The Academy Awards are on Sunday night. As is my long-time custom, I won't be watching. But as is my short-time custom,(this is my third year observing it), I've watched from the comfort of the love seat in my den all ten of the films nominated for Best Picture.
From bottom to top, from least favorite to most, here are my quick thoughts on each of them. (These are not plot summaries, so if you don't know anything about these movies, my comments may not mean all that much.)
10. Frankenstein - Dark and turgid throughout, I really disliked this one. Definitely took a nap-een during it, and didn't miss a thing. Other than, presumably, some dark and turgid whatever. Give me Boris Karloff in the 1930's horror flick. Or Peter Boyle in Mel Brook's madcap Young Frankenstein any old day
09. F1 - This is a perfectly entertaining old-fashioned movie. Brad Pitt can still bring plenty of good looks-ness and charm. But F1 could have been made 50 years ago. It's not that I disliked it. There was one movie the nominee list that I actually hated. (Looking at you, Marty Supreme.) It's just that F1 didn't seem, to me, to have enough of anything distinctive to merit a nomination.
08. Marty Supreme - I like Timothée Chalomet. I really do. Liked him in Little Women. Loved him as Bob Dylan. But I found Marty Supreme one chaotic mess, with Chalomet frenetically ping-ponging around for two long hours+. It was all just a bit too much. The fifties atmospherics were interesting, and I suppose it was inspired to cast a-hole businessman Kevin O'Leary (he of Shark Tank fame) as an a-hole businessman. But a supremely hard pass on Marty Supreme.
07. Hamnet - This is one beautiful film. Just gorgeous. The acting was fine. But it left me cold. My one takeaway is that the kid who played Hamnet looked a lot like Prince George.
06. One Battle After Another - There was some great acting, and some wonderful bits. I loved the white nationalist rich guy cabal. And Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw (a character highly reminiscent of now-demoted ICE honcho Greg Bovino) was deleriosly hilarious. But I found OBAA pretty confusing. And, as I find almost every movie that runs over 2 hours, way too long. But I liked it well enough.
05. Sinners - There's lots to admire about Sinners, especially the acting (e.g., Michael B. Jordan) and the setting in Depression-era Mississippi. I also liked the look into Black life (however surreal many elements were). But magical realism is not now and has never been my jam, so there were parts that lost me.
04. Bugonia - If a little magic realism goes a long way, well, so does a little science fiction, a little fantasy, and little horror. And Bugonia had some of all of the above. But it also had a ton going for it. Like Emma Stone. And the on-point portrayal of richy-rich CEO life, the horrors of big pharma, and the left-behind working class. So the good outweighed the bad, and I much enjoyed Bugonia.
03. Secret Agent - I even mucher enjoyed Secret Agent. Okay, there was too much violence to my liking. And although Secret Agent didn't drag, does any movie need to run 2 hours and 40 minutes? They could have saved a good slug of time by cutting out the hairy leg stuff, which did nothing to advance the plot of how harrowing it is to like in a violent, repressive, thug-ridden, poor, authoritarian country, as was Brazil in the late 1970's. (I shudder to think that our country may just be a few degrees of separation away from this state...)
02. Train Dreams - What was it that drew me right into this low key movie? The low key-ness. The simplicity. The generosity. The quiet (even when noisy). The humanity at its core. The incredible natural beautiful of the Pacific Northwest setting. This is a very sad movie, but it's devoid of gimmicks, special effects, magical realism, and surreality. And I loved it. Contributing to my loving it, Train Dreams clocks in at 102 minutes. Yes!
01. Sentimental Values - Although I pretty much saw all of Imgmar Bergman during my prime movie going days, I was never a huge fan. The movies were almost always a slog, heavy going, moody, depressing. But I pretty much love anything in a Scandinavian settin, so Sentimental Values was right up my cinematic alley. Plus Skellen Skarsgard who plays the no longer relevant, aging acto paterfamilias of an artsy/acting Norwegian family. The movie deals with memory, resentment, intimacy, war, parents, children, rage, and the house you grow up in. What I loved about this - other than the Scando setting, the acting, and the house to die for (before they modernized it) was that it was intensely real. No tricks up its sleeve that I could see. My favorite movie of the Big Ten, but not all that much farovite-y than Train Dreams or Secret Agent.
I will check on Monday to see which movie won. Unlikely to be one of my faves. (I'm thinking Sinners for the win.)
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