Oscars: Our critics dissect the Best Picture nominees
It's Oscars weekend, and as Hollywood gets ready for the biggest party of the year, In-house movie critic Dan Morris and BBC Shropshire film reviewer Carl Jones give us their take on the Best Picture nominees.
Dan Morris: Anatomy Of A Fall, The Holdovers, Past Lives, The Zone Of Interest, and Barbie
Ok, so we all know Oppenheimer has got the big one in the bag... or do we?
Christopher Nolan’s epic biographical thriller has certainly been the darling of awards season so far, and it has fully deserved every accolade it has scooped. But when it comes to the Oscars, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and the night may yield a few surprises.
The fact is that this year the standard is exceptionally high, and if Oppenheimer were out of the mix, a lot of the other horses in this race would be justly feeling a lot more confident. Before we address not the elephant but the plastic doll in the room, lets take a look at those flicks that for many will have slipped under the radar, but have punched their way to the top of the pack with a Best Picture nomination.
Exhibit A, a little festive ditty released in January (naturally) and starring the genius that is Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers is easily one of my favourite flicks of the last few months, and I’m delighted the Academy have given it its dues.
Giamatti leads an exceptional casting trio completed by Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a story of an unlikely troop forced to spend Christmas together at an American boarding school.
Giamatti’s grizzled and wounded classics professor is a masterpiece turn (not for nothing is he up for the Best Actor gong), and Randolph is breathtaking (Actress In A Supporting Role a strong possibility). In general this one is a hard-hitting and heart-warming yarn that touches every emotion a great movie should, and any of the five statuettes it is up for would be well-deserved.
Speaking of hard-hitting, they don’t come much more so than The Zone Of Interest. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, this adaptation of Martin Amis’s 2014 novel puts Christian Friedel in the shoes of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss.
As administrator of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Höss was instrumental to one of the Second World War’s darkest legacies, and Glazer’s film does not shirk from presenting a harrowing picture of one of the 20th century’s most shameful chapters.
The clever yet stomach churning thing that The Zone Of Interest achieves is how it so believably presents the commandant and his family living their best lives only metres away from atrocities of the worst nature imaginable. Powerful, but not for the faint of heart, this one is a brave and bold piece of filmmaking that deserves every bit of applause it has thus far garnered. Best Picture? I doubt it will take it. Best International Feature Film? A strong contender.
One of the truly sensational underdogs of this year’s Best Picture category is Past Lives – Celine Song’s feature directorial debut charting the course of the relationship of two childhood friends over almost 25 years. Starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro, this one has received an abundance of critical acclaim and has in fact been named named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute.
Touching and heartfelt to the last, this one is an honest and sublime depiction of real life that audiences across the globe have found a kinship with. It’s unlikely to storm in with the Best Picture gong, but a far more likely award will be the Best Original Screenplay prize, for which it is also nominated.
By the same token, French legal drama Anatomy Of A Fall is punching a little above its weight in terms of being able to bag the top Oscar. Though, with it having already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, stranger things have certainly happened.
And now, we come to it. Awards season would not be awards season without a slice of controversy, but this year the slice is looking like pretty much the whole cake with Barbie having been snubbed in an extraordinary fashion. Directed by Greta Gerwig, this one has busted the box office in half, grossing a whopping $1.446 billion to date, standing as the highest-grossing film of 2023 and the 14th highest-grossing film of all time. Quite rightly, it has been nominated in the Oscars’ Best Picture category, but the fact that Gerwig has been passed over for a directing nod and its leading lady Margot Robbie has suffered the same for Best Actress is bizarre.
Barbie was an extraordinary success, and regardless of its commercial power, was a great piece of filmmaking. One would hope that the fact it brought in the veritable bucks was not the reason that it has been shunned from so many nominations it deserved, but the cynic in me doubts this monstrously.
Award committees across the land would do well, I think, to remember that alongside Oppenheimer, this flick continued the almighty work of Top Gun: Maverick in compelling people to get back to the cinema post-pandemic, and frankly – in a year of strikes, discontent, and monumental upheaval – helped save a beloved industry from going entirely belly-up. I would be delighted to see Barbie take the top gong – however unlikely this seems – and, if there is justice, it will finally be given the acknowledgement it deserves. We wait with bated breath...
Carl Jones: Maestro, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers Of The Flower Moon, and American Fiction
Friday, July 21, 2023 . . . I did Barbenheimer!
Five hours of back-to-back movie-magic, kicked off with Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer, and topped with a pink-fest in the psychedelic world of Barbie.
Even as I recovered from the jarring mood swings and assault on my senses, I knew precisely which film would win the box office battle – and which would triumph in awards season.
Barbie wasn’t for me, much as it wasn’t for the many youngsters who’d arrived high on e-numbers and anticipation, only to be completely baffled by the wry, satirical storyline. I appreciated the cinematic flourishes, as well as the performances of Margot Robbie and particularly Ryan Gosling, but this was a grown-up feminist fable mis-sold in kids’ wrapping paper.
Oppenheimer, though, was another matter. It delivered exactly what I was anticipating. I named this engrossing three-hour powerhouse about the making of the atomic bomb as my film of 2023, and hope and believe it will take the Best Picture Oscar. Cillian Murphy was eerily effective as the title character, but for me it was the editing, the soundtrack, and the scene-stealing performance by Robert Downey Jnr which lingered longest in the memory. It’s one of those ‘event’ movies which deserves to be seen on the biggest cinema screen around.
Christopher Nolan has been snubbed at many an awards season, but this is surely his time. There were high hopes that Martin Scorsese might storm the Oscars this year with his first foray into the world of westerns, but Killers of the Flower Moon looks destined to linger among the also-rans.
At a quite daunting three hours 27 minutes, it requires a mammoth investment of your time, but you’re rewarded with solid turns from Scorsese favourites Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro – and a star-making performance by Lily Gladstone.
I’d had her nailed on to win Best Actress – until Emma Stone came along to clean up at awards season on the back of her incredible performance in Poor Things.
The film itself is pretty weird – from the creating minds of even more bonkers The Favourite with Olivia Colman from a few years back – but the wonderfully scripted modern-day take on the Frankenstein story, which sees a child’s mind planted into a woman’s body, is delicious.
Stone won a first Oscar for La La Land in 2016, but her hypnotic interpretation of wide-eyed lead character Bella Baxter in Poor Things is on a completely different level. You just can’t take your eyes off her.
And that’s tough luck for the leading actress contender flying the flag for the UK. Maestro may be all about the enigmatic composer Leonard Bernstein, but it is Carey Mulligan as his caring and conflicted wife Felicia who steals the show.
For me it’s quite probably her career-best performance. She’s the beating heart of the picture, grabbing hold of all the film’s most raw and powerful scenes and running through the entire gamut of emotions.
Having said all that, the movie itself failed to get inside the head of Bernstein, played passionately by Bradley Cooper in a labour of love project. Aside from a couple of Orson Welles-like directorial flourishes, and top-rate prosthetics, it left me feeling slightly unfulfilled.
If you’re looking for an outside bet to nab an accolade or two, how about American Fiction? Of all the contenders, it’s probably the one which has made the fewest ripples over here. Which is a shame. Jeffrey ‘Felix Leiter’ Wright is professor and writer Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison who is told that his novels aren’t ‘black’ enough.
It walks a fine line between the acidic and the absurd, delivering a classy, clever and at times comedic send-up – proving that it really is possible to mix biting social commentary with laugh-out-loud comedy.
