Ranking 98th Oscars Best Picture Nominees

Here is how I rank the Best Pictures nominees of the 98th Oscars in reverse order:

F1 (Joseph Kosinski) - Graded leniently [sic] because this took Avatar: Fire and Ash's place as the one popcorn movie amongst the nominees, thus freeing me from having to sit through that 197-minute beast or even having to think about it until this very moment (whoa! $1.484 billion at the box office - who knew?). F1 is Top Gun on the race track and every blockbuster beat locks in with such dreary clockwork that it feels like you're watching an architecture diagram for 155 hellassdamn minutes. Its sole ambiguity is whether or not Brad Pitt's abs are AI. C-minus

Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) - Poor Things suggested Lanthimos was ready to join the human race. But I skipped Kinds of Kindness because I had to wash my hair. So I can't claim that his remake of Save the Green Planet! (Jang Joon-hwan, 2003) continues a regression. But it reveals him up to his old nihilistic tricks again. Purely as a thriller, this is aces; my heart was racing throughout. But I could see the twist at the end coming the moment the conspiracy was explained and I'm not bragging. What attracted Lanthimos to Save the Green Planet! was the opportunity to suggest that, hey, some incel conspiracy theorists may actually be right! And boy, aren't I a moron for toiling away at an overdue article that's kept me from blogging while chasing after reputable scholarly sources and actually writing an essay with my real intelligence. I'm such a silly billy. In fact, we're all such silly billies because all humanity gets theirs in the end which one must assume included other incels as well. As usually, where this all leaves Lanthimos is known only to the therapist one assumes he feels he doesn't need. C

Hamnet (Chloé Zhao) - I'm not a gambling man. But I think this will take the statue only because it's the most Oscary, putting the mid in middlebrow. A forgettable evening at The Theatre. If it gets some teenager into Shakespeare as Amadeus did for me and Mozart, then I applaud it. B-minus

Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) - A bit too stilted and, well, Oscary for my taste. But a basically honest glimpse into the turmoil filmmakers can inflect on their families. B+

Train Dreams (Clint Bentley) - I'm not sure Denis Johnson's work makes for compelling film adaptations, e.g., Stars at Noon. This Netflix production of his 2011 novella throws in some Malickian nature mysticism but leans a bit too heavily on a "we're all connected" vibe that makes Oscar voters' hearts flutter. B+

The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) - Reviewed here. B+

Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie) - Loved it. But it's a de facto remake of Uncut Gems. And Good Time. Maybe even Daddy Longlegs. It's time to branch out. Then again, Benny did just that with The Smashing Machine and came up with about a B+. Apparently, the over-amped intensity of their films is Josh's spiritual burden to bear. My advice is that their next collaboration should be a musical. A-minus

Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro) - I was stunned by how much I loved this, especially given all the pooh-poohing it received. Like the novel, it starts off rickety. But as soon as The Creature (a superb Jacob Elordi) takes over the narrative, I was enormously moved by his more-human-than-human plight. A-minus

Sinners (Ryan Coogler) - Come see me deliver my talk “The Real and the Electric Sh*t: Sinners (2025), Recordings, and Inscriptions of History” at SCMS in Chicago on March 28th! A-minus

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) - Not quite up to the polyphonic density of Licorice Pizza. But a far more subtle film than naysayers are allowing. As for the charge that Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) lacks narrative agency and has been arranged for the white gaze, I can't help but think of the last line of Rita Dove's poem "Canary": If you can’t be free, be a mystery (also the title of Farah Jasmine Griffin's 2001 book on Billie Holiday). For more, check out Kristen Warner's Threads thread here. A

Three 2021 Oscary films

The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen, 2021)

King Richard (Reinaldo Marcus Green, 2021)

Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021)

It's difficult to determine what Coen thought he was adding to the Shakespeare warhorse by subtracting so much. His Macbeth takes place in severely minimal Los Angeles sound stages...the better to highlight the words (or, more precisely, the screenplay by Coen based on Shakespeare's words)? If that's the case, then why make a film? My ancient Signet Classic edition does the trick quite nicely. And why did he choose Shakespeare at all as his first project without the input of his brother Ethan? Is it some postmodern acknowledgement of the vexed nature of authorship and individualism? 

 To be blunt, I don't have the emotional energy to answer such questions. I've wasted so much time trying to determine whether or not the Coen Brothers were making fun of me for choking up during, oh, Raising Arizona that I skipped many, many of their titles. I won't say which because I cannot bear the thought of someone telling me that I just gotta see Miller's Crossing (oops). I will tell you that I loathed No Country for Old Men (aka Halloween in middlebrow Oscar-baiting drag) with a purple passion. So I'll just deem this outing as Masterpiece Theatre-adjacent with good performances (if you care about such stuff) and a hot Ross in Alex Hassell and move on with my life.

I have less to say about the other two films despite preferring them both. I expected to hate King Richard and have trouble figuring out why I ridiculed Belfast but have affection for this biopic about Richard Williams, the father and recalcitrant coach of tennis icons Serena and Venus Williams. I certainly couldn't care less about tennis (or any sports ever). Maybe it's unconscious (but now conscious?) American chauvinism that endears me to it. But it's essentially an exhibit for Will Smith as the titular patriarch in an intermittently comedic role perfectly tailored to his talents. He's my pick to win the Best Actor Oscar next month. 

I also expected to hate del Toro's remake of Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947), based on William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel which I hear I need to read stat, assuming del Toro's penchant for fantastic imagery would overwhelm a rather unwieldy story. But the dreary third act I was promised never materialized. This is a solid piece of filmmaking in the classical tradition and its 150 minutes rushed by me and my better half. In fact, it may come off as a bit too classical since it's lost buckets of money, occasioning Martin Scorsese to pen a curious entreaty in the Los Angeles Times to stimulate box office. No masterpiece but, yo, neither was the original. 

The Tragedy of Macbeth: B

King Richard: B+

Nightmare Alley: A-minus