Hortonioni Oscars

Here's who wins at my version of the Oscars! And my running commentary.

These are MY Oscars so I can do whatever I want. Everyone can win if I say so. Who wins at your Oscars?!

Best Picture - Anora, The Brutalist, The Substance, Nickel Boys. I mean honestly it’s like looking at beautiful jewels and saying pick the best. There’s no best, there’s just one particular one you can’t stop thinking about because you are you. I think when films get picked because they are the best-made or most-perfect films, these aren’t the ones that stick around in our collective mind. The ones that are messy, challenging, ambitious, tough, imperfect — those are really the best. I think these four films will stick with us all for a very long time.

Best Actor - Adrien Brody in The Brutalist, Coleman Domingo in Sing Sing. I was just incredibly moved by each of their performances, the incredible ranges of emotion, and they way they each dissolved into the role. They each broke my heart many times.

Best Actress - Cynthia Erivo in Wicked. She did it all in Wicked, and did it while green from head to toe, and while singing on a broom 30 feet in the air. It truly was magical, watching the emotion flutter over her face and transform itself into something new. (Major snub here for Nicole Kidman in Babygirl and Marianne Jean Baptiste in Hard Truths!!)

Best Production Design - Conclave, The Brutalist. Some of the other nominations may be more flashy - Dune 2 built a whole world, to be fair - but Conclave’s design was just so perfect, tasteful, and striking for the story. Those dormitories were like gorgeous prison cells, reflecting the constraints of the institution but the beauty it strives for. Every detail was perfect. Then for The Brutalist: when the curtains pulled back on that library, I literally gasped. I don’t know if I’ve ever gasped at a moment of production design before! Everything was so convincing that I thought the buildings we see at the end of the film were real. I turned to Ryan and said, “That’s in Connecticut, we have to go see it!”

Best International Film - The Girl with the Needle. As you know from Fab Films Pt. 3, I am a huge fan of this movie. The cinematography, performances and screenplay are so powerful and work together to bring you squarely into this world, and into the protagonist’s dilemma. No one is morally good or bad in this film, and it has you on the edge of your seat the entire time. It’s so murky and alive in every way!

Best Director - Sean Baker, Anora. I think he did so much with this movie, from casting and directing an incredible ensemble, to meshing moments of slapstick comedy (in the courtroom) with devastating heartbreak (the end scene). I don’t think it’s a perfect movie but it’s certainly alive and I think that feeling of aliveness is what the director brings. I also loved his radical speech at the Independent Spirit Awards!

Best Supporting Actress - Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez. I think I’m one of the waning few (according to the internet) that like Emilia Pérez, I really took it as an over-exaggerated opera that used dramatic and provocative plot points to explore timeless themes of human nature and tragedy. At the same time I very much understand and agree with its critics: I think the director tried to make the film in a vacuum and movies do not live in a politics-free world. Regardless of that, Zoe Saldaña’s performance was incredible — the singing, dancing, her lightness, and tragedy. She carried the movie through from the first scene to the last (doesn’t that make her the Lead Actress? Whatever). (Snub: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Nickel Boys, Michele Austin in Hard Truths)

Best Supporting Actor - Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain. You just cannot take your eyes off him! Even though he’s a difficult character (the distance we have from him via the screen is a welcome one!), you want the film to return to him at all times. He’s in so much pain, while also trying to create so much joy, in such conflict about how to live. (Snub: Clarence Maclin in Sing Sing)

Best Score - Umm where is Challengers on this list of nominations??! This is all I have to say about that. Moving on.

Best Screenplay - The Brutalist. This 3+ hour film had me in its grasp from beginning to end. You can’t do that without an incredible screenplay! I actually thought this was a true story for a while (see note on production design above). I thought it had to be: otherwise how was the story of this man’s life so rich and complicated and detailed?!

Best Adapted Screenplay - Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys is a beautiful and heartbreaking story, woven with fiction and fact throughout the film. A screenplay is just a blueprint for a film, but clearly the screenplay wasn’t afraid to change perspective, jump time, utilize mixed medias. It contains hyper-specific personal details and large structural horrors in the same breath. It’s devastating and triumphant at once and laid the groundwork for a truly bold film.

Best Cinematography - Nosferatu, or The Brutalist or Nickel Boys. Each of these films approaches the cinematography of the film in such a unique way. In Nosferatu, shadows are the storytelling — from the literal shadow that is Nosferatu, to the chiaroscuro play of light and dark in so many frames. The imagery feels both mythic and based in human misery. In The Brutalist, the colors are stunning — alive and sad at the same time. It feels full of texture, like you want to reach out and touch all the materials Lazlo’s building with. His architectural work cleverly incorporates sunlight and you feel like this film wields the power of light as well: the substance and the style are in conversation. Then in Nickel Boys, this is a brilliant example of how cinematography is in service of storytelling. By putting the audience in a first-person POV, this is the cinematic “empathy machine” as it’s most powerful. This creates the sense that you are the characters, and that the characters are each another (which, if you’ve seen the film, is part of the plot, perfectly melding form <> function). Not to mention, the director RaMell Ross was the camera operator: what we see is exactly what he wants us to see, whether that’s the texture on someone’s hand or the piercing stare of a grandmother.

Best Costumes - Wicked. Every single costume in this movie is a piece of art. Even the background characters have some of the most mind-blowing costumes — when the women go to Emerald City my eyes were swimming in sea of imaginative shapes and fabrics. I’d never seen costumes like that before!

Best Editing - Umm where is Challengers on this list of nominations??! From the fast-paced tennis matches to the one-take dorm room scene, the edit made this movie what it is. But okay fine, my Oscar goes to Conclave…that is a tightly-wound film!