Oscar movie superlatives
Winter is my least favourite season, but awards season is my favourite! That’s slight hyperbole, but I still love the nonsense of “the race”—following the betting odds, watching all of the stilted roundtables, reading the pundits’ predictions. The truth is that you can take the kid out of Hollywood, but that kid’s still going to love the Oscar race!
But I’m not going to bore you with predictions here. The Academy Award nominations this week were just fine—nothing terribly exciting or upsetting—and that’s not a bad thing. Instead, I want to offer up my own completely biased, subjective, and hopefully spoiler-free awards for what was a very strange year in cinema.
I’m going to have some fun with this, but in all seriousness, the five movies from the year that I think you should watch are: The Power of the Dog, Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, Summer of Soul and Parallel Mothers. And if you want my thoughts on performances—gender-neutral, of course, because it’s rather silly that we’re still splitting Actors from Actresses in the year 2022—I thought Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Hidetoshi Nishijima (Drive My Car), Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) and Troy Kotsur (CODA) all transcended their films. And, yes, I do think this is the year that Netflix will finally nab a Best Picture statuette.
BEST SCENE: The truck scene in Licorice Pizza.
BEST AESTHETIC: The Green Knight
BIGGEST TEARJERKER: CODA
MOST TIRED METAPHOR: The ghost of Anne Boleyn in Spencer. (I mean, really?!)
MOST UNIQUE(?) METAPHOR: The car in Titane.
MOST ENGROSSING 3-HOUR FILM: Drive My Car
MOST TEDIOUS 3-HOUR FILM: House of Gucci
BEST JANE CAMPION MOVIE WITH A PIANO SCENE SINCE THE PIANO: The Power of the Dog
BEST FATHER/DAUGHTER MOVIE: CODA
BEST MOTHER/SON MOVIE: Dune
MOST UNNECESSARY REMAKE: West Side Story
MOST UNNECESSARY SEQUEL: The Matrix Resurrections
BEST USE OF JAMIE DORNAN: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Sorry, Belfast!)
BEST DYE JOB: Dakota Johnson’s in The Lost Daughter
BEST HAIRDO: Timothee Chalamet’s in Dune (True hair-goals for me!)
BEST LINE READING: Lady Gaga’s “I don’t consider myself a particularly ethical person, but I am fair” in House of Gucci
CAST HER MORE: Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza) — if there was a snub in the Oscar noms, it was this!
CAST HIM LESS: Jared Leto (House of Gucci)
SCENE STEALERS: Ana D’Armas in No Time to Die; Ariana DeBose in West Side Story
I want to know what were your favourites too. Any hidden gems from this year’s crop of films that I overlooked? Let me know in the comments.
What I’m watching: Well, all of the above.
What I’m reading: Trying my best to binge-read the 720 pages of To Paradise before my library loan runs out. Everything else is on the back-burner.