2025 Oscars – Musings and Predictions

March 2, 2025 The Critic Leave a comment

With the 97th Academy Awards coming up on March 2nd, I decided to get in on the discourse and share my predictions for the awards alongside my general thoughts and musings on the nature of the candidates and appreciation for those artists who were not given the recognition I feel they should have been. I’m less interested in “snubs” and more interested in shining a light on work I felt was spectacular, so my notation of noticeable omissions isn’t meant to denigrate any of other nominees as much as it is to praise what I think is cinematically wonderful/artistically exceptional and offer a look into my own perspective.

For those looking to quickly parse the discussion for just the predictions, I have the winners BOLDED under each award category.

For any category where I haven’t seen a particular nominee, I will be marking them with an * next to the name of the respective film.

I will be skipping the following categories due to lack of familiarity with a majority of the nominees: Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Film, Documentary Feature Film, Live Action Short Film.

BEST PICTURE

FILM	DIRECTOR	PRODUCER(S)
Anora	Sean Baker	Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, and Sean Baker
The Brutalist	Brady Corbet	Nick Gordon, Brian Young, Andrew Morrison, D.J. Gugenheim, and Brady Corbet
A Complete Unknown	James Mangold	Fred Berger, James Mangold, and Alex Heineman
Conclave	Edward Berger	Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, and Michael A. Jackman
Dune: Part Two	Denis Villeneuve	Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Tanya Lapointe, and Denis Villeneuve
Emilia Pérez	Jacques Audiard	Pascal Caucheteux and Jacques Audiard
I’m Still Here	Walter Salles	Maria Carlota Bruno and Rodrigo Teixeira
Nickel Boys	RaMell Ross	Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Joslyn Barnes
The Substance	Coralie Fargeat	Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, and Eric Fellner
Wicked	Jon M. Chu	Marc Platt

This year’s Best Picture nominees, from my perspective at least, feel like they’re split into three categories:

1-Ambitious in form and style with muscular filmmaking, utilizing writing and acting in service of the more technical elements to generate transcendent cinematic moments

2-Ambitious in terms of dramaturgy, with a focus on writing and acting wherein the other grandiose aspects of filmmaking are utilized in a subtler fashion to support the formal undercurrents of the writing

3-Heavily reliant on writing and acting to generate moments of poignant catharsis with less focus on the pushing the envelope of visual style or form.

This is not to say films in first group have worse scripts and/or poorer performances while films in the latte two group have nothing technically inventive to marvel at but merely serves as an internal schema I’ve adopted to partition the nominees into more discrete entities for the sake of discussion.

This first group is the one I prefer due to my own leanings and thoughts on what makes for “great” cinema and it consists of: The Brutalist, Dune: Part Two, Nickel Boys, The Substance. I would be happy with any of these films winning the prestigious Best Picture award.

The second group is one I appreciate even if I think the films are a half-step below the aforementioned. This group consists of: Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave

The third group consists of: Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Wicked. Although some of these films seem to toe the line and could belong to the second group, I feel comfortable including them here.

Out of all the candidates, the film I believe is MOST LIKELY to win is Sean Baker’s Anora . The film’s great accomplishment is the manner in which it hides the subtlety of its titular character study beneath the veneer of a screw-ball rom-com which slowly fades away to a truly poignant ending. The film strikes the balance between popular appeal and indie endearment makes it feel like a more likely winner than any of the other candidates, but do not be surprised if another winner walks out with the prestigious award.

While I don’t think any film was “snubbed” so to speak, there are a few films which I felt exhibited the best aspects of cinema which I would have thoroughly enjoyed to see nominated, including but not limited to: Robert Egger’s Nosferatu, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and Challengers, Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada.

While some of these films would definitely not see an academy nomination due to their content, experimental tendencies, or genre leanings, I do believe they represent some of the very best of the year and wanted to shine a light on them alongside the aforementioned offerings.

DIRECTING

FILM	DIRECTOR
Anora	Sean Baker
The Brutalist	Brady Corbet
A Complete Unknown	James Mangold
Emilia Pérez	Jacques Audiard
The Substance	Coralie Fargeat

Out of the directing candidates, I think Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, or Coralie Fargeat winning would be wonderful.

I think that the MOST LIKELY winner will be Brady Corbet.
The sheer expanse of The Brutalist and what Corbet and his crew were able to accomplish feel like they’re too big for voters to ignore and it feels like this may be the “bone” given to the film for its efforts.

In terms of missing directors, the omission of Denis Villenueve is a glaring one but it makes sense given the seemingly general lack of award praise for Dune: Part Two in general at these Oscars. Still, for a film to be nominated for Best Film, Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects to not be nominated for Best Director is perplexing. If the award is meant to recognize the director who put the relevant elements together, and those elements are recognized as excellent in their own right and cohesive enough to generate a picture worth nominating, it feels odd to not include that same director in this set of awards.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

FILM	DIRECTOR	COUNTRY
Emilia Pérez	Jacques Audiard	France
Flow	Gints Zilbalodis	Latvia
The Girl with the Needle	Magnus von Horn	Demark
I’m Still Here	Walter Salles	Brazil
The Seed of the Sacred Fig	Mohammad Rasoulof	Germany

I believe that Emilia Pérez is MOST LIKELY to win. Even with recent controversy, I believe the film still has the momentum to pick up the award. It’s go-for-broke vision and kinetic energy should be able to keep supporters in tow even if they aren’t fans of the behind-the-scenes drama.

Yet, this category is more interesting to discuss given what is not nominated.

India’s astoundingly poor decision to not nominate All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia should be noted here. If the Cannes Grand Prix winner was on the list of nominees, I’m certain it would have won this award and most likely been nominated for Best Picture.

In addition, seeing The Girl With the Needle amongst the nominees (my pick for best film amongst the bunch) reminds me of the omission of Rahul Sadasivan’s Bramayugam, an equally competent folk-horror bathed in black-and-white which warrants a mention due to its quality.

Of films which were submitted as their countries best, it is Norway’s entry, Armand by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, which is noticeably not present. The film, which experiments with the boundaries of a chamber-drama, is gripping, existential and features a knock-out performance by Renate Reinsve.

But on a positive note, it is wonderful to see Flow nominated. It is rare to see an animated picture, even one with a robust cinematic quality, make it out of the Animated only awards and be recognized as cinema proper. One can only hope this is the start of a larger trend recognizing animated films as films that are animated instead of a wholly distinct category.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

FILM	DIRECTOR(S)
Flow	Gints Zilbalodis
Inside Out 2	Kelsey Mann
Memoir of a Snail	Adam Elliot
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl	Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham
The Wild Robot	Chris Sanders

Flow is MOST LIKELY to win. Its presence in the best International Films category makes this all but certain, and it is certainly a worthy winner of the prize. The manner in which it plays with scenarios that coalesce into something grander befitting what we could call “epic” is inspiring and something that cineastes need to experience.

While the other nominees range from “good” to “great”, there’s a dearth of qualified nominees which should’ve been present. As is custom with the Oscars, these are animated films from Japan. These omissions include Naoko Yamada’s The Colors Within and Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s Look Back. Both films feature stellar animation like the nominees, but experiment formally with the medium in ways that deserve recognition outside of just presenting a “great story.”

FILM EDITING

FILM	EDITOR
Anora	Sean Baker
The Brutalist	Dávid Jancsó
Conclave	Nick Emerson
Emilia Pérez	Juliette Welfling
Wicked	Myron Kerstein

While I prefer the structure and methodical pacing of The Brutalist’s editing and would easily give Jancsó the award, I believe the MOST LIKELY to win will be Nick Emerson for his work on Conclave. His editing helps propel the the urgency embedded within the narrative and is apparent especially due to the manner in which the edit unfolds alongside the intense, cutting score.

Yet, this category is less clear cut and I would not be surprised to see Baker or Jancsó taking the award home.

In terms of omissions, Joe Walker’s work on Dune: Part Two and Marco Costa’s work on Challengers are most interesting. The former’s layering of the oneric and political is what makes the film as effective as it is while the latter’s is some of the most propulsive (especially during the kinetic action scenes) of the year.

In addition, Yorgos Mavropsaridis’s work on Kinds of Kindness (a film which seems to have missed awards hype all together), should be commended as it strikes the perfect balance between the aspects of its tryptich plotting and within each of the sections independently. Anthology films are always hard to pull off and such wonderful balancing between the stories such as to preserve a throughline is rare.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

FILM	DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The Brutalist	Lol Crawley
Dune: Part Two	Greig Fraser
Emilia Pérez	Paul Guilhaume
Maria	Edward Lachman
Nosferatu	Jarin Blaschke

This is a category which is absolutely brimming with quality, and sans Emilia Pérez, is one where any of the winners are worthy due to the depth and beauty of their images.

Crawley’s work on The Brutalist helps the film ooze texture, and moments involving shadows hearken back to some of the best examples in the medium à la Gordon Willis’s work on The Godfather films.

Fraser’s work is just as good as his efforts on Dune and helps keep the two parts visually consistent with one another, affirming their status as complements telling one overarching story.

Lachman’s partnership with Pablo Larrain and Blaschke’s partnernship with Robert Eggers earns both cinematoraphers an additional well-earned nomition for their respective works. Blaschke’s accomplishments in rendering a near grey-scale image inspite of containing colors makes his work my personal pick for the award.

In terms of non-nominated works: Eric K. Yue’s work on I Saw the TV glow
keeps the film’s metaphysically dubious nature constantly prevalent as the lights and textures make it impossible for us to great a complete grasp on the reality of what’s transpiring; Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s work on Queer imbues the dreamscape with a lush haze that keeps the viewer fully engrossed even as the scenario gets increasingly surreal; Benjamin Kračun’s work on The Substance gives it an precise, clinical tactility that serves as the perfect backdrop to both the conspiratorial and gore-filled tendencies of the film; Simon Duggan’s work on Furiosa: A A Mad Max Saga which brings a new life to Miller’s fantastic wasteland and serves as a worthy follow-up while not directly aping John Seale’s stellar work in Mad Max: Fury Road.

That all said, I think that its Lol Crawley‘s work on The Brutalist that will MOST LIKELY take home top prize. It should appeal to traditionalist voters and more conventional ones with both its subtle close-ups and magnificent wides.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

FILM	NOMINEES
The Brutalist	Production Design: Judy Becker; Set Decoration: Patricia Cuccia
Conclave	Production Design: Suzie Davies; Set Decoration: Cynthia Sleiter
Dune: Part Two	Production Design: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Shane Vieau
Nosferatu	Production Design: Craig Lathrop; Set Decoration: Beatrice Brentnerová
Wicked	Production Design: Nathan Crowley; Set Decoration: Lee Sandales

While my personal pick of these would likely go to the team behind Nosferatu for the wonderful creation of a gothic hellscape that oozes its shadows at every corners, I think Academy voters will MOST LIKELY be swayed by Wicked and its fantastical renditions of Oz which the dance-numbers certainly call attention to. This is also the “populist” pick amongst the voters and seems like one of the “consolation” awards of sorts given to Wicked due to its widespread Blockbuster appeal.

VISUAL EFFECTS

FILM	NOMINEES
Alien: Romulus	Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, and Shane Mahan
Better Man	Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, and Peter Stubbs
Dune: Part Two	Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, and Gerd Nefzer
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes	Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story, and Rodney Burke
Wicked	Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, and Paul Corbould

While I think this batch of nominees is more than deserving of their selections (some more than others), the team behind Alex Garland’s Civil War deserves praise for the manner in which it transposes visions of violence onto the United States’ landscape in a viscerally upsetting, hauntingly grounded manner.

Yet, in spite of quality work on the part of the other candidates, this award is MOST LIKELY Dune: Part Two’s for the taking and it would be shocking if this was not the case. Helping to ground a wholly science-fiction world with this level of fidelity cannot be ignored.

COSTUME DESIGN

FILM	NOMINEES
A Complete Unknown	Jacqueline Durran
Conclave	Jacqueline West
Gladiator II	Janty Yates and Dave Crossman
Nosferatu	Ellen Mirojnick
Wicked	Holly Waddington

As is the story for the Production Design award, I think Academy voters will MOST LIKELY be swayed by Holly Waddington’s work Wicked and the whimsical manner in which she brings to life the world of Oz’s characters.

My personal pick amongst the nominees would be Ellen Mirojnick’s work in Nosferatu. She ensures that the milieu of Egger’s gothic nightmare is historically grounded which allows the fantastical elements to stand-out in sharp, disturbing contrast. The work isn’t particularly showy, but is perfectly complimentary.

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

FILM	NOMINEES
A Different Man	Mike Marino, David Presto, and Crystal Jurado
Emilia Pérez	Julia Floch Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier, and Jean-Christophe Spadaccini
Nosferatu	David White, Traci Loader, and Suzanne Stokes-Munton
The Substance	Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon, and Marilyne Scarselli
Wicked	Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, and Sarah Nuth

This award will MOST LIKELY go to Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon, and Marilyne Scarselli for their work on The Substance and deservedly so at that for the gonzo and astounding transformations character(s) go through. The committment to intertwining the stylings of the character with the visual effects makes the pronouncements of the former all the harder to ignore in spite of the genre bias the Academy has against horror. This is the film doing the most the best.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

FILM	WRITER(S)
Anora	Sean Baker
The Brutalist	Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
A Real Pain	Jesse Eisenberg
September 5	Moritz Binder and Tim Fehlbaum; co-written by Alex David
The Substance	Coralie Fargeat

The omission of Justin Kuritzkes work on Challengers is baffling given the films intense plotting and exuberant tit-a-tats between its leading triumvirate. This is the kind of screenplay it feels the Academy would’ve lapped up in years past making its omission amongst this years’s nominees all the more apparent. Alex Garland’s work on Civil War should also be mentioned as he creates a world filled with implications, hidden within the dialogue and story beats, that informs the harrowing nature of its journey from start to finish without overdetermining it.

Out of the nominees, both A Real Pain and September 5 are films that live-or-die based on their scripts and it is their scripts that make the films as good as they are, yet neither are particularly “special” in a way that marks them as something more than well-written and efficient. They’re missing that critical “X” factor which would differentiate them enough.

There is a world where Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s work on The Brutalist is given its “flowers”, but given the lack of voter interest in watching the film in its entirety ^[1]Davis, C. (2025, January 18). Oscar voting closes: Is “the Brutalist” underseen? could “juror #2” make a surprise best picture nom? – nine takeaways from Academy members. Variety. … Continue reading and the condemnation of the ambiguity and plotting in the second of the film, this would be a tougher sell ,even if it is my personal pick for the award.

While Fargeat’s script is nearly air-tight, I believe that voters will associate The Substance moreso with its gonzo visual designs and performances opposed to the masterful plotting of the narrative or the sardonic dialogue beats and will skip over commending it here.

Therefore, I believe that Sean Baker is MOST LIKELY to win for his work on Anora. He manages to achieve yet another indelibaly written screenplay with lived-in characters, quotable dialogue, and memorable scenes without missing those silent, poignant moments which serve as truly transcendent. His script is one which strikes a balance that should appeal to the most voters.

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

FILM	WRITER(S)
A Complete Unknown	James Mangold and Jay Cocks
Conclave	Peter Straughan
Emilia Pérez	Jacques Audiard
Nickel Boys	RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
Sing Sing	Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley

Dune: Part Two is the glaring omission here, but that seems to be the story of this 95th Oscars. It should be reiterated the enormity of taking Frank Herbert’s seminal work and rendering it into a cinematically digestible work, let alone one which thumps with grandeur as this one does.

Kuritzkes work on Queer also needs to be mentioned. Taking William S. Burroughs work to task in screenplay form is an thankless, near impossible task, but Kuritzkes managed to do the same without missing out on the emotional beats which make the surreal, hallucinatory film accessible to those willing to let it penetrate.

Finally, Paul Schrader’s work in bringing Russell Banks’ Forgeone to the screen in the form of Oh, Canada warrants a mention if for nothing else than the unique sincerity of its emotional thrust; there has never been such a somber meditation on the meaning of art from an artist at death’s door and coming from Schrader, one of the form’s most underrated auteurs, its poignancy rings all the clearer.

Amongst the candidates themselves, I would pick RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barne’s work on Nickel Boys for the way in which they weave together their larger-than-life narrative through the eyes of two men, retaining a humanity while commenting on larger strucutral issues.

Yet, I believe that Peter Straughan will MOST LIKELY take home this prize for his work on Conclave. His script balances the urgency, mystery, and spiritual stakes of the film without compromising on any of those aspects and should have the most widespread appeal amongst the voters.

SOUND

FILM	NOMINEES
A Complete Unknown	Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey, and David Giammarco
Dune: Part Two	Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett, and Doug Hemphill
Emilia Pérez	Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz, and Niels Barletta
Wicked	Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson, and John Marquis
The Wild Robot	Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo, and Leff Lefferts

Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett, and Doug Hemphill‘s work on Dune: Part Two will MOST LIKELY win, especially due to the lack of particularly standout work from any of the other candidates.

Yet, it is the work of those responisble for Nosferatu’s soundscape that is glaringly missing. The crunchy, off-putting dissonances of the film were certainly the most visceral pieces of mixing I’ve heard in any film of the year and made the experience what it was.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

FILM	COMPOSERS
The Brutalist	Daniel Blumberg
Conclave	Volker Bertelmann
Emilia Pérez	Clément Ducol and Camille
Wicked	John Powell and Stephen Schwartz
The Wild Robot	Kris Bowers

There is Daniel Blumberg’s work on The Brutalist and then the other candidates. His work makes the film thump and pound as it does, as he expertely layers his sounds to bleed the diegetic and non-diegetic elements of the soundscape. His triumphant score sets the tone for the film and its transformation throughout serves to formally align and juxtapose the films’ competing elements.

Even those who may not enjoy the film cannot help but be swept away by the operatic, grandiose quality of the score. Therefore, I believe that Daniel Blumberg is MOST LIKELY to win.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s work on both Challengers and Queer have been notibly omitted in spite of their vastly distinctive, yet equally evocatives dressing of their respective films. Neither of Guadagnino’s films are what they are without these aural textures, but given the exclusion of both of these works from any of the categories, it’s no surprise that the aural accoutrements of the works would get any recognition.

In addition, Kensuke Ushio’s work on The Colors Within is frustratingly missing in spite of the film’s explicit focus on music and the creation process that goes into the art-form. This is a score which features wonderful uses of the theremin amongst other instruments and its exclusion owes to The Academy’s general retience to acknowledge animated works outside of their animated qualities.

Finally, Robin Carolan’s operatic work on Nosferatu needs to be mentioned. The grandiose gothic leanings of the score transforms the represesed, dark vestiges it traverses into pockets of catharsis and generates beauty from the nightmarish.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

SONG	FILM	NOMINEES
El Mal	Emilia Pérez	Music by Clément Ducol and Camille; lyrics by Clément Ducol, Camille, and Jacques Audiard
The Journey	The Six Triple Eight	Music and lyrics by Diane Warren
Like a Bird	Sing Sing	Music and lyrics by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada
Mi Camino	Emilia Pérez	Music and lyrics by Camille and Clément Ducol
Never Too Late	Elton John: Never Too Late	Music and lyrics by Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt, and Bernie Taupin

El Mal will MOST LIKELY win the award and of the Emilia Pérez nominations this is certainly the one that I can get behind. The song is wonderfully choregraphed, featuring an absoltuely electric Zoe Saldaña who nails delivering the song with such finesse alongside with the electric camera movements that one can’t help but get into the rythm of the song as its use within its context.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

FILM	ACTOR
The Brutalist	Adrien Brody
A Complete Unknown	Timothée Chalamet
Sing Sing	Colman Domingo
Conclave	Ralph Fiennes
The Apprentice	Sebastian Stan

This is a race between Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet but I still believe that the former is MOST LIKELY to win the award due to his success at ceremonies during awards season.

However, the biggest omission from the performances is from Timothée Chalamet’s work in Dune: Part Two, which I think is a step above nominated work (which is absolutely wonderful). His range and transformation in Villeneuve’s work is absolutely transfixing.

Additionally, Justice Smith’s performance in I Saw the TV Glow is riveting and his calm, awkward, often self-abasing performance is filled with nuance and depth, sublmiating the film’s themes into facial expressions and physical ticks that devastate.

Gaudagnino’s leading men are also noticeably missing from recognition: Mike Faist absolutely serves in Challengers oscillating between competitive, hurt, horny, and complacent whenever the film needs; Daniel Craig’s somber longing makes Queer as melancholic and wistful as it is and showcases a depth which hasn’t been prevalent in his work up to this point.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

FILM	ACTOR
Anora	Yura Borisov
A Real Pain	Kieran Culkin
A Complete Unknown	Edward Norton
The Brutalist	Guy Pearce
The Apprentice	Jeremy Strong

Given his absolute decimation of this category throughout the season’s award shows, it’s not a MOST LIKELY as much as it is an inevitability that Kieran Culkin will win the award for his emotionally compelling work in A Real Pain.

However, it is Guy Pearce’s performance in The Brutalist which should win. It is an immense performance filled with nuances that elude surface level analysis and his ability to go toe-to-toe with Brody’s lead performance is what makes The Brutalist as engrossing and devastating as it is.

Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Willem DaFoe’s performances in Nosferatu are notable omissions as the two men who play counter-roles in the context of their characters relation to the supernatural nature of the plot give it the depth it needs to be as resonant.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

FILM	ACTRESS
Wicked	Cynthia Erivo
Emilia Pérez	Karla Sofía Gascón
Anora	Mikey Madison
The Substance	Demi Moore
I’m Still Here	Fernanda Torres

This is a race between Mikey Madison and Demi Moore and while I would personally tip my hat more to Madison, especially due to The Substance’s reliance on a balancing act between Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, the momentum is fully behind Moore who I believe is MOST LIKELY to win the award.

However, the inclusion of Demi Moore’s work in a genre film makes the omission Lily-Rose Depp’s performance in Nosferatu all the more troubling. Depp goes into full hystrionics in a way that is incredibly dificult to pull-off without coming off as caricature and she is the heart and soul of Eggers’ dark masterpiece.

Additionally, Kristen Dunst needs to be mentioned for her emotionally vulnerable, subtle transformative work in Civil War. Her arc is that of the film and is the necesary feature which lets the ending hit with the intensity by which it does.

Finally, Maika Monroe’s performance in Longlegs needs to be noted. Her quiet, socially-awkward cuts new ground in the genre and serves as the perfect vehicle for the audience to delve into the darker underpinnings of the world the film examines.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

FILM	ACTRESS
A Complete Unknown	Monica Barbaro
Wicked	Ariana Grande
The Brutalist	Felicity Jones
Conclave	Isabella Rosselini
Emilia Pérez	Zoe Saldaña

Given her absolute decimation of this category throughout the season’s award shows, it’s not a MOST LIKELY as much as it is an inevitability that Zoe Saldaña will win the award for her emotionally compelling work in The Holdovers.

However, it is Felicity Jones’ performance in The Brutalist which would be my personal choice as her appearance in the film triggers the dominos that make its conlcuding moments as poignant and cathartic as they are. Her show-stopping scene near the film’s end is utterly mesmerizing and is the best bit of acting amongst all the nominated performances.

Marget Qualley’s performance in The Substance is the biggest omission and one that has baffled me since the start of the Awards Show season given how much her balancing act with Demi Moore makes the film. Focusing on one performance over the other feels antiethical to the point the film makes which makes the lack of praise for one actress and the overwhelming support for the other absolutely puzzling. If Moore deserves her kudos(which she does), then Qualley deserves the same equally so.

2020s, 2024, Art House, Current, Drama, Epic, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Year

Film Review: The Brutalist – 2024

February 6, 2025 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Brady Corbet
Principal Cast	Adrien Brody as László Tóth Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren Felicity Jones as Erzsébet Tóth
Release Date	2024
Language(s)	English
Running Time	202 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Note: This review was done off of theatrical viewings of the film and as such the review does not feature images or extended granular analysis. Once I am able to get a physical copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from, the review will be updated to match the site’s standard review format.

A black screen, the ringing sound of sirens, then the text: Overture.

Just as he did in his previous two films, director Brady Corbet makes us formally aware that a thesis will be presented.

Glorious horns break in before the overture disappears and the sound of a shrieking woman pierces through the soundscape, shattering the grandiose aura.

A woman (Raffey Cassidy) is sat down and interrogated. She is tasked with explaining her family’s genealogy, give proof of her existence as a legible subject of the social order She remains silent and stares at the screen, forcing us into the position of interrogator struggling to make meaning of a gaze that avoids explanation.

Then, a cut: a new character, a new setting.

A man (Adrien Brody) tumbles around a boat and the chaotic sounds of the ship begin to overlay with the musicality of the overture; the line between that which is diegetic and that which is not blurs.

A woman’s voice layers over this sonic tapestry, reading from a letter. From her words we know that she is this man’s wife. She explains that she’s still alive and she is unable to come to him at the present. But her words are for us, not him – at least not yet.

He proceeds through the ship, bustling amongst the bodies on his journey to the deck. Finally, he reaches the outside.

The horns crescendos: Glory is here, hallelujah!

The camera turns and the Statue of Liberty occupies the frame; but this great symbol of American Freedom is presented upside down – a stark visual contrast to the booming of the horns and the presumed jubilation of the moment.

The man, László, beams with enthusiasm upon seeing this symbol of the American Dream, for unlike us, he sees the symbol as the powers that be intended it to be seen.

The woman’s speech ends: ” Go to America, I will follow you.”

Thus, the overture informs us of the deconstructive tendencies of the film, it’s desire to break-down that which it builds up:

The film opens on the image of a woman who refuses to answer that which she is asked while an unseen woman supplants the space the former’s voice would have occupied; visual and auditory presence is exchanged along the register of gender.
The triumphant score and narrative milieu immediately call the aesthetic of the Great American Novel caught on film but the image of Liberty rendered against itself calls the foundations of this image into question. The promise of freedom has been flipped on its head.
The formal bracketing of the women announcing and auguring the film’s subject, a man on a journey towards the dream, immediately invites question on the construction of narrative, both of the individual and of the statecraft.

From the outset, we are forced to decipher a labyrinth of symbols and associations wherein even seemingly simple exposition becomes something else totally.

New text materializes: Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival.

László gets off the ship and stands amongst the immigrants aboard the ship. An official gives the group instructions in English as a translator repeats the same information in another language; the two dialects overlay onto each other, confusing the presentation of the information even though the content of the utterances remain the same: difference materialized through the act of translation – the enigma of arrival, indeed.

Yet, despite possessing little income and being advised to be wary one’s use of their capital, László’s first free act off the boat is to find the nearest prostitute to avail himself of his wares. The lingering admission of love enunciated earlier to us as voice-over serves as stinging rejoinder to this seeming betrayal; we feel for this unseen woman and chastise our protagonist despite his lack of knowledge; dramatic irony is thus rendered a formal conceit, a function of exposition that creates distance from context.

But try as he may, László is unable to fully consummate his tryst, a failure which leads the brothel’s owner to suggest that his sexual proclivities may not fall within the heteronormative paradigms of the time. She suggests men. He rejects her repeated suggestions with an air of disdain, a repudiation which operates both to show us László’s reticence to being categorized, in this case as queer, and as a comment about the contours of sexuality, the manner in which masculine sexual inclination is positioned in particular.

As László acclimates to his new home, Corbet intersperses radio broadcasts about the domestic and foreign affairs at the time alongside historically-tinted propaganda video sections extolling American virtues (presented in a boxier video-format), constantly complicating our relationship to the information being presented. The assertion of fact in these proclamations trains us to be suspect of the relationship between enunciation and verisimilitude

The narrative proper which features scenes upon scenes of our primary characters explicitly asserting themselves become doubled due to this inculcation, and the dread of what is not said, the visible absence so to speak, continues to build critical mass against the apparent didactic being employed until its provocations threaten to expose the artifice of the film all together.

In this vein, The Brutalist operates in a dialect with itself through its Rorschach-like formal tactility. On the surface, the film contains all the trappings of the Great American Novel:

The story follows a rags-to-riches redemption story emblematic of the American Dream: László is a Holocaust survivor who is given a chance to continue his architectural genius under the purview of a new patron (Guy Ritchie)
Composer Daniel Blumberg’s mostly momentous score emphasizes the epic stature of the tale.
The formal demarcations of the film accentuate its novelistic quality, operating like chapters.

Yet, where the film shines is not the content of the narrative per-se as much as the structure by which it is presented. When the story as presented is viewed as veneer to be peeled back, the film transforms into a ghost story, one in which the myth of the epic assemblage haunts the story as a specter, both within the narrative proper (ex: diegetic and chronological ellipses) and around the narrative in the non-diegetic features.

By using the trappings of the Great American Novel, Corbet is able to toe the line between serious drama and deconstructive pastiche that his previous works have been unable to broach as successfully. Because we are aware generally of where László’s journey should go given our familiarity with the milieu, we are more perturbed by disturbances to that rhythm, a facet that the polarizing 2nd Part of the film exploits to full effect; when the film “cheats” and gets to the next preordained spot on our expected journey, we’re left to reckon with the through-line motivating the transition between the points without the usual journey which would explicate as much; when the film “breaks” with the structure and introduces a pivot that is seemingly out-of-place, we’re left recoiling with deducing what more commonplace moment has been replaced.

In either case, we are forced to use the film against itself, utilizing its ambiguities to mine into one another to craft a structure of meaning that can serve to scaffold the verifiable aspects of the film. This provocation is made explicit by the story, as László’s brutalist architecture, his artistic contribution, is constantly being symbolized, discussed, interpellated. We can’t help but caught up in analyzing the film’s grammar when the film centers itself around the same activity.

Ultimately, it is this act of interpretation, a brutality representing the most fundamental form of violence, that the film circulates around. The title then, a reference to both violence and art, is a confirmation of the intimate relationship between the two concepts and the manner in which the former both allows and enshrines the latter.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Brutalist sees the Great American novel rendered undo itself, operating as both a more traditional character-focused epic following a protagonist struggling to achieve the American Dream whilst deconstructing the meaning of that Dream and the ideological consequences of its deployment, presenting its findings as a Rorschach test that will give viewers as much as they put in.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

Pages: 1 2 3

2025, Article, List

2025 – Top 10 Most Anticipated Films

January 2, 2025 The Critic Leave a comment

With the new year officially upon us, here are the 10 films I am most excited for (based on projected release dates).

My list is certainly auteur driven and is less focused on the subject matter of the films themselves. The best filmmakers usually make the best films and my picks reflect my taste among auteurs and the quality of their works leading up to the film in question.

**10. Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linklater**

Linklater’s 2020’s output has been consistent with both Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood and Hit Man serving as solid additions to the director’s oeuvre, so Nouvelle Vague would have been something to keep my ears out for anyways; but in the past few years I’ve come to genuinely enjoy the French New Wave’s importance and relevance within the history of film. In particular, I have found myself circling the behemoth that is Godard’s filmography.

The idea of Linklater tackling the milieu and genesis of Godard’s Breathless at that sounds too exciting a prospect to miss out on.

Additionally, Linklater has always been an excavator of dialogue and an surveyor of chronology, so seeing his take on one of cinema’s great linguists (both in the spoken word and film grammar), Godard, in a wholly different language, French opposed to English, at the moment when Godard would change the schema of cinema entirely with his groundbreaking debut film, sounds like it has all the parts that could let Linklater truly let loose in a way his past few entries haven’t allowed.

**9. Hope by Na Hong Jin**

While Na’s first two features are remarkable, it is his 2016 foray into horror with his feature The Wailing which put him on my radar and made his next film an immediate must-see.

The Wailing is one of the densest, most intricately written and woven horror films of the 21st century and deserves comparisons to the best. Fans were able to partially whet their appetite for a Na with his screenplay contributions to 2021’s The Medium, but nothing can substitute the feeling of watching his direction proper. Here’s to hoping that the long gestation period will deliver.

**8. Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-Ho**

This has been the longest period between films for the prolific auteur from South Korea made all the more curious given that his last film, 2019’s Parasite, was a critical and commercial darling. For me, it also stands as his finest (which is certainly a compliment when your filmography contains Memories of Murder), so my anticipation for this next work is palpable to say the least.

In addition, the pairing of Bong with Robert Pattinson, a star whose iconic performances in multiple arthouse hits (Good Time, The Lighthouse) and outings in bigger blockbusters ( Tenet, The Batman) have demonstrated his versatility and depth, is exciting to imagine (especially after hearing that voice in the trailer).

Additionally, as a huge fan of his last fully English science-fiction feature, Snowpiercer, the subject matter and change in language feel like they could allow Bong to do something spectacular once more.

Fingers crossed that this does not get delayed again.

**7. Resurrection by Bi Gan**

Few modern filmmakers have treaded into the liminal space between reality and dream in such ethereal fashion as Bi has in recent years. His 2018 film Long Day’s Journey Into the Night and 2022 short A Short Story demonstrated his unique voice and ability to set a slow and dreamy tone like few others in the artform and certainly feels like its descended from a lineage including Andrei Tarkovsky and Apichatpong Weerasethakul – good company to say the least.

Resurrection’s synopsis mentions dreams, being lost in time, and androids – all markers which augur well for a Bi film (and remind me quite a lot of Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 which makes me all the more excited).

**6. Orphan by László Nemes**

With one of the best debuts of the 21st century in 2016’s Son of Saul and his nearly equally triumphant second feature in 2018’s Sunset, Nemes has marked himself as a director to pay special attention to. He is daring formalist whose sheer dedication to carving out an aesthetic from the sublime and terrible makes his moving images immediately captivating.

The moment I saw he was doing another film in an oppressive historical milieu, my interest was piqued. It’s always a pleasure to see a master crafter doing what they do best.

**5. The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson**

Any Wes Anderson film is an event to be marked, and with his dogged formal commitment and evolution in the 2020’s present in his features The French Dispatch and Asteroid City along with his series of Roald Dahl shorts/anthology film, the anticipation for his next film is all the greater.

The French Dispatch saw him playing with his commitment to breaking apart stories at a formal level while Asteroid City and his anthology work showed him using his style in an increasingly aware style that makes the incredible artifice of his work even more layered. As a fan of Wes Anderson’s pictorial beauty and melancholic narrative sensibilities, it’s his formal work that most excites me now.

This is very much an auteur still finding the limits and thresholds of his particular style, one whose nuance in expression has become even more poignant with his most recent offerings. Here’s hoping that his latest continues the trend.

**4. Die My Love by Lynne Ramsay**

Ramsay’s oeuvre is certifiable proof that quantity is not quality as her four features over multiple decades comprise a filmography that could go pound-for-pound with many of the forms greatest. No one else is able to quite capture the way characters are ensnared, molded, and react to traumatic wastelands with such poetic brevity. There is a texture in her films that is immediately apparent and eludes textual description; she’s a filmmaker whose works can only be experienced because the narrative, so to speak, hangs off the image like a drape on windows, accentuating but never overdetermining.

With a cast that features Jennifer Lawrence in the lead and multiple surrounding stars (including Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek, and LaKeith Stanfield) and a genre, horror-comedy, that her work has played with more tangentially, it seems like we’re in for yet another indelible cinematic offering.

**3. One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson**

There is a good argument that Paul Thomas Anderson is the greatest working director and many of his 21st century works (including There Will Be Blood, The Master, Punch Drunk Love) are in contention for the best #1 position on many “Best Of” lists.

His latest feature marks his first collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, who likewise has a similar argument for being the finest working actor in the modern era and some of his finest performances (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Revenant) come from the last decade.

Any collaboration between stars is one to to keep ones eyes out for, but a collaboration between two superstars in their respective artforms is a whole other deal. Given the budget and IMAX screenings the film received, it will be a beast to behold regardless of whether or not it reaches PTA’s peaks.

In any other year, this would easily be my number one pick, but due to both nature of personal biases it slots in at three.

**2. Eddington by Ari Aster**

Ari Aster is my favorite director out of all the most recent auteurs. His works are the ones I have found myself most entranced by and I find myself returning to them to mine their formal conceits again and again. His current run of Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau is Afraid is truly a behemoth to witness in real-time.

He’s a true formalist with a gift for directing actors and Beau demonstrates his willingness to push the limits of maximalist storytelling in ways that are wholly original and engrossing.

Eddington sees him working once again with Joaquin Phoenix (whose work in Beau is certainly some of his and 2023’s best) and Emma Stone (who is coming off a hot-streak from her collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos) along with Austin Butler (whose transformations in both Elvis and Dune: Part Two have certainly made him someone to watch for).

But interestingly enough, this also marks his first feature apart from his longtime cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski. Instead, Eddington will be lensed by legendary DP Darius Khondji (who coincidentally also lensed Mickey 17). It’ll be curious to see how Aster’s visual language changes (or stays the same) as a result.

If anything, seeing him tackle the Western with his patented black humor and absurdist horrific tendencies with this cast will be a treat.

**1. No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook**

Park is one of the great masters of the art-form. Full stop.

He’s made multiple masterpieces in multiple decades and his most recent 2022 film, Decision to Leave, is proof that he is still at the top of his game.

No Other Choice has been a long gestating film for him for developed over years and is one he has described as wanting to make as his “masterpiece.”

When an artist of this caliber and consistency announces their passion project, you best be ready.

Uncategorized, Viewing Challenge

Halloween 2024: 31 Day Horror Marathon

October 1, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

Welcome to the Critic’s Sanctum’s 6th Annual 31-Day Horror Marathon!

With Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu on the horizon this Christmas, a remake of one of the most (if not the outright the most) famous vampire films to grace the big screen, I thought it fitting to explore the vampire sub-genre through history and the manner in which the creature has both been mythologized and deployed.

The initial entries present unique visions of the vampire from the earlier ages of the cinematic medium. These films form the template that a large host of the sub-genre has lifted from since.

After this introduction, the entries focus on re-articulations of these classic tales. These films are attempts at either differently representing the origin stories or hyper focusing on certain aspects to exaggerate a feeling or set of themes.

With the figure of the vampire more clearly defined, we will move to an exploration of the monster and the manner in which it’s deployed in more traditional narratives that are less focused on articulating an origin story. Some of these entries are art-house leaning while others are more conventional in order to thoroughly examine the narrative potential the vampire opens up.

Finally, the marathon concludes with experimental explorations of the vampire. These films may or may not include “real” vampires as we’ve been accustomed to up to the point, but they do explore the vampire as a conceptual metaphor or conceit.

The List

DATE	FILM	DIRECTOR	YEAR
10-1-2024	Nosferatu	F. W. Murnau	1922
10-2-2024	Dracula	Todd Browning	1931
10-3-2024	Vampyr	Carl Theodor Dreyer	1932
10-4-2024	Nosferatu the Vampyre	Werner Herzog	1979
10-5-2024	Dracula	Terence Fisher	1958
10-6-2024	Bram Stoker’s Dracula	Francis Ford Coppola	1992
10-7-2024	Count Dracula	Jesús Franco	1970
10-8-2024	Vampyros Lesbos	Jesús Franco	1971
10-9-2024	The Rape of the Vampire	Jean Rollin	1968
10-10-2024	The Nude Vampire	Jean Rollin	1970
10-11-2024	The Shiver of the Vampires	Jean Rollin	1971
10-12-2024	Black Sunday	Mario Bava	1960
10-13-2024	The Fearless Vampire Killers	Roman Polanski	1967
10-14-2024	Valerie and Her Week of Wonders	Jaromil Jireš	1970
10-15-2024	Blood For Dracula	Paul Morrissey	1974
10-16-2024	The Hunger	Tony Scott	1983
10-17-2024	Lifeforce	Tobe Hooper	1985
10-18-2024	Cronos	Guillermo del Toro	1992
10-20-2024	Interview With a Vampire	Neil Jordan	1994
10-20-2024	Vampires	John Carpenter	1998
10-21-2024	Let the Right One In	Tomas Alfredson	2008
10-22-2024	Thirst	Park Chan-wook	2009
10-23-2024	Twixt	Francis Ford Coppola	2011
10-24-2024	Only Lovers Left Alive	Jim Jarmusch	2013
10-25-2024	A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night	Ana Lily Amirpour	2014
10-26-2024	Doctor Sleep	Mike Flanagan	2019
10-27-2024	El Conde	Pablo Larrain	2023
10-28-2024	Shadow of the Vampire	E. Elias Merhige	2000
10-29-2024	Martin	George Romero	1977
10-30-2024	Arrebato	Iván Zulueta	1979
10-31-2024	Cuadecuc, vampir	Pere Portabella	1970

2020s, 2022, Action, B, Comedy, Fantasy, Grade, Horror, Past, Review, review-movie, vampire, Year

Film Review: Renfield – 2023

May 14, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Chris McKay
Principal Cast	Nicholas Hoult as Renfield Nicolas Cage as Dracula Awkwafina as Rebecca
Release Date	2022
Language(s)	English
Running Time	93 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The film opens on a name tag: Renfield.

The camera slowly pans up from this moniker to its recipient who looks up to a speaker talking about a “monster” whom she can’t seem to get away from. We’re made aware that this is a self-help group of sorts and the crowd of persons there listen fully invested in this monstrous metaphorical dressing of a toxic employer.

The lighting is a sickly, neon green, accentuating the toxicity of the discourse in the environment and highlighting Renfield’s pale, emaciated visage.

This young man then proceeds to address the audience in a fourth-wall breaking speech, explaining to the viewer that he, like the rest of the group, persons who he describes as “decent folks”, is in a “destructive relationship.”

We quickly flash to a supernatural action set-piece, an environment which is lit more “normally” than the self-help group, and a man runs off walls while being assailed and then stares at the screen with his fangs flashing. But before we can feel the bite of the moment, the frame pauses on this monstrous visage and lets the terror sink its teeth.

Renfield quickly shifts gears in order to provide context for the visceral flashback and the film cuts once again, moving to grainy black-and-white footage inspired/edited from Browning and Freund’s iconic 1931 film, Dracula. The pieces come together: we’re watching a sequel and the character addressing is us none other than the iconic Renfield of old, the salesman-turned-assistant to the legendary Dracula.

We see our hero’s doomed journey to the vampiric overlord’s grand manor and are treated to scenes, digitally altered to change the actors of both Dracula and Renfield to the modern actors playing them in this film. This quick summation of the older film is narrated in quirky fashion by our protagonist who takes the words of the weary woman which we previously heard and applies them directly to his own situation thereby literalizing the monstrous metaphor.

He described the process by which he was turned into a “familiar” that includes a quick textual definition which pops onto the screen to explain the terms of his “employment” and dresses up the evil machinations of his master with a modern parlance that belies the situation and injects a wry comedy to the moment.

With the set-up complete, we cut back to the first flash-back and witness as Dracula is manipulated and nearly beaten in battle. But just as he’s about to taste defeat, he looks at Renfield and implores his most loyal employee to help. Renfield is caught in Dracula’s gaze and his silky words, a commentary on the codependence and abusive nature of their relationship. Then, we’re able to witness an absolute bloodbath filled with comic amounts of gore and effects which accentuate the campy nature that the film is aiming at.

Dracula wins the battle but suffers debilitating injuries due to being exposed to the sun and Renfield explains that this is just a cycle repeating. As he explains: “At the peak of his powers, Dracula goes on a full-tilt blood-sucking bender, the good guys show up and do their thing, and then it’s up to me to clean up the mess.”

During this explanation, the two are framed by a circular door, a subtle affirmation of this cyclical explanation, where Renfield stands in the middle, straddling the line between Dracula, the prince of Darkness, and the light emanating from the window, beams which would have killed the evil if not for Renfield’s intervention. The stakes are established: Renfield is not one of the “good guys” but thinks of himself as a “decent” person who is struggling now to make the correct decision.

We cut back to the present day where we learn that as part of his duties, Renfield is tasked with moving Dracula, finding a new locale to store his batty boss, and then help him gain power while waiting for it the inevitable moment where the endeavor goes sour and the entire process has to be started once more. It’s no coincidence that that our unwilling employee is framed in a restaurant with a horrific, monstrous head behind him, consuming him just as he’s consumed by his master’s orders which are oriented around the act of consumption.

Yet, when asked to explain this story to the diegetic audience of the self-help group, Renfield shies away and claims that the group would never be able to understand the specific nature of his trauma; after all, there’s a difference between a cranky boss and a literal demon who yearns for the blood of innocents.

However, in spite of his reluctance to explicitly share within the catharsis offered by the setting, Renfield doesn’t leave the meetings empty handed; he doesn’t give his stories, but he takes his fellow cohorts’ tales of victimhood as signals by which to select targets for Dracula; the morality of the situation gels with him easier knowing that he’s taking out minor “monsters”, the only fitting dish for the heinous gourmand giving him these murderous orders.

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) punches a head.

Immediately, we see the employee of the century spring into action.

He ingests insects which give him his supernatural powers and proceeds to hunt down a target. In the first of many action set-pieces, we’re able to witness campy and kinetic action induced by the absurd neon lighting flourishes, kinetic yet quirky camera movements, and gratuitous injuries with blood abound. It’s a whole host of fun which is then accentuated by the introduction of the film’s B-Plot, a crime family who has dealings with the same cretins that Renfield finds himself dispatching, and suddenly, our vampire acolyte finds himself facing off with a masked, lumbering foe in raucous aplomb.

The violence of the encounter is felt by the son of the crime family in charge, Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz), who swiftly departs the scene of the butchering and ends up being accosted and then arrested by a traffic cop, Rebecca (Awkwafina), desperately searching for a way to apply her skills in a more meaningful manner in her efforts to clean the streets of crime. Thus, the supernatural vampire story becomes inextricably tied to a light, crime narrative.

Renfield takes the bodies to the new abode.

It’s with this dichotomy in place, that the film ventures to more ambitious grounds.

We see Renfield drag the corpses from his battle to a decrepit building high in stature, a call-back to the castle shown in the opening flash-back, and he proceeds towards his master’s lair which is lighted by neon greens and reds which accentuate the sickness of the milieu.

It’s here where Dracula, dressed in a disgusting half-formed prosthetic showcasing his lack of power and injured state, dresses Renfield down for not bringing good enough victims, innocents whose blood would truly fuel the dark lord, and proceeds to abuse his liege until the would-be hero re-affirms his role in life and pathetically pledges his allegiance once more.

Meanwhile, the exact same scenario plays out with Teddy. He is freed from the police building, enters his family’s large mansion which is grand and opulent, and then goes to meet his mother, Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo), the leader of the group, who is busy torturing unseen victims behind a screen which leaves only their silhouettes for us to witness. This space is also dressed in distinctive neon lights, red and blue, and she similarly takes her liege, her son qua employee, to task for his failures in maintaining the family name and the fearful deterrence that it ought to evoke in its foes.

He too is forced to re-affirm his dedication to the family’s cause and is told to right the situation which he’s so badly botched, an order which forces him to confront Renfield, the man who got in his way and stopped his goon from carrying out the previous evening’s mission.

Thus, the two genre perspectives are formally married as complimentary sections, and Dracula is rendered as an analog to a Godfather figure, a crime lord in his own right (though his proclivities and activities make the Lobos pale in comparison). This posturing is intriguing and gives the film and its respective narrative an interesting position by which to couch itself within the horror genre as less a rote vampire story and more an examination of the commonplace structure that governs vampire mythos.

Unfortunately, where the film stumbles the most is precisely in this area due to its inability in highlighting the most interesting aspects afforded through this juxtaposition.

Instead of honing in on the idea of Dracula as a crime-lord looking to build his analog to a mafia-like empire and Renfield as the “rat” who threatens to bring it all down, focus is given more so to Renfield’s journey and entanglement with Rebecca, a morally upstanding officer who motivates him in his journey for redemption and who is unfortunately the least interesting and compelling character within the narrative proper.

Her goody-goody schtick gets boring quickly especially once she’s played her role in motivating Renfield to better herself, rendering her mostly superfluous to the narrative. With nothing else to do with her character and no interesting developments in their relationship, the sections between these two characters quickly devolve into quips and ham-fisted attempts at a light romance that undermine the tension, momentum, and obscene fun of the moments involving Dracula and his attempts at becoming a legitimate name in the vein of the Lobos.

It’s a bloody shame because Cage’s Dracula is absolutely a gonzo villain, a madman dripping in menace and condescension. He’s campy and mean-spirited in the best way and elevates the film whenever he appears. The way he rides Renfield and simultaneously reinforces and exposes the toxic, interdependent nature of their relationship, an extension of the help-group’s commentary on bad bosses, is the heart of the film; yet these moments, far and few between, are rarely given their moments to shine in the sun.

This uneven feeling is due to the film’s inability to translate its formal and stylistic tools evenly throughout the film. At a larger level, the care demonstrated in the stylizations of the Dracula vs non-Dracula sections is lop-sided. The intensely neon lit set-pieces, the energetic camera work, the 4th-wall breaking meta-commentary, and the endearing splatter effects all but disappear whenever the vampire mafioso is not present leading to a feeling of relative apathy when we’re stuck dealing with entire chunks of the film which are played closer to the stylings of an inert rom-com, one that is replete with moments of random humor (a diatribe regarding ska music is groan inducing in particular) that have no bearing, clever or otherwise, in regards to anything else going on in the screen; the passion or energy that would help these sections compete with the Dracula moments is simply missing.

Yet, even the Dracula sections feel like they could pack more punch as they lack the kinetic momentum and rapid-fire stylistic flourishes of the opening which neatly utilizes textual interludes and edited flash-backs of the older Dracula film to position the film as a sequel and examination of the lore underpinning it. Instead, the Dracula sections, fun as they are, rely entirely on Cage and Hoult playing out their abusive coupling and carnage candy, a formula which is entertaining but doesn’t have nearly the bite that was initially promised.

Consequently, the scattered pieces of the film never coagulate into something that quite rises to the amount of blood being spilled. The entanglement of the sub-genres comes off as clunky instead of nuanced and at times it almost feels like one is watching two different films which were forcefully smashed together instead of one compelling piece using its different aspects in an intertextual manner which the initial formal structure of the piece would otherwise suggest.

Thus, while the greatest bits of the film feel in line with the best of director Chris McKay’s work in The Lego Batman Movie, the lesser sections are at best mildly entertaining and at worst act as bogs that we’re forced to wade through. And though the plot beats eventually congeal into a memorably carnivalesque finale loaded with absurd moments and wonderful comedic beats, it’s hard to shake off the bad blood of the lesser sections holding the film back from rising to its potential.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Renfield attempts to marry the crime and vampire genres but is unable to fully tap into its mixture to examine the idea of Dracula as a godfather-type figure. Yet, the film does endear itself to the audience during its kinetic, carnage-candy moments and the interactions between Dracula and Renfield provide enough bite for audiences who can wade through the less inspired, rom-com sections that the film is unfortunately bogged down by.
Rating	7.9/10
Grade	B

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

Pages: 1 2 3

April Fools, Article, Holidays, Satire

Cinema Explored: A View on Modern Audiences in the Theatrical Space

April 2, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

As the iconic Nicole Kidman espouses in her long-running advert for AMC Theatres: “We come to this place for magic (…)and we go somewhere we’ve never been before; not just entertained, but somehow reborn. Together.”^[1]Nicole Kidman – AMC theatres. we make movies better. Genius. (n.d.-b). https://genius.com/Nicole-kidman-amc-theatres-we-make-movies-better-annotated

Her revelation of the cinematic space par excellence, the communal grounds wherein audiences can come together and experience audio-visual ecstasy in transformative fashion, rings truer today than it ever has before as modern audiences have taken the duty to enact these ideations and make them a reality that each and every one of us, persons willing to to buy tickets and carve out time in their schedules to go to such spaces, can experience in ways we never even thought possible.

Tickets and Anticipation

Tickets go on sale for the latest film that catches your attention. It’s a blockbuster. Or it’s an indie production. Perhaps, it’s even at art-house romp. Regardless of its inherent nature, this filmic media calls out to you, inviting you to experience it on the big screen and engage in an experience you couldn’t have anywhere else.

This ticket, one you eagerly purchased in anticipation of the experience waiting to be unlocked by it, sits in the palm of your hand, whether it be doled out as a more classical stub or a more modern code to be scanned later.

You count down the time before the film is set to play. For some, this waiting time is weeks or even months and for others its mere moments before showtime is set to start. No matter which side of the aisle you end up on, the anticipation before the feature whets your appetite. We’re counting on this experience to fill us up, providing a meal that could only be cooked in this environment at this designated time.

Finally, the moment arrives. The film is about to start as the adverts playing before this main course finally die down. Anticipation builds and reaches a fever pitch as we hanker down for what we were promised: to be “reborn.”

The Film Starts

Then the film starts up and the wonderous interplay between sound and image fill the space. The large screen becomes a massive canvas where visions can play out while the speakers surrounding the enclosed space begin to immerse you with their pristine sounds.

You lean back in your chair and begin to take it all in, soaking in the wealth of details offered by the artifice of the theatre. We, the audience, sit together and take in this larger-than-life vision, one created by various artists across a plethora of disciplines working together in an attempt to create something that will make our decision to attend the show worth it.

After all, ticket prices have increased across the board and time feels like it’s becoming increasingly scarce. Finding both the energy and the finances to go down to the theatre to enjoy the experience is an act of faith that must be rewarded.

Enter the Modern Audience

Sensing this dilemma and hoping to ensure that such disappointment does not come to fruition, the modern audience, one that represents a solid chunk of persons and not the collective audience at large, takes it upon themselves to ensure that these promises are kept and the theatrical experience not only meets expectations but exceeds them entirely.

However, these valiant soldiers of the art-form have few means available to them by which to do as much. After all, it’s not like they can directly go in and edit the movie itself. So, they must improvise with the tools at their disposal to create the best possible space for appreciating the movie playing

Sound Design

Of course, the first and most widely available tool in these heroes’ toolboxes is their ability to contribute to lend their talents to the audio-mix.

Some of these good Samaritans have realized that the time of the audio-commentary has disappeared, a disappointing trend that renders the films themselves the only thing to experience during their run-time.^[2]Larman, A. (2020, October 22). The death of the DVD commentary: Alexander Larman. The Critic Magazine. https://thecritic.co.uk/the-death-of-the-dvd-commentary/ But audio-commentary adds a whole new layer to what’s going on, providing a feedback and explanation of why certain aspects of the picture are working and what parts of it we should pay more attention to.

Comments made during the movie, by audience members who try their best to be loud such as to ensure that everyone else can partake in the fuller experience, fill this gap and accentuate the idea of community that’s so important to the theatre in general.

A “isn’t that the person from that thing?”, draws attention to the impressive bodies of work that members of the crew have accumulated and helps us appreciate the scope of their careers, ones that would go unnoticed outside of the most current role on the screen if not for the reminder.

Series of “wait, so what just happened?” ensure that the no one is ever lost in the flow of the story, as they’re constantly reminded of key events during and after their moment on the screen. Why wait for a flashback or an explanation and risk the chance of not understanding something? Instead, being constantly reminded of previous scenes or bits of dialogue, sometimes multiple times in a row from a slew of modern audience members in the crowd, ensures that there is absolutely no room to not know what’s going on.

Meanwhile, a “this sucks” or “hell, yeah!” lets us know that our opinion of what’s happening in the film may in fact be wrong and that we should pay more attention such as to not get duped. We wouldn’t want to end up unfairly judging the piece with just our own opinions. Having help ensures that we give the movie a fair shot.

These types of comments also act as reviews — a buy one, get one free deal— that really lets us get the bang for our buck. Now we don’t even have to take the time to go and watch videos or read analyses after our viewing because we get to learn what others think in the moment without even having had to leave our chairs. The more people join in, the larger the value of the experience is. Bigger is always better, and the modern audience understands that better than anybody.

But the fun doesn’t stop there.

Some members of the modern audience realize the importance of sub-text and meta-textual interplay, understanding that it’s the relation between works that allows hidden meanings to become noticeable. These precocious people take it upon themselves to introduce these extra narrative layers to the film.

Some of them have conversations amongst themselves, ensuring that any moment of silence has some audio to go along with it. That way no one ever gets bored and they always have something to listen to. When something is happening, these conversations force us to be fully engaged, as we really have to hanker down and focus on what exactly is being said within the film.

The more intense version of these upstanding movie-goers are those who decide to have dialogues with persons not even in the environment. By taking out their phone during a showing and having a conversation that also layers over the film’s dialogue, they really make the audience hanker down and give full attention to the speakers.

But there’s the added benefit of bringing in another party to the experience from afar, as the persons on the other side of the phone conversations now get to be involved within the community present in the space without having to even be there. Now people who were unable to make it to the showing can joyfully participate with those excited cineastes who paid for their tickets and made the journey down, uniting distinctive groups of people that may otherwise not have such a chance to interact.

Phones also give the modern audience the ability to play composer. Cellphone ringtones playing constantly, one after another, can help fill otherwise quiet moments and ensure that they don’t feel too boring or hard to get through and may have the added benefit of introducing us to musical endeavors that we would have otherwise not been privy to. I personally can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a track as a ringtone and thought to myself: “Now that’s a song I need to add to my playlist!”

Visual Layering

But movies are so much more than just their sound. Video on the screen might be an even bigger part of the allure of the experience, and here, modern audiences have truly innovated when compared to their historical counterparts.

Obviously, the phone users are punching above their weight, somehow changing both the soundscape and the way the screen itself is viewed. Bright lights scattered around the room make the screen one of many objects to look at, giving everyone else multiple objects to look at if they find that staring at one particular screen, the big one in the front of the room, gets too cumbersome for them. This way there’s always diversity present, ensuring that the movie itself does not overwhelm viewers who would otherwise be forced to pay attention to it the entire time.

But this recent era has seen the rise of “vapers”, modern audience members who decided that lights weren’t enough of a visual accompaniment and that a more poignant visual layer was necessary in the form of plumes of smoke punctuating the air and becoming hyper-visible in the projection light.

This gesture transforms the 2-D experience into a multi-dimensional one, as the smoke adds a new visual layer, a type of opacity, that you can actually touch and feel and the fragrance of these vapors takes it even further, tapping into an olfactory dimension that cinema hadn’t had before – an innovation in form if there ever was one.

The most dedicated members make sure to take as many puffs as possible and blow the smoke out in all directions, ensuring that their activity is noticed and that fellow viewers don’t miss out on the artistic flourishes being added.

Communal Engagement

The net result of these active changes to the filmic experience present newfound moments for community bonding between members of the audience who aren’t quite as modern. Now they’re presented with chances to get in on the action.

The chattering, the lights, the smokes, and the smells all allow chances for new interactions to bloom within the cinematic space, as audience members who aren’t as comfortable with the dynamic landscape often find themselves networking with the modern members, asking them to “be quiet”, “stop talking”, “stop blowing smoke due to allergies”, and the like.

These interactions, moments of genuine communication coming from the heart, would have never happened if not for the brave actions of modern audiences who push the boundaries of what the theatrical experience can be.

The Take-Aways

If the reason we go to theatres is to engage in a community experience wherein we take in fully the moving picture, a combination of both visuals and audios, meant to tap our senses and move us to new places that make the cinematic adventure wholly unique, something that would never happen in the privacy of our homes, then the modern audience makes up the viewers who are most committed to the cause.

These are the heroes taking on the responsibilities of the cinematic zone, ensuring that other viewers take away from the theatre something that would have otherwise never gotten. As Nicole tells us “We come to this place…for magic” and with a modern audience like this, we’ll certainly leave having experienced something akin to that. ^[3]Nicole Kidman – AMC theatres. we make movies better. Genius. (n.d.-b). https://genius.com/Nicole-kidman-amc-theatres-we-make-movies-better-annotated.

2020s, 2022, B+, Comedy, Grade, Horror, Past, Review, review-movie, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies – 2022

March 24, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Halina Reijn
Principal Cast	Amandla Stenberg as Sophie Maria Bakalova as Bee Myha’la Herrold as Jordan Chase Sui Wonders as Emma Rachel Sennott as Alice
Release Date	2022
Language(s)	English
Running Time	94 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Closeup of Bee and Sophie making out. The focus is on the erotic element.

The soundscape is littered with the sounds of birds and bees, animalistic noises and the symbols of sexual euphemism come to life, as the camera focuses on a fitting image of a loving, lustful engagement – a gratuitous make-out session – whose noises enter into the cacophony. The frame’s first focus is the encounter, the experience and not the experiencers – an intentional choice that affirms a “living in the moment.”

Then, the camera pulls back to reveal the subjects of this amorous encounter, Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova), who are caught in the throes of passion, their desire for their respective partner’s body overwhelming any other drive – humans rendered as their basest selves.

From this vantage point, the greenery surrounding the couple in the backdrop shot out-of-focus to render it into a hue of colors, an impressionistic embrace and framing by nature, calls back to the idyllic Eden, this time populated by two Eves.

This paradise continues for a while until Sophie declares her love to Bee, the latter of which smiles back without giving a verbal response.

The title card drops as the duo looks at their phones.

The enunciation is immediately interrupted by the harsh musical tunings of Slayyyter ‘s “Daddy AF” and we cut to the two characters, previously protected by the lush greens, now encased in a metallic husk, a car, with phones in their hands as opposed to on one another – technological transmutation, a counterpoint to the openings positioning of the human as pure animality freed from anthropocentric constraints.

With the shift to this “hi-tech” humanity, we see new concerns bleed into the environment, replacing the love from before with a sense of worry. Bee looks at her phone with concern, scrolling through it with a sense of dread. Sophie attempts to assuage her, claiming that her friends’ digital personas, profiles Bee is looking over are not as “nihilistic” as portrayed and are indicative of what said friends want others “to think” of them.

Thus, the phone is rendered as a barrier to unfettered love, a portal to false images by which persons can look at others in an artificial, distanced manner.

The camera cuts from the inside of the vehicle to wide shots of the vehicle traversing lush, green mountains before a nice aerial shot reveals a wide-spanning mansion, the location of the get-together that Sophie is taking Bee to, a party with the aforementioned friends that Bee feels the need to research before meeting in an attempt to not make a fool of herself. We’re a far ways from the idyllic Eden where love can find and cultivate itself without regards for the thoughts of outside observers.

Bee (Maria Bakalova) and Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) kiss in front of the greens.

The couple gets out and heads to the luxurious abode but Bee hesitates and claims she has to retrieve something from the vehicle. Sophie rushes over, tells her not to dally for too long, and kisses her partner once again. But this attempt to channel the Edenic opening fails. There’s a space here made all the more poignant by the greens around them which are now fully in focus: discreteness generates distance.

Bee goes back to the car and immediately checks her face in the rear-view mirror, touching up her image to ensure that her ensuing meeting with the persons she’s spent time researching will come to joyous fruition. The reflective surface serves as an analog to the phone from earlier, an interface by which the ego can render itself into its most pleasing form.

Satisfied by her appearance, she finally gets out and begins to walk into the abode. The shot frames her in the background with the car’s dashboard and mirror in the foreground. We watch her move towards the house and cut right as she disappears behind the mirror she’s just spent time consulting with: she’s entered the mirror world, the realm of appearances.

David (Pete Davidson) and Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) float.

Meanwhile, the mansion’s inhabitants peacefully float around in a pool, a man-made approximation of nature, of Eden, that can’t recreate the same idyllic peace but serves as a temporary reprieve, a metaphorical womb of sorts. This moment is interrupted by the presence of Sophie; she appears at the edge of the pool, her image distorted and shifting, and disrupts the reflection of those below. Confrontation looms at the boundary of the water qua mirror, a counterpoint of sorts to Bee’s earlier moment by herself.

The crew comes up and engages with Sophie. Alice (Rachel Sennot) eagerly greets her friend while the rest of the group slowly acclimates to the presence, treating their supposed comrade more like an intrusion, questioning her presence at their get-together. As all the characters pop out, Greg (Lee Pace) pops out of the water and reveals that the paradisal picture was merely a competition ground; the group had been testing the limits of their breathing capacities and he’s won the competition. The game of compare and contrast has already started.

Bee (Maria Bakalova) is framed alone in the house.

While this group converses, Bee enters the house, a moment which showcases the opulence of the manor in a wonderful tracking shot that starts on the ceiling and goes to Bee’s face as she gazes around entranced. A cut shows her framed by the doors of the house, a new entrant to the world of the bourgeoise who finds herself held in its purview. She enters the backyard pool environment and is initially cast alone, her outsider status re-affirmed.

Sophie quickly runs to her partner’s side, wraps her arms around her, and begins to introduce her to the rest of the crowd, stopping on Greg who is revealed to be Alice’s most recent beau, another new entrant to this social scene – seemingly obvious given his age gap compared to the rest of the group. The framing switches from Bee alone to Bee with Sophie to the couple now cast to one side of the frame against the already established group – two worlds primed to collide.

Greg’s immediate reaction to learning that this is THE Sophie immediately informs us of an undercurrent pervading this social scene, one that has been building since her cohorts first became aware of her appearance. There’s a palpable tension building as we wait to learn what Sophie’s done. Just like Bee, we’re outsiders to this group’s dynamic and must learn how to swim in its ebb and flow.

Quickly, thinly veiled barbs start materializing into larger concerns. The group calls out Sophie for being unresponsive in the group chat. She hasn’t been part of the group’s festivities in some time and her presence is a genuine surprise to everyone else. What exactly does she want?

Then, Alice goes to get champagne to celebrate the festivities. David (Pete Davidson), the party’s host, chastises her for taking his “dad’s shit”, revealing this abode and everything within as part of the generational wealth he’s been born into, but he ultimately doesn’t push the matter when she exclaims the presence of their seemingly unavailable friend warrants a toast. In perfect synergy with his partner, Greg then comes out into the fray with an antique sword and slices the bottle open in a wonderful show, a demonstration which upsets David even more than the retrieval of the bottle. He not only repeats his warning to not touch his father’s property but goes so far as to act and grab the weapon away from the only other male presence – class and gender become inextricably tied as masculinity becomes coded, albeit jokingly, as a threat.

The subtle interactions of the group reveal their individual relationships to one another and to wealth itself which help inform both us and Bee of the underlying dynamics at work, an interplay which has become more complex as an unseen member, Max (Conner O’Malley) is disclosed to be missing due to alluded antagonisms. Additionally, the group realizes that they too are unfamiliar with the new Sophie who surprises everyone with her announcement of sobriety. Suddenly, the reason for the toast itself, a gesture meant to include Sophie within the festivities with aplomb, is undermined and leaves the group searching for something new to celebrate.

In a sick joke, as if we needed any more proof of the group’s opulence, they choose to then dedicate their drinks to the impending hurricane; a devastating event for commoners becomes a time for celebration for those who are capable of sheltering away from such tragedy. But nature cares not for wealth, and the imposing presence of the hurricane makes good on its promise and forces the group to go inside even as David takes the time, with sword in hand, to challenge the natural phenomena before giving up and throwing the sword on the floor thereby confirming that his concerns over its damages at the hands of Greg were based in pride and antagonism: property is only valuable as an extension of one’s image – a succinct take on the purpose of class.

Back in the house, our initial couple attempts to engage in another make-out session, this time framed against the backdrop of the mansion, which is quickly interrupted by the party’s host who takes Sophie aside to learn for the latter’s reason for coming to the event. Class dictates new conventions and the show of nature, initially cast as serene at the film’s start, becomes interrupted and commented on by observers. Privacy no longer exists.

This is confirmed when Bee slowly explores the house, entranced by the images of family and grandeur all around her. She’s clearly alienated by this environment but is unable to even take the entirety of the locale in before Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) intercedes, informs Bee of Sophie’s wealth which is comparatively greater to even David’s, and issues a warning to the newest newcomer: “Just be careful, okay? With Sophie. Just… Be Careful.” As she delivers this cautionary comment, the camera slowly pivots and uses the framing of the wall to divide these two parties into separate partitions – new groupings are being formed.

Suddenly, the mysteries of Sophie are turned against Bee as she’s now thrown into the currents of a group-dynamic which she knows nothing about and is forced to accept that she may not know her partner as well as she previously thought. The previous exchanges amongst the group code this interaction in multiple fashions and transform it into a labyrinth to be navigated with caution.

Is this this an analog to David and Greg’s previous confrontation at the pool, a female antagonism opposed to male, wherein Jordan takes on David’s role, Sophie takes on Greg’s role, and Bee, the seemingly poorest of the bunch, comes to be a stand-in for the “sword”, a symbol of power, in this case companionship, which must be controlled as an extension of one’s image?

Or is this an example of class solidarity, an extension of Jordan’s concern with not dropping the incredibly expensive alcohol, a thought which seemingly crossed none of the other party members’ minds, wherein she is looking out for Bee as someone who is also alienated by the displays of affluence? It would certainly make sense of her earlier, unprompted provocation about the stature of Sophie’s wealth.

We’re left to ponder the intent as Jordan happily hops down the hallway, out of sight, leaving only her eerie words behind.

David (Pete Davidson) obsesses zooms onto his face.

As the interactions continue to proliferate, the film’s symbol par excellence, the cell-phone, continues to gain functions and becomes cemented as a pivotal tool in each character’s toolbox. It serves as mirror which can allow one to modify their appearance. It can allow for communication with parties not present within the immediate space, allowing for intimate connection. It can combine these functions and be used as a tool for social capital, capturing interactions meant for large-scale consumption vis-à-vis applications like Tik Tok. Director Halina Reijn imbues the object with nuance, an interface wherein all aspects of identity play around in relation to different socialized systems of power, but constantly demonstrates the way this nuance is discarded in favor of projects funded by the ego, affirmations of selfishness at the cost of everything else, a cost which will the film will explore with relish as its run-time continues.

Eventually, the group, including Bee, fall fully under the influence of their drugs and/or drinks of choice and are fully able to interact with one another, the substances operating as catalysts for interaction that previously was too shy to occur organically. It’s a ritual meant to summon the affects of Eden, nature at peace with itself, into a space that’s anything, the abode of capital and egotistical antagonisms that take priority over everything else.

Azelia Bank’s iconic “212” starts to play as the group begins to dance with aplomb while losing themselves in its frenetic energy, but as evidenced by the opening’s musical break, we know this is set to fail. The frenetic hand-held montage can’t sustain the same passion evinced by the opening as the constant-cutting showcases the power of the gaze and its violent powers.

Intimate moments of potential connection are ripped apart as persons are repeatedly transformed into outsiders who project their own fears and concerns onto these new dalliances, transforming would-be encounters into battlegrounds where the excluded participants make themselves known and vie for total control of the situation.

Jordan stares with a fervor as Sophie and Bee dance, her warning looming in the distant background.

Alice immediately pushes Sophie aside when the latter dances with the only other outsider in the group, Greg – a move that immediately stops the establishment of solidarity.

Sophie is prodded by David to look at Bee and Jordan dancing and is clearly perturbed by this interaction. Her reaction marks the beginning of the end and she calls the affairs to a stand-still and proposes that the group play a game, the titular “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”

The rules of the game are explained as the group waits.

The game, a take on popular games like “Mafia” or “Werewolf”, designates one player as a killer and tasks the other players with figuring out their identity before the players are fully eliminated. The players must navigate the house in the dark with a light and the next session of the game can only start when someone finds a deceased member and calls out the game’s title: “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” Thus, the implicit arena of the dance-floor becomes explicit within a game that actively forces the players to ascertain one another’s true intentions and come to meaningful conclusions as violence looms around every corner.

However, this variant of the game starts off with a ritualized ceremony, a credo of sorts, that sees each player take a shot and then slap the player next to them. The symbolic violence and rush of the game is not enough for these people and they need to ramp up the stakes even more to feel something in their insulated, privileged lives.

The ritual goes along well until Bee, the female outsider, refuses to hit David as hard as she’s expected to, obviously taking the trappings of the game as a limiting factor to the violence, choosing to play within the realm of symbols instead of letting such desires sublimate into reality. But David takes her refusal as a window to showcase what should actually be done – the host enforcing the laws of the land – and viciously punches Greg, the male outsider, the party who already emasculated David unknowingly outside with the display of the sword, giving the audience a taste of what’s to come.

Alice quickly calms Greg down and the game begins. The lights are turned out and the players are told to hide amongst the house. Of course, Bee armed with her cell-phone, uses it to navigate the environment, an abode which already alienates her with its affluence, and determines her allegiances, choosing to try and form a companionship with Alice, who runs away from her, and avoid Jordan, who narrowly misses Bee as she hides.

Suddenly, the call is made. The group convenes. The lights turn on.

And as expected, the resulting conversation immediately devolves into personal slights, indictments based on knowledge that one would never know outside of the game, so called “meta-gaming” moments that reveal the antagonisms within the group that had been swirling up for so long up to this moment. We see the formation of in-groups and the way they determine outsiders and see the ruptures becoming to form, conflicts which break out into reality when the next round starts and a body is found again, this time genuinely dead and un-moving. Now, the game will truly begin as it becomes realized in the flesh.

As this violent investigation continues, conflicts which we had only seen parts of rear their ugly heads. Alliances are tested and at each critical juncture new information is revealed which makes ascertaining the assassin increasingly difficult. No one can be trusted and the character’s, stuck using their own knowledge of one another, information which has been coded by all parties to fit their own self-interests, find themselves trapped in a nightmarish environment where anything and everything threatens to take them out.

With the lights fully out due to the storm, this variant of the game, one enforced by the rules of nature proper, never has a moment of proper deliberation with every encounter taking place in absolute darkness, the state of ambiguity. The power saps the utility of the phones, turning them into pure symbols meant to light the way – a perfect tying of form to content.

The set-up lets Reijn ratchet up tension, shooting the majority of the rest of the film in a handheld manner that reinforces the horror tropes one would associate with such a milieu and leads into moments of genuine tension.

However, as the storm rages on, the tight, intricate brushstrokes the film paints itself with, namely the minute point and counter-points related to class and gender, wash away under the pressures of the narrative and become far less focused and poignant, drowning under the pressure.

Ideas on class and gender become far more overarching than they need be and the manner by which the film demonstrates the logic of alienation is cast aside.

The script’s wonderful Gen-Z slang, awash in the tropes and stylings of online vernacular, previously used to reinforce the shallow manners by which the characters’ code themselves as perpetual victims and as better than one another, eventually becomes superficial in end of itself, servicing the film with nothing more than punch-lines that elicit laughs but do very little in taking the aforementioned sub textual machinations to the next level, a move that would evaluate this horror-skinned murder mystery into the realm of a full-blooded classic.

While the broad splatters the film ultimately uses to finish populating its canvas tie together the plotlines in a formally competent and satisfying manner, neatly calling back to some of the larger overtures established at the film’s start, the ultimate reveal, the film’s punch-line so to speak, may alienate viewers looking for something grander underneath the veneer of it all. And while that particular message and related revelation may be the film’s biggest point, a perfect encapsulation of sorts of its characters and the manner by which it treats them, it’s a shame that it seemingly becomes the only fully developed statement delivered when so much groundwork had been laid down to present a more multi-faceted thesis.

Using the film’s pressing scenario as a metaphor, there’s a hurricane waiting to be unleashed on the viewer, but the film settles for a torrent of rain instead, foregoing the other elements that would augment such a phenomenon and generate a storm that would truly stand-out.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Much like the party and game at the heart of it’s story, the film is filled with an abundance of jokes, kinetic scenes, and moments of grandeur that ultimately delivers goods that should satisfy those looking for a fun horror-skinned murder mystery and satire on the parlance of identity politics, but the vacuous nature of this delivery may disappoint those looking for something a bit more profound.
Rating	8.8/10
Grade	B+

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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2020s, 2023, Award Categories, Biography, Grade, History, Oscar Winners, Past, Review, review-movie, S+, War, Year

Film Review: Oppenheimer – 2023

March 19, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Christopher Nolan
Principal Cast	Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer Robert Downey Jr. as Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock
Release Date	2023
Language(s)	English
Running Time	180 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

We see droplets rippling in a pond outward into circular reverberations and then get a glimpse at this phenomena’s perceiver, Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy), our protagonist, who relates this watery vision against one predicated on a countervailing elemental source, a world of fire, flames pluming out and flowing as a liquid, a state of plasma, an analogous movement to the echoing droplets.

From this point on, we’re treated to a variety of visuals which evade traditional classification as their scopes cannot be disambiguated. Visions of fire remain indeterminable as they take one of two roles depending on perspective: either they represent molecular entanglements of atoms blasting against one another or they are eruptions of flames on a scale familiar to us, eruptions that we would traditionally classify as such vis-à-vis our “naked” eyes.

As the montage of these visions continues, text eventually intervenes into the frame describing a divine story: “Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” A tale of divinity rendered contiguous with a visual plane depicting these flames from a scientific vantage point – this dichotomy is one that will seep into and develop through the film.

Accompanying this concisely phrased religious summation is an increasingly intense rumbling which enters the soundscape, source undetermined, which crowds out all other noises.

Fission is indexed to Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy), color, subjectivity, surrealism.

The sound continues until we cut to the visage of our phenomenological observer whose eyes are resolutely closed. Once he opens them up, the deafening, unidentifiable stamping noise immediately dissipates – a vision broken through as its dreamer wakes up. A supertitle, “Fission”, appears on the frame, setting the start of the formal patterns which will segment the film from this point on.

Oppenheimer begins to read a statement regarding his life to the audience and its filmic analog, persons which he regards as judges, while he explains that his decisions can only be evaluated against such a grand narrative. Meanwhile, the crowd evaluating the same refuses this classification as judges, clarifying that they instead serve as members of a security board – a semantic distinction operating as bureaucratic gesture.

Immediately, the film cuts to a close-up of another man, Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), with the supertitle of “Fusion” appearing on the frame. This new filmic subject comments on the previous scene, explaining that Oppenheimer engaged in his aforementioned testimony for a month. He’s informed that he will be forced to explain his position towards the Oppenheimer security hearing, an issue which still divides America, in his confirmation hearing but is assured that this is not a trial – an inverted echo of the earlier statement from Fission wherein the audience clarified they were not judges, the prosecutors of a trial.

Thus, from the start the film the two formal strands by which it bifurcates itself, the colored world of “Fission” and the black-and-white world of “Fusion” are explicitly tied to the point-of-views of two distinctive men respectively, Oppenheimer and Strauss, who each find themselves at the heart of their own respective hearings which bear the markings of trials but are officially not classified as such while they’re forced to justify their lives. These two sections act as assemblages, gaining formal powers as the film continues to build a series of relationships and explicit patterns that define these partitions and grant them the power to frame the content they depict in radically distinctive fashions.^[1] DeLanda, M. (n.d.). In Assemblage Theory. introduction. These two chronologies will come to stand-in for a variety of ideas, separate from one another, constantly inviting the viewer to ascertain the reasons for such distinctions.

“Fission”, as per its molecular namesake, is predicated on the manner in which parts collide with one another, splitting into one another to create products in a chain reaction.^[2] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference Consequently, the section is associated the realm of the “subjective”, taking the mental projections of its associated character, Oppenheimer, as the atoms to split in the process and demonstrating this chain reaction through a fragmented chronology featuring a host of surreal images and quantum interludes like those featured in the opening.

“Fusion”, likewise, is based another molecular process, occurring when two atoms slam together to create something greater. The process is shorter-lived but has a much greater power.^[3] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference This section, the shorter of the two, indexed towards Strauss as opposed to Oppenheimer, makes sense of the fragmented nature of “Fission” and puts it back together, weaving the interstices of the aforementioned hearing and the context surrounding it into a newly consolidated image, one based in “realism”, a move away from the realm of the “subjective” to the world of “objectivity”, the world of bureaucratic power.

These are opposite processes, one based on separation and the other on collision. Whereas “Fission” is shown in full color, letting the various hues of the spectrum bounce around the frames, “Fusion”, is shown in black-and-white, an intentional choice which ties it to the mode of classic cinema, a gesture towards tradition. The film will intercut between these two paradigmatic approaches in regards to the same subject matter, that of Oppenheimer’s life, from two different vantage points whose relation to one another develops and informs the audience of the truth behind “power” and the manner by which it relates to the subjects it governs.

Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy) lies awake troubled by visions.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer begins to recount his days as a student back in Europe, a time he explicitly recalls as less than satisfactory as the “visions of a hidden universe” troubled him. These visions, some of which we’ve already seen in the opening, come back into fray, adopting a wholly new color scheme more in line with the rain and its reverberating droplets, serving as molecular interludes. Like Terrence Malick did with his cosmic interludes in his opus, The Tree of Life, to frame his story about a family, more specifically a boy from that family now grown up, dealing with personal pain, against the backdrop of the creation of the universe, thus raising the particular to the level of the universal, director Christopher Nolan does here, using the molecular interludes as a cosmic stand-in, tying together the different strands of Oppenheimer’s life to the very forces underpinning them.

Thought itself is rendered corporeal as these moments are rendered with the same intensity as Oppenheimer’s actions in the world around him. They become an interface between the physical and the metaphysical through their surreal depiction which grants them the same visual status as the world that Oppenheimer finds himself navigating.

We see him do science in a lab, but he’s not nearly as skilled in working in this domain as he is with traversing the ones in his mind and accidentally breaks glassware. His professor, Blackett (James D’Arcy), chastises him for the mistake and orders Oppenheimer to stay in the lab to clean up while the rest of the students and staff go to attend a lecture on quantum theory by Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Oppenheimer’s personal idol.

This perceived slight upsets the young scientist who takes matters into his own drastic hands. He sees an apple on a table – the Edenic symbol of man’s eventual corruption and Fall. He reaches for poison and injects the fruit with it, transforming it from a source of nourishment into an object of death, a perversion in purpose.

He runs through the rain to get to the lecture hall, coming in right as Bohr is speaking about the manner by which quantum theory offers a new way to understand “reality”, a way to peer through into a “world inside our world” made up of “energy and paradox.”

Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy) continues to look up.

This explanation brings Oppenheimer no peace as this newfound reality continues to assault his senses, haunting his waking visions. His only course of action is to go into the world of his dreams. His eyes close.

The molecular matter transforms into the night sky, stars taking the place of atoms. The fiery explosions become domesticated into the peaceful warmth of a fire. This is a precious memory, one that brings peace. Here, Oppenheimer tenderly feeds a horse an apple from his hand, granting sustenance to his furry friend.

But then he wakes and thinks back to the apple. The fruit of comfort from his dreams has become a nightmare enacted by his own hand in reality. He runs back to the classroom to get rid of this marker of sin and sees Bohr in the classroom. The two engage in dialogue. It’s revealed that Oppenheimer has seen Bohr in another lecture hall and had asked the latter the same question at two different occasions in an attempt to get another answer, a better answer.

Bohr issues a slight warning, another Edenic allusion: “You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.” Lurking behind quantum theory is a world of probabilities which may not offer comfort and instead only point out visions of filled with sin. It’s no coincidence that Bohr says as much while holding the apple that Oppenheimer so desperately wants to throw away. Finally, Oppenheimer grabs at it and throws it away, claiming the fruit suffered from a “wormhole.” This excuse has a double meaning, referring to either a hole in the fruit dug through by a worm or the scientific structure professed through Einstein’s works which can connect distinctive points in space-time; religious symbolism and scientific inquiry are once again linked to one another.

With potential death now out of the way, the older scientist tells his scientific fan to go to Germany to learn the ways of theory, likening the science to sheet music. The question is not whether Oppenheimer can read this music but whether he can “hear it.”

It’s at this moment when composer Ludwig Göransson’s monumental score truly lifts off and sweeps Oppenheimer and by extension the audience off their feet, as the aptly titled track “Can You Hear the Music?” dominates the aural plane as Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame weave through a plethora of seemingly discrete images in a wonderful montage that lasts nearly 90-seconds.

We see majestic establishing shots of skylines and cities, Oppenheimer exploring the beauty of cathedrals while bathing in their luxurious glasswork, equations being written on boards, a host of molecular interludes now freed from their former domains as they appear in the frame with Oppenheimer himself, an effect of the wonderful practical effects being used which makes science surreal through seamless juxtaposition. A poignant moment in this mixture involves a set of tracking shots, pushing in on both Oppenheimer and Picasso’s “Woman Sitting With Crossed Arms”, a cubist representation of a woman which flattens her dimensions into one smooth visual representation.

This flattening effect is the point of the montage and the reason that music is framed as a method by which to engage in the sciences as Oppenheimer’s mind treats all these distinctive images of the world, of sciences, of art, of nature, of buildings, of equations as part and parcel of the same ontological fabric, operating on the same plane and waiting for someone to connect them together. Far from being discrete images, the procession invites the audience to join Oppenheimer in processing the way that these shapes and representations fire off from one another, atoms splitting from another in a chain reaction.

And then the magic abruptly ends.

The color, creativity, catharsis crumble in the cracks of bureaucracy as the film cuts back to Fusion. Strauss is tasked with explaining his relationship with Oppenheimer, a task he was not expecting to deal with during this Senate Confirmation hearing, and flashes back to his own past and experience with the scientist we’ve spent the film’s run-time with up till now.

In this past, Oppenheimer is rendered arrogant and ignorant, casually demeaning Strauss with a variety of statements even though it’s unclear if he intended to do as much. Our newfound positioning with Strauss paints these comments as clear insults with no basis. From his view, he’s offering a job at one of the most prestigious institutions with a slew of benefits and is experiencing an unjustified pushback.

Their conversation comes to a pause when they spot Einstein (Tom Conti) at a pond near the facility. Strauss questions Oppenheimer’s decision to not involve the esteemed scientist in the Manhattan Project. The latter explains that the Father of Relativity wouldn’t embrace the quantum world his theories revealed which Strauss pins down to Einstein’s statement on the same: “God doesn’t play dice.” The statement, an indictment of the lack of definitive order necessitated by quantum theory, serves as an interesting counterpoint to Oppenheimer, a character who has been and will continue to be tied to the divine. Scientific paradigm is transformed into an act of faith. Which way will he leap?

Strauss offers to introduce the two but Oppenheimer brushes him off and goes to meet off with Einstein on his own terms, explaining that the duo has been acquainted for many years. But when Strauss attempts to approach the couple, Einstein brushes past him and walks off, ignoring the would-be introducer.

Power has been usurped and Strauss attempts to elicit a reason for such behavior from Oppenheimer, but the latter refuses to give up any information and instead turns the conversation to the contents of his security file, a point of concern for the scientist being asked to take a prestigious position at the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss confirms that Oppenheimer’s act of patriotism vis-à-vis his work on the Manhattan Project is demonstrative proof of his loyalties and that any compromising information from said file should have no bearing on his status – a fact that we know is a lie given the way Fission starts in and is framed by a meeting to determine Oppenheimer’s security clearance. The film’s form and chronology thus introduce a question, how have we gotten from here to there and will lay the roadmap as it progresses.

We cut back to the present where Strauss’s inquisitors question the Cabinet Nominee on his knowledge of Oppenheimer’s past associations and why such knowledge didn’t concern him. He explains, in a seemingly joking manner, one which we learn is not the case at all and know based on the antagonist posturing of the duo in the flashback, that he was instead entirely consumed with what Oppenheimer “must have said to Einstein to sour him on” Strauss.

The crowd laughs at what they think is a humorous bit, but the mood is once again silenced by the governmental machine who persists in their questions. They ask Strauss if these concerns came up later. He responds: “Well, we all know what happened later.” It’s here that one recognizes the chronological circuitry the film is playing with, rendering time in one formal strand as a past that the other one can access; past, present, and future all become relative as they’re placed in proximity to one another and Strauss’s retort reveals this because the “later” he refers to is an event we’ve yet to see based on our vantage point from the “past” being showcased in Fission.

Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy) gives a lecture in Dutch.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer discusses his initial meeting with fellow countryman and scientist, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz), who is quickly impressed by our protagonist after witnessing him give a lecture on quantum theory entirely in Dutch. Oppenheimer departs the lecture location on train, seeing rain droplets and quantum visuals on the reflection on the window pane, before Rabi enters his compartment and formally introduces himself, drawing Oppenheimer’s attention away from the window pane, a plane where science and nature intertwine with one another, to the other side of the cart where human interaction waits.

The two men find themselves similar in many fashions – Jewish, American, Scientists. Their identity displaces science as the topic of conversation and the milieu’s anti-Semitism is brought up. Given the nature of the film, it’s no wonder that these partitions will become more relevant both within the larger context of the story and within these character’s lives, as these markers of their selves will be manipulated by systems of power. But for now, there are no immediate tensions and Rabi extends a helping hand, a gesture of kindness, by giving Oppenheimer nourishment in the form of fruit. A friendship is born.

The duo sets out to meet the premiere German quantum scientist Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer) who gives a lecture on quantum mechanics, a response of sorts to Einstein’s earlier quotation, where he explains that speculations of a “real” world bound by order, causality, lurking behind probabilities comprising the quantum world are fruitless to speculate on. Read through the framework of divinity hitherto set-up, this summation is an refutation of the Apollonian promise of God, a pure affirmation of the metaphysics of the dice roll where paradox rules.

After the lecture, Oppenheimer converses with Heisenberg and the two share their mutual admiration for one another’s works, both cut from similar scientific cloth, but Oppenheimer’s focus lays elsewhere: America. He wants to go back and spread the scientific gospel in his home nation, a fire to be lit for the masses waiting in the dark.

He comes back to the States, accepting positions at both Caltech and Berkeley, and starts his rise. Quickly making friends with the faculty, he rises to the task at hand and amasses a huge following.

Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy) starts with one student.

The in-scene editing demonstrates the massive pull of his influence. We start on an empty classroom and one student, Lomanitz (Josh Zuckerman), walks in and attempts to leave upon ascertaining the situation. But Oppenheimer quickly starts to speak and begins to spout on about the paradoxes of quantum theory with such exuberance that the young Lomanitz ends up sitting in.

We see Oppenheimer write on the board, cut to Lomanitz’s enthused reaction, and then cut back to Oppenheimer who begins to leave the board. But as he walks away and goes throughout the room, we realize that we’ve cut to the future; the classroom is now filled with students eager to learn more.

Suddenly, a discussion of a star’s gravity breaks out. We see one of the earlier interludes which is now retroactively determined to be a star contracting due to the force of its gravitation pull being stronger than the force of its furnace pushing its fire out. Gravity condenses the star which triggers a seemingly infinite reaction wherein gravity and density cause the other to increase. Oppenheimer is positioned like this star, his brightness and exuberance pushing out colors and drawing in influence, but as his influence wanes, the gravity of the situation he finds himself in, the forces of bureaucracy, condense his situation into an ordeal that gets so much bigger than him.

We cut back to Fusion as if on cue, a reminder of these governmental forces at play and the manner in which they curb the projection of color, and Strauss explains that Dr. Oppenheimer’s file started while he was at Berkley because of his connection to left-wing political activities.

Another cut – this time to Fission – to a chalkboard filled with a political announcement as opposed to the normal equations which fill its space, politics in lieu of science. This development is chastised by Oppenheimer’s faculty peer and friend, Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), who issues a warning to keep politics out of the classroom, a fortuitous warning indeed given what we know will happen.

But Oppenheimer persists and pushes back, likening their revolution in physics to similar revolutionary movements in the humanities by thinkers such as: Picasso, Stravisnky, Freud, Marx. This explicit reference serves as a continuation of the ontological flattening demonstrated by the “Can You Hear the Music?” montage, wherein all revolution in thought is cast in the same light. But his line of thinking isn’t ubiquitous, and the conservative leanings of Lawrence come out when he retorts that America has already had its revolution, a paradoxical affirmation that approves of a previous revolution, an upending of values, but refuses to do the same again, a commitment to the status quo.

The duo departs and Oppenheimer heads to a Communist meeting with his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold), and the latter’s partner, Jackie (Emma Dumont), where he has his first chronological encounter with the powers of politics that be: federal agents are taking pictures of the attendee’s license plates, obviously creating a registry of political thinkers that don’t align with status quo tendencies.

It’s at this meeting that Oppenheimer meets with future friends, acquaintances, and one of his life’s great loves, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who challenges his lack of commitment to the Communist cause. Though he’s sympathetic to their thoughts and ideologies, Oppenheimer is very much a pragmatist whose commitment is less to a single truth than it is to a variety of thoughts which all contain aspects of that. But what appears as “wiggle room” for him appears as lack of dedication to others, and his journey is one that will see him pulled apart by all relevant sides as they try and force him to commit to one system once and for all.

At first glance, the tapestry that is the film seems too massive a task to engage with. Within these first 20-minutes, we’ve been introduced to: a plethora of characters, each important in their own right; discussions related to the arts, sciences, politics, faith and juxtapositions of those ideas against one another; multiple time-lines that are further bracketed into the Fission and Fusion segments which eventually showcase the same actions from different vantage points; an overarching story which constantly breaks its chronology and introduces images and plot points shrouded in mystery, waiting to be retroactively determined and put together in sequence by the spectator as the film continues.

But Nolan consistently demonstrates how fully in control of the viewing experience he’s in. Conversations which may prove to be daunting are edited in kinetic fashion, making wonderful use of Göransson’s score, which plays almost for the film’s entire run-time, ensuring a consistent propulsive force that drives the narrative forward; we’re always aware of exactly what we have to pay attention to so we don’t lose the plot so to speak. When characters are referenced, the film wonderfully cuts to images of them to remind the audience of who they are, but these moments also work formally as we’re firmly latched into a point-of-view which would be thinking back to these faces while talking about them. The visual schema stays compelling in spite of the heavy dialogue laden scenes through the use of wonderful establishing shots, surreal images that break reality, and the lower shot-length in general which ensures there’s always something new on the screen to latch onto.

However, the script itself is arguably Nolan’s finest, featuring razor-sharp dialogue that flows and exudes charisma while neatly layering in sub-text within the text, thematic overtures which build to deafening crescendos as the viewer slowly pieces together the formal pieces of the puzzle together into a much larger, multi-faceted tapestry.

There are the surface level ideas involving moral culpability especially in relation to one’s politics. We know Oppenheimer will build the nuclear bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, a genocidal force, but he will do the same because his country demands it. This neatly leads into the larger discussion on politics proper, whether or not good citizens can have distinctive ideological ideas or if having them compromises them in their ability to fulfill their duties as patriots, whether or not being a patriot is justifiable in lieu of one’s obligations to humanity in general.

Then there are the deeper ideas involving science and religion, the way the latter and former are inextricably tied as explanatory mechanisms for the world and the manners in which they align and diverge from one another, the potential impossibility in reconciling beliefs from one domain with beliefs by the other and how the framing of these ideas within these particular discourses affects the way they’re treated by persons and society at large.

All of these throughlines and more are allowed to collide against one another and recapitulate into new discrete moments because of the formal partitioning of the film, Fission and Fusion, which transform the film into an apparatus of quantum theory itself. The memories of the respective characters serve as the atoms, distinctive vantage points of the same situations demonstrating the way that such a molecule can easily split. The editing serves as the catalyst that galvanizes these collisions and leads to the chain reactions, the explosive power that is transformed into epiphanies that only become clear when scrutinized and analyzed via the vantage points the film offers.

The point is not to push the audience towards a capital T “Truth” but instead to explore the way verisimilitude is generated through power and perspective. As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it: “There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “idea” of that thing, our ‘objectivity.'” ^[4]Nietzsche , F. (1887). Third Essay. In O. Levy (Ed.), H. B. Samuel & J. M. Kennedy (Trans.), On the Genealogy of Morals. essay. Retrieved from … Continue reading Nolan wholeheartedly embraces this epistemic approach in Oppenheimer, approaching his titular character’s life from as many perspectives as possible in an attempt to understand the father of the nuclear bomb, the American Prometheus and give reason explaining why he did what he did.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Oppenheimer is Nolan’s multi-perspectival exploration of his titular character, broaching the subjectivity of this one person and the magnitude of their nuclear decision via a plethora of vantage points. Whether it be the drama, the analysis of war, the moral deliberations, spiritual exploration, or the formal examination of the way subjectivity is produced through the levers of power, there is something for anyone willing to grab onto one of these throughlines and see it through to the film’s end.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

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2024 Oscars – Musings and Predictions

March 9, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

With the 96th Academy Awards coming up on March 10th, I decided to get in on the discourse and share my predictions for the awards alongside my general thoughts and musings on the nature of the candidates and appreciation for those artists who were not given the recognition I feel they should have been. I’m less interested in “snubs” and more interested in shining a light on work I felt was spectacular, so my notation of noticeable omissions isn’t meant to denigrate any of other nominees as much as it is to praise what I think is cinematically wonderful/artistically exceptional and offer a look into my own perspective.

For those looking to quickly parse the discussion for just the predictions, I have the winners BOLDED under each award category.

For any category where I haven’t seen a particular nominee, I will be marking them with an * next to the name of the respective film.

I will be skipping the following categories due to lack of familiarity with a majority of the nominees: Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Film, Documentary Feature Film.

BEST PICTURE

FILM	DIRECTOR	PRODUCER(S)
American Fiction	Cord Jefferson	Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson and Jermaine Johnson
Anatomy of a Fall	Justine Triet	Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion
Barbie	Greta Gerwig	David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner
The Holdovers	Alexander Payne	Mark Johnson
Killers of the Flower Moon	Martin Scorsese	Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese and Daniel Lupi
Maestro	Bradley Cooper	Bradley Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Fred Berner, Amy Durning and Kristie Macosko Krieger
Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan	Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan
Past Lives	Celine Song	David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler
Poor Things	Yorgos Lanthimos	Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone
The Zone of Interest	Jonathan Glazer	James Wilson

This year’s Best Picture nominees, from my perspective at least, feel like they’re split into two categories: ambitious in form and style with muscular filmmaking, utilizing writing and acting in service of the more technical elements to generate transcendent moments of filmmaking; heavily reliant on writing and acting to generate moments of poignant catharsis with less focus on the pushing the envelope of visual style or form. This is not to say films in the former group have worse scripts and/or poorer performances while films in the latter group have nothing technically inventive to marvel at but merely serves as an internal schema I’ve adopted to partition the nominees into more discrete entities for the sake of discussion.

This former group is the one I prefer due to my own leanings and thoughts on what makes for “great” cinema and it consists of: Oppenheimer, The Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon. I would be happy with any of these films winning the prestigious Best Picture award.

The latter group consists of: American Fiction, Past Lives, and the Holdovers. While Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Maestro seem to toe the line between these groupings, they do seem to err towards the paradigm enshrined by the latter, so I feel comfortable including them here.

Out of all the candidates, the film I believe is MOST LIKELY to win is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. His sprawling biopic sacrifices no narrative heft and features a great ensemble performance on top of two masterful performances from both Cilian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. while exhibiting some of his most masterful editing work, the facet of cinema he most excels at, and strikes a nice balance between popular appeal and formal exuberance. Given it’s track record at awards shows leading up to the Academy Awards, it feels like an incredibly safe bet to win.

While I don’t think any film was “snubbed” so to speak, there are a few films which I felt exhibited the best aspects of cinema which I would have thoroughly enjoyed to see nominated, including but not limited to: Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, and Chad Stahleski’s John Wick: Chapter 4. While some of these films would definitely not see an academy nomination due to their content, experimental tendencies, or genre leanings, I do believe they represent some of the very best of the year and wanted to shine a light on them alongside the aforementioned offerings.

DIRECTING

FILM	DIRECTOR
Anatomy of a Fall	Justine Triet
Killers of the Flower Moon	Martin Scorsese
Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan
Past Lives	Yorgos Lanthimos
The Zone of Interest	Jonathan Glazer

Out of the directing candidates, I’m happy to say I’d be fine with the majority of the pool taking home the big award, even though I think that the MOST LIKELY winner will be Christopher Nolan. With Oppenheimer poised to win the lion share’s of awards on Oscar night, it seems inevitable that Nolan will finally get his well deserved Oscar and subsequent recognition.

On another note, in reference to the idea of director Greta Gerwig’s snub for Barbie, while I personally do not think such an offense occurred from my perspective of what constituted the best film of the year, I do think it’s curious to see Barbie nominated for Best Picture, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) along with a few other nominations and then not see the director get credited for the same especially given the cultural relevance of the film. If the award is meant to recognize the director who put the relevant elements together, and those elements are recognized as excellent in their own right and cohesive enough to generate a picture worth nominating, it feels odd to not that same director in this set of awards.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

FILM	DIRECTOR	COUNTRY
Io Capitano *	Matteo Garrone	Italy
Perfect Days	Wim Wenders	Japan
Society of the Snow	J. A. Bayona	Spain
The Teacher’s’ Lounge	Ilker Çatak	Germany
The Zone of Interest	Jonathan Glazer	United Kingdom

I believe the Zone of Interest is MOST LIKELY to win. It’s by and far away the best film of those nominated for the International Feature Film award and I have no doubt it will cinch the same especially given the absence of Anatomy of a Fall which bested it at the Cannes Film Festival.

Speaking of Anatomy of a Fall however, and the related discussions of its omission due to France’s decision to nominate The Taste of Things, I have to readily admit that I think that the proper decision was made in this regards and am puzzled at the latter film’s particular omission from this final list of five nominees. The Taste of Things features poetic camera-work, includes tender and inviting performances, and certainly feels like it warrants a better reputation amongst cineastes.

But on a more positive note, while I believe that Perfect Days was not the best film made in Japan (that honor goes to Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron) , I do believe it’s a gem of a film and am glad to see it have gotten some recognition, especially when Japan seemed to produce a handful of incredible quality films (including: Godzilla Minus One and Monster) this past year. If not for The Zone of Interest, this would be my easy pick for the award from the current pool of nominees.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

FILM	DIRECTOR(S)
The Boy and the Heron	Hayao Miyazaki
Elemental	Peter Sohn
Nimona	Troy Quane, Nick Bruno
Robot Dreams*	Pablo Berger
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

In terms of animation, 2023 proved to be one of the very best (at least at the top level), especially in recent years, with both Western and Eastern directors and studios putting out incredible, quality works. I believe it’s going to be a fierce two -horse race between The Boy and the Heron and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse but I do think Miyazaki’s film is MOST LIKELY to win.

Miyazaki famously is the only director to have a work, Spirited Away, win the prestigious award despite having made it in a non-North American animation house, and the cult of personality surrounding him and the melancholy nature of this film potentially being his last might be enough to push him ahead of his competitors.

In terms of missing films, I believe that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a significant omission and certainly warranted a spot on the list of nominees. It has a wonderful aesthetic dripping with personality and makes a series of cinematic choices that use animation’s abilities as a medium to the fullest

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

FILM	DIRECTOR
The After	Misan Harriman
Invincible	Vincent René-Lortie
Knight of Fortune	Lasse Lyskjær Noer
Red, White and Blue	Nazrin Choudhury
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar	Wes Anderson

It’s a bit of a paradigmatic snafu for me in the context of this category, because I evaluated Wes Anderson’s collection of Roald Dahl short films as an anthology film of sorts, but if forced to evaluate just The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, I do believe it is easily the best offering from the nominees and is MOST LIKELY to win.

However, I do want to call attention to the omission of Bi Gan’s A Short Story from the nominees. It’s a wonderfully hypnotic piece of film-making that fit’s nicely into the director’s wildly oneiric oeuvre and I believe that it would made this competition, from my point of view, incredibly competitive.

FILM EDITING

FILM	EDITOR
Anatomy of a Fall	Laurent Sénéchal
The Holdovers	Kevin Tent
Killers of the Flower Moon	Thelma Schoonmaker
Oppenheimer	Jennifer Lame
Poor Things	Yorgos Mavropsaridis

Christopher Nolan has made a name for himself as one of the premiere editors of the modern generation of filmmaker’s and his work with editor Jennifer Lame confirms that his sense of rhythm and penchant for formal layering has only gotten stronger and think that the latter is MOST LIKELY to win as a result. The film wonderfully dips between different timelines seamlessly and makes following otherwise un-cinematic conversations a visceral experience.

In terms of omissions, I’d like to call to attention Jonathan Alberts’ work on All of Us Strangers which deftly interweaves between internal and external, dreamscape and reality, the corporeal and metaphysical with such ease that one simply sets back and lets the experience of the film wash over them.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

FILM	DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
El Conde	Edward Lachman
Killers of the Flower Moon	Rodrigo Prieto
Maestro	Matthew Libatique
Oppenheimer	Hoyte van Hoytema
Poor Things	Robbie Ryan

This is a category which I would have loved to see opened up this year as there were numerous director’s of photography transporting us through worlds, both internal and external, through their use of camera movement in relation to precise mise-en-scène arrangements.

In terms of the nominees proper, I want to call special attention to Lachman’s work in El Conde, which imbues a texture and sense of gravitas to the film and keeps its horror comedy blood flowing and Robbie Ryan’s masterful work in Poor Things where his staggeringly beautiful photography utilizing hyper-exaggerated and distinctive lenses feels at once totally alien and simultaneously wholly authentic to the world being showcased.

Notable nominees who I want to shout out include: Dan Lausten, whose work on John Wick: 4 imbues and ties kinetic, jaw-dropping action with wonderful, picturesque set-piece and backdrops which give the film an epic and grandiose feeling, elevating it to the top of its genre; Pawel Pogorzelski, whose work on Beau is Afraid, masterfully evokes the voyeuristic feeling of the camera and the way it points-of-views are matriculated through subjectivity and influence the way phenomena are perceived; Linus Sandgren, whose work on Saltburn contains some of the most flat-out, painterly beautiful frames I’ve seen in films this past year; Jonathan Ricquebourg, whose work on The Taste of Things, transports the viewer into the world of gourmet foods with such flair, that one cannot help but feel their stomachs grumble as the film deftly exhibits the transformative, evocative powers of a camera that knows exactly at what points to prolong its movements to create truly, sublime moments.

With that said, I think that it’s Hoyte Van Hoytema’s work on Oppenheimer, that will MOST LIKELY take home top prize. He manages to imbue such an epic scale to an intimate bio-pic and utilizes the canvas of Cilian Murphy’s hazy, blue eyes, and worry-marked face to constantly evoke and stir the palpable emotional current that keeps the film feeling grounded and monumental simultaneously.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

FILM	NOMINEES
Barbie	Production Design: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
Killers of the Flower Moon	Production Design: Jack Fisk; Set Decoration: Adam Willis
Napoleon	Production Design: Arthur Max; Set Decoration: Elli Griff
Oppenheimer	Production Design: Ruth De Jong; Set Decoration: Claire Kaufman
Poor Things	Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek

There are three glaring omissions in this category that I would like to draw attention to before talking about the wonderful nominees proper. They are: Fiona Crombie, for her work on Beau is Afraid, a film that constantly changes between what seems to be radically different milieus, each striking and viscerally shocking in their own ways, while keeping the aesthetic choices consistent within the larger schema of the film; Charlotte Dirckx and Suzie Davis, for their work on Saltburn, a film that explores the labyrinth of wealth through a debauched, grandiose setting that exemplifies the same; Adam Stockhausen, for his work on Asteroid City, a film which splits itself between two separate strands, each complete with their own trappings and aesthetic leanings, that feels wholly nostalgic, fictional, and lived-in simultaneously.

In terms of the nominees themselves, the race between them is incredibly close and I could see the award going to Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, or Poor Things. While my personal pick of these would likely go to the team behind Poor Things for the wonderful creation of a surreal world mapped off our own, I think Academy voters will MOST LIKELY be swayed by Barbie whose hot-pink, resolutely artificial sets give it a vitality that even detractors of the film at large wouldn’t be able to ignore. Given my belief that Barbie will also lose a good amount of the awards it’s been nominated for, this feels like a safe “gimme” award for the box-office juggernaut.

VISUAL EFFECTS

FILM	NOMINEES
The Creator	Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould
Godzilla Minus One	Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland and Neil Corbould
Napoleon	Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco and Neil Corbould

While I think this batch of nominees is more than deserving of their selections, Alexandre Lafortune’s work on Beau is Afraid and the way he was able to coalesce the work and visions of a host of creatives (especially the contributions of Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña) to deliver Aster’s zany vision is nothing short of exemplary especially in the 3rd-part of the film which contains, for my money, some of the most spectacular film-making of this current decade.

In terms of the nominees proper, both the teams for The Creator and Godzilla Minus One deserve applause for helping to create moments of serious heft, depth, and impact, perfectly molding artifice with reality in a gripping, yet non-alienating fashion. Choosing between them is not an easy or enviable act.

While I believe that Godzilla Minus One will MOST LIKELY win the award due to the awards buzz hype surrounding it and its massive global reach, I would personally give the slightest edge to The Creator whose visuals and subsequent worldbuilding left me gobsmacked through its running time, never letting up and allowing me to question what I was seeing even though in the back of my mind I knew it was just digital wizardry at play.

COSTUME DESIGN

FILM	NOMINEES
Barbie	Jacqueline Durran
Killers of the Flower Moon	Jacqueline West
Napoleon	Janty Yates and Dave Crossman
Oppenheimer	Ellen Mirojnick
Poor Things	Holly Waddington

While I believe the nominees in this category to be wonderful, I do want to draw attention to Stacey Battat’s work on Priscilla as she recreates crystallized moments from the past with such careful attention to detail that the film is able to explore the ghosts of the past as though they were here with us now.

In terms of who will be taking home the award, I believe it will MOST LIKELY go to Jacqueline Durran for her work on Barbie. In the same manner of praise I lauded onto the team behind the film’s production design, I have to extend to Durran who wonderfully captures the mood of the iconic doll amongst such a large variety of variants that it becomes hard not to get lost in the wonderful details.

However, my personal pick amongst the deserving nominees would be Holly Waddington for her work in Poor Things, given her ability to switch effortlessly between so many variations and stylizations of dress-wear whilst showing their respective evolutions vis-a-vis the protagonists journey. The work is showy in the best ways, inviting the viewer to pay attention and marvel, but never becomes the focal point outside of when it needs to play that role.

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

FILM	NOMINEES
Golda*	Karen Hartley Thomas, Suzi Battersby and Ashra Kelly-Blue
Maestro	Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell
Oppenheimer	Luisa Abel
Poor Things	Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston
Society of the Snow	Ana López-Puigcerver, David Martí and Montse Ribé

From the perspective of what the Academy Awards themselves would normally nominate, this category feels like it has a glaring omission in the form of the team behind Barbie which feels especially absurd given my comments above on the film’s Costume Design; this work goes very much in hand with the makeup and hairstyling work being done there and if one is worthy of winning it seems shocking that the other would not be worthy of being nominated. Just genuinely baffling.

From my own perspective, the lack of nomination for the team behind Beau is Afraid’s makeup and hairstyling – which perfectly rides the line between disturbing, campy, and endearing – feels more an effect of the Academy’s general aversion to the film and its ilk, so pointing out this omission is more a tepid sigh on my part than an aggrieved, finger-wagging condemnation.

But in regards to the nominees in play, without Barbie to lead the way, this category is certainly harder for me to predict, and I definitely think, moreso than the other categories, my biases are have to dictate my choice; thus, I believe that the award will MOST LIKELY go to Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston for their efforts on Poor Things. Their work is subtle when it needs to be and the more extreme aspects of what they managed to do feel wholly incorporated.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

FILM	WRITER(S)
Anatomy of a Fall	Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
The Holdovers	David Hemingson
Maestro	Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer
May December	Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik
Past Lives	Celine Song

At this point I’ve extolled Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid enough, so I’ll just say I think I think it should be mentioned in this conversation.

A film I’ve been waiting to bring up and now have an opportunity to do so with however, is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster whose screenplay written by Yuji Sakamoto is entirely gripping from start to finish, demonstrating the powers of structure as a tool by which to break a seemingly simple story in such a way as to create a propulsive narrative force that emotionally provokes as much as it plays with the mysteries lying its heart.

With that said, this category is incredibly competitive this year and guessing the winner feels like playing a game of statistics using other nominations as a springboard to guess what’s going to win.

If it were up to me, I would, by a very slim margin, pick Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik’s work on May December. They manage to hit the perfect space of absolutely disturbing and upsettingly funny and the way the narrative progresses is a sight to behold.

However, I think Celine Song’s work on her debut, Past Lives, is absolutely masterful and certainly operating on the same tier. Perhaps it’s due to my conversations with my own friends regarding the film, but it feels like it hits so many emotional beats commonplace among persons across a wide variety of age groups, targeting a kind of unforgettable melancholy we’ve all buried away lest we look upon the same and shatter into pieces, that I can’t help but think it’ll manage to sway enough voters to win. Calling it MOST LIKELY to win feels difficult, especially given the rapturous hold The Holdovers has seemed to have on audiences who have given themselves over to its tender, heart-warming story and absolutely and endlessly quotable moments (there are few lines more memorable from the year than “Hardy, I have known you since you were a boy, so I think I have the requisite experience and insight to aver that you are and always have been penis cancer in human form.”) , so I could see Hemingson also walking away with this honor. This is certainly going to be one of the more gripping Oscar night races to witness.

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

FILM	WRITER(S)
American Fiction	Cord Jefferson
Barbie	Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan
Poor Things	Tony McNamara
The Zone of Interest	Jonathan Glazer

Killers of the Flower Moon glaring omission here, especially given its prominence among the other categories, is certainly felt, but the pool of candidates left are all absolutely worth of the accolades.

However, if there’s an omission that’s flown under the radar, it’s Andrew Haigh’s work on All of Us Strangers, which is certainly one of the most emotionally evocative, sublimely tender pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen in years let alone the year itself. The manner in which he’s distilled Taichi Yamada’s initial story and transformed it into his own is demonstrative proof of the magic of adaptation and would certainly be my personal pick for best Adapted Screenplay of the year.

Amongst the candidates themselves, I think it’s hard to go wrong with Christopher Nolan, Tony McNamara, or Jonathan Glazer, as each of their screenplays seems perfectly calibrated to do exactly what their respective film’s are trying to achieve thematically. Glazer’s minimalism might be a tough sell to voters even if I think it’s absolutely perfect in what it sets out to do. Ultimately, if forced to choose between the other two, I believe that Christopher Nolan will MOST LIKELY take home the prize, riding the wave of Oppenheimer’s general success.

SOUND

FILM	NOMINEES
The Creator	Ian Voigt, Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn, Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic
Maestro	Steven A. Morrow, Richard King, Jason Ruder, Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	Chris Munro, James H. Mather, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor
Oppenheimer	Willie Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo and Kevin O’Connell
The Zone of Interest	Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn

There’s only one real answer here, no MOST LIKELY about it, and that is Tarn Willers and Johnie Burn’s work on The Zone of Interest. This might be some of the greatest sound work in the history of the cinematic artform, supplementing the visuals of the film and the story told by the same with another tale entirely through the soundscape, a plane which utterly terrifies and engrosses the audience within its miasma from start to finish.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

FILM	COMPOSERS
American Fiction	Laura Karpman
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	John Williams
Killers of the Flower Moon	Robbie Robertson
Oppenheimer	Ludwig Göransson
Poor Things	Jerskin Fendrix

My personal pick for this year’s best original score oscillated between two candidates. The first of whom, Joe Hisaishi, created one of the most somber, touch, endearing, spellbinding scores in his already legendary, storied career for The Boy and the Heron. There is a beautiful minimalism to much of it that explodes with sensational aplomb when the need arises, never overstaying its welcome or arriving too late to accentuate the oneiric visuals on screen. His omission definitely feels like the Academy denigrating the power of animation within film.

Thankfully, the second of my picks, Ludwig Göransson, is also the MOST LIKELY to walk away with this prize. Nolan shows off the range of Göransson’s musical treatise, filling his film with tracks for nearly its entire runtime. There’s absolutely no place to hide from the soundscape and no one who listens to its sonorous beauty would want to.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

SONG	FILM	NOMINEES
The Fire Inside	Flamin’ Hot	Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
I’m Just Ken	Barbie	Music and Lyric by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt
It Never Went Away	American Symphony	Music and Lyric by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson
Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)	Killers of the Flower Moon	Music and Lyric by Scott George
What Was I Made For?	Barbie	Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell

What Was I Made For? feels like it was born for this award and will MOST LIKELY walk away with the prize. It served as the perfect vehicle for the wonderful Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell to imbue Barbie with an emotional heft that one would not normally attribute to a film based on the hugely popular toy line.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

FILM	ACTOR
Maestro	Bradley Cooper
Rustin	Colman Domingo
The Holdovers	Paul Giamatti
Oppenheimer	Cillian Murphy
American Fiction	Jeffrey Wright

As we come to the final set of awards, one’s related to acting, I have to mention Beau is Afraid one final time as Joaquin Phoenix’s turn as the iconic Beau is absolutely legendary and one of the legendary actor’s finest performances. He’s forced to both be a receptacle for Aster’s world and exhibit a neurotic indecision that would be nauseatingly grating by any normal measure but also be sympathetic enough such as to not totally alienate the viewer, and I believe he achieves that striking balance with such precision that it’s hard not to be impressed.

However, when it comes to awards night, the MOST LIKELY, and by this I mean almost definitely, winner will be CILIAN MURPHY, whose piercing eyes and worried facial lines ground the film’s epic scale with a human intimacy that lingers on the viewer long after the runtime has finished. This is the best performance from a storied actor, one whose worked with Nolan for years on end now, and come Oscar night I hope to see him recognized for the same.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

FILM	ACTOR
American Fiction	Sterling K. Brown
Killers of the Flower Moon	Robert De Niro
Oppenheimer	Robert Downey Jr.
Barbie	Ryan Gosling
Poor Things	Mark Ruffalo

Like his cast-mate, Robert Downey Jr. win feels less like a MOST LIKELY and more like a certainty. He is every much Cilian’s equal, both within the Oppenheimer’s‘ narrative and in regards to the depth of the performance he has to give to humanize the stakes.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

FILM	ACTRESS
Nyad	Annette Bening
Killers of the Flower Moon	Lily Gladstone
Anatomy of a Fall	Sandra Hüller
Maestro	Carey Mulligan
Poor Things	Emma Stone

This is certainly the most competitive race of the night and feels like a battle between Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone. While I believe Emma Stone’s performance is legendary and might be one the young, but incredibly accomplished actress’s best and is easily my pick for the category, her status as an Oscar holder and the narrative forming behind Gladstone might be just enough for the Killers of the Flower Moon star to cinch the award.

It’s hard to deliberate between one’s gut and the way one perceives the flow of public opinion, but I think that Emma Stone will MOST LIKELY walk away with the award given both more transformative nature of her performance and the fact that, unlike Gladstone, she’s in almost every frame of her film as it’s star.

Funnily enough, I believe that the second best performance by an actress this year came from Sandra Hüller for her work in The Zone of Interest, but it’s her work in Anatomy of a Fall which has been nominated. If anything, it demonstrates what an exceptional phenom she is, having been a part of two of the better films of the year and delivering masterful performances in both.

However, while Hüller has at least been mentioned for her work in one of the films, even if I think it’s the weaker of her two roles, Scarlett Johansson’s work in Asteroid City has largely flown under the radar and is certainly worthy of adoration. Standing out in an Anderson ensemble is hard enough work, let alone to a newcomer to his iconic filmography, but Johnasson absolutely delivers a wonderfully subtle performance that fits within the director’s style while being totally her own. The lack of attention given to her work seems to be more an effect of the film’s larger alienation among the director’s usual fanbase – a shame.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

FILM	ACTRESS
Oppenheimer	Emily Blunt
The Color Purple	Danielle Brooks
Barbie	America Ferrera
Nyad	Jodie Foster
The Holdovers	Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Given her absolute decimation of this category throughout the season’s award shows, it’s not a MOST LIKELY as much as it is an inevitability that Da’Vine Joy Randolph will win the award for her emotionally compelling work in The Holdovers.

2020s, 2023, A+, body horror, cosmic, Grade, Horror, Past, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Year

Film Review: Evil Dead Rise – 2023

March 6, 2024 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Lee Cronin
Principal Cast	Lily Sullivan as Beth Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie Morgan Davies as Danny Gabrielle Echols as Bridget Nell Fisher as Kassie
Release Date	2023
Language(s)	English
Running Time	97 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

We open with the Evil Dead Franchise’s iconic shot, a spectral point-of-view (P.O.V.) tracking shot, which pushes and bends through the environment in search of an unsuspecting person who will be made the victim of this malignant force, referred to as a deadite, viewing them. The score becomes increasingly unnerving as the camera moves, signaling a terrifying presence. As the soundscape continues to become more disturbing, the camera finishes traversing through a forest and zooms over a lake, traditional horror iconography to be sure, before coming face-to-face with an unsuspecting woman, Teresa (Mirabai Pease), who immediately recoils upon contact.

Based on all the clues, we’re convinced that she’s been destroyed by this otherworldly, cosmic presence. However, a cut to a wide shot reveals that the P.O.V. we were following was not that of a deadite but that of a drone being flown by Teresa’s acquaintance, Caleb (Richard Crouchley), who takes great pleasure in the manner by which he elicited fear from his camera’s subject and captured it on frame. In this manner, the film’s opening subtly equates the supernatural gaze with that of the upper class looking for entertainment at the sake of someone else’s misery.

Teresa (Mirabai Pease) goes towards the distorted cabin.

Upset at being made a fool of, Teresa walks away from the pier and goes towards a cabin for comfort. The distorted composition along with the context of the genre (and franchise) immediately informs us that this is where things will go wrong. Director Lee Cronin ensures of as much with a series of wonderful aesthetic choices.

When Teresa enters the cabin, we see her reflection in the glass of a clock, whose foreboding ticks slowly encroach and dominate the soundscape. The camera’s focus shifts and her reflection within the domain of the clock becomes a focal point. Her time will run out; this much is certain. The film cuts to a wonderful split-diopeter, one of many that punctuate the film, which emphasizes that this space is malevolent; Teresa is akin to a fly in a trap, waiting to die. As she enters the inner-most room, she is once again positioned in reference to the clock and its sounds fade out as the barrier to the room is opened; the moment is almost here.

She calls out to the room’s inhabitant, Caleb’s partner, Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas), but Cronin deftly avoids revealing the latter’s visage; she remains covered in a shroud of mystery.

Jessica remains mostly unresponsive to Teresa’s banter, slightly chucking when the former makes a violent joke in response to Caleb. The lack of discourse prompts Teresa to read a book, Wuthering Heights, to pass the time. However, this solitary literature session is interrupted by the previously silent occupant, who sits up on her bed and begins to recite the text on the page – text which the camera cuts to in order to reinforce both the terror of the words being recited along with the action – without any prompts. The sound of the clock violently stops while Jessica’s voice becomes increasingly distorted, causing Teresa to beg for the phenomenon to stop. Time is up.

It’s at this point that Cronin lets us see Jessica’s face, but almost instantly, the demonic sounding girl falls to the floor and begins to vomit a grotesque, vile bile while shuddering violently. Teresa, unaware of what’s to come, tries to help but is caught off guard when Jessica reveals her helplessness was but a ruse; she proceeds to violently scalp her friend by pulling the former’s ponytail with great force.

Teresa’s POV as she stumbles towards the lake.

We cut to a new P.O.V. shot that stumbles towards the lake and learn that this is Teresa, looking desperately for help. But before she can get Caleb to act, we cut to a canted shot of Jessica entering the frame. The possessed is now fully in control of the situation and the framing emphasizes as much; her body and the effects of her violence – the bloody scalp – dominate the frame. She moves towards the drone and then stares at the camera, gazing directly at her former friends and the audience proper. She smiles. The violence to come will be enjoyable for her, terrifying for her friends, and will be somewhere in the middle for the audience; after all, what else would a viewer going into an Evil Dead movie expect?

She bashes this representative of the faux-spectral P.O.V. shot and proceeds to decapitate her former boyfriend after he tries to save her from the same.

The water in the lake becomes a bloody red and Jessica flies up out of it; there will be no escape. The disturbing soundscape from the opening returns in full force. Then, in a brilliant move, the title card rises up behind her, emerging as furthest back element of the frame in full crimson glory. The film can now properly begin.

Canted shot of Beth (Lily Sullivan) realizing she’s pregnant.

We cut to black, the sound drops, and we change settings entirely. Like the 2013 attempt at rebooting the franchise, the 2023 iteration draws the viewer in with a small helping of violence, a promise that what’s to come will satisfy their desires, before going to develop the primary cast. Here, our first member, Beth (Lily Sullivan), enters a bathroom and takes a pregnancy test. She sees her result and the frame becomes canted as the camera slowly pushes in on her face; the discovery of her newfound status as potential mother is treated as a horrifying event.

She drives to a dilapidated apartment building as the rains beat down on her. We cut to an apartment inside this structure and are introduced to our other primary characters: Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a mother who works as a tattoo artist; her older daughter, Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), whose interests lie in political activism; her son, Danny (Morgan Davies), who is having a blast with his state of the art music set-up; her younger daughter, Kassie (Nell Fisher), who seems to be doing her own thing, cutting off the head of a doll as if to remind the viewer of the film they’re watching.

As the chaos in the house enfolds, Ellie responds to a ring at the front door and goes to answer. She opens the door and sees no one. She checks a corner. No one. The camera slowly pushes in on her; for just a moment, we’re concerned that the evil from the opening has come here. But right as Ellie turns to go inside, Beth appears from the other side of the door, shots “Boo!”, and gets appropriately punched in the face by her sister. This inoffensive jump-scare, a trick played by one family member by another in an attempt at eliciting fear for entertainment, hearkens back to the opening sequence and sets the stage what’s to follow: the cute moment’s perversion into the grotesque and macabre.

Thus, the principal characters are established and we’re given just enough bits and pieces to ascertain the family dynamic. We learn that Beth has been distant from her sister and niblings in pursuit of her own career. However, in this time, her sister, Ellie, has had to deal with a separation from her own husband and the responsibility of maintaining a household on her own. To make it worse, Beth learns that her sister is set to lose her residence as the building is set to be demolished. This is a condemned environment.

Unfortunately, Ellie’s previous attempts to convey this information to Beth have fallen on deaf ears, as the latter has been so focused on her craft that she has ignored calls for help. The awkward revelation gives Ellie an excuse to send the kids out for food so that the adults can find a way to deal with the alienating tension between them.

Beth realizes her mistake and is upset with her lack of action. Ellie forgives her sister and subsequently attempts to probe the reason for this surprise visit. However, before Beth can reveal that she’s concerned about her potential tangle with motherhood, an earthquake erupts and disrupts the already shoddy environment further, preventing the conversation from going any further.

Danny (Morgan Davies) decides to explore the hole.

While the adults try and stabilize in the apartment, the children, who are located in the garage, duck for cover. However, the aftermath of the quake reveals the foundations of their apartment building, a bank, lurking underneath. A newly created gap offers a way to untold riches and Danny decides to explore in order to potentially find something of value.

Yet, his exploration, in true Evil Dead fashion, is filled with a litany of symbols and objects that would scream to any other person to “stay out!” In contrast to his aunt’s earlier playful jump-scare, a statue of Jesus Christ literally jumps out from a corner in an attempt to deter him from his ill-founded material pursuits. But Danny persists, ignoring the warning sign of the holy entity, and finds a set of vinyl records before uncovering a grotesque tome, the iconic “Book of the Dead”. This discovery marks the beginning of the end and the film consequently cuts to Ellie staring forward at the camera, letting us know that evil is imminent.

In customary fashion, evil, supernatural hymns are recited, cosmic horrors enter the fray, and our group of characters are forced to find a way to survive against an immensely powerful malevolent force that takes immense pleasure in enacting the sickest, most twisted forms of violence on its victims. From this view, the plotting of this latest entry in the iconic Evil Dead franchise goes mostly as one would expect.

P.O.V shot goes through a lake, evoking classic horror imagery.

However, Cronin distinguishes his rendition of the Evil Dead from the rest of the franchise’s mainstays through his exploration and deconstruction of the spectral P.O.V. shot. If the opening wasn’t enough of a clue, an early conversation between Beth and Kassie draws textual attention to this point of focus, as the former party informs her niece that she doesn’t believe in ghosts because she can’t see them.

Thus, we are made aware that it is the gaze that is relevant and the film serves as an extended analysis of the way that its functions, both in regards to ourselves and within cinema, operate in relation to and through violence of different sorts. We are being asked: In what ways does our perspective of what is and is not violence change based on our perspective in relation to the phenomenon and its effects.

But Michael Haneke’s Funny Games this is not, and the analysis is mostly limited to simplistic thematic domains, namely to traditional thematic overtures regarding the family structure and manner by which it operates a kind of communal barrier. While the film’s set-up includes multiple angles by which to position said discussion and offer nuance into multiple domains, the limited deployment of its techniques ossifies the possibilities inherent within them. The thematic playground the film finds itself playing in is so much smaller than the space its elements give it access to and the way it dances with its cinematographic exploration, though deft, barely scratches the surface of the space it seeks to explore. In other words, the film’s area of focus is compelling and it judiciously utilizes both genre conventions and the franchise’s own history in pursuit of the same, but it limits its purview within artificial-feeling trappings that feel disappointing given the skill on display.

These commitment issues extend to the film’s tone which feels like it’s trying too hard to please all the myriad of fans, all of whom enjoy different aspects of the multi-faceted franchise. At times the film plays it straight and acts like a pot-boiler thriller with terrific pacing and frights abound. Every relevant plot element is neatly set-up à la Checkov’s gun and there’s very little fat as the film moves to its rhythm. The scares are neatly executed with subtle cues, few jump-scares, and mostly excellent sound design which helps accentuate the mean-spirited nature of the visceral horror set-pieces, playing on the ability of the genre to get viewers to imagine such violence’s happening to them. But right as the terror hits a fever pitch, the film will awkwardly toss aside the momentum for strange detours, like slapstick jokes found in Evil Dead II, which completely dissipate the tension and stop the pacing dead in its tracks.

Rises’ reliance on sticking to a formula also prevents it from gaining any new converts or impressing fans who are more so interested in the worldbuilding promised by the franchise. If you’ve seen any of the films before, you’re already going to know where and how the majority of the narrative will proceed which leaves only the spectacle remaining, and while that spectacle is stylized as all hell and is certainly visually evocative, it still does not approach that critical point at which the work feels transformative and wholly its own.

Instead of trying to be a terrifying thriller, a gory spectacle for splatter aficionados, a dark comedy for the horror-jaded, an examination of violence in relation to cinema for the theorists, and wholly honest to the plethora of expectations engendered by the franchise, the film should have given upon the juggling act and truly committed to the most congruent of these elements so that it could transcend itself in the way that certain parts of the film would suggest it would be able to do otherwise. Of course, it’s difficult to criticize a film when the criticism is aimed at its desires to please everyone, a task which it mostly does based on discussion surrounding it, but inevitably, upsetting some in favor of experimentation that pushes the needle forward is the only way to make a long-lasting mark and it’s disappointing when a film this fantastic doesn’t quite live up to that type of potential.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Evil Dead Rises is an ambitious, wonderfully stylized piece of work that deftly utilizes genre trappings and the conventions of the franchise to deliver a filmic experience that should please most of the fans it seeks to impress even if its attempt to do the same inevitably lowers its own artistic ceiling.
Rating	9.5/10
Grade	A+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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BEST PICTURE

DIRECTING

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

FILM EDITING

CINEMATOGRAPHY

PRODUCTION DESIGN

VISUAL EFFECTS

COSTUME DESIGN

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

SOUND

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

REPORT CARD

10. Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linklater

9. Hope by Na Hong Jin

8. Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-Ho

7. Resurrection by Bi Gan

6. Orphan by László Nemes

5. The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson

4. Die My Love by Lynne Ramsay

3. One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson

2. Eddington by Ari Aster

1. No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook

The List

REPORT CARD

Tickets and Anticipation

The Film Starts

Enter the Modern Audience

Sound Design

Visual Layering

Communal Engagement

The Take-Aways

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REPORT CARD

BEST PICTURE

DIRECTING

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

FILM EDITING

CINEMATOGRAPHY

PRODUCTION DESIGN

VISUAL EFFECTS

COSTUME DESIGN

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

SOUND

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

REPORT CARD

A place for fun and rumination

**10. Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linklater**

**9. Hope by Na Hong Jin**

**8. Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-Ho**

**7. Resurrection by Bi Gan**

**6. Orphan by László Nemes**

**5. The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson**

**4. Die My Love by Lynne Ramsay**

**3. One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson**

**2. Eddington by Ari Aster**

**1. No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook**