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There are some critics who think that service journalism is above them, that they’re not really here to help you decide what to watch. But I’m a man of the masses; I work for you, the people. That’s why the top half of today’s newsletter is both a ranking (from worst to best) of the Best Picture nominees and a guide to where and how to watch them. Let’s get to it, shall we?
(The links in the titles are to my reviews; the links to VOD will take you to the website JustWatch.com, where you can choose your preferred VOD provider. We receive no commission if you click on that link and buy; I’m just doing it to save you a Google search.)
10. Emilia Pérez (Streaming on Netflix)
Look, I don’t want to belabor this, but it really is very funny that Emilia Pérez went from Best Picture frontrunner because it checked off a lot of the right identity politics boxes to untouchable after one of the key elements of those boxes was revealed to be, uh, kinda racist on Twitter. There’s a whole Coen Brothers movie to be made about this. (Maybe a Todd Phillips movie.)
9. Wicked (Some theaters, $20 on VOD)
Look it’s not my cup of tea, but I’m very much not a musical guy. (Note that my bottom two this year are both musicals.) If you’re into this movie, great. But I’d guess it’s only got a chance in a handful of technical categories, and maybe not even those.
8. Nickel Boys (Some theaters, $20 on VOD)
It’s a gimmick movie (the whole thing is shot from the first person point of view of its protagonists) but a relatively well-done one.
7. The Brutalist (Some theaters, $20 on VOD)
The first half of this movie is one of the best movies of the year, a gut-wrenching portrait of immigration, assimilation, the push and pull between capital and art, and the underbelly of the American Dream. Unfortunately, there’s a second half. In the end, the whole enterprise reveals itself to be a movie about making movies, but it’s weirdly uninterested in the actual creative impulse. If you’re going to watch a three-hour movie about the struggle of making movies, just watch Babylon.
6. A Complete Unknown (Theaters)
It’s a perfectly pleasant movie and Timothée Chalamet is quite good in it, but it never really rises above pleasingly competent. There’s something to be said for pleasing competence! I like things that are competent. Two of the movies I discuss in the back half of this newsletter are, sadly, not competent. But I just couldn’t imagine voting for this for Best Picture.
5. Conclave (Peacock, some theaters, $6 on VOD)
The airport novel as Oscar movie. Look, it’s ultimately dumb, preachy pulp, with an ending that literally made one of the elderly people in my audience yell out “What the hell is going on!” But it also looks marvelous and has a handful of the best performances of the year and is never boring. That counts for a lot this year.
4. The Substance (Mubi, some theaters, $6 on VOD)
It’s a great movie about addiction and a less interesting movie about gender roles and norms. Dennis Quaid absolutely got robbed for a Best Supporting Actor nomination; no one has ever chewed shrimp onscreen like that. Demi Moore will win Best Actress and she deserves it.
3. Dune: Part Two (Max, $4 on VOD)
I’m very torn about this movie, because it has some undeniably epic action sequences and it demonstrates once and for all that Chalamet has “it” (much to my chagrin). But the whole middle hour is a mess, the Harkonnens are barely people and thus uninteresting villains, and the whole “Paul can’t be messiah because bad things will happen” struggle is underbaked (just as it is in the books, I’m sorry). The whole middle hour is endless. There’s nothing as stirring as the bagpipe charge in the first film. It’s a movie I really want to love and just can’t.
2. I’m Still Here (Some theaters)
This will be the hardest movie for folks to track down, since it’s playing on fewer than 500 screens at the moment, but it’s worth your time. (I’m a little surprised it’s not on VOD; you’d think now is the best time to get folks to throw down $20 for a rental.) A chilling portrait of life under a fascist dictatorship where the greatest terror comes from being unsure of the fate of your imprisoned family members. Heartrending stuff.
1. Anora (Some theaters, $6 on VOD)
It’s fair to say that Anora is the frontrunner for Best Picture after the film took home top prizes from the producers guild, directors guild, and writers guild. And I think it’s easily the best of the films nominated for Best Picture. It’s heartfelt and funny and just jaundiced enough to keep from getting sappy; this is a movie that does not have a storybook ending because life is not a fairytale. You want Cinderella, go watch Pretty Woman. This is a world where Russian oligarchs get what they want because they have the money to take it.
Apologies for the lack of Across the Movie Aisle this week. But NEXT week I’m going to be talking to Jake Rademacher, the director of Brothers After War, about his new movie. If you have a veteran in your life, give them a heads up that the Gary Sinise Foundation has set aside $150,000 for tickets to the movie via VetTix.org. I hope you check it out.
Cleaner review
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I was excited for Cleaner because it’s directed by Martin Campbell. Campbell may not be a marquee name like Nolan or Spielberg or Tarantino, but he is a name whose movies you’ll recognize: He directed two of the better Bond installments (GoldenEye and Casino Royale), as well as The Mask of Zorro and the high-concept ’90s basic cable classic, No Escape. And while there have been some misses in his body of work (Green Lantern, I’m looking at you), more often than not he pulls a rabbit out of his hat.
We’ve seen that in recent years with The Foreigner (in which Jackie Chan takes revenge against the IRA terrorists who killed his daughter and the government officials complicit in their actions) and The Protégé (in which Michael Keaton trains Maggie Q to be an expert assassin). These are not great movies but they are greatly entertaining, in no small part because of the cast: Jackie Chan and Maggie Q can hold their own in a fight, and Campbell is one of those fine technical craftsmen that the studios used to churn out with seeming ease.¹
Having Chan and Q is key; the cast in such projects makes all the difference. It’s one of the reasons why Campbell’s 2024 film, Dirty Angels, simply doesn’t work. Eva Green is undoubtedly a talented actress, but she’s not really an action star, and the rest of the cast is … well, lacking. The story itself was also a disastrously convoluted mess; what should be a high-concept action movie about a band of female soldiers rescuing the students of a girl’s school who have been taken hostage by ISIS devolves into a torturously elaborate tale of double-crossing by the Taliban and ISIS and American special forces. Worse than confusing complexity for depth of thought, Dirty Angels is, simply, boring, taking far too long to get to the rescue at the heart of the picture.
But Cleaner stars Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen! And it has a fairly clever high-concept hook: Ridley plays Joey Locke, a highly skilled soldier who washed out of the British military for insubordination and now works as a window cl