Oscar best picture round up 2023
Oscar best picture round up 2023
Which film will win?
It’s finally time for the Oscars! Today will usher in another round of glittering cinematic successes and leave another round of broken hearts lying on the Academy Awards floor.
Will Everything Everywhere All at Once complete its much deserved sweep of awards season? Will Michelle Yeoh become the first Asian woman to win Best Actress? Will Mandy Walker become the first woman to win Best Cinematography?
It’s bound to be an exciting ceremony. Here are the ten films nominated for Best Picture and what I thought of them.
All Quiet on the Western Front dir. Edward Berger
I didn’t think that All Quiet on the Western Front offered enough of a new perspective on the ‘war movie’ genre to earn its BAFTA awards haul. My favourite part was its harrowing opening sequence showing the still forest and rural landscape which served as the backdrop to the war. While there are other moments in the film also marked by this bewitching stillness, I wish that the film had lent its ‘all quiet’ nature even more. Paired with the impressive score by Volker Bertelmann, it could have been a real visual marvel.
The biggest flaw of this film was that it didn’t tell me anything about its characters. I couldn’t tell you their dreams, fears or flaws. The horrors of the war would have hit home much harder if I had an emotional connection to the characters.
Avatar: The Way of Water dir. James Cameron
Many of the films on this list are too long but Avatar: The Way of Water is most guilty of this with its undeserved 192 minute run time. It dragged in several places, the story was stretched thin and it felt extremely tonally confused.
By far, the best part of this film is the introduction to the new Metkayina clan of the Na’vi who live on the water. This new ‘water world’ is visually stunning, exciting and fresh. There are several underwater sequences which excel from both a technical and narrative point of view.
However, the story just doesn’t do justice to the success of the original movie. Even though the story in the first movie was simple, it was effective. It established clear stakes and goals for its characters and wrapped things up nicely at the end.
While the premise of the sequel is sound enough given how the first film ended, it loses itself following too many vague messages and somehow doesn’t manage to achieve depth in any of its characters despite the bloated runtime. There isn’t any real need to bring back a weaker version of the villain from the first film and Neytiri’s role was reduced to being almost ornamental.
The Banshees of Inisherin dir. Martin McDonagh
I love Ireland so even just watching this film was a real marvel for my eyes. With Martin McDonagh’s direction and Ben Davis’ cinematography, this movie is a gorgeous depiction of a lonely Irish isle at the end of the civil war.
Banshees has a great premise as it follows what is essentially a friendship breakup between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s characters and delivered on exactly what I expected from McDonagh: a deeply black comedy and tragic story with moments which occasionally got too gruesome for my personal taste.
The pleasant surprise about this movie was the stellar performances from its supporting cast. Barry Keoghan is fantastic as the irritating but troubled Dominic and Kerry Condon was so great as Siobhán that I wished the whole movie had been about her.
Elvis dir. Baz Luhrmann
I think I finally get the hype about Baz Luhrmann now! I didn’t think Elvis would be the movie to get me over the line, but I stand corrected. Luhrmann’s almost psychedelic visual style shines in this film and gives it such a bold flavour that many of the other movies were lacking. I’m actually quite sad that he didn’t get a nomination for Best Director.
Unfortunately, Elvis is let down by the choice to frame his story through the eyes of his abusive manager, Colonel Parker. While Colonel Parker should undeniably be a part of Elvis’ story as the villain, and he is a superb part of the movie in that regard, his narration of Elvis’ story feels unnecessary and confusing. Coupled with the fact that Tom Hanks feels greatly miscast in the role, it’s a major misstep for an otherwise compelling film.
Everything Everywhere All at Once dir. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan
The biggest mistake I made this Oscar season was watching Everything Everywhere All at Once first because every movie after it was a let down.
My favourite thing about this movie is that I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s so visually bold and daring, the kind of story that you feel couldn’t have been told any other way except for in a film. The Daniels’ directional style feels like the definition of committing to the bit and I love a movie that is confident in its aims.
It stars Michelle Yeoh at her absolute best, Ke Huy Quan on fire in his comeback and Broadway fave Stephanie Hsu in her big debut. Picking a favourite performance from this film is impossible.
While I didn’t think this movie was perfect as it took me a little while to really get a grasp on the new world that was being presented in front of me, it is by far the best of this year’s contenders. And once I did find my place in the Michelle Yeoh multiverse, I was sucked right in for good.
The Fabelmans dir. Stephen Spielberg
It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that I enjoyed the film about the silly little kid who just wants to make movies, as someone who used to be a silly little kid who just wanted to make movies. And yet it was! Maybe because the Oscars are often full of vain Hollywood movies and it feels lazy for a suffering artist to make a movie about a suffering artist.
But it feels wrong to call The Fabelmans a movie about Hollywood or even a movie about making movies. The Fabelmans succeeds because, at its heart, it is really just a movie about a family and what the world looks like from their point of view. The fact that protagonist Sammy wants to become a filmmaker feels almost secondary to the emotional journey taken by all the characters.
The Fabelmans does fall apart in the third act and eventually simply dissolves into the end credits sequence. I guess it doesn’t really have an ending because the ending is that Sammy grows up to become Stephen Spielberg.
TÁR dir. Todd Field
The biggest disappointment on this list, I found TÁR incredibly underwhelming. I left the cinema not even feeling confident of what the film was supposed to be about. It was far from Cate Blanchett’s best performance. I wish we’d seen more of what supposedly made Tár a genius. The beige and grey colour palette made the film visually dull.
I do applaud the movie for bringing in an actual orchestra for the musical scenes and for allowing Sophie Kauer to play the cello so wonderfully.
I also find it amusing that a movie about a female composer can be nominated for an Oscar, but not an actual real life female composer as evidenced by this year’s all-male nominees.
Triangle of Sadness dir. Ruben Östlund
Okay, I have to address the elephant in the room: I didn’t watch Triangle of Sadness. This is because the film contains an 18-minute long sequence which graphically depicts the characters vomiting and I have an exceptionally queasy stomach.
I went back and forth on whether to watch Triangle of Sadness several times. On one hand, my quest to watch all the films nominated for Best Picture is about challenging myself to watch films that I wouldn’t normally seek out in order to broaden my horizons. On the other hand, watching the trailer in the cinema before other movies and seeing photos of the vomit scene in reviews made me feel so queasy, I was pretty certain that viewing the whole 18 minutes would make me physically ill.
I want to broaden my film horizons but ultimately I decided that I’m okay with drawing the line at making myself ill.
Top Gun: Maverick dir. Joseph Kosinski
Top Gun: Maverick has no right to be as good as it is. Yet through a combination of stunning practical effects, an excellent new character in the form of Miles Teller and a story with an actual emotional heart, it blew me away. Was this only because I had low expectations after watching the first Top Gun movie? Who can say for sure.
The biggest plot twist about both Top Gun movies was that I expected them to be about highly masculinised bravado when they are actually about grief. For me, Top Gun: Maverick succeeds not because of Tom Cruise, not because of the impressive flying and not even because of the swoon-worthy scene on the beach but because it unpacks the universal truth that we would each die for a person we love.
Women Talking dir. Sarah Polley
I love a movie which asks a big question and the big question of Women Talking is this: when something starts to go seriously wrong, do you try to fix it? Or do you burn it to the ground and walk away?
While the men of their colony are away posting bail for the rapists among them, the women hold a vote followed by secret meetings to try and decide what they will do: stay and do nothing, stay and fight or leave.
Women Talking is exactly what the title suggests: it is a group of eleven women sitting together in a hayloft talking. Honestly, it almost baffles me how Sarah Polley made this so compelling. But I felt like I was there, trying to make this monumental decision, grasping for a small sense of agency in a vastly unfair world.
I find it unfathomable that Rooney Mara, Claire Foy nor Jessie Buckley garnered an acting nomination for this film. Their performances are brilliant and devastating and I can’t imagine why they were left off the nomination list.
Ranking
It always feels impossible to rank such different films, but this is my gut feeling of how I would order them from best to worst:
Everything Everywhere All at Once dir. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan
Top Gun: Maverick dir. Joseph Kosinski
Women Talking dir. Sarah Polley
Elvis dir. Baz Luhrmann
The Fabelmans dir. Stephen Spielberg
All Quiet on the Western Front dir. Edward Berger
Avatar: The Way of Water dir. James Cameron
The Banshees of Inisherin dir. Martin McDonagh
Tár dir. Todd Field
Usually there are a handful of movies that I would be happy to see win, but this year I think Everything Everywhere All at Once is actually that far ahead of the rest of the pack.
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony will air on Channel 7 from 11am on 13 March 2023.