The odds have changed a bit since the opening.
Anora has replaced The Brutalist as the favorite for Best Picture, and Conclave is gaining ground on both of them after winning the BAFTA. No other film seems to have a reasonable chance. Conclave and Anora seem to be locked in for the two screenplay awards. (Conclave was adapted from an eponymous 2016 novel by Robert Harris.)
Adrian Brody is still the favorite for Best Actor, but Chalamet is closing the gap.
Demi Moore is still a slight favorite for Best Actress, but it is now a tight two-way battle with Mikey Madison. Interestingly, they both did nude scenes.
Conclave was actually an incredibly well made film….. and then…. They decided to take a political shot at the Catholic Church. I’m Jewish and I still found it incredibly disrespectful. It’s not the crying game when you make a political statement in order to insult half the population.
It was an ironic twist showing up all the biological police like the Christians, JK Rowling, & you, so looks like it succeeded
That’s exactly my point. Why the need to “show up”? You’re paid to entertain. Entertain. This is Hollywood, not some liberal arts film school in the Midwest. Doesn’t really matter at this point. I’m sure Trump and Elon will get to it eventually.
The moron is back.
lol. Says the guy who “fails to see the appeal of dune” and “didn’t care for the book”? Ok guy. I’ve been here. Just haven’t felt the need to chime in since you and your liberal buddies are back to being considered “insane”.. The woke age of Obama is gone for good. Good riddance.
Total zero….who brags about his job, education etc. You give Jewish people a bad name.
Seeing Kieren Culkin as such a large favorite for Best Supporting Actor is weird. Soon saying “Oscar winner Kieren Culkin” will be surreal. And it would give “Scott Pilgrim vs The World” two Oscar winners.
I was skeptical about him until I saw that film. He was terrific. Eisenberg did a good job on that script, as well.
Conclave was just “meh”. You could almost see them reading the script and going “this will win an Oscar for sure”.
Anora was interesting. The lead performance was great (and she got naked a ton), but the movie itself seems kind of overrated. Just kind of dragged after the first hour.
Haven’t seen Brutalist but will check it out. I had to shut off the transgender musical on Netflix, that was just embarrassing.
Honestly not a terribly exciting year. Dune 2 should have gotten a lot more nominations if just to shake things up.
Brutalist, as brilliant as it can be, is a hard movie to like. Talk about a film impressed with itself. “Hey, everyone. I’m so long that I make German operas seem like Miller Lite commercials. I’m so important that I need an intermission, like Lawrence of A Fucking Rabia.” The film wants to comment on the nature of postwar America. I’d be willing to stand three hours of that if it were a true story about Ike or Eleanor Roosevelt or Joseph McCarthy or Edward R Murrow or somebody like that, but I just can’t seem to learn anything valuable about the American experience from a bunch of stuff that never really happened. It kind of seems like intellectual masturbation. I admire the craftsmanship behind The Brutalist, but I don’t care to watch it again.
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I liked Jesse Eisenberg’s film, A Real Pain, better than most of the nominees.
I did like the Conclave, although I don’t think it earned the final surprise twist, and I think it had a couple of logic gaps. (And I think it was immediately obvious which character would win the Papacy, because of the Chekhov Rule – there was no other reason for that character to be there.)
I thoroughly enjoyed A Complete Unknown. That doesn’t make it an Oscar winner. It probably tells you more about my taste than about the film.
I’m lukewarm on Anora.
All those noms for Emilia Pérez? That’s maybe the most totally out-of-touch the Academy has ever been.
Wicked? It’s fine as far as it goes. The music is forgettable, but the sets are dazzling. Frankly, it’s only half a movie, so I would not award it more than half an Oscar. Ask me again when they finish the damn story.
The Substance and Dune are slick genre films. I don’t think they have any chance to win Best Picture, but they could earn awards in other categories.
There are a couple of nominees I haven’t seen: I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys.
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If I had a vote, I don’t know which film I would vote for.
Don’t care for “Dune” and fail to see its appeal. Didn’t care for the book either though.
I agree with just about the entirety of your assessment here Scoop. I would probably vote for Conclave myself, even if it had a couple of weaknesses. As for the movie that I found most entertaining among the nominees, it was A Complete Unknown, which also reflects my tastes, interests, and probably my generational predispositions as well. Although I was born just a bit too late for Dylan to have been central to my early life, he certainly was a part of it and I thought that the film did a good job of conveying some of ideas and the feelings that were a key part of the era.
I’m also leaning toward Conclave, but that lean is probably more like a slight tilt.
If you thought Anora dragged after the first hour, I bet you thought Uncut Gems was too laid back lol
Interesting that you should bring up an analogy between Anora and Uncut Gems, because I was thinking about that myself while watching Anora, especially during the second half of Anora. For me there is limited entertainment value in watching stupid, vile people doing stupid, vile things. I absolutely hated Uncut Gems – I almost walked out on it, actually. While the Anora, even in the second half, did not not quite descend to the same depth (some of the characters in Anora had at least certain redeeming qualities/moments), it certainly had some of the same negative qualities.