A serious look at the silly Oscars - review

It always feels silly to get serious about the Oscars, which will be awarded in a ceremony in Los Angeles on the evening of March 10 (1 a.m. on March 11 in Israel). 

But this year it seems borderline ridiculous since for most of us, there will be more suspense over which celebrities wear yellow ribbons to draw attention to the 134 hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas and which celebrities will demand a ceasefire in Gaza without calling for the release of these hostages or mentioning the Hamas massacre that started the war. 

Michael Rapaport’s brilliantly dark satire of what he would say if he were the host – he’d mercilessly rib the A-listers for acting as if the hostages don’t exist – was shown on Eretz Nehederet last week, and maybe that’s enough Oscars for this year.

But if you do want to watch, the red-carpet coverage will be broadcast here starting at 10:30 p.m. on Yes Movies Drama on Sunday, while the ceremony itself will be shown on the same channel at 1 a.m. on Monday. There will be a rebroadcast of the ceremony, also on Yes Movies Drama, on March 12 at 9 p.m.

While Israel’s selection for Best International Feature, Ayelet Menahemi’s Seven Blessings, didn’t get a nod, there is an Israeli director who might well win, Tal Kantor, whose brilliant animated short film, Letter to a Pig, about a young girl and a Holocaust survivor, is predicted to take its category. 

Golda, the drama by Israeli Guy Nattiv about Golda Meir, received a nomination for Best Makeup and Hair, but most are predicting a win in this category for the team behind the fake schnoz worn by Bradley Cooper to play Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. This prosthetic nose inspired a slew of complaints by those who felt it was somehow antisemitic – a concern that now seems quaint in the face of real, rising antisemitism around the world.

This was a year filled with overhyped, overrated movies, and I admit to being perhaps the only person in the world who didn’t enjoy either half of the Barbieheimer double feature that was so popular this summer. 

I also suffered through the soulless pretension of Poor Things and the overlong obviousness of Killers of the Flower Moon – but these are the movies seen as socially relevant that the Academy rewarded with the lion’s share of the nominations. So let’s take a look at the movies most likely to take home the prizes. 

BEST PICTURE:

 There are 10 nominees this year, so here are some tricks to narrow it down. It’s rare that a movie wins Best Picture without a Best Director nominee, so the movies whose director is nominated are Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of Fall, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest. Killers lost momentum when it was criticized for telling too much of its story of Native-American life from a white perspective. Anatomy of a Fall is too artsy for an Oscar, and all the main characters in The Zone of Interest are Nazis. That leaves the twisted metaphorical fantasy about male domination and feminist empowerment, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which is about a tormented hero wracked with guilt for his part in inventing the atomic bomb, and which obviously tells a true story. When in doubt, always bet on the movie with the more likable characters, and if there’s a political message – nuclear war is bad – that’s also a plus.WINNER: OPPENHEIMER

BEST ACTOR:

 Cillian Murphy in the title role of Oppenheimer and Paul Giamatti playing an unhappy teacher in a WASPy prep school in The Holdovers are seen as the top contenders. Both have had long careers with many acclaimed roles. But here’s the test: I can’t imagine that Oppenheimer would have been such a hit without Murphy’s blank stare – he was the perfect actor to express Christopher Nolan’s pretentious vision. And much as I like Giamatti, I can imagine a half-dozen other character actors doing a good job in that role.WINNER: Cillian Murphy, OPPENHEIMER

BEST ACTRESS:

 This race has been seen as a contest between Emma Stone for Poor Things and Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon. Stone (who already won this award in 2017) got to stomp around a lot playing a woman with the brain of a fetus and utter stilted, cutesy dialogue, which is the sort of thing that tends to charm Oscar voters. But Lily Gladstone is likely to win for Killers of the Flower Moon for several reasons.

One is that, like the character she plays, she is Native American and her win would be the kind of historical first that warms the hearts of the Academy. Another is that she already won the Screen Actors Guild Award, a reliable predictor of Oscar success. The third is that Killers is a prestige movie directed by a venerated veteran that is unlikely to win much else. The final reason is that she is an extremely appealing actress who gave a wonderful performance.WINNER: Lily Gladstone, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: 

The only moments I was jolted out of my stupor brought on by the repetitiveness and pretension of Oppenheimer was when Robert Downey Jr. appeared on screen. Given the awards he has already won, others had the same reaction.WINNER: Robert Downey Jr.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

 Da’Vine Joy Randolph gave a performance in The Holdovers as a bereaved African-American mother with a sense of humor that had Oscar written all over it.WINNER: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

BEST DIRECTOR: 

Oppenheimer is the perfect Oscar movie: It looks at a big issue – the morality of atomic warfare and the hypocrisy of the US government for persecuting suspected Communists – and has a guilt-ridden but sympathetic hero. The story is adorned with all of Christopher Nolan’s signature flourishes, including heavy moments, time jumps, and artistic cinematography. He’s been nominated several times before, but has never won.WINNER: Christopher Nolan, OPPENHEIMER

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: 

Many feel Greta Gerwig will be compensated for her lack of a directing nod for Barbie by winning in this category, along with her partner, Noah Baumbach, since for some unfathomable reason, Barbie is nominated in the adapted and not original category (what was it adapted from – the copy on the box?). Others think Christopher Nolan will win for Oppenheimer, which many who enjoyed the book felt was an excellent adaptation. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and pick what I think was the Best Adapted Screenplay, Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel American Fiction, a truly funny satire of the literary world and its stereotyping of minorities. The movie was nominated for several awards, including Best Picture, but this is the one it’s most likely to win.WINNER: Cord Jefferson, AMERICAN FICTION

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: 

As usual, this is a very competitive category, and most feel that this year it comes down to a contest between two very different movies, Anatomy of a Fall, a tense courtroom drama that is really about a bad marriage, and The Holdovers, a look at misfit faculty and students bonding at a boarding school during Christmas. Both scripts are good, but The Holdovers is a more conventional and predictable movie, while Anatomy features lines and monologues that I still can’t get out of my head, even though I saw it eight months ago, and I find myself still wondering about plot turns that were left unresolved. That’s a good screenplay. It was co-written by its director, Justine Triet, and Arthur Harari. It doesn’t hurt that one of its writers is female, or that it was nominated for four other awards, including Best Picture.WINNER: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, ANATOMY OF A FALL

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE:

This year, the main competition is between the Spanish film J. A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow, about soccer teammates who survived a plane crash in the Andes by turning to cannibalism, and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a look at Nazis living on the grounds of Auschwitz. Society is a perfectly good movie, but it’s a story that’s been told before, in several versions. On the other hand, you’ve never seen a movie quite like The Zone of Interest before. Zone is also nominated in several other categories, including Best Picture, which means they really like it.WINNER: THE ZONE OF INTEREST