The Best Picture Gauntlet

Two movie ones in a row–I know! I’d wanted to change it up, but the other thing I’m currently working on keeps jumping tracks smidge by smidge, and the Oscars are in like 6 hours or something, so here we are. A sidenote on running a newsletter: I still don’t quite know where the cutoff is for what shows up in the first few lines of the email. Even with introductory paragraphs being just that, jumping right into things feels off, so this preamble is both to have a preamble, and to see how long that preamble needs to be. Did anyone actually memorize the Preamble of the Constitution in school? Like I know it was an assignment, but did anyone actually do it? I’m serious, tell me.

Movies are fucking great. I’ve always known that, but I’ve latched onto them in the last few years as a special interest. Part of that is just access–Amaryl and I moved a few blocks away from Cincinnati’s banner art house theater a couple summers ago and love going. It’s a cozy place with friendly staff and good popcorn, and the type of spot that gets The Substance a day early and houses a slew of repertory screenings, and I can go there at basically the drop of a hat? Life does not get better than this. It also gets me out in the neighborhood, and I’ve made/deepened friendships as a result. And that’s the bigger part of it–the people we share things with. I got into movies because talking about them with my friends brought me joy. Shoutout to Movie Club Club, but shout out for Tj especially for how passionate he is about movies. This whole entry’s like a shoutout to him; go read his writeups, too!

I made the call to see all 10 Best Picture nominees sometime last year when it clicked that I was already on my way there, so I figured I might as well challenge myself. By October, I was already deep enough into movies that I had a dim awareness of what was coming out of festivals (shoutout The Big Picture and Dobb Mob), so it just became a slight effort to go out of my way for I’m Still Here and A Complete Unknown. And I did! It felt good, and it means I can now rank the 10 Best Picture nominees of 2024.

Yes, of course I have a Letterboxd.

10. Emilia Perez

If you’ve watched one song from Emilia Perez, a musical about a trans woman’s transition that somehow fucks up that premise so hard that even I can’t stand it, it’s “La Vaginosplastia.” In particular, you’ve probably seen–oh, here–the part where Zoe Saldana sing-speaks things like “I’d like to know abouuuuut sex change operationnnnn” and “man! to woman!” to a doctor who calls her kinda clocky. The clip gives you the impression that Emilia Perez is not only an insane movie (true), but one that’s entertainingly so (false). 

However, the song that truly captures Emilia Perez’s essence is the one after it. “Lady” is a duet between Saldana and the sketpical Israeli plastic surgeon she beseeches in Tel Aviv to perform said sex change operationnnn that manages to be condescending, ideologically incoherent, regressively self-congratulatory, and profoundly fucking boring all in one go. I may go deeper on what all Emilia Perez gets wrong at a later date because Karla Sofia Gascon’s unearthed vitrolic tweets torpedoed its chance to win tonight, but just as a movie, its greatest failure is that it ends up being a slog.

Emilia Perez jumped out as the “progressive” choice among the nominees, the international film about a Mexican trans woman that was meant to show that we’re more than Trump’s America. It’s a nice sentiment until you register that a story in which every Mexican is either a victim or perpetrator of cartel violence, the trans woman is a duplicitous barely repressed rage monster who schemes her way into children’s lives, and a white guy’s calling all the shots anyway is exactly Trump’s America. El mal, indeed.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: Why don’t we rewatch the “Yeah x10” scene from Challengers again, instead?

9. The Brutalist

It’s way smoother sailing from here. The Brutalist is obviously great–that Statue of Liberty reveal! The score! Those sweeping shots of Italy! Damn near every actor on screen! For all of its grand intricacy, though, The Brutalist has what I call Self-Conscious Masterpiece Syndrome–it’s so preoccupied with its own size and scope that they become their own ends at the expense of the movie articulating something with them. For example, there’s a lot of weird sex stuff–not “ew! sex!” weird, but “there’s something that’s not quite articulated about this” weird–that doesn’t resonate as thoroughly as you’d want it to in a Great Film (except for the one time the sex stuff is entirely too heavyhanded), same with a handful of character arcs/dynamics and the clumsiest “doing drugs” scenes I’ve watched in a minute. And while astute watchers can argue themselves into why these threads that are gestured toward more than they’re realized is a good thing for the sake of media literacy or finding your own meaning in a narrative, I need to be able to see what you’re aiming at when you make such a fuss over how big your swing is.

But then other times, such as the building of the library or the opening five minutes or the closing of Act 1, I absolutely get the thrill of the swing in the first place.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: This clip of Adrien Brody and Guy Pierce during their first meeting, in which Brody’s character discovers proof that his work survived the Holocaust, is an early charge in the movie’s momentum, and shows how much an artist can love their creations.

8. A Complete Unknown

Good movie! I dragged my feet on getting to A Complete Unknown: it was the last Best Picture nominee I saw, and the one I labeled “the jury duty watch” once I decided to be a completionist. “It’s a Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothee Chalamet directed by the guy whose last musician biopic is why Dewey Cox was made,” I told myself, “It’s not going to surprise me.” And honestly, it kinda didn’t. All the standard biopic points were there: here’s the musician with notebook in hand as they mutter a future classic to themselves, see Bob scowl furtively at the news before debuting “Master of War,” have some faithfully recreated concert footage, here’s a cliche I Think You Should Leave riffed on; you get the idea.

But A Complete Unknown did kinda surprise me for how willingly it showed Dylan as an asshole without valorizing said assholeishness as a cost of genius or one of its tragic side effects. He’s just a dick because he can be kind of a dick. And Chalamet plays this aspect of Dylan with a central itchiness, a guy with a borderline compulsion to keep drawing people near even while he reflexively pulls back from them without seeming to understand his own reasoning. He does it so well that you want to see what Elle Fanning or Monica Barbaro could do with that depth of character. There’s a more interesting if not strictly more successful version of this movie that’s more grounded in Fanning, Barbaro, Edward Norton, and the rest of the supporting cast that I’d like to see, but at the same time, “Maggie’s Farm” kicks ass in this. Ah, Bob. It’s always contradictions with this guy.

I do like that there are at least 4 movies now that center around Chalamet being the inscrutable yet kind of alien visionary, though. Hell of a niche to carve for yourself.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: it’s not on YouTube yet, but Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash strolling in to rattle through “Big River” as we see in real time how electrical instrumentation galvanizes Dylan got me to lean forward in my seat.

7. Wicked

Are people born theater kids, or is theater kid-ness thrust upon them?

It’s not that I want Wicked to win over The Brutalist or A Complete Unknown, it’d just make a part of me happier. Whereas last Oscar year’s “for the girls, gays, and theys” pink cinematic explosion erupted with the force of a plastic heart taking its first beats, this year’s is relatively all froth elevated by a trio of exceptionally game performances (Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, and Jonathan Bailey), exquisite production design worthy of a potential Oscar win, and of course, about a half-dozen of the most potent showtunes of the 21st century. Wicked originally hit when I was just the right age and getting into musicals as a high school theater kid; try though I might, I’m not going to be able to deny “The Wizard and I” (show’s best number) or “Popular,” even in a movie whose direction and visual choices occasionally get in its own way. I really love what the choice of a Black actress does for a character as Othered as Elphaba, too, by giving the musical’s dippy anti-prejudice messaging something resembling heft. I’m still a little put out that Wicked could win Best Picture–there’s just a few too many things to “Yeah, but” it as a movie for a full-throated investment–but when it flies, it soars.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: Grande doing “Popular” is going to be her Oscar clip tonight, and I get it. It’s the best thing she’s ever done, the movie at its most clicking, and far and away the most vested Grande’s looked in anything she’s done since thank u, next.

6. I’m Still Here

Great movie! I thought spending the entire first act just settling in with the Paivas in their day-to-day familial life and exploring their dynamic while the political turmoil of Brazil’s 1970s dictatorship lingers in the background, only showing up as unasked questions and downbeats when Rubens is part of a handoff was a clever way to set up the results of the movie’s inciting incident. Instead of the movie being “about” how Eunice steers her household after Rubens is disappeared, Walter Salles’s direction and Fernanda Torres’s acting play the tension as naturalistically as possible. Soft, even. Whereas a movie like The Brutalist underlines every moment of its suffering with What It All Means, I found myself during I’m Still Here’s family passages asking myself what I’d do in Eunice’s situation. I liked that approach more.

Which isn’t to say I’m Still Here is all delicate show-don’t-tell. An extended, harrowing series of interrogations ratchets up the stress levels without ever fully bringing them back down, since now you know exactly what’s lurking beneath the surface.

I’d also be remiss not to spotlight Emily St. James’ Letterboxd review, which glibly but accurately describes what it’s like to watch ISH as a trans American at our present moment. Hm. Ice cream, anyone?

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: I’m Still Here is still there, in theaters, so none of its made its way to YouTube yet, but I’d let the beach opening play out. It just drops you immediately into this family’s life, and what Eunice will later work to preserve.

5. The Substance

It’s only ranked fifth this way, but this would be number one if I ranked this year’s Best Picture nominees by how funny it’d be if they won, because a kinetic grossout body horror exploitation movie like The Substance winning Best Picture would be fucking hilarious. Movies that weaponize blood, fingernails, teeth, tits, baking ingredients, and…shrimp like The Substance just aren’t “supposed” to stand alongside the dusty Bob Dylan biopic or stately Vatican procedural or foreign language thinker, but we’re all the richer that it is.

I like how The Substance grabs at a fistful of concepts and is conversant with decades of horror film while still being genuinely sorrowful over how the female body is treated, especially as a woman ages. Demi Moore’s Elisabeth is adrift once the body that defined her value for decades is casually reappraised as worthless, and desparate to claw back any validation she once felt at any cost, and Moore fucking crushes it as “at any cost” gets increasingly literal as The Substance flies well and truly off the rails. It’s not so much a case of trying to have your cake and eat it, too, as much as stuffing the cake with blood squibs and chicken grease and chucking it at the audience. It rules.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: You’ll know if you’re in or out on The Substance based off the first switch scene (warning: kinda nuts) in which Margaret Qualley literally crawls out of Demi Moore’s split-open back. Gnarly but compelling stuff. Not that it’s the point, but Qualley’s first look in the mirror is how I look at myself on injection day once the shot’s had time to kick in.

4. Conclave

Places 5 through 3 on this list got reshuffled a bunch due to how each one pulls in a different direction, meaning that we have the respectable Vatican procedural smooshed between the French weirdo’s body horror comedy and the one about a sex worker with a F-bomb count that feels Uncut Gemsian. Movies are fun.

Conclave was the biggest surprise for me last year. Like The Substance, it’s a movie doing two things exceptionally well: a pensive meditation on the sin of liturgical certainty and the value of faith as a springboard from which to ask questions about the world–a demonstration of what Catholicism can be at its best…and a romp-y workplace soap opera about old men in robes with impressive thread counts. And Isabella Rossellini. And the two work in tandem! Conclave wouldn’t be as rich a watch if either the painterly, lush cinematography and production design felt chintzy, nor would it be as engrossing without a playful edge and lightness to its feet that you wouldn’t expect from a movie with multiple characters who are referred to as “Your Eminence.” The combo together works, and it’s the only movie on this list I can talk about enthusiastically with people my age and my very Catholic mother and get an excited response. That’s cinema right there.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: I’m trying to avoid like, “Conclave is brat”ing too hard, but all of Conclave’s tea-spilling salacious best is in this scene. Rossellini’s curtsey, “Judas,” the vape hit. Livin’ that life von ‘clave, Pope classic.

3. Anora

I shocked myself when Anora’s acrylics clawed past Conclave at the last minute for the third-place spot. It came down to “If I could only watch one right now, which would it be?” and the truth is, I had a lot of fucking fun watching Anora. It’s exceptionally well-paced and well-shot throughout, but the second act involving Ani (Mikey Madison’s character’s preferred shortening of her name) traipsing around New York with a beleaguered clutch of goons while looking for her erntswhile new husband was the funniest thing I saw in theaters last year that wasn’t Hundreds of Beavers. This stretch tows the line between the concussive, deliriously happy “don’t think just go” moneyed first act and the uncermoniousness of the ending incredibly deftly, and it’s hard to understate just how great Madison is throughout this feature.

It says quite a bit that I have Anora this high despite there being a trio of psychological/philosophical underpinnings that don’t quite land right for the movie to be a slam dunk. Madison’s brilliance as Ani helps paper over how her continued belief in Ivan strains credulity long after he cut and run, abandoning her to the aforementioned beleaguered goons to save his own skin and refusing to answer anyone’s calls. There’s part of the slapstick setpiece home invasion (you’ll know) where the humor gives way to an actual threat of violence that the movie plays too long to be written off with later quips about who has “Fucking rapist eyes,” and then the ending, well, it reaches at something that doesn’t feel quite realized in the road to how we got here. These are tiny things, but they’re so essential to what Anora’s doing that I haven’t been able to not sweat them in the lead up. Still, great fucking movie.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: This extended feature on the list has all been so I could share this amusing as hell 25 seconds.

2. Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two came out over half a year before any other Best Picture nominee. It’s been toward the top of my favorites list for so long that I started wondering if I was overrating it, but then any clip I saw was a reminder that I was absolutely not. Does it have a little Self-Conscious Masterpiece Syndrome in its DNA? Definitely, but a big budget adaptation of a famously unadaptable sci-fi epic shouldn’t be as good as Dune: Part Two is. The degree of difficulty is absurdly high, but the movie glides like a Harkonnen foot soldier over it. I love that this movie is an act of imagination as much as it’s a technical achievement. The inverted colors of Giedi Prime and their black hole fireworks? Everything about the Shai Hulud sequence that is as breathtaking as anything Chalamet does as Bob Dylan? I might be less with the fandom stuff than I used to, but I’m still a genre nut at heart, especially when it’s as great as Dune: Part Two.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: The Shai Hulud sequence is the obvious choice, but no one’s meant to watch that on YouTube. It’s like seeing the Mona Lisa through FaceTime. No one’s meant to watch the Feyd Rautha scene like this, either, but less is lost in translation.

1. Nickel Boys

I will die mad that this has no actual shot at winning.

Nickel Boys is as close to an objectively best movie of the year as 2024 gets. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it’s true. Just in terms of concept, intention, and execution, it’s the most realized movie of the year, to say nothing about how beautiful it is, and how it’s truly unlike anything else I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen. This story of two Black boys who meet at a fictionalized version of a real reform school tells its tale exclusively through a first-person perspective. And nothing about the decision feels gimmicky, but instead puts the viewer inside who these boys are, body and soul. It’s a thoroughly Black, thoroughly humanizing movie that had me whispering “Come the fuck on” multiple times for what it could do. Please see it however you can.

“Can you pull up your YouTube?” clip: This edit gets across what makes Nickel Boys magic without giving anything up.