Oscars 2025: Just Throwing It Out There (So Many Toss-Ups!)

Because I’ve digested 33 of the 35 full-length features nominated for Oscars this year and all 15 shorts — that’s 96% of nominees in the main categories to be awarded during tonight’s televised event — friends keep asking me for my picks.

I’m not in it to score points with predictions. Hollywood was ravaged this year, so I mostly predict the unpredictable. Besides, the whole politicization of the arts — distributor campaigns, stars being told to behave to curry favor with voters — disgusts me.

But here goes, picking with my heart and not my head:

Best pic: Anora

This was my favorite even before all the critics started defecting to it from “The Brutalist” (which was a brutal 3.5-hour experience, even with a blessed intermission). “Anora” feels like a Jersey girl opera in three acts: The first is soft porn, the second is screwball, and the third is so not a happy ending. But what a wild ride, and I happen to like movies that push all my buttons: arousal, surprise, hilarity, awe, tears — and, with its gut-punch ending, a surprising feminist thrust.

Close second: “Emilia Perez,” which reinvented the movie musical.

Best director: James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown”

It’s no accident all the performances were brilliant in this ode to Dylan; Mangold created the space and synergy for the cast to recreate (not mimic) iconic artists and historic times. Rather than explain who they were and how they got that way, he deepened their enigma and that of the Sixties. Because he also co-wrote the screenplay, I think this man deserves to be completely known.

Best actress: Mikey Madison

All the critics whine about how fraught this decision is, but I’m just going with my gut and the person who impressed me most. Despite the courage Demi Moore needed for her disquieting role, Mikey seemed braver and more vulnerable. And, oh yeah, the acting. It is an acting category and not just a study of the female form.

Best actor: Sebastian Stan

I’m likely alone in this, but I watched “The Apprentice” three times and “A Different Man” twice. This true immigrant actor (Romanian American) is a shape shifter extraordinaire. And for those who haven’t seen “The Apprentice” yet, you must.

Close second: Timothée Chalamet (he’s probably my more serious pick, but they say the only actor to win this category while under 30 was Adrien Brody and that all planets are aligned for Brody to win again. Pooh. If Brody wins, it’s only a credit to the AI technicians who manipulated his every word of dialogue to capture a Hungarian accent. Brody should be disqualified!)

Supporting actress: Zoe Saldaña

Just wow.

Close second: Ariana Grande

Who knew?!

Supporting actor: Kieran Culkin

That scene in the plaza with the statues — as I was splitting my sides, I realized that too few films make me LOL anymore. Then I found out it was all improv by Culkin. Case closed. (Because he’s also daringly poignant and endearing.)

Close second: Yura Borisov

Original screenplay: Anora

A literal tie: A Real Pain.

Adapted screenplay: Nickel Boys

Close second: Sing Sing

International feature: I’m Still Here

I had to go to the actual movie theater to see this one — and it was one of those that had only, say, 30 seats because of low demand — but there I found three other solo people, my “tribe,” who were so moved that we stayed standing for the credits and wept as the ushers swept, then met in the hallway for a quick film discussion. A beautiful cinematic experience. We represented a diverse clique in ages and backgrounds, so this film has undisputed universal appeal.

Animated feature: Memoir of a Snail

This work actually improved my mental health. As did “Inside Out 2,” but the artistry involved was exquisite.

Documentary feature: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Such an original, jazzy format! I’m handicapped in this category because I couldn’t see either “No Other Land” or “Porcelain War,” for lack of wide release. But if I had to pick between those two wars and themes, I’d side with Ukraine, for“Porcelain War.”

Original score: Conclave

My dear departed brother taught me how to listen to movies. I think he’d agree with me here. He also would have dug the soundtrack to “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.”

Original song: “El Mal,” from Emilia Perez

As much as I’m an Elton John fan, I’m of the opinion the original song awardee should be part of the movie, not just piped in over the credits. And this scene was jaw-dropping and unforgettable.

Cinematography: Maria

This movie should have been nominated for Sound Design for the way they mixed Maria Callas recordings with Angelina Jolie’s vocals. Overall a moving picture (get it?) and it must win for something, so I’m honoring it here.

Costume design: Gladiator II

Can’t believe I’m choosing this, but I just kept staring at the costumes, which made me wish I’d lived in ancient Rome.

Editing: Emilia Perez

The mind boggles what the cutting-room floor looked like afterward.

Makeup and hairstyling: The Substance

OK, whatever.

Close second: A Different Man

Production design: Conclave

I know it’ll be “Dune: Part Two,” but ugh. Gotta root for true art.

Sound: A Complete Unknown

(I could finally understand all of Dylan’s words? Ha. Just throwing a bone here.)

Visual effects: Dune: Part Two

There’s no fighting it. But I would prefer to see “Better Man” win — a movie I didn’t think I’d like but ended up loving.

Animated short: Magic Candies

Also made me LOL.

Close second: Beautiful Men, despite its gratuitous nudity — or maybe because of it? I’m a sucker for beautiful.

Live-action short: This is my toughest category, the hands-down best of the season. I watched most of them three times, and all felt more like documentaries than fiction — with the exception of “I’m Not a Robot,” which was more cautionary tale, always a crowd-pleaser, brilliantly amusing, and could “captcha” the popular vote. The more I watch it, the more I realize every frame is magic. I’m happy with any winner! The critical front-runner, “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” from Croatia (interesting that the man in the title is not exactly the protagonist) is connecting with voters and critics because, I believe, it explores the specter of an authoritarian regime and the rapid dissolution of civil rights. I wrote about “A Lien” in a recent blog post, and it also mirrors people’s fears ripped from the headlines. “Anuja” is joyful, tear-jerking … the perfect short film — and it holds Easter egg rewards if you watch the full credits. But “The Last Ranger” might be my first pick, because its themes about protecting wildlife at all costs and mentoring the next generation of strong women are nearest and dearest to my heart. (With “I’m Not a Robot” a close second.)

Documentary short: Instruments of a Beating Heart

The Japanese British filmmaker spent a year in this school shooting footage for a larger project to show what Japan teaches its children, and how those lessons knit together the fabric of society. This tender, at times brutal narrative about Ayame, a first-grader auditioning and performing in a concert for the incoming class, was extracted from the larger project. But man. It’s powerful and will slay you. (Can I adopt Ayame? While I’m at it, can I adopt Anuja?)

Close second: Incident

This gets second only because all the footage came from police body cameras and surveillance cameras. But what a masterful editing job — and what a horrendous indictment of police brutality.

Special award for screenwriting: Death by Numbers

Sam Fuentes, a victim of the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, school, wrote this script. She is nothing short of a poet, and a hero. (Oh. Can I also adopt Sam? No offense to my own daughters, but this year’s crop ignited a powerful maternal instinct — including “The Last Ranger.” OK, that seals it. I want “The Last Ranger” to win. )

But I’ll be happy with any outcome in the last two categories. Now … on with the show! And see you next year at the movies.

Oscars 2025: Aliens vs. Monsters

Not my ex-boyfriend.

One of my proudest acts as an American came in college, when I served as a character witness in the naturalization process and ceremony for my then-Salvadoran boyfriend. Not just a witness; I helped him study, tested him, and by reading that citizen handbook probably learned more than most of my privileged native-born peers would ever know.

Technically, he was only half-Salvadoran; his mother hailed from El Salvador, but his father was Guatemalan, having fled his motherland during a bloody, three-decade civil war, escaping debt slavery, authoritarian rule, and a rebel’s likely death.

My beau never liked talking politics. I was the one protesting on campus and on the streets of the nation’s capital — “No draft, no war; U.S. out of El Salvador!” — when our federal government got involved protecting its interests and the Salvadoran military against socialist forces. When I finally met my boyfriend’s idealistic, peaceable pop and explosive, straight-shooting ma, I experienced a “homecoming” that kindled my own half-breed Latina fire.

Some of the more than 25,000 people I joined marching past the Lincoln Memorial on our way to the Pentagon on May 3, 1981, to oppose U.S. military involvement in El Salvador and cuts in social programs by President Ronald Reagan. (Photo by Barbara Rice/D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection)

Alas, the love story that felt fated faded. But the man I helped make American went on to become a wildly successful neurosurgeon here in the States. While I’ve never saved a life, he has no doubt saved hundreds.

It’s been nearly 45 years since college, and 15 since I started whiling away wintry months binge-watching every single movie nominated for any Academy Award between the time nominations are announced and awards bestowed. This year, I’m no longer living in an area that’s a hotbed of arthouses, which always made the Oscar marathoning easier. And for the first time, in deference to the tragic victims of the L.A. fires, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences delayed its nominations announcement, thus scrunching my typical runway from about seven weeks to five.

Still, despite the onus to see 35 full-feature films and 15 shorts in just 38 days, as of today I’ve notched 33 movies and 10 shorts on my popcorn-strained belt.

This year’s crop, while slim in number, are monstrous in theme. Monsters and brutes popping up everywhere, from Dracula reimagined in “Nosferatu” to Demi’s godforsaken, gory “The Substance.” Victimizers reign in “The Brutalist,” the saga of an American dream turned nightmare, and in “Sugarcane,” a documentary detailing yet another way Native Americans have been ravaged. A parade of Wicked-ness. Rapists. Racists. Terrorists with misplaced ideals and misplaced targets stalk Olympic athletes in “September 5” and their own family members in “The Seed of the Sacred Pig.” Monsters even live within: “A Different Man” — perhaps the inverse tale of “The Substance” — tracks a man’s transformation from deformed to “normal” (socially acceptable), yet his internal ugliness festers. “A Better Man” depicts a real-life pop heartthrob as a non-cuddly chimp, because that’s how he saw himself, as a “performing monkey” and an outcast. And no one could hear me scream over the squeamish sequels of “Dune: Part Two,” “Alien: Romulus,” and “Gladiator II,” inhabited by carnivorous sandworms, sickly-sticky space demons, and homicidal baboons — mixed in with power-hungry, double-crossing human beasts of prey.

This is just a whiff of the bogeymen prowling this season’s film fest. But nothing proved more traumatizing than “The Apprentice” — which laid out the blueprint of a maniac in the making — combined with the live-action short “A Lien,” which hurtled me back to those college days.

Within a frenetic few minutes, we care deeply for the young family in “A Lien” — a blond American woman, her Salvadoran husband, and their half-breed Latina daughter — on a mission to obtain the man’s green card, for which he recently became eligible. But they’re running late for their appointments, they get separated, things grow chaotic, ICE intervenes, and, yep, the long claw of a vicious immigration policy upends their world.

The closing text announces the narrative is reality-based. Good folks, whose major crime is not being born American, are lured to green-card appointments under false pretenses: to be summarily deported.

I cried. I cried for every immigrant who cherishes this country, follows the rules, holds fast to their dreams, then gets treated like scum. More brutalism packed into 14 minutes than “The Brutalist” managed in 215.

It’s the kind of film that makes you want to take to the streets.

Marvel superhero Sebastian Stan turns supervillain as a dead ringer for a nascent Donald Trump, charting a ghastly metamorphosis in “The Apprentice” — unquestionably the horror film of the year. Stan plays another two-faced man, one who masks his internal ugliness, in “A Different Man.”

A slice of the theatrical release poster for “A Different Man.“

High Hopes for Billie Eilish (Can She Feel the Love Tonight?)

Frank Sinatra famously covered most of the chart-worthy songs that won Oscars during his storied career. From the looks of it, though, only two of his original recordings led to an Academy Award in the Original Song category: “Three Coins in the Fountain” in 1954, for which he was the uncredited singer, and “High Hopes,” featured in 1959’s A Hole in the Head. (The following year, that song became the theme of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.)

There’s no denying it: The Oscars are fueled by and feed politics.

For an Oscar marathoner like me, the Original Song category offers an opportunity to sample sidelined movies that might not appear anywhere else on the ballot. The nominated song for this year’s Flamin’ Hot, for instance, was lackluster, but the movie, a rags-to-riches story about the inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, though cheesy, was uplifting and worth my while … as well as the extra calories incurred sampling the snack.

Oscar has recognized songwriting since 1934, seven years into its awards run. Some see the category as a throwback to the old days of the movie musical, or a marketing ploy for modern movies to sell soundtracks, or purely peripheral. But I think this race adds pizazz to the awards ceremony, guaranteeing at least five live performances amid the treacly speeches and snippets of playoff music.

This year, Billie Eilish and brother Finneas O’Connell, who earned an Academy Award two seasons ago for 2021’s “No Time to Die,” from the 007 film of the same name, have a chance to join serial winners Johnny Mercer, Jimmy van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, and Alan Menken (tied for four songwriting Oscars); Tim Rice, Harry Warren, Paul Francis Webster, Ray Evans, and Jay Livingston (three each); and two-timers Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Sammy Fain, Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach, Howard Ashman, Elton John, Stephen Schwartz, Randy Newman, Ned Washington, Will Jennings, Giorgio Moroder, and the teams of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn, and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. (Take breath.)

Not all household names, but a pretty illustrious list. Among them only Elton John and Randy Newman qualify as singer-songwriters, like Eilish, who at tonight’s ceremony will perform a tune she has said she wrote to work her way out of a pretty severe depression. It has already won her a pair of Grammys and a Golden Globe.

Besides the Latin-infused “The Fire Inside” that accompanies the Cheetos flick, other nominees include an Indigenous chant from Killers of the Flower Moon and a heartfelt ballad from world music king Jon Batiste dedicated to his cancer-stricken wife. Diversity is definitely on display. Disney, which historically had a lock on the Original Song nominees, hasn’t had a contender in a couple of years, since Encanto. (Sir Elton’s first win, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” in 1995, derived from an animated kids’ movie, The Lion King, as did both of Randy Newman’s wins: 2002’s “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. and 2010’s “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3.)

This year’s toy story movie, Barbie, is hogging two of the remaining five spots, choices that pit Barbie against Ken (“What Was I Made For?” and “I’m Just Ken”). For all the ballyhoo of Barbie getting snubbed — no nomination for director-screenwriter Greta Gerwig nor for lead actress Margot Robbie, although she gets one as producer by virtue of the film being nominated for best picture — the movie, up for nine Oscars, seems a high-heeled shoe-in to win this category.

I’m pulling for Eilish and O’Connell’s soul-searching composition over the smirking “I’m Just Ken.” Still, there’s something refreshing about song nominees being incorporated into the narrative rather than tacked on during the credits. “I’m Just Ken,” in which Barbie’s plus-one finds his voice as something of an action figure, is tailor-made for the stage, reminiscent of the male-bonding histrionics of last year’s orgasmic Original Song winner, “Naatu Naatu” from RRR. I’ll never tire of watching that one, which could ride on its own as a music video or live-action short, apart from the movie vehicle:

Ken’s Ryan Gosling was previously lauded as a performer of the Oscar-winning “City of Stars” in 2016’s La La Land, paired then with Emma Stone (who is up for best actress this year for her courageous portrayal of another blank-slate budding feminist in Poor Things — a far less pink or sanitized version of Barbie). Gosling certainly won’t be playing second fiddle to anyone as he performs “I’m Just Ken,” a predictable showstopper during tonight’s telecast. And if his song were to pull off an upset, I wouldn’t be in the least bit upset.

Again, I seek to watch every movie so you don’t have to. As of this minute, I’ve consumed 40 of the 41 features up for any award in this year’s top 23 categories; “Godzilla: Minus One” remains the lump in my craw. While I do care who wins, I don’t care about being right in my predictions, because the politics of the Oscars are ever stacked against the critics.

Instead of running through that tired list (Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer …), I’ve compiled for you the ultimate Oscar playlist: all 88 songs that have clinched Academy Awards so far. Couldn’t find the precise original for each, but close enough, courtesy of Amazon Music:

https://music.amazon.com/my/playlists/77255f4a-7222-4652-919f-e31dc939d6df

Looking over the list, some are mere blips. Does anyone remember “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle & Flow or “I Need to Wake Up” from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? Well, too many folks ignored that documentary as well as the song and still need to wake up. (Incidentally, “I Need to Wake Up” defeated all three of the nominated songs from Dreamgirls, one of only four films in history that have featured three nominated songs; The Lion King is another.)

Of all the enduring hits among the winners, “Over the Rainbow” and “When You Wish Upon a Star” seem to be the strains most deeply embedded in our musical grain. Which song will become the 89th on the playlist? Eilish-O’Connell’s “What Was I Made For?” is right up America’s alley, evoking a similar wistful, wishful sentiment:

“… I don’t know how to feel
But someday I might.

“Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I’m not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I’m made for.”

In this toss-up, flip-of-a-coin race, may the best songwriter(s) win. But I predict Barbie’s latest accessory, at least in the Original Song category, will be Oscar, not Ken. I wonder who’s taller. Or whether she can get him to don any clothes.

As Sinatra, the standard-bearer of standards, sang 70 years ago:

“Three coins in the fountain
Through the ripples how they shine
And just one wish will be granted
One heart will wear a valentine

“Make it mine.”

Best WISHES to all the nominees!

A Perfect Day at the Movies

Twelve winters. I have exercised my own sort of March Madness (and January and February Madness) for at least 12 seasons now, embarking on a kooky quest to see every Oscar-nominated movie on the standard ballot of 23 top categories.

I say “at least,” because 2012 was when I started blogging about it, and I have no record or memory of what I spent my time doing before the interwebz. Twelve years makes perfect sense, as that’s when we officially became empty-nesters; my life grew empty of creative gristle when my favorite works of art moved away for good.

This year, I wasn’t motivated to blog about my journey until now, nearly the end. I have been squeezing in titles late at night, mostly streamed, mostly multiple times because I’d invariably fall asleep the first time. That’s no way to consume art.

And the length of movies is a definite problem this year — Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, both fine and important works, suffer for taxing viewers’ attention spans and bladders.

Despite its fatal flaw of depicting a 50-star U.S. flag throughout a movie set in 1945, when there were only 48 states in the union, Oppenheimer will likely manage to annihilate the competition and sweep the awards on March 10. It bugs me that people allow buzz to sway their votes. You have the studios power-brokering and influencing, creating “masterpiece” monopolies when dozens of other 2023 movies are worthy of laurels and leverage.

It took a mostly dialogue-free, English-subtitled, small-budget, beautifully simple Japanese-German film to charge me up this year. Not only was Perfect Days — chronicling the workaday life of a man who cleans toilets in Tokyo — the perfect movie, but it created controversy on discussion boards over what it was even about. Some saw Hirayama’s life as routine and dreary, his rote actions as a means to cope, his obsession with old technology (cassette tapes from the Seventies) as testament to being haunted by his past, his emotional spasms as proof he’s barely holding it together. They said that the critics had it all wrong and that cleaning toilets is heavy-handed symbolism for clinging to the bowels of despair. Others described him as a lily-in-the-field type, finding beauty in the smallest pleasures, treasure in trash. Besides, the toilets he cleans are architectural and technological wonders. He nurtures nature, becomes a refuge for the lost, shadow-dances with strangers, feels deeply while always looking up, optimistically, at the sun-dappled trees, like the “komorebi” concept that inspired filmmaker Wim Wenders.

The trailer doesn’t do it justice, even if it clearly frames it positively, deciding the online bout of bickering. True art cannot be posterized — too many tones and nuances get left out of the commercial. And it’s the commercialization of movies, as well as the politicization during awards season, that ruins it for a cinephile.

When folks hear I binge on Oscar nominees, they always beg for predictions. “Which will win?” As if seeing them all allows me to see into the future. They want the digest form of all this art I’m digesting. One colleague directed me to ESPN’s oddsmakers. “You could win!”

Oscar marathoning may sound like sport, but it’s not the contest aspect I’m interested in. As another colleague opined, picking a winner is like choosing the loveliest rose — they each hold incomparable merit.

Sure, I have my favorites, cinematic experiences that tickle my fancy, like the animated short Ninety-Five Senses, which unfolded like a kid’s origami fortune teller. Others, like El Conde this year, leave me befuddled, even aghast. Some are unlikely to secure a statuette but will stick with me a long, long time: Anatomy of a Fall (did she do it?), Past Lives, The Zone of Interest … well, Zone might very well win in the international feature category. But all five of those nominees are roses. No way could I choose.

If I were to issue any recommendation, it would be: Be sure to watch that whole bunch of foreign flicks. Io Capitano (Italy), which tells the other side of the story of crossing borders “illegally”; Perfect Days (Japan), ’nuff said; Society of the Snow (Spain) — watch the making-of documentary as well, fascinating; The Teachers’ Lounge (Germany) — astonishingly, the lead actress is British, speaking German, and the main kid evokes Fred Savage from The Wonder Years, plus its meaning is also open to interpretation (did she do it?); and The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom), just wow, pure purgatory. The lead actress in that opus, Sandra Hüller, is also the lead in Anatomy of a Fall. She truly was the discovery of the season, slaying two very different roles.

As of this weekend, I’ve nailed 38 of the 41 features nominated — counting each set of shorts as one feature. That’s 93% with just a week to go until the ceremony. As for the remaining three: I plan to stream To Kill a Tiger (documentary feature) on Netflix as soon as it’s available, hopefully this week, please?; I’ll catch Robot Dreams (animated feature) in its one-night-only engagement at a local arthouse on March 6; but, alas, Godzilla: Minus One (visual effects) has crushed, smashed, stomped my dream of sampling 100% this year. For such a huge nemesis, its cinematic run was devastatingly short.

My greatest advice, however, is not telling you how to fill out your ballot. Rather it’s to urge you to go to the movies. Don’t watch them on your phone or in your rec-room cocoon. Catch them on the big screen, as they were intended. Shadow-dance with strangers.

And help the struggling movie houses stay in business, like the 100-year-old Avalon Theatre (below) in Washington, D.C.’s tony Chevy Chase neighborhood, where our showing of the documentary shorts was delayed a half-hour due to technical glitches. The suspense built, patrons bonded, and we all let out a communal cheer as the lights finally dimmed and one drama gave way to another.

Another perfect day at the movies.

(The matinee crowd at the Avalon, waiting for the projectionists to get their act together. Photos by Terry Byrne)

Oscars 2023: Donkeys, Sea Beasts, Shipwrecks, and Trees

I’d first like to thank the Academy for making it possible for me to finish screening everything nominated everywhere for anything (not all at once but over six weeks) for the first time since I started Oscar marathoning over a decade ago.

It did this not only by choosing nominees that would be available for screening or streaming during the short window between nominations were announced Jan. 24 and tonight’s ceremony, but also by continually limiting the scope of movies it anoints to a few dozen feature films. This year the magic number was 39 full-length movies plus 15 shorts, and I wrapped up title No. 54 last night just before Cinderella’s witching hour, and before losing a precious hour to daylight saving time, with the apropos costume-design nominee “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” a Cinderella story about a cleaning lady’s dream of owning haute couture. It was the perfect final accessory to my feat, as I imagined all the film industry types harboring transformational dreams while obsessing over their red-carpet looks.

I’d also like to thank my husband for indulging not only the time my obsession takes but the cost. I had to rent or even buy some digital titles (sorry, hon, we now own “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”) and visited seven movie theaters, from luxurious bistro types to a standby arts house, which, while not fancy, had a full complement of offerings so well spaced out that I accomplished another feat: took in three full-feature films and sugary meals in one day. Yes, proudly, on Super Bowl Sunday, I started at 9:45 a.m. with “The Whale,” saw “EO” at 12:45 p.m., and wrapped with “Living” at 2:45 p.m. — and made it home in time for the big game.

And … SEEN! (Geddit? Like “And … scene!” Except it’s all my seen scenes. Never mind.)

It so happens Oscar Night this year coincides with our 35th wedding anniversary. Then again, our marriage has always been about March madness; today is also Brackets Day for his perennial passion, basketball. Surprising we even managed to get married at this time of year. Yet our twin obsessions timed in unison may be what has helped us stay married so long.

Above all, I thank the makers of the art, the grand designers, the people whose visions rejuvenate the soul each winter. It’s not that I couldn’t take in movies all year round, but marathoning provides rare permission to indulge, to binge. And having someone else cull the watch list, via nominations, as imperfect as they may be, saves time by ensuring the investment is worth it. Each movie has some redeemable quality, whether technical tricks (OK, “Avatar,” I’ll give you that), a pioneering score (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), or the ability to deliver a tear-jerking performance while peering through an unwieldy prosthetic (Brendan Fraser). Sure, too many action movies were nominated this year, but maybe action is what we need to fully reawaken from pandemic slumber.

Not gonna waste time here running down the full prediction/pick list as I’ve yet to compile it — that’s this afternoon’s task. Besides, everyone knows already what’s gonna win. (“Everything …” much? And no, I disagree it deserves to.)

Instead, let’s reflect on themes that go, perhaps, beyond what others see.

Been There, Donkey That. Dun-duh-dun-dun: Critics pointing out that 2022 was the Year of the Cinema Donkey has been done(key) to death — Mashable shared such insight before the year was out and the noms were in. Has anyone speculated what this means politically? Will it be a good year for the Dems, or the opposite, as donkey deaths have been what’s driving the themes. In best-picture nom “The Banshees of Inisherin,” miniature donkey Jenny’s death raises a civil war between brothers-in-arms (or fingers, as it were) to a vengeful crescendo; in best-international film “EO” (spoiler alert!), the self-titled donkey, played by six donkey stars, heads to slaughter; and the shipwrecked bourgeoise humans in “Triangle of Sadness” savagely kill a beast of burden. Most reviewers omit another film spotlighting donkeys: “Navalny,” nominated for feature documentary, which is very political and preoccupied with avoiding death. One scene shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife, Yulia, feeding two breeds of donkeys and debating which is most virtuous.

Among the interesting donkey commentary in this year’s batch of movies for me, though, were the donkeys that went missing. Namely, from “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio” (nominated for animated feature). Remember when Pinocchio and bad influencer Candlewick grow donkey ears then, in a detour from the marionette’s dream to turn into a real boy, transform temporarily into a donkey? Totally skipped in this interpretation. The transformation for Del Toro’s Pinocchio is entirely internal.

But this discussion gooses thoughts of another common animal theme this year …

Sea Beasts. I’d say whales, except some of the massive sea creatures gathering in Oscar’s storm are whale-adjacent, and some are merely symbolic. There’s Pinocchio and Geppetto’s whale, where they’re reunited and with whom they must do epic battle. Brendan Fraser’s aforementioned morbidly obese but optimistic-to-a-fault English prof fixates on a peculiar lifeline: a certain essay about “Moby Dick” whose author remains veiled for much of the film. Then there’s the entire movie “Sea Beast,” in which a young girl must teach her portside community how to live peacefully among the fearsome, loathsome creatures. “Avatar: The Way of Water” immerses us into a world of otherworldly beings that too closely resemble whales and sharks (if you’re going to invent a new universe, bounded only by one’s imagination, why hew so closely to what we already know?). Finally, for a whale of a good time, my favorite feature documentary centered around the adventures of marine biologist Maxim Chakilev and sea beasts (no spoilers!) that may have you clambering to join a “Save the Whale”-style movement in no time.

Overboard With Water. That brings us quickly to water, sinking ships, and shipwrecks, which Oscar seems to be drowning in this year. Leave it to James Cameron to dive into déjà vu by recreating “Titanic” with his “Avatar” sequel — even getting Kate Winslet to help on his creative team and star as Ronal, powerful partner to the chief of the seafaring peoples. Like much of the cast, Winslet had to learn to free-dive for the role – she may not have gone down with the ship in “Titanic,” but castmates were likely holding their breath over the risks they were forced to take. Cinema audiences also must watch a ship go down in spectacular fashion, with characters straining for air pockets. I couldn’t help but distractedly imagine what it was like for the Strausses and Captain John Smith, etc. “Triangle of Sadness,” part gilded “Gilligan’s Island” satire, also features a flooding, sinking ship. Not to mention the aforementioned “Sea Beast” movies. Plus “The Flying Sailor,” an animated short that spins off the 1917 explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after a French cargo ship collided with a Norwegian vessel, killing 1,782 people and injuring an additional 9,000. I’m sure there were more watershed moments in this year’s lineup, but my memory is awash in excitement right now, and I must post this soon to get Oscar-ready.

Addicted to Heroines. Time pressures won’t allow me to get into this big idea right now, either, so just putting it here. This year’s Oscars feature so many rise-up or save-the-day strong female characters — from Michelle Yeoh’s reluctant heroine Evelyn in “Everythng, Everywhere All at Once” and the Mennonite sisterhood in “Women Talking,” to superhero types Shuri taking up T’Challa’s mantle in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and the young girls in “Sea Beast” and “Turning Red”; the small woman with big gumption in the live short “Night Ride”; and the courageous women who manage to stand up for themselves or recover, as in two other live shorts, “The Red Suitcase” (escaping an arranged marriage) and “Ivalu” (escaping sexual abuse), plus the parade of “To Leslie,” “Causeway,” “Tell It Like a Woman,” and “Empire of Light.” All powerful stories in their own right, but watching them in succession was so striking, I asked myself: When did Hollywood go from full-blown patriarchy to bordering on patronizing? Is moving too fast to balance the scales tipping the bandwagon? (Gender equity reigns even among the villains, most notably in “Everything …”)

The Trees Letting in the Light. Which brings me, finally, to two of the most towering female performances among 2023’s Oscar-nominated films, at least for me — one who was recognized (Cate Blanchett in Tár) and one who was not (Olivia Colman in “Empire of Light”). Interestingly both women also voiced characters in 2023-nominated animated films. Blanchett jumped in at the last moment as the monkey in “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio” — imagine wanting to be in a movie so much this acclaimed actress was willing to merely squeak and howl — and Colman was the sage voice of the Mama Bear in “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.”

I could write an entire post about “Empire of Light,” partly about a woman with mental illness who is abused and manipulated by men yet manages to break through and find a ray of light and meaning. The movie pays homage to one’s ability to find that sliver of hope through art, in a darkened theater. And it was about so much more — such as terrible, toxic racism. Nominated for cinematography, one scene really sticks: Employees of a grand old movie theater, people who live and work in a fantasy world, stand like sentries inside the lobby, curiously watching a demonstration outside. Suddenly they realize the demonstrators are demons, skinheads, set on violence and destruction. They lock the doors, but the brutes soon gravitate to the glass doors like locusts, echoing a scene from a zombie film, with hate raining down, and finally shatter the theater staff’s protective bubble.

The movie spoke to me deeply, underpinning one reason I partake in this vanity undertaking of digesting every movie deemed worthy of accolades. It was pure therapy, much as some of the other under-the-radar masterpieces were this season: “Living,” “Close,” “Causeway,” “The Quiet Girl,” and “Aftersun” — the latter arguably the best of the bunch.

Colman’s character recites poetry throughout “Empire of Light.” One poem in particular stood out because not only does it sum up how Oscar marathoning can resurrect and recalibrate you, it infiltrated yet another nominated movie, recited by yet another magnificent actress: Isabella Rossellini as Nana Connie in “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Whom would you rather hear utter this?

The Trees (1974)

By Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Beyond poetry, this season’s crop of movies were rife with subtitles. Subtitles once were relegated to the international film category, but as the world shrinks more foreign dialogue — including hard-to-suss Irish brogues — and subtitles are creeping into mainstream films. I noticed this especially while screening a few titles with my 91-year-old mother, who likes to turn on captions, anyway. We’ve all gotten more digital, but I’ll bet this excess text poses a conundrum for captioners as well as for viewers. Having to “read” a movie can ruin the dialogue — especially, in the case of a Spanish-language film like “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” for which I understand a lot of what’s spoken and realize how much is lost in translation. That overlong, overwrought film is nominated for cinematography, but its subtitles threaten to obscure the optics. Timing on subtitles is also crucial. Reading dialogue before it’s spoken can ruin the pacing of a scene and sully the appreciation of the work.

Given my husband is a longtime practitioner of tai chi, I’m also noticing more and more tai chi “jokes” in films — this year “Turning Red” and “The Irish Goodbye” come immediately to mind, but there were at least two others I checked off in my head that mangled the technique but I forgot to write down. He’s also of strong (100% proof) Irish ancestry, so this is really his year! That may be why he’s willing to watch an awards show with me, for a change, on our anniversary night. For whatever reason, though, I’m grateful, and here’s a final love note to him:

“… It’s very clear
Our love is here to stay
Not for a year
But ever and a day

The radio and the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies
And in time may go

… But, oh my dear,
Our love is here to stay.”

Oscars 2022: Standing on Ceremony at the Finish Line

One challenge for Oscar marathoners: We can waste no time in starting to screen the best-pic noms and other “top” categories straight out of the gate once nominations are announced. One never knows if life will allow one to complete the mission. This year, contenders were announced on Feb. 8, leaving 6.5 weeks to cram in all 53 movies, at a rate of about eight titles a week.

(Sounds worse than it was, as I’m including the 15 shorts in that overall count — although some of this year’s batch proved epically long, such as the half-hour “Robin Robin” in the animation category and the 40-minute “Ala Kachuu – Take and Run” from Switzerland in the live-action category.)

That hierarchical hitch means one must save the less interesting categories to view at the end. So these “lesser” features are the freshest in our minds come D-(decision)day. In my case, the dregs tend to be the visual effects and animation feature groups — never been a huge fan of blockbuster action flicks, and since my kids are all in their 30s and older by now, I don’t have much use for formulaic cartoons, either. Or so I thought: Man, this year, I found all the animated features quite relevant and riveting, especially the revolutionary “Flee,” nominated in three categories (also international feature film and documentary feature), and — surprise, surprise — “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” which I have neglected to mention much.

(What about us?!)

Another hitch in our git-along: Many of the “top award” entrants get hyped throughout the year and chances are high a marathoner might have already seen them back when they were released, putting even more distance between the viewing and the Oscar race “reveal.”

I’ve been marathoning for 11 years now, and I typically have seen only two of the best-pic noms by the starting gun. This year, though, I had a leg up, having previously seen four of the 10 best-pic noms (“Don’t Look Up,” “Dune,” “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story”) plus “tick…tick…Boom!” (nominated for best actor and film editing). All those titles made deep impressions, but with so much time having passed, and so many other celluloid clips crowding my brain, my recall skills are now potentially unreliable, for comparison’s sake.

Still, my husband says I must complete my tour of movie duty and make predictions on these top categories — even though everything’s been written about them and you all have your own views and I wouldn’t be able to influence anyone at this point, with the telecast set to begin mere hours from now.

Check that: According to awards columnist Pete Hammond of the Deadline website, the deadline for Oscar voting is 7 p.m. ET today. Whoa. Still time to sway anyone on the fence. Hammond also notes: “The overall current total of Academy members is 10,487, but 914 of them are emeritus status and don’t vote, likewise for 86 active Associate members.” This year, voters began with a denominator of 276 eligible movies and had not quite five days to whittle those down into the critical categories. I’ll betchu not all 9,487 voters watched all 276 contenders — and I’m pretty sure a smaller share took the time (as I did) to screen even the 53 top nominees. Mainly because it took A LOT of time.

There is definitely something wrong with this system. Shortcuts are no doubt employed. These folks could be voting by feel, pulling filaments of hype from the air, or choosing based on trailers alone (which made, for instance, the international feature “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” look much better than it was because of expert trailer-editing skills).

(Note: I’m not saying the movie was bad — it just wasn’t as good as the trailer portends.)

One mustn’t discount, then, the influence of any small-time blogger upon any big-deal Oscar voter.

So, if anyone is listening, I shall do the dirty work and make your selections for you in what many consider to be the top eight categories.

First, perhaps the most difficult: the writing categories. Eeek. Apologies in advance for my hurried, hack writing.

Original Screenplay

Belfast. Kenneth Branagh’s memoirs as a boy living through “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland proved a gorgeous, intimate portrait of the Irish soul. Part of me thought: Wow, we’re all a little bit Irish, so is it now time to celebrate them (us) as an oppressed people? Viewing the violent conflict through the eyes of a love-smitten Protestant boy — especially when the object of his affection happened to be Catholic, and about a foot taller (another nod to “Romeo & Juliet” or even “West Side Story”) — was an ingenious narrative device. But because the story was largely a diary, point deduction.

Don’t Look Up. Adam McKay’s cleverly veiled clarion call about climate change is truly a statement of our times. It broke Netflix streaming records and obviously seals the popular vote. Biting satire and worthy of the honor, no matter what the snooty elitists say.

King Richard. Loved, loved, loved this movie, but the screenplay wasn’t necessarily the element that stood out, as it was based largely on real events and documented interviews.

Licorice Pizza. Saw this on a late-show date with my husband and — unsure he noticed, but I am confessing now — I dozed off. It’s certainly not one I can go back now to review, as it’s not being streamed. I loved the dialogue that I caught, and it had a lovely improvisational feel. But the story structure seemed jumbled and overwrought, especially after I woke up. Sorry, my bad, but an Oscar winner, even a good bedtime story (in this case, a waterbed) should never induce sleep.

The Worst Person in the World. No ordinary love story, this Norwegian import was ultimately about finding love for oneself. Creative storytelling, and the stop-action scene in which our protagonist tests another course in life with an alternative lover is one for the books. The worry is I can’t fully appreciate the screenplay because I experienced the dialogue only through subtitles — and Oscar voters may feel the same. A sentimental favorite, but …

Prediction & Pick: Don’t Look Up

[Update post-Oscars: “Belfast” was the winner.]

Adapted Screenplay

I haven’t read/accessed the source material on any of these nominees — oh, no! Is that a chore I must add to my Oscar marathoning rules in order to properly choose in the future? Worse, I haven’t even read about the source material, been too busy watching movies. My stalwart husband, however, has read the “Dune” series and testifies Denis Villeneuve’s vision is finally a great adaptation.

CODA. This singing-signing-themed darling is now neck and neck in the best picture race with the alpha “Dog.” I think its chances are good. But “CODA” is a remake of the French-language film “La Famille Bélierso,” so I am less inclined to choose something for adaptation whose source material is another movie. (Although I’m certainly curious how American Sign Language and French signing compare.)

Drive My Car. Pure genius. Too long.

Dune. Shall I let my husband influence me?

The Lost Daughter. Possibly my favorite screenplay of the movies in the running — only because “Drive My Car” needed editing. Admittedly, though, the morning after I watched “The Lost Daughter,” I couldn’t recall the ending — I had to go back and review the final shot, which is so important in evaluating a screenplay. Coulda been the wine. Still, all that doll stuff was disturbing and unpredictable, which are my criteria for screenwriting: stories that keep me guessing and take twisted turns.

The Power of the Dog. This may be, technically, the best adaptation. And I may be advised to pick it, considering I have virtually snubbed this 12-time-nominated movie thus far. Then again, I’m not trying to get a good score. There is no money on the line. Only my reputation. Already damaged. This endeavor is not at all about being right — only about justice.

Prediction: The Power of the Dog

Pick: The Lost Daughter

[Update post-Oscars: “CODA” was the winner.]

And now, for the remaining, highest-achiever categories, just gonna list ’em. Not gonna sweat my rationale, as I have no reason left.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Prediction & Pick: Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”)

[Update post-Oscars: Ariana DeBose was the winner!]

Actor in a Supporting Role

Prediction & Pick: Troy Kotsur (“CODA”)

[Update post-Oscars: Troy Kotsur was the winner!]

Actress in a Leading Role

Prediction: Penélope Cruz

Pick: Jessica Chastain

[Update post-Oscars: Jessica Chastain was the winner!]

Actor in a Leading Role

Prediction & Pick: Will Smith

[Update post-Oscars: Will Smith was the winner!]

Directing

Prediction: Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”)

Pick: Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”)

[Update post-Oscars: Jane Campion was the winner.]

Best Picture

Prediction: CODA

Pick: West Side Story

[Update post-Oscars: CODA was the winner!]

Notice the absence of “The Power of the Dog” in that last bit. What can I say? I’ve always rooted for the underdog. Plus, between “The Piano” and “Dog,” can’t help but wonder if Campion has a sadistic streak.

And maybe I’m a little masochistic, but my Oscars 2022 marathon is finally, officially a wrap — although I still plan to watch “Writing With Fire” upon its release tomorrow, just to say I’ve seen 100% of all nominees in the top 23 categories. My viewing score is 98%. My guessing score will be far, far lower because I’m not in it for the win. It’s an honor just to experience all the nominees. And better luck next year.

The whole thing is a crapshoot, and I’m pooped.

See you all virtually tonight. Congratulations to all the artists who make the movies magic. And keep an eye peeled for winners holding their Oscar statuettes upside down to signify their protest of the eight categories cut from the telecast. I’m with them — thumbs down on ABC’s decision.

[Update post-Oscars: 6 of 8 correct. But never saw the Will Smith outburst coming. My overall score, though, is abysmal — the worst ever at 47%. Mostly because I didn’t appreciate “Dune,” and couldn’t trust the popular choice.]

Oscars 2022: The Envelope, Please

Do they still use envelopes? You really can’t call those $200-apiece cardboard craft projects envelopes.

The 94th annual Academy Awards are upon us. My penultimate round of picks, made under duress:

Music (Original Song)

Can’t go wrong with Queen Beyoncé. “King Richard” was the only sports movie ever that made me cry.

Prediction: “Be Alive”

Still, the artistry of Billie Eilish can’t be denied. This music video captures more emotion than the movie did — in fact, the Bond clips kinda ruin the video. Anyway, it won’t win, but I sure like the poetic convergence of “Be Alive” and “No Time to Die” in this category. Keeping the movies alive that keep us alive!

Pick: “No Time to Die”

[Update post-Oscars: “No Time to Die” was the winner!]

Feeling obligated to share the also-rans, just in case you missed them. You can play them while you “read” (scroll). And de verdad, “Dos Oruguitas” shouldn’t win — not only because no one can remember how to spell it, but because even Disney is voting against it by promoting “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” instead; see quibble at the end of the post.

Visual Effects

For the first time ever, I enjoyed seeing all the action movies tied to this category.

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings” broadened me culturally. So much humor and I didn’t fall asleep during the battle scenes as I typically do. The story was weak, though. Super far-fetched. (As if the rest aren’t?) One point against it: The VFX team used the exact same “ring of fire” portal effect for the characters to step through to other dimensions as was used in “Spider-Man.” Is there a setting on the MacBook for “ring of fire portal”?

“Dune” — Just wasn’t feeling the sandworms. Sleep-inducing. Like a lullaby. Check back when we get to Part Two. [UPDATE: While watching the run-up interviews on March 27, all the VFX artists were explaining their techniques, and I might have made the wrong call here. “Dune” probably has the artistic edge. If only the movie hadn’t felt so dull.]

“No Time to Die” — Big surprise! The hero dies! (You knew that, right?)

Prediction: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Can’t bet against the most popular movie of the year. I honestly felt queasy as he swung around, so I guess those were some rad visual effects. Enjoyed the star power and the multiverse science stuff, too. But because of the ordinary “ring of fire” effect, it loses points and can’t be my pick.

Pick: Free Guy

“Free Guy” is the only movie in this category I’d be inclined to rewatch. It’s “Groundhog Day” meets “The Truman Show.” Chris, if you’re reading this, you MUST check out this flick. Augmented reality is part of my daily life, so it stimulated my imagination — and not just in scenarios featuring Ryan Reynolds, but, yeah, that, too. Now I gotta cue up “Deadpool”! (Yes, I’m the only one in the universe who hasn’t seen it.)

[Update post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner.]

Costume Design

“Cruella” was smashing, but its extreme fashions catered to mostly one person. “Cyrano” was credible, but nothing too special — and seeing Peter Dinklage’s wardrobe only made me feel worse for the protagonist of the live-action short “The Dress,” about a woman with dwarfism who struggled to find any nice clothes to fit her. Throughout “Dune,” I felt the urge the do laundry. Nothing against the stylistic “Nightmare Alley” …

Prediction & Pick: West Side Story

… but nothing can compare to “West Side Story,” whose wardrobists had to outfit an entire mob. While the costume design was enmeshed in its production design — could the dance at the gym have been better coordinated? — every garment in every frame simply sizzles and energizes. They paid homage to the original while freshening and upping their game. The costumes contribute more to the characters than any other nominee.

[Update post-Oscars: “Cruella” was the winner.]

Cinematography

This is the one category in which I will yield to the front-runner — although I am still secretly (or not so secretly) rooting for “West Side Story.” I think the power of “The Power of the Dog” is all in its cinematography, so throwing it a bone here.

Prediction & Pick: The Power of the Dog

[Update-post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner.]

International Feature Film

Flabbergasted that the critics gave a 100% score to Bhutan’s “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” about a reluctant teacher in the most remote classroom on Earth. That and Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino’s near-pornographic, self-indulgent, autobiographical “Hand of God” are the only two I can safely eliminate. (Sure, now you’re all gonna race to stream that one.) Denmark’s “Flee” and Japan’s “Drive My Car” were brilliant — but “Flee” has other chances to win in the animated feature and documentary feature categories. Norway’s “The Worst Person in the World” was probably the most relatable and engaging entrant for me — I also had the chance to see it in the theater, so maybe that gave it an advantage. (I featured it in an earlier post.) But it has a chance to win in the original screenplay category, whereas I doubt “Drive My Car” will snag best picture or adapted screenplay. So making the most charitable pick here.

Prediction & Pick: Drive My Car

[Update post-Oscars: “Drive My Car” was the winner!]

Documentary Feature

Ah, cursed category in which I was unable to screen all five submissions. “Writing With Fire” remains elusive (its public premiere is March 28, the day after the Oscars telecast), so I’m not wholly qualified to judge. It also received 100% positive reviews from the critics, but who knows — many Academy voters may not have gotten through all their screening materials. It certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of ink, being a journo flick. It may indeed win. But this category is so strong, it’s anybody’s race. I wrote a whole post early on about “Attica,” and “Ascension” simply blew me away — a fly-on-the-wall study of the Chinese work ethic, classism, and that pervasive “Made in China” label. The sex-doll factory alone! “Flee,” again, was mesmerizing. Yet I’m compelled to go with the most entertaining and the best-edited documentary — the solid-gold “Summer of Soul.”

Prediction & Pick: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

[Update post-Oscars: “Summer of Soul” was the winner!]

Animated Feature

Prediction & Pick: Flee

[Update post-Oscars: “Encanto” was the winner.]

“Encanto” fans will call this pick blasphemy, but I’m making the choice based on art here, not formula. Besides, my favorite song/scene in “Encanto” is “Surface Pressure” — and no one ever talks about that one (instead “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” gets all the attention — it wasn’t even the nominated song, and yet it will be performed during the live telecast, upstaging its own nominee). “Surface Pressure” also contains the only Titanic reference I recall among all 52 Oscar nominees I’ve seen.

And that segues into what I consider the top eight categories — all four acting awards, best picture, best director, and, most important, the two writing awards (original and adapted screenplay). That’s too much pressure for me to process tonight. No doubt you’ve made up your mind already on those and don’t need me to weigh in, anyway. No mistakes, no pressure! tick…tick…BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Update post-Oscars: My score was a dismal 3 of 7 among these.]

Oscars 2022: Picks and Predictions From Someone Who’s Seen It All

“‘The time has come,’ the walrus said.” I tend to be an indecisive person, but no more so than come awards season. Still, I soldier on. Because I take pains to see every film nominated in every category on the Oscars ballot, friends rely on me to make the picking part easier.

Let’s start with those sad eight categories that have been eliminated from the live telecast this year. It’s shameful that the biggest draw and suspense of the Oscars awards is being denied. We all know the big races are fixed, and the biggest names are rarely the biggest dreamers. It’s a thrill to see those lesser-known artists get their 15 seconds in the spotlight.

My jam has always been the shorts. Pardon if I write long.

Short Film (Live Action)

Such a strong crop this year.

The longest one runs 40 minutes and shouldn’t even qualify as a short: “Ala Kachuu – Take and Run” (Switzerland), or The Runaway Bride of Kyrgyzstan, focuses on the plight of the thousand or so women kidnapped into marital slavery each year. Though shedding light on an important topic, it’s straight-shot story-telling, with some blatant symbolism, and so my least favorite.

“The Dress” (Poland) is a daring but disturbing tale of a hotel maid with dwarfism who pines for love — or, at least, its rite of passage. She arranges a special date with an itinerant trucker but must scrounge for something special to wear (“the dress”). Even as this piece spotlights cruel injustices faced by differently abled people, it left me wondering whether it was also exploitative.

“On My Mind” (Denmark) — a powerful treatise of love and loss — is the only one that brought me to tears. I have already written about in a previous post because it spins on karaoke. While each of these is deserving, none is likely to win.

Prediction: The Long Goodbye (United Kingdom)

This nightmarish episode in what we think is a civilized country boasts the star power of Riz Ahmed, a British rapper and actor who was nominated for his explosive leading performance in 2020’s “Sound of Metal.” It was released as a companion piece to his concept album “The Long Goodbye,” and imagines the brutal possibilities of ethnic persecution/cleansing in a post-Brexit U.K. Though only 11 minutes long, nearly a third of it is consumed by Ahmed’s performance art — which is breathtaking. The theme is tolerance, live and let live, but the fusion of art forms and the improvised screenplay make it stand out.

Pick: Please Hold (USA)

This satirical look at our broken justice system amid the punishing, un-navigable maze of digital-assistant “customer service” is both hilarious and horrifying. It’s a heavy sentence on actor Erick Lopez’s shoulders, but he pulls it off. Kudos to writer-director KD Dávila. I’m voting here for all the misjudged people of color and all the unjustly incarcerated people. And anyone who has ever raged against the A.I. machine.

[Update post-Oscars: “The Long Goodbye” was the winner!]

Documentary (Short Subject)

This is traditionally my favorite category, and this year’s entrants don’t disappoint.

“The Queen of Basketball” is simple and charming — a one-person interview with the most adorable super-athlete ever to break barriers interspersed with archival clips, with the power of The New York Times behind it. Upping its game is the pity factor: Its subject died in January, wouldn’t live to see the Oscars. Kinda OK if it doesn’t win. It’s well edited and structured, but the filmmaking, like sports, seems a combo of skill and luck.

Another sporty title, “Audible,” about a winning season for the Maryland School of the Deaf’s football team, felt too staged and filled with cheap shots (“let’s go to the cemetery and take close-ups of everyone missing their friend who took his life”). Tragic, gripping in its silent-movie mood — the sound is terrific, like something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey” — but the camera was too intrusive, the subjects too aware of the filmmakers, and each scene overly directed to qualify in my documentary book.

“Three Songs for Benazir” required three viewings — I fell asleep the first time via Netflix because I’d been watching too many movies. I watched it again for good measure. Then had to go to the cinema to catch the shorts that weren’t available for streaming and was forced to watch it once more. Turns out the third time’s the charm because it finally dawned on me how brilliant it was. Shot over the course of four years, it’s the tale of an Afghan refugee, Shaista, whose future (and day-to-day) looks bleak. With a wife, a son, and another on the way, he sees joining the army as his only option, but his father and village oppose it, fearing the Taliban’s recourse and insisting the opium trade holds the answer. There are great bird shots throughout, whether caged, being forced to fight in a ring, or flying free. One fantastic vignette shows Shaista protesting his case through the rebar on his adobe-hut window, trapped. Eventually, he sticks with the opium harvest … and (SPOILER ALERT!) ends up in rehab. What’s great is that the filmmakers were his neighbors, so all the action is searingly nosy and honest. Oh, and the “songs”? He has a habit of spontaneously singing to his wife, Benazir — such winsome interludes.

Prediction: Lead Me Home 

I think the Academy voters will be persuaded by this slick, in-your-face short about homelessness, using every time-lapse and drone trick at moviemakers’ disposal. Still, the individual stories are powerful, woven into a gut-wrenching, heavy-hitting plea for solutions. It juxtaposes upscale apartment dwellers freighted with kitchen islands and treadmills beside tent dwellers, car sleepers, and the most beautiful panhandling dancer on Earth, Ronnie “Futuristic Astaire” Willis. I would invite him to move in.

Pick: When We Were Bullies 

Betting I’m the only one to pick Jay Rosenblatt’s walk down memory lane to try to make reparations for participating in an act of bullying while in the fifth grade 50 years ago, at PS 194 in Brooklyn. Perhaps more memoirs than documentary, its premise and coincidences are mind-blowing, spine-chilling, and it made me chortle and choke up. The creativity astounds — sprinkled with animation — the story-telling is sharp, and his hypotheses about why kids bully touched a nerve, as I had a similar experience in fifth grade. This short was even more guilt-inducing than the homeless one. A full link on YouTube has since been removed by Rosenblatt for copyright infringement. Hmmm. Maybe he is just promoting himself? Regardless, it moved me the most, in the moment. (Sorry, Barbara of Winchester!) And the schoolyard scenes remind me of the “West Side Story” rumbles, and I can’t get enough WSS this year.

[Update post-Oscars: “The Queen of Basketball” was the winner.]

Short Film (Animated)

Already posted about the animated shorts, here. But will reiterate my votes:

Prediction: Robin Robin (United Kingdom)

Pick: The Windshield Wiper (Spain)

[Update post-Oscars: “The Windshield Wiper” was the winner!]

P.S.: For the best wrap-up I’ve seen on all 15 shorts, check out a fellow marathoner’s “A Busy Film Fan’s Guide to the 2022 Oscar Shorts.” Turns out I agree with him on many points, and he provides nice clips/footage.

Film Editing

Another favorite category is film editing because I do a little on the side and it’s what I secretly wanted to be when I grew up. (Instead, I’m a regular journalist-type editor, though you’d hardly know it reading my slap-dash blog posts.)

The critics’ choice here is “The Power of the Dog.” The fans’ choice is “King Richard.” I can definitely see that because sports movies present their challenges, and the tennis action took some deft splicing. The girls cast as Venus and Serena Williams weren’t tennis players to start, so a combination of visual effects and body doubles were used to create realistic tennis sequences. We’ll skip “Dune” and “Don’t Look Up.” I mean, I didn’t skip them — I saw them all. But “Dune” needed editing (not enough action or sandworms) and unless you count Meryl Streep’s nude scene, the editing hardly stood out in “Don’t Look Up.” Yeah, yeah, it’s not supposed to stand out, but you get my drift. “Don’t Look Up” had that frenetic ADHD quality of today’s screen-addicted youths. Part of me is rooting for it, though, as it depicted my alma mater (though that wasn’t truly the East Lansing campus).

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Prediction: The Power of the Dog

Pick: tick…tick…Boom!

C’mon! Weaving in all those Broadway stars who aren’t used to double and triple takes? Syncing all that couch-jumping, keys-pounding action? Let’s hear it for my boy, Lin-Manuel!!

[Update post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner.]

Makeup and Hairstyling

Two words. Jared Leto. I didn’t know he was in the movie — even after I watched it — so “House of Gucci” must win. No point even listing the also-rans.

Prediction and Pick: House of Gucci

[Update post-Oscars: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” was the winner.]

Music (Original Score)

Prediction: Encanto

Pick: Anything but Parallel Mothers

Seriously. That soundtrack was like a porn movie score, not that I know anything about porn movies, or scoring.

[Update post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner.]

Production Design

Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth in a scene from “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+ and A24

Prediction: The Tragedy of Macbeth

It needs a win. This might be its only shot. Far more artful than the projected winner (“The Power of the Dog” — again?!?)

Pick: West Side Story

A true production, amiright?

[Update post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner.]

Sound

Belfast. Interestingly, I watched this once without the sound on, just to breathe in its exquisiteness. Despite a killer soundtrack by Van Morrison — made doubly musical by those bewitching brogues — I don’t think such points count for sound design, though.

Dune. Lots of wind-blowing is all I recall.

No Time to Die. The sound crew was no doubt the MacGyvers of sound design but, again, I forgot to pay attention, because I watched it in a hotel.

The Power of the Dog. I liked the piano-practicing scene. And the sound of exasperation. (Really? 12 nominations?!)

West Side Story. CRANK IT UP.

Prediction: This one’s tough. So I’ll go with pack-leader The Power of the Dog.

Pick: West Side Story

[Update post-Oscars: “Dune” was the winner. Damn “Dune.” I got only 2 of 8 among these.]

Oscar vs. Tony: A Race of Show Vehicles

Music and musical theater are getting a strong hearing in this year’s Oscars race. From Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cameo-loaded “tick…tick…Boom!” to Steven Spielberg’s remastered “West Side Story,” the Academy Awards have gotten so showy that moviegoers might start expecting playbills and intermissions.

I sure needed an intermission for “Drive My Car,” that Japanese import clocking in at three hours and one of 10 best picture nominees this year. Although it’s not a musical, it borrows heavily from the theater. It’s the saga of a stage actor-director tasked with directing a production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at a theater festival in Hiroshima soon after the death of his wife. Four-time Oscar-winning “Driving Miss Daisy” it’s not, but we witness Mr. Kafuku studiously internalizing the lines of the play while in transit, and — when the theater company insists on assigning him a driver because of a fatal accident that occurred in bygone days — his young driver, Misaki, is also transformed by hearing the work over and over again. Any devotee of theater would devour this film as the ultimate life-imitates-art vehicle.

A momentary detour: Who could miss the parallels between these “Drive My Car” scenes and the Oscar-nominated animation feature “Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings,” in which Katy (Awkwafina) and Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) make their living as valets? Katy, a daredevil driver, is tasked late in the film with driving the gang through an enchanted forest that’s hell-bent on swallowing them up.

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If I were Billy Crystal trying to frame an opening number for the Oscars, I’d capitalize on this chauffeur-charged theme, somehow hitching it to the famous truck scene in “Licorice Pizza,” in which Alana is behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler, driving BACKWARDS, with soulmate Gary (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s real-life son, Cooper) egging her on.

Piling on with the behind-the-wheel vignettes this awards season is the live-action short “Ala Kachuu – Take and Run,” about a Kyrgyz woman with higher-ed aspirations who is kidnapped into marriage. Without giving too much away, the scene in which her equally independent-minded mentor teaches her to drive proves a most valuable life lesson.

But back to this post’s driving theme: how live theater, aka Tony, has merged into this year’s Oscar lane. Are we Broadway-bound or in La-La Land?

Among best picture nominees with songs at their heart, besides “West Side Story,” is “CODA,” about a girl who is the only hearing person in her family who listens to her inner voice to pursue a career in singing, by way of her high school show choir. Lots of gleeful (and tearful) moments. (Ed: In music, a “coda” is a passage that brings a piece or a movement to an end. But this one I didn’t want to end.)

Prancing through the costume design category is “Cyrano,” a de facto, if lackluster, musical. “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage showcases his stunted four- or five-note range in a score that, frankly, bores to tears. Skip it, if you can. But don’t dare miss Lin-Manuel Miranda’s magic as he showcases his connections and MT chops in both “tick…tick…Boom! and “Encanto.”

Do any of these showtune-fueled flicks have a chance of winning? Let’s harken back to that tragi-comic moment at the end of the 2017 Academy Awards telecast when the producers of “La La Land” were giving their acceptance speeches for best picture before the show-stopping realization that Warren Beatty had announced the wrong winner? (Cue “Moonlight.”)

A “La La Land” win would have been plausible, because Americans do dig their movie musicals. If you also dig lists, check this out: At least 132 movie musicals — including so-called jukebox musicals — have won some sort of Oscar over the years, starting with 1929’s “The Broadway Melody” (Outstanding Picture award) and most recently 2017’s “Coco,” which won both for animated feature film and for original song, “Remember Me” — which bodes well for “Encanto.”

Closely aligned with jukebox musicals this year are those movies that celebrate and elevate karaoke to an art form. (Any musical theater nerd is known to practice karaoke devoutly.) Katy and Shang in “Shang Chi” blow off steam by hitting the karaoke bars after work — to viewers’ and listeners’ delight. And the tender-hearted live-action short from Denmark, “On My Mind,” is about a man driven to sing Elvis’ version of “Always on My Mind” as if on a life-or-death mission. Although this man-vs.-machine saga has slim chance of winning, if you have 18 minutes to spare, it’s gorgeous and well worth your time — and will leave you with an endearing earworm. (Lead actor Rasmus Hammerich does all his own singing; bartender Camilla Bendix is also blisteringly authentic, down to her makeup.) Showing here:

The curtain rises, in just four short nights …

Counting down to Oscars 2022 … tick … tick … BOOYAH!

Only an Oscar marathoner like me — who has screened 98% of all the movies nominated in the top 23 categories (52 of 53, all told) — can fully register the convergence of talent spanning this year’s contenders. Cross-pollination of projects makes busy bees of many A-listers, especially as they emerge from pandemic-induced hibernation.

As far as I can tell, no one is up for multiple awards in separate categories this year, but nothing in the rulebook bars that from happening.

At least a dozen times in Oscar history, actors and actresses have been nominated for multiple awards in the same season. Such freaky-deaky overlap first occurred in 1938, during the 11th annual awards, when Fay Bainter was nominated as best actress for her role in “White Banner” and took home the Oscar for best supporting actress for her turn in “Jezebel.” In 2020, Scarlett Johansson was nominated for both leading actress (“Marriage Story”) and supporting actress (“Jojo Rabbit”) — winning neither. The most recent time an actor has been nominated in two categories and actually won one was in 2004, Oscars LXXVII, when Jamie Foxx clinched best actor honors for “Ray,” and was an also-ran for best supporting actor in “Collateral.” Although featured in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (nominated for visual effects) as the laser-gifted villain Electro, Foxx’s name won’t be etched on any statuettes this year.

That 2021 Marvel vehicle, though, is like a clown car packed full of cinematic double-timers.

“Spider-Man” sure gets around! Consider:

Benedict Cumberbatch: Not only does he seem to be leading the pack in the best actor category for “The Power of the Dog,” Cumberbatch’s familiar Doctor Strange in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” helped “No Way” open to a staggering $260 million at the box office amid a pandemic, eventually becoming the third-biggest U.S. box office grab in movie history. Yes, way! But no way do I want him to win. I thought he was more chilling in “The Imitation Game” (2014) as computer nerd Alan Turing.

Andrew Garfield: Cumberbatch’s fellow British rival for best actor — yes, both of these karma chameleons are English — also found his way into “No Way” by reprising his 2012-14 Peter Parker part. Garfield, who won a best actor Tony for the 2018 revival of “Angels in America” but never an Oscar (he was previously nominated for “Hacksaw Ridge” in 2017), may seem a triple threat this year. He was simply dynamite impersonating Jonathan Larson in “tick…tick…Boom!” having taken vocal training for a year and learning to play the piano well enough to pass as fluent. Still, I fear he was nominated for the wrong performance. His Jim Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” was even more masterful than his Larson, as he convincingly portrayed the Southern televangelist through his arc from straight-laced to crooked. I wouldn’t be sorry if Garfield won, but my heart this year is with Will Smith.

Zendaya: Yet another “Spider-Man” ensemble member represented in multiple Oscar-worthy projects is Zendaya, so incomparable that only one name suffices. In “Spider-Man” as in real life, she is Tom Holland’s eye candy, but she’s also the ethereal, ephemeral vision with the piercing-blue spicy eyes in “Dune.” Although she didn’t get enough screen time in either movie to broker a nomination, she is sure to be rewarded (again) come Emmy season for her rapturous work in HBO’s “Euphoria.”

Bradley Cooper: The nine-time Oscar nominee (four acting nominations, four producer nominations, and one writing nomination) produced and stars in the hellish circus fever dream “Nightmare Alley,” and also goes on a rampage as Jon Peters, Barbra Streisand’s erstwhile significant other, in “Licorice Pizza.” No silver lining here; “Nightmare Alley” can’t possibly win for best picture. But it is kinda wild to recall that Cooper directed and starred in the 2018 remake of “A Star Is Born,” playing opposite the character Streisand played in the 1976 remake, which Peters produced. (Sadly, Lady Gaga, Cooper’s co-star from the 2018 “Star” vehicle, was snubbed — however you make the Italian gesture for “snubbed” — this year for her fashionable turn in “House of Gucci.”)

Lin-Manuel Miranda: OK, this is where things get fun. Broadway’s self-appointed ambassador not only directed the movie version of “tick…tick…Boom!” (which apparently missed a best-pic nod by a hair) but he also helped infect this year’s Oscars with enough Tony as to confuse voters about whose party it is next Sunday. Get ready to rumble, Oscar vs. Tony! And Miranda’s Nuyorican fingerprints are all over “Encanto,” an enchanting entry into the animated feature category for which he work-horsed the music. Not only has the flick collected oodles of awards and #hashtag hits, but it also has entered Miranda into the best original song category for “Dos Oruguitas” (“Two Caterpillars”). A very hungry caterpillar indeed. Plus, Miranda opines about music in the documentary feature that I predict will win: Questlove’s “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).” My only question: Why was his “In the Heights” overlooked — the movie for which I first subscribed to HBO Max, opening my Pandora’s box of streaming via the FireCube? Side note: A P.R. high school classmate, Olga Merediz, played Abuela Claudia in that movie and also originated the role on Broadway, for which she was nominated for a Tony, which is why I had to see it as soon as it was released. Sweet release. And so … we’ve come full circle, as far as Miranda goes.

My former school chum Olga Merediz (right) with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Grace (Nina Rosario) at the “In the Heights” premiere.

Did the release of Steven Spielberg’s fabuloso “West Side Story” on Dec. 10, 2021, completely erase from our memories the “In the Heights” release just six months earlier?

Awkwafina: Speaking of coincidences and highly animated features, the mythical dragon Sisu in “Raya and the Last Dragon” is voiced by self-deprecating actress, rapper, and comedian Awkwafina who (SPOILER ALERT!) casts the fatal blow to the evil dragon in “Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings.” Typecast much? Awkwafina’s birth name is Nora Lum, but she chose Awkwafina at age 15 as a “shield of confidence” (and apparently a reminder to stay hydrated). Sisu’s name is a Finnish word meaning courage, guts, grit, and determination. Fits her.

Olivia Colman: Another actress with animation voice-over in her arsenal — which few people may be aware of — is Her Highness Olivia Colman, who played the villainous AI called Pal in the animated feature nominee “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” (an obvious nod to HAL from fellow Brit Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”). Colman’s certainly not lost in space, but she does give an out-of-this-world, non-robotic performance in “The Lost Daughter,” for which she’s up for best actress.

PAL (on left) vs. HAL 9000

Maya Rudolph: Finally, a mainstay on “SNL” from 2000 to 2007, Rudolph seems to prefer to be heard and not seen in this year’s Oscars race. She appears briefly in “Licorice Pizza” as casting director Gale, mostly in a long shot and making hilarious gestures. She also voices the mom, Linda Mitchell, in “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” as well as the mom, Daniela Paguro, in Pixar’s “Luca” — two nominees in the best animated feature category. A mother of four herself, Rudolph knows motherhood from many angles. One of her claims to fame is her own mom’s identity: Minnie Riperton of five-octave “Lovin’ You” fame. Too bad Riperton didn’t get a shoutout in “Summer of Soul.”

Maya and mom Minnie, lovin’ each other.

Another fun mother-child discovery: The namesake of the film “Luca” is voiced by an actor of that famous mom story from Oscars 2015, “Room.” Canadian Jacob Tremblay was only 9 when he gave an arresting performance as the boy who knew of nothing beyond four walls and his caretaker mother. His film debut two years earlier, though, was another animated feature: He played Blue in “The Smurfs 2” (2013). He’s more sea-green in “Luca,” a “Little Mermaid”-type story for boys about sea monsters and vroom-vroom (not “Room”) — in which our misfit hero is trapped inside his own skin.

Then there’s the mantra that Luca and his best bud, Alberto, use to silence their inner voice of self-doubt: “Silencio, Bruno!” Errr, we don’t talk about Bruno? An “Encanto” reference, for you youngsters and hipsters. Full circle again, back to Lin-Manuel Miranda. Boom! Booya!!

Oscars 2022: The Thrill of Discovery

Big announcement for anyone who cares. As of 11:30 p.m. ET on March 19, 2022, I’ve finished viewing 98% of all the movies nominated in the top 23 categories for this year’s Academy Awards. That’s 37 of the 38 full-length features and all 15 shorts.

oscar-tally-1Download

The only reason I can’t achieve 100% is because the documentary feature “Writing With Fire” refuses to be available in theaters or via any streaming service until March 28, the day after the ABC telecast. It also happens to be the critics’ favorite title in that category, with 100% of positive reviews, according to Rotten Tomatoes polling — the only film in this year’s lineup to achieve such perfection. It figures that the “perfect film” would handicap my own potentially perfect score. Still, who can scoff at 98%? So, so, so close. The closest I’ve ever come in over a decade of striving.

Thus I’m kinda writing with fire myself to say: What a journey it’s been. Sure, it used to be more thrilling back in the ancient pre-streaming days, having to carefully plan my itinerary up against the deadline, mapping out those off-the-beaten-track theaters, catching late-night offbeat screenings, even double and triple features on my days off, doing it all in just over a month. But if the covid pandemic has done anything it’s made my movie diet easier to consume on my own timetable. Now, with a week to go before the Oscars telecast, I’m unsure what to do with myself. Maybe just rewatch a few to make proper picks in the categories I’m unsure about.

Oh, right. The D.C. Environmental Film Fest is in full swing and all virtual this year, so I could binge there. Or I could read my stack of unread must-read books. I could also campaign and beg the producers of “Writing With Fire” to release it early, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeze. Or I could join the chorus of complaints about ABC editing out some of the most important, suspenseful categories from its live telecast: best original score, film editing, production design, makeup and hairstyling, sound, documentary short subject, live action short film, and animated short film. The creators behind these films, not the A-listers, are the folks who need the recognition to further their careers. These titles represent the gems that the mainstream audience never bothers to see.

As Emmy-winning film composer Scott Bomar recently told The Washington Post: “You’re going to diminish these eight categories and air a Twitter vote instead?” (He was reacting to the stooooopid #OscarsFanFavorite and #OscarsCheerMoment categories whose winners, selected online, will be announced during the ceremony.) “This whole thing is making the academy less relevant instead of more relevant, which is what they’re going for,” he said.

I couldn’t agree more that the point of awards shows — if there’s a point — isn’t the fashion or the speeches but the “thrill of discovery” — getting those sneak peeks of the relevant art that flew under the radar, whetting audience appetites to consume them. Like “Writing With Fire,” about ballsy female journalists in India, something right up my alley but that apparently was available only to select film clubs.

I don’t go to the movies much during the year, preferring instead to wait for awards season, when the endless offerings have been culled by critics. Although the Oscars have lost much of their luster and integrity, it’s still my blueprint for exploration. At least, that is, until I achieve 100% one year; maybe then I can be done with my Oscar marathoning.

Because I’ve never been big on action flicks, the category I ended with was Visual Effects. That one’s usually a slog because I tend to fall asleep during mega-battle scenes. But the two features I saw tonight, I must say, proved delightful surprises. “Free Guy,” starring Ryan Reynolds (my first-ever Ryan Reynolds movie), touched and tickled me. And “Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings” featured some bad-ass lady martial artists, such as Michelle Yeoh, who at age 59 still has it going on and, not to mention — if you’ve seen as many movies as I’ve seen in theaters this month you’d know — has a new multiverse flick coming out, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” (The multiverse is definitely having its moment. Would that make the multiverse part of the meta-verse?)

“Shang Chi” proved the perfect movie to wrap on because it offered a li’l sumpin’ sumpin’ that few movies bother with anymore: a couple of Easter egg segments tucked midway through and at the end of the credits. I always insist on sitting all the way through until the end just in case. How wonderful to be rewarded with my last feature of the season, and a Mark Ruffalo/Hulk cameo to boot! It may have been a shameless promotion from Marvel, but marvelous nonetheless.

Cramming on movies is my personal brand of March Madness. Now all that’s left is the filling out of my ballot/bracket. And for the first time ever, I have a whole week to do it.

 

Oscars 2022: Cartoons That Are Sick, Sick, Sick

From the Department of Stolen Childhoods, this year’s nominees for short-subject animation are, generally, unsuitable for children.

And I’m not sure these explicitly NC-17 doodles were even suitable for me. The graphic nudity and defiling of corpses I could kinda take, but it was the animal abuse, beheadings, torture, suicide, homicide, and sexual harassment that made me wonder what some of these animators were smoking. (Oh yeah, the chain-smoking depicted only made me laugh — are we trapped in some 1960s time warp?)

The lineup starts mildly enough with “Robin, Robin,” from the same British studio that brought us “Wallace and Gromit.” It’s a classic cat-and-mouse caper, except for the bird. (Well, “Tom and Jerry” meets “Tweety and Sylvester.”) A robin is adopted by a mouse family — and feels very much like the black sheep, because whenever she tries to sneak around for crumbs, she manages only to draw attention to herself because, hey, pretty bird! The moral: Being different is special. It’s on Netflix, so you can watch it with your kids there and keep them far, far from the theater.

After that, the Russian offering, “Boxballet” — and I admit I set a pretty high bar for this one having freighted it with an instant anti-Russian bias amid the invasion of Ukraine — explores the unlikely love story between a brutish boxer and an exploited ballerina (think Bluto and Olive Oyl). What surprised me was it comes before the Short TV’s editors announce that children should leave the room. Plenty of sleazy stuff in this one, too, like the director fondling the ballerina’s leg while she stretches and then making a pass at her (more like an assault, feeling her up) after dangling the promise of the role of Giselle in exchange for, well, favors. The mismatched couple bumbles through and, even though (spoiler!) he gets the girl — having wooed her literally with sugar, a 10-pound bag of it — their settling down reeks of “settling.” For a ballet, not uplifting in the least.

Not until it’s over, though, does this warning appear for several minutes onscreen:

Now that we have everyone’s attention, cue up “Affairs of the Art” (U.K./Canada), which supposedly is a “whimsical” look at a woman’s midlife obsession to pursue her lost dream of becoming an artist. It’s kinda gross, except I was amused by the protagonist forcing her nude husband to repeatedly fling himself down the stairs while she tried to sketch him (she ends up leaving marks that could be Exhibit A in a domestic abuse case).

Next, “Bestia” (translated as “Beast”) from Chile simply traumatized me. I’m left speechless. “Disturbing” doesn’t cover it. Nightmare-inducing. Sure, cartoons have always been violent, a bit sadistic, capitalizing on the Schadenfreude of characters falling, getting bonked on the head, being stuffed through small-beyond-belief orifices. But I regretted not leaving the theater with all the kids. (Actually, I was the only one in the theater. That frightened me even more because I expected that fractured china doll head to come peering out of the shadows at me. EEEK!) Next!

Bringing up the rear — and there was plenty of tail in this one, too — was the only one I genuinely liked: “The Windshield Wiper” (Spain), whose creator found inspiration traveling the world in July 2021, at the height of the pandemic’s second wave, secretly recording cafe conversations and observing humans’ odd mating habits. So much loneliness it’s painful, but beautifully drawn. I loved the scene in which we zoom all the way out above the planet to the perspective of a cell satellite getting pinged by vapid texting/sexting: “LOL, right? Yeah.” What a waste of technology. We have all this brainpower, yet as a species our scope seems infantile to any outsiders/eavesdroppers: unremarkable flirting, pining, seeking distraction and instant gratification, looking for love in all the wrong places. Look sharp to catch the inspiration for the title — lovely indeed.

I’ve used this line before, but it’s more appropriate this year than ever: Are those animated shorts, or are you just happy to see me? The envelope, please!

Animated Short Film

Prediction: Robin Robin (United Kingdom)

Pick: The Windshield Wiper (Spain)