A Helpless Non-Voter's Best Picture Ballot

Screaming into the abyss: a therapeutic exercise in futility

Happy Oscars Sunday! I forgive you if you didn’t know that today was the “big” day. Fewer and fewer people in my orbit seem to be aware that the annual ceremony celebrating the years’ best in film continues to exist, much less that it is occurring today. And if my orbit is hardly aware, I cannot imagine what the situation is outside of it. (Actually, I can. See: the historically low viewership counts of recent broadcasts.)

Consider this post, then, an act of public service to you, dear reader: if you want to get a sense of the films that are up for the top award on offer this evening, or (more likely) to know what the hell the movies that appear in tomorrow’s headlines as the big winners are all about, read on. As an added bonus, this post is an act of self-care, allowing me to vent about what I think is wrong with the movies which the Academy will decide to award, and what I think is great about the movies they fail to recognize. Because they always, always get something – most things – egregiously wrong.

By way of background, for the past decade or so the Academy has moved to a ranked-choice voting system in which members rank the ten nominees for Best Picture in order of preference. What follows is what I would submit if I were a member of the Academy, along with some thoughts on each nominee. I am of course a hapless non-voter, so this is as close to an exercise in complete futility as there is. It also happens to be a boatload of fun (for me).

10. Triangle of Sadness
It’s possible that this is not the absolute worst movie nominated for Best Picture – that “honor” probably goes to the next film on my list – but Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner is certainly the nominee to which I had the most visceral negative reaction. Triangle of Sadness consists of three connected, but distinct parts, each ridiculing the fatuousness and ugliness of the beautiful, powerful, and above all rich – the first centered on a “romantic” evening between a pair of models, the second on the disdainful relationships between the staff and patrons on luxury cruise ship, and the third on a band of survivors stranded on an island after the aforementioned cruise ship is shipwrecked. Individual moments capture the biting edge of Östlund’s previous work (The Square and the wonderful Force Majeure), and the performances – particularly those of Charlbi Dean and the BAFTA-nominated Dolly de Leon – are smartly constructed and effectively executed. But in addition to feeling a bit haphazardly stitched together (the three parts’ interconnectivity does not pay off, giving it the feel of an anthology film instead of a cohesive feature), the whole thing has a kind of self-satisfaction about its own moral righteousness that comes off as utterly insufferable.

9. Elvis
Whatever one may think about it, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is without a doubt Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. The Australian filmmaker’s maximalism is certainly sui generis; it also happens to be categorically exhausting. His style of storytelling is a fragmentary one, capturing individual and isolated moments without much of an eye to how they fit into a whole. This extends not merely to how scenes are pieced together, but even to how shots within a scene are combined. There is hardly a frame which is allowed to breathe before the next cut arrives. Effective as this style may be in Elvis’ musical numbers, which are undoubtedly extraordinary, it is not at all conducive to painting an insightful portrait of the King of Rock and Roll’s life as an artist and individual. What saves Luhrmann’s film from itself is Austin Butler, whose transformation into Mr. Presley is spellbinding. His fidelity to the physicality and mannerisms – and, of course, the voice – of his subject does not devolve into caricature, but instead inflects Elvis with a humanity that the script and storytelling do little to evince.

8. Everything Everywhere All at Once
If one must tell a story in the multiverse, this is the way to do it. EEAAO sees Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert combine their zany sensibilities (their previous film together, Swiss Army Man, is about a magical farting corpse which helps a stranded man escape a desert island) with the literally infinite possibilities of a story set across multiple dimensions. The result: universes in which all humans have hot dogs for fingers, in which every sentient being is a rock, and everything in between, with travel between dimensions requiring a bizarre action like eating a full stick of lip balm or shoving a (remarkably phallic) trophy where the sun don’t shine. Within and beyond all of its unflinching absurdity, EEAAO is a sweet story about the importance of love and family, and how they supersede all notions of time and space and known reality. It is a warm hug of a film. It is also far, far from the masterpiece that its most zealous fans proclaim it to be. Its zaniness often veers into silliness (see: hot dog fingers) and its sweetness often veers into the saccharine. It is definitionally “extra.” Many responded to it with exuberance, delight, and tears of joy. I did not; I merely liked it. Sue me.

7. Women Talking
I confess that I went into this film with trepidation. It seemed at first glance merely another bit of shameless Oscar bait, riding its way to critical acclaim on the laurels of its political valence rather than its quality. I could not have been more mistaken, for Sarah Polley’s first directorial effort in a decade is as captivating as they come. An adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, Women Talking is about women, well, talking – specifically, a group of Mennonite women discussing whether or not they should venture into the outside world following a spate of sexual assaults committed by men in the community. Polley’s film is visually drab, but purposefully so, with its desaturated color palette and static setting giving it an aggressive ugliness that clashes with (and thus accentuates) the intellectual dynamism of the women as they furiously debate whether to forgive, stay and fight, or leave. Polley’s script powerfully argues that unity, even in the face of horrendous collective trauma, cannot be taken as given, and must be fought for tooth and nail.

6. All Quiet on the Western Front
Edward Berger’s German-language war epic is a superior version of Sam Mendes’ much-lauded 2019 Best Picture nominee 1917; while the latter used its war setting as an excuse for an exercise in style, this Netflix production wields its technical flourishes in service of that setting, thunderously showcasing the terror and brutality of frontline combat. Is it treading new ground? Certainly not – in addition to bearing the fingerprints of famous anti-war films of yore like Come and See and Apocalypse Now, it is also based on a novel which has twice before been adapted to cinema (the 1930 version of which itself won Best Picture). Yet the technical aptitude on display, from its spectacular range of colors to its athletic, breathless cinematography, overwhelm its possible lack of freshness, especially given the current awful standard of craft on display in mainstream films possessing even less originality than All Quiet on the Western Front. (Yes, that was Marvel slander.)

5. Avatar: The Way of Water
The doubters and haters can be damned. Big Jim Cameron did it. This much-anticipated sequel to 2009’s Avatar – the highest grossing movie of all time, in case you had forgotten – is now the third highest grossing movie of all time. And, perhaps more surprisingly, it’s stunning. Sure, the plot is somewhat trite, and the dialogue occasionally laughable. But when the film looks the way it does, who really cares? The plot and dialogue are merely vehicles for Cameron to build out the intricacies and details of his beloved Pandora. The care and craft bleeds off the screen, with every individual Na’vi, every plant, and every one of the glorious sea creatures designed and rendered with transparent love.The Way of Water, much like its predecessor, must be seen on the biggest screen and with the loudest sound system you can find to be appreciated fully. Go. Now. Trust me.

4. The Fabelmans
It’s all too easy to imagine how this film could have gone. Steven Spielberg could have chosen to give his life the full hagiographic treatment, building out and puffing up the already substantial mythos around his career. He instead made a something a bit less obvious – more self-critical than self-congratulatory, and consequently much more audacious than the alternative. The Fabelmans centers on Spielberg’s early life and growth into a filmmaker, yes, but its ultimately focus is on the inextricable intertwining of an artist’s personal and creative lives. Spielberg’s avatar in the film, Sammy Fabelman (a brilliant Gabriel LaBelle), processes defining events of his youth – the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, his first serious relationship, his experiences with anti-Semitic bullying – through the lens of his camera and on the cutting room floor. Spielberg’s film achieves what most autobiographies cannot bring themselves to do: it looks at its subject squarely in the mirror, blemishes and all. Far from puffing up his mythos, Spielberg somehow both explodes it and deepens its foundations.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin
Martin McDonagh’s latest feature is about a man who one day decides to entirely cut his heretofore best friend out of his life completely, and does so by threatening to cut off a finger each time further contact between them occurs. It is also about the Irish civil war of the early 1920s, the question of whether it is worth sacrificing interpersonal (but impermanent) relationships for permanence through artistic achievement, and how the proximity of friendship can sow the seeds of enmity. Thematic richness packed into darkly absurd premises is McDonagh’s métier, and yet rarely has the synthesis been as seamless – one has to return to his 2008 debut In Bruges to find something as powerful, with Bruges’ macabre humor giving way here to an overarching melancholy. What makes Banshees transcend is its slew of brilliant performances – Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan, and Kerry Condon are all Oscar-nominated, and deservedly so – as well as McDonagh’s directorial eye, which for the first time in his career adds a visual palette that enriches his script instead of just adequately servicing it.

2. Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick [is] a work of pure, uncut nostalgia […] The opening credits are almost shot-for-shot with the original, scored once again to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” A group of pilots drunkenly perform a piano-accompanied rendition of “Great Balls of Fire” at their favorite watering hole – just as in the original. Philosophical and temperamental asymmetry between two machismo-obsessed trainees becomes a chief source of conflict – just as in the original. The finale involves a strategic mission to neutralize a conspicuously unnamed enemy nation – well, you guessed it.

How does Maverick get away with all this without it coming off as obsequious, pandering nonsense? It is down to the sheer dedication of its creative team – director Joseph Kosinski and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, certainly, but above all our last true movie star, Tom Cruise – to the minutiae and craft of filmmaking. Nostalgia in their hands becomes a boon instead of a burden. The recycled elements continually remind the audience of what they enjoyed from the original, only for the film to blow away its predecessor at every turn – a revitalization instead of a mere recreation. This is nowhere more true than in the action sequences, which – I am not being hyperbolic here – rank among the greatest ever put to screen. Each and every shot in each and every flying sequence comes across as meticulously planned, obsessively constructed, and masterfully executed. One understands the amount of effort being exerted, and yet is not made to feel it. All one can feel is the rush of air, the G-forces, the speed, the adrenaline.

I can easily believe that this film exists. What I cannot believe is that it’s so alive. For something to feel so deftly controlled and yet so exhilarating, so finely calibrated and yet so limitless, is nothing less than miraculous. That’s just what Top Gun: Maverick is: a magisterial, magnificent miracle […]

I wrote this about Maverick back in September. Nothing has changed. What an absolute banger.

1. TÁR
The greatness of writer-director Todd Field’s return to the big screen after a decade and a half is not in the supreme level of craft on display, from the superb sound design to the shrewd cinematography, from the ornate production design to the sharp, assured editing. It is not even in Cate Blanchett’s virtuoso, epochal performance in the titular role – a performance, in my mind, that ranks among the very best on screen since the turn of the millennium. No, the greatness of TÁR, which tracks the rise and fall from grace of (fictional) EGOT-winning symphony conductor Lydia Tár, instead lies in its audacious subtlety, in the willingness of Field to shade the film in grey when the demand is for black and white. The New York Times ran an op-ed on the film titled “Finally, a Great Movie About Cancel Culture,” which is true, but also does it a disservice, for Field’s interests are far broader than this heated, exhausting cultural debate. TÁR is about how power imbalances between rungs of a hierarchy are abused and viciously self-perpetuate, and about the difficulties of distinguishing between artistic authenticity and fraudulence, and about how much our notion of “genius” is shaped by actual achievement versus self-promotion. All of which is to say, it is about the complexity and nuances of the human experience, and the impossibility of answering all of the profound questions that experience asks of us without oversimplifying to a fatal degree.

(TÁR’s indefiniteness is also why this magnificent film has not a whisper of a chance to win Best Picture. Ah well. Relish its existence, and its nomination, I will whimper to myself softly after it is completely blanked this evening.)