Oscars

For the first time that I can remember, I have seen all but one of the nominees for the Oscars, which were held last week. At the time, I had seen all of them except for The Post and The Shape of Water, which I finally saw after it won best picture. My thoughts on it and the rest of the nominees:

The Shape of Water is essentially Splash re-imagined with the Creature from the Black Lagoon instead of a mermaid, but nowhere near as good. I was impressed by the creature design, certainly, but the rest of the movie felt frustratingly underdone. It was a very typical Guillermo del Toro film, in that sense: I think he’s a gifted visualist, but his stories and characters leave a lot to be desired.

Get Out is actually my third favourite movie of 2018, behind mother! and Blade Runner 2049, so if I had been an Academy voter, this is the one I personally would have chosen for best picture. It’s very smart, very funny and very poignant without being preachy. It’s really brilliant, the best of the bunch on offer, in my opinion.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was the one I would have bet on winning. I thought it had the best script with distinct, engaging characters and a complex, conflicted situation they’re all involved in. The dialogue is whip-crack smart and often very funny which helps leaven the darkness of the story. I really thought it was going to win.

Dunkirk is a very interesting, suspenseful film but thin in terms of plot or story. That’s not the point, of course: the movie works best as a sensory experience, and it is arguably the most purely cinematic of the films up for best picture, but the Oscars usually try to be as all-encompassing as possible and I doubt there was enough story in Dunkirk for the Academy to vote it best picture.

The Darkest Hour makes an interesting companion piece to Dunkirk, telling the story behind the events of that film. However, I felt that there wasn’t much to the movie beyond Gary Oldman’s stunning performance as Winston Churchill (and it really is worth watching just for that). Everything else was just sort of there to provide a stage for the actor, in my opinion.

Call Me By Your Name is a refreshingly cliché-free telling of a gay coming-of-age story. Beautifully shot and containing a wonderful speech at the end delivered by Michael Stuhlbarg, I nevertheless felt the movie was too long and could have been better with a little more editing.

Ladybird is a really fun and funny coming-of-age story which also manages to avoid the clichés so common to the genre. Well-written and wonderfully acted by everyone, I would not have been surprised if it had won best picture.

The Post is the only one I haven’t seen. Although I like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, the film just didn’t appeal to me. I couldn’t say why exactly, but I can’t help feeling it was nominated not because of its excellence but because of its “importance”. Maybe it is really great, and I hate to sound so cynical, but I’m just not interested.

Of course, Get Out was the only one on the list of nominees that I had in my top five of last year, but then it’s quite normal for my personal choices to be at odds with the Academy. It’s also not unusual for the Academy to be “wrong”. I mean, who remembers Crash over Brokeback Mountain? Or the musical Oliver! which beat 2001: A Space Odyssey?

I don’t know why I watch the Oscars. Every year I swear I won’t waste my time next year, and then I tuned in, faithfully. I’m just a movie nerd, I guess.