Looking at the 96^th Academy Awards announcement, I have posted about most of them with reviews for two best animated nominated films, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Boy and the Heron. Five Best picture nominees, Barbie, Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon all made it into the Top 10 of my Best of 2023 film list (with Spider-Verse and Heron in the top 10 too). That leaves five Best Picture nominees to go, also a peek at a few other nominees from other categories. A couple of these are fantastic and/or great, some are okay, some are not. Here’s a catch-up on most of the rest!

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT

The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar

It’s a delightfully quirky short film from the delightfully quirky Wes Anderson, which may or may not be considered condemnation at this point. This is one of four short films by Anderson that are based on the works of Ronald Dahl that are available on Netflix. Anderson uses multiple actors in multiple roles as the characters often read the prose line for line while looking at the camera, and there’s moments when the viewer sees the stage changing and stagehands swapping objects out like a play. The story follows Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he learns about meditation tricks to be able to see through objects, so naturally he uses it to make money gambling, but he comes to higher realization about life. Cumberbatch’s character goes from schemer to zen master, and other actors, Ben Kinglsey, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes and Richard Ayoade have great bits as different characters in multiple scenes.

There was a write up that said using “established” directors in this category may be a cheat as it is “supposed” to be for up-and-coming filmmakers, but just because someone has an established body of work doesn’t mean they aren’t allowed to make a short film. And this is a great one!

VERDICT: Worth a watch, it’s definitely a Wes Anderson film and at a zippy 39 minutes it never overstays its welcome.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM

Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó and The Last Repair Shop

Two of the Best Documentary Short nominees are available on Disney Plus and they’re both engaging. Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó is about filmmaker Sean Wang’s two grandmothers who live together. It is a slice of life in these lovable grandmas, as they ruminate about life, daily exercise and bicker about who passed gas. Also, there’s fun moments when Wang dresses them up in modern type clothes and makes it rain with cash and chug back (hopefully fake) bottles of liquor. It isn’t very deep but it is heartfelt. The other documentary is The Last Repair Shop, about a shop that fixes instruments for school kids. There are a few interviews with students that impart how important this program is for music education, spliced with interviews with the four people who work in the shop and their unique history (there’s music stars and refugees and more), and how they came to work there. The film ends with a soaring musical performance by current students and former alumni of the district that is rather stirring. With support of music programs dwindling it shows that keeping music can lead to a fuller life.

VERDICT: Both worthwhile, appealing, and speedy watches about real stuff in real life.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Elemental

Looks expensive as all get out, that’s probably because it was. Apparently, the budget for one Elemental added up to both a Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Both animated films that have visuals much more unique than Elemental. Elemental has the Pixar sheen, every flame rendered, every water drop perfect, and the style is expressive, even if it does sort of lean a bit much into Pixar’s now ubiquitous house style. This a Fire and Water version of the (much better) Zootopia and the culturally crossed lovers, Ember and Wade, is a story that has been done quite a few times. It’s also trying to tell a story about the immigrant experience, but it seems trite. It is a fun and fast movie with a lot of quips, featuring a protagonist who cries so much that actual crying is what brings him back from evaporation. Not a great Pixar movie but not terrible either. Just kinda there, pretty to look at though.

VERDICT: In a year with so much standout animation, this slot should have gone to something else, like the stylish and cool return of the TMNT.

Nimona

This was once a 20^th Century Fox film but then it was bought by Disney and axed, so Nimona is now a Netflix film. Also it is one of the best animated films of 2023 which is saying something as it’s in the same category as Spider-Verse and Heron. It gleefully bounces between madcap and heartfelt, mashing genres in a Steampunk style of medieval and futuristic, lots of action and anarchy with even a bit of a Godzilla in the finale. Nimona (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) is a 1000-year-old shapeshifter looking to engage in some chaos and she partners up with a disgraced knight, Ballister (Riz Ahmed), who was wrongfully accused of murdering the Queen. The movie has a breezy, madcap vibe and then it turns rather shockingly into something tragic and deep. The film looks fantastic with a colour palette that feels like graffiti art spray-paint, then it will have some flipbook animation style like an old scroll. There’s a flashback to Nimona’s past that features an inventive twist of the iconic “Go back to the shadows from whence you came” line from Lord of the Rings that hits deep.

VERDICT: Absolutely should be a part of the top tier animation duo of Spider-Verse and Heron. They’re all so good one could basically draw straws. I would pick Spider-Verse simply because it has so many different animation styles in one film but any of these would be a worthy winner.

BEST PICTURE

Maestro

Pretty much every single cliché of what an Oscar bait film can be is delivered herein. It is a musical and historical biopic that skips across the decades, important feature altering makeup, written, directed and starring Oscar wanting thespian Bradley Cooper, and third act features requisite family bonding sickness and tragedy to bring everyone together. Cooper plays musical genius composer Leonard Bernstein who had a tumultuous private life laced with intoxication and affairs that put a burden upon his wife, Felicia (Carey Mulligan). The film uses visual tricks that make it visually grander than the standard biopic like flopping in between black and white, colour, and different aspect ratios. There are long panning shots featuring characters running down a hallway in joy, or a sad shot of Felica and Leonard arguing during a Thanksgiving parade while a giant Snoopy float travels by the window. It’s not badly made, it has some great moments like when Bernstein is wrapped up in conducting, it just seems like a dutiful checklist of an Oscar film.

VERDICT: Kind of dull but seemingly mandatory Oscar movie. Probably should have been turfed for any three of the best animated films (if uniqueness and quality was a deciding factor) but apparently this had to be nominated for Best Picture instead.

The Zone of Interest

A very strange and disturbing film which is no surprise as it came from the director of the very strange and disturbing Under the Skin. This is about the banality of people actively engaging in something horrific. Set in World War II Germany, Commandant Hoss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, in her first of two Best Picture nominated movies) right beside the Auschwitz concentration camp. They want to live in a perfect home, even though thousands are being exterminated right beside them. There are a lot of mundane moments about daily life in a glamorous house but what makes it disturbing is the sound design featuring far away screaming, crying, gunshots, and more happening and burning lighting up the skies. The Commandant has a conversation about the mechanics of how the crematorium would function, totally sapping it of emotion. Some bits are a bit too dull; there’s a whole scene where Hoss and Hedwig just light up a smoke and stare wordlessly at each other, or Hoss having a medical exam. But the flashes of hinting at the horror, Hoss standing in smoke and hearing gunshots and yelling, are effective. And a powerful modern-day flashforward showing the personal items of the victims of the Holocaust on display displaying the enormity of what happened.

VERDICT: Not the fastest film ever, and intentionally rote in a lot of places, but it does convey that people were trying to live in bureaucracy without ever acknowledging the horror of what they were doing. It was just busywork.

Past Lives

A heartfelt and sad romance that jumps along the decades. Nora Moon (Greta Lee) was childhood friends with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) in South Korea until she moved away to Canada, and 12 years later they reunite over Facebook. But, after months of talking, Nora wants to concentrate on her work of becoming a writer, so they stop having conversations. After 12 more years, Nora is married to Arthur (John Magaro) but Hae Sung travels to meet them in New York, and while Nora and Hae reconnect, she wonders about what if they had stayed together. There are moments that very directly emulate Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise series with long shots of walking and talking as the duo contemplate upon life. Not that’s a bad thing, it’s just that the movie’s influence is pretty visible at times. Also, the movie tries hard to not paint Arthur as the bad guy, he even says at one point he would be the villain, but it doesn’t entirely succeed in making him likable either as Hae Sung and Nora seem perfect for each other. It is ultimately a sad story of what could have been.

VERDICT: Strong indie chit-chat vibes about a disconnect between two people who simply weren’t meant to be at the same time. It certainly is more affecting a love story than the histrionics of Maestro.

Anatomy of a Fall

This is a detective thriller / domestic drama about novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller, in her second Best Picture nominated film, and she received a Best Actress nomination for this one too) who is investigated after her husband fell to death out of a window in their house. There are no witnesses to the event, only that her son, Samuel (Samuel Theis), returned from a walk and found his father’s body lying in the snow. Soon Sandra is on trial for the death of her husband, and all sorts of nasty revelations about their lives together come out. There are some compelling forensic clues here, the way the blood spatter on the ground can prove how he landed, and a recorded argument between Sandra and her husband that is absolutely damming. Hüller is great here as she never quite indicates if Sandra was innocent or guilty, it could go either way. And the kid is quietly contemplative as he is compelled to testify against his mother, leading to some dramatic bits. Some scenes go on too long, at two hours and thirty minutes it could have used some trimming, but as a procedural courtroom drama about buried secrets, it is well done.

VERDICT: The examination of the husband and wife devolving into extreme bitterness that may have turned into murder is engrossing. But there were more visually striking films released last year that could have taken this spot. Shorter, too!  

American Fiction

In yet another Oscar nominated film about artists, and yet another one about a writer, author Monk (Jeffery Wright) is dissatisfied with a popular novel about the African-American experience. So, on a whim, he writes a pandering piece of tripe filled with every single cliché he can think about the black experience that suddenly becomes a blockbuster and optioned for a movie adaptation. And the dumber he makes his story, inventing a false convict persona, the more money he makes. The satire is great, very biting, very funny, with bits like when Monk is interacting with his characters, as the finale features several layers or reality as Monk rewrites his own story to make a Hollywood producer happy. Meanwhile, there is also an affecting story about Monk’s mother (Leslie Uggams) dealing with loss and dementia while Monk’s brother, Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), is going on a bender while coming out late in life. There is a bit of a disconnect between the family melodrama stuff, which feels real and earned, and the satirical stuff, which feels amusingly outsized (as satire often does). It is funny but the satirical and earnest stuff kind of clash. All the actors are great, though, especially the always dependable Wright.

VERDICT: A funny satire that dips often into emotional earnestness. There are two sides to this film that are both well done but sometimes hard to fit together smoothly.

OVERALL OSCARS VERDICT: The 96^th Academy Awards is starting an hour earlier, is scheduled for three and a half hours and the show will still go on dang long! Probably going to be basically a (well-deserved) Oppenheimer sweep anyway.