The 2022 Best Picture Nominees
Depending on your perspective, this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees are either fine, great, or disappointing. It’s certainly not the worst lineup of films that’s ever been up for the top prize at the Academy Awards, and the bevy of prestigious directors—Anderson, Branagh, del Toro, Spielberg, Villeneuve—helps to increase the chances of a respected filmmaker getting an award befitting their level of respect. Most of these films are good, a few are excellent, and I only consider one to be bad. Again, there have been worse years.
Best Picture isn’t supposed to be celebrating films that are merely “good”, however. These are supposed to be the best of the best squaring off, and there’s plenty of outstanding films that assuredly won’t win Best Picture because they haven’t been nominated. Yes, I’m aware the Academy have their preferences and tend to favor films that possess certain qualities, and it’s perhaps the height of hubris to suggest my personal favorite films of the past year are objectively better than most of what’s been nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in film. That said, there are several films that fit the Academy’s parameters for quality that also weren’t up for Best Picture, and because there’s a good chance you might not otherwise hear about them, the final part of this essay will catalogue a few of the most noteworthy snubs. This year’s crop isn’t awful, but it is plenty underwhelming, and having a few of these picks in the mix could have done wonders for the credibility of these awards.
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Perhaps best epitomizing the underwhelming but not awful nature of this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees is the first to occur alphabetically: Belfast, written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who has established himself as one of the most prolific multi-talented workers in film whose works I have never seen. I’ll go ahead and guess that his adaptation of everyone’s favorite Shakespearian comedy, 2011’s Thor, is the most widely seen of his works. The party line around Belfast seems to be that it is a return to form, which is usually more of a backhanded insult than a compliment, though as his most recent works include Artemis Fowl and the modern remake of Cinderella you probably already forgot existed, the party line at least feels true.
Belfast is a loosely episodic coming-of-age tale of a boy growing up in the capital of Northern Ireland during The Troubles (I’d explain what The Troubles are, but I’d need a signed note from your legal guardians first). I say “loosely” because, while there are distinct storylines that inform the greater narrative, they advance in piecemeal chunks rather than as anthology. Indistinct drama involving the boy’s parents arguing over their finances will occupy the whole of one moment, and in the next, the boy will be wondering how he can win the heart of the girl in his class. This aspect of its storytelling has frustrated some audiences, but in terms of conveying what it’s like to be a kid with little perspective and a lot of feelings, it worked wonders on me. To a kid that knows nothing else of the world, the threat of constant violence, the woes facing his parents, and the girl in his class are on the same level of importance, and that the film doesn’t provide a history lesson on The Troubles can be justified by the kid knowing nothing beyond that two sides hate each other, because that’s all he needs to know. It certainly does a better perspective of informing that he’s nine years old than the script does as his writing has the usual stink you get when an adult tries to write what a child sounds like without bothering to learn or recall what children sound like.
Other aspects of the filmmaking have a varied success rate. The boy has an affection towards film and music, with several scenes being punctuated with Van Morrison tunes and lines from old films. This sometimes comes across as appreciated contrast and reflection, but it mostly feels like excuses to play songs Branagh likes and reference old films those dang millennials should appreciate more. The best of these comes with a scene from 1952’s High Noon and its signature tune, Tex Ritter’s “The Ballad of High Noon” (everyone calls it “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’”), being played in close proximity to a high stakes moment, which feels like a wholly earned moment but mostly stands out for being a successful exception. If other instances of film scenes and licensed songs here were meant to be used in much the same manner as the example I outlined, the intent was not obvious enough to work.
The performances are fine across the board, but there’s nothing here I’d single out as being worthy of an Oscar nomination, which is bad news for the discourse as it is up for two acting awards anyway. Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench are up for supporting trophies, and they did a good job in their parts but their characters are so incidental and the performances so unremarkable that their nominations feel like underhanded lifetime achievement awards above all else. I’ll remind that last year’s winner of Best Supporting Actor went to Daniel Kaluuya for his part in portraying Fred Hampton, the “Black Messiah” part of Judas and the Black Messiah, and if you’re like many who believed Kaluuya should have been up for Best Actor instead, I’ll also remind that other Best Supporting Actor winners include Heath Ledger as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight, J.K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher in 2014’s Whiplash, and Robin Williams as Dr. Sean McGuire in 1997’s Good Will Hunting, all roles that are important parts of sculping the identities of their respective works. Meanwhile, the roles portrayed by Dench and Hinds in Belfast take up three sentences of the 400+ word plot description on Wikipedia, and that sounds like adequate representation of their importance to the film. Perhaps Dench might win on the strength of her execution of the last spoken words in the film, and to be fair, there have been worse reasons that some have won Oscars.
It's the whole “being nominated for Best Picture” thing that hurts how I perceive Belfast. It has problems and I don’t regard it as remarkable, but I think it is, overall, good. It isn’t, however, exceptional enough to deserve winning Best Picture in a year when so many better films weren’t even nominated, and while I’m dedicating the final section of this essay to discussing the snubs, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there were better performances from supporting actresses within the period of eligibility than what Dench did in Belfast. Many had Ann Dowd’s performance in Mass, for instance, as a surefire frontrunner for the award, and to see it be ignored in favor of such a minor part is disheartening. That’s ultimately how I feel about Belfast: good, but to posit it as the best in its class feels wrong.
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The next film to discuss is also not the best film I saw of the past year, but I’ll give up my feelings on it right away and inform it is my second-favorite of the Best Picture nominees: CODA, directed by Sian Heder, who also wrote the screenplay. This is based on a French film titled La Famille Bélier, though as best I understand it, CODA came about by a producer on the original film asking Heder, best known up to that point for her role in helping to write the first three seasons of Orange Is the New Black and her Netflix joint Tallulah, to put her own spin on the material. I haven’t the time to watch Bélier, but if the scattershot reviews and impressions I’ve garnered from its trailer are any indication, CODA is the superior product.
CODA follows a titular “child of deaf adults” who uses her gift of hearing to help with her family’s fishing business (coast guard sirens and all that) but comes to discover she has a gift for singing and yearns to leave her family behind for university to cultivate her skills. Will she follow her dreams or will she help her family for the rest of her days? Oh, c’mon, it’s a family dramedy with a title pun about the ending of things, it’s impossible for me to spoil it because you already know where this is going. Some critics have balked at such predictable and light-hearted material being up for Best Picture, as though they’ve had the sentimental part of their brain either surgically removed or otherwise destroyed. Not every work needs to be a four-dimensional chess set of moving parts; sometimes, you’re in the mood for a deaf dad comically showing off how to administer a condom.
Critics have also said the film isn’t much to look at, but while the cinematography is fine (and “fine”, as previously established with Belfast, isn’t great when in talks of Best Picture nominees), I do find value in the look of the film, and I wholly accept this is a “me” thing. CODA is set in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in a rare instance of filmmakers vying for accuracy, it was shot on location. This is probably a neat note for most folk and little besides that, but I’ve lived within an hour of Boston for at least three decades of my life and I’ve grown infuriated with the Hollywood vision of the place, everyone talking like they grew up on the South End and every street is always as crowded as New York City during the holidays and you’re somehow always five minutes away from Fenway Park. Living close to the Cape means nearly tripping over the runoff on the sidewalks that prove invaluable in the winters, the frequent smell of salt if the wind catches just right, and a certain incommunicable shared quirk to the architecture, and CODA, if incidentally or even accidentally, captures much of that better than most films set in and around Boston. This isn’t to say CODA is good because it makes my home look like a hippin’ and hoppin’ vacation spot, but I’d be lying if I didn’t disclose this as a factor in why I enjoy it.
Being predictable isn’t a death knell, but a predictable plot structure has to be made up for in other areas, and CODA goes in hard with its performances. Much of CODA’s initial press made a big deal out of Marlee Matlin portraying the protagonist’s mother, an understandable decision given Matlin’s credentials (she is the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, on the strength of her role in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God), but she doesn’t do all that much in this film. Matlin does a good job with the material given to her, but she’s simply not given enough substance to make a meal out of. Rather, CODA is built around the contentious relationship between Ruby and her father, Frank, played by Emilia Jones and Troy Kotsur, respectively, and they are most of the reason why this film works. Jones’s American accent is flawless, even as she’s raising her voice and singing; I’d have never guessed she hails from Westminster. She plays Ruby as spirited but not unwavering, trying to convince her parents she can make it while also trying to convince herself, and it’s easy to get on board with her personal journey. That said, Kotsur is outstanding as the wacky but imposing Frank. One can chart, through his performance, how Ruby got her hothead tendencies, but he leaves enough room for empathy to make his humorous and heartfelt moments work without all this registering as incongruous. I didn’t have him pegged as a surefire Best Supporting Actor nominee, but that was because I figured the Academy weren’t going to acknowledge this film at all, and he’s my favorite of the field.
CODA is a sentimental, predictable, low-stakes family dramedy about being good to your family and following your dreams and blah blah blah, you can already tell why some have been quick to label this one of the weakest Best Picture nominees of all time. There’s a moment in the trailer, however, that sells the concept, though the scene is used far differently in the finished product: Ruby, performing in front of her peers, getting a good reaction from most of them…and the camera finds her parents, who seemingly haven’t appreciated any of her performance on account of being deaf but slowly realize the socially acceptable thing to do is to clap with the people. Maybe that didn’t touch something in you, and that’s fine, but in a field of films that aimed to succeed more on a technical or metatextual scale than appealing to an audience’s sense of emotion, CODA shines bright to me.
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CODA may have proven controversial among film purists who argue the best of the art form are all game changers, but most are united against the next nominee: Don’t Look Up, written and directed by Adam McKay with a story co-credit to political commentator David Sirota. McKay has quietly made a name for himself in Hollywood, going from co-founding the Upright Citizens Brigade to directing several smash comedies, including 2004’s Anchorman, to switching to prestige dramedies the Academy have responded well to. He garnered six nominations between 2015’s The Big Short and 2018’s Vice, his sole win going into Sunday being for his work in adapting the screenplay of the former. He is also a producer, and among his credits in this capacity are as an executive producer on 2019’s Booksmart and a producer on 2019’s Hustlers and 2021’s Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. I don’t have much kind to say about his latest film, as you’ll be able to tell from the following paragraphs, but between everything I just listed, you’ve probably noted at least one work that either wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t exist in a form you appreciate without McKay’s help, and that’s without getting into his work in television, which includes an executive producer credit on HBO’s Succession as well as directing its pilot episode. I don’t like his latest film, but I do respect him.
Don’t Look Up presents a scenario in which the Earth is in the crosshairs of a world-destroying disaster and asks how those in power would respond, and as this film has ambitions of being satirical, the chief point of suspense comes from whether the entire planet will be destroyed or merely most of it. It’s a thinly veiled allegory for how we’ve responded to climate change, with the humor coming from the circus that erupts when a society that worships capitalism misses the forest for their bottom line. McKay and others who worked on the film have posited the film’s position has proven too radical for some critics, that to criticize this film is akin to admitting one doesn’t care about saving the world. I’ll go ahead and say I agree with McKay’s expressed politics, and while some have criticized the film for operating in a place of exaggerated emotion, this aspect of Don’t Look Up also didn’t bother me. “Exaggeration” and “satire” go hand in hand; Sarah Palin never said “I can see Russia from my house” but the joke still landed because it felt like something she could have said.
The biggest problem with Don’t Look Up is that it isn’t funny, a fatal flaw given it is a comedy. This is a difficult concept to convey given how subjective humor can be, but I’m going to try. Most of the humor in this film comes from characters blandly overstating the obvious, from exchanges that baldly reveal a lack of perspective (“What if we die?” “Yeah, but what if we get rich?!”) to a running gag involving petty behavior on the part of craft services at the White House. Some of this might have been fine in moderation, but these are most of the jokes and the rest seem to consist of the classic comedy trope of mining humor from characters being placed in uncomfortable situations, minus the part where humor is mined from these situations. Don’t Look Up isn’t the only modern comedy to think characters being placed in an uncomfortable situation represents the whole of a good joke, but it is the only one that’s up for Best Picture.
I understand my feelings aren’t universal. To some, Don’t Look Up’s penchant for overstatement represents not a failure to convey humor but a cry for sanity, and that such a visible project is taking on such an important topic is reason enough for celebration. I accept there is no chance in changing these minds, and I don’t want to; if you find value in Don’t Look Up, I’m happy for you. That said, I think I can make a case to fans of this film that there are better works than Don’t Look Up that share many of its goals. 1964’s Dr. Strangelove is the obvious example, another black comedy that conveys a doomsday scenario, but there are other works to consider. 1997’s Wag the Dog is a more modern example of how the government will put its own interests above those of its people. HBO’s Veep married Sorkinesque dialogue with comic pettiness, eventually following a cast of dirtbags that all hate each other almost as much as they hate the American people they govern. If climate change talk in fiction is what you’ve responded best to with Don’t Look Up, I urge you to check out the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which is also thinly veiled allegory for climate change conversation. If you find value in Don’t Look Up, I promise you’ll get even more out of at least one of the works I’ve mentioned.
The best joke, however, would come if Don’t Look Up won Best Picture. Strangelove, a common pick for the best film of all time, was famously snubbed for Best Picture in favor of My Fair Lady, a decision regarded at the time as a tough choice between several outstanding pictures (Mary Poppins was also snubbed) that has proven unpopular over the years. Don’t Look Up, meanwhile, is already unpopular among film enthusiasts, and I anticipate the villainous backstory of at least one individual will begin if this film wins where one of the greatest films of all time failed. This should have no chance of winning on account of how bad it is, but then again, it shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Picture in the first place.
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Drive My Car, meanwhile, is this year’s international nominee for Best Picture, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi with a screenplay written by Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe, based on the Haruki Murakami short story of the same name. Hamaguchi has been previously celebrated for his 2015 film Happy Hour and wrote and directed last year’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which was either snubbed for this year’s Academy Awards or will be a frontrunner in next year’s ceremony, depending on the whims of the Academy and how they want to apply their stupid rules. Murakami is probably the most respected Japanese writer of the past fifty years, though my experience with his work consists of reading about a quarter of his 2013 novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I could explain why I got that far without reading any further, but I think it will be more amusing to illustrate my point by listing its accolades: shortlisted for The Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the year of its English localization, and shortlisted for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, a dubious distinction celebrating exactly what you think it would.
Drive My Car follows an unconventional theater director/actor who takes a residency job directing a version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, a personal favorite of his, in the aftermath of his wife’s sudden passing. We follow him through the whole process of the construction of this play, from casting to the first performance, all while he works to process his feelings towards his beloved deceased. This is, basically, the plot, with few narrative elements beyond that. The biggest plot twist, in fact, occurs when a character literally steps off the screen to do something. Such a shoestring story might suggest a brief film, so I hope you’re sitting down when I tell you Drive My Car clocks in at almost three hours. It’s a tough sell, in other words.
I haven’t read the original Murakami short story, but I’ve come to understand it represents the barest bone version of this tale, with the residency job and the business with the play being original to this adaptation. Murakami’s story establishes the man’s relationship with his dead wife through the framing device of interactions he has with his chauffer, and while that’s all been preserved, the business with the chauffer in the film version is a muted element. She’s there, granted, and she has a well-developed character that is a crucial part of the signature tableau of the film, but I have my doubts this character would be a part of this version of the story if she wasn’t one of two depicted characters in the original work.
In practice, the daunting runtime isn’t that bad, not the least of which is due to it being more like a two-hour film with forty minutes of prologue. I’m loathe to discuss the nature of the protagonist’s relationship with his wife as I consider that something of a spoiler (though, judging by reading other reviews, I seem to be in the minority), but there’s plenty of grief to pick apart over the course of that runtime and both Hamaguchi and lead actor Hidetoshi Nishijima leave no stone unturned in conveying his depression while conveying he’s a separate man besides his grief. Nishijima plays his character as though he thinks it would be impolite to express what he’s feeling, and through his eyes, we can feel his holding himself back when, say, an audition takes a turn it shouldn’t have, all while successfully conveying his stoicism. Hamaguchi, meanwhile, uses Uncle Vanya as a point of comparison and contrast to great effect, from reflective plot points between the play and the protagonist’s life story to creative disagreements in rehearsal echoing conversations he had with his wife. I’d be remiss if I didn’t single out the work done by cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya as well, especially the trick he pulls during the film’s most devastating moment. The work he does in gradually shifting the lights as the nature of the conversation at the center of the scene turns is a key part of why it draws you in, and it’s hardly the only outstanding visual element of the film.
This being up for Best Picture, however, represents a strange midsection of discourse. If the winner was decided exclusively by a film’s quality, there’s no conversation to be had here—Drive My Car wins, easily. On the other hand, films like Drive My Car, longform ruminations on difficult subjects, typically don’t win Best Picture. On the other, other hand, most longform ruminations on difficult subjects typically aren’t nominated for Best Picture in the first place. I’ll save my thoughts on snubbed international films that might have had an easier path to the top prize for the final part of this essay, but I’ll plainly state here what you’ve probably already gathered from my expressed thoughts: Drive My Car is the best film nominated for Best Picture this year, and if it doesn’t win, we’re in for a wild night.
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Speaking of film adaptations of literary works: Dune, or, rather, Dune: Part One: Dennis the Menace, directed by Denis Villeneuve and based on the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert, with the adapted screenplay penned by Villeneuve, Eric Roth, and Jon Spaihts. Spaihts has an oddball track record, with his initial treatment of Passengers being hailed as a promising work but whose final version did not resonant with critics while audiences collectively regarded it as “not bad”. Roth, however, is a seasoned and respected name, having garnered six nominations for his adaptations and going home with the gold once, for a little film from 1994 called Forrest Gump (though Dune could be lucky number two). Villeneuve, meanwhile, has become one of the most consistent and exciting names in film in the last decade on the strength of an intimidating body of work, having directed 2013’s Prisoners, 2015’s Sicario, 2016’s Arrival, and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049. With those projects as comparison, I don’t think I’m offending even people who love Dune: Part One: Chapter One: Page One when I say I regard it as his worst film.
To wholly convey my grievances with this film that I enjoyed, however, involves first digging to the core of what Dune the novel is, and I’m not about to give an entire book report on this because I’ve been out of school for over ten years and you can’t tell me what to do anymore. Context is important, however, so here’s a summation, sort of: it is a book proud of being regarded as a work of literature, whose meticulous word choice works to convey a dizzying sense of reality that puts you in the headspace of a cavalcade of characters with a warped sense of morality and spirituality. An old woman doesn’t tell a boy to get his beauty rest for his busy day tomorrow, no, she says, “Sleep well, you sly little rascal. Tomorrow you’ll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar.” That’s from page three of the book, and no, neither you nor the boy are supposed to know what a “gom jabbar” is at this point. I won’t tell you how you should feel towards this sort of material (you’re a grown-up, you can decide for yourself), but my point is that how this book is composed might be more important in discussions of its lasting appeal than what happens in it. With its lofty ambitions and dense word count and choice, Dune is easier to compare to Moby Dick than any sort of pulpy, action-packed sci-fi book you could think of like Jurassic Park or The Hunger Games.
The book also has elements that render it superficially similar to sci-fi pop art that blew up in the decades following its release: political intrigue and warfare in space, magic systems and mysticism in a sci-fi setting, creatures that are as monstrous as they are mesmerizing, and a wide cast of characters of varied ages that can allow you to put both a veteran of Shakespearean adaptations and the latest fresh face to grace the cover of Tiger Beat in the same project without missing a beat. The process of translating Dune to the screen, however, usually dies when a producer bothers to, you know, read the book and realize this isn’t the next Star Wars. Before Villeneuve’s mostly crowd-pleasing effort to translate the text, David Lynch took a shot at it in 1984 and Alejandro Jodorowsky spent much of the 70s trying to get his version off the ground, and for a sense of how crazy and talented you’d have to be to try this, Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (1989) features a hysterical elephant funeral that ends at the city dump and Lynch managed the even-crazier feat of preventing Showtime from milking Twin Peaks: The Return for eight seasons. Neither effort was received well, with Lynch’s film being disliked for being bad and Jodorowsky’s film being disliked for not existing, and for the past couple of decades, the novel has been regarded as impossible to translate to the screen, at least not in a format that is both true to the text as well as good. Then again, Villeneuve already pulled off the impossible by making a worthy follow-up to Blade Runner, which was regarded as a fool’s errand up until Villeneuve proved that notion wrong. If anyone living filmmaker could solve this equation, it’s Villeneuve.
You might be wondering what the plot of Dune: Part One: The Fellowship of the Sand is, and if your only experience with Dune consists of Villeneuve’s version, you’re probably still wondering what the plot of Dune is. That’s because Dune: Part One: Real Madrid: Zero is impossible to fairly judge without Dune: Part Two: The Last Atreides, and that’s where most of my problems with it come from. Dune isn’t the only film to split its story into multiple parts, but for whatever could be said about other films that follow this practice, they still represent whole works. Kill Bill Volume One has a beginning, middle, and end, though the end leaves you primed for its second part. The Avengers: Infinity War has a beginning, middle, and end, though the end leaves you primed for Endgame. Even Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings all conveyed complete stories on their own. Dune: Part One: I’m Out of Puns, however, concludes shortly after the inciting incident of its story, briefly dipping its toes into its second act before the credits roll. When the second part is out and we’ll be able to watch the whole thing in one five-hour sitting, we’ll be able to better judge how many of the creative decisions here pan out, but for now, we’re basically complimenting world-building, set design, and special effects.
For some, that’s more than enough. Villeneuve’s Dune certainly looks great so far, and the cinematography and conveyance of aesthetic is as appreciable as any of his works. The approach so far seems to lean towards transplanting the text to the screen, and while that could have turned out disastrous for many directors, Villeneuve has a gift for handling complicated information, handily showing off, for instance, frequent flashbacks and prophecies without confusing or alienating the audience. I’d love to tell you that this makes for a rewarding story, but, again, the story isn’t done. It’s barely gotten started, and for all I know, none of the introduced plot threads could pay off. Alternately, some of the odder and arguably bad elements, like Paul’s muted reaction to pretty much anything that happens to him, could be setting up for a moment in the second half that recontextualizes these “bad” elements as the setup to a payoff that was very much worth it. I simply don’t have much to say about the film beyond “it looks nice and is progressing well so far, I can’t wait to get my whole thoughts on it in two years”. No film has won Best Picture on the strength of being half a film, so a win on Sunday would break new ground and could set a precedent for other half-films cleaning up at award season. That’s the pessimist view, anyway.
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I have little doubt there will be more to say about Dune whenever the second part comes out, but for now, it’s time to discuss a film I have little to say about: King Richard, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by Zach Baylin. Baylin doesn’t have much work under his belt; IMDB says he has worked in the art department for several projects, but King Richard is his first writing credit and his second, Creed III, is currently in production. Green, meanwhile, wrote and directed 2018’s Monsters and Men and directed 2020’s Joe Bell, both of which enjoyed a mixed reception from critics and audiences alike. This is easily the biggest project either man has to their credit so far, and I guess there’s a compelling headline to be had for them if this film wins Best Picture. I say that as I struggle to understand why this film is in this position.
King Richard tells the true story of Richard Williams, the father and longtime coach of Serena Williams and Venus Williams, two of the most celebrated sports figures of the past twenty-five years. I’m not a fan of the Williams sisters as I’m not a fan of tennis, but I can acknowledge they have an incredible life story that could make for an amazing, valuable film. King Richard, however, is not about the Williams sisters. Instead, we keep following the guy who is on the sidelines cheering them on and telling them to keep their stance open. If that sounds like a missed opportunity, that’s because it is.
It is such an odd choice, in fact, that contemplating why this film was told as it was proved more entertaining to me than the film itself, especially as there’s been little revealed about its conception. Maybe this started as a script about the Williams sisters but, even though they have executive producing credits, major showbiz suits thought it would be easier to secure crucial funding with an A-lister on as early as possible, so it was tailored to favor Richard Williams to better court Will Smith. Maybe the Williams sisters got on board with a pitch about a biography but didn’t want to be thrust into another spotlight, so they shifted the focus towards their father. Maybe there’s another, more boring reason a project that involves two of the most famous athletes of all time focused on their coach. Maybe, just maybe, and I admit this one is a long shot, maybe all involved thought telling this story with Richard as the protagonist would produce the most artistically sound and worthwhile film. It’s a bit of a crazy idea, but it is possible.
To give credit where it is due, Smith is great in portraying the titular character. Most of Smith’s work, no matter who he is playing, sees him convey a degree of coolness, even if that’s at odds with the direction of his character. As Richard, however, Smith is in pure dork dad mode, flubbing over his words and occasionally failing to read social cues and moving with a slumbering gait he’s visibly trying to disguise. I don’t know if Smith’s third time will prove to be the charm when it comes to Best Actor, but he’s easily the most consistently good part of King Richard.
Most of the rest of the film, however, is…fine. The cinematography is fine. The acting across the rest of the board is fine (apologies to Aunjanue Ellis, who is up for Best Supporting Actress for playing the mother of the Williams sisters). The soundtrack is predictable but fine. Heck, there are even a couple of good scenes sprinkled throughout, such as an instance of gun violence early in the film. There’s nothing here that’s exceptional, however. If you want something to occupy the time and attention of your family without getting them riled up, King Richard’s two hours will get the job done. While it isn’t the worst film up for Best Picture, however, it might have been more interesting if it was worse. Don’t Look Up is at least an interesting sort of bad, and that’s more than can be said for King Richard.
More devastating, however, is a scene late in the film that hints at how much better a film with one of the sisters as the focus could have been. Venus, young but triumphant in the first round of the big tournament of her professional career, relishes a private moment to celebrate as a kid should. King Richard feels the most alive in this sequence, finally wrenching some emotion after too many scenes of The Punisher telling Agent J that he’s doing wrong by his daughters, that they need to do more competing because you don’t know what you’re talking about and I do, which is supposed to count as dramatic irony because we already know Richard is proven right. Venus’s private moment of celebration seems to come from a different movie, one that would have been more interesting, if not better, than King Richard. I cannot imagine the justification behind voting for this film above the other nominees, but by being nominated at all, King Richard has already overperformed at the Academy Awards.
***
We now turn to one of the most popular Best Picture nominees and maker of exhausting discourse: Licorice Pizza, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose list of outstanding works consist of some of the best and most celebrated films of the past twenty-five years (and, also, Magnolia). This is his third film to be up for the top prize, with 2007’s There Will Be Blood losing to No Country for Old Men and 2017’s Phantom Thread losing to The Shape of Water, and this is his fifth writing credit up for an Oscar, after 1997’s Boogie Nights lost to Good Will Hunting, 1999’s Magnolia lost to American Beauty, There Will Be Blood lost to No Country for Old Men (again), and 2014’s Inherent Vice lost to The Imitation Game. I’ll leave it to the individual to determine which of these were his great works losing to works of equal quality and which were snubs.
Licorice Pizza is a coming-of-age dramedy about the budding relationship between a fifteen-year-old boy and a twenty-five-year-old woman in California in 1973. Most of the promotion around this movie softballs that premise; the first trailer sees Alana Kane (played by Alana Haim of the pop-rock band Haim) mention that Gary Valentine (played by Cooper Hoffman) is fifteen years old in a context that suggests she’s too old to be hanging out with him, but Haim’s costume and classically-youthful features make it difficult to determine her character’s age, and it is easy to assume she is portraying someone who is eighteen or nineteen years old. That age gap would still not be, well, great, but as it is, Hoffman’s character can’t vote while Haim’s character can rent a car, and the film asks you to get on board with this premise or get out—and some, indeed, have opted for the latter.
The film’s relationship with its central relationship really is the biggest stumbling block to enjoying it. In fairness to Licorice Pizza, Gary is the one who pursues Alana from the start and Alana is quick to essentially say “no, we’re not going to date, but I would like to have more dude friends so let’s hang out”, so it isn’t quite the predatory story you may have assumed from a laconic description of the plot. It’s also worth noting that depicting something in a film is not the same thing as endorsing it, and to posit otherwise is a simplistic and insulting manner of regarding media. That said (light spoiler talk, I guess?), the ending does a lot to complicate generous interpretations of their relationship. One could argue that she’s had an extended adolescence brought on by being coddled by her surroundings and he’s eager to cut his adolescence short so he can get the respect from adults he feels he's owed and they’re meeting each other at exactly the right point in their lives for their souls to be compatible or whatever, but at the end of the film, it’s still 1973, he’s still fifteen, she’s still twenty-five, and I’m doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out how Anderson thought any of this was a good idea.
One of the more sensible interpretations I’ve developed towards this text, one that allows that Anderson knew what he was doing and had no nefarious intentions with his work, come with viewing Licorice Pizza as though it were contemporaneous, as if you were watching this film, which is set in 1973, in 1974. View the film under these set of values and not only does the central relationship make more sense, it also explains the scenes that “make fun of” racism against Japanese people that merely show someone being horribly racist towards Japanese women, with people snickering behind his back over how inappropriately he is acting. I am not comfortable deconstructing this aspect of the film in depth, and I will not pretend I have anything definitive to say on the matter. That said, I struggle to understand why these scenes are in this film. Pizza has nothing else to say about this topic, and most of the rest of the film offers little commentary on American society of this time period. I don’t want to believe the reason these scenes are in the film owes to that Anderson has become untouchable as a creator and no one could put their foot down and get them 86’d, but I’m struggling to understand how else they could survive into the final product.
I should clarify in plain language that I do not believe Licorice Pizza aims to romanticize relationships between adults and children. I genuinely believe that Anderson meant to render a portrait of a complicated relationship between two broken people who collided at a crucial time in their lives. It’s just that there’s so little meaningful text towards this notion, the episodic stories that make up the film being so disconnected and little character development happening for whole tens of minutes of the film combined with scattered execution towards driving a cogent point home, that it is easier for an ungenerous audience to regard this as endorsement than as a vision of disorder. It isn’t unreasonable to imagine a stronger film could have emerged with a few more voices in the writer’s room instead of, well, one.
For all of that, you’re probably thinking I hate Licorice Pizza, but in the biggest plot twist of this essay, I must admit this is my third-favorite of these nominees. Pizza’s central relationship may be questionable, but it’s far from the biggest curveball I’ve ever been pitched, and the rest of the film, for as disconnected as its episodes are, was easy to enjoy. Hoffman is off to a promising start to his acting career, and while I don’t think Haim was snubbed for Best Actress, her performance is miles ahead of what you’d expect from someone making their film debut at age thirty. Anderson’s eye for visuals and ear for the classics is as good as it’s ever been, and the sequence involving Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters is one of the funniest scenes in recent memory. If you can get past the questionable decisions surrounding the central conceit of the film, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Whether you can get on board, however, is up to you, and I do not think lesser of anyone who can’t.
***
From one strange nomination to the next: Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro from a screenplay penned by del Toro and his wife, writer and film historian Kim Morgan, based on the 1946 William Lindsey Gresham novel of the same name. This is the second film adaptation of the novel, with the first being the 1947 version directed by Edmund Goulding, which is better regarded today than it was on its release. GDT is one of the most respected directors of all time, with 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth being cited by many as an all-time classic and 2017’s The Shape of Water winning Best Picture in a year of tough competition that included Get Out, Lady Bird, and Phantom Thread. He also featured in a video game about a postman who has a baby strapped to his chest. He’s that kind of a dude.
Nightmare Alley tells the story of a man who learns confidence tricks, gets rich off them, and then gets challenged by a psychiatrist who has her own agenda. Sort of. I think that’s the story being told, anyway. I’m not familiar with the novel, but if this is anything to go by, Gresham loved exploring tangents and surreal elements and was willing to do this at the expense of his book’s eventual spinal sturdiness. The evidence I have to back this up is that the psychiatrist I mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph, the one that signposts we’ve entered the film’s second act, doesn’t show up until over an hour into the film. Up until then, we’re following Bradley Cooper’s ascent through a circus troupe, from wrangling carnies to honing a top tier craft and bedding beautiful women all the while. The film is two-and-a-half hours long with credits (two hours and twenty minutes sans credits) and it is begging to have half an hour or more cut from it.
This isn’t to say the film is twiddling its thumbs for that first hour. GDT loves to soak his films in atmosphere and foreboding and Nightmare Alley is no exception; nothing supernatural happens in this film (a first for GDT), but it always feels like something supernatural is about to happen. The budding relationship between the confident protagonist and a fellow performer with an electrifying act (that’s a pun; her show involves an electric chair) is also engaging, with Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara having a solid rapport. There’s also a plot twist I won’t spoil that comes out of nowhere at first but makes sense when you learn where the characters end up at the end, though it might take a second viewing to put the dots together. Alley spends its first hour hanging out with a bunch of weirdos you learn to…well, maybe not like, but you’ll definitely develop some set of feelings towards each member of the motley crew, and once the second act begins, it turns into an above-average character study. Put this many outstanding actors together and you’d practically have to try to get something below average.
To put it bluntly, I regard Nightmare Alley as a good film, but by being nominated for Best Picture, it is punching far above its weight. Perhaps the disjointed narrative and odd pacing are justified in the original novel (or perhaps these are problems introduced in this adaptation), but for as good as it looks and for as good as the performances are and for as well-realized as the personal story at the center of this tale turns out to be, there are a myriad of better films that aren’t up for Best Picture and that weighs heavily on how I feel towards Nightmare Alley. It’s a fun romp you’ll quickly forget you watched, and that’s not a meritless experience but that shouldn’t describe something we put on a pedestal.
This is truly the most puzzling nominee of this year. Even the critics who love this film didn’t have it on their radar for Best Picture nominees, and while last year’s odd duck Promising Young Woman represented perhaps a greater deviation from what normally gets nominated for Best Picture, it was still anchored by a strong central performance, which is still well within the Academy’s established tastes. Cooper does a good job with his character, who is central to this film’s narrative, but Nightmare Alley spends a lot of time with his character off to the side in favor of showing off its other cast or engaging with an unsettling sight, and even that central personal journey, for as much as I enjoy it, amounts to basically “bad guy learns karma exists”. It’s a picture show meant to shock and thrill you and do little else. The good news for Nightmare Alley is that there is precedent for such a work winning Best Picture. The Greatest Show on Earth, for example, took the top prize in 1952, a year of tough competition that saw it beat out High Noon, Ivanhoe, and The Quiet Man, while Singin’ in the Rain couldn’t even get nominated. A win for this film wouldn’t be the worst result or unforeseeable, but that speaks more to the quality of the other nominees as well as the erratic behavior of the Academy than it does the merits of this film.
***
I hope you’re not sick of talking about film adaptations of novels yet. The Power of the Dog is the latest film from director Jane Campion, who wrote the screenplay that was adapted from the 1967 Thomas Savage novel of the same name. Dog is also up for several other Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actor (Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Best Supporting Actress (Kirsten Dunst). Campion has one Oscar on her mantle, for writing the adaptation of 1993’s The Piano, which also earned her a nomination for her direction (the award that year went to Steven Spielberg for Schindler’s List, and no one complained). It’s anyone’s guess how Sunday will pan out, but it stands to reason that Dog is not going to go home empty-handed.
The Power of the Dog is a multidimensional tour de force, a feature-length essay about diagetic formations of synthetic synthesis and…okay, fine, it’s actually about a homophobic cowboy who takes to licking his lips when his brother’s stepson comes around. Dog has been celebrated for its commentary and deconstruction of the myth of the cowboy, long considered a symbol for American idealism and exceptionalism, and I’ll grant it certainly engages with this topic, though I might have been kinder to this project if commentaries and deconstructions of the myth of the cowboy weren’t the only Westerns that garner acclaim anymore. From 2007’s No Country for Old Men to 2010’s True Grit, from 1992’s Unforgiven to 2015’s The Hateful Eight, from the Red Dead Redemption games to arguably Yellowstone, every Western you’ll hear of these days posits that maybe there’s something wrong with the cowboy that is worth taking apart. It’s not even a new phenomenon for film, either—1952’s High Noon focused on the typical Western trope of a sheriff facing down a gang of criminals, but the entire film was built around conveying the trepidation and stubbornness of the protagonist, to the point where when he walks downtown for the final showdown, you’re not sure if he’s doing the right thing. In comparison to all these works, Dog feels lightweight and shallow.
Maybe I’d be gentler towards the film if it did anything exceptionally well. The best element is probably Johnny Greenwood’s score, and that feels like faint praise towards a film that’s up for Best Picture, Best Director, and three acting awards. I’ll grant that the film looks high end, and I could never accuse this production of lacking for effort, but I found it hard to appreciate so much of this film as its artifice was in my face throughout. I can cite at least one period film set in post-Revolutionary, pre-Depression America that does a better job of suspending my disbelief on a small budget than The Power of the Dog did with its $35 million. If what I’m looking at strikes of well shot cosplay, how can I get invested in it?
I’m harsh to this film partially because I’ve spent a lot of time engaging with Westerns. My stepfather and his father grew up in the rural South and grew to love the genre, and they worked to convey that love onto the rest of the family by, well, making us watch a whole bunch of them over the years; I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched McLintock!. I’m not putting this forth because “it was all better back in the day” but because old Westerns, for whatever else could be said about them, worked hard to convey a sense of authenticity, that their stories played out in real locations and with real, unconventional characters. The Power of the Dog, in contrast, looked like it was shot on a bevy of sets with actors that were doing their best to convey Southern accents. Consciously, I know the old Westerns were attempting the same thing, but they were never this transparent. The big red flag here is Cumberbatch. The man has made a career out of playing intellectuals, and he’s done a great job of it, but he’s tasked here with playing someone struggling to understand his own feelings and he just doesn’t know how to play dumb. There’s also the problem that comes with casting such a visible actor well outside his established persona. I couldn’t look at him and regard him as anything besides an elseworlds Dr. Strange.
I accept that my negative feelings towards The Power of the Dog are not shared by most, not even by people who dislike the film, and for what it’s worth, I don’t feel comfortable calling it a bad movie. That said, I had someone join me for my first viewing of the film, someone who says they “watch films to enjoy them, not to pick them apart like you do, John”, and they found themselves fed up with one scene. “Why is she wearing a dress shirt without sleeves?” she said, indicating to Dunst’s character. “The house is cold. She’s cold. This has been brought up in dialogue several times.” This wasn’t an issue for me—I had reasoned that the character would have regarded wearing something more conservative as a faux pas of some sort. It goes to show, however, that even when talking about Important deconstructive Westerns that are About Things, authenticity can still matter to casual audiences, and elements that shatter the illusion of the location can register even to those who don’t spend eight hundred words talking about the Richard Williams biopic no one else saw.
***
The last of this year’s nominees is, at once, one of the biggest film events of the year and one of the biggest bombs: West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay written by Tony Kushner, adapted from the 1957 stage musical of the same name. Kushner has worked with Spielberg on two projects in the past, 2005’s Munich (co-written with Eric Roth) and 2012’s Lincoln, both of which earned him nominations for their screenplays, but the biggest feather in his cap is Angels in America, both the 1991 play and the 2003 HBO miniseries. Spielberg is the most commercially successful director of all time, many of his films are generally regarded as classics, and his influence on the art form is impossible to undersell. Several of his films have been up for Best Picture and he has won it once, for 1993’s Schindler’s List. This version of West Side Story, the second film adaptation, is up for several other technical awards and has garnered Ariana DeBose a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, presumably for her work in trying the salvage the most annoying number in the film.
I have no experience with any other version of the musical, so I couldn’t tell you if this is “faithful” or if they get something wrong, but I know enough about the show and Spielberg that it seems a match made in Heaven. Spielberg has been renowned for his command of visuals as well as being an “actor’s director”, and West Side Story features several scenes of complicated action and grand spectacle, so it should make sense that a version of Story would be his first and only musical. The finger curled in on the monkey’s paw, however, signals a grim reality: it’s exactly what you’d expect. You know how everyone wanted Tim Burton to do a version of Alice in Wonderland, but when he finally did it, the universal reaction was that it was exactly the film they thought it would be? That’s one of the biggest problems with Story, that it has no surprises in its filmmaking and is more appreciable for its technical elements than anything else.
That might not be a problem for you, and I won’t deny the technical accomplishment here. Spielberg still has his golden touch for staging, and the dance numbers feel impossibly large without becoming wholly impersonal. It’s just that I don’t feel drawn into the world or otherwise entertained by most of the numbers here. The biggest set pieces had me thinking “Wow, this must have been incredibly difficult to coordinate”, which is not something I’m supposed to be thinking as an audience member. I’m supposed to be drawn into this world, enchanted by the music, and caring about its cast, and instead, I’m just impressed by the effort and admiring the lighting. If you found this film engrossing, I’m happy for you, but I found this easier to admire than engage with. This isn’t a problem with all film musicals, either—I didn’t have the same problem with this past year’s In the Heights. We might have reached the point where films inspired by Spielberg, such as 2020’s The Vast of Night, might be conjuring classic Spielberg better than Spielberg himself can.
There is one outstanding element to this film—Rachel Zegler, who plays Maria. I’ve criticized some of the acting nominations here, arguing that maybe some of them should have been snubbed in favor of better work done by other actors, but that Zegler isn’t up for Best Actress is one of the biggest snubs of this year’s ceremonies. Any time this film comes alive owes to Zegler’s commanding yet charming presence; she grabs your attention, to put it lightly, and when she effortlessly conjures tears, West Side Story, if briefly, has an emotional core. I’m reminded of Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, immediately announcing herself as an exceptional performer that will be around for (God willing) a long time, amid what is otherwise an average work.
Were that we could clone Zegler and she could act opposite herself, if only so we could get rid of Ansel Elgort, and here’s where I need to address the elephant in the room. Yes, I know about the allegations, and no, I don’t dislike Elgort’s performance here specifically because of the things he’s done in real life, though they do weigh heavy on my mind every moment he’s on screen. An actor with better PR that turned in a performance as bad as his might have steered the discourse towards “well, at least he tried”. I watched Pieces of a Woman after learning of the stuff Shia LaBeouf did, and I was still able to register that he turned in a good performance. Meanwhile, Elgort could feed starving children every day for the rest of his life and I still wouldn’t say he turned in an acceptable performance as Tony.
I say that not because I regard Elgort as a bad actor. I’ve seen other works he starred in, and he usually does a good job. The difference is how he was utilized in those works. The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Who Drives saw him affect an air of stoicism that made it so he could convey a character without having to do much emoting. In those films, it was a big deal when his character smirked, because he was otherwise a slab of concrete. (This is not to suggest he’s not exhibiting skills in those roles or that just anyone could do it—if that were true, I’d be doing it.) With West Side Story, however, he’s tasked with consistently emoting, and that’s outside his wheelhouse. In a work that plays almost everything as over the top, Elgort consistently chooses to play things under the top. This doesn’t make for welcome contrast; rather, it just makes him look bored to be there. He also can’t sing, and having him sing next to Zegler, who has been singing for much of her life, makes him come across as grossly incompetent. Late in the film, Tony gets bad news that makes him sad, and the crumpled face Elgort affects had me laughing out loud. If Zegler should be up for an Oscar, Elgort should be given a Razzie, or perhaps a couple of years in jail, depending on what we’re talking about.
Overall, film=fine I guess, Zegler=star, Elgort=trash, da da da da da da, America.
***
As mentioned, the final part of this essay will focus on the snubs. As a reminder, because the last time I mentioned this was several thousands of words ago, these aren’t just films from the past year I liked that should’ve been nominated over films I didn’t like. These are films that fit the usual Academy standard for Best Picture that still weren’t up for the top prize. Let’s get it started.
-We’ll start with listing some international films. I know the Academy has nominated one international film a year for the past three years, but if they are serious about celebrating such films, they shouldn’t put forth the notion that only one film not made in America can square up to the best of what has been made in this country.
First up: 7 Prisoners. This is a drama about youths who find themselves trapped in a work slavery ring that takes some sharp, well-constructed turns that I won’t spoil. The Academy have responded well to such topics in the past, and it’s anyone’s guess why this went unnoticed.
Identifying Features (also marketed as Sin Señas Particulares) is a similarly baffling exclusion. If the Academy fell over themselves over the vistas of The Power of the Dog, this film would have had them drooling, and the slow burn of a tale here is as haunting as anything that’s up for Best Picture.
I’m now going to do a weird thing and recommend a film I didn’t love: This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection. The pace of this painful drama eventually wore me down past what it was going for, but the commitment to its mode of storytelling has gone over well with the audiences who have given it a chance. No matter how you’ll end up feeling about it, it’s at least more interesting than many of the films up for Best Picture, if not outright better.
Finally, let’s single out the most obvious international snub: Titane. Okay, maybe a film about a showgirl serial killer who gets pregnant with a car’s baby and disguises herself as someone’s lost son doesn’t sound like Oscar material, but this won the Palme d'Or last year over stiff competition, including Drive My Car. That should’ve been enough to get it onto the shortlist.
I recognize some of these might not have won if they were up for the top prize. I imagine at least one person reading this regards even having one international film up for Best Picture as progress by itself, and that the people behind these films should consider it an achievement to be nominated for Best International Feature. It pains me to know I won’t see the look on that person’s face when they learn the four films I cited have also been snubbed for Best International Feature. Yep, there’s a whole lot of great films that aren’t being celebrated at all by the Academy. Welcome to Hell!
-I know some regard The French Dispatch as one of Wes Anderson’s lesser projects, but I thought it was wonderful. It may have leaned heavily on the director’s trademark quirks and presented a series of disconnected narratives, but so did many of the films up for Best Picture and Dispatch was better than most of them.
-Someone is going to complain if I don’t mention The Green Knight, so here’s me mentioning The Green Knight.
-The Killing of Two Lovers is an intense and thrilling drama about a guy trying to put on a happy face as his life and marriage falls apart. You’d think half the Academy would be able to relate to that.
-Shiva Baby made quite the splash at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was one of the most acclaimed comedies of the past year. The Academy picked Don’t Look Up instead. Again, welcome to Hell.
-Spencer has seen Kristen Stewart get nominated for Best Actress, but I think that’s selling the film’s merits short. My favorite joke of 2021 was that the Princess Diana film was a horror film in disguise, and that it was better than most that is up for Best Picture is almost as funny to me.
-Finally, you know how I complained that The Power of the Dog looked completely fake to me and I could cite at least one recent period piece that reeked of authenticity? Well, that film is The World to Come, one of the most engrossing romantic dramas in some time.
To close things out, watch on Sunday, maybe, and then check the blog on Monday, where I will complain about passing out before the winner of this award was announced.