The nominations are in, the predictions have begun, and a whole lot of folks are probably just looking for where they can see the 10 films nominated for Best Picture (we got you covered on that as well). Still, all the prognostication, horse race reporting, and second-guessing over the snubs and surprises has a bad habit of obscuring why folks care about these things in the first place.
The movies. If you’ve ever cared about the Academy Awards, or simply felt the urge to express your lack of care for their selections, it is because deep down we all share an affection for stories told by flickering images in the dark. And whatever your thoughts on last year’s cinema as a whole, there were still many great movies, moments, and memories made by pictures in motion. So without further ado, here are some of our favorite moments from this year’s Oscar nominated films.
Little Ani Mikheeva Breaks Big Men in Anora
More than a few folks have told me they thought they were getting a new version of Pretty Woman when they walked into Anora. This always seemed odd considering the Ivan character (Mark Eydelshteyn) was so callow and immature that he proposed marriage to Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) like he was asking her to go to prom with him (albeit with a four-carat signing bonus).
Still, the first act of the movie is swooningly romantic if you ignore the details and red flags, something Ani herself does when she “hits the jackpot,” as a fellow exotic dancer suggests. But that’s what makes the turn in the second act so delightful. After an extended “fools rush in” opening, writer-director Sean Baker takes an agonizingly hilarious 24 minutes to show his hand. In a sequence that might be frightening in any other film, supposedly tough Armenian and Ukrainian dudes show up to warn Ivan he’s in a heap of trouble. The kid runs, abandoning his bride. Luckily, Ani can stand her ground—and ruin these guys’ whole week.
When the head underling for Ivan’s parents shows up, an exasperated middle-manager who just knows this is going to end with him losing his marriage and his job, he’s flabbergasted to find furniture shattered, noses broken, and two grown men demoralized. “She’s a fucking little girl, you let her beat you up?”
“She’s not fighting like one,” cries the dude with a broken schnoz. No, no she’s not. And like the the rest of this expansive sequence, the line invites us to howl and marvel at Madison’s wicked creation of a Brooklyn girl with the accent and attitude to match. Watching her alternate between aggrieved spouse to cackling tormentor of these supposed toughs, breaking down both their and the audience’s cool as Baker’s camera stays in perpetual motion around this room, is an exercise in decompressed screwball comedy. The bits that Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch would rush through, Baker savors and underlines as every character endures one of their worst days—and one of our funniest in a cinema. – David Crow
Demi Moore’s Worst Date in The Substance
A magnificent speech might have made Demi Moore a frontrunner in this year’s awards season, but her performance in The Substance stands on its own as a towering achievement for an actor who has been in the industry for decades and knows how to unearth its greatest anxieties and horrors. Admittedly, Hollywood did not create the impossible beauty standards or patriarchal pressures placed on women, but the entertainment business has happily done its part to accentuate and sharpen the cruelties going through a woman’s head, even one as objectively beautiful as Moore.
Her Elisabeth Sparkle really does look lovely on the night she agreed to go out with an admiring fan. And the low stakes appeal of the rendezvous, which seems more about Elisabeth getting out in the world and enjoying her life rather than beginning anything approaching romance, makes her slow-boiling anxiety attack all the worse. Already the “magic cure” she has taken to fight aging has done permanent damage to her body, but Elisabeth is able to conceal those wounds easily enough.
So it’s left to Elisabeth’s own self-image—as defined by her younger self (Margaret Qualley) resurrected on a billboard outside her apartment—to do the real damage. The need to compare herself to youth, especially her own, robs Elisabeth of the ability to enjoy her life in the present, so much so she ends up spending the night spiting her own face with smeared lipstick and disgust in front of a vanity. The self-loathing and despair Moore channels is more harrowing than any creature feature effect later in the movie. The Cronenbergian “Monstro Elisasue” we eventually meet in the movie’s climax is frankly a relief when compared to the textured heartbreak of Moore’s performance in this earlier, cyrstalizing moment. – DC
László Fixes a Chair in The Brutalist
Brutalism was never my favorite form of architecture. All hard edges and looming severity, there is an overwhelming harshness to it. But like so much else in The Brutalist’s first and best half, Brady Corbet’s film articulates the subtle beauty and even romance that came out of this distinctly mid-20th century, postwar aesthetic. It also conceptualizes the agony of being misunderstood.
The best example of this is earlier in the film, before we’ve even seen proper brutalism on display. The library that László Tóth designs as a “surprise” for blue-blooded industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) is more modernist than brutal, with its clean lines and manipulation of depth and perception. It is also a basic remodeling job that László and his cousin (Alessandro Nivola) take on as glorified day-laborers.
Even so, László is a perfectionist and an artist. No matter how meager the circumstances, and being a postwar refugee immigrant is fairly meager, he cannot help but find ways to express himself. This can occur in little touches like when he moves Harrison’s new reading chair in the center of the room for maximum sunlight. It’s an evocation of an artist honing his craft purely for art’s sake—and an early summation of the film. For all his genius and care, and even when beautifying the lives of the rich and powerful, the immigrant is still only the help: a guest allowed into the home but never welcomed. This is confirmed after Pearce’s raging Harrison enters the picture seconds later. – DC
The Inmates Perform Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code in Sing Sing
As you might expect from a prison drama focusing on a man wrongfully sentenced to prison, Sing Sing has lots of dark moments. But director Greg Kwedar manages to create a movie that’s more than just human suffering and misery, in part because he draws from the real experiences of inmates who participated in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, and in part because he gets formerly incarcerated people to portray themselves.
That verisimilitude allows Kwedar and co-writer Clint Bentley to find notes of not just humanity, but also pure joy, in the darkness of Sing Sing. That joy comes to the fore when the inmates perform a play they wrote, Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. A delightful mishmash that includes time travel, cowboys, mythical gods, and even Freddy Krueger, Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code finds the characters at their most indomitable, hindered by neither unjust prisons nor by genre conventions. – Joe George
Paul Breaks Bad in Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Dune: Part Two offer a lot to please fans of the Frank Herbert books. The movie’s manage to retain much of the film’s complex mythology and world-building, even while streamlining the concepts for larger audiences. Top-rate actors and special effects bring to life the devout Stilgar, the insidious Baron Harkonnen, and, of course, the hulking sandworms. And yet, book adherents cannot help but feel a certain dread as the story plays out: “Do they get it? Do they get that Paul will be just as corrupted as any other charismatic leader?”
All those fears fall away in the final moments of Dune: Part Two. With his enemy Feyd-Rautha defeated and his followers chanting “Lisan al-Gaib” behind him, Paul pulls the knife from his shoulder and stares down Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Free of all the timidity that marked every previous glimpse of the golden path before him, Paul demands worship from everyone, and orders his troops to engage in Holy War against dissenters. Enhanced by the defiant march that Zendaya gives Chani as she walks away, by the mournful strains of Hans Zimmer’s score, and by the mad look Timothée Chalamet sneaks into Paul’s stoic stare, we understand that Muad’Dib is no liberating hero. He’s just another man intoxicated by power, just like Herbert intended. – JG
We Have a Pope in Conclave
Unless you’re a devout Catholic, it’s hard to believe that Conclave strikes you as an edge of your seat thriller. Directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan, who adapts the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, Conclave follows a gathering of cardinals to choose a late pope’s successor. Even with a cast that includes beloved character actors such as Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini, and even with gorgeous cinematography from Stéphane Fontaine, Conclave sounds more like a tony bit of Oscar bait than an exciting and provocative shocker.
Yet Berger’s deft direction heightens the various twists that Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) encounters, making the movie feel like a religious version of a James Grisham potboiler that we enjoyed in the 1990s. Even better, the film’s reveal has a moral immediacy that elevates it even further. I won’t get into the details here, but the final decision about the new pope couldn’t come at a better time, exciting anyone who wants to believe that people will actually heed a voice in the wilderness, no matter what your religious persuasion might be. – JG
Professor Von Franz Arrives in Nosferatu
As if the physical attacks that Count Orlok unleashes on Thomas Hutter and psychic assaults on his wife Ellen aren’t enough, there’s the incredible loneliness the protagonists feel. Thomas is stuck alone with Orlok in the count’s castle, with a strange wilderness between him and his home. Worse, no one knows how to make sense of Ellen’s extra-sensory abilities, let alone the way Orlok feasts upon her mind. Instead of helping the beleaguered Ellen, her doctor and supposed friends tie her down, treating her as if she’s a monster.
That is until Willem Dafoe arrives as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. It’s not just that Dafoe perfectly threads the needle between eccentric weirdo and compassionate humanist. It’s that he provides immediate relief for Ellen by simply believing her claims and treating her like an actual person. As soon as Von Franz and Ellen bond over their love of cats, Robert Eggers adds a new level to his already fantastic Nosferatu. The bit of empathy Von Franz brings doesn’t diminish the movie’s horror, but rather heightens it, paving the way for Nosferatu’s tragic and heroic conclusion. – JG
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