Welcome back to another glorious year for movies!

 

I love the smell of Oscar announcements in the morning! (Yes, I was up at 5:15 a.m. waking from a dream that I was having that I had missed the announcements and couldn't find the list online anywhere...)

This year, we have 53 films with nominations - savvy readers will notice that it's a bit lower than in prior years, but that's what happens when 3 movies each capture double digit nominations, as happened with Oppenheimer (in the lead with 13), Poor Things (with 11), and Killers of the Flower Moon (with 8). With 265 total nominations (5 nominees in 23 categories), the Best Picture list of 10 captured 71, that's just over 25% of the nominations.

I've done pretty well in the lead up to the Oscars, with just a small handful left to see before the big night in March.  Thanks for indulging my moment of bragging, but in fact, it's the lowest number I've needed to see ever.  That's a tribute to my amazing husband who is literally the Oscar films logistics Director, constantly researching what's playing where and making sure I find every nominee.  Enough about us, back to the nominees!

Snubs and Surprises

I thought Bradley Cooper was a shoo in for a Director nomination for Maestro, what everyone is referring to as his Magnum Opus. Though nominated for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, and Best Picture (as a producer), I have to assume that he is still disappointed.  Cooper has a total of 12 career nominations which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

John Williams earned his 54th Oscars nomination. Walt Disney is the single person who has had more nominations with 59, and Williams has said that he has reached the end of his career so won't be adding any more noms. Still, I think we could argue he is unrivaled in his accomplishments, ironically beating by far Leonard Bernstein who only had one for On the Waterfront.

As usual, the costume, production design, and makeup and hairstyling branch voters baffle me. Nothing for the Hunger Games prequel Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, nothing for Wonka. Only the latter had some buzz for the Oscars, but please go back and look at these projects and explain to me how they were completely overlooked in these categories.

We had a chance of up to 4 women being nominated in the Directing category and shockingly, the one who made her way in is Justine Trier for Anatomy of a Fall. No Greta Gerwig for Barbie, no Emerald Fennell for Saltburn (ACTUALLY NOTHING FOR SALTBURN - sorry Barry Keoghan and Rosamund Pike), no Celine Song for Past Lives.  Still, one of my favorites, Yorgos Lanthimos scored yet another nomination for directing (6 career nominations, 2 for directing) and I loved his film which will surely win for costume and possibly others.

American Symphony, the brilliant documentary on Netflix about Jon Batiste navigating fame and his wife's cancer was nominated for song but not for Best Documentary.  This is shocking because I thought it would win the category altogether, and I highly recommend you watch it.

And the biggest snub of all, Ava Duvernay's magnificent film Origin received no Oscar buzz, not for directing, not for screenplay (which I understand to be the greatest feat of taking a dense book and turning it into an incredible story), and not for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor who frankly gave the performance of a lifetime. Duvernay self-financed the film and had no big studio to put in money to conduct an Oscars campaign (sorry guys, it's true... no campaign, very unlikely to get nominations). Nonetheless, a wonderful and important film.

There are certainly more snubs and surprises, but this is where I'll leave you for today.  Tomorrow we begin the real work, friends, reviewing each and every one of the 53 films nominated, and most importantly, telling you which ones to see and which ones to skip.

Happy Oscars Day!

Promising Young Woman - 5 nominations

Best Motion Picture of the Year Ben Browning (producer)  Ashley Fox (producer)  Emerald Fennell (producer)  Josey McNamara (producer)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Carey Mulligan

Best Achievement in Directing - Emerald Fennell

Best Original Screenplay - Emerald Fennell (written by)

Best Achievement in Film Editing - Frédéric Thoraval

Promising Young Woman tells the story of Cassandra (Carey Mulligan), a medical school dropout cum coffee barista who is handing out street justice to those involved in a trauma-inducing crime she and her best friend experienced while in medical school.  In the process, she has a little side hustle of trapping and scaring the hell out of potential rapists and self-defined "good guys" who take home drunk women that they might "get lucky" and luck themselves right into raping said women.  Cassandra won't stop until she has sought revenge against the rapist, the cheering by-standers, and those professionals in the college system who are impotent or unwilling to bring to account those who perpetrate criminal behavior; because it's difficult to prove, because it hurts the university's crime statistics, and worst of all... because the rapist has "such a promising future."

Sounds heavy, right?  Not so with this impressive film that manages to inspire emotions that run the gambit - there are really funny parts in this revenge movie.  There are tense parts, there are scary parts, there are emotional parts, and all of the parts merge to form a delicious whole.  Credit is due to Carey Mulligan who is so utterly likable and so brilliantly tactical that we root for her, even as she does her worst.  While I doubt that this film will win Best Picture, the screenplay has a shot.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I used to work in student affairs and the professionals I know have always taken rape quite seriously as a crime, and my observation is that they put the students who report as their top priorities.  I worry that their good work comes into question with films like this, but having said that, there is enough evidence that many universities have failed in their duty of care for the students that this story is easily believable.  In fact, if this film speaks to you, I highly recommend another film called, "The Hunting Ground," for which Diane Warren and Lady Gaga received an Oscar nomination for Original Song.  This documentary captures the realities of rape on campus and what university administrators are doing - or not doing - about it.

Promising Young Woman is worth it for the performances alone, but is worthy of all nominations it has received.

Watch the trailer here.