The Oscars...

[GuiltyCowboy]

I've always liked the Oscars. It's never been about the 'best' anything; it's a marketing exercise. And that's kind of interesting in itself: it's always been an evening when the (American) film industry elevates what it believes to be the most important kinds of stories at the moment.

So, does anyone here have any interest in films? Who's your shout for the winners - or should be winners - tonight?

It's an unusually strong year. The Secret Agent, One Battle After Another, Sirat, Sinners, It Was just An Accident, Marty Supreme...all extremely good films, all original (even if the PT Anderson is 'inspired' by Pynchon), all very much worth the price of admission.

 

[Trionyx]

Sorry, GC, but I find the whole Oscar thing tedious and boring. I like good movies, just not the rah-rah, self-congratulatory BS that comes with the show.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I highly recommend Train Dreams, it's one of the most beautiful films I've seen in years.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm not one for star worship and I much prefer reading personalized lists of the best movies from critics I like rather than the anonymous mass voting of the Oscars. I've never put much weight on them.

 

[Comshaw]

I highly recommend Train Dreams, it's one of the most beautiful films I've seen in years.

Absolutely. Since it's about my neck of the woods and since I was raised around loggers, I am admittedly a little biased. Okay, a lot biased. But I think this movie is fantastic. I hope it does well in the popularity contest of the Oscars.

Comshaw

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm not one for star worship and I much prefer reading personalized lists of the best movies from critics I like rather than the anonymous mass voting of the Oscars. I've never put much weight on them.

The voting is from members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, not the public. For example, Cinematography is awarded by fellow cinematographers.

 

[SimonDoom]

The only nominated movie I've seen is Sinners. I thought it was good, not great. Interesting, and Michael B. Jordan is a charismatic actor. The music is good and the movie looks good.

I general, I think the quality of nominated and winning movies over the last decade hasn't been that great. There's never been a greater divergence between what people like and what the Academy thinks is worthy.

I haven't watched an Oscars ceremony in years.

 

[TheRedChamber]

The voting is from members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, not the public. For example, Cinematography is awarded by fellow cinematographers.

I know but I still don't know any of them from Adam.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

The only nominated movie I've seen is Sinners. I thought it was good, not great. Interesting, and Michael B. Jordan is a charismatic actor. The music is good and the movie looks good.

I general, I think the quality of nominated and winning movies over the last decade hasn't been that great. There's never been a greater divergence between what people like and what the Academy thinks is worthy.

I haven't watched an Oscars ceremony in years.

It’s not uncommon that I hear this opinion - movies aren’t that great these days (often accompanied with an insistence that tv is amazing) - and whenever I ask the person expressing that opinion about which movies they’ve been watching, it turns out they’re watching truly awful films, and very few of them

Essentially: ‘the food’s terrible and the portions are tiny’, ‘well, whaddya expect? You’re eating airplane food’.

I figure the best thing to do is to get them excited about checking out some good recent films. That’s all you can do.

Because cinema is still the place where the very best storytellers work with the very best actors and the very best craftsmen to create extraordinarily rich, complex and original stories.

And, just so you know, Sinners has made $360m at the box office and One Battle After Another $210m. And that’s only about 20-30% of what they’ll earn in total. So, let’s be clear: the Oscars are awarding exactly what people like to watch.

So, anyway, here’s my shot:

Personally, I’d argue that The Secret Agent is the best film of the year. Hands down. It’s so, so good. Sirat is one of the most ‘holy shit!’ cinema experiences I’ve had in a long time. Read nothing about it beforehand and just go see it. One Battle After Another is a wry, and very clever, romp that every American should see - and it includes a sequence the likes of which has never been captured on screen before. And that’s just three possibilities. And just from the last 6 months.

Others have mentioned Train Dreams, which is a great shout. Sinners is pretty good, as you say. It Was Just An Accident is phenomenal - when was the last time a shot of the back of someone’s head froze your blood? Sentimental Value is worthy of a night’s entertainment.

Treat yourself. Watch good films.

 

[PennyThompson]

Looking at the list of nominees for Best Picture nominees this year, apparently I've seen five of them!

One Battle After Another
Tense, expertly filmed and edited, surprisingly hilarious at times, the car chase near the end was a genuine surprise and something I don't think I've ever seen before, there were several moments that made me cry joyful tears. I think about this movie a lot

Sinners
Visually beautiful, excellent music, one of the musical bits was probably the single best scene of a movie I've seen this year. I thought it was a little over-stuffed at times, and the pacing could have been better, but it took big swings and big risks and I loved it!

Train Dreams
Really pretty, reflective, patient, meditative, sad... It gave me Terrence Malick vibes, it didn't resonate emotionally with me very personally, but I appreciated it for what it was and I can imagine that some people would find it powerfully affecting!

Frankenstein
The filmography, costuming/makeup, and sets were all gorgeous and delightfully horrible, the acting was over the top in the best ways and Guillermo Del Toro is the king of Monsterfuckers and for that I will always love him

F1
Nah, sorry, for me this one sucked and had no business even being in contention It was a fairly rote "sports underdog" kind of plot, the acting was bland, the action was bland... maybe if you're an F1 fan this worked, but I think a good sports movie makes you care about it even when you don't care about the sport being portrayed, and for me it failed at that.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

the car chase near the end was a genuine surprise and something I don't think I've ever seen before

The more I think about that film, the more I think about Benicio del Toro’s character.

For a while, I didn’t quite get why he was a judo teacher. Seemed random. But then there’s that stuff about him repeating ‘ocean waves, ocean waves’ to DiCaprio to calm him down - and then that’s how the road is filmed in the car chase, as ocean waves. And then you realize that judo is the art of using your opponent’s strength against them. Which is exactly the tactic DiCaprio’s daughter, and del Toro’s judo student, uses to come out on top during that car chase. And how, in fact, you defeat authoritarians.

Just one phenomenal little detail in a remarkable film.

 

[anthrodisiac]

The filmography, costuming/makeup, and sets were all gorgeous and delightfully horrible, the acting was over the top in the best ways and Guillermo Del Toro is the king of Monsterfuckers and for that I will always love him

That man has done a lot for us teratophilics

Also, I knew a guy who voted in the Oscars (he won one), and he told me about the amount of schmoozing the studios do to all the voters, and it's truly sickening. Tens of millions of dollars (probably more now) trying to buy votes. So I take it all with a very cynical view that while the movies nominated are usually better than average, the ones that win probably happened to have the best influence campaign.

I also didn't watch or have any idea who won

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

the ones that win probably happened to have the best influence campaign.

That’s almost certainly true. And I think we saw that this year: Sentimental Value is not a better film than The Secret Agent but it won the Oscar for non-English language.

However, the Oscars have never been about what is 'best' - except in the craft categories like costume and sound editing and so on. They are about the American industry deciding which stories are most worthy of respect and attention in that particular year, with the overall aim of course of marketing films made by the US studios. And that's a different thing to which films are 'best'.

And why I think the Oscars are kind of interesting to the wider culture - because it is interesting to think about which stories are the most important right now.

And, like any voting procedure, there are going to be campaigns to influence and sway voters one way or another. That's not unusual. That said, though, my understanding is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for those campaigns to have an impact: first, because the voters are much more international than in previous years and, secondly, because you can't vote unless you've seen all the films. The results are more fair than they've ever been.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Personally, I’d argue that The Secret Agent is the best film of the year.

So sad it isn’t a Conrad adaptation though

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Hitchock made a version, called Sabotage. And then there's this...



Look at that cast: Patricia Arquette, Bob Hoskins, Gerard Depardieu and Christian Bale! And with music by Philip Glass!

The current film - no real relation to the Conrad - is original and, dare I say it, much better than these two films. So, I'm not so sad myself...

 

[EmilyMiller]

Hitchock made a version, called Sabotage. And then there's this...

View attachment 2603982

Look at that cast: Patricia Arquette, Bob Hoskins, Gerard Depardieu and Christian Bale! And with music by Philip Glass!

The current film - no real relation to the Conrad - is original and, dare I say it, much better than these two films. So, I'm not so sad myself...

I wasn’t being serious. And this thread makes me realize that - even as a cinephile - I’ve not watched many new movies recently.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I’ve not watched many new movies recently

Lucky you. You have good films to look forward to.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Lucky you. You have good films to look forward to.

There are some that we’ve been meaning to get around to. Then I spent so much time on my novel last year

 

[Nynah]

I take the Oscars with a grain of salt, it's largely self-congratulatory but I do like to pay attention when people who should be recognized get their due from their peers and when the platform is used to say things that need to be said.

Highlights for me include Michael B. Jordan winning for playing not one, but two characters in Sinners, K-Pop Demon Hunters winning for best Animated Film and Original Song (but boo to the Oscars for shooing the team off after Ejae made her speech) and Autumn Arkapaw for becoming not only the first woman, but the first woman of color to be nominated and win Best Cinematography for Sinners. I also enjoyed Will Arnett saying that animation (which I took to include visual art in general as well) is an art form made by people, not AI and should be celebrated and protected.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

and when the platform is used to say things that need to be said

Yes, I particularly enjoyed all the jokes about how tech companies are desperate to take over every part of our lives and make them worse...

...“Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos is here and this is exciting: This is his first time in a theater. ‘This is what they’re talking about? Why are they together enjoying themselves?! They should be home alone so I can monetize it!'”...

...and, on Amazon not getting any nominations this year, “Why isn’t the website I order toilet paper from winning more Oscars?!”

A nice change from the constant cheer-leading in the media about AI and big tech.

But my favorite joke of all, so silly, so left field: "F1 did so well they’re making a sequel: CAPSLOCK.”

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It’s not uncommon that I hear this opinion - movies aren’t that great these days (often accompanied with an insistence that tv is amazing) - and whenever I ask the person expressing that opinion about which movies they’ve been watching, it turns out they’re watching truly awful films, and very few of them

Essentially: ‘the food’s terrible and the portions are tiny’, ‘well, whaddya expect? You’re eating airplane food’.



And, just so you know, Sinners has made $360m at the box office and One Battle After Another $210m. And that’s only about 20-30% of what they’ll earn in total. So, let’s be clear: the Oscars are awarding exactly what people like to watch.

One Battle After Another made $210 million on a $130-175 million budget. After the theaters take and marketing costs it lost money. It wasn't even in the top 10 highest grossing movies for 2025.

 

[SkyBubble]

Am I supposed to care about the Oscars?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Am I supposed to care about the Oscars?

Apparently... but yeah...not so much.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Am I supposed to care about the Oscars?

No, you are supposed to display your insecurity by ostentatiously declaring your ignorance and lack of interest.

 

[PennyThompson]

Y'all can just choose to not comment on topics you don't care about, you know