Yesterday we tackled the 2024 Oscar Viewing Project, where I share all of the rankings I have for every feature-length, narrative category at the Oscars. Today, though, it's my turn. If you've been on the blog a while, you know that I do what I refer to as "My Ballot," the choices that I would've made if I had picked the Oscars in 2024. As you'll see, 2024 was a year that I really got outside of Oscar's wheelhouse. You can find all of the past My Ballots linked at the bottom of this page, but for only the second time in 27 years we've profiled (the other being 1931) none of the Best Actress contenders from the Oscars are cited this year for the My Ballot. So you're going to see a lot of new names below. A gentle reminder that I can't see every movie, and so if there's a title you're not seeing below that Oscar also ignored, double check with me before calling me out in the comments for not recognizing its genius, as that might be a future viewing for me! With that, enjoy the choices Oscar should have made. 😉
The Brutalist
Challengers
Dune: Part Two
I Saw the TV Glow
My Old Ass
Nickel Boys
A Real Pain
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
We Live in Time
The Wild Robot
Gold: Sex, despite what Gen Z may think, is largely an endangered species at the movies right now, and even more so is forbidden romance. And yet the center of Luca Guadagnino's masterpiece Challengers is just that-a sexy, romantic thriller of a love triangle, buoyed by some of today's hottest movie stars.
Silver: Sequels, especially in the middle of a trilogy, are oftentimes hard to judge, but while other movies this year feel incomplete without their companion (cough Wicked), you cannot say that for Dune: Part Two, which abandons some of the more avant garde aspects of the original but in the process gives us stronger acting & still sublime visuals.
Bronze: Finishing out our top medalists is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a movie smuggled out of its country because of its apt, shocking look at how an abusive marriage can serve (all too convincingly) as a metaphor for an abusive marriage.
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Luca Guadagnino, Challengers
Mohammad Rasoulof, The Seed of the Sacred Fig
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys
Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two
Gold: Luca Guadagnino, seven years ago, gave us one of the quintessential screen romances, a fleeting escapade in the Italian countryside that would become one of my favorite movies (some days, it might honestly be my favorite movie). Challengers, though, doesn't have that kind of romance-instead it has a competitiveness, about how even in love there are winners and losers...and people aren't fighting fair.
Silver: Denis Villeneuve's great trick in Dune: Part Two is that he doesn't give us the easy answers. While the sequel is more literal than the first movie, he still crafts a vision of a man, one who looks like a hero, but it's hard not to wonder if there's a villainy underneath.
Bronze: While I cannot condone where we go in the second half of Brady Corbet's The Brutalist (I think it gets sloppy), the first half is 100% the best movie of 2024, and that is due in large part to the scale and ambition of its director, intent on making a classic even from the opening shot.
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothee Chalamet, Dune: Part Two
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time
Josh O'Connor, Challengers
Gold: Josh O'Connor's Patrick isn't the hardest role in Challengers (our female lead gets that distinction), but it is the role that's most crucial to you buying into it. He needs to be sexy, talented (but how talented...always a question), and enthralling in the way that only a guy with a giant red flag on his visage can be. O'Connor, our most consistent new star, once again dominates here.
Silver: Twenty years after his shocking, gut-wrenching work in The Pianist (for which he won our Gold Medal), Adrien Brody proves that film to be no fluke. The Brutalist is a look at the immigrant experience, the way that capitalism steals so much humanity from those that it steps on in the way of profit...it's a wonder there's anything left.
Bronze: In some ways, Kieran Culkin has been here before. The intonations here are not much different than his greatest performance as Roman Roy. But while Roman was a sarcastic, cruel man, his Benji is the opposite, carrying too much emotion and feeling too fully. As we move through the film, we understand his limitations, and through Culkin's searing final scenes, we realize he does too.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
Julianne Moore, The Room Next Door
Florence Pugh, We Live in Time
Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door
Zendaya, Challengers
Gold: The performance of the year (my choice for the best performance in any category) goes to movie star par excellence Zendaya. Her work in Challengers is so natural, and so layered. She's a character that puts her motives & motivations out in front of everyone, and yet is impossible to read (particularly when it comes to the two men in her world, and whether she really wants either of them). One of the great portraits of ambition (and why we constantly try to pass it off as something else in women).
Silver: Marianne Jean-Baptiste takes the prickliness of anger, and the way that we are expected to feel so much, all the time, as both a metaphor and a literal interpretation-we all know someone like Pansy, struggling to understand why the world can't make sense.
Bronze: Tilda Swinton is our last isolated woman in this category, but while Zendaya & Marianne don't reach out, her Martha is desperate for company, clinging to a world that she both is ready to let go of...and not wanting to leave. A really moving, frequently heartbreaking look at how death comes too soon for us all.
Jonathan Bailey, Wicked
Yura Borisov, Anora
Mike Faist, Challengers
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Drew Starkey, Queer
Gold: I mean, I can't leave the last leg of the triangle without plating it gold as well. We are going with Mike Faist for the fifth consecutive Challengers trophy (spoiler alert: it will take nine gold medals in total so we're only at the halfway point). His Art is the loosest of the three, focused on wanting to win in all aspects of life, but clearly having a preference of where he wants to go...even if no one will let him get there.
Silver: Jonathan Bailey, like Mike Faist, has spent the past couple of years ascending into the cinematic pantheon (our first true, openly gay male movie star), and given the opportunity, he decides to steal Wicked wholesale with his flirtatious, dancing Fiyero.
Bronze: Yura Borisov's Oscar nomination wasn't inevitable...it might not even have been on the page. But he brings so much heart, comic timing, & (let's be honest) sex appeal to the role that he's the performance you carry away as you leave the movie theater with the film's complicated final act.
Joan Chen, Didi
Rebecca Ferguson, Dune: Part Two
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Aubrey Plaza, My Old Ass
Tilda Swinton, Problemista
Gold: I always feel the need to point out at least once in these articles that these are given in a vacuum (i.e. I only base it on the merits of the nominees' quality, not anything more). Does a pop star who is giving her first major performance really need to win an Oscar, particularly given she's doing so in only half a film? No, no she doesn't. But that doesn't mean that Ariana Grande, using her mile-high range, ace comic skills, and weirdly good impersonation intonation (the borrowing from Kristin Chenoweth is well-chosen) isn't the best in this field.
Silver: Growing a lot of the mystery that she built in the initial film, Rebecca Ferguson takes Dune up a notch with this performance. Think of the physicality of her work, particularly in the water drinking sequence, and the way she is constantly playing on multiple plains. A consistently brilliant character actress gets her moment.
Bronze: Finishing this off, we have another bronze medal for the world class performer that is Tilda Swinton. Problemista is a movie that was forgotten by many, but for those that saw it, it's hard not to think of Tilda's work as one of the year's highlights, so selfish & vibrant & specific of a certain type of (oblivious) privileged white lady.
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Nickel Boys
Queer
The Wild Robot
Gold: I have read chunks of Frank Herbert's novel, and that what sprung forward from Dune is not a clunky, overwrought book (ooph I was not a fan), but instead a spry, generational bit of storytelling is due to the wizards behind the keyboard, not just the special effects crafting the visuals.
Silver: I have not, however, read Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-Prize winning book Nickel Boys, but I can tell when a story is being told properly, and when it has difficult source material to mine into cinema. The way that it approaches this, through a unique perspective...it is jaw-dropping that this wasn't an original plan for the movies.
Bronze: The nostalgia for a good old-fashioned 1990's-style thriller was clearly there for a picture like Conclave, but that shouldn't be the only reason that you favor a picture like this with praise. A ticking clock mystery on top of a fascinating multi-character study, it's like watching high stakes chess until the final moments (even if you guess where it's going it's a thrill).
Challengers
Hard Truths
I Saw the TV Glow
A Real Pain
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Gold: Sex is hard to write, and sex is as crucial to get right in Challengers as the tennis is. We see shifting alliances, all characters who keep their true natures close to the vest (without ever needing someone to say "this is confusing")...that's a testament to a script that knows what it's doing.
Silver: The best asset in The Seed of the Sacred Fig is the slowly unfolding screenplay. Told in a gigantic way, we get a sense of not just the metaphor but the claustrophobia of the picture, as these three women understand their world, and how much of it is predicated on the illusion of freedom, rather than the reality of it.
Bronze: Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain captures something we don't often see in the movies-a look at what keeps us in friendships that are long past their expiration date. I love the way that he weaves in metaphors about loss & grief into a story about how aging causes both (and not always through death).
Flow
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot
Gold: A tight race, but I have to go with the movie that tugged on my heartstrings so much it also made it into the Best Picture field. The Wild Robot gives us such grace and humanity, with fabulous vocal performances from Lupita Nyong'o, Kit Connor, & Pedro Pascal, and it's honestly about something-the way that we form unlikely bonds that shape what we believe we can do in this world.
Silver: Do you remember playing the game Myst as a kid? The almost insanely immersive experience of that computer game, like nothing I'd ever witnessed before, was what it was like taking in Flow in a crowded (god bless people going to the movies) theater. Lovely animation, but more so really just smart realism of what would happen in a world where humanity is abandoned.
Bronze: If I was giving away a prize for Best Villain this year, it would not be to Jeff Goldblum's Wizard or Austin Butler's balding Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen...it would be to the most dastardly Feathers McGraw, the scene-stealing genius behind yet another lovely outing with Wallace & Gromit.
Blitz
The Brutalist
Challengers
Dune: Part Two
I Saw the TV Glow
Gold: Blending in a song and music score so flawlessly you almost assume the characters can hear it as well, Challengers creates a pulsating experience in the way it approaches the audible tone of the picture, using building sounds to capture the growing tension between the three main characters.
Silver: Slipping through Hans Zimmer's score and the sands of Arrakis, Dune: Part Two is deliberate in the way that it uses tone in each scene, giving us the elevation of Paul alongside a growing urgency in the sound room.
Bronze: I Saw the TV Glow is a movie that doesn't feel like it warrants tech nominations. In some ways, it's kind of intended to give us a 90's afternoon fantasy show pastiche. But the sound work shows why that's so intentional-the way that the song score & dropped noises inform the plot...this is the rare movie where I cited the sound work in my Letterboxd review (for a reason).
Blitz
Dune: Part Two
Flow
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
The Wild Robot
Gold: Oscar frequently confuses "more" with "best," but there are cases where the film with the most obvious sound effects also is the one that deserves the statue, and that's the case with our second go on Arrakis. Dune's new crowd work & the growing importance of the sand worms underline how much what we hear is informing our experience in the picture.
Silver: Animated films can have some of the best work here (since nothing happening in an animated film is organic), and in picking between the two animated films cited here, I favored The Wild Robot, which has to incorporate not just nature & animals, but also the robotic gadgetry (that humanizes our inhuman title character).
Bronze: We'll finish up with the roving bandits & big, gigantic explosions of Furiosa, a film that builds upon the Mad Max world but doesn't abandon what made it so spectacular-the desert heat against these gigantic, maddening oil-rigged crashes.
(A quick note from John: I am aware that Oscar has combined the Sound categories for years now, but I view these as distinct art forms, and unlike when Oscar had them together, I am capable of not simply nominating the same 5 films, as is evidenced by only two overlapping pictures between Mixing & Editing. For the curious who want a direct comparison, if I combined to one sound category I'd have gone with The Brutalist, Challengers (Silver), Dune: Part Two (Gold), I Saw the TV Glow (Bronze), & The Wild Robot as my nominees.)
The Brutalist
Challengers
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
The Wild Robot
Gold: Daniel Blumberg finds a way to make The Brutalist's score a reflection of the buildings that Laszlo erects throughout the picture. We get an elegant, sometimes conventional score that molds & shapes into modernist, industrial sounds. Like Challengers (more in a second), you couldn't mistake this score anywhere else.
Silver: One of those nominations Oscar is going to forever regret not giving out, no film score quite encapsulates the picture it is conducting quite like Challengers. Using what sounds like house music, it captures the frenetic energy of both tennis and sex, unrelenting right up until the final shot.
Bronze: I am not bound by Oscar's rules (and given that they nominated the almost exclusively pre-written music of Wicked, neither are they), and so I will include Dune amidst my nominees. Like much of the movie, Hans Zimmer takes a bigger, larger, and more involved approach in giving us a build-up in the film's more traditional (than the first) narrative.
"Claw Machine," I Saw the TV Glow
"Compress/Repress," Challengers
"I Always Wanted a Brother," Mufasa: The Lion King
"Kiss the Sky," The Wild Robot
"The Rider," The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Gold: Listen, the movie itself is not that bad until you remember it's directed by Barry Jenkins, but it is kind of funny how, once you get out of the "this isn't the original" canopy of Mufasa, the songs are generally super fun. This year is admittedly a weak year for Best Original Song (apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda for tarnishing his third gold medal from me), but the best of the bunch is his bouncy, infectious "I Always Wanted a Brother."
Silver: Close behind it would be "Claw Machine" in the haunting I Saw the TV Glow. This one works much better in the movie (Miranda's works anywhere which is why I ultimately picked it), and it was a close call between the two. Proof that I can separate the category from the film, because lord knows I liked the silver medal film more...both really important & signature to their picture.
Bronze: While nothing else about The War of the Rohirrim lives up to the Peter Jackson sextet before it, the song at the end comes close. A haunting, moving power ballad in the vein of Enya and Billy Boyd before it, "The Rider" tells the tale almost better than the movie itself.
Blitz
The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
The Room Next Door
Gold: I am not immune from that Oscar instinct of wanting to give a film a statue based on what its plot is, but it still has to be worthy. That's the case with the cavernous sophistication of The Brutalist, which takes a fictional architect and has to find a way to make him a genius (on a relatively tight budget). That the film succeeds is predicated on the ingenuity of the production design team.
Silver: Speaking of making cavernous inventive, we have Dune: Part Two, expanding the world of Arrakis. I keep thinking of the cubed ceilings of the Fremen strongholds, or the gigantic picture windows of the Emperor's palace, the way that it feels carved for this world specifically.
Bronze: The Room Next Door takes a bizarre approach for a movie, as it tries to understand the death of a person who never made family work (even though, in this case, the person has a child to fit heteronormative expectations). Instead, the production designers put at every corner of the picture books, movies, clothes, & music, of light and color, the personalities and enrichments that make life worth living (and worth missing).
Blitz
The Brutalist
Challengers
Dune: Part Two
Nickel Boys
Gold: The production team wasn't making The Brutalist mesmerizing on its own. We also have the luminous camerawork, giving us unconventional angles and approaches that capture the unique perspectives of Laszlo's design. One of the rare aspects of The Brutalist that continues to hold up just as well in the second half of the movie.
Silver: Dune: Part Two is not a similar movie to The Brutalist in terms of plot, but as I reflect on them both so often today (both are double-digit nominees in this write-up), I understand a lot of their power comes from their top notch tech teams approaching their work in the same way. Here we once again need to build to something, with bigger and wider shots until we can see the whole world bow before Paul.
Bronze: It takes a lot of guts to try and copy the storytelling and camerawork of Terrence Malick. It takes brilliance, though, to actually succeed, and that's what happens in Nickel Boys, giving us a first-person look into the world of two young boys, all of it feeding into the similarities and differences that will spring forth & shape their lives.
The Brutalist
Challengers
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Wicked
Gold: Uncle! There are a lot of things that I wish were better in the gigantic hit Wicked, but the Costumes...this is where I give in and just say "you get your kudos." The green-and-pink motif could threaten to take over the film, but it doesn't, particularly in the way that Ariana Grande's Ozdust Ballroom has some touches of white. Throw in everything Madame Morrible wears (that lavender dress!) and you understand the magic of this movie.
Silver: I am not one to turn down men's fashion when it comes to this category, and we get gorgeous black armor on Austin Butler to go with the hooded cape of Lea Seydoux and Florence Pugh's golden headdress in Dune. Costumes inform the characters, and here they give us not just rank, but also which possess style.
Bronze: Oscar is generally oblivious to what contemporary costume design can bring to a movie, but thankfully I am not, certainly not when faced with all of the wonderful touches of Challengers. The "I Told Ya" tee-shirt went viral, but it's everything (the sleeveless sexiness of Patrick's ensembles, the All-American boyish preppiness of Mike Faist's tennis polos and backward red hat, the transforming sophistication of Zendaya, deprived of her platform)...the movie gives great costume in every direction.
The Brutalist
Challengers
Dune: Part Two
Nickel Boys
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Gold: One of my best friends in college used to complain that there were no good tennis movies because you couldn't make tennis look realistic onscreen. Challengers is the first (for me) to do so, because it captures the hushed-voice elegance of the game...and has the smarts to counter it with a pacing that seems like every scene is placing one more lob over the net.
Silver: Sorry, another situation where we're following Challengers with Dune (they were my two favorite movies this year for a reason), but the work here, building up to gigantic scenes (ones that are given their time to breathe) doesn't feel (like so many other movies of this nature) like padding a thin novel, but instead are rich with back story, giving us a proper epic.
Bronze: Speaking of proper epics, The Brutalist takes unconventional, and frequently risky moves with its editing (that upside-down Statue of Liberty could look silly if the movie that follows doesn't work), but it pays off (especially in the first half) with a glorious look at the shattered American Dream.
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Gladiator II
Saturday Night
The Substance
Gold: Sequels are hard to gage in terms of tech categories, because some of what we've seen in Dune we can't really judge as it's already happened (Stellan Skarsgard, for example). But we still have lots to work with, including the lettered face of Rebecca Ferguson, the balding sexiness of Austin Butler, and the subtle desert sand effects on the entire cast. Details matter.
Silver: The showiest of the nominees here nearly won for me, and I suspect will have won for Oscar (I wrote this on February 18th, so I have no idea who is taking home the gold). Horror movies so rarely win this prize, and The Substance is a gonzo example of why Oscar should be going to this genre for more of its nominees: iconic, haunting, and pushing forward so much of the plot, the makeup here is essential.
Bronze: I am not as much of a sucker for realism in my movies as Oscar is, but when it works, it works, and with Saturday Night, it very much works. The transformation of these actors into the iconic looks of Chevy Chase, John Belushi, & Dan Ackroyd on the biggest night of SNL's history feels both plucked from a 1970's sketch show and with enough modernist flare (Dylan O'Brien's never looked sexier) to not feel like it's just a cosplay.
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
A Quiet Place: Day One
Twisters
Gold: Consistently one of my favorite categories, Visual Effects feels like a bit of a cheat in 2024, because, well, how are you going to beat Dune? The sand worms, the giant vistas, the epic fights...even the crowd work in this movie is just on another level. In an era where so many epics feel like they're in the shadow of past greats, Dune is forging a future that actually looks more fantastic.
Silver: We are now on our fourth nomination and third series medal since the reboot of Planet of the Apes (it has yet to miss since we saw this new iteration brought back in 2011), and in the Year of the Monkey (Better Man, Godzilla x Kong, Wicked, & Gladiator II also had their own primates to deal with), this is the one that felt beautiful, realistic, and like they had confidence in their CGI (Better Man fans who protest...please explain to me why the cinematography always got dark whenever Monkey Robbie shared the screen with an actual human & I might be more forgiving).
Bronze: Finishing this out is Furiosa, the one film of these five (which I really like-the category takes a steep drop after these five, but this quintet is very worthy of Oscar) to have a significant amount of practical effects, using George Miller's brand of fire & beauty in the beating desert sun.
Other My Oscar Ballots: 1931,
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2010,
2011,
2012,
2013,
2014,
2015,
2016,
2017,
2018,
2019,
2020,
2021,
2022,
2023
