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. Winner: 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.  Highlight 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)

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.

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.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - One Battle After Another

• IMDB link: One Battle After Another
• Tagline: "When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own."  
• My Best Picture Project

    At its heart, this movie is a really excellent action/chase movie with a lot of tension, great acting, and engaging characters, and I liked it wildly more than the last Leonardo DiCaprio movie I saw (Killers of the Flower Moon).  It's full of dark humor and is a wonderful thrill ride.

    But.

    It is not without flaws. The immigration theme is a thin veneer that forms a backdrop to the movie, but it's not well integrated into the story. You can swap out ICE agents for Zombies, tweak a few details, and it would work just as well.  Or you could use the story as the basis for another Ocean's Eleven movie (one in which things go really, really wrong).  Immigration is a theme, but it's not what it's about.  

    Because the ICE/Revolutionary conflict is just a backdrop, that theme ends up feeling kind of performative and shallow. And what is the message? If I had to guess, it's "Pro-ICErs are ruthless, evil, and violent, and Anti-ICErs are stupid, paranoid, and violent."  

    And boy, are they stupid at times. The protagonists take unbelievably stupid risks for no gain, usually for laughs (stopping for sex when they should be escaping, or monologuing while walking on countertops), but these things didn't feel like something revolutionaries would actually do.  I would imagine they are more businesslike.   Even worse, they rat out their friends just unbelievably easily, yet we are supposed to believe that a completely paranoid organization wouldn't practice information hygiene to protect against that?  Every person who is caught knows WAY more about their friends than they should, and they endanger each other repeatedly.

    

    One of my favorite characters was Col. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn.  He did a fabulous job creating a character that was Inspector Javert (but without the heart) mixed with Norman Bates or perhaps Travis Bickle. He walks weirdly, is a racist who fetishizes black women, and he's just ... off.   He was too weird even for the movie's Klan group (in a delightfully sly, ironic moment, Lockjaw is awarded the Bedford Forrest prize for excellence). Another neat parallel: the movie's two main villains are both played by Jewish men, echoing the casting and the actors' intent in Casablanca.

    I want to call out three actors who played small but important roles.  The first was Kevin Tighe who played paramedic Roy DeSoto in Emergency!  In this, he played a delightfully cantankerous elderly grand-dragon-type character. The other was Eric Schweig, who played Uncas in Last of the Mohicans.  In One Battle, he played a far less noble character, a Native American bounty hunter who works for the very people who hold him in contempt.   The last one is James Raterman who plays the ICE interrogator throughout the movie. He isn't (usually) a professional actor. He is a security consultant and former Homeland Security Investigator. He did a great job portraying an entirely competent agent. His character wasn't the slightest bit clownish, and ended up being one of the most frightening because of it.

    Finally, a note about politics.  The movie-makers were careful not to tie the movie to any specific POTUS in either of its two time periods, fifteen years apart. It could take place during any presidency starting with George W. Bush (ICE was formed in 2003), but it ended up feeling a little mistimed, given the real-life ICE conflicts happening right now.  For 15 of the last 22 years, I've lived an hour outside the Twin Cities. I'm still in Minnesota, but a little farther away now, and the situation in Minneapolis is incredibly tense, no matter which side of the conflict you are on, and for me, seeing a movie that uses that tension for frivolous entertainment value is a bit like poking a bruise.  The movie was made and released before Operation Metro Surge, but it hit awfully close to home.

    So, yeah, I really liked the movie—it was funny, tense, fast-paced, well-acted, and utterly engaging—and I definitely recommend it.  But you should go into it understanding that it reflects current events more than you might like.

(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: 6, Chris: 6)

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

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Frankenstein

• IMDB link: Frankenstein
• Tagline: "Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation."
• My Best Picture Project

    I have something of a complicated relationship with Frankenstein.  I admire it as the spiritual mother of science fiction, and when I was 19, I read it in one sitting for a literature class in college and loved it, but now, at 56, not so much.  Damn novel reads like it was written by a dramatic, emo teenager, which, I suppose, it was.  

    So far, my favorite rendition of Frankenstein is Frankenstein - Playing with Fire by Barbara Field, which I saw at the Guthrie Theater in 2018.  And after seeing the Guillermo del Toro exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art a few years ago and his lifelong obsession with Frankenstein, I expected to like this movie.  Don't get me wrong: this version is by far the best movie adaptation I've seen and the truest (though not entirely true) to the source material. It's simply gorgeous, but del Toro couldn't resist tinkering with the story in ways that didn't improve it.

    Note: I'm assuming you know the story, and will be discussing spoilers. If you don't, you should probably stop reading now.

   

    Let's start with Elizabeth. I liked that she has more to say in this version, but directors just can't just seem to leave poor Elizabeth alone. In the Kenneth Branagh version, Victor turns Elizabeth into a bride for the monster (whut?), and in this version, Victor accidentally shoots her (again, whut?) when she is about to marry his brother (third whut).  In the book, Elizabeth and Victor were childhood sweethearts and the Monster kills her on their wedding night.   Seriously, that is more of a gut punch than the weird love triangle in this movie.

 

    The book makes it clear that Victor's creation was quite brutal, killing children (Victor's brother William) and women (Elizabeth) just to punish Victor. A Sesame Street monster, he was not. So when Mary Shelley shows you that Victor is even worse, well, she's really saying something.  On the other hand, del Toro softens the monster, limiting his violence to moments of self-defense. He doesn't hesitate to kill people who are trying to kill him, but he is tender and protective of innocents and those with sympathy toward him (like Elizabeth).  

    

    While softening the Monster, del Toro dials up Victor's monstrousness.   He loses the oh-me-oh-my-WhatHaveIDone of the book (which, to be honest, got a little tiresome at times) and makes him selfish, crazy, and just plain mean.  He outright beats the monster before abandoning him to burn to death in a rather spectacular crescendo of fiery destruction (I liked that part, actually).  In the book, Victor was young, maybe 20 or 22, and you can chalk his lack of wisdom to his still being a kid.  This Victor was in his 40s, and he just came across as a deranged asshole.

    In this version, William, who in this version is allowed to grow up and become Victor's office manager, informs his brother in what del Toro clearly intended to be A PIVOTAL SCENE, "You are the monster, Victor."  No shit, Sherlock.  It was the most bald example of directorial condescension I've ever seen.  Del Toro was .... monster-'splaining.  

    To be fair, the acting was excellent, the storytelling and cinematography, sets, and costumes were amazing, but I think Oscar Isaac was miscast, and I wish the director had stayed closer to Mary Shelley's version.

(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: 4, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 4)
5. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaining; Cathy: 5, Chris: 5)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Bugonia

• IMDB link: Bugonia
• Tagline: "Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth."
• My Best Picture Project

    I kinda hated this movie.  My husband and daughter loved it, so maybe I'm being unfair, but just as the heart loves what the heart loves, it also hates what it hates. But there were things I loved about it, too.  Going into it, I was disposed to like it because I loved another Yorgos Lanthimos collaboration with Emma Stone (the delightfully obscene Poor Things), so it surprised me when I didn't like it.  But there are some rather shocking events in the last half, and because I refuse to spoil the movie, this review must be neutered by definition.

     The acting was spectacularly good, particularly by the three main characters.  (Note: the character of Don was played by newcomer Aidan Delbis, who is neurodivergent in real life).  The cinematography was great. Except for the pacing, which had some problems, storytelling was very good.  The production design did a great job carrying visual motifs throughout the movie (there are honeycomb motifs all over the place). The movie is going to haunt me for a long time.

    From a movie-making perspective, the only real problem is the aforementioned pacing.  The first half of the movie was slow and kind of boring; the second half was like a train speeding toward a crescendo of weirdness.  The second half is worth the wait, though.  It is also described as darkly comedic, but I almost never found it funny.   

    Given what I said above, it seems odd to hate it, but hate it I did.   I have a quirk - I don't like stories where no one is likable, where I can't identify with the characters.  Okay, Don, the sweet, easily manipulatable character, was decent, but I don't identify with him. Michelle, the CEO, was ... rich, scornful, paying lip service to employee rights (ok, her wishy-washy suggestion that her people leave at 5:30 was kind of funny), and Teddy was a deranged, violent manipulator.

    I quit reading Cormac McCarthy's gorgeous Blood Meridian halfway through for the same reason -- it is filled with people with no redeeming characteristics at all.  I don't require stories be populated with saints -- I just need for them to have characters I can identify with, if only a little.   In my opinion, 

The best stories have complex heroes and villains who are, at the core, regular people.  Where the main difference between them is the path they chose to take. With Bugonia, I never felt like I was watching regular people.

    Note: because the movie doesn't explain it, the title refers to the ancient Greek concept of bees spontaneously emerging from animal carcasses.

 

(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: 4, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 4)

• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Train Dreams

• IMDB link: Train Dreams
• Tagline: "Based on Denis Johnson's beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century."
• My Best Picture Project

    This movie reminds me a lot of A River Runs Through It, but slower-paced. Lovely places, interesting people, and more ... dreamy, and given the title, that makes sense.  It is also more tragic, but I don't want to spoil the movie.  I haven't read the novella, so I can't speak to how well the movie adapted the source material.

    The movie is about an orphan who becomes a logger, and eventually marries, has a child, and he encounters a lot of strange people and strange events.  He witnesses the anti-Chinese racism of the early 1900s and encounters loggers of all ages.  At the start of the movie, he is young and notices the old loggers; later, he becomes an old logger and is taught to use early chainsaws by the young loggers.

    There was also a hint of Rip Van Winkle in the story - he occasionally comes out of the woods to see how the world is changing.  He sees TVs for the first time on one of those jaunts and finds out men have gone to outer space.  Another time, he rides in an airplane, and he ponders how everything is connected.

    I don't exactly identify with the main character - he's a logger, and I'm not. But he likes his cabin in the woods, and given the chaotic political events happening right now, I totally get that.   He's also a genuinely good man, and such people are rarely depicted on screen, perhaps because they aren't especially interesting. The movie makes up for that by making everything around him weird.

    

    The acting is excellent. William H. Macy played an old demolition expert in a standout, funny, and sad performance.  Cinematography is also great - the woods of the Pacific Northwest are almost a character in their own right.  

    It's a good movie, and I do recommend it, but expect the strange and tragic odyssey.

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

1. Sinners (Southern Gothic Vampires Sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
3. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 3)

• Bugonia (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Sinners

• IMDB link: Sinners
• Tagline: "Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back."
• My Best Picture Project

    Ohmygod. This movie was spectacular.  Seriously, do yourself a favor, and if you haven't seen it, pop some popcorn, grab a beer, and sit back and enjoy the story, the creepiness, the acting, and most of all, the music.  This was a horror movie with history, symbolism, and unexpected themes; a near-perfect example of entertaining and riveting storytelling that tells a simple story with complex and multi-layered meaning.

    Now, how to talk about this movie without giving too much away?   

    Director Ryan Coogler set the movie in 1932, and the main characters are WWI veterans-turned-Capone gangsters-turned-southern-speakeasy owners. Michael B. Jordan plays twins Smoke and Stack (get it?) who return home after years away, intending to open their own club.  It's sometimes hard to tell the twins apart -- one memory hint that might help as you watch the movie is that Smoke wears a blue hat (smoke is often blue), and Stack wears a red hat (chimney stacks are often made of red brick).  Anyway, they enlist their cousin, a gifted blues musician, to be their opening act.

    From there, everything goes to hell, as the movie sneaks its way from a wonderfully moody period drama into a monster movie with carefully crafted visuals and hints that observe all the rules of vampire lore (though it does speed up the turning process, from hours to minutes). Coogler also sneaks in other lore (hoodoo), and visual homages to other monsters - there is a scene of the undead singing that reminds me a little of Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

    The acting is excellent.  As always, Jordan creates a powerful presence on screen, but the entire cast is stand-out, including Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Halee Steinfeld, Li Jun Li, Jayme Lawson, and Wunmi Mosaku. They rounded out the story nicely. 

    I also want to call out Jack O'Connell, who played an important villain; he slipped between Irish and southern accents seamlessly (it makes sense, I swear).  I kept wondering how the actor could do such a perfect Irish accent, but then I found out that it's his natural accent, and the convincing, skillful part was the rural American South in his voice.  The movie also uses Irish history as an important theme. The main vampire is Irish. They drink Irish beer at the speakeasy, and it's more than just a thematic element; it's also a plot device (I can't say much about that - that would give too much away). It goes even deeper; Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was Irish, but more than that, Irish history mirrors African American history very closely. Coogler layers in the parallels and connections beautifully.  Even small details like inclusion of the Choctaw are important (the Choctaw raised money to help the Irish during the Irish potato famine of the 1850s. 170 years later, the Irish raised money to help Native American communities hardest hit by the COVID epidemic). 

    There were only a few minor things that bothered me: one that isn't really the movie's fault, and two that are.  Not the movie's fault: I have some hearing loss, so dialogue tracks in movies need to be really clear for me to understand them, and I'm having more and more difficulty with accents other than my own as I get older. Between the rural Southern dialects and the fact that Michael B. Jordan doesn't move his lips much in this movie (this isn't true in his other roles, so I think it was a character trait that fits the character), I had some difficulty understanding what people were saying. I turned on subtitles, and that solved the issue. 

    Now for the two that ARE the movie's fault - movies today are being made with muddy dialog tracks, and it seems to be a deliberate stylistic trend; I think the moviemakers are trying to be realistic and immersive. That is true of this movie.  I know it's not just my hearing - I can turn on movies made 30 and 40 years ago and have no trouble understanding them, but I do have difficulty with a lot of modern dialogue tracks, regardless of dialect (the TV show Coroner, which takes place in Ontario, is a particularly egregious example).  The rest of the sound design is excellent, though.

    The final problem is that the credits start to roll ... but the movie is not over. There is a VERY extended outtake with another 5 or so minutes of movie that you should absolutely not miss. As we were turning off the movie, my daughter noticed that there were many more minutes left, so we went back in, and I'm glad we did. So, note to Mr. Coogler: don't start rolling the credits until the movie is genuinely over, particularly in non-Marvel movies like this one, where outtakes aren't expected. It's only because of my daughter's quick thinking that we didn't miss the real ending of the movie. The outtake isn't just a small easter egg; Buddy Guy, the real-life blues musician, plays an important part.

    One final note. The tagline includes the phrase, "an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back." Chris and I gave the movie a much higher "important message" score than we might normally give a monster flick because it addresses the virulent racism of the early 1930s.  

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

1. Sinners (Southern Gothic Vampires Sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 2, Chris 2)

• Bugonia (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - F1: The Movie

• IMDB link: F1: The Movie 
• Tagline: "A Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver."
• My Best Picture Project

    In case you aren't aware of the definition of a Formula 1 race car: It's an open wheel, single-seater car built under strict rules (the "formula), to be the pinnacle of speed and aerodynamics, etc. They are also expensive, with a 2026 budget cap of about $215 million. That's why the drivers and cars are just COVERED with sponsor logos.

    This was a fun, mesmerizing movie that really drops the viewer into the driver's seat of a race car going nearly 200 mph, and that's really saying something, because I have no interest in racing whatsoever. I don't exactly hate it, but I can't imagine being a fan, either. I can see wanting to be a race car driver (that might be kinda fun), but I can't imagine anything more boring than watching cars make multiple laps around a track. My husband liked the movie better than I did, but he's an excellent driver, and well, I'm not.

    But Hollywood is pretty good at making things that I'd never be interested in real life, cool, exciting, and interesting on the silver screen. I hate boxing, but I love Rocky. I dislike horse racing, but loved Seabiscuit and The Black Stallion. I'm not interested in planes except for how they can get me where I want to go, but I enjoyed Top Gun. F1 is like that. Mesmerizing, fun, and exciting, but a little thin on story. 

    This movie is the grown-up version of Pixar's Cars - the old, wily racer has stuff to teach the young, cocky driver, but in this case they are teaming up to win an F1 race.  F1 isn't as character-driven as I like in an Oscar nominee, but it did a great job of developing characters with some really excellent visual motifs and just the right kind of repetition, of showing us stuff, and sometimes telling a story or two. It had a lot of heart, showing us the hopes and dreams -- and sometimes failures -- of two amazingly talented racers.

    The racing sequences and the visuals are thrilling - and very realistic. The filmmakers filmed each race at each of the real-life races - they set up a fake pit/booth between the real Ferrari and Mercedes areas, and filmed the pit scenes while the actual race was underway.  The fake race cars were real, driven by the lead actors in real life, and had many bespoke cameras mounted on the cars.  The sound design effectively supported the story, though the race scenes were auditorily overwhelming -- not just loud, but chaotic.  My only real gripe is that the quiet scenes were too quiet, and the racing scenes were too loud.  I'd leave the sound as it was for the racing scenes, but raise the volume of the quiet dialogue scenes.

    I also hate the title, which is kind of stupid. "F1" by itself would have been OK (if unimaginative), but they tacked "The Movie" on the end, just in case the audience forgets that it's not: The Game, The Car, The Driver, The Race, or The Comic Book.  There have been many other F1 racing movies, and the title doesn't set this one apart from them, so why bother? Personally, I think a great title would have been The Greatest That Never Was (a not-so-nice nickname given to Brad Pitt's character). It's clever, and it's got some wonderful irony going for it. Or maybe The Never Was if we are going for a pithier title.

    I enjoyed the movie, and I do recommend it (well, if you might enjoy thrilling, very dangerous first-person racing in cars that drive really, really fast), but this is movie-candy, and is probably not meaty enough to win (not unless the other nominees just suck, which I doubt).  

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

• F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 1, Chris 1)

Not yet watched:

• Bugonia (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sinners (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 AMPAS Best Picture Nominees - Initial thoughts, trailers, and other miscellany

    Every year, my husband Chris and I try to watch all of the AMPAS Best Picture Nominees and review, rate, and rank them prior to the awards ceremony, which is on March 15, 2026. Here are this year's nominees.

    Note: The movie title/headings will take you to the IMDb page for that movie.

Bugonia 

Tagline: "Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth."

    Yeah, Emma Stone (star) and Yorgos Lanthimos (director) like both working together, and making weird movies (like the brilliant, imaginative, and somewhat obscene Poor Things two years ago), and this movie seems entirely on-brand for those two.  My prediction, not having seen, nor knowing anything about it ... she probably IS an Alien.  Available on streaming (Prime, etc.).

 

***

F1: The Movie 

Tagline: "A Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver."

    The only thing I knew about this movie was that it was abut Formula One racing, and that it has father-son-type relationship in it.   Looks like Top Gun on wheels, which means I'll probably like it well enough, even though I'm uninterested in racing. Available on streaming (Prime, etc.).

***

Frankenstein

Tagline: "Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation."

    Years ago, I saw the Guillermo del Toro exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the man loves Frankenstein so much that he has a bunch of Frankenstein sculptures, drawings, and other art in his house. It's safe to say that he loves (is obsessed with?) Mary Shelley's book, so I'm rather excited to see this one, as there is no worthy movie version. Hopefully, that is about to change. Available on streaming (Netflix)

***

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."

    I adore movies that show how real life influences Shakespeare's plays (Shakespeare in Love, I'm looking at you!). This one looks to be more tragic, as it depicts the death of Shakespeare's real-life son, Hamnet, and how it may have influenced what many consider Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, Hamlet. It also seems to be more about Shakespeare's wife Anne/Agnes, which is nice because she's often overlooked in favor of her more famous husband.  Available on streaming (Prime, etc.)

***

Marty Supreme

Tagline: "Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness."  

    It appears to be an underdog movie about ... ping-pong?   The third movie in a row that Timothee Chalamet starred in a Best Picture-nominated movie. Available on streaming (Prime, etc.)

***

One Battle After Another

Tagline: "When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own."  

    I know nothing about this movie, other than it's got Leonardo DiCaprio in it (shrug). Available on streaming (Prime, etc.)

***

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." 

Last year's Portuguese-language nominee wasn't available on streaming before the Oscar ceremony, and I never got around to seeing it, so when I realized this was another movie out of Brazil, it seemed like the Cosmic Movie Gods were shaking their finger at me in reprimand. This movie looks like a lot of fun - it's a crime drama/thriller with some comic elements (it's a work of fiction set against the backdrop of the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s), but it'll still be a lot of work to watch with subtitles. Available streaming (Prime, etc.)

***

Sentimental Value

Tagline: "An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art."

    This looks to be a movie about a movie-maker who neglected his children in favor of his art.  I'm a fan of Stellan Skarsgård, so I'm looking forward to it. The movie appears to be in Norwegian (odd as Skarsgård is Swedish) and English. Available on streaming (Prime, etc.).

***

Sinners

Tagline: "Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back."

    Another partnership between Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan (both of Marvel's Black Panther), and this one is getting a lot of buzz, with a record-breaking sixteen nominations.  It appears to be a horror movie (the only horror movie to ever win best picture is The Silence of the Lambs, which I contend is one of the finest horror movies ever made), mixing 1930s-era Jim Crow, Southern Gothic elements, Blues ... and vampires?  It looks just scary enough that I'll watch it on a weekend during daylight hours. Available for streaming (Prime, etc.).

***

Train Dreams

Tagline: "Based on Denis Johnson's beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century."

    This feels similar to A River Runs Through It, which is an excellent coming-of-age movie. This seems just as beautiful, too, though it looks like it is more about the other end of life, the regret for the passage of time, the losses, and a changing world.  It's also got William H. Macy, who is always great. Available on streaming (Netflix).

***

    Unusually, I know very little about this year's best-picture movies, and I'm going into most of them nearly blind, and I've nearly always had great experiences when that was the case.  The only exception is Frankenstein, as I've read the novel and seen a play (a sequel of sorts to the story) and at least one different movie version. 

Some initial cross-movie trends:

• Timothee Chalamet has starred in three Best Picture-nominated movies in the last two years (Marty Supreme, Dune II, and A Complete Unknown). He has been nominated for Best Actor for two of those (Marty Supreme and A Complete Unknown)
• There are 6 period-setting movies: Frankenstein (1800s), Hamnet (early1600s), Marty Supreme (1950s), The Secret Agent (1970s), Sinners (1930s), and Train Dreams (early 1900s).
• There are 4 modern-setting movies: Bugonia, F1, One Battle After Another, and Sentimental Value.
• There are 2 movies with languages other than English for some or all of the movie: Sentimental Value (some English and some Norwegian), and The Secret Agent (Portuguese).

    Enjoy!

Thoughts on the 2025 Oscar Nominations

    There will always be movies nominated where I think, "What was the academy thinking?!? How can anyone think this movie is the best of the year?" (2023's Triangle of Sadness, I'm looking at you).  I have mixed feelings about this year's slate of nominees, as it was considerably weaker than last year's.  Last year, the top eight movies were all worthy contenders, and even with the bottom two, I can see why they were nominated, even though I myself didn't like them.    

This year, the best movies were only very good, and most didn't rise to great. The slate was characterized by wasted potential and the failure to kill the director's darlings:  

• The Substance was on track to be the best movie of the year and perhaps the best horror movie of all time. It built the suspense and dread through the first 3/4 of the movie until it fell down in the final act, with its blood-drenched crescendo that suddenly and massively violated suspension of disbelief.
• Nickel Boys took a great story about good kids but ruined it with experimental and distracting film techniques and head-hopping.
• The Brutalist needs to cut at least 30 minutes but perhaps as much as an hour, particularly if can't be bothered to close its plot holes. What happened to Van Buren?  How did Laszlo rebuild his career after the fiasco depicted in the movie?  When did his niece overcome her trauma?  The list goes on.
• Anora failed to make me care about any of the characters. The character I liked best and identified with, was hired muscle who inadvertently assaults the main character (though she was so annoying, who can blame him?)
• Emilia Pérez was actually a pretty good movie, but the director's lack of research was kind of insulting and played on everyone else's ignorance of the difference between Spain and Mexico.
• Wicked was imaginative, but like Anora, failed to make me care about the characters.  Worse, it was a musical with not very good sound design.

    The only movies that didn't disappoint me in some way were Conclave, Dune 2, and A Complete Unknown (I haven't seen I'm Still Here, which hasn't yet come to streaming and is unlikely to before the award ceremony). 

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

1. A Complete Unknown (Super songwriter's origin story; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Conclave (Absorbing conspiracy at the Vatican; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
3. Emilia Pérez (Stereotypes, redemption, and transition; Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
4. Dune: Part Two (Best rendition of a classic SF novel; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. The Substance (Excellent horror movie ruined by ending; Cathy: 5, Chris: 5)
6. The Brutalist (Troubled architect explores the pitfalls of patronage; Cathy: 6, Chris: 6)
7. Wicked (Beautiful, yet boring; Cathy: 7, Chris: 7)
8. Winner: Anora (Steaming pile of говно; Cathy: 9, Chris: 8)
9. Nickel Boys (Civil rights meets a feverish collage of an arthouse film; Cathy: 8, Chris: 9)

    Interestingly, except for Anora and Nickel Boys, we remained in perfect lock-step. That's pretty rare, as we are both pretty opinionated.

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

• Four movies take place in modern times (The Substance, Anora, Conclave, Emilia Pérez)
• Four movies are historical period pieces  (The Brutalist 1947-1960-ish; A Complete Unknown 1961-1965; I'm Still Here, 1971; Nickel Boys, 1964).
• Two movies take place out of time (Dune 2, Wicked)
• One movie deals with genocide, or more accurately, its aftermath (The Brutalist).
• Six movies contain a language other than English.  Two were mostly or entirely not in English (Emilia Pérez, Spanish; I'm Still Here, Portuguese). The others were mostly or almost entirely in English but contained other languages as well (Conclave, with Spanish, Italian, and Latin; Dune 2, Fremen and sign language; Anora, Russian; The Brutalist, Hungarian and Italian).
• One actor (Timothée Chalamet) starred in two of the nominated movies (A Complete Unknown, Dune 2).

    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 Dirctor: Coralie Fargeat/The Substance, James Mangold/A Complete Unknown, Jacques Audiard/Emilia Pérez, Brady Corbet/The Brutalist, and Sean Baker/Anora.
• Best Actor:  Timothée Chalamet (for his Bob Dylan role), Adrien Brody, and Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes successfully made me sympathize with a Catholic cardinal, a person I have zero in common with.
• Best Actress: Cynthia Erivo, Karla Sofía Gascón, Mikey Madison, and Demi Moore.  No question -- Moore's performance in The Substance was fantastic.
• Best Supporting Actress: Monica Barbaro, Ariana Grande, Felicity Jones, Isabella Rossellini, and Zoe Saldaña. Saldaña held Emilia Pérez together.
• Best Supporting Actor: Guy Pearce, Edward Norton, and Yura Borisov. He is the ONLY person I sympathized with in Anora.  I also loved Ed Norton's turn as Pete Seeger.
• Best Writing (original screenplay): The Brutalist, Anora, and The Substance.  Extra kudos for it having been written in French and perfectly translated to English.
• Best Writing (adapted screenplay): A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, and Nickel Boys.
• Best Sound: A Complete Unknown, Dune 2, Emilia Pérez, and Wicked.
• Best Production Design: The Brutalist, Conclave, Dune 2, and Wicked.
• Best Cinematography: Dune 2, Emilia Pérez, and The Brutalist.
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling:  Emilia Pérez, The Substance, and Wicked.
• Best Costume Design: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Wicked.
• Best Visual Effects: Wicked and Dune 2.