The Oscar nominations are out, and I am NOT howling with outrage. I’m generally pleased that the year’s best movies are receiving lots of recognition: The Power of the Dog, Belfast, Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up and CODA – and even my top choice Drive My Car, which I feared would be overlooked (because it is a fairly obscure, three-hour long Japanese movie).
Being the Ricardos is nominated for several major awards despite being a so-so movie; my guess is that Aaron Sorkin, Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are so popular and respected among the Academy voters, that voters expected it to be really good and somehow failed to recalibrate after watching it.
The most exciting category is Best Supporting Actor, where three exquisite performances are recognized. Kodi Smit-McPhee takes over the final third of The Power of the Dog and elevates it. Deaf actor Troy Kotsur is as fine an actor as any hearing person, as he demonstrates in his moving performance in CODA. Always very good, Ciaran Hinds knocks a grandpa role out of the park in Belfast (and gets to deliver the film’s most moving line). I will be elated whichever of the three win the statuette.
In the Best Actress category, Olivia Colman delivered another performance for the ages, but in The Lost Daughter, a film that is just not going to be popular.
My biggest quibble is in the Best Supporting Actress category, which bypassed Cate Blanchett despite her TWO spectacular supporting performances in Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley.
Since summer, I’ve found it inevitable that Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) would win the Best Documentary Oscar. I wasn’t expecting the Academy to spurn The Velvet Underground in this category, though.
Drive My Car and The Worst Person in the World should contend for the International Cinema Oscar. I’m dissatisfied that the Academy failed to nominate Riders of Justice, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn or Lamb. (To be fair, Riders of Justice wasn’t even submitted by Denmark, which went wih Flee instead.) Instead, Academy nods went to a movie I had never heard of – Luriana:A Yak in the Classroom from Bhutan – and to the underwhelming The Hand of God.
The Animated Feature category is usually thought of as a category for children’s films. It’s interesting that a film decidedly for adults (Flee) has a chance.
Finally, I know this is geeky, but I was especially pleased that Tamara Deverell was nominated for Best Production Design for Nightmare Alley. She created an astonishing art deco office suite for Cate Blanchett’s character and an extraordinary world of mid-century carnivals.
