Time Pegs Be Damned at this Blog! I'll React to the Oscars When I Want to React! In All Seriousness, Please Consider Raising Your Subscription From Free to Paid to Help Incentivize Me to Write In a More Timely Manner. It Takes a Decent Amount of Human Labor to Write This After All, and The Traditional Journalism Outlets to Publish These Pieces Are Dying.
Plus: A Great Year on the Whole
To people who aren’t film buffs, it seems like a blanket generality to say that one year was good and one year wasn’t, but it actually can be true. Certain trends — and especially the ripple waves of COVID — altered release dates to the point where some years were complete duds (looking at you, 2022!).
2024 only had four films I would unequivocally recommend — Here, Anora, Between the Temples, and Challengers. This past year? I’d classify somewhere between 15 and 20 films at that level of quality. So when it comes to Sinners and One Battle After Another, they are both extraordinary films in an extraordinary year.
Minus: The Back End of the Nominees
I found Frankenstein too gory and disturbing to be a positive experience. But I can accept that it’s not my cup of tea, and it fills a nice niche for a Best Picture slate.
What I wholeheartedly reject is the inclusion of F1 and Bugonia. Terrible movies must not be allowed to be nominated, troops! Just kidding — I know art is subjective — but I thought those were seriously unimpressive films. Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most imaginative filmmakers out there, but he’s been nominated for far better films before. This one was a flat horror film with a half-baked twist, not something on par with his usual level of world-building.
F1 was a clichéd sports film that saw Brad Pitt playing to the exact behavioral expectations I would have of a Hollywood star who has consistently been told he’s one of the sexiest men on the planet. Also, let’s be honest: Sentimental Value wasn’t that far off from the SNL sketch.
Plus: A Veteran Wins Supporting Actress
In the last few years, the Academy has been using the supporting categories to kowtow to groups that insist the Academy award a diverse set of winners. Everyone’s opinion will vary, but I found Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Zoë Saldaña, Lupita Nyong’o, Ariana DeBose, Ke Huy Quan, and Troy Kotsur all unworthy of the Oscar, and it’s difficult not to believe the race was altered to some degree because of the diversity narrative.
My friend told me, “Congratulations, you have the same view as Fox News,” and my hatred for the Republican Party is well documented, but that doesn’t mean I like seeing Oscar voting influenced by counterfactual pushes for diversity. Watching someone like Ariana DeBose campaign for the Oscar on the basis that she’s the more diverse choice — while ignoring that this benefits her in today’s socio-economic climate — and then hammering “the continued importance of diversity” in her speech the following year feels tone-deaf.
This year, I was impressed with Chaser Infiniti in One Battle After Another, and Regina King knocked it out of the park in the unnominated Darren Aronofsky film Caught Stealing, so I was pretty thrilled for Amy Madigan, although I should point out…
Minus: That veteran was Someone I Had Never Heard Of. Skarsgard Family Still Goes Unrewarded:
Although, I do have to ask: who the hell is Amy Madigan? Am I the only one who can’t remember her from Field of Dreams? Personally, I’ve only seen her in three films: Rules Don’t Apply, Pollock, and Field of Dreams. She’s also famous for Uncle Buck and the Oscar-nominated Places in the Heart. But that’s a pretty thin résumé.
It’s nice to see an older actor rewarded, but Stellan Skarsgård would have been a much nicer choice. Still, it’s the kind of bombastic supporting-character role that we don’t see too often.
Plus: Conan O’Brien Goes All In on Sketches
From 2002 to approximately the dawn of YouTube, I was a Conan obsessive. If you were up past midnight, this was the only game in town, and it was quite a game. His stand-up was pretty typical, and his Hollywood banter had a nice awareness that he was a small fish in a big pond, but he really shone brightest in sketch work.
With the aid of Brian Stack (who I am scheduled to interview this May), Brian McCann, Andy Blitz, Max Weinberg, Joel Goddard, a young Amy Poehler, and others, Conan presided over a gonzo theater of the absurd. He crammed in an especially high number of bits: imagining himself as an entitled Oscar winner being serenaded by Josh Groban; memeing Leonardo DiCaprio and duplicating Michael B. Jordan; a future Oscars overrun by product placement; a parody of Netflix’s habit of spelling out plot points mid-movie.
This is Conan at his best.
Minus: The Backlash to Sinners Losing
I’ve written plenty about how the Oscars continue to be a referendum on progressiveness by a bloc of critics, movie fans, and industry advocates who believe that lashing out at the minute shortcomings of one of the most progressive industries on the planet will make a ripple in fixing our messed-up society.
As Chris Rock once said, the Black community in the 1960s wasn’t protesting Sidney Poitier’s Oscar snubs because they were too busy getting lynched. In the past decade, I’ve witnessed mass calls for greater inclusiveness during Awards Season that are just plain intellectually insulting, and I’ve had to risk looking racist or sexist if I didn’t join that bandwagon.
On top of the slant toward people wanting to see Black nominees win, we have the additional backlash that inevitably comes from Sinners being such a highly nominated film. They are both incredible films but one has to be a winner. The problem is that both films will be defined forever in a debate that will go beyond the Oscars (expanded upon here)
Side note:
My biggest irritation here is that Ryan Coogler won an Oscar, but some people will claim it’s not the right Oscar. Try telling that to Ryan Coogler! You think he's not happy winning an Oscar or that an anti-Black Academy would really pick and choose which type of Oscar to give someone?
Plus: Writing Wins for One Battle After Another and Sinners
So much of what worked well with these movies happened at the writing level.
Sinners established great backstory for its characters without dragging (impressive for a 137‑minute movie) and pulled the wool over our eyes as it underwent a very smooth genre shift.
One Battle After Another walked the thin tightrope between being relevant but not preachy or specific. It built out an entire world that could be explored in sequels or spin-offs.
Minus: The Ceremony Started an Hour Early
Whose bright idea was this? Who exactly wants to start an Oscar party on the West Coast at 4 p.m.? It was a major schlep just to make it to my own party by 7 p.m., and I had the easiest time zone in the country.
There’s “starting early,” and then there’s “my Aunt Hilda insisting we eat at 4:30 because she doesn’t like driving in the dark.” The Oscars should not be taking scheduling cues from Aunt Hilda!
Plus: The Casting Oscar
The new casting award is a good start — a long‑overdue acknowledgment of a crucial part of filmmaking — but it remains to be seen whether the Academy will just copycat the Best Picture race (the way the SAG Ensemble award often does) or actually think creatively. Would a good ensemble film featuring risky choices like Bad Shabbos or the Knives Out sequel have made it in under ordinary circumstances? How about a foreign crossover like Rental Family, with an entirely fresh cast of Japanese actors alongside Brendan Frasier?
It’s a promising category, but the Academy has a long history of defaulting to the familiar. Let’s see if they can resist that gravitational pull.
Plus: The Bridesmaids Reunion
Probably the funniest non-host bit of the night. The forced improv element with the most random selection of audience members was killer. I was disappointed to see Wendi McLendon-Covey (unfortunately, the least famous of the sextet) absent on stage, but fortunately that was explained as a scheduling difficulty.
