Oscar Choices

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Having seen all the contenders except Bugonia (the sour taste of Poor Things still lingers), I’m ready to anoint my Oscar choices for 2025, limiting myself to the official nominees:

Best Actor
Ethan Hawke. An easy decision. He held the screen the entire movie, captivated us although he wasn’t attractive by any measure, and so inhabited the character that I had no idea who the actor was for much of the film.

Best Actress
 Jessie Buckley. Also easy, although not for want of competition. Any other time I would be happy with a win for Rose Byrne, Renata Reinsve or even Kate Hudson, but Buckley was radiant, acted with range and carried what otherwise could have been a limp, albeit beautiful, film.

Supporting Actor
The supporting cast of One Battle After Another was uniformly superb, but Sean Penn, as he often is, was in a class by himself. Although you knew it was Sean Penn, you believed in him as a character every time he took the stage.

Supporting Actress
I thought I discovered Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas among her more heralded co-stars, only to see the Academy acknowledge her as well; but if the Academy wants to recognize Amy Madigan for her bizarro role, I will too.

Best Picture
Only two of the ten Oscar nominees made my personal Top Ten, and neither was near the top of the list. I will go with Sinners for its artistic achievement, a movie about music, the South, race relations and, yes, zombies.

Director
Ryan Coogler gets my nod over Paul Thomas Anderson. Both took ambitious, daringly big swings–Anderson’s a little too much so.

International Film
Sirat was the most convincingly original film of the year, in its setting, its cast, its score and its emotional shock.

The Technical Awards
I don’t hold myself out as competent to judge these awards, and I wonder if many Academy members do either, as year after year the nominees are drawn from the Best Picture slate. In other words, I suspect many people just vote for their favorite films, without considering some mediocre film that had really great costumes, say, or sound editing. How, for example, could someone say Marty Supreme, with a number of bumbling amateurs, was one of the five best Casting films?
With that caveat, I thought Frankenstein the most sumptuous film of the year, so I’ll give it the Oscar for either Costume or Production Design. F1 had great race scenes that didn’t overwhelm the rest of the movie, so I’ll throw a bone there, although I won’t complain when One Battle After Another wins the award. Cinematography could go to anything other than Marty Supreme; many people loved Train Dreams, and we felt we missed a lot by watching it on the TV screen. The director of Sirat made a strong case for the Best Sound nod; it was certainly the loudest, most percussive, and most instrumental to its story. Sinners had the best music, and Ludwig Goransson usually wins the Original Score, so no problem there. I don’t know any of the Original Songs, but our granddaughters love the Kpop Demon Hunters. Original Screenplay–Blue Moon. Adapted Screenplay–One Battle After Another. That’s all I know.

No Other Choice – 2

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If a comedy, not funny. If a drama, not dramatic. If social commentary, no comment. After an hour we looked at each other, mouthed the word “stupid,” and departed. The culture gap between us and this Korean Oscar submission must have been too wide.

The Voice of Hind Rajab – 7

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A one-note dramatization of a real call from besieged Gaza was short on modulation, and how one responds to the lead character’s conduct will depend on the viewer, but any film that humanizes Palestinians deserves celebration.

Top Ten 2025

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How to pick a Top Ten–and what does “Top Ten” mean, anyway? I’m in no position to pick the “best” movies; so my choices must be personal favorites and, on a further level of subjectivity, on the particular day I saw them. Some would question how I could pick Americana., a film that was barely noticed and poorly reviewed, but not Sentimental Value, the kind of quiet, interpersonal film I usually champion, with award-worthy performances throughout.  Here’s my explanation: I had heard so much positive chatter about SV before I saw it, and I had so loved Joachim Trier and Renata Reinsve’s previous collaboration that I was somewhat disappointed that the film was much quieter and smaller than The Worst Person in the World. Conversely, I went to see Americana. after reading reviews that weren’t terribly promising but made it sound quirky enough to check it out on at Metro 4 on a Tuesday afternoon. Low expectations, big payoff vs. high expectations, no fireworks.

The one common test I applied to all the movies vying for a spot on the list is, Do I heartily recommend it to others? Conversely, again, however “good” the film is, if I walk away thinking more about my reservations than overall quality, then it’s off the list. One Battle After Another is clearly one of the most ambitious films of the year, with a serious message, brilliant directing and worthy acting Oscar nominations; but I left thinking how much I disliked Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting or character (not sure which) and how absurd the chase-scene ending was. F1 and Song Sung Blue were far less original, but the action scenes were entertaining and the chemistry of the romantic leads was convincing, making both totally enjoyable nights at the cinema.

Then there are points for originality and artistry: if a director has a vision, successfully executes it and, also important, I get it, it deserves a spot. Richard Linklater’s twin bill of Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague makes it largely on those grounds. While I had a good time with both, there was more admiration than rapture. What ideas and how did he pull them off! Sirat falls in this category as well. I was amazed at how the director combined music, setting, characters and plot that were all new to me into a unified whole. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was another unusual vision-driven film that just missed inclusion on my list.

Zombie and horror pictures aren’t my usual Top Ten fare, but both Sinners and Weapons were sufficiently tethered to reality that I could accept them on their terms and go along for the ride without internal protest. By the time the story went crazy I was settled in their worlds. Same for The Housemaid, another film, like Americana., that will be forgotten in awards season but also, like Americana., gave me new respect for Sydney Sweeney.

Jay Kelly also gets little critical respect, but it was made up of fun moment after fun moment, and seeing it before reviews with Noah Baumbach to explicate gave it a head start. As for Part One of Billy Joel: And So It Goes, whether it qualifies as a “movie” matters less than the fact it provided the most fun two hours we had in front of a screen all year.

There weren’t a lot of important films this year, which is fine, but this made The Teacher stand out even more than it would have just for its artistry. Other than daily Trump and his destruction of a country that was doing so well for 250 years, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people was for me the defining issue of the year; and while this movie predated October 7 it captured that environment in language that was not at all foreign. More than recommend, I would urge people to see it and only regret that it hasn’t been around to watch.

1. The Teacher
2. Billy Joel: And So It Goes
3. Americana.
4. Sinners
5. F1
6. Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague
7. Song Sung Blue
8. Weapons
9. Sirat
10. Jay Kelly

Secret Agent – 6.8

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What a feel this movie gives for Brazil in 1977 – its people, its culture – in just its first 40 minutes! In the hands of a master filmmaker, I sat back, eager for the ride, with Wagner Moura as the easygoing lead. Then the plot happens and muddies the picture. People are enemies of the state for reasons unknown, a hairy leg attacks people enjoying commercial sex, heads get blown off, and researchers 45 years in the future piece together the puzzle for, again, reasons unknown. Perhaps familiarity with Brazilian history and politics would have kept us better glued for the following two hours.

It Was Just An Accident – 7.8

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Remarkably filmed sub rosa in Iran, Accident told a story of torture and revenge with compelling directness and lots of close-ups. Some of the set pieces went on too long, which drained some suspense, but that may have been Jafar Panahi’s intention. (Would the Golden Globes consider this a comedy?) A bit threadbare for Best Picture, but politically daring and in every way commendable.

Sound of Falling – 7.6

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A very arty, elegiac and cryptic, but not unpleasant, look at women’s lot in a poor East German farmhouse in three or four discreet early 20th-century years, intercut and largely unresolved. It helped that the director warned, this was not a film about plot or characters; it was an experience that we should float along. Death, sex and subjugation seemed to be common themes, with trivial amusements lightening the load.

Song Sung Blue – 8

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Music can make you happy, and this film did, over and over. Good songs, sung with joy to enthusiastic audiences, were played to the end but smartly intercut with snippets of the characters’ daily lives, so they never outstayed their welcome. The characters were all people you rooted for (cf. Marty Supreme) and enjoyed being with, even the teenage girls. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson were wonderful, as was the supporting cast, featuring good old Michael Imperioli. The plot may have been based on a true story, but it doled out excessive tragedies in a Hollywood-hokey way that erased any thought of authenticity. But that music!

Marty Supreme P.S.

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Given the critical accolades tossed at Josh Safdie and Timothee Chalamet’s film, it’s worth recalling, even a month later, the main reasons I labelled Marty Supreme “unwatchable.”
1. Marty’s character, which dominates the film, is so abhorrent any possibility of “enjoying” the movie evaporates. Yes, Chalamet does a remarkable acting job, presumably at Safdie’s direction, of making his character unlikeable. His selfishness is bad enough, but it his cruelty to others that is most repellent. (Should I overlook Marty’s ugliness and admire his creation as a work of art? Let me just note that I have the same test for paintings. I’ll take a Copley or Sargent or Velazquez portrait of a handsome man or beautiful women any day over someone plain or unattractive.)
2. The absurdity of Marty’s table tennis career. I suppose ping-pong doesn’t require the extreme conditioning of some other sports, but to be a world champion of anything one must be in good shape and practice hard and often. Marty’s irresponsible, not to say licentious and quasi-criminal, lifestyle, left no room for actually working on his game.
3. The table tennis itself. Having to film more than one match, the director seemed at a loss to differentiate the action, repeating over and over the same play of slam-and-race-across-the-room-to-retrieve. To my untrained eye, it also appeared that CGI was taking over the ball in flight.
4. To stick with the sport, Marty’s win over the Japanese champion was totally unsupported by the script. The film made a point of explaining that Marty’s loss to Endo at the British Open was due to a new kind of racket that Endo was using. And the loss was convincing. What had changed for the rematch? Marty hadn’t adopted the new racket, he was playing in Endo’s home country and he was either jet-lagged or hadn’t slept for 48 hours.
5. Then what about those orange ping-pong balls? The movie built this invention up to be a breakthrough, then it went nowhere.
6. Okay, let’s move on to Kay Stone. However tired of her marriage she is, are we to believe she would answer Marty’s cold call, then stay on the line with his rude manners, then come to his room for a quickie? And continue a relationship with nothing in it for her? Their relationship just made me squirm.
7.  Speaking of this relationship, the scene in Central Park was another head-scratcher. We learned that Safdie prides himself on using amateur non-actors; as good as Pico Iyer was in his role, the cops in the Park were embarrassingly bad. (I didn’t feel that way about Kevin O’Leary, but Siri thought him a terrible actor before knowing he wasn’t one.)
8. The dog subplot. This didn’t bother me as much as it did my friends with dogs, but it seemed to belong to another movie. What little sense it made dissipated when Marty and Rachel tried to pass off a dog that bore no resemblance to the canine in question.
9. The falling bathtub. Again, this belonged to a different movie, maybe one with the Three Stooges. It was also poorly set up by the landlord adjuring Marty not to take a shower, not a bath.
10. The ending. Were we supposed to believe that Marty has grown a heart because he coos over his newborn child? If so, it’s an undeserved ending. If not, why use it?
I’ve previously mentioned that I didn’t like any of the songs Safdie used (rare for a film), but I suppose that’s a matter of taste.

Nuremberg – 6

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It’s tricky to make a modern historical drama where the viewer has his own context to compare. It doesn’t help when the American characters played by Michael Shannon and Remi Malek come across as clueless and incompetent, while Russell Crowe’s Hermann Goering is masterful and compelling. But the film seems populated by symbolic figures, not real people. Still, I wish the famous trial could have made some sense, historic or dramatic.