Oscar the Grouch
Do I actually like so-called Oscar movies?
Yet another critic being shamelessly manipulated, at the Montclair Film Festival in 2014
I’ll have serious thoughts next week about serious subjects, but tonight is Oscar night, and as usual we’re having a handful of people over to watch an indelibly silly ceremony. This year’s Academy Awards promises to be more interesting than usual, because so many categories feel up for grabs, and because there’s been so much drama already surrounding certain films. If Conan O’Brien is funny, Cynthia Erivo wears something wacky, and Kieran Culkin doesn’t take his Intuniv, it should be a fun night.
I have strong rooting interests this year for and against certain films, but overall I think this was a fairly weak year. Yet, weirdly, I find I am better prepared for the Oscars than usual, in that I’ve seen all the nominees for the major categories (Picture, Directing, Acting, Writing) and most of the feature film nominees in general. That’s partly because I’m trying harder these days to see movies that are “in the conversation,” but I think it’s also because, for all that I lament the consequences of the decline of the Oscar movie—the mid-budget somewhat-serious film for grownups—I’m not sure I actually like movies like that. Whereas, even when I don’t wind up liking more arthouse fare, I’m at least curious to see it.
Take a film like Emilia Pérez. I strongly suspect that the film won so many Oscar nominations in part because people thought it was making important history with its depiction of a trans character. Then the backlash started—the film was lambasted in Mexico for bad Spanish and for insensitivity to the toll taken by the cartels, the star was discovered to have made numerous “problematic” tweets—but more important, I suspect, people actually watched the film and discovered it wasn’t a progressive message movie at all. That, though, is why I liked the film—precisely because it’s far too weird for Oscar.
Or take a film like Nickel Boys. A lot of the excitement around that film is about the way it was shot: nearly entirely in first-person POV. That’s a very peculiar way to shoot a film, and I’m not sure it works—but I thought it was an interesting and worthwhile experiment. In fact, it’s the main reason I wanted to see the film, because without that conceit I would worry that an Oscar-aiming film about two Black boys in a segregated Florida reform school would be the kind of “worthy” film that winds up being quite boring. The artiness of films like Moonlight or The Last Black Man in San Francisco isn’t incidental to their appeal, at least to me.
When I look back over recent Oscar history, I notice that frequently the films I didn’t wind up seeing are precisely the kinds of films that scream “I am an Oscar film,” mid-budget inspirational fare like Selma, The Darkest Hour or Green Book. This year, I didn’t wind up seeing Blitz even though I’ve liked a number of Steve McQueen’s films, nor did I see Saturday Night, nor Maria, or Shirley. That’s substantially because I heard they weren’t very good, but to be honest I would have had to hear that they were very good indeed for me to be excited about them. By contrast, the word on the street that it was a train wreck didn’t deter me at all from seeing Megalopolis, which I enjoyed immensely in spite of—or maybe in part because of—its ridiculousness.
So if the state of film is in terminal decline, does that mean I’m part of the problem? Maybe so. Maybe I should be rooting for Hollywood to make more and better films that I don’t want to see, so that downstream of them other folks can make more films that I do.
Anyway, if you want to bone up on my thoughts on this year’s Oscar-nominated films, the pickings are a little slim. Pieces I’ve written about Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, A Real Pain, Dune are out there already, along with a capsule piece about The Seed of the Sacred Fig, but I think that’s about it. My thoughts on The Wild Robot (along with two other robot-themed works, Maybe Happy Ending and Robot Dreams) will appear in the next issue of Modern Age, and my thoughts on Anora and Nickel Boys (along with Hard Truths, one of my favorite films of 2024 that was snubbed by Oscar, which I wrote about briefly here) should appear in the issue after that, whenever it comes out—long after people have stopped talking about these films, no doubt. I think that’s it, though. I had intended to write a piece about The Substance pairing it with the John Frankenheimer film, Seconds, but it somehow never happened. Maybe Oscar will give me an opportunity to do it belatedly.
Finally, if for some reason you want to read my Oscar-related musings from recent years, here you go:
2024: here are my thoughts at the time of last year’s nominations, declaring 2023 to have been a solidly good year for movies. I wrote quite a bit about 2023 films; here is a longer rumination on many failed “great man” films from that year (plus one successful one: Oppenheimer); here is a piece about Barbie and Poor Things, two other important films from 2023 that are really doppelgängers; here is a piece on Perfect Days (along with Salesman in China, a wonderful play I saw at Stratford last summer; here is a piece on American Fiction, and here is a piece on The Zone of Interest, all important films from that year.
2023: here are my grumpy musings about the films of 2022, with much reference to the Oscars of decades past. And here, in a similarly cranky vein, are my comparisons of three Oscar-nominated films from 2022 to the older, deeper films that were their inspirations: All Quiet on the Western Front, the 2022 versus 1930 versions; Living versus Ikiru, and EO versus Au hasard Balthazar. To complete the crankiness, here is my pet theory of the indie darling that dominated that year, Everything Everywhere All At Once.
2022: here, finally, is my interminable ramble about the films of 2021, with particular emphasis on why I was rooting for Jane Campion’s film, The Power of the Dog, along with an exhaustive rundown of my rooting interest in the rest of that year’s Academy Awards. It’s fascinating to recall that I cared so much. Personally, I blame COVID. That same season prompted me to write this piece arguing that it’s ok that films have gotten small, a proposition that I’m clearly rethinking. Other Oscar-nominated films I wrote about that year include The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Lost Daughter and Encanto, and probably others that I’m forgetting—though maybe not; there weren’t terribly many films that year, also on account of COVID.
I think that’s enough self-promotion. Enjoy the show.
I do have an ongoing battle within myself between just wanting good movies that work and wanting something novel. More and more I'm looking at that latter inclination as a character flaw. It's the same tendency that has fashionistas always chasing the next thing, that has people uninterested in old movies, old music, Shakespeare, etc. I think it's the other side of the coin from those who just want the familiar. Always eat a burger or pizza when they travel to other countries. Still listening to the music they listened to in high school. Want to make America white again. Etc.
I think it's important to be open to what's original, new, or unfamiliar, but also the stuff that isn't, but is still well made and entertaining.
(I would say the bigger problem with movies like Green Book or Selma is just they weren't that good and the Academy was probably honoring them for something other than their filmmaking greatness.)