Your obligatory 96th Academy Awards pre-reads
The Oscars are this Sunday night, which, for a film nerd like myself, is equal parts thrilling and annoying. All of a sudden, everyone else wants to talk about the movies and compare their relative merits (yay!). That worthwhile discussion is, in short order, degraded by a self-serving and self-congratulatory spectacle that makes it seem like that kind of discussion can ever be closed (boo! boo! boooooo!).
The Oscars are stupid, but talking about films is not. What is one to do?
In my case, it’s hit you with some links that recap the year that was:
My erstwhile film website is still around for sole purpose of the annual best-of list put together by myself and dear friend Steve Cimino. We’ve been doing this for 11 years, and it’s a s good as ever, if I do say so myself.
We pair that fancy-stinky-cheese of an experience with the fine wine of an audio format, in which we drink, make stupid jokes and pick our film of the year. As we discussed, we have a great track record, going back over those 11 years, even though Steve made me choose The Irishman over Parasite once.
Is that all you’ll need to get through Sunday night? How am I to know? Since we don’t do the list in order, here is my personal ranked top 10 as well as a ranking of the Best Picture nominees.
The best, ranked
Oppenheimer
Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Asteroid City
Napoleon
BlackBerry
Poor Things
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Priscilla
El Conde
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Best Picture nominees, ranked
Oppenheimer
Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Past Lives
Barbie
American Fiction / Zone of Interest (haven’t yet seen ‘em)
If I can muster the energy, I’ll likely have a chat going on Substack during the show. See you then, maybe.