2023/2024 Oscar Nominations Reactions

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-The nationalities of the 20 best actor nominees are:

16 US nominees though 2 are second-generation Latin American (Colman Domingo’s parents are from Guatemalan and Belize, America Ferrera is Honduran); 1 Canadian in Ryan Gosling; 1 Irishman in Cillian Murphy 1 German in Sandra Huller; 1 British (2nd generation Irish) in Carey Mulligan

-Zasie Baetz was announcing like she was giving away cars on either the Price is Right or Opera. At first, I was convinced that she was stanning American Fiction but that was likely my bias. Jack Quaid is one of my favorite young stars of Hollywood, but isn’t there still room in Hollywood for Jack and his dad? #FarFromHeavenforever

-I’ve seen 6 of the 10 nominees (Check: Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, Maestro, Poor Things, Holdovers, Didn’t See: American Fiction, Zone of Interest, Past Lives, Barbie) and 14 of the 20 nominees (Paul Giamatti, Cillian Murphy, Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emma Stone, Sandra Huller, Annette Bening, Lily Gladstone, Robert DeNiro, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, DaVine Joy Randolph, Emily Blunt, and Jodie Foster). Of the remaining four, I haven’t seen Zone of Interest holds the least interest to me. I don’t pressure myself to see everything that’s out there.

-The woke crowd will probably be split, but with the surprise inclusion of Sterling K Brown, America Ferrera, and the fact that one woman was still nominated (Justine Triet), they don’t have much basis that the patriarchy squeezed their voices out. To the degree that foreign film enthusiasts overlap with woke advocates (a lot of foreign films are made by white people and that’s all that counts to the woke), there’s much to celebrate on that front as three foreign films have never been among the final ten. I saw Anatomy of a Fall and the subtitles made the story difficult to follow, so audiences will have to adjust.

-Killers of the Flower Moon is the 12th Best Picture Nominee that Robert DeNiro has appeared in: Godfather II, Taxi Driver, Deer Hunter, Raging Bull, Soldier’s Story, Awakenings, Goodfellas, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, Irishman, Joker, and now Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s likely a new record. Leonardo DiCaprio is close behind at 11; Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe; Jesse Plemons (who’s had a streak of 6 in 7 years: Brides of Spies, The Post, Vice, Irishman, Judas and the Black Messiah, Power of the Dog), and Bradley Cooper are tied at 7;Emma Stone is at 5; and Margot Robbie, Gary Oldman, and Paul Giamatti are at 4

-These were the most competitive female acting categories in years. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December; Greta Lee in Past Lives; Fantasia Barrino and Taraji P. Henson in Color Purple; Rachel McAdams in Are You There God It’s Me Margaret; Rosamund Pike in Saltburn were all in the running. The last one in each category was likely the two elderly ladies from Nyad: Annette Bening and Jodie Foster. I’ve never loved a Jodie Foster performance but somehow she won me over this time. I think, all factors considered, Foster, got in on that extra bit of sparkle she bought to that inspirational role. Bening got in because of the tendency to award people who transform and exhaust themselves. They couldn’t recognize her in the role.

-Congratulations to Bradley Cooper, Jodie Foster and Annette Bening for being in the 5-timers club. Why Cooper is already considered by pundits to be out of running for the award is already beyond me. He completely transformed himself for the role, he keeps the movie watchable through his pure joy, and he’s turned into a great spokesman for classical music through the journey. He also co-wrote, directed, and produced the film. If he doesn’t get an Oscar now, he might get desperate enough to go full-Revenant and get eaten by a bear.

Congratulations to the 2023/2024 Oscar Class. These people all have a screen credit (as determined by Rogerebert.com) in one of this year’s best picture nominees: Adam Brody, Alexandra Shipp, America Ferrera, Anne Rotger, Antoine Reinartz, Barry Corbin, Benny Safdie, Bradley Cooper, Brendan Frasier, Camille Rutherford, Cara Jade Meyers, Carey Mulligan, Carrie Preston, Casey Affleck, Christopher Abbott, Christian Friedel, Cillian Murphy, Daniel Holzberg, David Krumholtz, Da’vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Emma Mackey, Emma Stone, Emily Blunt, Emily Cass McDonnell, Erika Alexander, Florence Pugh, Gillian Vigman, Greta Lee, Gustaf Skarsgard, Helen Mirren, Issa Rae, Jack Quaid, Jason Clarke, Jason Isbell, Jeffrey Wright, Jehnny Beth, Jerrod Carmichael, Jesse Plemons, John Cena, John Lithgow, John Magaro, John Ortiz, Josh Hartnett, Kate McKinnon, Keith David, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Lucy Boynton, Margaret Qualley, Margot Robbie, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bonner, Matt Damon, Maximilian Beck, Maya Hawke, Medusa Knopf, Michael Cera, Michael Urie, Milo Machado Graner, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Olivia Thirby, Paul Giamatti, Ramy Yousef, Rhea Pearlman, Robert DeNiro, Robert Downey Jr, Ryan Gosling, Sascha Maaz, Sandra Huller, Sarah Silverman, Simu Liu, Scott Shepherd, Stephen Thorne, Skyler White, Sterling K Brown, Swann Arlaud, Tate Donovan, Teo Yoo, Tony Goldwyn, Vicki Pepperdine, Willem Dafoe, Will Ferrell

The nationalities of the 20 best actor nominees are:

16 US nominees though 2 are second-generation Latin American: Colman Domingo’s parents are from Guatemalan and Belize, America Ferrera is Honduran; 1 Canadian in Ryan Gosling; 1 Irishman in Cillian Murphy 1 German in Sandra Huller; 1 British (2nd generation Irish) in Carey Mulligan

Top 12 Shows of 2023: 10 Honorable Mentions

Always check out the After Party Tag:

The After Party (Apple)

https://www.slashfilm.com/1254579/the-afterparty-season-2-trailer/

Tiffany Haddish, in a pitch-perfect role, is back in this comedic murder mystery series that copies the innovative style of devoting each episode to a different character’s point of view. This time, however, the show takes on the added challenge of telling each story in a different genre. The always-reliable Ken Jong and Paul Walter Hauser ooze comic potential with their line delivery here, and the supporting cast (particularly the unknown Anna Konkie) can keep up. Zoe Chao and Sam Richardson’s characters have now settled into a comfortable relationship and their interplay is kind of adorable.

Captain Fall (Netflix)

https://images.app.goo.gl/Koo7LEGnVES81KoC8

An aspiring captain with a massive inferiority complex is selected by a criminal cartel precisely because he’s at the bottom of his class and would be least likely to notice the wide-scale atrocities they commit daily. Throughout the first season, they trafficking bride for an Arab billionaire, abduct humans for a people zoo, kill endangered animals for a form of Viagara, facilitate arms deals, and sponsor child soldiers. Has there ever been an animated comedy this dark? I’m pretty sure it has Archer beat. With its Truman Show premise, it’s also one of the cleverest comedies on TV.

Florida Man (Netflix)

https://images.app.goo.gl/5xPsGfYDrdzfGe8U6

What might be classified as a sun-drenched noir that plays off the more creative modes of vice people in the Sunshine State are often drawn to. Unlike Killing It, this is more of a dramatic showcase but a gripping one nonetheless. Edgar Ramirez shines as a former detective hired by a peculiarly short mob boss (Emory Cohen) to track down an ex he happens to already be in love with (Abbey Lee). It’s a show that knows how to escalate as necessary.

Hello Tomorrow (Apple)

https://paleofuture.com/blog/2023/1/21/apple-tvs-upcoming-series-hello-tomorrow-looks-like-mad-men-with-hovercars

In this parallel version of the 1950s, we didn’t just land on the moon but were able to quickly subdue it for human colonization to the point that we were selling real estate on it. Although little about the show makes sense historically, there are a lot of deep thematic veins underneath the surface of this façade. This show reflects a 1950s-era sensibility in which men are breadwinners, and there’s no better way to win that bread than to don a suit and sell something. Several heavy hitters — Billy Crudup, Alison Pill (pictured above), Hank Azaria, and Susan Heyward (not the Oscar-winning actress from the 40s and 50s but a relative newcomer) — do some of their best work here.

History of the World Part II (Hulu)

https://www.ign.com/articles/history-of-the-world-part-ii-premiere-review-episodes-1-and-2

After 22 years, this 1981 Mel Brooks anthology film of world history parodies finally returns. Incredibly, Mel Brooks is still alive at 95 and had a creative hand in the project although most of the legwork for producing, acting, and writing goes to a pretty random trio of collaborators: Ike Barinholtz, Nick Kroll, and Wanda Sykes. The show has a great sense of pacing knowing which stories to focus on and which only need a minute or two to get to their punch lines. Best of all, the show has a playfulness with a genre that would go well in a high-end lit mag, while also not limiting itself to low-brow jokes when the moment feels right.

Krapopolis (Fox)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14016574/reference/

In this reimagining of ancient Greece, the laughs-per-minute ratio is high, and even higher if you catch all the easter eggs in this satire on democracy and the pantheon of the gods in Ancient Greece. The story takes place at the dawn of civilization as a young king (Richard Ayodaye) tries to initiate very basic ideas for progress but meets resistance at every turn. The breakout character, Deleria (Hannah Waddingham), isn’t the god of anything useful but comes with all the vanity that one would expect a god to have.

Mulligan (Netflix)

https://images.app.goo.gl/oUSD3KVafTStc6Hv8

From Tina Fey’s 30 Rock co-creator Robert Carlock, this animated series imagines a near-apocalypse in which only a couple thousand survivors remain in DC. The only surviving member of Congress (Dana Carvey) takes the vice presidency behind a dimwitted baseball player (Nat Faxon) as head of state because he accidentally saved the city from an alien attack. The rest of the cabinet is a similarly entertaining pairing of contrasts, and the dialogue is on par with some of the funnier sitcoms of the 2000s. Did I mention Questlove and Weird Al survived the alien invasion too? Sounds like a party!

Night Agent (Netflix)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-night-agent-review-netflix-1235358918/

This isn’t the only series to use the 24 formula of lone moral voice within the DC infrastructure tasked with saving the country. But I can’t think of one with better execution: The casual moral vacancy of the villain, the slowly creeping love story, just the right amount of characterization (humanizing but not too empathetic) of the two assassins, and a very palpable sense of danger.

Poker Face (Peacock)

Poker Face — TV Review | Empire Online

Fresh off his well-received Agatha Christie homages of Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion, Riann Johnson makes use of his creative capital with high-end guest stars and prestige writing in this anthology series. Natasha Lyonne channels Culombo’s Peter Falk as a runaway from the mob with a keen ability to determine whether someone is lying. Like most detectives in procedurals, she has the uncanny misfortune of crossing paths with murders waiting to happen and there’s the interesting angle at play of how much of a duty she has to do right by the victims. Some episodes hit and some miss based on the nature of the plot, but the show always has that prestige sheen.

What We Do in the Shadows (FX)

https://www.ign.com/articles/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-season-3-premiere-review

One of TV’s funniest shows has relied on a status quo corollary in which the idiot characters can’t ever achieve their outsized ambitions of conquering Staten Island, finding love, raising a Colin Robinson that isn’t so loathsome. But five seasons in, these miserable characters needed some forward movement, which is why I was thrilled for Guillermo to (spoiler alert!) become a vampire. Or did he? Unfortunately, it didn’t last long which is why this show didn’t make my top 12 this year.

Poor Things Review

Saltburn has intrigued me this awards season because people who feel obligated to follow Oscar bait and people caught up on the grotesque buzz (masquerading as something worth seeing), are experiencing something far more horrific than they bargained for with that film.

Similarly, Poor Things has some truly icky scenes (there's lots of nudity, graphic scenes of surgery and eye stabbing, just be prepared to close your eyes at the right moments) that might generate enough cringe to get people into the theater out of morbid curiosity. And then there's Willem DaFoe's grotesque face and the way he burps liquid mercury. As opposed to Saltburn, this delights me because Poor Things is a beautiful unconventional film, but leaves the same meaningful emotional payoff as you hope most love stories would do. Willem Defoe plays a Frankenstein-type, Dr. Godwin Baxter, who re-animates a pregnant suicide-by-drowning victim. His solution is to put the fetus's brain into the grown Emma Stone's body (again, yes, it's very icky, just move past it, people). As such, she starts out like a version of Beck Bennett's baby boss on SNL with a lack of mental acuity to compliment her lack of motor movement. A large through line of the film is all the subtle ways in which she grows into an adult over the course of the film. Without seeing this films, it might seem ludicrous to award a 35-year-old actress who already has an Oscar over someone who seems as worthy as Lily Gladstone (partially because it feels right to give it to a Native American, partially because it's the right type of role, and partially because Gladstone makes a lot out of being passive), but the way Emma Stone's performance is simply too good to ignore. If she wins, it would mark one of the rare moments where a comic performance wins anyway. Godwin wants his character to marry his protege Max, (Ramy Yousef), and while Godwin genuinely cares for her in a paternal way. it's also uncomfortable: She's still pretty close to having the mentality of an infant. Max's earnest declarations of love for her, don't erase the logistical obstacle of connecting with someone who's psychologically a child. Issues of consent aside (I generally don't police fictional works from earlier eras for age-consent issues), there's not really much convincing that Max initially loves her for anything other than her looks? Her next suitor, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), is a total sleaze but he is at least transparent of his lust for her because of her virginal qualities. In the film's second act, Duncan takes her out and the classic virgin/slut dichotomy comes into play: Duncan's carnal desire for her is because she's virginal, and he goes insane with jealousy at knowing that she shares her sexual exploration with others. Cleverly, the film implies that it's a literal form of madness and then shows him actually going mad. As this is a story of what it means to be human and how one grows into it under conventional circumstances, the central characters we care about (Godwin and Max, in addition to Bella) arrive there as well. Like some of the biggest names of the year (Alexander Payne, Todd Haynes, Greta Gerwig, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan), Yorgos Lanthimos is not a man who makes movies that are ordinary. He will reinvent the wheel each time out. Sure, there are flaws in his style. Like Todd Haynes' May December, the string score can be obnoxious, the film can overly indulge in the gross, and there is way more CGI than needed. But he's always original and in a film like this, it's a story that works beautifully. This might also be the best ensemble of the year despite the way that Holdovers deserves credit for such fully realized characters, and films like Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Asteroid City, and Oppenheimer crammed such an impressive number of high-profile actors onto the same set. Aside from the performances of Ramy Yousef (a comedian who has his own show, this is his coming out performance in someone else's film), DaFoe, Stone, and Mark Ruffalo in the lead, there's a lot of smaller parts to appreciate. Margaret Qualley cameos as the mad scientist's replacement experiment, Christopher Abbott is an able villain and then there's the delightful Martha. Played by Hanna Schygulla, Martha should get a scene stealer of the year award: She lets a developmentally disabled person ask to touch her hair (resembling Effie in the Hunger Games) and probe her sexual history, then being such a good sport about Duncan wanting to drown her in a fit of rage.

How to Write Family Members Who Hate Wes Anderson

Disclosure: This isn’t an exact facsimile of what I wrote to my family. It’s been enhanced in certain places to make it more palatable to a general audience. This article is also on my Patreon and my Medium.

Dear my entire extended family. When I mentioned that my favorite film of the year was Asteroid City (although, to be fair, I greatly enjoyed Tetris, Killers of the Flower Moon, Holdovers, Fool’s Paradise, and Oppenheim), I’m flattered that you all took it as a recommendation but I would have told you he has a very stylized way of making films.

Asteroid City is by Wes Anderson who has a very stylized way of making films. He started out in the 1990s with low budget movies (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore) and just a few characters. These were probably not that out of step with regular movies and would have been more palatable to you. Martin Scorsese and James L Brooks were very strong early champions of his work.

Royal Tenenbaums is probably his most effective piece emotionally. It involves a dying elderly man (Gene Hackman) trying to connect with his wife (Anjelica Huston) and adult kids before he goes. The kids are all accomplished geniuses in their field, but they are beset by loneliness and intimacy and are even romantically entangled.

Ed Norton was asked why his favorite director was Wes Anderson and he said that it spoke to people’s need to belong. That’s why he’s maybe my favorite director as well. The characters might be enemies in the middle of or whatever, but they ultimately recognize each other’s humanity at the end. I would also say that for unmarried people, Wes Anderson provides a comfort because he leans so heavily on found family tropes, and not the belief that happy endings are based on romantic ones.

From there, his works have gotten more idiosyncratic with more bloated casts. This, I suspect, might be the turn off to regular moviegoers. If there are 40 speaking roles, it’s harder to form a coherent story.

It’s probably this kind of stuff that has made him fodder for humor. Amy Poehler once joked at the Golden Globes that he rode to the ceremony on a bicycle made from tuba parts. SNL did a skit on him. So if you want to just laugh at him, check this video out:

In fact, there's a whole cottage industry of Wes Anderson parodies on YouTube:

But isn’t this normal for all our favorite directors? Don’t you lean into the stuff that hits for you and your fans?

What I’m essentially saying is sometimes you have to grow up with a director. Can you appreciate John Ford’s The Searchers (a film where he humanizes the Indians) without seeing films where he painted Indians as flat characters.

I also like Asteroid City because he had worked with such bloated casts and he corrected the problem. His worst example of this was the previous film, The French Dispatch. In this film, he has a ton of actors as well, BUT the key to appreciating the film, is that only five characters matter. The Tom Hanks character, the Jason Schwartzman character, Scarlett Johannson, and the two respective children of J.S. and Scar-Jo (Technically, Schwartzman’s character has more than one kid, but the others aren’t really important, and Wes Anderson smartly doesn’t give them many lines so they’re not a distraction). The three adults have different ways of living and dealing with loss, and the two children are the hope that the future could be unencumbered by that loss. Everyone else in the movie is just window dressing: They’re just flashes of color and texture that Wes Anderson uses really well.

Then there’s the play behind the story (the part with Bryan Cranston, Willem DaFoe, Ed Norton, and Adrien Brody fall into this). Some might call it extra and unnecessary, and some might see it an extra layer of genius. I’ll even give you all that point: It’s excessive, EXCEPT for one thing. It lends credence to the visual artificiality. TV Tropes (A favorite site of mine, here is their entry) mentions that the geography of the town doesn’t make sense. It’s mostly an excuse to use the stock desert interstate. There are a lot of easter eggs like that. It’s a way of more clearly illustrating that the film maker is a product of his influences (Tennessee Williams, Rod Sterling, and Elia Kazan are influences for the play behind the play).

This movie might not be an easy, breezy watch. However, it is a film that leaves you thinking (provided you watch it to the end).

For example, what’s the reality of the scene when Jason Schwartzman’s character burns his hand? Both he and Scar-Jo react not as characters but as actors who are taken out of the moment because something went wrong on set. Is this commentary on the film’s artifice or part of a deeper meaning? Perhaps, it reflects how a parent might have to be performative to help their kids cope with loss? It's the kind of thing that a think piece like this can be written about.

Even if you didn’t love it, I’m proud of my recommendation because it’s a lesson that films don’t all come in the same form and they entertain in different ways. Sometimes, if you expand yourselves out of your comfort zone, you will be rewarded with a richer experience.

Top 20 Movie Scenes of 2023

Be sure to check out my patreon at http://www.patreon.com/okjournalist where I do most of my writing now.

 

1. Bernstein Conducts at The Ely Cathedral Conducting Scene, Maestro­: Like most biopics, one of the selling points of Maestro is how much Bradley Cooper put his heart and soul into the role. It’s hard to tell if the anecdote about how he wanted to be a conductor as a kid is true, but he certainly mastered this esoteric art for the film. In a scene shot in Ely Cathedral with the London Symphony Orchestra, Cooper (the director) makes the brilliant decision to shoot Bernstein’s highly animated conducting largely with the camera’s focus on the director as the camera zooms in and then outward of its principal subject.

2. The Climactic Negotiation, Tetris: Who would have thought a film about intellectual rights could be so thrilling. The film follows a Dutch entrepreneur (Taron Eggerton) who mortgages his house and future in his quest behind the Iron Curtain to secure the rights to the titular game. The film’s climactic scene features a cross-cutting between our protagonist, the an amoral father-son (Anthony Boyle and Roger Allam) conglomerate who screwed him over, and a befuddled middle-man (Tobey Jones) as they try to make their case in darkened rooms with the KGB breathing down their necks. Although fictional, the negotiation is topped off with a chase out of the country a la Argo.

3. Diana Makes it to Land, Nyad: The docudrama chronicling Diana Nyad’s historic 2013 swim from Cuba to Key West has an ending that’s pre-ordained. The challenge, therefore, is to sell the audience on the strength of the two key relationships in the film: One between two best friends (Jodie Foster as trainer Bonnie Stoil) and another with a foil tempering her unound optimism (the boat’s captain played by Rhys Ifans). This all comes to fruition at the sight of Diana Nyad making it onto land after 50-straight hours of swimming. She’s so dazed that she can’t make the final steps without Bonnie coaching her step by step, until the two fall into an embrace (shortly joined by her captain). A litmus test of emotion-driven films is how well one interprets the power of their ending. This one hits.

4. The Cowboy Dances with the School Teacher, Asteroid City: Like all of Wes Anderson’s big ensemble films, Asteroid City has a few characters providing the central story and a lot of characters who are sprinkled in to provide different dashes of color. The marmish school teacher (Maya Hawke) and the rugged cowboy (Rupert Fiend) exhibit the kind of sexual chemistry that seems destined by the Western tropes that encoded these caricatures in the first place. Then again, they exist in a Wes Anderson movie which often keeps the characters in a rigid state of introspection. Fortunately, spontaneity wins out and the pair share a very spirited dance with virtually no segue beforehand.

5. Latte’s “Wipe Out” Dance, Fool’s Paradise: Charlie Day’s Fool’s Paradise combines the physical comedy of the silent clowns, with the comedies about idiot savants who fail upwards like Being There and Broadway Danny Rose. In this pivotal scene at a Hollywood party, the song “Wipe Out” plays and our previously catatonic hero suddenly awakens like a wind-up toy. He loses all inhibitions as his limbs flail widely through a crowded party and dances on a the ledge of a skyscraper, before falling into a pool. In a possible homage to The Graduate, Latte sinks to the bottom with a sense of childlike wonder.

6. Elizabeth Reveals Her Voyeurism in a Talk on Method Acting, May December- Iconoclast director Todd Haynes’s latest film challenges us to think about how we classify people as pariahs in our society. The film centers around a doppelganger of 90s scandal Mary Kay Letourneau (Julianne Moore) who prayed on a middle school student and is still married to her victim (Chris Melton) 25 years later. Natalie Portman plays a method actor who travels to her home to study her for the role. But she’s not so innocent herself. In a speech given to the local high school, a version of Elizabeth creeped in that showed herself to be devious and her motives for capturing a subject to be less than pure.

7. Keith Shares a Drink with his Viewers, Dumb Money-Judging by how often the pandemic has been dealt with in real films, it appears that the public might have been too traumatized by it to enjoy seeing it presented on screen. But the pandemic gave way to moments of unique social celebration that are worth celebrating. The scheme of a bunch of have-nots to short-circuit the stock on Reddit is the kind of social media ingenuity that is hard to believe wasn’t strengthened by the pandemic. The emotional touch of ring leader Keith toasting his viewers on line and revealing to a group of (by some definitions) strangers that his sister just died: That’s something.

8. Richard Calls the CEO of the Company, Flaming Hot-This rather typical story little-engine-that-could docudrama tells of a janitor at the Frito-Lays company, Richard Montanez (Jesse Garcia), who invents a spicy new brand of snack food. The movie’s fairly by-the-book, but one stand-out scene distinguishes the film. After hitting the predictable red tape of a factory janitor who wants to revolutionize the company, Richard takes a gamble and calls headquarters from the janitor’s closet. He gets through to Tony Shalhoub’s CEO who responds with the kind of tempered curiosity one would expect. It’s a very effectively written scene. It also channels that frustration we all have in this age, where getting through to someone on the phone is a relic of the past.

9. The Score Powers Through the First Look at the Mushroom Kingdom, Super Mario Brothers-There’s very little chance this film will go down as a classic. That’s not to say that the score didn’t deliver the nostalgic feels for a 90s kid like myself, and that it didn’t have striking visuals to match. This is especially apparent when Mario gets his first site of Princess Peach’s castle and the full vista of the Mushroom Kingdom after being led there by Toad.

10. Ernest Meets His Fate in Tom White, Killers of the Flower Moon-At the 2005 Oscars, Chris Rock got flack for one of the least controversial comments ever made at an Awards ceremony: That actor Jude Law acts a lot. Aww, quaint times. When Killers of the Flower Moon gets nominated for an Oscar (a near certainty), Jessie Plemons will have the distinction of having been in an Oscar nominated film seven of the past nine years: In other words, a new Jude Law. Is this a good or bad thing? There’s a such thing as overexposure, but Plemons’ ability to say a lot with silences can certainly have a chilling effect when utilized correctly. In Killers of the Flower Moon, Plemons instantly establishes himself as the adult in the room when he visits Leonardo DiCaprio’s wreckless manchild and tells him in few words that there will now be consequences for his actions.

Ten Runners-Up in Slightly Less Detail

11. Next Goal Wins- Oscar Knightley revealing himself as a cameraman who moonlights as a federation soccer executive, kicking off a running gag of everyone taking on multiple jobs in the impoverished Samoan economy. 

12. Oppenheim-The very real explosion. Conducted with no CGI. Certainly worth the hype that the first half of the movie was building towards.

13. Holdovers-That electric kiss between Angus and Miss Crain’s niece. The niece was a bit childish and immature (she did finger paints, after all), but it had a great sense of youthgul playfulness

14. Asteroid City-Jason Schwartzman’s Augie photographing ScarJo’s Midge like an avant-garde French movie. 

15. Maestro- Maya Hawke initiating a dance to the Clap Song and everyone joining in; the family’s culminating in an emotionally messy hug.

16. Saltburn-Ollie’s cryptic seduction of Venetia. It’s the first time that Ollie’s undertones of deviousness are shown and it comes out of nowhere. 

17. Holdovers-Mary gifting Paul an open book. Mary also made a mark for being gracious in accepting the same gift that Paul gave to Angus, but subtly pointing out how it’s not a particularly thoughtful gift. 

18. Migraton-Carol Kane’s heron alternating between extremely threatening and highly accommodating to the protagonist duck family. Sometimes cartoon characters can endear me to them lightning-fast simply by being drawn in a certain way. This was one of those cases 

19. Dumb Money- Pete Davidson putting the breaks on being a douche for a second to bond with his brother over their dead sister, running, and their shared goals. 

20. Quiz Lady-Awkwafina’s winning the audition round on a gnarly acid trip.

Interview with Anna Brisbin AKA Brizzy Voices

Anna Brisbin is a Voice Over Artist with over 70 IMDB credits and over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Check out her channel and don't forget to subscribe to mine.