Thoughts on the 2026 Oscar Nominations

 

    This year's movies were characterized by surprise. A big part of it is that, other than Frankenstein, I knew almost nothing about the movies before they were nominated. It was really nice going into them without preconceived notions.

• Sinners packed in a lot of surprises - who would have thought a vampire movie could pack in so much symbolism and layers of meaning? And such great music?
• Who would have thought a race car movie (F1) could be not just worthy of a best picture nomination, but also break my top five?
• Who would have thought that del Toro, who has had a lifelong fascination with the subject, could make such a disappointing Frankenstein movie? It's way better than Kenneth Branagh's version, but still.
• Sean Penn, in an acting tour de force, pulled off his character in One Battle. He made me believe that weirdo could be real. I wouldn't have thought that possible.
• Hamnet did not shy away from showing the death of a child.  That is rare.
• Bugonia had several surprises, most of which I won't discuss to avoid spoilers. But it did not shy away (or cut away) from showing a suicide. That is also rare.
• I would not have thought a filmmaker would go too far in depicting a thoroughly unlikeable cast of characters. But nearly everyone in Marty Supreme was odious.  The main character was so unlikeable that I quit halfway through.
• I never expected to see a severed leg hopping around, kicking people in a park, but The Secret Agent had that.  

    So, here's how Chris's and my ranking of the movies falls out:

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
4. Hamnet (The Bard's wife; Cathy: 2, Chris: 5)
5. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 7, Chris: 4)
6. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 4, Chris: 6)
7. The Secret Agent (Strange, sweaty movie about life in fascist Brazil; Cathy: 6, Chris: 8)
8. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 9, Chris: 7)
9. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 8, Chris: 9)
10. Marty Supreme (Odious ping-pong hustler no one respects; Cathy:10, Chris:10)

    This year, Chris and I only agreed on Sinners, Train Dreams, and Marty Supreme.  Where we disagreed, we were at least two apart.

     I also try to draw conclusions about interesting cross-movie themes:

• Four movies take place in modern times (Bugonia, F1, One Battle, Sentimental Value)
• Six movies are historical period pieces  (Frankenstein - early 1800s, Hamnet - late 1500s, Marty Supreme - 1952, Secret Agent - 1977, Sinners - 1932, Train Dreams - 1917-1968).
• Three movies contain a language other than English.  Frankenstein was mostly in English (a few brief scenes in Danish or French), Sentimental Value was mostly in Norwegian (maybe 1/3 in English, with a little French), and The Secret Agent was almost entirely in Portuguese (one brief scene in English).
• One actress (Kerry Condon) had supporting roles in two of the nominated movies (F1, and Train Dreams).
• Two movies dealt with child death (Hamnet, Train Dreams).
• There were two horror movies (Frankenstein, Sinners).
• There were two science fiction movies (Bugonia, Frankenstein).
• This year's movies averaged some rather low scores for relatable situations (2.85) and identifiable protagonists (2.8). Average is 3.

    I'm hesitant to offer predictions or opinions for other categories because I haven't seen all of the performances, but here are my opinions in spite of my ignorance. I underlined the one that I thought should win.  Bold indicates the winner.

    Note: There should be five nominees per category. If I don't mention a nominee (or indicate a winner), it's because I haven't seen the performance. If I didn't mention a category, it's because I have no opinion.  

• Best Actor:  Timothée Chalamet/Marty Supreme, Leonardo DiCaprio/One Battle, Michael B. Jordan/Sinners, and Wagner Moura/The Secret Agent.
• Best Actress: Jessie Buckley/Hamnet, Renate Riensve/Sentimental Value, Emma Stone/Bugnia. 
• Best Actress (Supporting): Elle Fanning/Sentimental Value, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas/Sentimental Value, Wunmi Mosaku/Sinners, Teyana Taylor/One Battle.
• Best Actor (Supporting):  Benicio Del Toro/One Battle, Jacob Elordi/Frankenstein, Delroy Lindo/Sinners, Sean Penn/One Battle, Stellan Skarsgård/Sentimental Value.
• Best Casting:  Nina Gold/Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti/Marty Supreme, Cassandra Kulukundis/One Battle, Gabriel Domingues/The Secret Agent, Francine Maisler/Sinners.
• Best Cinematography: Dan Laustsen/Frankenstein, Darius Khondji/Marty Supreme, Michael Bauman/One Battle, Autumn Durald Arkapaw/Sinners, Adolpho Veloso/Train Dreams.
• Best Costume Design:  Kate Hawley/Frankenstein, Malgosia Turzanska/Hamnet, Miyako Bellizzi/Marty Supreme, Ruth E. Carter/Sinners.
• Best Director: Chloé Zhao/Hamnet, Josh Safdie/Marty Supreme, Paul Thomas Anderson/One Battle After Another, Joachim Trier/Sentimental Value, Ryan Coogler/Sinners.
• Best Film Editing:  Stephen Mirrione/F1, Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie/Marty Supreme, Andy Jurgensen/One Battle, Olivier Bugge Coutté/Sentimental Value, Michael P. Shawver/Sinners.
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey/Frankenstein, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry/Sinners.
• Best Production Design/Sets: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau/Frankenstein, Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton/Hamnet, Jack Fisk and Adam Willis/Marty Supreme, Florencia Martin and Anthony Carlino/One Battle, Hannah Beachler and Monique Champagne/Sinners.
• Best Sound: Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta/F1, Greg Chapman, Nathan Robitaille, Nelson Ferreira, Christian Cooke and Brad Zoern/Frankenstein, José Antonio García, Christopher Scarabosio and Tony Villaflor/One Battle, Chris Welcker, Benjamin A. Burtt, Felipe Pacheco, Brandon Proctor and Steve Boeddeker/Sinners.
• Best Sound (Original Score): Jerskin Fendrix/Bugonia, Alexandre Desplat/Frankenstein, Max Richter/Hamnet, Jonny Greenwood/One Battle, Ludwig Goransson/Sinners.
• Best Visual Effects:  Ryan Tudhope, Nicolas Chevallier, Robert Harrington and Keith Dawson/F1, Michael Ralla, Espen Nordahl, Guido Wolter and Donnie Dean/Sinners
• Best Writing (original screenplay):  Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie/Marty Supreme, Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier/Sentimental Value, Ryan Coogler/Sinners.
• Best Writing (adapted screenplay): Will Tracy/Bugonia, Guillermo del Toro/Frankenstein, Chloé Zhao & Maggie O'Farrell/Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson/One Battle, Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar/Train Dreams.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Hamnet

• IMDB link: Hamnet
• Tagline: "After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss."
• My Best Picture Project

    This was a beautiful movie about Anne (Agnes) Hathaway and what it might have been like to be married to William Shakespeare. It's so much from her POV, that the subtitles referred to Will as "Husband" most of the time. In fact, his whole name is only mentioned once toward the end of the movie. 

    Funny story: once, when the movie was paused, it displayed the names of the characters and actors on screen, and we had the following conversation:

Me: Agnes is Anne Hathaway

Kivi: No, she's Jessie Buckley.

Me: No, her real name was Anne Hathaway.

Chris: (looking at me like I've got two heads) It says it right there - her name is Jessie Buckley.

Me: (realization dawning) No, no, no. Shakespeare's real-life wife was named Anne Hathaway, not to be confused with the actress who is also named Anne Hathaway.

    Like Shakespeare in Love, the movie did a wonderful job mixing in lines from their life into Shakespeare's plays - there is a lovely scene where Will stages a play for Agnes, starring their children as the three witches from Macbeth, and later words and phrases make their way into Hamlet as well.  Agnes is an herbalist, and her lists of herbs had to have inspired Ophelia, though that scene isn't shown, and during a particularly low moment for Will, you see the origins of the "to be or not to be" soliloquy.

    The acting and casting were excellent, and it had a nice, clear voice track, which is nice for my aging ears (I still turned on the subtitles because I didn't want to miss a single word due to less-familiar accents), and the visuals were lovely ... when they weren't too dark.  Too many scenes were filmed in the dark, and it was hard to see sometimes. I suspect (but don't know) that it was dark to reflect the times and lack of electric lighting, but I think that was the wrong choice.  The pacing was a little slow in the first half, but damn, the last half was spellbinding and heartbreaking.  

    It also does an excellent job depicting how people handle grief so differently. Will by channeling his pain into a tragic masterpiece, Ann/Agnes by surviving for her remaining children, fed by her rage at will, then ... forgiveness.

    Bring tissues.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
4. Hamnet (The Bard's wife; Cathy: 2, Chris: 5)
5. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 7, Chris: 4)
6. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 4, Chris: 6)
7. The Secret Agent (Strange, sweaty movie about life in fascist Brazil; Cathy: 6, Chris: 8)
8. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 9, Chris: 7)
9. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 8, Chris: 9)
10. Marty Supreme (Odious ping-pong hustler no one respects; Cathy: 10, Chris: 10)

The White Rose (Weiße Rose) Resistance Group

Monument to Die Weiße Rose resistance
movement, at the University of
Munich, Germany. Public Domain.

 

    So, a few months ago, I started building a timeline of WW2 events that I could connect to each chapter of Biscuit. When I could, I used resistance activities because they further an important theme of the book. Anyway, I came across the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group at the University of Munich, and damn ... those were some courageous, heroic people.

    Anyway, Germany is a sort of boogieman-type villain in Biscuit (hard to write a book about an ethnically/culturally Jewish family in WW2, where Germany doesn't look pretty bad). But in this situation, there's not a whole lot of opportunity for nuance. It doesn't help that most of Arthur and Roma's interactions were with Germans in enforcer-type roles. Soldiers at roadblocks. Gestapo investigating sabotage, soldiers chasing down illegal refugees.

So when I found opportunities to make the portrayal of Germany a little more complex, I took them. One was to use the White Rose group as part of my timeline, and the other was to have a German POW show genuine remorse for his actions, and also explain why he couldn't dodge the Wehrmacht draft, despite holding anti-Nazi beliefs.

    Anyway, back to the White Rose. One of the members was a young woman named Sophie Scholl. She and her brother Hans were executed by the Nazis for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets for the White Rose, but after her death in 1943, Germany has never forgotten her:

• They placed a bust of her in the Wahalla Memorial.
• There are streets and squares named for the Scholls all over Germany.
• In 2003, Sophie and Hans placed fourth in a poll of the most important Germans, beating out Einstein, Bach, Gutenberg, etc. If only the votes of young Germans had been counted, the Scholls would have placed first.
• There have been several German TV shows and movies telling the story.

The transcripts of the Scholls' interrogations resided in East German archives until the 1990s. After reunification, the transcripts came to light, and one filmmaker used those as primary sources, along with survivor testimony, to write the screenplay Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage). The movie was released in 2005, was nominated for and won numerous awards, and I'm planning to watch it in a few weeks:

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Marty Supreme

 

• IMDB link: Marty Supreme
• Tagline: "Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness."  
• My Best Picture Project

    To quote the god of movie critics, Roger Ebert, "I hated, hated, hated this movie."  I hated it so much that I quit watching halfway through. Oh, it ticks a lot of Best Picture boxes all right:  fine acting, obviously good cinematography, lots of great old cars (it takes place in 1952).  But the story begs the question, "Just how awful can a filmmaker make the protagonist without losing the audience?"  

    Too far, in this case. Marty is an odious, odious person.  The tagline is "Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness," but it should be, "Marty Mauser, a fast-talking young asshole no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of the hustle."

    As a woman, I'm hardly qualified to expound upon manhood (though I tend to favor the idea that a "real man" is just another way to say a "grownup who is responsible, and attempts to be a good person"), but I'm comfortable saying that Marty isn't any sort of man that I can admire. He's nothing but a spoiled child, and while he's a world-class ping-pong player, he is also a hustler and a cheat who constantly whines about how unfairly he's treated.

    Ok, I did like the rather shocking scene when Marty's bathtub falls through the floor of a very, very cheap hotel, but even that was horrifying because the elderly mafioso in the room below gets hurt.  Just reading that last phrase makes me cringe, because my god, even the bystanders aren't innocent.

    I didn't like a single character in the movie.   Nearly everyone is a fast-talking liar, and the ones who aren't are cheaters or predators. The pacing was also frenetic, matching the manic main character, rushing through 3 hours of movie in two-and-a-half.  And because I identified with literally no one, I couldn't get into the movie at all, and when I realized (about halfway through) that I didn't give a damn how it played out, I decided not to waste another 75 minutes of my time. 

Seriously, given my background, you'd think I'd identify with a movie full of Jewish immigrants and a Holocaust survivor or two, but nope. I think the most admirable person in the movie is Koto Endo, the Japanese ping-pong player who won the British table tennis open in the first half.  He was a survivor of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, which left him permanently deaf.  And there are hints that Marty suspects Koto of cheating because of his foam paddle and Asian playing style, but given that Marty is a hustler, his opinion hardly matters.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris: 5)
6. The Secret Agent (Strange, sweaty movie about life in fascist Brazil; Cathy: 6, Chris: 6)
7. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 8, Chris: 7)
8. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 7, Chris: 8)

• Marty Supreme (Odious ping-pong hustler no one respects; Cathy/Chris: Did not finish)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - The Secret Agent

• IMDB link: The Secret Agent
• Tagline: "In 1977, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks."
• My Best Picture Project

    What a weird and wonderful movie that is just full of sweaty hairy-chested Brazilian men, and if they button their shirts at all, they never do so past their sternums.  It was a lot of work to watch, though (as all foreign-language films are for me these days) since they require subtitles. It's my first Portuguese-language movie, and it was like watching a Spanish-language movie (lots of shared vocabulary), but ... not.

    It opens with a wonderfully absurd scene of a man in a yellow VW bug stopping for gasoline at a gas station with a corpse lying in the parking lot. The cops show up, but they are more interested in the man in the Volkswagen than in the corpse. The movie is mostly a drama, but with some darkly funny moments.

    It's visually beautiful and well-acted, but there are also lots of oddball themes, like Jaws, severed legs recovered from shark bellies, and just incredibly corrupt cops, businessmen, and assassins. 

    I was very confused, though, when a newspaper reported on a story about "the hairy leg", and then we see the severed leg from the shark hopping around, kicking people, mostly individuals engaging in public sex in a park.   Was it South American magical realism? Was it just an oddball, surreal moment? Was it folklore?  Turns out it was a literal (though surreal) embodiment of 1970s-era newspaper codespeak referring to police brutality, particularly against the gay community.

    Another odd moment was when the local police chief took Marcelo (the main character) to meet an elderly German man, to show off the man's scars. The policeman assumes the old man was a Wehrmacht soldier in WW2, and I, too, assumed he was a Nazi hiding out in Brazil, but it turns out the opposite is true. He was a Holocaust survivor, and the scars came not from being a soldier but from being the victim of those soldiers.   A cautionary moment warning us not to assume we know someone's past?

    The movie leaves many questions unanswered. What happened to Marcelo's mother?  What happened to the villain who destroyed Marcelo's life? Why are the people in modern-day Brazil researching him? (That may be obvious to someone who knows the culture better than I do, though.)

    The pacing is good, and it's a slow build from oddly normalized weirdness to a crescendo of satisfying violence that is worthy of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris: 5)
6. The Secret Agent (Strange, sweaty movie about life in fascist Brazil; Cathy: 6, Chris: 6)
7. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 8, Chris: 7)
8. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 7, Chris: 8)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

The Skinwalker in the Closet - Chapter 1

Editor's foreword: I spent the day with my 9-year-old granddaughter yesterday, and we wrote the following story together. The creativity and story are entirely hers. I did the typing, some coaching, and implementation (like using details in different places to provide foreshadowing), and editing under her supervision.

Chapter 1: Is it real?  

    I had just arrived at Aunty Melissa’s house, and right away, I slipped quietly up the stairs to Rory’s room, but the lights were off, and the door was ajar.  The sound of talking was coming through the door.  I wasn’t sure if Rory was there or not, if that was her Furby.  

    I knocked, and the door swung open.  It was Bertie, the youngest of my cousins, and she had shoved the door all the way open.

    Bertie was standing in the doorway, and Drew and Rory were sitting on the bed with their eyes closed. 

    “If it touches you, you freeze,” Drew said. “But only if it touches your skin directly.”

    Lincoln was holding Rory’s camera, swiping through the camera roll. 

    “What are you doing?” I asked.

    “I’m looking to see if we got any pictures of the skinwalker.”

    “What’s a skinwalker?” I asked. That’s weird, I thought to myself.

    Rory said, “My brother thinks it’s living in his closet, and we don’t know what to do with it.”

    “Yeah, but is it a skinwalker?” I asked again. They hadn’t answered my question.

    There was a long pause. Finally, Rory said, “It’s the dead white skin of a person, but it can walk. Drew saw one moving in his closet last night.”

    “We are trying to investigate it,” Lincoln said. We snuck into Drew’s room and opened the closet door just a crack, and took pictures through the gap, and then quickly slammed the door closed again so it couldn’t get out.”

    I was still standing in the doorway when Drew jumped out of Rory’s bed, snatched the camera out of Lincoln’s hands, and ran past me into his room. He opened the closet door a little bit and started taking pictures.   Then he dropped the camera and backed away, and before he made it to Rory’s room, Drew froze in place. 

    Rory, Lincoln, Bertie, and I ran into the hallway and dragged Drew, who was rigid, back into Rory’s room. I ran into Drew’s room, picked up the camera, and threw the closet door wide open. I loved my cousins, but I wasn’t sure I believed in skinwalkers.  I stepped into the closet, and something grabbed my arm.  I gasped and yelled, “Guys, help me!”

    I tried to pull away, and my cousins ran into the room and grabbed my other arm and yanked hard, and it let go, and I fell to the floor.  My arm really hurt. I pushed up my sleeve and looked at where the skinwalker had grabbed me, and my arm was red and starting to bruise in the pattern of a hand. I could make out a thumb-shaped bruise and finger marks. 

    I started believing in skinwalkers that day.

--by Cathesa, edited by Cathy B. Weeks

Editor’s note: the thing in the closet may actually be a Windigo rather than a Skinwalker, but in the heat of a terrifying moment in a dark space, it can be hard to tell.

(Stay tuned for Chapter 2: The Labyrinth)

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Sentimental Value

• IMDB link: Sentimental Value
• Tagline: "An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art."
• My Best Picture Project

    This was a difficult movie to review.  There was so much that was good about it, but the pacing was problematic enough that what could have been a great movie ended up merely OK.  The movie was about 2/3 in Norwegian and 1/3 in English, so we turned on subtitles.

    Let's start with the good:  The acting was great, really great.  I didn't know Stellan Skarsgård was such a good actor. I mean, I've always liked him, and in general, if he's in it, I'm probably going to like the movie. But in this, I felt he brought an amazing depth to his character, a washed-up elderly actor-turned-director who writes a beautiful script that captures all the regrets of a father who was neglectful, knows it, and regrets it, but doesn't know how to fix it.  There's a neat place where a young Gustav appears, and the filmmakers recycled footage from a movie Skarsgård made as a young man.

    The two young women who play his daughters, Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, do a lovely job capturing what it is to be the children of a neglectful artist parent, and the struggles they face with intimacy, trust, and anxiety. Elle Fanning does a great job playing an adopted daughter of sorts, hired by Gustav when his older daughter refuses.

    The cinematography was lovely, and I loved the house where the movie takes place (it's used as a framing device). There's a really cool montage toward the end of the movie, of the faces of the four main characters superimposed over one another, and I liked the movie-within-a-movie, and how the story weaves together scenes from their family history.  I also liked the rather dark Ikea joke which I will not spoil.

    I did like the ending, which shows the filming of the movie that Gustav has been trying to get made throughout the actual movie

    I like slow-paced movies that take their time and bring the audience for the ride, allowing the acting and scenery to take precedence over the action and special effects. But there's an extraordinarily fine line between interesting and boring when the movie's pacing is slow.  Unlike Train Dreams, which was slow-paced and kind of mesmerizing, this movie was slow-paced and a little boring. It wasn't without compelling scenes, but I did find myself glancing at the time more than I like.  The movie was like a long string of ellipses punctuated with exclamation points and question marks until ending on a high note: 

  .....?.....!.....!?......!.....""""

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris: 5)
6. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 7, Chris: 6)
7. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 6, Chris: 7)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.