OVP: Best Picture (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Malte Grunert, All Quiet on the Western Front
James Cameron & Jon Landau, Avatar: The Way of Water
Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, & Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick, & Schuyler Weiss, Elvis
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, & Jonathan Wang, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, & Tony Kushner, The Fabelmans
Todd Field, Alexandra Milchan, & Scott Lambert, Tar
Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, & Jerry Bruckheimer, Top Gun: Maverick
Erik Hemmendorff & Philippe Bober, Triangle of Sadness
Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, & Frances McDormand, Women Talking
My Thoughts: We are at the end of yet another season of the Oscar Viewing Project! This is the quickest turnaround we've ever done from the initial ceremony to the OVP ballot (the Oscars were just a few months ago), so I'm excited we were able to do this within a calendar year. I'm going to make you wait a little more than week for our next season; we'll kick it off in August, but as a hint we'll be doing one of the two remaining years left this century (for links to past contests, click the bottom of this page). We'll also be doing one of my favorite series to write on the blog-whom I would've picked if I had picked all of the nominees tomorrow. But for now, grab the popcorn & get ready for one last ride with Oscar's ten best pictures. Hopefully the ride goes better than our first film...
Triangle of Sadness is another commentary from Ruben Ostlund about the ways that capitalism & power destroy our combined humanity, and how no one is really exempt from it. Combining Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away with recent Best Picture winner Parasite, the movie is a fascinating look at a lot of ideas that definitely needs a better editor. The second third of the movie lasts too long, with Ostlund less trying to aid his tale and more attempting to gross out his audience, but much of the rest of the movie is worth sticking around if you can stomach it, specifically grand performances from Dolly de Leon and Harris Dickinson. The ending needed to chop the last thirty seconds off of it, though.
Top Gun: Maverick is the antithesis in pretty much every way of Triangle of Sadness, here finding ways to glorify the industrial complex & capitalism. The movie itself works in key aspects. Some of the supporting cast (Glen Powell & Jennifer Connelly, specifically) play well, and this is a last great lap of one of the quintessential action heroes, Tom Cruise. Plus, in a world dominated by CGI, it's thrilling to see actual sets, actual stunts, and not just a wall of computer-generated banality. But the movie's script lands like a lead balloon, is filled with cliche & the dialogue is cheesy as hell (plus, Jon Hamm continues his weird trend of not knowing how to act in movies after giving one of TV's most iconic characterizations).
Women Talking is that rare film where you say "a film feels like a play" but you mean it is a compliment. Everything about this is about finding direction through conversation, with us learning more about the complicated world these women live in, but also about the freedom they feel outside of the gaze of men. I loved the way that your initial assumptions of how these women will progress alters, in the way that new ideas change your mind, and I've never felt claustrophobia used as a framing device (rather than something to overcome) so well. Sarah Polley's movie is fresh, alive, & full of uncomfortable truths.
All Quiet on the Western Front joins the very short list of movies where both the original and the remake got cited for Best Picture (I believe this is just All Quiet and West Side Story...not a great look for Hollywood originality that both are in the past two years). The story in this movie is too hard to break entirely-it's one of the most damning anti-war tales ever told-but this one feels paint-by-numbers, and includes a needless addition of Daniel Bruhl reminding us of the ticking clock that we already understand is hanging over these soldiers' heads. With a remake, I need more than just "it's more realistic" to justify its existence, and this movie never provides that.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is bizarre because my initial review of it on Letterboxd (follow me) is way shorter than I normally would've gone with a Best Picture nominee, which is kind of an indication of how I feel about it (and how out-of-nowhere it felt at the time for the Best Picture race). I liked it, I didn't love it. I think that the central performances are all good, but the final third is too convoluted, frequently borrowing from things we've already seen and rarely in a way that feels like it's adding more texture to the story. It's a miracle that an original movie with no established IP or real-life figure managed to take over the pop culture/box office in such a way, so I give it credit for that...but it's not as original as it needs to be, nor as well as well-edited as it has to be, if we're going to throw around phrases like "masterpiece."
If you want to give out that title for a wholly original movie, you gotta look at a movie like Tar. The movie is an epic, staggering character study of human nature, and the reasons why we keep things secret. Cate Blanchett gives the performance of a lifetime (and it's Cate Blanchett we're talking about here, so the lifetime was already on a pedestal) as Lydia Tar, owning every scene of her movie and giving us a domineering, complicated, over-her-head woman that defies expectations. One of those movies you only truly understand once you've seen every second of it.
I'm always a sucker for an "ode to cinema" and the past couple of years have given us high-profile takes from major directors. 2022's best was The Fabelmans, which gives Steven Spielberg the vulnerability to share not just where he came from, but where some of his best movies came from. Within The Fabelmans, we get a sense of the prickliness that we see in so many of his movies (for all of the "happy ending" criticism that Spielberg gets, so often the children in his films are from "broken" or divorced homes, just like Sammy here). Solid performances from Williams, LaBelle, & Dano help to underline the central dynamic of a father-and-mother's love being so crucial to a young man finding himself.
I have been so sick of musical biopics (by far the most tired & overdone genre in movies today) that I kind of forgot that they could have some thrills. Leave it to Baz Luhrmann to get me there with Elvis. This movie doesn't always work in its approach-the length (oddly enough) is fine, but it glosses over side characters too much (particularly Presley's wife Priscilla), to the point where it makes the editing feel choppy. And I don't entirely get what Tom Hanks was doing here, even if there are times it kind of works (bad acting can have its place in a movie, though that is what this is). But casting Austin Butler as this unknowable sex god is so appropriate and so inline with Elvis, you might believe at some points that that electric magnetism has been brought back from the dead.
An even more successful spin on a tried-and-true genre (the buddy comedy) is The Banshees of Inisherin. The best parts of Martin McDonagh's films are when he gives us sharp edges on his characters, which we get as the film goes-the central four characters are all imperfect, and sometimes that imperfection has consequences they can't take back. Buoyed by the best acting ensemble of 2022, the writing & acting are so heightened and extraordinary it's hard not to feel you're in the presence of some great, untold tale. I loved it.
With Hollywood telling more and more stories that we've already heard, an increase in sequels in this category is inevitable. If that's the case, please make them all as good as Avatar: The Way of Water. I had honestly forgotten a blockbuster movie could look this good, with James Cameron genuinely caring about light & design in his film rather than piecing together action set pieces with no care in-between. The story itself is strong, particularly the way that he folds it into a thrilling action sequence over the film's last 40 minutes (you will not look at your watch once in this very long movie), but it's the glorious visual effects that make this something truly special.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy so we have ten films to discuss, but in a different style than Oscar's ten. Best Musical/Comedy went to The Banshees of Inisherin against Babylon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Glass Onion, and Triangle of Sadness while The Fabelmans bested Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Tar, and Top Gun: Maverick in Best Drama. The PGA Awards gave their statue to Everything Everywhere All at Once beating most of the Oscar lineup with Women Talking, All Quiet on the Western Front, & Triangle of Sadness replaced by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion, & The Whale. BAFTA only does five nominees, and picked All Quiet on the Western Front against Banshees, EEAAO, Elvis, & Tar. In eleventh place...I think it was probably The Whale given it won two major awards and got the PGA nod. I maintain that had Glass Onion (a populist hit if you've ever seen one) gotten a real run in theaters and not just a "quick, get it onto Netflix" it would've gotten a nomination here the second it hit $100 million at the box office. Streaming, I cannot stress this enough, is ruining the entertainment industry.
Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!
Oscar’s Choice: An easy call for EEAAO-BAFTA & the HFPA were doing their own things (which I love) but by Oscar night, it was evident that EEAAO was taking this over All Quiet and The Fabelmans.
My Choice: Comparing films is insane, and that's very much proven by my top two films, Avatar: The Way of Water and The Banshees of Inisherin, two superb movies that have nothing in common. I started this article ranking Banshees first because the acting & story is a bit better, and I'll stay there, but this is one of those decisions I'll waffle about forever. Behind them (in order) I'd go: The Fabelmans, Tar, Women Talking, Triangle of Sadness, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, and All Quiet on the Western Front.
And there you have it-another OVP in the books. Are you staying with Oscar's bandwagon love of EEAAO or do you want to hang with Jenny the Donkey & I over with Banshees? Do you think The Whale, Glass Onion, or something else was just out of this contest? And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2022? Share your comments below!
Also in 2022: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature, Sound, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2022
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