Welcome to this special edition of "Ranked", where I'm profiling the 10 films that are nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars.
Avatar: The Way of Water:
My last trip to Pandora was a miserable experience and even after 13 years away and all sorts of dazzling upgrades to the scenery, there was just no way in hell I was going back to that god forsaken place.
Grade: N/A
9.Elvis:
Typically, I'm all for unconventional biopics. But what Baz Luhrmann did with Elvis is just plain heinous. His bag of chaotic editing tricks and snappy visuals establish this kind of manic carnival sideshow take on Elvis' life that's pretty fun for the first act, but after 2 hours and 39 minutes of using the same tricks over and over again, the film becomes a grating and tiresome affair that ultimately proves to be every bit as hollow as one of the genre's typical birth-to-deathers.
Grade: D
8.TAR:
Enter this year's "I get it, but it's not for me" movie. TAR is a long, bleak character study about an accomplished conductor named Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) whose years of abusing her power start to catch up with her... or do they? While Blanchett is an incendiary, despicable force as a musical genius who is fully aware of her brilliance and believes she is fully above consequences for her years' worth of misdeeds and its commentary on the egos of artists, being able to separate art from the artist and whether or not cancel culture actually leads to real consequences for the "victims" of it will fuel many a film studies piece, I never got particularly invested in the arrogance that made Tar great or how it ultimately fueled her downfall.
Grade: B-
7.Triangle of Sadness:
A competent yet shockingly mild "eat the rich" satire that goes for the easiest possible comedic targets and only hits them about 60% of the time. For my money, The Menu is a significantly funnier, smarter and more efficient take on a similar subject matter that is more deserving of the praise that Triangle of Sadness has been receiving since it debuted at Cannes last spring.
Grade: B-
6.Women Talking:
While it's undeniably a shitty thing to say about a movie that has such a deep respect and empathy for survivors of sexual assault, I can't help but think that Women Talking would've worked better as a play. The camera and all of the jumping around that comes with the edit creates this kind of buffer for the audience that dulls the emotional impact of these raw, honest conversations between a group of women living in an isolated religious colony who are processing these acts of sexual violence in different ways and debating how they're going to proceed with the next chapter of their lives (the discussion is largely based around on whether they're going to leave the colony or stay and fight back against the men who've been attacking them). On a stage, the power of this material would've been undeniable as the audience would be forced to confront the full weight of what they were saying directly. But alas, that's not the medium that Women Talking was adapted into and writer/director Sarah Polley and this ensemble cast (Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Shelia McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand) deserve kudos for their dedication to telling an important story that amplifies voices that have gone unheard for far too long.
Grade: B
5.The Fabelmans:
Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical look back at his childhood manages to be both be shockingly honest in how he depicts himself as someone who can only process his emotions through movies/creating art and needlessly melodramatic in how it portrays things like how his parents' divorce and the antisemitic bullying he faced in high school affected him. This conflicted emotional balancing act results in a good movie that would've been great if it handled certain things in a more grounded fashion.
Grade: B
4.Top Gun: Maverick:
Tom Cruise turning the long-gestating sequel to the project that made him a global movie star into a propaganda piece about why he's the last of a dying breed of actor is a deeply stupid and preposterous move that nobody else in Hollywood right now would be brazen enough to pull off. Despite all of the damage the regular moments of unintentional comedy that surface when the film props up "Maverick" as a special talent whose brilliance is only matched by his refusal to conform to his industry's attempts to modernize does to its overall quality, this present-day ego trip dressed up as an exercise in nostalgia and military heroism ends up working because Cruise's love of making big movies that are driven by practical stunts/action sequences is so fucking pure.
Grade: B
3.All Quiet on the Western Front:
There have been plenty of war movies over the years that have portrayed the horrors of war in excruciating detail, but few have hammered home the pointlessness of all of that bloodshed better than All Quiet on the Western Front. In between all of its horrendous, visceral depictions of the trench warfare of World War I, the film-which is told from the German prespective-goes to great lengths to convey that all of this horrific violence is being driven by the greed and pettiness of individuals in power who view mass loss of life as a reasonable cost for collecting more assets for their country. This is easily the finest war film I've seen since The Hurt Locker and I can't wait to see what Edward Berger does next.
Grade: B+
2.Everything Everywhere All at Once:
The only thing more shocking than a movie made by Daniels (aka the weirdos that made the Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie) that's filled with so much absurd, goofy comedy eventually ending on a deeply moving note is that said movie has become the Best Picture frontrunner. The same organization that has routinely embraced the safe choice seems highly likely to pick a deeply weird movie that features characters with hot dog fingers, rocks with googly eyes and a fight scene where sex toys and a fanny pack are used as weapons to win their highest honor? That wouldn't have seemed even remotely possible as recently as 7 or 8 years ago, so kudos to the modern-day Academy for daring to go in a bolder direction with the films they honor.
Grade: B+
1.The Banshees of Inisherin:
I had a feeling once I saw The Banshees of Inisherin at the end of October that it would be my favorite awards contender of 2022 and that ended up holding true for the entire season. Through the sharpness of Martin McDonagh's writing/direction and the brilliance of the performances from its primary cast (Colin Farrell, Brendan Glesson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan), The Banshees of Inisherin is able to gracefully combine comedy and tragedy as it examines the relationships a group of people on a small Irish island have with themselves and each other and how some of their decisions end up greatly impacting each other's lives.
Grade: A
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