Oscars Rundown 2024
I watched all 53 nominees so you don't have to!
The Academy Awards center movie discourse every February and early March. This makes sense: there’s no bigger day devoted to cinema than the night of the Oscars. The ceremony breeds excitement for many movie lovers but also generates contempt: everybody loves to complain about those same Oscars.
There’s a lot to complain about. There’s a lavish self-importance to this event that punts far beyond its coverage. These are movies; gold statues go to actors and producers, not human rights lawyers or cutting-edge geneticists. Setting documentaries aside, the event sees people who pretend for a living patting others who pretend for a living on the back for their pretending.
However, similar critiques apply to almost any award ceremony, so more people direct their Oscar ire toward the films themselves. When a personal favorite gets passed over, they grouse; when one they loathed lands its leads on the podium, they lament. They decry bias, expensive campaigns, and elitism—and they’re almost certainly right! All those things undercut the Oscars’ power.
I’m no stranger to “snub” talk—I’m a sports fan who can’t resist reading about awards misses and all-star exclusions—but this year in particular, I keep running across writers and creators who implore me to understand that the best films don’t always win Oscars or sometimes even sniff nominations.
Yeah. I know.
Cinema hasn’t synthesized a Wins Above Replacement statistic to measure quality; the goodness of a movie remains subjective. There is no objective answer to “Which film is best?” except according to one’s personal tastes. The films I champion might bore or frustrate you. Your favorites could test my patience and alienate me in act one. That’s okay.
My point: I don’t care about the Oscars because they tell me which films are best. No ceremony will change my love for a film. Sure, I’d love to see my top pick pull out some wins, but I know it won’t. That, too, is okay.
In truth, I complete the Oscars Death Race—that is, watching every nominee in every category before the ceremony—every year without regard for the awards themselves. Who gets the trophy is secondary to the filmmaking it exposes me to. Most years, I watch the broadcast via DVR the following day, letting me fast-forward through most of it. That telecast isn’t the point.
What I love takes place much earlier: receiving a list of exciting movies each January. Documentaries, short films, and international cinema would elude me without Academy Awards attention, but I also see more interesting films all year while trying to complete the Death Race efficiently. The Oscars expand my cinematic palate year-round: I actually saw every Best Picture nominee this year before the announcement.
These 53 nominated films may or may not include the best of the best. I would argue they do since I saw one of them in theaters five times and have been lobbying people to watch it since July, but your mileage may vary.
Whether they do or do not is irrelevant to me. I love how these nominees nurture my hobby and train me to step beyond my cinematic comfort zone.
With that in mind, here are my picks for each Oscar category. These are not predictions; I’m choosing my favorites after watching every nominee, not helping you win your Oscar pools.
Below, I briefly discuss my choice in every category except Best Picture, for which I rank and share my thoughts about each nominee. If you’re interested in my ratings, I rate every feature-length film I watch on Letterboxd.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Da’Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers
Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa go pretty big in The Holdovers, and that helps Randolph hit from the opposite box in a quiet, melancholic performance. Gracious but wounded, distant but sharply aware, her Mary Lamb doesn’t want to talk about grief but also can’t stop thinking about her loss. Randolph checks every box on the emotional scorecard from gut-wrenching to hilarious, yet there isn’t one scene that doesn’t feel true to her character nor truly human.
Achievement in Sound
The Zone of Interest
Sound design governs Jonathan Glazer’s film about human callousness and our ability to ignore what is slightly out of view. While a young family frolics around a gorgeous garden hosting lavish lunches without a care in the world, we, the audience, hear what those laughing and living tune out: the grinding, screaming horror of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In every scene, its monstrous murder machinery whirs and hums mercilessly behind the wall in their backyard.
Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Visually, Oppenheimer must convey the majestic menace of an atomic bomb but also the constricting claustrophobia of a stacked-deck interrogation in an empty office. Telling this sprawling story coherently across shifting aspect ratios, settings, and color-grades stands as one of this heady summer blockbuster’s most outstanding achievements.
Documentary Short
The Last Repair Shop
My clarinet career never made it to a concert, but music impacted me sufficiently as a child to be floored by this short film centered on an iconic repair shop for school band programs in Los Angeles. This is about the instruments, the concerts, and the kids whose lives are changed by having music in them, but it’s structured around vignettes about the personal journeys of the repair team. Thinking about the last one still puts a warm lump in my throat.
Visual Effects
Godzilla Minus One
Commanding scale represents a significant hurdle for kaiju movies, since the massive monsters must outclass towering skyscrapers and render human foes mere ants. The titular lizard here has a substantiality, a harrowing heft, that convinces my brain of his immense inertia; this Godzilla’s inevitability would tickle Thanos. For a paltry $15M budget, Godzilla Minus One carries epic, gritty grandeur that no bloated Marvel budget sniffs anymore.
Animated Feature
Robot Dreams
Yes, I loved Across the Spiderverse, but Spider-Man doesn’t tell a complete story from beginning to end. Among those that do, none does so better than Robot Dreams, a film with zero spoken dialogue but a treasure trove of rich emotion. A lonely anthropomorphic dog in New York purchases an android companion, and the two hit it off, only to become separated. The dual journeys the film traces from there left me laughing, worrying, and crying, but also dancing. No spoilers here, but I’ll also say that its ending is right up my alley and aligns with other great films from this year.
Animated Short
Letter to a Pig
I watched this without subtitles or context, adding a degree of difficulty none of the other four contended with. But that lack of understanding elevated the feeling of this piece about a young girl’s bad dream, a haunting frame story, and the Holocaust. I had a fever when I watched it, so describing the short as “like a fever dream” might be more literal than intended, but its style and form wallop with raw emotion in the same way childhood nightmares always do.
Actor in a Supporting Role
Sterling K. Brown in American Fiction
Clifford Ellison’s numbness often plays for humor, with Brown centering several of this film’s domestic scenes as a high plastic surgeon exploring his new sexual identity for the first time. Clifford is a mess of joyless charisma, and his hollow eyes, while half-dancing in an audacious, unbuttoned shirt, stuck with me. Brown nails this man who has finally found himself only to discover a familiar disquiet in the newest iteration.
Makeup and Hairstyling
Society of the Snow
In recounting the awful 1972 Chilean plane crash that stranded a rugby team in the Andes for months, stylists needed to progressively transform a dynamic young cast into emaciated, devastated husks clinging to hope with frost-bitten fingers. We see that transformation in raw flesh, matted hair, and chapped-to-bleeding lips that convey not only the situation’s severity but also the power of endurance on display.
International Film
The Zone of Interest
I wrote a lengthy justification for choosing Society of the Snow over Jonathan Glazer’s film, but I realized by the end that I had devoted most of those words to praising Zone of Interest. What this film does is out there, filming the banal micro-dramas of the Auschwitz architect’s family set against the concentration camp itself without ever going inside. Glazer’s film lets the technicolor disregard of those dying yards away depict evil without ever showing the horrors it wrecks. The Zone of Interest didn’t sit right with me; I suspect that was the point.
Live-Action Short
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Choosing a prestigious Roald Dahl adaptation captained by Wes Freaking Anderson feels like cheating; if it bothers you, feel free to hand the grief vignette, Knight of Fortune, a deserved trophy instead. But how can I not celebrate Henry Sugar for the endlessly inventive, stylized to the gills, intensely moving achievement that it is? It’s incredible filmmaking, and although I still admire The Swan more from this series, I finished Henry Sugar with inspired tears as if I’d just walked out of a Challenge Day.
Costume Design
Barbie
A visual feast from start to finish, Barbie’s flashy, vintage toy-inspired fashion has stuck with me. I can conjure countless costumes, from Barbie’s western wear to Rebel Ken’s many vests to the quirky, kid-with-scissors aesthetic Kate McKinnon dons as Weird Barbie. Populating this film with retina-burning hot pink and decades of outdated garments won me over, but this is also a movie celebrating attire: my favorite gag consists of Ken tossing Barbie’s outfits out of the house but having them momentarily levitate to allow time for a description.
Original Screenplay
Past Lives by Celine Song
Tempting though it was to sneak May December in here as my second favorite film of 2023 received only this one nomination, I know where my heart lies. Celine Song’s screenplay excels in its economy: full of long pauses and understated dialogue, Past Lives shrugs off exposition and uses every word thoughtfully. I usually respond more to Aaron Sorkin-esque screenplays with lots of talking delivered with a snappy rata tat rhythm, but Past Lives proves a great story needs only the words necessary for telling it.
Adapted Screenplay
Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan
The degree of difficulty for Nolan to adapt not just a historical drama about developing the atomic bomb but also one of political chess and personal reflection stands out to me. Oppenheimer wields a propulsive through line that carries us into multiple eras and keeps tabs on numerous characters without ever losing its propulsion. That the film’s end slams me speaks to the stunning achievement that was making this story, told this way, engaging.
Original Score
Killers of the Flower Moon
None of the five nominated scores stuck with me; only one film in 2023 saw me rush to listen to its instrumentation, and Past Lives received no nomination. Thus, I gave each score a brief listen and instantly knew my choice: the late Robbie Robertson’s music immediately evokes a sense of place, full of instrumentation from the period and people who center Scorsese’s film. It’s a versatile score that drives this unconventional love story-slash-historical tragedy.
Film Editing
Anatomy of a Fall
There’s excellent editing on hand in Oppenheimer as it flows between timelines, but that showier style only highlights the crisp precision of this legal drama. Every cut here—and there are a ton—feels clinical, whether capturing a second-language interrogation or zeroing in on mannequins as they fly out from an attic. This is a film about unknowability and constructing narratives, and I sincerely believe the movie does so with an exactness unmatched by any other film in 2023.
Documentary Feature
Four Daughters
I’m pretty sure 20 Days in Mariupol will win, which is fine—that is urgent and raw, filmed under a literal flurry of bombs. Still, I reacted more powerfully to three other contenders, none more than Four Daughters, a moving and intense but also playfully meta movie. A mother in Tunisia loses her two oldest daughters to radicalization, and a filmmaker attempts to tell their story. To do so, she casts actresses in both the daughters’ and the mothers’ roles. This leads to intense scenes with her real daughters sobbing into the arms of imitators, as well as ones where the real mother watches from the screen’s edge as her doppelgänger plays out heart-wrenching moments.
Production Design
Barbie
If not for Best Picture, this might be the most straightforward category for me to choose. I’ll forever favor fantastical worlds for this category, but Barbie stands out even among them for manufacturing an internally consistent Barbie Land without scrimping on the bold plastic maximalism. Everything I saw in the toy world Barbie and Ken call home struck me as clever and inventive fun while still evoking the doll and accessories that inspired it.
Original Song
“I’m Just Ken” from Barbie
Gosling sings this power ballad with such silly sincerity that I laugh and love every second. This is played as epic and urgent, with rocking costumes and a game-for-everything cast, but it also serves the plot. Other songs carry grander meaning, and maybe this is too goofy to merit a win, but I know it’s the only song from this year’s nominated films that I’ll still be able to hum ten years from now. I love it.
Directing
Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
I credit Nolan for writing an excellent script, but I also credit him for executing this sweeping vision as he does. Moments as major as an exploding atomic bomb hit with force, but so do quiet, contemplative ones, and even performers with minimal screen time are integrated perfectly. Nolan gets the big stuff big while keeping the small stuff small, and all of it works. I can’t claim to know how to discern directing, but the scale of the entire Oppenheimer operation sets Nolan apart. I’ll hand mine to him.
Actor in a Leading Role
Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers
Choosing between Cillian Murphy and Giamatti challenges me, and I could keep going back and forth. Giamatti’s performance goes big, his Paul Hunham a curmudgeon of the highest order, but I respond to the arc Giamatti guides his sourpuss through. That I loathed Hunham but still hurt for him speaks to the performer bringing this fictional character to grouchy life.
Actress in a Leading Role
Emma Stone in Poor Things
Bar none, Stone’s performance resembles nothing I’ve seen before. There’s this electric physicality to it; she shows so much skin I averted my eyes several times, and she traverses from child-like wonder to wizened survivor, all without ever losing Bella Baxter’s stilted, alien thread. My apologies to Lily Gladstone, who is lovely and understated next to Leonard DiCaprio, but Stone shocked me and transformed this weird film into her bizarre film, a fascinating experience.
Best Picture
I count down from ten, my least favorite, to one, my favorite.
Ten: American Fiction
Jeffrey Wright gives a terrific performance, as he always does, and laughs abound in Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut about an accomplished writer with a chaotic family who, after struggling commercially, pens a bestseller…that embraces all of the stereotypes and tropes he abhors in Black literature. I enjoyed American Fiction, especially Sterling K. Brown’s scene-stealing turn as Wright’s brother, but the two stories running concurrently here didn’t always click together cleanly, and the thought-provoking ending left an odd taste in my mouth.
Nine: Maestro
What pushes Maestro past American Fiction for me is several transcendent scenes in the former. There’s one involving a single-take conversation that foregrounds a gargantuan balloon, another traces rapid-fire scenes from musicals, and of course, there’s the moving scene in which Bradley Cooper’s Bernstein conducts an orchestra. Like American Fiction, Maestro is two stories in one, and though these probably flow together better than those do, there’s an absent cohesiveness that doesn’t quite get there for me.
Eight: Poor Things
An aggressively weird film that can’t help but be in conversation with Barbie, Poor Things is also about a creation from a sheltered place entering the human world and learning its warring ways. When I left the theater, I felt convinced Poor Things did everything Barbie did but better, but I’ve changed my tune there; anyone can watch Barbie, while Poor Things dares viewers to feel offended. Still, Emma Stone does some batshit stuff on screen, and her willingness to go for it elevates this film that doesn’t always work into something memorable.
Seven: Barbie
I’ve watched Barbie three times, and each subsequent viewing has delivered more affection than the last. The construction here is incredible, the attention to detail mind-boggling, the production design still tickles me, and Gosling’s Ken plays for laughs and gets them. The Movies with Mikey video about Barbie helped me appreciate the interwoven stories even more, and I admire the film’s accessibility in the face of its ambitious messaging, but there’s still a part of me turned off by the on-the-nose-ness of multiple vital moments and a few story choices that never resolve thematically.
Six: The Zone of Interest
I admire and appreciate the craft and message of this film far more than I enjoy it, with a sound design that turned my stomach in the precise way it promised to. Glazer’s film is about what is always just off-screen and obscured in the background, but its powerful, urgent message about the so-called “banality of evil” is ever-present. This is all impeccably executed, but I couldn’t help but find it all a tad one-note: it makes a powerful point in its 105-minute runtime, but it’s the same singular point repeatedly. That’s fine—the movie works—but that put a ceiling on my viewing experience.
Five: Killers of the Flower Moon
No one movie better represents the genre of five-star films that I never want to watch again than Scorsese’s epic about the Osage tribe and the white world methodically wrecking and robbing from it. What I love most about Killers of the Flower Moon is how the film recounts historical tragedy but distills that through an inexplicable relationship. These two have a connection that shouldn’t work, but their affection believably pops off the screen. Lily Gladstone needs only one look to rivet me, Leonardo DiCaprio plays his bumbling baddie to perfection, and De Niro portrays ruthless apathy in a terrifyingly real way. Still, this is a brutal watch that eclipses 200 minutes. I felt that runtime’s weight.
Four: Anatomy of a Fall
Immaculately constructed with sterile precision, this courtroom drama follows the case of a novelist (Sandra Hüller) whose husband falls to his death at home…or was he pushed? I entered the film aware that it would never solve its central whodunnit, and that knowledge let me appreciate everything the film is about rather than bemoan all it avoids. I’d describe Anatomy of a Fall as meticulous and clinical, and I choose those adjectives as compliments; there’s a grounded realism here that hooks me not on what the film does but how it does so. Despite being an exacting look at a court case, tiny details and emotional beats still intrigue me, and the canine performance in the film is as good as everyone says.
Three: The Holdovers
A genuinely funny holiday comedy, The Holdovers doesn’t shy away from real emotion while delivering laughs. There’s a sadness at the center of this film, with all three characters grieving something they’ve lost, and although you know they will come together and emerge better for it, their emotional growth rewards all the same. Paul Giamatti is excellent as the ornery teacher Paul Hunham, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph will take home a deserved statue for her warm but somber resolve, but newcomer Dominic Sessa shouldn’t be overlooked. His Angus is clever and fierce but also vulnerable and wounded in literary ways, but the character always carries humanity. The script conspires with our expectations to telegraph the characters’ trajectories, but damn does The Holdovers land its ending perfectly and earn all of the emotion it inspires.
Two: Oppenheimer
Given a choice, I’d rather watch The Holdovers again than Oppenheimer, which is far longer and much headier…but that’s because I’m at home. No theatrical experience in 2023 matched the spectacle of watching Nolan’s masterpiece in IMAX on opening night with my friends, and I’m not just talking about the tremendous bomb scene. There’s so much here, so much to think about, and so many celebrated performers flying in and out of scenes, but there’s also this artfully constructed engine driving the entire thing to a brilliant final moment that adds biting context to everything before it. Oppenheimer is a great movie and one of my favorite in-theater viewings ever.
One: Past Lives
I’m not going to write anything substantial here. That isn’t because I have nothing to say; I don’t want to cram my thoughts and feelings about Past Lives into a few brief sentences. Sunday’s newsletter will be wholly devoted to this film, addressing why I love it and why it speaks to me in a way that I still haven’t actively let go of.
Thank you for indulging me. Watching and reflecting on these movies counts among my favorite things.
A very substantial list, Michael. And I appreciated your thoughts on the oscars themselves.