2025 Oscar Viewing Project

Just in time for Oscar next weekend, I have officially seen all of the Oscar Viewing Project contenders for 2025!  For the second year in a row, I've done this before the ceremony, which feels very in-theme for how we operate.  For those that are new, the Oscar Viewing Project has me watching every single narrative, feature-length nominee at the Academy Awards (i.e. no shorts or documentaries, unless they're in the traditionally feature-length, narrative categories), and rating them in a vacuum, picking my choices based on whom Oscar selected based solely on the quality of the 3-5 nominees in front of me.  If you are truly new, this is the 32nd of the 98 Oscar ceremonies we've done this for, and you can see links at the bottom of this list for past contests.  For the first time since 2001, we have a new category that will be added, and it will be covered (Casting), and I will also be adding it to the My Ballots going forward (though not retroactively).  I have a few more screenings left to finish up the 2025 My Ballot (where I pick the nominees), including one specific animated film that's been annoyingly hard to get ahold of, but in the meantime, we will sort through Oscar.  As a reminder, here was where the domestic box office ranked in 2025:

1. Zootopia 2

2. A Minecraft Movie

3. Lilo & Stitch

4. Avatar: Fire and Ash

5. Superman

6. Wicked: For Good

7. Jurassic World: Rebirth

8. Sinners

9. The Fantastic Four: First Steps

10. How to Train Your Dragon

(Note: I will point out this is the current lineup as of the last writing.  Avatar: Fire and Ash, specifically, is still making relatively decent domestic money, though likely not enough to outearn Lilo & Stitch and move onto the medal stand)

Of these 10 films, I've seen eight of them, skipping both of the live-action animated remakes because, as a general rule, I think these are terrible.  I think it's notable, looking at this, how we have at least one truly original movie (Sinners becoming the highest-grossing totally original story since Gravity), and that the MCU truly just fell from grace here, with Thunderbolts not even crossing the $200M mark domestically and Captain America: Brave New World making $700M less than the last Captain America movie did at the box office (and only Fantastic Four making the Top 10).  Looking down the box office list, most of the unseen movies that I haven't caught yet are horror movie sequels, though The Housemaid stands out as maybe the movie I should've caught and might try to sneak in before the My Ballot (I will definitely be seeing How to Train Your Dragon given so many people loved the visual effects).

But now, it's time to go back just a few months to a time we all were getting a crush on Zohran Mamdani, watching Taylor & Travis get engaged, and seeing the first American pope.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Picture

1. One Battle After Another

2. Hamnet

3. The Secret Agent

4. Sinners

5. Sentimental Value

6. Train Dreams

7. F1

8. Bugonia

9. Marty Supreme

10. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: This is a solid list in what was honestly a very good year for movies, maybe the best since 2021 or even 2017.  But there's no competition for Paul Thomas Anderson here-One Battle After Another is a profound, challenging picture with universally good acting and writing.  Hamnet is really special in second place, proving that Chloe Zhao is emerging as one of our most thoughtful and introspective directors, and I have a sincere enjoyment of the craftsmanship of something like The Secret Agent or Sinners, but One Battle is on another level, and as you'll see, is going to be batting really well this write-up.

Director

1. Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)

2. Chloe Zhao (Hamnet)

3. Ryan Coogler (Sinners)

4. Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)

5. Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)

The Lowdown: A second showdown between Anderson & Zhao (both of whom are going to repeat when we get to the 2025 My Ballot), but I won't pretend this is a close race.  I've actually been much kinder to PTA than Oscar has (his films have plenty of My Ballot statues), but I'm glad on some level that Oscar waited for (what I hope) will be a coronation here as this will become the defining work of his career.  Also, I want to say for the record that Josh Safdie's personal troubles are not why he's in last...I just really did not like his movie.

Actor

1. Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)

2. Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)

3. Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent)

4. Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon)

5. Timothee Chalamet (Marty Supreme)

The Lowdown: Best Actor remains the best lineup of the 2025 acting races, and I will own that none of these (not even Timmy in a movie I didn't like) is a bad performance.  In terms of a win, though, Leo's best work in years is really going to take it over Michael B. Jordan adding nuance to two different characters and Wagner Moura's steady, marked performance in The Secret Agent.  Leo's so good here-a man that even in his prime was over-his-head but in love with ideals and a woman who wouldn't stay, having to reengage with life to save the only thing he truly cares about...this is the kind of star power electricity that Leo promised when he was in his Chalamet years.

Actress

1. Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)

2. Emma Stone (Bugonia)

3. Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)

4. Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue)

5. Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You)

The Lowdown: I will largely skate by the elephant in the room (I love Rose Byrne, I love Kate Hudson, but these performances are not ranked incorrectly...do with that what you will), and instead focus on the real competition: Jessie Buckley's spiritual work as a mother trying to connect with a man she loves but can't understand and a boy she knows but cannot grasp, and Emma Stone's terrifying girlboss incarnate, totally grasping on to Bugonia's bizarre (and oftentimes off-kilter) wavelength.  I'm going with Buckley because I think she is able to connect more to the ending than Stone.

Supporting Actor

1. Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)

2. Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another)

3. Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value)

4. Delroy Lindo (Sinners)

5. Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)

The Lowdown: I like #3-5 in other things (truth be told, there is no acting performance of the 20 that I truly disliked even if there are movies that were cited that I disliked, which is rare), but for me it's a competition between the two Oscar-winning acting titans in One Battle After Another.  I'm going with Penn not because he's the bigger performance, but because I think that big performances sometimes get a bad rap in modern acting (del Toro is certainly subtle), but you need them when you're playing a big character like he is, and he totally inhabits a unique type of weak toxicity that's rarely seen represented in the movies (but oftentimes on cable news).

Supporting Actress

1. Amy Madigan (Weapons)

2. Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)

3. Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value)

4. Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners)

5. Inga Ibsdotter Lileaas (Sentimental Value)

The Lowdown: Madigan gives one of the most unhinged supporting performances in recent years, channeling in many ways actors like Kathy Bates in Misery or Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby to give us something truly terrifying (and speaking of Trump, if you think the red-haired clown terrorizing a group of children isn't an allegory for the guy that has plagued the Epstein list, watch again).  Taylor would be a really worthy winner too, and I love the imprint she made on this movie with only time in the first 40 minutes or so, but this is Madigan by the widest margin of the acting races.

Adapted Screenplay

1. One Battle After Another

2. Hamnet

3. Train Dreams

4. Bugonia

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: One Battle is not done with its wins yet, and takes another one for PTA.  One Battle is honestly one of the rare one of Anderson's films that is more of a director's achievement than a writing or acting one, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have the oomph to best Hamnet, which is also a wonderful and deceptively strong screenplay (the way that it folds ideas of Shakespeare into the film, while also feeling vaguely universal).  The rest of this category I'd probably upend, and will when we get to the My Ballot.

Original Screenplay

1. Sinners

2. Sentimental Value

3. Blue Moon

4. It Was Just an Accident

5. Marty Supreme

The Lowdown: I'll be honest, the writing categories are where a relatively decent Best Picture lineup (like I said, 2025 is one of the best years for movies so far this decade) shows some chinks in the armor, as you have films like Marty Supreme & Bugonia where I actively disliked the endings and felt they took down chunks of the movie.  There is a touch of that with Sinners, so I will note that it is just barely beating out Sentimental Value (which nails its ending), but the inventive plotting and the way that it unfolds a closed door horror so well means I'm going to slightly favor the vampires over the Swedish introspection.

Animated Feature Film

1. Elio

2. Little Amelie, or the Character of Rain

3. Zootopia 2

4. Arco

5. KPop Demon Hunters

The Lowdown: In what was otherwise a strong year for cinema, I'll own that animation was terrible.  It's not even a case where we have a bunch of better films sitting around-KPop is good when the music is playing and Zootopia is good if you don't constantly compare it to the original and Arco is good if you pretend the melancholy ending was at all earned by the rest of the picture...but overall this is not an impressive list.  If I have to pick a winner, it'd be Elio, a somewhat forgettable Pixar movie that nonetheless has gorgeous animation, beautiful music, and some really strong emotional plotting, but would stand out more if Pixar hadn't been using the same plot for every non-Toy Story film since Cars 3).

International Feature Film

1. The Secret Agent (Brazil)

2. Sentimental Value (Norway)

3. It Was Just an Accident (France)

4. Sirat (Spain)

5. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia)

The Lowdown: The movies of this category used to, on very rare occasion, get nominations in other fields, but this year we have four of them nominated elsewhere and two nominated for Best Picture.  Even with this category, the Academy is becoming entirely focused on the Best Picture field.  Thankfully that's where this should be, as those are the two best movies of the bunch, with weirdly similar plots (both movies are essentially about how you can never know your parents).  I prefer The Secret Agent, a subtler movie with a more sprawling historical look behind it (and the better central performance), but honestly either one here is a winner.

Score

1. Hamnet

2. One Battle After Another

3. Sinners

4. Bugonia

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: I am a total sucker for Max Richter, whose soft melodies and gorgeous, romantic use of strings and swelling orchestras is a callback to the man I frequently confuse him with (Max Steiner).  Hamnet earned him his first Academy Award nomination, and I struggle to find a reason not to give him this (the OVP is in a vacuum, as a reminder, so I'm not trying to make up for lost time-just noting that Richter has gotten multiple My Ballot nods at this point, and will get another one in 2025 from me when we get there later this month).  One Battle After Another, by another favorite of mine (Jonny Greenwood) is really aces as well, even if it isn't quite as distinctive as we're used to from Greenwood's collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson.

Original Song

1. "I Lied to You," Sinners

2. "Golden," KPop Demon Hunters

3. "Sweet Dreams of Joy," Viva Verdi!

4. "Train Dreams," Train Dreams

5. "Dear Me," Diane Warren: Relentless

The Lowdown: I sometimes struggle with how to grade this category, because I do feel that it should not just be about the quality of the song, but also about how it is incorporated into the movie.  "Golden" is an ear worm that I have not stopped listening to since it came out (there's a reason this became a genuine pop hit), but the "I Lied to You" sequence in Sinners is easily one of the best scenes of the year, and in my opinion deserves this statue even if "Golden" might be a better piece of music outside the realm of the movie.  Of the three also-rans (i.e. the songs you don't know), "Sweet Dreams of Joy" is much better than you'd expect, and sadly "Dear Me" is exactly what you'd expect (we really should've just given Diane Warren that Oscar for Burlesque and none of this would've happened).

Sound

1. F1

2. Sinners

3. One Battle After Another

4. Sirat

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: After watching Sirat, I realized why this was nominated (the sound work is on full-display throughout, and honestly is a supporting actor in how prominent it is), though unlike The Zone of Interest, I wasn't as impressed, and felt it bordered the line between best and most that sometimes tech categories can't distinguish.  I was far more impressed with F1 and Sinners, the former a sea of zooming cars & "you're practically there" race scenes, the latter a wonderfully constructed semi-musical.  I'm going to go with F1, a movie I think did both mixing & effects well (I'm old-school), but either would make a good winner.

Casting

1. Hamnet

2. Sinners

3. One Battle After Another

4. The Secret Agent

5. Marty Supreme

The Lowdown: The first year of this category, I also kind of need to set my own parameters of how I'm going to grade this, as (like editing) you don't entirely know what was left in the cutting process.  For me, I think it comes down to how well the cast works together, how ingenious/inventive the casting process is (particularly if an actor isn't an obvious choice), and whether there are any clear standout good/bad casting decisions that elevate/demote it.  For me, I have Hamnet over the next two-I don't think there's a bad choice in the casts here, which is saying something as there usually is, but Hamnet had the stunt casting of two actual brothers to underline one character and the character he inspired, and that on top of Mescal & Buckley being perfect for their parts puts it in the lead.

Cinematography

1. Train Dreams

2. One Battle After Another

3. Sinners

4. Marty Supreme

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: Sinners has, for my money, some of the best cinematography of the year.  The Golden Hour shots are honestly breathtaking, but the night scenes suffer (by my personal tastes), with them trying to patch over some of the gaps in the visual effects (I liked the makeup, but the visual effects were more hit-or-miss for me), by making the screen too dark to see properly make it hard to judge overall as a success.  As a result, I am all in on the beautiful Train Dreams, a gorgeous Lubezki-esque take on the passage of time with a camera.  In a year where, in general, Cinematography was lacking (this is somehow going to be the weakest of my My Ballot lists in a few weeks), this is the one film that really embraced looking like a movie you'll remember forever.

Costume Design

1. Sinners

2. Hamnet

3. Marty Supreme

4. Avatar: Fire & Ash

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: It's possible I totally upend this entire list (looking like the only category I'll do that with), but for me it's all about the outfits specifically worn by Michael B. Jordan & Michael B. Jordan in the film.  Part of Sinners ability to inspire is that you kind of need to be horny for the dual MBJ's (this is a very sexy movie, with an early sex scene and Jack O'Connell clearly meant to be both figuratively and literally carnal), and the gorgeous teal-and-red combo that Ruth E. Carter brings here is better than the peasant period fare in Hamnet or the out-of-this-world third spin on Avatar (the craziest nomination of 2025).  I will note that the Mia Goth peacock outfit in this photo is so good it makes me forget that I was largely uninspired by the rest of Frankenstein.

Film Editing

1. One Battle After Another

2. Sinners

3. F1

4. Sentimental Value

5. Marty Supreme

The Lowdown: I mean, sometimes this category gets something a bit out-of-the-box (F1 was probably further along here than in the Best Picture race), but there are days I think "Oscar didn't try to think beyond his five favorite movies in the editing branch...should I even bother?"  I will note that One Battle After Another's win here comes from the way it unfolds tension-the bank robbery scenes, the harrowing conversation late in the film between Sean Penn & Chase Infiniti...it's something to behold.  Sinners might have had a better shot if it had had more consistent cinematography lighting, as well as had the good sense to cut that post-credits ending which feels nonsensical and totally unnecessary (but the building tension there is something else).

Makeup & Hairstyling

1. Kokuho

2. Sinners

3. Frankenstein

4. The Smashing Machine

5. The Ugly Stepsister

The Lowdown: Oscar has historically struggled with horror in his category even though it is very much the bread-and-butter of the genre, so it's weird to see a lineup where the majority of the nominees come from that world.  I am not so apathetic (I nominate horror more regularly for the My Ballot), and while I was impressed with the violent deformity of Sinners and the albino care of Frankenstein, my heart belongs to the remarkable beauty and elegant aging of Kokuho, giving us a first-hand at the look of kabuki theater.

Production Design

1. Sinners

2. Marty Supreme

3. One Battle After Another

4. Hamnet

5. Frankenstein

The Lowdown: We're going to give Sinners its final trophy here (genuinely curious how this compares to its count with Oscar-it ended up taking three statues from me), with the sets in this feeling so authentically barren.  There's so much personality and touches in the dancehalls and railway stations in Coogler's work, and yet they feel appropriately isolated-there's nowhere to run.  I'll note that most of this lineup is good, and this is Marty Supreme's worthiest nomination (I love the on-a-budget redesign of New York City that never feels like it's on a budget at all), but Sinners feels like it lives in the set the most, and adds the most to the story.

Visual Effects

1. Avatar: Fire & Ash

2. F1

3. Jurassic World Rebirth

4. Sinners

5. The Lost Bus

The Lowdown: Putting Avatar in a lineup of Visual Effects always feels like you're playing on cheat mode.  The latest round doesn't have the "how the hell did they do that?" impact that its predecessors had, but in an era where visual effects are increasingly sloppy, overdone, and clearly glossed over by darkened cinematography (looking at you, The Lost Bus), it has beauty and looks fantastic, and even against something as impressive as the technical virtuosity of F1, it's unbeatable.

Past Oscar Viewing Projects: 1931-32, 1948, 1957, 1972, 1981, 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, 2024

OVP: Original Screenplay (1999)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Alan Ball, American Beauty

Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich

Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia

M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense

Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy

My Thoughts: All right, we are in the home stretch now as we enter the Big 8, and we generally start this with Original Screenplay.  Part of the reason we do that is, historically, you're more likely to find Best Picture nominees in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (so it feels more like we're climbing the mountain), but we are hardly Best Picture shy here, with two contenders (and the eventual winner) in the quintet.  This is also a category, I'll be honest, I'm not totally sold on whom I'm picking as my winner, so I'm going to kind of decide as I write this whether or not I'll give one of two films my statue.

Let's start with our last nomination for Topsy-Turvy in the discussion.  The film dominated the tech categories, and that was enough to get Mike Leigh another citation to his collection of nominations-without-wins (seriously, give the man an Honorary Oscar).  The script here, unlike the technical aspects, is just okay.  I think that it tells an interesting story, but because it's so linear, we don't get a lot of the fun meandering into the human experience that we receive in the best of Leigh's scripts like Secrets & Lies and Another Year.  I wanted more introspection, and this doesn't quite have that in the same degree as I would've hoped.  Still enjoyable, but not a Mike Leigh masterwork.

Being John Malkovich brought Charlie Kaufman his first of five nominations (to date) from the Academy, and it is an ingenious script.  I like Kaufman's movies better when he's being directed by someone else, and Spike Jonze is there to provide some restraint, which helps this script.  I think that some of my personal problems with the film are around not the script, which is really clever in its look at sexual politics, celebrity, and consumerism, and more around John Cusack being a bad casting choice in the lead.  Really good stuff here, some of Kaufman's best.

Magnolia, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson scripts.  This is a controversial take (I know some who set their clock by this movie), but I did not like this film.  That is partially on me, I'll take it-the black-as-coal look at humanity is something that I can sometimes take, and sometimes it feels a bit too Joker-esque.  I'll own that it's been a while since I've seen this, and maybe as an older man I could handle what's happening...but my notes on this eviscerate the movie's meandering plot, one with too many loose ends, and nothing about my memory makes me want to relive this (though Cruise & Moore are excellent).  If you're a huge fan (I've never been so different in my take of a movie compared to my Letterboxd followers, including my brother Luke whom I rarely disagree with by more than a star-and-a-half on a film), let's blame younger John on not liking this one (even though I honestly don't think older John is going to love it either).

And then we get to the two Best Picture nominees.  American Beauty is, in my opinion, a textbook definition of a great film script.  All of the storylines work-there's no point where I'm wanting to go in for another character, wanting to just spend time, with, say Annette Bening over the rest of the cast.  The movie's shrewd look behind-the-curtain of suburbia was so influential that it became the norm in film and television in the following decades.  I love everything about this...except the ending.  I do not think the ending of this film works (it's way too sentimental), and while a movie should be more than one aspect, if we're splitting hairs, that's gotta count for something.

The Sixth Sense, of course, famously aces its ending.  If we're comparing the two, The Sixth Sense's biggest issue would be around some of the dealings with Bruce Willis's character, where the limitations of the twist ending mean that we don't explore some of his more complicated dealings with his wife and his career.  But this film is littered with really great lines ("I see dead people" became a classic for a reason) and those end monologues, particularly between Toni Collette & Haley Joel Osment, are fantastic and human, adding a real sense of feeling to a horror movie (harder to do than you'd think without it coming across as cheesy).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and in a rare situation, all five of them would eventually get an Oscar nomination (usually at least one gets skipped by the Academy).  Three are adapted, including the winner American Beauty and Being John Malkovich & The Sixth Sense took nominations.  The BAFTA's have them divvied up like Oscar does, and their adapted field included Being John Malkovich as the winner against All About My Mother, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, and Topsy-Turvy while the WGA went with the same winner and nominees as Oscar, except they dumped Topsy-Turvy in favor of Three Kings.  If we're being real, I don't think any of these were in sixth place.  Pedro would win this category three years later, but Talk to Her was a bigger deal than All About My Mother was at the time, and while Three Kings was a serious film in 1999 (I rewatched it as a catch-up for a reason), it might have been too controversial to get in with Oscar.  I'd theorize that Sweet & Lowdown, with two acting nominations and it being Woody Allen, was probably just out-of-reach in this lineup (I'm just going to mention that The Matrix is not something Oscar was cool enough to nominate for writing in 1999).

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to be totally real here-Original Screenplay is maybe the weakest I've seen it in the years we've profiled for 1999...in the last two weeks of my My Ballot I'm on the hunt specifically for better options here.  But I do think that if they were ever going to nominate the taste-specific films of Kevin Smith for an Academy Award, Dogma's take on religion (which has aged really well) would've been the way to go.

Oscar’s Choice: Alan Ball's win here was inevitable.  The era where winning Best Picture came with matching directing & writing statues was coming to an end (3 of the previous 4 years had failed in that department), but American Beauty is the kind of movie that gets a writing statue, especially with its competition being as unusual as Being John Malkovich and The Sixth Sense.

My Choice: I said at the top that I couldn't decide who should win, and the contenders for the statue (for me) are American Beauty and The Sixth Sense.  I think that American Beauty has better plot structure, but fails its ending, while The Sixth Sense doesn't have as insightful of takes, but sticks the landing better.  I think a script needs to be a complete package, though, and so I'm going to change my mind on what I initially had at #1 and instead give it to The Sixth Sense, just barely over Alan Ball's work (both will be high on my My Ballot list).  Behind them (in order) are Being John Malkovich, Topsy-Turvy, and then Magnolia.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you getting scared with M. Night Shyamalan & I, or do you want to sell real estate over with American Beauty?  Am I the only person who really did not get the appeal of Magnolia?  And with a host of options, are you thinking All About My Mother, Sweet & Lowdown, The Matrix, or Three Kings as the sixth place finisher?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: Picture (2021)

 OVP: Best Picture (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik, & Tamar Thomas, Belfast

Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, & Patrick Wachsberger, CODA

Adam McKay & Kevin Messick, Don't Look Up

Teruhisa Yamamoto, Drive My Car

Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, & Cale Boyter, Dune

Tim White, Trevor White, & Will Smith, King Richard

Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, & Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, & Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, & Roger Frappier, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg & Kristie Macosko Krieger, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are officially finishing off 2021, the year that brought back the "ten-wide" rule (thank the lord...it should be ten or five, not this floating number each year), and the year where movies returned to theaters.  We'll get to the My Oscar Ballot tomorrow (where I pick my nominees), but for today, we've talked about all of the films for weeks (links to all past contests below)-let's crown a winner!

Dune is a movie that plays as a half of a film.  This isn't the first time this has happened (Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future II come to mind), but even in a world where sequels are inevitable, I don't know that I love that it's not a complete vision, as it's hard to gage without seeing the second half.  That's really the only complaint I have about an otherwise magical film.  The effects, cinematography, and writing are all top drawer, playing with visual space onscreen by showing grandeur against a limitless nothingness on the planet of Arrakis, and featuring solid turns from Rebecca Ferguson & Charlotte Rampling.

Speaking of movies that feel incomplete, we have King Richard.  This has a solid lead performance from Will Smith, but it's too glossy for me.  This happens when you have portrayals of real-life figures, especially when those real-life figures still have a lot of power to shape their narrative (the Williams sisters are not signing off on a movie that makes their dad look bad).  As a result, you get an unrealistic look at a man who the film insists is always right, and late in the film tries to give you some of the complications of his parenting without actually articulating them.  The tennis scenes are well-edited & timed, but the film itself can't claim the same.

Licorice Pizza was marred in some critical debates by conversations about its content...largely from young critics who don't really understand that movies aren't supposed to be literal reflections of life.  The film itself is meant to be a suspension-of-reality, and it pays off.  We get Anderson's most cinematic movie yet, a dreamy look at the coming-of-age narrative, with terrific performances from Cooper Hoffman (very much doing his dad proud) and a star-is-born turn by rocker Alana Haim.  Throw in fun cameos by Bradley Cooper & Harriet Sansom Harris, and you've got yet another "W" in the PTA column.

The Power of the Dog is a slow-burn enigmatic tale that never stops surprising the audience.  That lack of expectation & the way that we don't know what's next is really a testament to Campion's ability, decades into her career, to come up with one of her best movies to date (have to clarify with "one of" when you made The Piano).  Benedict Cumberbatch's weird accent work and unusual delivery is somehow the perfect fit for his Phil, an enthralling, dangerous man who knows the best way to make all of the people in his life (ably played by Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, & Jesse Plemons) on edge, and feeling like they have no way out.

Drive My Car got most of its press from its length and the shocking moment 40 minutes into the movie where they decided to start the credits, showing the audience they're in for the long haul.  But that's not a problem for the movie, whose in-depth story of grief & loss doesn't play as a dirge, but instead something you want to continue watching.  The movie overdoes it with the connections to Uncle Vanya and some of the side characters (specifically the owners of the theater company) feel a bit stilted, but overall it's a strong movie, and features a great lead performance from Hidetoshi Nishijima.

West Side Story is one of those remakes I insisted I didn't need...until I saw it and realized "this one gets a pass."  Of course Spielberg has possibly the greatest musical score of the 20th Century to play with, but he reinvents characters (Mike Faist comes out as a STAR in this), gives us unique takes on the film's original text (it isn't afraid to point out the racial politics at play that were underdone in the 1961 film), and during many of the musical numbers, you're reminded why he's one of the great filmmakers of all time (that scene at the dance!).  There are quibbles (the choreography is too repetitive, the cinematography feels a bit too heightened in some scenes), but overall this is Spielberg's best work in decades.

The films of Adam McKay have gotten increasingly off-track, and utterly ridiculous (giving a man an Oscar does not make him Quentin Tarantino).  That's more-than-true with Don't Look Up.  Listen, nothing in this film isn't true-the absurdity of the media, the inability of the political establishment to do anything about major issues without needing to be pushed to the brink...this is literally what is happening with climate change.  It's appropriately terrifying.  But it's broad as a barn, and with a call sheet that boasts five Oscar winners (not to mention Timothee Chalamet & Melanie Lynskey!), he does nothing with this godsend of a cast, making Mark Rylance & Meryl Streep give maybe the worst performances of their careers.  A sloppy, gross mess...that admittedly makes some decent points.

CODA is the sort of movie that if you take it out of the context of the Oscars, would age very well.  The movie is strong if formulaic, with a decent roster cast (best of the bunch is Daniel Durant as a sexy, sullen older brother caught in his sister's shadow), and it does what it is attempting to do well.  Simple is not always easy, and it plays at warmth & heart without feeling saccharine or like you're watching a third act speech on a 1990's sitcom.  Giving it the Oscar made it an easy target for potshots, but if we're being honest-it's a good movie, and better than a lot of its competition.

The same can be said for Belfast, a wonderful spin on the Cinema Paradiso trope that gains a lot of its strength through the casting department, as the entire team is working well here, particularly Jamie Dornan in the film that gets him out of his Grey doldrums and proves what a fine actor is underneath his chiseled-from-marble exterior.  In a different life, this would've been a feel good, word-of-mouth hit thanks to the way that it plays on the importance of family set amidst the tragedy of violence, and while it doesn't stick the ending...after a joyous ride it's hard to care that much.

The final nomination is for Nightmare Alley, arguably the big shocker of this slate, and like West Side Story, a remake I didn't really want but was happy to receive once it came on my doorstop.  Like WSS, the movie does things the original couldn't, particularly sticking to the original book ending (which I won't spoil here, but it's better than what we get in 1947), and playing with the nastiness of the darkest film noir of the Golden Age.  Bradley Cooper has never been better, and the ways the gothic cinematography play with space are super inventive.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy (and in 2021, they separated their awards from an audience given the HFPA boycotts), so you have The Power of the Dog taking Drama over Belfast, CODA, Dune, and King Richard, while Musical/Comedy went in the predictable direction of West Side Story against Cyrano, Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza, and Tick Tick Boom.  PGA goes ten-wide, and picked CODA atop Oscar's lineup save for Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley which were replaced with Tick Tick Boom and Being the Ricardos.  And BAFTA is still five-wide so while they went with Power of the Dog as well, it was only over Belfast, Don't Look Up, Dune, & Licorice Pizza.  Eleventh place has to be Tick Tick Boom, given its precursor run, lead actor citation, & (most crucially) a nomination for editing with AMPAS.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: In a victory that I predicted but still shocked, CODA took it over the more critically-acclaimed Power of the Dog (I also wonder if in future years we'll think about this as the year Dune lost in the way we think of Star Wars losing in 1977, depending on that franchise's legs).

My Choice: In a pretty solid field, Power of the Dog stands on top as the champion.  Jane's look at the western is too strong to ignore, and I'm not going to make the same mistake as Oscar.  Following it will be (in order) Dune, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, CODA, Nightmare Alley, Belfast, Drive My Car, King Richard, and Don't Look Up.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you joining me in Jane's uncomfortable western or do you want the heartwarming tale that Sian brought with CODA?  What film was most vulnerable to an attack from Tick Tick Boom?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2021?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2021: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Picture Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Director (2021)

OVP: Best Director (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are on the penultimate contest of the 2021 race, and, in a testament to the films of 2021, I'm still not tired of these movies yet.  Usually when I write these, I get kind of exhausted.  Especially in the past 15 years (which has been the bulk of our focus for the OVP), the Academy is so repetitive with their nominees (the same 8-10 movies in every category) that it's hard not to get bored.  But in 2021, they picked such a worthy vintage, as is evidenced by this fine crew of filmmakers, that I can't really get mad even if we've been to all of these places before.

The movie we have discussed the least of the bunch is Drive My Car, which is only on its third of four nominations (I anticipate we'll hit Best Picture & My Ballot in the next 48 hours to close out this season).  I have discussed this before, but I think that the film's steady hand and some of its risks with length really work.  It takes its time, especially with our two leads' journey, and while it short-changes the side characters, that feels more a fault of the writer than the director.  Hamaguchi's work here is measured and disciplined, and worth the payoff.

Jane Campion is one of those filmmakers that you breathe a sigh of relief when they win a directing Oscar, as you know she'd join Hitchcock, Kubrick, & Altman on the list of "embarrassing misses" for AMPAS.  That she won for such a wonderfully-controlled western is icing on the cake.  Power of the Dog is very much a product of its director.  She has to incorporate the vast wilderness (admittedly, not the American frontier it's implied to be, and it shows) of this world that swallows many of its characters without making the audience get too distracted.  It helps that she remains disciplined & focused on the four primary characters, her camera rarely moving off of them.  It's a triptych told as a quartet, and the direction is appropriately calculated.

Kenneth Branagh's Belfast is also quite controlled, and briefer than you'd expect for a biopic about a filmmaker who is not known for his brevity.  That choice to bounce & quickly give us snippets of his young life rather than drawn out treatises is so wise-the best asset Branagh has as a director is his cast, wonderfully brimming with chemistry.  I do feel like this film, more than any other cited by Oscar, is borrowing from previous films (you can't help but think the phrase "Cinema Paradiso" on repeat throughout this movie), and the way the film occasionally crosses into the present time feels unnecessary.  But I don't mind that too much, nor am I really torn up that the movie isn't darker (not all coming-of-age films need to be insanely depressing, even when they're about tough historical eras).

Steven Spielberg at once had the most difficult task of the five directors here, bringing to life the greatest musical score of the 20th Century (easy) while living in the shadow of one of the most beloved Best Picture winners of all-time (hard).  He almost completely succeeds, doing so by adding in just a little bit extra around side characters the first movie short-shifted (namely Riff & Valentina), and giving us inspired restaging of a number of the musical numbers.  Not all of them work ("America," in particular, feels like it's not up to the original, and the Jets choreography in the beginning is too repetitive), but when it dazzles (like the scene at the dance), you almost forget the Wise & Robbins outing.

Paul Thomas Anderson is (kind of) the only one of these five without an Oscar (it's so stupid they don't give the International Feature Film Oscar to a person instead of a country).  You know he'll get one eventually, though, and hopefully it'll be for a movie as good as Licorice Pizza, his most autobiographical film to date.  The decisions of the film are so smart-giving us a dreamy world largely in the perspective of Cooper Hoffman's charming leading man, the sort of story that plays not as reality but instead as a memory you think back upon as an adult.  The staging of some of the scenes (especially those with Bradley Cooper) are done for maximum comic effect-a really well-designed movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Campion, here atop Branagh, Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve (Dune), & Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter...HFPA loves their celebrities!), while DGA picked a near carbon copy (including winner) of Oscar's lineup except they subbed out Hamaguchi in favor of Villeneuve.  BAFTA was doing its own thing in 2021, and that didn't stop with directing, with Campion winning against Anderson, Hamaguchi, Audrey Diwan (Happening), Julia Ducournau (Titane), & Aleem Khan (After Love).  In terms of sixth place, it was clearly Denis Villeneuve...this category was basically invented for big-scale epics like Dune, and it's wild he didn't get a nomination for it given Oscar has liked him in the past (and no, future Oscar historians, it wasn't CODA-all that buzz happened later).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: Yeah, I don't get the Villeneuve snub either-he'll make my ballot when I do it this weekend.
Oscar's Choice: You can always wonder whether Sian Heder might've taken this if she'd been cited, but without her, this was the one trophy that Power of the Dog took, and likely won in a landslide.

My Choice: Campion-she's on a different level, and makes the fewest mistakes.  There are no duds here, though, and I'd follow her with a solid Spielberg, Anderson, Hamaguchi, & Branagh.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Are we all kind of on the same page that this was the right time to give an Oscar to Jane Campion?  Do we think the moment has passed for Spielberg to get a third directing trophy, or could it still happen?  And would Sian Heder have been a real threat here had she snuck in through the Hamaguchi slot?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2021: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Director Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020