Tom Salinsky

The last of the Best Picture nominees this year (for me personally) is arguably the one which is dominating the discourse the least. That’s not surprising given that it’s neither a hugely controversial offering likely to split the crowd, but nor does it really have a shot at the big prize. I’m Still Here is the latest from Walter Salles whose Central Station from 1998 I remember thinking was fantastic, and there’s a weird overlap here with Emilia Pérez. Jacques Audiard’s film takes the fate of the disappeared in Mexico and uses it as a lever to open up the morality of a former gangster now living life as a civilian – and as noted, it rather collapses under the weight of a lot of silly clichés at the end, regardless of what you think about the depictions of the Mexican people, trans people and whether or not you liked the songs.

Salles’s intentions are rather more sober and serious as he tells the true story of the disappearance of politician Rubens Paiva in Brazil in the 1970s – through the eyes of his wife Eunice, played by Fernanda Torres. And although Selton Mello does great work as the husband, as do the teen/child actors playing the kids, it’s Torres who carries this absorbing film bodily on her shoulders. From her early caution as friends meet in her home to consider action against the military regime, to her steely management of the armed men in her living room, to the trauma of her imprisonment, to her heroic efforts to rebuild her life, she’s amazing.

This is a simple, unfussy film which tells its story without flinching and without glorifying, but which never feels like a documentary. From the very beginning, every aspect rings true, and how lovely to see Fernanda Montenegro – Oscar-nominated star of Central Station – in a cameo at the end. Fernanda Torres is nominated for this film, but I assume Demi Moore has this sewn up. Obviously it has a shot at Best International Feature, particularly given the Emilia Pérez backlash – although Audiard still won at the BAFTAs, so who knows? I enjoyed this more than any of the other Best Picture nominees, apart from The Substance – but hold on, there’s another film coming.

I gotta be honest, I put on Sing Sing feeling a bit like I was going to have to eat my greens. I’ve loved Colman Domingo since first seeing him on Fear the Walking Dead, but there are so many trite, clichéd and frustrating ways to tell the story of prison-theatre-programme-leads-to-personal-growth-but-also-brings-up-trauma that I suspected this would rapidly fall over its feet and land in saccharine schmaltz or hysterical melodrama. Boy, was I wrong. This incredible movie dodges every single tired trope the second they appear on the narrative horizon, and every frame of this rings so perfectly and so affectingly true, that I should have guessed earlier that almost the entire cast are graduates of the programme in question and they’re all essentially playing themselves, with Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San José the only ring-ins.

I don’t know how I would have experienced the film if I’d known that beforehand – I don’t think it’s intended to be a big surprise. But now I want to watch it again knowing that because the performances are even more incredible when you consider that for most of the cast it would be their first time on a movie set. So all the credit in the world to them, but also to director and co-screenwriter Greg Kwedar for marshalling these resources with such precision and empathy. Shot on 16mm, the feeling of confinement gradually shades into intimacy and the surroundings feel totally authentic from the very first frame. I’m calling it – this is my favourite film of 2024.

I also want to briefly consider Memoir of a Snail which continues Adam Elliot’s idiosyncraticly adult adventures in claymation, and which combines terrific voice performances from the likes of Sarah Snook, Jacki Weaver, Magda Szubanski and Kodi Smit-McPhee with tactile plasticine animation to create a grungily charming life-story. While not quite having the impact of Elliot’s earlier triumph Mary & Max, this is still very well done, but the Best Animated Feature category is very competitive this year and I don’t think it stands a chance next to The Wild Robot and Flow, as good as it is.

I’m also trying to see all the nominees for Best Animated Feature. Inside Out 2 is wonderful entertainment despite not being a patch on the original, which just emphasises what a tremendously strong piece of work the original is. Vengeance Most Fowl is Wallace and Gromit at very nearly their best, and one barely notices the absence of Peter Sallis. I’m very excited about Memoir of a Snail, having been knocked out by the same team’s Mary and Max some years ago. That leaves The Wild Robot and Flow.

In their different ways, these are both painterly CG animations about the collision between nature and the modern world, with a largely animal cast and driven by a singular creative talent. But despite these superficial similarities they function in very different ways, although I’m pleased to say I think they’re both terrific.

The Wild Robot is the latest offering from mad genius Chris Sanders, who was let off the leash back when Disney was earning All Of The Money to make Lilo & Stitch, possibly my favourite post-renaissance 2D Disney movie. After a period in the wilderness, he came back with How to Train Your Dragon, and also has (sigh) a live action Lilo & Stitch coming out soon. Meanwhile, he’s cast Lupita Nyong’o as “Roz”, a silicon help-meet who mysteriously washes up on the shore of an uninhabited island. With echoes of both WALL-E and The Iron Giant, Roz grapples with what her purpose is, and (having spent days learning their language) turns to various animal friends for help.

This is pretty breezy, family-friendly, crowd-pleasing stuff, but an exceptional voice cast (including Pedro Pascal as a wily fox, Catherine O’Hara as a hilarious possum, Matt Berry as a neurotic beaver and Mark Hamill as a grizzly bear) and some absolutely gorgeous animation elevate this to classic status, and the script knows just when to go for the gag and when to pluck on your heart strings.

It reportedly cost around $80m which is cheap for a major CG movie. Flow was made for less than a tenth of that, and it’s almost impossible to tell. This Latvian animation was created by a tiny Latvian/Parisian team on consumer-grade equipment and tells the entirely worldless story of a tiny grey cat making friends (secretarybird, golden retriever and capybara mainly) in order to escape mysteriously rising flood waters. Again, the CG images have been given a painterly sheen, and whereas in the American movie, I’m convinced this is entirely for artistic reasons, here I think it may have been in part to conceal the relative simplicity of the digital models. But when the animation is so simultaneously characterful and accurate to the natural world, this seems like a pointless thing to quibble about.

My taste for magical realism, which at points strays in to surrealism, isn’t quite as well developed as that of director Gints Zilbalodis, but for the most part, this is a gorgeous, enthralling, sweetly beguiling story of friendship and adventure which never for a moment feels like dialogue would have added anything at all.

September 5

Tim Fehlbaum’s account of the Munich Massacre from the point of view of the ABC Sports team covering the Olympics makes an amazing trailer but only a pretty good film. Of course, it’s not the film’s fault that it’s been sold as something slightly other than what it is, but the differences between the white-knuckle, morally-queasy trailer and the rather more by-the-numbers actual movie raises questions in my mind about the wisdom of this approach.

It’s certainly an interesting piece of history, as has already been proven by Steven Spielberg who took a very different approach in his film Munich. In 1972, terrorists took nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. By the early hours of the next morning, most of the terrorists and all of the hostages were dead. We follow the television crew who are used to talking over footage of swimming, long jumping and javelin events as they grapple with the reality that the are the only people able to tell the world what’s happening.

The pressure cooker environment is effective, and – as Billy Wilder observed – “audiences love ‘how’” so the stuff about having to smuggle film cans in and out of the Olympic Village, strapped to the body of a cameraman posing as a coach is fascinating. And there is tension, and there are interesting debates about whether the ABC coverage is influencing events for better or for worse, and whether ABC Sports president Roone Arledge is thinking more about innocent lives or about his own career.

The problem is that, of necessity, we only get access to either the plight of the hostages, or the actions of the German authorities, in fragments. So, we’re presented with a story in which innocent lives are at stake and a terrifying stand-off is taking place, but the film is trying to wring tension and excitement out of whether or not ABC will get access to the “bird” (satellite) or what form of words the anchor should use to (wrongly) announce that the hostages are alive and free.

It’s a decent TV movie, but I’m a bit disappointed and rather surprised to see it nominated for its screenplay. Still, in a world in which The Imitation Game wins a screenplay Oscar, anything is possible.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Also taking an unusual angle on events of global importance, but succeeding rather better is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, up for Best International Feature. The story of the making of this film by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof could be movie in itself, as the raw footage had to be smuggled out of the country and the director had to flee before he could be arrested. Thus, this film about Iran, shot in Iran, by Iranians and entirely in Persian ends up as Germany official selection for the Academy Awards.

Missagh Zareh is Iman, newly promoted within the Revolutionary Court, but beginning to have misgivings about the nature of his role. His daughters meanwhile have an even more rebellious streak to them, amplified by protests surrounding the death in custody of a young woman (not named as but clearly meant to be Mahsa Amini), leaving his wife caught in the middle. Where September 5 is constrained by its narrative framework, the effect of the shifting political sands on this ordinary family is very much the point, and as such the family drama and the huge global story reflect on each other in fascinating, disturbing and moving ways – no more so than when Rasoulof includes real footage of Iranian protests and police actions.

While the whole cast is excellent, I must make special mention of Soheila Golestani as Iman’s wife Najmeh who fiercely attempts to steer a clear path between her own morality, her love for her family and her practical need to survive and thrive. She’s constantly trying to give nothing away, but there’s always something going on behind her eyes.

Normally it’s easy to spot which film will take the Best International Feature award – it’s the one also nominated in one or more other categories. But this year, we have both Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here nominated for Best Picture, and Flow nominated for Best Animated Feature, leaving only this and The Girl with the Needle without additional nominations elsewhere. But of the films in the Oscar conversation, I liked this more than pretty much anything else outside of The Substance and Anora.

Nickel Boys is the first drama film from experimental documentarian RaMell Ross and it takes a grim story (from the novel by Colson Whitehead) and presents it in a very striking way which doesn’t always help. This is a very choppy, piecemeal film, in which short scenes end with hard cuts and material from other sources (and sometimes timeframes) is cut in unexpectedly. This I could have coped with, although some of the metaphors from the Apollo 8 mission and the Martin Luther King marches was a bit heavy-handed for my taste.

What I had a harder time with was the decision to shoot almost everything first person. Ross is smart enough not to be wedded to this technique, but he doesn’t stray from it often, and the idea presumably is to place us directly in the shoes of the main protagonist Elwood. We look out through his eyes and see the world that he sees. But drama is watching one person changed by another, and if we can’t see our protagonist’s face, we have to guess how he might be reacting. Near the middle of the film, Elwood’s friend Turner is also given the power of the point-of-view shot which means we can finally cut between two people having a conversation – but these conversations tend not to be the crucial ones, so we’re still stuck with only half the story.

In a second strand, taking place years after the boys’ incarceration, adult Elwood is shot over his own shoulder, so again we can’t see his face but now it’s harder to frame shots so that we can see who he’s talking to. A bit life Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, this struck me as an interesting formal experiment, but ultimately one which didn’t have the effect of immersing me more fully in the story – in fact just the opposite, it held me at a distance. That’s a shame as there’s much to appreciate here. This isn’t a true story, but it was inspired by ghastly places like the Dozier School which deserve to be exposed, and the Jim Crow era is a horrendous stain on American history, which some Americans seem only too happy to forget about.

I do have a nasty suspicion that the camerawork is designed at least in part to facilitate a final rug-pull which struck me as confusing and unlikely. Other people have found more thematic resonance in this, and maybe if I watched it again, knowing what was coming, I’d see that too, but I was too busy trying to work out the crossword puzzle which the film had set me to be truly moved or to appreciate the themes. There’s great work here from Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson and especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, but I didn’t get as much out of this as I expected or wanted to. I seem to be in the minority, though, so the failing may well be mine.

Sautday Night, Jason Reitman’s account of the final ninety minutes before the first episode of “NBC’s Saturday Night” went on the air is a work of obvious artifice, but it’s greatly to Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan’s credit that most of the backstory about events taking place outside of this very narrow window goes down very easily. There’s even a nice visual metaphor in one of the aspects of the film which I’d be prepared to bet never happened. This succeeds very nicely in making a somewhat trivial event seem of momentous importance, and the cast is having an absolute ball, anchored by Gabrielle LaBelle as the earnest, almost unflappable Lorne Michaels – but shout outs too to Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donoghue, Matthew Rhys unrecognisable as George Carlin, Nicholas Braun in a remarkable dual role and most deliciously of all JK Simmons as a revoltingly vulgar evocation of Milton Berle. Good fun and buoyed by an appropriately demented score from Jon Batiste.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Conclave – no, not enjoy: savour. It looks magnificent and Edward Berger continues his productively discordant partnership with composer Volker Bertelmann whose strident foghorning helped make All Quiet on the Western Front so evocative. We have some of this generation’s finest Old Men of Acting giving it everything they’ve got. And who wouldn’t want to peek behind the curtain of decision making at the Vatican? Decision making is one of the keystones of storytelling, whether it’s Chaplin being forced to eat his own shoe, Michael realising only he can take out McClusky or Han Solo coming back to save Luke Skywalker.

But this time, Berger isn’t adapting a classic German novel born out of the pain of a generation-defining conflict. This time, his source text is a Robert Harris page-turner – maybe not quite an airport thriller, but definitely aiming to build suspense and pass the time rather than leaving the reader pondering great questions about the nature of humanity and goodness. And if the characters in Conclave spend any time at all pondering such questions, they do it off-screen, as when they’re in front of the camera, they’re scheming and plotting in a way much more befitting Francis Urquhart or Malcolm Tucker. We know Ralph Fiennes’s earnest and studious Cardinal Lawrence is experiencing a mild crisis of faith because he tells us so – not because it’s dramatised in any particularly interesting way.

Yes, the plot did keep me guessing, but this is also sometimes to the film’s detriment, as the rules of the thriller to which it’s so wedded mean that the clearly-telegraphed penultimate twist must needs be topped by a final somewhat ludicrous twist. To be clear, this is partly the fun of what is a very entertaining and engaging film. It’s endlessly charming and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny to see these pompous clerics in their ornate robes sneaking a crafty ciggie, fiddling with an iPhone or hacking into someone else’s email. But the actual storytelling couldn’t be less interested in the philosophical debates about the future of the Catholic church, and is only just interested enough in the personalities of the main players to make the plot work.

That leaves us with the actors, and here Isabella Rossellini is effortlessly commanding, Fiennes and Tucci elevate the thin material they’re given and Lucian Msamati – whose Cardinal Adeyemi actually is given a little bit of depth and nuance – is very impressive. What baffles me slightly is why John Lithgow took the gig. I’m certain he doesn’t need the work and his character exists solely to wax his moustache and cackle evilly. A missed opportunity.

In terms of character depth, A Complete Unknown is sort of the opposite. Monica Barbaro manages to mine the flimsy screenplay and comes up with a complete character with a rich interior life seemingly from nowhere. Everyone else seems satisfied with doing impersonations and moving through the relevant Wikipedia entries until 140 minutes is up. Maybe that’s because Elle Fanning looks so completely lost – because her character is the only one that’s invented.

I came to this knowing nothing much at all about Bob Dylan, which meant on the one hand that I wouldn’t be huffing and fuming and nit picking as the inevitable artistic licenses were taken. On the other hand, that means things need to be explained to me to make the story work, and various things seemed to happen which were given profound significance without paying off in any meaningful way. Dylan’s first album is all covers. Why? Did they sell? How did he persuade the record company to let him record originals? Who are these two different round men who smoke cigars both of whom seem to be something to do with his management but neither of whom is ever introduced or seen to be making decisions which impact his life or career. Who’s this guy bullying his way into the recording session and ending up playing the organ? What, to be blunt, is the point of any of this, other than to check off events in the life of a famous asshole?

But I could have stood a bit of confusion about the finer points of the music industry if the character work had been stronger. Timothee Chalamet is a fine talent and has clearly worked incredibly hard to summon up Dylan’s manner and musical abilities. But if we aren’t given any insight into who he was and what he wanted, then the entire exercise seems futile. Early on, I appreciated the measured pace and there were some nice moments between Chalamet’s puppy-dog 20-year-old Dylan and Edward Norton’s avuncular Pete Seeger. But after the first half hour, this turns into Folk Hard: The Bobby Dylan Story with a dedication that seems almost demented.

Eight down, two to go.

And they’re off. The starter’s gun has been fired for this year’s Oscars race, and while it wasn’t hard to predict most of the films appearing in most of the categories, there were still some surprises. Chief of these is that the most nominated film is Jacques Audiard’s bonkers transgender Spanish language gangster musical redemption fantasy Emilia Pérez which can count thirteen mentions. This is to a certain extent artificial, but even if you discount Best International Feature and ignore one of its two Best Original Song mentions, it would still top the list with eleven, just ahead of The Brutalist and Wicked, both with ten.

Together with strong showings in the directing and editing categories, that suggests that the contest for Best Picture is between those three, but I think Emilia Pérez will struggle to convert a lot of its chances and I also wouldn’t rule out Conclave, which might not have as many pluses as some of its rivals (and only garnered eight nominations, tying it with A Complete Unknown), but it doesn’t have any negatives – it isn’t weird, it isn’t a musical, it isn’t TikTok friendly and none of its characters were revoiced by AI.

Let’s rundown the Best Picture nominees and I’ll give you some further thoughts.

Anora was a delightful surprise when I took myself off to see it earlier this year. Sean Baker is a very fine filmmaker indeed and the promise he showed with The Florida Project is fully flowering here (I didn’t see Red Rocket but I’ve heard good things). I don’t think this has much of a chance of winning Best Picture, but it’s the kind of movie which could pick up a screenplay award as a sort of consolation prize.

The Brutalist is about as compelling as a 200-minute movie about architecture could possibly hope to be. Adrien Brody is amazing and the guest cast almost uniformly strong. I wasn’t always convinced by Felicity Jones, AI or no AI, but this is a huge and very Oscar-friendly achievement, and currently the bookies’ favourite. I just wonder whether it’s a bit too weighty to have lots of people putting it at the top of their ballots. Full review here.

A Complete Unknown looks great, provided it can avoid enough Dewey Cox clichés, and Timothée Chalamet can usually be relied upon to elevate weaker material. I’ll try and see it very soon.

Conclave likewise has passed me by and looks like hand-milled Oscar bait, but I think that voters who want serious and meaningful will prefer The Brutalist and those who want something with a bit more flair and dash will go for Emilia Pérez – but then maybe Conclave will come through the middle? Against that, Edward Berger hasn’t been nominated as Best Director, which must hurt the film’s chances.

Dune: Part Two feels like it’s here to make up the numbers. I don’t have any particular fondness for the Duniverse, but I went to see both movies on the big screen and I had a good time. I don’t entirely know if the effort required to create them is appropriate to the entertainment value I derived from them, but I don’t have any real complaints about either. The chances of a science-fiction sequel winning Best Picture however are slim to say the least.

And you might think that a similar calculation applies to Emilia Pérez but with nominations for two of its cast, its director, its screenplay and its editing, it must be in with a shout. The bookies have it just behind The Brutalist which sounds right to me – and there’s quite a jump in price, so you could clean up if you got it right.

Of I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys I know almost nothing, but I will – as usual – attempt to see them on a big screen before the first Sunday in March. The Substance I’m delighted to find on the list, as it is already one of my favourite films of the year, and I found it utterly compelling. Full review here.

Lastly, we have Jon M Chu’s Wicked (shorn of its “Part One” suffix) which I thought was one of the best stage-to-screen musical adaptations I’ve seen recently (not quite as good as Matilda though). And yes, a lot of the set-ups will have to be paid off next year which isn’t ideal, but as vastly elongated first acts of musicals go, this is exemplary. Review here.

In other categories, Best Actor looks like a straight fight between Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet, Best Actress looks nailed on for Demi Moore, likewise Kieran Culkin is getting a lot of attention for A Real Pain, and Zoe Saldaña will surely win for Emilia Pérez even if that film is shut out elsewhere. Likewise, Conclave must have a good chance at winning Best Adapted Screenplay even if it is not given much love in other categories.

And speaking of films not given much love, it’s a double Guadagnino shut-out with no nominations at all for either Challengers or Queer, and it looks like Nicole Kidman humped all those rugs for nothing as Babygirl has been completely overlooked. Some Academy watchers also expected to see mentions for Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, and Denzil Washington for Gladiator II, which only gets a nod for its costume design. There was also a lot of enthusiasm for Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl, but not from the Academy.

Right, time for me to book some movie tickets. See you back here soon.

The Brutalist is a long movie, and that tends to please Oscar voters. Shot on VistaVision (35mm film passing through the camera sideways), with heavyweight themes, a powerhouse cast, a rumbling score, an interval and an overture, it is seemingly hand-milled, weapons-grade Oscar bait. This would be far more frustrating if it was a less interesting film. In fact, my chief complaint after 200 minutes of screentime is that it ends abruptly.

It does teeter on the brink of wilful obscurity towards the end, as the actions of powerful tycoon Harrison van Buren (Guy Pearce, seemingly cos-playing as Brad Pitt) make less and less sense and the respective fates of László Tóth and his family are barely sketched in during the coda. But for much of the running time, this is engrossing powerful stuff with a great sense of place and character, and a detailed and sensitive portrayal of loss and ego from Adrien Brody.

The choice of VistaVision is interesting too. On a big screen, this doesn’t gleam. The oppressive Philadelphia weather combines with the grainy film stock to create an image which glimmers and glooms, but that only adds to the constant eerie threat of potential danger, as this once-feted architect tries to claw his way up from the bottom of the heap in which he finds himself. Adding to the disquiet is the use of sound, with odd phrases, noises and rumblings often drifting in from the edges of the screen, adding to the feeling that we aren’t being shown something, we’re peering in on it.

Felicity Jones doesn’t get much to do alas – third billed but she only really appears in the second half, and there are disquieting rumours about AI being used to autotune her accent and Brody’s, but what shocks me most is that someone let sitcom actor Brady Corbet loose with $10m to make this epic. Don’t get me wrong, on the whole I’m very glad they did, I just can’t understand what the pitch would have been like.

And I could say similar things about Emilia Perez, Jacques Audiard’s film about which I’m going to be circumspect as I knew very little about it going in and I’d love you to be as surprised as I am. It’s a startling combination of some incredible fresh and original material, wrapped in some equally incredibly clichéd plot twists. Zoe Saldaña is absolutely electric as under-appreciated lawyer Rita Mora Castro, whose dealings with the mysterious Emilia Pérez gradually lead her to become embroiled in Mexican cartels, politics, corruption and eventually violence.

Selina Gomez shows a little more range here than she typically does on Only Murders in the Building, but this is Saldaña’s show, especially during the musical numbers. Look out for her rendition of “El Mal” at all the awards shows. The last half hour is by far the least interesting, as the plot can only be resolved by means of overfamiliar gangster and action movie tropes, but the journey that got us there is a real shot of cinematic adrenaline.

Also filling up a big screen and making terrific use of sound is the third screen version of Nosferatu, originally shot by Murnau in the silent era as a way of ripping off Dracula without having to pay any royalties. I hadn’t seen this or the Klaus Kinski version, so I felt a little as if I hadn’t done my homework. Following a little subsequent research, it seems as if writer-director Robert Eggers’s chief concern was to shore up plot holes in the existing iterations. This leads to a very handsomely mounted production, full of committed performances (Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily Rose-Depp, Willem Dafoe and especially Emma Corrin) but it ended up not feeling very much. Rather as if I’d played through a really atmospheric and well-done computer game rather than been told a deeply personal story. Extra points for Simon McBurney as Herr Knock who knows that this part has no top for him to go over and goes absolutely for broke.

Cord Jefferson’s satire on the publishing business through a Black lens is many things. One thing it isn’t is the riproaring, one-liner stuffed, broad comedy which the trailer sells it as. By taking the ten best jokes and stitching them together, the marketeers have badly misrepresented this smart, painful, incisive, thoughtful – and yes, sometimes very funny – film. Ironically, despite the frustrations that this might cause, it seems appropriate for a story in which things are not what they seem, commercial imperatives trump artistic integrity and even vaunted literary prizes are hotbeds of pandering and intellectual shortcuts.

The cast is unimpeachable. Jeffrey Wright has never been better and is given a strong family unit comprising sister Tracee Ellis Ross, mother Leslie Uggams and brother Sterling K Brown. The early part of the story dismantles this strong family, forcing Wright’s hand much in the way that the St Valentine’s day massacre forces Joe and Jerry’s hand in Some Like it Hot. Only the incredibly convenient arrival of the perfect suitor for their live-in-maid strains credulity a little.

Based on what sounds like an unadaptable novel, the film’s unwillingness to settle for a single ending (or a single clear message) is probably the best way of taking the book’s style and finding a cinematic analogue, and Jefferson is careful to pave the way for this development in the way he structures and shoots some earlier moments (which include a lovely cameo from Keith David). He’s also careful to smudge the outline of what could have been too strident a moral, shading Issa Rae’s initially comical character with more depth and unafraid to make out hero seem like something of an asshole from time-to-time.

Possibly the best joke in the whole film, and one the trailer couldn’t spoil (so I will), is the conclusion of the literary judging process in which the three white jurors overrule the two Black ones on the basis that “It’s time to listen to Black voices.” Sharply satirical, but also oddly warm and even moving, this definitely isn’t what was sold to me, but is arguably better.

Have just discovered this languishing in my drafts folder. Apologies for the inconvenience.

The Oscar nominations are out and once again, we have ten Best Picture nominees. I have already seen a triumphant eight of these, and will be trying to mop up some of the International and Documentary features in the next few weeks. Here are the runners and riders.

American Fiction is one of the two I haven’t seen, but the trailer is very appealing (although you’d be forgiven for overlooking Sterling K Brown who is glimpsed only briefly, but who notches up a Best Supporting Actor nomination). Full review to follow.

Anatomy of a Fall. Terrific slab of Euro-intrigue which remakes the courtroom drama in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible, blessed with a remarkable tri-lingual script and a tremendous central performance from Sandra Hüller. Full review here.

Barbie. Thrillingly bonkers Mattel tie-in, which subverts the very play logic which it shockingly embraces to deliver a simplistic but deeply heartfelt feminism-for-beginners message. I briefly wondered if it might gather enough momentum to be a real contender for Best Picture, but with only eight nominations and nothing for Greta Gerwig as director or Margot Robbie as leading actress, I think we can write it off from this contest at least.

The Holdovers. Very Oscar-friendly, but probably not extraordinary enough to win. Full review here.

Killers of the Flower Moon. Scorsese demonstrates that he hasn’t lost his touch, blending the intimate with the epic, but I would have preferred a more focused two-hour version or a more exploratory six-hour mini-series which would have given more of a voice to the Osage people. Full review here.

Maestro. Despite all of the effort poured in by Bradley Cooper and the wealth of talent he has surrounded himself with, I kept waiting for the story to kick in. This feels like it’s run out of gas already.

Oppenheimer. Clear front-runner, with the most important story to tell, the biggest cultural footprint (possibly with the exception of Barbie) and it made a ton of money to boot.

Past Lives. Beautifully observed, painstakingly assembled, and far more original than its premise would suggest. Doesn’t have much of a chance at the big prize.

Poor Things. Lanthimos’s horny fairy tale horror has the potential to pull off a major upset, and I wouldn’t be mad at it for doing so, despite my reservations about the film. Full review here.

The Zone of Interest. The other one I haven’t seen but advance word is very strong.

In other categories, Best Director looks nailed on for Nolan, regardless of who wins Best Picture. The omission of Greta Gerwig is appalling but somehow not surprising. Nice to see Justine Triet there though. Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor also look set to go Oppenheimer‘s way. Best Actress is a straight fight between Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone. Best Supporting Actress looks more open with probably Emily Blunt the least likely to succeed, but a case could be made for any of the others. Original Screenplay looks like a two horse race between Anatomy of a Fall and The Holdovers. Adapted Screenplay is Nolan’s to lose.

Killers of the Flower Moon

It’s awards season, and first up is Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon, bringing his two favourite actors together in front of his lens for the first time. This bum-numbing narrative probably could have been told at even greater length as a mini-series (the director falls back on a radio programme to deal with the aftermath, and gives himself a brief cameo) but which never bored me for a second. Clearly, this is a story made by white people and told from the point of view of white people, but as its purpose is to centre the selfish and cruel decisions made by those white people, I think this is legitimate, even if I’m left with a feeling that there was a whole other, less familiar, version of this story which I didn’t get, even at this length.

As usual, Scorsese doesn’t either judge his characters or manipulate the facts in order to generate a fake catharsis. Without giving too much away, I kept hoping for a moment of moral clarity from DiCaprio’s dim-witted Ernest, but in fact he just continues to be buffeted by the demands of people around him and his own shortsightedness. In other hands (or on another day) that might render the whole exercise slightly pointless, but the fact that this is a true story, the strength of the playing (Lily Gladstone is amazing), and the director’s expert marshalling of time and place and space combine to create an engrossing experience, which hugely benefits from the big screen experience.

How to Have Sex

Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut would lose less watched at home, but watched at the Curzon Soho, the more tense moments feel a little less escapable. This is a tricky exercise in tone. Too much hijinks and not enough pain and it might come across as trite and superficial. But turn the screw too far and we’re into soap melodrama, undercutting the blazing authenticity of the acting and filming. Walker, who also writes, finds this thin line with unerring accuracy and although Mia McKenna-Bruce is attracting all of the acting plaudits, the whole ensemble of terrifyingly young actors is faultless and the whole experience brilliantly grubby, joyful, horrifying, intoxicating, disturbing and life-affirming. While it’s unlikely to feature on anything like as many Oscar ballots as Flower Moon, a couple of nominations for, say, screenplay and one or two of the actors would be jokes.

Anatomy of a Fall

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner arrives on these shores and represents a fascinating Euro-riff on the familiar US/UK courtroom drama, with a couple of neat twists. Chief among these is the fact that the continental legal process (which I can only assume is represented at least vaguely accurately here) is rather unlike the combative system we’re used to. Sandra Hüller is deliciously hard-to-read as the widow of the dead man and her last argument with her late husband, shared with the jury courtesy of a slightly ludicrous contrivance, is mesmerising stuff. Maybe because of the snowy Alpine setting (but not only because of that) this reminded me of the amazing and influential Force Majeure and while I don’t expect this to be followed with an American remake and a stage version at the Donmar Warehouse, it is  still compelling, engrossingly ambiguous stuff and I can understand entirely how it won.

The Marvels

And certainly unlikely to trouble Oscar voters much, the latest offering to fall off the Marvel production line does ask a considerable amount of viewers who are expected to simply know who all these various characters are (at minimum you need to have watched Infinity War, Endgame, Ms Marvel, WandaVision, Captain Marvel, Secret Invasion and ideally Hawkeye and Iron Man) but which gets by on the colossal charm of Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani, to say nothing of a very silly and very effective pantomime villain turn from Zawe Ashton. The other string to its bow is the near Rick and Morty commitment to bonkers space opera as we zip from orbiting space station to Skrull ghetto to Planet Jai-Ho where everybody communicates in the medium of song. But what’s really bonkers about this is that it’s the biggest box office success ever for a movie directed by a Black woman, and still a commercial failure which will end up losing Disney tens of millions of dollars. That’s your problem, right there.