Best Picture 2024

The 2024 Oscars ceremony is mere hours away and I've finally finished writing my annual post about this year's Best Picture nominees. This is my sixth year doing this and once again I've seen all the nominees. Let's take a look!

American Fiction

Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright who is perhaps best known as Felix Leiter in the Daniel Craig Bond films, is an intelligent African-American professor and writer whose high-brow books sell poorly. Frustrated, he writes a satire of "black" books which is unexpectedly taken by the publishing world to be a serious piece of literature. It's a hilarious film with Wright having lots of fun taking on Monk's alter-ego. At the same time though it's also a clever critique of the sort of media that is consumed by white people to make them feel better about racial issues and the film points out that black people can have normal lives beyond ghettos and gangs- the film itself also tells an ordinary black man's story as Monk goes through various family and relationship dramas. Few films manage to both be hilarious and thought-provoking. 

Anatomy of a Fall

When a man is found dead having fallen from the balcony of his chalet, naturally his wife falls under suspicion. The film follows the police investigation and the trial as Sandra (Sandra Huller) has to defend herself. The premise does feel like a Sunday night TV drama but the film is actually much more sophisticated than that, delving deeply into a complicated relationship. It's also really well constructed with the way it drops its plot points making it feel like you are a member of the jury. Were I to rank this year's nominees this would be towards the bottom, though that's more because they are especially strong this year, but that means I think it's unlikely this is going to win. Sadly the Oscars does not yet have an animal acting award but if it did than Messi the dog who plays Snoop in this film would win for one of the best pieces of animal acting I've ever seen. 

Barbie

This is by far the most commercially successful film of this year's nominees and for good reason. Writer/director Greta Gerwig took the Barbie dolls and created a film that is clever and very funny and manages to dive into feminist issues all at the same time. It's generally been perceived that Gerwig was snubbed for a Best Director nomination and Margot Robbie for a Best Actress nomination and many pointed out the irony that Ryan Gosling received a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Barbie is my dark horse of this year's nominees partly due to this controversy and also due to the fact that the Academy is made up of people from all aspects of filmmaking such as lighting and production design and this film does a fantastic job in the technical areas. One award if really should win is Best Original Song for Billie Eilish's haunting 'What Was I Made For?'.

The Holdovers

Another comedy, The Holdovers sees Paul Giamatti play strict and stuffy boarding-school teacher Paul Hunham who is tasked with spending Christmas with the students who can't go home for Christmas. Events conspire to leave Paul with one student, troubled teenager Angus Tully (brilliant newcomer Dominic Sessa). The result is a lot of fun but we gradually learn about Paul's difficult past and the reasons why Angus is troubled. This is very much a Christmas film and is the 2020s version of classic stories like A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. Stupidly it was released in the UK in February but it's one to look out for come the festive season. I suspect Da'Vine Joy Randolph will win Best Supporting Actress for her role as the school's grieving cafeteria manager. 

Killers of the Flower Moon

Directing legend Martin Scorsese seems to show no signs of slowing down despite now being in his 80s. This film unites his muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Nero in a true story set in 1920s Oklahoma where members of the Osage Nation were murdered after oil was discovered on tribal land. The film has received some criticism for portraying this story from the view of the white locals rather than the Native Americans themselves but I think that the story is best told in this way. It's one of those historical injustices that deserves to be better known and it's great that Native American actors have a significant role in the film; Lily Gladstone is fantastic and has an outside chance at the Best Actress award. 

Maestro

In my mind, this is by far the worst film of this year's nominees and I can't even work out how it managed to get nominated. The film is written and directed by Bradley Cooper and he also plays the lead character, composer Leonard Bernstein. The whole film feels like it is really trying to win an Oscar with Cooper taking every fancy directorial trick and throwing it at the film. It's all well done but the resulting film left me cold, making Bernstein's story seem frankly rather dull and somehow managing to neither really highlight why he was such an impressive person nor get under the skin of his character. One of the biggest talking points of the film is that Cooper learned how to conduct and there's a long sequence of him doing that which is all very impressive but feels more like simply showing off rather than serving any real narrative or artistic purpose in the film. If this film wins Best Picture it will go down as one of the academy's worst mistakes, which is saying something. 

Oppenheimer

There's no beating around the bush- this is probably going to win Best Picture as well as a ton of other awards including Best Actor for Cillian Murphy and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. Christopher Nolan's film about the man who created the atomic bomb is incredible. It's so many things at once- a film about an incredible scientific achievement, a film about a complicated marriage, a film about how we treat heroes and a film about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The sequence building up to the explosion of the first test bomb is absolutely breathtaking. It's probably not my favourite of this year's nominees but it's undeniably fantastic and with the momentum behind the film it seems inevitable it's going to be hugely successful. 

Past Lives

I'm delighted that this film got a nomination because it's so beautiful. Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Celine Song, the film begins with childhood sweethearts Na Young and Hae Sung living in South Korea. Shortly afterward Na Young's family emigrate to North America, she is renamed Nora Moon, and the pair lose contact. As adults, they reconnect online and eventually Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) travels to New York City where Nora (Greta Lee) lives with her husband. You expect it to be a proper romance and for Hae Sung to save Nora from her horrible American husband but her husband is actually a nice man and there's no real prospect of future romance. Instead, it's the story of what could have been and I was surprised to find it elicited enormous feelings from me relating back to a circumstance that wasn't so very different. I still think about this film and it's the one I'd vote for if I had a say. 

Poor Things

Outlandish director Yorgos Lanthimos gives us his weirdest film yet with Poor Things, which is saying something. Bella Baxter, played by an incredible Emma Stone who I suspect will win Best Actress, is a young woman in a steampunk Victorian London who is resurrected via a brain transplant and embarks on a voyage of self-discovery. It's essentially a version of the Frankenstein story with Bella exploring what it means to be human, though this version contains significantly more sex than Mary Shelley's story. It's very funny, the highlight being a hilarious performance from Mark Ruffalo as a typical Victorian cad, but also quite profound at times too. I think this is too weird to have a serious chance of winning Best Picture but it's a fascinating film. 

The Zone of Interest

This is one film I have no intention of ever watching again, and not because it's bad. The film is about the family of the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedal). His wife is played by Sandra Huller, who impressively managed to appear in two Best Picture nominees in the same year. It's a Holocaust film that is unlike any that has come before. We watch the domestic life of the family in their house and garden whilst on the other side of the garden wall Jewish people are murdered in their thousands. You never see the Holocaust directly happen but you see smoke coming from the chimneys over the wall and the film has superb sound design with there often being distant screaming or gunshots in the background. The film shows us this loving and normal-seeming family who are complicit in genocide and it's really hard to get your head around how those contrasting things are possible. 

So there you go, nine excellent films and Maestro. My personal favourite was Past Lives with American Fiction not far behind but it seems likely Oppenheimer will be all over the headlines after winning Best Picture and a slew of other awards.