope that those stories would not be limited to stories of grief, pain, and trauma.
My sister is a massive Friday Night Lights fan. Here is her review of Killers of the Flower Moon:
“Poised Plemons Pops in Powerful Picture.”
Grace and I may both be biased in favour of Killers of the Flower Moon, though, because Robert De Niro’s (excellent) performance was so eerily reminiscent of a relative of ours (who, like Hale, is extremely manipulative and conniving) that we turned to each other within his first few minutes of screentime and whispered his name in unison. A truly chilling experience.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this year’s Best Picture nominee ranking! I’ll be back tomorrow with my final Oscar predictions. Maybe by this time next year I will have gone fully off the deep end and will send a list of Best Picture nominees ranked by how much Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would like them, which I only talked about this year (Scully would hate Poor Things even though she’s a total Bella Baxter; The Holdovers is basically a Mulder biopic but he’s all three of the main characters). Stay tuned to find out!