Best Picture Roundup
Catching up on all the films nominated for Best Picture at the 98th Academy Awards.
NOTE: I went very long on this one so if you read these through your email, everything might look truncated. You may need to navigate to the app or the Substack website to view it properly.
The Academy Awards are upon us and in my younger days, I would’ve tried to watch every single nominated film. But as it stands, we don’t have enough funding here at Nathan’s Emergency Bulletin HQ to pay for our writers to watch all of them and do a full proper roundup. Plus, my day job at the Coal Mine forces me to be selective with my movie-watching time so there’s only so much extracurricular work I can take on myself.
Instead, I’ve chosen to zero in on the big prize: Best Picture. I’ve already gone long on three of the nominees—Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, and Sinners. Bugonia didn’t get its own piece, but it was my favorite movie of 20251. I also covered it in a roundup from last year, so I think I’ve more than given it its due.
As for the rest, it’s a decent crop, taking all snubs into consideration. Amanda Seyfried will win an Oscar one of these days and when she does, I’ll pretend it’s for The Testament of Ann Lee. Which I also wrote about here if you’re interested. Alright, enough with the self promo.
Anyway, here’s a roundup of the rest of the films nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards.
F1 (dir. Joseph Kosinski)
This movie loves Brad Pitt as much as, if not more than it does Formula 1 Racing. From the director of Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick—important entries into the canon of legacy sequels as well as Movie Titles Split Up By A Colon—the racing sequences are exhilarating and when it comes time to slow down and really admire the rugged face of a beloved American icon, Joseph Kosinski delivers the goods.
Javier Bardem is probably my favorite performance in the movie and the scene where he and Pitt link up for the first time is just electric. It’s fun to watch even if it’s something we’ve seen before—the Grizzled Veteran being lured back for One More Ride even though he’s has seen better days and the risk is higher this time. Perhaps there’s a Young Gun (Damson Idris) who reminds GV (Grizzled Veteran) of why he does this damn thing in the first place? And if you could allow me a second Perhaps…at the end of the day, the GV proves he’s just as good, if not better, than the YG (Young Gun)?
The characters and overall narrative are thin in the way they typically are in a movie focused more on the machinery, which does make the 155-minute running time feel bloated. I had the unfortunate experience of enjoying the movie and feeling like it was reaching a satisfying endpoint…only to pause and see there was a whole hour left.
Which hints at a potential issue, that I watched this on Apple TV. I would’ve had the same story complaints but maybe had more fun hearing it loud in a theater. It was probably easier to get this funded with someone like Apple, but knowing it’s just going to end up on a streaming service for the rest of time does seem a little grim.
But the distribution is a completely different conversation from the movie itself, which I enjoyed just fine! Those cars were really fast!
Train Dreams (dir. Clint Bentley)
Trains can also be really fast! That’s just me not knowing how to transition to the next movie.
I’m always fascinated with movies that deal with time, specifically when we follow one individual as they experience the passage of it. Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is our throughline in Train Dreams and while I’ve mostly liked Edgerton just fine in the movies I’ve seen him in, I think what he’s pulled off in this one is extraordinary. There’s a real power in experiencing some of the biggest technological innovations of our time through the eyes of an ordinary man.
I haven’t read the Denis Johnson novella it’s based on and from what I hear, there are some major changes that fans of the book didn’t appreciate. So, while I can’t speak to any deviations from the source material, I thought it was a wonderful movie with a solid performance from Edgerton and gorgeous, sometimes unconventional cinematography from Adolph Veloso. It’s on Netflix right now, as is…
Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
I’ve never read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, so I approached this one as an admirer of the work of Guillermo del Toro. I’ve also signed a blood pact where I watch anything Oscar Isaac is in. That’s the kind of royal treatment you get here at Nathan’s Emergency Bulletin HQ when you make a movie like Inside Llewyn Davis.
There’s been a lot of critiques over what Guillermo did and didn’t do with the source material, but being only familiar with the broadest elements of it, it makes sense that this is the book the man who made Cronos and Pan’s Labyrinth would have a lifelong obsession with.
When it comes to book adaptations—especially classic ones like this— making a truly faithful version will always be an impossible task because novels and films are inherently different mediums. I think multiple adaptations of a work is a good thing personally, each artist taking an aspect (or multiple) they love and expounding on it.
I think the deeper I’ve gone into Mexican cinema also primed me to appreciate it more because not only am I seeing some of del Toro’s influences, but seeing where he culturally connects with the story. To quote my buddy Ismael’s Letterboxd review of the movie, “What if the story of Frankenstein was told like a grand, melodramatic Mexican telenovela, imbued with the Catholic guilt inherited by the culture, and calling out its machista upbringing that lets down so many young men?”
I don’t think Guillermo set out to make the definitive adaptation of Frankenstein, but I do think it’s a story he loves and feels deeply connected to. I see this as his way of paying tribute to it with his chosen form of artistic expression. Shooting it like a big-budget telenovela just makes me love it even more.
The Creature is obviously what makes or breaks the movie and what del Toro’s created with his imagination and Jacob Elordi’s performance is truly special. I don’t think he’s the front runner for Best Supporting Actor Sunday night, but whether Elordi gets the gold or not, I think this is a portrayal of The Creature that will stand up with the classic ones that have come before him.
Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)
Right now, Stellan Skarsgård is looking like the likely pick for Best Supporting Actor and if he does, it’ll be for his first and only Oscar nomination to date. Celebrated actors being ignored by the Academy for long periods of time isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s truly surprising that he’s only now being recognized.
The win would be more than deserved because it’s an incredible performance. Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, a Norwegian filmmaker returning to his home country to make a film involving a tragic incident in his family’s past. He asks his daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve) to star in the movie, who roundly rejects him and is driven to a nervous breakdown. He then offers the part to American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and as she starts digging into the role, it forces the Borg family to finally confront the things they refuse to speak to each other about.
I know that doesn’t exactly scream “laugh riot,” and for the most part, the movie is a sensitive drama about generational trauma. But there is humor throughout and it mostly comes from Gus being such a prick. The funniest moment in the movie comes when he goes to his 10-year-old grandson’s birthday party and gives him DVDs of Irreversible and The Piano Teacher. It’s not that you expect him to pick something more appropriate for a 10-year-old, as evidenced by the way he’s been as a parent. It’s the fact that he goes so extreme and so French. You gotta pick one or the other.
I really loved The Worst Person in the World, especially the Renate Reinsve performance, so I was excited for this one. It’s a lot quieter and more restrained, so it took me a minute to get on its wavelength. It’s one of those movies where the character dynamics aren’t always obvious, so it takes a while to suss out the stakes of the story. But once things to start to click into place, I think it all converges beautifully by the end.
This is really a movie about the performances, so it’s cool to see that the Academy has at least recognized most of the principal players with nominations. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas as Agnes, Gus’ other daughter, is the performance that I could feel really growing in my mind as the movie went on. It’s that wonderful thing when someone can convey a paragraph of thoughts with a single look.
Hamnet (dir. Chloe Zhao)
Big year for Agnes’s tbh. Jessie Buckley is likely to win Best Actress for this one and as someone who’s been following her since Wild Rose, it’s gonna be a big day at Nathan’s Emergency Bulletin HQ if she takes home the gold.
Now, this novel I did read and while my grasp on the life and times of one William Shakespeare is tenuous at best, I did grab onto the emotional through line of the story. I knew Chloe Zhao would undoubtedly bring something special to it, but I was completely bowled over by the final sequence.
There’s been a lot of critiques about the movie and as I’ve stated above, I’m not exactly the person who’s gonna argue with a Shakespeare scholar. But there has been resistance to the emotionality of the movie, calling it exploitative or melodramatic. I’ll save my screed on melodrama as genre and how American critics in particular misunderstand it for my Época de Oro series.
The long and short of it is that I think the movie more than earns its emotional conclusion, it’s fine if you think it didn’t. Aren’t movies great?
The dance party they held after filming wrapped is one of the greatest things I’ve seen so far this year, so let’s take a beat and watch it together.
The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Back in the early days of COVID, one of the ways I coped with things was getting really into the Criterion Channel, as most cinephiles did. I remember watching a new release that premiered that year on the channel, Bacurau, with the instruction to go in completely blind. I don’t even want to say anymore myself; if you have a Criterion subscription, go watch Bacurau. If you’re an American and you have a library card, it’s streaming for free on Hoopla and Kanopy as well.
The Secret Agent is director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s follow-up to Bacurau and it’s a serious leveling up. Watching him apply that same dark, satirical bent to a more ambitious story with a movie star like Wagner Moura anchoring it all was the most fun I’ve had at the movies this year. It’s politically relevant to the moment we’re living in without ever getting didactic about it.
I think like everyone else, Narcos was the first time I became aware of Moura. I liked him in Civil War, even if his character was missing dimension that the others had, but The Secret Agent is his movie through and through. You can feel his fury and urgency all throughout the movie. The scene where Armando/Marcelo (Moura) is giving a testimony on tape about a corrupt businessman is just a masterclass. Not just with the Moura performance, but Filho’s storytelling technique, cutting back and forth to put us in the story being told and then back in Armando’s perspective, as well as a third perspective that is running alongside the rest of the movie. It made me think of the editing in Inglorious Basterds during the baseball bat sequence that fills in necessary exposition without killing the momentum of the present. Hopefully this means people start saying the name “Kleber Mendonça Filho” as often as, if not more than they do “Quentin Tarantino.”2
AMC has been running this one in the lead up to the Oscars, as have other movie houses, so if you can see this on the big screen, it’s absolutely worth seeking out. It’s also streaming on Hulu to be watched at any time. However you see it, make sure the conditions are right. And then watch Bacurau so we can talk about it afterwards.
If you ignore the running bit throughout the piece.
I’m a fan of most of Mr. Tarantino’s work; I just wish he would stop publicly slamming his colleagues on podcasts and finally work on that final movie he keeps threatening to make. UPDATE: apparently Quentin’s doing a play now. Good for him. I’m sure it’ll be completely normal.