Oscar Winners (If I Made the Categories)
All Quiet on the Triangle of Women Talking: Maverick
Happy (Belated) Oscar Sunday! This would’ve gone out Saturday morning but it was actually medically necessary that at I spend 36 straight hours in bed watching every Oscar nominated film I could stomach in between episodes of Twin Peaks.
For better or worse, many of my bestie Nia and I’s predictions came to fruition, but I’m not quite done yet. I have my own awards to hand out to the final batch of movies I watched this past week-and-a-half but that I haven’t yet written about.
I’m proud to say that, for the first time in years, I made it through (almost) all of the Best Picture nominees. Allison: 9. AMPAS: 1.
BEST MOVIE I WILL NOT SEE: Avatar: The Way of Water
I am not watching Avatar: The Way of Water. You cannot make me watch Avatar: The Way of Water. Neither God nor the devil nor Carmela Soprano herself could compel me to subject myself to this three-plus hour self-indulgent, sacreligious Sci-Fi rip-off of the Blue Man Group. Maybe intellectual property theft SHOULD be a crime. May Edie Falco strike me down.
BEST TOP GUN SEQUEL: Top Gun: Maverick
Love Top Gun. This was definitely Top Gun. Does a great job of being Top Gun. No idea how this was nominated for Best Picture, but it’s hard to imagine another film pulling ahead in this category.
*my editors (Madeleine) have informed me it’s pronounced “TOP gun” and not “top GUN”*
BEST MOVIE WITH THE MOST WOMEN TALKING: Women Talking
A+ for title accuracy — those women sure were talking! Martin Scorsese be damned!! Jokes aside, this was an extremely haunting and well-made film about the women of an abusive, conservative religious cult employing direct democracy, in spite of forced illiteracy, to make a collective decision about their future. It wasn’t my fave of the season, but it was definitely good. Really upsetting, though. I do not recommend for the faint of heart.
BEST MOVIE DESPERATE TO CASH IN ON THE SUCCESS OF WHITE LOTUS: Triangle of Sadness
I liked The Menu. I didn’t like White Lotus. This film was like the two of them birthed a class satire antichrist. I got a kick out of Woody Harrelson’s lunatic socialist monologuing and the mid-film power grab by Abigail (Dolly de Leon). (Extreme liberal arts college discussion section vibes.) But largely I am exhausted with old white male filmmakers delivering bloated, heavy-handed class discourse in bids for rich guilt award wins — especially the films that hyperfocus on the ultra wealthy and out of touch, presumably so that delusional, privileged viewers can enjoy the satire without feeling shamed or lampooned themselves. Triangle of Sadness stole two hours of my life that I will never get back :(
BEST MOVIE ABOUT WWI(I): All Quiet on the Western Front
Much like 1917, War Horse, Dunkirk, Journey’s End, Saving Private Ryan, Inglourious Basterds, Gallipoli, and the first All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) before it, AQOTWF is this year’s clear frontrunner for Best Movie About WWI or WWII.
It checks all of the anti-war war movie boxes: Naive young recruits, manipulative officers, hopeless camaraderie, hand-to-hand combat, moral ambiguity, and disillusionment joined by one scene after another depicting the abject horror and suffering of war. And while I do think The War Movie™️ did a very good job at being A War Movie™️, I mostly found myself thinking: What’s the point?
I understand that I am not this film’s target audience, but it feels like every other year there is an [insert 20th Century war] movie that positions itself as the movie to END all war movies or to SUBVERT all war movies or to MOCK all war movies. You could scribble names of wars and film tropes, drop them in separate hats, and pick two and you’d get the rough outline of a recent Academy Award nominee. At a certain point the intent of the individual war film — be it historiography, patriotism, criticism, or satire — feels less significant than the collective barrage of violence employed to drive those points home. It brought to mind a thought I had watching Tár: How many times must we watch the same acts of violence to believe they occurred at all?
All that aside, I like to evaluate war movies based on how much of the runtime I spent wishing I was watching a different movie about war. I think I spent around 60 minutes of AQOTWF wanting to put on Saving Private Ryan instead. Not bad. Speaking of Saving Private Ryan…
BEST COMING-OF-AGE FILM HOMAGING THE SWEET NAIVETÉ OF YOUTH: The Fabelmans
…Steven Spielberg is back with a movie that’s NOT about war! (RIP War Horse) And it’s good!? It’s more than good, it’s adorable. The Fabelmans is a semi-autobiographical film about the legendary director’s childhood, family, and introduction to filmmaking. I went in thinking there was no way Spielberg could pull it off, only to be enchanted by the sheer whimsy of it all. Spielberg’s self-insert (Sammy) is awkward and thoughtful and sweet. The film is a little heavy-handed at times, but isn’t this true of all good bildungsromans? Adolescence is nothing if not painfully sincere. In a landscape of increasingly cynical, starved-for-substance coming-of-age films, a movie about a boy who loves to make movies made by that boy who liked to make movies is a welcome antidote. Imagine watching this movie and thinking Licorice Pizza was good.
BEST COMING-OF-AGE FILM HOMAGING THE DEVASTATING NAIVETÉ OF YOUTH: Aftersun
I have to admit, I was an Austin Butler Best Actor truther and a Colin Farrel dreamer, but in a different year I could see Paul Mescal having a real shot at the prize for this beautiful, devastating film. In Aftersun, a young woman named Sophie (Frankie Corio) reflects on the last childhood vacation she ever took with her father (Mescal). It’s a slow-burn indie film interspersed with self-shot camera footage of the trip, juxtaposing Sophie’s innocence with her father’s rapidly deteriorating mental health. Mescal’s performance is deft and volatile, simultaneously joyful and strained. His character is trapped between his desire to be present in his daughter’s life and his desperation to escape his own, and wracked with guilt over a choice he wishes he had the strength not to make. I sobbed. Highly recommend.
BEST MOVIE THAT HAD A BETTER MOVIE DEEP DOWN INSIDE OF IT CLAWING, SCRATCHING, BEGGING TO BE LET OUT: The Whale
I wanted this movie to be so much better than it was. I remember seeing the stage play years ago, but watching it onscreen was an entirely different experience. The Whale follows Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a man homebound by obesity who tries to make amends with his estranged daughter at the end of his life. He must reconcile his choice to leave his wife and daughter for a chance at happiness with one of his male university students, his subsequent loss of that partner, and his decline in health. To anyone paying close attention to the story, Charlie’s weight is the least compelling part So why is it the only thing on Aronofsky’s mind?
As Roxane Gay wrote, the most challenging part of watching The Whale is how evidently the director detests his subject. The plot is broken up by gratuitous scenes showing Charlie struggle to breathe, pleasure himself, and move around his apartment. One moment we’re watching him thoughtfully advise his students or try to connect with his daughter and the next we’re watching a montage of him binge eating or dropping items on the floor that he then can’t reach. All anyone in the film wants to talk about — and all anyone behind the camera is thinking about — is Charlie’s weight, but it’s a one sided fight. He wants to make sure the people he loves will be okay when he is gone. He wants to make amends for choices that have nothing at all to do with his body. Hateful, fetishistic scenes distract from that goal.
It’s not my place to speak on Charlie’s experience personally or politically, but I’ve had loved ones who lived how Charlie did. I’ve known those who lost freedom of movement at the end of their lives, whose loves and traumas were in the past, and who turned to the internet to seek connection while homebound. It’s not that this person doesn’t exist or that their story shouldn’t be told, but that it should be told by someone who sees their humanity first. It should be told by someone who understands that an individual’s body is not a moral battleground. It should be told by someone for whom telling the story is more than a self-satisfied pat on the back. It should be told by someone for whom the life Charlie lives is not an abstract experience, his emotional journey is valued, and the actors are encouraged to focus on the intricacies of the relationships between their characters as opposed to the body in front of them.
Ultimately, I think Darren Aronofsky was a poor fit for this source material. He made a “psychological thriller” out of a story that works far better as a thoughtful, slower-paced drama. Brendan Fraser and Hong Chau delivered terrific performances with the material they were given, but there’s a better movie in The Whale than the one we got. If only the creative team could have found it.
That’s all for this week — tune in next week for me finally finishing a book, and perhaps diving into the obscene amount of David Lynch content I’ve watched this past week.
<3,
Allison