Oscar best picture round up 2024
From Jefferson's debut to Scorsese's epic
There’s only one week left to go before the Oscars!
It’s taken a while but I have watched all ten films nominated for this year’s Best Picture award and therefore completed my annual Oscar quest.
I’ve got too many thoughts to squeeze into one article, so this week I’ll be sharing my thoughts about half of the Best Picture line up – American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Then you’ll get Part 2 featuring Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, along with my overall ranking, next week on Oscars morning.
Here are my thoughts on the first five Best Picture nominees.
American Fiction dir. Cord Jefferson
American Fiction has a fantastic premise. It explores some genuinely interesting ideas instead of rehashing the same old dramatic themes. There are some truly laugh out loud moments that are usually incredibly rare during Oscar season. Jeffrey Wright delivers a stellar performance as grumpy professor Monk (rivalled only by Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers).
But, I am so sad to say it, I was really disappointed by American Fiction. I looked forward to watching this movie so much – I was super excited by the unique premise, the laughs (it did deliver on those) and an in-depth look at the literary industry. I kept waiting for this movie to take me to a more interesting place but it never really delivered.
Within quite a solid story structure, it was let down by some truly terrible dialogue. There was nothing visually interesting – the cinematography and art direction felt particularly lacking for a Best Picture nominee. And for a movie which ultimately seemed more interested in critiquing the movie industry than the literary one as it claimed to, it didn’t do anything to advance the art form.
Anatomy of a Fall dir. Justine Triet
Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute) is an intimate portrait of a three-person one-dog family at an incredibly invasive time of their lives. From the moment that Samuel’s body is discovered by his son Daniel and his wife Sandra becomes the prime and only suspect in his death, their entire lives are picked apart by the police and the court system. Don’t be fooled, though: this is not a whodunnit and the tension will not lift.
It’s no wonder that Justine Triet has become only the eighth woman ever to be nominated for Best Director. Anatomy of a Fall is so well-executed that Justine Triet makes filmmaking look easy.
Of course, this is far from the truth. The screenplay, co-written with Arthur Harari, is razor sharp and the cinematography by Simon Beaufils both shows off the beautiful French scenery and heightens the dramatic tension of the story.
Anatomy is blessed with a brilliant main cast, with Sandra Hüller shining as the suspect woman of the hour and Swann Arlaud as her old friend turned legal counsel who doesn’t know if she’s innocent or if he cares.
But I’ll go out on a limb and say that the best performance in this film doesn’t come from the incredible Sandra Hüller and not even Messi as Snoop (winner of the Palm Dog Award at Cannes). Instead, it is Milo Machado-Graner who steals the scene by the film’s end with a heartbreaking performance as Daniel.
It’s brilliant to see that Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s jab about English-speaking audiences getting over subtitles seems to be coming true as Anatomy of a Fall is one of the three Best Picture nominees in a language other than English this year (alongside Past Lives and The Zone of Interest). A decent chunk of Anatomy is in English anyway, as the film uses Sandra’s understanding of language as a clever metaphor for her disconnection.
Barbie dir. Greta Gerwig
How do you make a movie about a plastic doll? The premise of Barbie demonstrates a true creative brilliance from the minds of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.
There’s so much to love about this movie: Margot Robbie’s brilliant performance as Stereotypical Barbie, the lush plastic design of Barbie Land and the killer soundtrack of hit after hit demonstrating exactly how Barbie landed three out of the five nominations slots for Best Song at the Golden Globes.
The story does lose its way a handful of times. For a movie named Barbie, there is an exceptional amount of time devoted to Ken. He gets dangerously close to overshadowing the point of the movie, most notably with the massive dance number ‘I’m Just Ken’.
I’d hope that if studio executives take anything away from the cultural phenomenon of Barbie, it’s how much women want to see stories about women on screen (something the Oscars have traditionally ignored) – but I’m sure they mistakenly think we just love commercials about toys and cars instead.
The Holdovers dir. Alexander Payne
This Christmas movie would’ve been such a splash hit if it hadn’t come out in Australia on January 11.
This year’s Best Picture line up has a few really fresh original ideas on it for once and The Holdovers is one of them. Even though it does feel like it’s following in the footsteps of Dead Poets Society and openly harks back to the 1970s, The Holdovers is a great example of honouring past stories while still creating something wonderful and new.
The titan of awards season so far and surely a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actress, Da’Vine Joy Randolph is brilliant as grieving mother Mary. The Holdovers doesn’t try to tell some magical new story about grief – it just lays it bare, honest and messy as it is.
Newcomer Dominic Sessa is wonderful as charming yet annoying student Angus Tully, somehow making you switch between wanting to punch him and wanting to root for him constantly throughout the film. It’s an incredible debut and he was unlucky not to land a Best Supporting Actor nomination in a crowded year.
Amongst the last few years of Best Picture nominees with ambitious ideas that fail to stick the landing, The Holdovers is also refreshing in having a satisfying ending. It’s not perfectly wrapped up in a bow, but the kind of ending that feels real and allows you to walk out of the cinema feeling content.
Killers of the Flower Moon dir. Martin Scorsese
I’m still letting it sink in over six months later but Killers of the Flower Moon might be the best drama film I’ve ever seen.
In classic Martin Scorsese fashion, Killers of the Flower Moon lays bare the vast extent of plain human evil and white supremacy. The film is a brilliant illustration of how an entire white community was complicit in the the genocide of the Osage people and how racism was ingrained in all the social structures (‘Can you spot the wolves in this picture?’).
A far cry from his charming performances in movies like Titanic and even The Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio plays an absolute weasel of a man as Ernest. Both DiCaprio’s Ernest and Robert De Niro’s King Hale are laid so bare in their pure villany.
As has been obvious to anyone watching this movie, the standout performance comes from Lily Gladstone as Mollie, an Osage woman whose family is at the centre of the new oil money and therefore the murders. Gladstone delivers an absolutely masterful performance in thinly veiled rage, unrelenting grief and eventually sorrowful fury. If there’s anything that comes out of this Oscar season, I hope it’s the cemented status of Gladstone as a superstar.
Truly, the film boasts a wonderful ensemble of actors. Tantoo Cardinal delivers a haunting performance as Lizzie Q, Mollie’s mother, and Cara Jade Myers is phenomenal as Anna May, Mollie’s sister.
Much debated during its release, I left the cinema feeling absolutely furious that the 3.5 hour runtime was incredibly deserved. I wouldn’t cut anything out. In fact, I wanted more: I went home afterwards and read every page of David Grann’s nonfiction book which formed the basis for the movie.
The 96th Academy Awards ceremony will air on Channel 7 on 11 March 2024.