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

A Tale of Two Andersons

Wes Anderson reminds me more and more of Paul McCartney, an undeniable talent who finds it difficult to resist a brand of insular whimsy. And with The French Dispatch, he drowns in his own little sandbox. Easily his worst film, The French Dispatch is a curious love letter to The New Yorker, a bastion of insularity all its own that Anderson professes to adore. But he approaches his homage as a child would a playground crush, through endless teasing because you're too underdeveloped to articulate your feelings.

I'm averse to synopses on this blog because the reader can get them elsewhere. But to recount the insufferable story of The French Dispatch here would be truly criminal. It's taxing enough to observe that the titular journal is the French bureau of the Kansas Evening Sun in the postcard ville of, wait for it, Ennui-sur-Blasé. Ya know, cuz French. The film then proceeds in this groan-worthy manner to recount the creation of three storied articles. The first, about a murderer who paints nifty abstracts in prison, echoes the philistine position that a monkey or a child or, hey, even I can produce modern art and the community of dealers and academics conferring value upon it are the lowest of shysters. The second is somehow even worse, an absolute disaster proving Anderson admires the look more than the radical politics of Godard films like La Chinoise as he transforms the student revolts of May 1968 into a game of chess over the rights to access the girls' dormitory. By the third and most successful tale (ugh must I synopsize?), the torrent of proper nouns and exhausting inventiveness comes off like Family Guy's Stewie badgering Lois in the classic "mom mum mommy" scene.

Anderson might have pulled off all this tweeness he had not avoided the emotional implications of each story. But, in what one must assume is a fit of growth stuntedness, he constantly retreats into whimsy when things gets too messy as in the third story when he details a complicated meal in the midst of a potentially harrowing child kidnapping. The "No Crying" sign that hangs in the French Dispatch offices thus applies to the film itself. Too much of an open heart gets in the way of the perpetual irony or satire or whatever the hell Anderson is up to here.

I salute any film that respects the written word. Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the pater familias of the French Dispatch (Bill Murray), nurtures his writers and is even willing to cut ads in order to give them the space they need. Brought to life by Anderson's familiar stock players, it should have displayed all the markings of an ars longa, vita brevis collectivity. Instead, it reeks of privilege and an unwillingness to engage with the world. Anderson needs to pull his thumb out of his mouth (or nose) and film someone else's screenplay for once. 

Where The French Dispatch is implosive and self-absorbed, Licorice Pizza is porous and inexhaustible. Easily Paul Thomas Anderson's best film, Licorice Pizza combines the fever-dream experimentalism of Inherent Vice with the crowd pleasing antics of Boogie Nights. Anderson never once gives you the assurance that his take on San Fernando Valley in 1973 is any kind of final word. Quite to the contrary, the clipped conflicts, episodic structure, and intoxicating sound/image dislocations, the latter especially energizing in a scene at a teen expo with Herman Munster in attendance, suggest a honeycomb for further exploration. And explore we might given how much of the film concerns the rotten glamour of the Hollywood TV and movie industry. Subsequent, obsessive viewings will bring forth exegeses that I, for one, shall welcome on the personalities Anderson parades before us: Lucille Ball, William Holden, Mark Robson, Jon Peters (a hilarious cameo from Bradley Cooper that just might be his best performance to date), as well as names new to me such as child talent agent Mary Grady and Jerry Frick, owner of the Mikado hotel and restaurant. 

And within this maelstrom stands Alana Kane (Alana Haim, from the superb sister act Haim), a directionless twentysomething trying to self-actualize in a field of toxic masculinity. Alana's affection for 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), whose confidence and independence are both alarming and attractive, makes sense given the creepshows she has to deal with including mayoral candidate Joel Wachs (Safdie bro Benny), a closeted gay man who uses Alana as a beard during a dinner date with his frustrated boyfriend Matthew (Joseph Cross). Based on child actor/producer Gary Goetzman, Valentine is a horny teen whose sexual politics are hardly pristine. But the pragmatism he displays in his crazy business ventures into water beds and arcades renders him a perfect partner to Alana in self-actualization. That it never comes for either character gives Licorice Pizza that illusion of unfolding into eternity that is the hallmark of so many great art films. Consistently surprising, endlessly watchable, with a riotous moving truck sequence lifted from the Mike Judge animated series King of the Hill (or is that the 1954 Lucille Ball vehicle The Long, Long Trailer), Licorice Pizza awaits your obsession. 

The French Dispatch: C (and slipping)

Licorice Pizza: A (and rising!)