Hello! This was an introduction I wrote for the inaugural Breakfast Film Club screening at Towner Eastbourne on 14th June 2025. It all went well and we had a lovely time, with two more screenings coming up over the Summer. For preservations sake and for those who weren’t able to attend, you’ll find my script below for my intro. It is rough and ready as I was using it as a basis but hopefully you’ll enjoy it for what it is!
Good morning and thank you so much for coming out to our inaugural Saturday Breakfast Film Club! My name is Henry Jordan and I’m one of the duty managers here at Towner. I do a lot of work alongside the cinema here so you may have seen my face around. I’m also a freelance writer and I have a first class degree in Film Studies and English from University of Exeter, where I specialised in contemporary literature and surrealist films.
Today, we’re screening a selection of films from the filmmaker Germaine Dulac, starting with The Seashell and the Clergyman before her short films Themes and Variations, Cinegraphic Study on an Arabesque and Disque 957. Dulac began making films before wide understanding of the word surrealism, hence why she is often referred to as both an abstract and a surrealist artist, fitting into both, either and neither categories. For those who may not know, Surrealism itself is first coined as a word in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire, though we really start thinking of Surrealism as a movement in 1924 with the publishing of the two manifestoes of Surrealism. The first is released by a school of artists who claim to be successors to Apollinaire, and the second, released just two weeks later, is spearheaded by Andre Breton alongside artists like Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp. It is Breton’s we typically refer to these days, as the language of his manifesto is both the most potent and the most malleable of the two. You may already be familiar with Breton’s definition of Surrealism, in which he describes the movement as art that evokes “the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
Breton here is describing art that is expressing images and logic from the subconscious, often inhabiting the world of the dreamlike, which makes sense when you consider Surrealism’s precursor Dadaism, a movement centered around nonsense and no-sense, as well as the growing popularity of the work of Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalysis of dreams. Breton’s description of surrealist art as dreamlike is still one of those ideas that has transcended to today, it’s often one of those things that causes us to see a film and go “that was a bit surreal”. However, I do want to complicate Breton’s idea that this was art exempt from “moral concern”. These manifestos are written by outsiders, but still outsiders who were wealthy white men. They felt no need to engage in the moral concern of politics, which is obviously a stance that is retroactively worrying in 1920s Europe. If you’re coming to the screening of Daisies, put a pin in that idea of Surrealism as being exempt from any moral concern, Chytilová’s film is very engaged with ideas of moral concern, in between the food fights and beheadings, though I suppose to some that is of concern.
It is worth remembering about the earlier days of the Surrealist movement that it is very male. There are female artists and gender non-conforming artists who exist and make great art but are left by the wayside as this boys club starts to really pick up steam. Surrealism gets stuck in the thing that many art movements do, where the men are the artists, the women are the muses and ironically for a movement that is so focused on upending convention, there is little room for fluidity in that. I’ll offer some further recommendations before we begin the screening but this regressive attitude meant that works by great artists like Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington and Maya Deren have required critical revaluations over the century, usually after the artist’s death, to reach the esteem they are now held in. Even today, you see this erasure. While trawling YouTube, I found that someone had commented under one of Dulac’s shorts how much they love Jean Cocteau, and are rightly corrected that while Cocteau’s work is wonderful, he has nothing to do with the project. Fortunately, today we do get to celebrate an artist who did receive her flowers in her time, with Germaine Dulac. She begins making her short films before the Surrealism manifestoes are published, with her earliest known film being released in 1915, obviously complicating her place in the movement.
Anyway, she is making shorts for the next decade or so, including an adaptation of The Lais of Marie De France, but the films we’re watching today are all from the tail end of the twenties. When she released The Seashell and The Clergyman in 1928, she released it one year before Un Chien Andalou, hence why hers is often considered the first true Surrealist film as it predates the most influential. The title is contentious, not least because Dulac comes from the world of the cinematic Impressionists and not the Surrealists, but it hopefully puts into perspective for you how groundbreaking the films you’re about to watch are. Ironically, even at the time the film was overshadowed by Bunuel and Dali’s film, despite the fact that techniques that Un Chien used and was praised for using also appear in Dulac’s film. Still, there is some consolation, in that even the criticisms of the film accurately appraise Dulac’s work. The British Board of Film Censors, better known today as the BBFC, reported that the film was “so cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable”. When you’re viewing the films today, see how doubtlessly objectionable you find the meaning.
For me, I think they pull this idea of objectionability from the abstraction of the body. We’re not quite in the era of film censorship here but we see in Seashell similar tactics, in which ideas are explored through metaphor and allusion. We’re presented with these opposing images, with the phallic power of the sabre and the yonic draw of the seashell in frequent contrast to each other. Perhaps Dulac simply liked sword fighting and enjoyed trips to the seaside. Perhaps you too find these images objectionable. With surrealism, there is only one answer that matters and it’s the answer you feel.
Once synchronous sound made its way into cinema, Dulac drifted away from the medium, mainly making newsreels for companies like Gaumont and Pathe. However, she was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1929 for recognition of her contributions to the French film industry. It would be many years until her work was as well respected internationally as it was nationally but it remains an important footnote, that she did receive the highest honour that a French citizen can receive for her work, and did so while in the height of her career.
So, what does this have to do with Paule Vezelay? Well, let me draw your attention to the quote that greets you when entering the exhibition. Vezelay says of her art “I hope to give intense pleasure to the eye of the beholder… (with) colours and forms more pleasing than can easily be found in actuality”. Though Vezelay was not a surrealist, of course neither was Dulac, so it feels harmonious that their works made alongside Surrealism can be drawn together by the strands of the movement. You’ll see this aspect more in the short films at the end of this program, in which Dulac really does get abstract with shape and form, creating the illusion of movement through a form in which that illusion is no longer required. I love that idea Vezelay brings up though, of colours and forms more pleasing than can be found in actuality. That’s the magic of cinema in it’s purest form, in getting to experience pure visual pleasure for nothing more than the sake of pleasure. These films today are a very refined version of that and it’s a form of pleasure in cinema that I think we often lose once cinema chains itself down with narrative, sound and character.
Alongside the visual pleasure, I encourage you to explore the film through these themes, of gender power dynamics, of sexuality, of dream logic. I also encourage you to detach from this if you want. I love surrealism because of the emotional sense it makes to me and I implore you, if it stops making narrative, thematic or structural sense to you, explore the film emotionally.
Before I wrap up, one of the things that I think is so wonderful about this screening today is the soundtrack that is going to accompany it. The Seashell and the Clergyman is part of this era of film we call silent film, but none of these films were ever truly silent. They didn’t have synchronous sound until the late 1920s and even then, it took a while for cinemas to get fitted for this new technology. So, before the “talkie”, cinemas experimented. Many would have their own in-house musicians who would play music live to accompany the film, and we still see the relics of this in touring artists like The Dodge Brothers and Hugo Max or in the preservation of instruments like The Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ in the Tampa Theatre in Florida. However, many would simply do as we are doing and play music off a record. Today, we’re lucky enough to have music from the band In The Nursery, who have made many musical accompaniments to silent films as varied as Man With a Movie Camera and The Fall of the House of Usher. Their score for Seashell is really special and has helped enrich my own appreciation of the film. The score was released in 2019 and so it is decidedly modern, owing a clear debt to David Lynch’s longtime collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, whose work you may know from Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. The score is a mercurial thing, that has elements of threat but also elements of beauty and something unattainably grand. In concert with the images on screen, it makes something magical and again, if you feel the film losing you, lean into the music and you will find yourself returning before long.
If you want any quick recommendations of where to go after this viewing, I would always recommend the short films of Maya Deren, particularly her seminal Meshes of the Afternoon, and if you’re after more silent surrealism, The Life and Death of 9413, A Hollywood Extra, also from 1928, is a delight. Honestly though, this is such a fruitful era for Surrealism, you could pick any name I’ve mentioned today, zero in on them and vanish down a dreamy rabbit hole.
We’re really excited to be programming this selection of films to enhance your experience with our current exhibitions of Sussex Modernism and Paule Vézelay Living Lines. Whether you’ve already seen the exhibitions or you’re planning to after this screening, I hope that these films compliment your time upstairs and vice versa. If you enjoy today’s screening, please do tell your friends and do also tell us! We have two more of these screenings currently on sale if you’re interested in seeing more. One is for Borderline on 12th July which will be introduced by Dr Hope Wolf, who has curated our Sussex Modernism exhibition, and the other is Daisies on 13th September, which will again be introduced by me. These have all been organised and put together by my colleague Emily Medd, she’s done a fantastic job getting all the moving pieces together and we wouldn’t be doing any of these screenings without her. If you enjoy them, hopefully that gives us the chance to put on even more of these with future exhibitions, so please do talk to us after the screening. But for now, please. Get comfortable, get ready and get excited for Germaine Dulac and her cabinet of abstract delights.
I felt I needed to add something at the top here because things aren’t great in the LGBTQ+ community right now. You probably know that here in the UK, the supreme court ruled that trans women are not legally considered women. That’s disgraceful. We’ve still not felt the repercussions of this ruling but anyone with their head screwed on can see it’s a sign of worse things to come, both on legal levels and on social levels. If you’re someone reading this who has a little extra money floating around right now, I would like to ask that you donate it towards a charity that supports trans people. Feel free to do your own research but if you need help, I can get you started. Mermaids do a lot of good work at supporting young trans people and their families, I have attended sessions from Gendered Intelligence which are a really valuable way of keeping workplaces informed of how to support trans, non-binary and gender questioning staff or visitors, and I will personally be giving some money to The Clare Project because they’re a local charity to me, they run support groups and workshops hosted by and for trans, non-binary and gender questioning people who need a little extra support. And if you don’t feel you have enough money to make a difference but you do have trans friends or family, just look out for them, be an ear for whatever they’re worried about and just take steps to be an ally. Buy their coffee, get that book they wanted, make sure you pay for their cinema tickets for a little while. These are small things but when something so big and so terrible has happened, a little treat goes a long way. That’s me, that’s my soapbox, I just didn’t feel I could talk about drag and not mention this because it’s an artform that owes so much to the trans community and as a cisgender man it’s something I owe it to the community to mention. We will now move to your regularly scheduled programming, fix your hearts or die.
I haven’t really talked much about RuPaul’s Drag Race on my blog, because in the grand scheme of it, I’m only a recent fan. It’s also one of those things where I don’t know how much demand there is for me to talk about it, so I rarely do. However, I would be lying to you if I said a great deal of my time isn’t spent watching and thinking about Drag Race. Which brings us to today, shortly after the conclusion of Season 17, a season that I find myself so full of things to say about. Seeing as it’s my first time really talking about Drag Race on the blog, let me give you my credentials (and lack of.) First off, I am a straight cis man, I have only been to a handful of drag shows in my life and though I have a lot of lovely queer people in my life, I have also been primarily surrounded with other cis-het men and women. However, what I do have is knowledge of Drag Race. I have seen all of the American, All Stars, UK, Canadian, French, Swedish, Australian and New Zealand seasons, and have dabbled in Philippines, Germany, Spain and Mexico. I’ve been to Drag Con twice and been socially awkward around very friendly icons of the international drag stage. At this point of my life, I am someone who intricately understands the shape of a reality competition like Drag Race, so while I couldn’t quite describe myself as “in queer media”, I’ve read the core texts. It’s also important to state that, along these lines, Drag Race is a TV show and I will talk about it as such. When I refer to queens, I am referring to them by their stage names because these are characters on a show and we can’t assume to know what the people behind the characters are like. With this all laid out, it’s time to start our engines and find out if the best drag queen won.
Perhaps controversially, I felt this season got off to a poor start. The premiere itself was curious, as we dedicate a lot of time to an elaborate, unfunny and pointless Squid Game parody. So far, so Drag Race, someone let those writers touch grass. However, we do get some air when we’re introduced to the queens, proving that honestly it serves to just do the formula that has been refined over the past sixteen years. Speaking of the formula, it is time to do what we always do on a premiere now and have a talent show (split across two episodes for our viewing pleasure). What was once something so unique and exciting (I need not say more than “same parts” “is she gonna jump from that” or “brown cow stunning” to remind you) has devolved into a show that is mainly queens lipsyncing to their own original “bitch tracks” (songs written to tell you how much better they are than everyone else, “Mama Ru I’m gonna snatch the crown” type things). It’s telling that even in this over saturation, the winners of both episodes were queens who did a bitch track with a twist, those being Suzie Toot tap dance syncing and Lexi Love roller skate syncing. Both shows were fine in general, we just need to radically alter the show and do something crazy like banning pre-recorded music, so that real talents can come to the fore (Shannel, we never forgot what they took from you).
Anyway, that is all by the by, there are two main reasons this premiere is a spanner in the works of an otherwise exciting season. The first is Katy Perry, our space goddess who returned to Earth out of the kindness of her heart and her love for the LGBTQ+ community. She is the exciting premiere guest judge and not to be that guy, I completely called it. When “Woman’s World” came out, it immediately slapped us all in the face as a song whose lip service to feminism was so detached that it was clearly only made for West Hollywood gays without female friends, which led me to make a prediction. Drag Race famously films its seasons almost a year before airing, so there was a chance we were hearing the song after production on Season 17 had wrapped. However, I predicted that Perry would not only give her song to Drag Race early so they could use it, the song would be used on the premiere and she would be a guest judge. Her desperation was as embarrassing as it was transparent and the prophecy did indeed come true, with Perry lacking an ounce of humility and doing her best to act odd enough so that at someone might, just might, shout “MOTHER”. The other issue is the “badonk-a-dunk tank”, a gimmick that allowed two people to be saved from elimination by randomly pulling levers at the end of an episode. It fortunately didn’t last past episode 5 but it cheapened the stakes for a while and I was glad to see the back of it. It did mean though that the culminating lip-sync of these two talent shows was an underwhelming mess which no one went home for. Oh well.
After this though, the show starts finding its rhythm. If I’m honest, it’s always in the middle where Drag Race is at its best, when it doesn’t have to set up new characters or ensure all the storylines are resolved, but can just relish in the momentum it has gained. The challenges are good, but the weight of the season is on the back of the queens, who are charisma machines. It has been pointed out a lot how young this cast is, and while I think their inexperience (i.e. they’re my age) means they don’t do as well in the challenges, it means they have a cattiness and a vivacity that lights up the screen. Take our first three eliminated queens, Lucky Starzzz, Joella and Hormona Lisa. All three have an interesting perspective but just seem broadly unprepared for the types of challenges that Drag Race asks of its contestants, which means we say goodbye. On their way down though, all three get iconic moments in which their larger than life personalities can shine and it means that I remember them fondly months later!
What served as a really good bellwether for the trajectory for the season was the elimination of Crystal Envy. Again, this is about the character presented on the show, not the performer in real life nor their off-stage self. Crystal was a queen I just didn’t connect with. Like Q last season, her drag was high quality, looked expensive and she was able to do what the show was asking her to do. The problem is, I didn’t get a perspective from her. I know Hormona does drag like a good Christian housewife, I know Joella is THE Slaysian diva of LA, I don’t know who Crystal is aside from someone whose nude illusion suits are grotesque. And so, when she was eliminated by Lana Ja’Rae (a performer so charismatic that she lost her wig and still easily won the lip-sync, a new and unique move for her), I felt relief. The show was telling me that it wasn’t going to reward quality without a perspective but that it was interested in queens who had something to say, no matter how consistently well they said it. For me, that commitment to exciting personalities is exactly what makes Drag Race such a consistently rewarding piece of reality TV.
With Crystal gone, our little weirdos continue to get to flourish, doing just okay at the challenges and absolutely nailing Untucked, refusing to keep a single thought inside their heads when it could instead spill out and create drama. As I said earlier, this is a cast whose strength is not in nailing challenges but in being good TV personalities. Take Arietty, the undeniable villain of the season. Her runways were great and her everything else wasn’t, but her mean confessionals were a treat and were a sign that a bigger meltdown was coming. That meltdown came in the phenomenally entertaining Villains Roast episode, in which she proved, in front of three other notable villains, that she was actually the biggest villain of the show’s past decade. In a spiteful rage, she stole jokes from Tampa’s sweetheart Jewels Sparkles, then delivered the stolen jokes badly, then left a mirror message that revealed Onya’s personal medical history on her way out. That was a blaze of glory if ever there were one and you know what, it was phenomenal TV. Thank you Arietty for being an evil little elf.
I’d also be remiss not to mention the sweethearts of the season, Kori King and Lydia B. Kollins. Very quickly, the two began a romance that has continued to grow since this day. Kori was initially worrying as she is the drag sister of Plane Jane, but fortunately Kori inherited the personality that Plane did not. Her confessionals were great, the other queens enjoyed her reads and do I even need to mention her illustrious Cameo career as the premier Suzie Toot impersonator? Initially, it didn’t seem a natural fit that she would go for Lydia. After all, Lydia is your classic weirdo queen, who would reliably be in the most interesting (though rarely the best) thing on the runway and who played David Lynch in the Snatch Game. Despite this, the two worked and got a magical lipsync moment to “Kiss Me Deadly” in which they got to show RuPaul how they really felt about each other. Both immediately make complete sense for an All Stars return (and curiously, Lydia is already confirmed to return for All Stars 10) but only to redeem their challenge performances. Personality wise, entertainment wise, these two did themselves very proud.
Which brings us to almost the end, which confusingly will be the end, as in the winner of the season. A season is often defined by its winner and how well their legacy perseveres. Season 16 has a complicated legacy because it choose the wrong winner whereas season 15 would have felt like a cheat if Sasha Colby didn’t win. Fortunately, season 17 fits into the latter category. All the finalists this year apart from the winner would have been “a good choice, but…”, the types of queens who have an open path to victory in an All Stars season but maybe weren’t ready now. Jewels was great but needed to apply the confidence and humour she had in the confessionals into her challenge performances. Lexi was a super promising queen, but was clearly very in her head and is still working through some personal stuff that is holding her back from being her fullest self. Sam is high quality but needs a hook other than being country. Looking at our final four, it could only be Onya Nurve who took the crown.
Onya Nurve has absolutely commanded season 17, being a dominant personality from the second she appeared. While she was never a queen who would be wearing the best outfit on a given runway, she is a queen who knew how to work the stage, how to work a script and how to work RuPaul very specifically. She was an absolute treat to see on screen week to week and is a testament to the quality of a different kind of drag queen. Her outfits don’t look as expensive as others and she isn’t even doing drag full time, Onya revealing in the final episode that she works as a burger chef for her day job. I feel the same about her as I do Spankie Jackson from Drag Race Down Under. Both were the obvious frontrunners for most of their seasons, but lacked the polish of some of the other competitors. However, through sheer talent and force of charisma, they won. It once again is a promising sign that RuPaul’s Drag Race is moving away from rewarding queens who throw a bunch of money at designers to cover up a lack of perspective and instead moving towards rewarding queens who are born superstars that are only short of a platform to showcase themselves on.
There’s one key building block of the season that I’ve not covered yet and that is the lightning rod of the season, the one thing we all can’t stop talking about. If you have watched it, there is one thing you certainly have a very strong feeling towards and that is Suzie Toot. Suzie is a queen from Fort Lauderdale (we love another Florida girl) and her style is heavily influenced by twenties and thirties cinema. Naturally, I was besotted quite early and she won two episodes very quickly, the first of which she won by tap dancing at Katy Perry instead of actually singing “Woman’s World”, an iconic move. Her makeup was distinctive in a way that a lot didn’t like, but she was quick to change it up and try something fresh. However, as the season develops, something shifts. Suzie hits Snatch Game with an intense delusional edit, claiming to have won when she clearly didn’t do well. This sets her on a downturn in which she becomes the punching bag for the girls, specifically Lexi, whose entire storyline starts to become about Suzie. By the time Suzie is eliminated just before the finale, we have been shown her as a great competitor, a delusional menace and someone who didn’t live up to her own potential. It felt odd, considering that we knew the first to be true and had conflicting evidence on the other two.
However, Suzie’s arc is wrapped up in the Lip Sync Lalaparuza. It starts very business as usual, with everyone (including Michelle) laughing at Suzie because she doesn’t get the Liza Minelli song. Instead, she is forced to tackle the Dua Lipa song “Training Season”. And guess what? She crushes it. A new Suzie emerges here, a cool and effortless one, akin to the rocker chick Suzie we briefly saw at the start of the season (and that she should have won the challenge for). She wins the lipsync and moves onto “We Found Love” by Rihanna. Once again, she is calm and composed, winning the lipsync without whipping out a single trick more complex than a stanky leg. She easily moves forward to the final round against Kori King, where they perform to “APT” by Rosé and Bruno Mars. This is the best lipsync of the season, no doubt. Once again, Suzie is in control completely, relying on smooth and carefree movement as Kori attempts to do tricks. She swishes and she glides and for many viewers, she cast an intoxicating spell that two weeks on has yet to be broken. Suzie blows Kori out of the water and wins a $50,000 prize for her troubles. It’s the kind of redemption arc she needed and, after the way the show presented her, the kind of redemption she deserved. She is a superstar of immense and admirable complexity and while Onya always deserved to win the crown, I would have loved to have seen Suzie in the finale giving her a run for her money.
All in all, a season well done! We had some reasons to be worried in the first few weeks but once the production tricks got pushed to the background and we let a group of charismatic drag queens hang out, we got some really exciting TV. As it always is now though, we look to the future and ask what next? I think a lot of production decisions with this season, specifically Crystal’s elimination and Onya’s win, push the franchise in the right direction. Drag Race has become a show that people will literally re-mortgage their house to appear on (I am told it’s just as bad, if not worse, for the UK franchise), so it’s a comfort that the show is being explicit in rewarding what it claims to have valued this whole time, in charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. All Stars 10 is already on the horizon and shows lots of promise, especially because as a huge fan of season 14 it’s nice that this is basically a full reunion. We’re also getting the first edition of Drag Race France All Stars this year, on top of all our regular franchise outings. After a disaster with Global All Stars and a course correction with UK season 6, Drag Race feels reliable again. If you’ve never jumped in, these past seasons from the US and UK franchises are perfect places to start, with casts full of personalities you are doomed to fall in love with. Or, if that isn’t enough to convince you, can I again remind you that this is a season where a queen inspired by the great depression tap dances to “Woman’s World” in front of a befuddled Katy Perry?
Like a plague on all our houses, the Oscars have arrived. They are at once the cinematic lowlight and highlight of the year, a grim spectacle that actually, it is quite fun to gather round for and jeer at. This year has featured particularly heightened jeering with Emilia Pérez leading nominations (at 13! The second highest amount ever!) and sort of blocking out any positivity around a lot of exciting films getting exciting nominations. With our crop of nominated films now known, it’s time for wild and baseless predictions. As ever, I’m predicting what I think will win, weighing in on what I would choose to take the trophy and where possible, also throwing in a suggestion of a film that I wish had made the cut. In a lot of categories I won’t have much to say, so I will keep those short! Some chaos picks will appear too, those will be explained as they arise, though if Emilia Pérez is nominated, assume that as a default chaos win (we will still take opportunities to beat that dead horse). With our ground rules laid, let us predict!
Best Documentary Short Film
Will Win: The Only Girl in the Orchestra
It’s a short distributed by Netflix that promises not to be overwhelmingly depressing, it seems the most likely.
Best Live Action Short Film
Will Win: A Lien
You have to go cynical with these short film categories. A film about a political topic that isn’t so political as to be divisive? Go for it.
Best Animated Short Film
Will Win: Wander to Wonder
I am told that this is the film winning a bunch of other similar awards at similar ceremonies, so we’re just playing the odds here.
Best Documentary
Will Win: Porcelain War
Should Win: No Other Land
I should apologise here, I’ve seen very few of the films on this list. I do hear that the nominees are all pretty great, Black Box Diaries in particular I really wanted to check out before time got away from me. The film I have seen though is phenomenal and that is No Other Land. It’s the story of how Israel is destroying Palestinian homes in an attempt to eradicate their people. The story is told from the perspective of one Palestinian man and one Israeli journalist and it is as revealing as it is heart-breaking. However, it is about a controversial war that people in Hollywood are particularly uncomfortable with (the film doesn’t even have proper distribution deal in the US). A film about a war that does seem less controversial to the Americans is the Ukrainian war, which is depicted in Porcealin War. Again, I do hear it’s great, pairing miniature beauty with massive horror. It just feels frustrating when there is an amazing documentary about an essential subject that is begging to be rewarded and may not be because Hollywood types won’t do any soul searching.
Best Visual Effects
Will Win: Dune: Part Two
Should Win: Better Man
Should Have Been Nominated: Nosferatu
Alright, let’s rattle through this one. Alien Romulus and Wicked are just big films that have notable CGI in them, though both are broadly unlikely to win because they both have some moments of noticeably bad CGI. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is built almost entirely of visual effects and while it doesn’t feel as impressive as the last two Planet of the Apes films, it is a film of obvious and impressive CGI. My favourite ape film in the category though is easily Better Man, a film in which an ape is on screen with a bunch of humans and you never question it at any point. They use the effects for some absolutely amazing transitions too, not that anyone knows that because no one saw it. The unquestionable leader in this category though is Dune: Part Two. Like the first film, it’ll do really well in technical categories because in every category, it is the film with the biggest scale, executed to perfection for every second of its mammoth runtime. It truly deserves the win. As we will also see in all the technical categories, I love Nosferatu and would love it to be nominated everywhere possible. It uses visual effects in a way that is pretty imperceptible, which therefore means it was too good to be nominated. So it goes.
Best Film Editing
Will Win: The Brutalist
Should Win: Anora
Should Have Been Nominated: Challengers
There is an old adage that best editing at the Oscars goes to the film with the most editing. Therefore, that unfortunately does mean that Emilia Pérez has a chance here, but I would love it not to. I also think Wicked would be a really poor choice here, as the edit makes the film feel even longer than it is, as the film squeezes a three hour play into a pair of two and a half hour long films. Conclave would be a lovely choice as it’s a film that properly rockets along and that I have happily watched twice, such is its effortless nature. I would expect it to lose to The Brutalist however, as most editing can mean either really quick shot transitions or longest film. The Brutalist is very long! Unlike Wicked though, it is a really pleasantly paced film that I could luxuriate in for hours. For me though, Anora is my pick. The structure of the film is quite magnificent and while the bulk of that credit goes to the screenplay, the moment to moment feeling of the film is splendid. That middle home invasion section is immaculate, hopping between a moment of crisis and the funniest baptism I’ve ever seen. As will become a tradition though, we will pour one out for Challengers. Here is a film of perfect pace, restless energy and magic feeling, which was always too good for the Oscars.
Best Costume Design
Will Win: Wicked
Should Win: Nosferatu
Should Have Been Nominated: The Beast
We come now to the only category Gladiator II is nominated in. It has no chance of winning. Such is life. All four of the other nominees would be a good shout though. My beloved Nosferatu is nominated here and would be a great shout, Robert Eggers always makes sure that his costume team pick costumes that are spot on for the period, Nosferatu is no exception. Weirdly, Conclave would also be a solid choice. The little cloaks and little hats are great, they’re nothing too extravagant but you never doubt them for a second. Another great choice is A Complete Unknown, a film that also recreates period accurate outfits but for a period when many of the voters were alive. However, there’s no way it can’t be Wicked. If I’ve got my facts right, the stage musical won the equivalent award at the Tony’s, plus as someone who isn’t a huge defender of the film, those costumes are lovely. They became instantly iconic, they look really fancy, give them the trophy now. That is, you give them the trophy. I will give mine to The Beast, another film you will keep seeing me bring up. This film is set across three different time periods and even on a tiny budget, all the time periods are truly believable. You will get bored of me talking about The Beast so we’ll move on.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Will Win: The Substance
Should Win: Nosferatu
Should Have Been Nominated: Dune: Part Two
It’s The Substance. That’s the end of the conversation. The Substance has amazing, obvious and properly cool makeup and hairstyling. It has to win this award. They painted a woman green for Wicked, did drag king makeup for Emilia Pérez and probably did something equally impressive for A Different Man (I apologise, the film escaped me and I’ll kick myself for that later). But like, it’s The Substance. I’d give it to Nosferatu because I think the execution of the titular character is just phenomenal, but I know it doesn’t have a chance. Even though I would have liked to have seen Dune: Part Two in here, it too would ultimately only be here to lose to The Substance.
Best Cinematography
Will Win: The Brutalist
Should Win: Dune: Part Two
Should Have Been Nominated: Challengers
I have to say, this is a category where every film really is deserving of its place. Even Maria, I film I thought was so bad it was borderline patronising, at least had the good courtesy to look beautiful. Oh wait, I lied, Emilia Pérez is here. Why? It has good elements but its cinematography is not amongst them, it just looks a little odd and a little different. In a bold twist, I don’t think Nosferatu should win this, despite being nominated. Do not get me wrong, it looks phenomenal and is one of the best looking films of the year, lighting its colour film to make it almost monochrome. However, it is not the best looking film of the year. For me, the best looking film nominated in this category is Dune: Part Two. There are images in this film that are jaw dropping and genuinely a little hard to believe. Thinking of them now, I get goosebumps, although to be fair I am a little sci-fi nerd. The Academy not being a group of little sci-fi nerds, they will go for The Brutalist. It was filmed in a very specific style and is all about how essential the look of things is, it’s an easy win. An easy nomination though would surely have been Challengers. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom knows exactly how to make Guadagnino’s films feel luscious and he makes tennis feel more exciting than I’ve ever seen it. That final scene alone is worthy of about eight different awards, how did they not even nominate this? COME ON!!!
Best Production Design
Will Win: The Brutalist
Should Win: Dune: Part Two
Should Have Been Nominated: The Beast
Actually, a category that genuinely feels pretty correct. Conclave had to build its own Vatican, Wicked transposed great stage sets into great film sets and Nosferatu made 18th century Germany and vampiric castles feel just as real as each other. Those would all be three highly deserving winners. My winner would be Dune: Part Two. If you’re not in production design (as I’m not), it’s not easy to rank quality of production design. The closest I can get is that the worlds of Dune are the most illogical and yet I believed all the worlds completely. I reckon the Academy will go for The Brutalist though. It’s literally a film about making buildings, how much more production design-y can you get? Get that tally chart ready in the back, it’s time for me to tell you The Beast should have been nominated. As I said earlier, we cover three different time periods in totally convincing fashion. The film also asks for a disquieting air, which all the sets facilitate, by being either a little too big or a little too small. It is a mix of subtle work and really impressive big work, it should have been a big contender here.
Best Sound
Will Win: A Complete Unknown
Should Win: Dune: Part Two
Should Have Been Nominated: Challengers
Like with editing, “most sound” is how you need to think of this award. Emilia Pérez therefore isn’t a terrible prediction, but it would be a terrible winner. The Wild Robot would be nice, obviously the entire soundscape of that has to be rigorously constructed, unlike the live action nominees. I wouldn’t say its sound has stuck with me but all the same, it feels tough to argue its place here. Likewise, wow, lots of sound in Wicked. My main issue would be that you think sound in Wicked, you only think of the songs and not the texture of the songs. That sounds like a pretentious point but our likely winner, A Complete Unknown, proves my point. Here, it’s not just that we have songs, we also have the crackle of microphones, we have radio static, we have a world that sounds alive. It’s pretty fab to be fair, but I would pick Dune. Again, these are alien worlds that feel true and while the visuals were a great draw to the cinema, the soundscape was just as vital, requiring some big and expensive speakers. We will once again take a moment for Challengers though. What a great sounding movie. What a great movie. How do cinemas show anything other than Challengers?
Best Original Song
Will Win: “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez
Should Win: “Like a Bird” from Sing Sing
Should Have Been Nominated: “Beautiful That Way” from The Last Showgirl
CHAOS WIN: “The Journey” from The Six Triple Eight
What a terrible category this is this year. Five slightly limp songs, all spluttering in and feeling like obligations. Just this decade we’ve seen bangers from Billie Eilish (twice), Mitski and Ryan Gosling in the category and looking just a little further afield, we’ve had winners like “Man or Muppet” and “City of Stars”, full throated musical set pieces that command the viewers attention. These songs barely stopped me turning them off while on in the background. Honestly, even after the Emilia Pérez backlash, I think “El Mal” has it in the bag. It’s the flashiest set piece in the film, more so than the dreary “Mi Camino”, and it was at least a slightly fond memory I had while leaving the cinema. Elton John is here because he is Elton John, no other reason. I thought “Like a Bird” at least stood out from the category and made me feel a little something. Why there was no space for the actually moving “Beautiful That Way” from The Last Showgirl confounds me. It’s by Miley Cyrus, there wasn’t even some vain interest in getting another star in the building? However, the most important reason to highlight this category is the song “The Journey” from The Six Triple Eight. It is written by Diane Warren, who is on her sixteenth Academy Award nominations and has never won a competitive prize (she was given an honorary one in 2022). Every year, she releases a bland song for a movie no one has heard of, it gets nominated and she will lose to something people have heard of. Last year, she allegedly had a go at the ceremony producers after losing to Billie Eilish, who hardly feels like the worst person to lose to. We will pay attention to this category just to see if she once again loses her head or is finally relieved of her pain. Time only will tell, but with a year this weak, maybe it is her time.
Best Original Score
Will Win and Should Win: The Brutalist
Should Have Been Nominated: Challengers
Both deserve credit in their own ways but honestly, what are Wicked and Emilia Pérez doing here? The bulk of the music in Wicked isn’t original as it is taken from the stage musical and most of the original songs in Emilia Pérez are just people whisper talking over booming synth beats. Boot both out of here. I honestly don’t remember much of the score from The Wild Robot so I would feel bad saying too much about it, but it is at least nice seeing an animated film in this category. Conclave‘s score is quite lovely, a thing that booms and twinkles, throwing in the same leitmotifs for different impact throughout. As someone who works at a cinema where we’ve been screening the film pretty constantly, I’m still yet to get bored of the music that plays through its end credits and that’s always a great thing. However, head and shoulders above the competition, is Daniel Blumberg’s score for The Brutalist. It too has recurring leitmotifs, such as that incredible opening number on the boat, but is also relentlessly surprising. It’s the only film in this category whose score I’ve listened to after watching and I think it’s also the most complicated, what a deserving winner it could be. If you know me though, you know it’s time to talk Challengers. No one who has seen Challengers is able to stop themselves from mentioning the score and after it won at the Golden Globes, a nomination seemed likely at the Oscars. Of the two fantastic scores Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross made for Luca Guadagnino films, this is the king. Alas, no luck. Fortunately, the vinyl is mine forever and Reznor and Ross will doubtless bounce back next year with another incredible score or two.
Best International Feature Film
Will Winand Should Win:I’m Still Here
Should Have Been Nominated: Kneecap
I was desperate to see Flow this year but unfortunately, due to the nature of UK release dates, I have not been able to (I know it’s floating around online, but if you’re not going to support a film like this at the cinema then what’s the point?) However, there’s still plenty of good stuff in this category. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a very fine film indeed and just it’s creation is a miracle, but for me it just didn’t click as much as I hoped it would. I was very impressed by The Girl with the Needle though, a Danish film of both stark beauty and unrelenting misery. It’s not an easy watch but it’s one of those films that makes you want to watch whatever it is the director makes next. At one point, we may have assumed Emilia Pérez was the frontrunner to win this award but after the backlash, it seems like an uphill battle, especially when competing against I’m Still Here. I’m Still Here surprised many when it made it into both Best Picture and Best Actress (more on those later) but the good thing about that is that more people will get a chance to check out the film. It’s a heartbreaking true story that is incredibly moving and is a reminder of just how much great cinema is coming out of Brazil these days. It also helps the film’s odds that it’s fantastic, and it would be my choice in this category. Lots of other amazing films were unable to make the cut this year, as always, but I would have loved to see some love for the anarchic Kneecap. Forgive me for being cynical but this can be a dry category and some Irish language shenanigans, drug use and remarkably creative swearing would have been welcome. Alas, it wasn’t to be, but aren’t you glad I wasn’t able to mention Challengers?
Best Animated Feature
Will Win and Should Win: The Wild Robot
Once again, my apologies for not watching Flow yet, I’m very excited for it’s UK release later this month. Another bit of quick housekeeping, thank God the Oscars didn’t nominate the limp Moana 2 here, just because it’s a Disney film. That would have been quite an embarrassment and prevented one of our smaller and more interesting nominees. Speaking of Disney, Inside Out 2 left me mainly cold. It rehashes the first film in a largely uninspiring way and was a sobering reminder of how much more corporate Pixar have gotten in the past decade. The other three nominees though are a treat. Memoir of a Snail is the only film in the category for adults and therefore stands out straight away. It has a really visceral ugliness to it’s animation that I love, avoiding pixel perfect beauty in favour of something with real personality. It’s not quite as magnificent as Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl though, a feature length return for the nation’s favourite dog and least favourite dog owner. It has no chance in hell of winning (God knows the Anton Deck joke alone will have gone straight over the heads of most Americans) but what a charming nomination. No, the real heavyweight here is The Wild Robot. It has lost a few awards to Flow but this is a big budget animated film from a studio that looks as great as it feels. None of the others come close to the emotional journey here, which was at risk of giving me serious medical side effects from dehydration.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: Conclave
Should Win: Nickel Boys
Should Have Been Nominated: The Beast
We are finally in the “big eight” categories. Things get serious here and any nominee marks itself out as a film to watch. To that, I say I’m sorry I didn’t catch Sing Sing. One of the film’s big weaknesses this awards season was its half hearted release, which was unfortunately true here in the UK, it came and went in the space of about a week. I heard great things, I will catch up eventually. A shame, as I have to start this category by not just admitting my defeat but by also not being pleased by some nominations. Emilia Pérez got one of its 13 nominations in this category, to which I say okay? The structure is a bit of a mess and the film itself feels long, it’s tough to know if we lay that blame at the screenplay. I also don’t know how to feel about the nomination of A Complete Unknown. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed the film, but I think its great accomplishments are in the music, the atmosphere and the performances. None of those feel borne from the script. Though I’ve not read the original novel, the adaptation work for Nickel Boys astounds me. How do you create something that feels so cinematic from a novel? I have since bought the book to try and find out, but I think it’s a piece of adaptation that we’ll be talking about for a long time. However, nothing can beat Conclave. It hasn’t lost a single time that it’s been nominated in any of these big televised events and it is a film full of big weighty monologues that just scream “wow that’s well written.” It will win and to be fair, it will deserve it, for morphing papal drama into Drag Race. I would have loved to see The Beast in here though. It is a broad and experimental adaptation of a Henry James novella, taking it from turn of the century England to a narrative across time and place, while still containing the heartbreaking coda of the big finale. I’m only going on about it so much because it really does feel like a very special, once in a lifetime sort of film.
Best Original Screenplay
Will Winand Should Win: Anora
Should Have Been Nominated: Challengers
I say it every year, I think you can find some of the most exciting films of the year in Original Screenplay, and this year we avoid any outright travesties. September 5 is the oddest inclusion in this category as it is absent from the rest of the ceremony, so its odds are low. The structure is good, but its core issue is being politically toothless and that is an issue that starts with the screenplay. I do also think The Substance is a silly screenplay nomination. Though it won best screenplay at Cannes, its structure makes the film feel longer than it is and the dialogue is as wooden as the desk I write this on. It deserves to be in this category for the “Original” part of the title, not the “Screenplay”. With our three left though, three good choices! The thing I loved most about A Real Pain was its ability to wrestle with ideas but never present definite answers to the audience. Its knottiness has been its longevity with me and I’m glad to see it here. The Brutalist would be a lovely choice too, an immense picture loaded with themes that also leaves certainty elusive. It has good odds due to the sheer obviousness of its structure, with Corbet openly splitting the film into parts, but it’s a move that I think makes the film stronger. However, can anything beat Anora? Here is a film that is also comprised of distinct acts that all compliment each other, and is also loaded with fun and complex dialogue in the way that Mike Leigh films are. Baker’s characters are so vivid and a win for Anora would be a win for his cinematic rogues gallery… But can we talk about Challengers? I was worried by the structure at first but it effortlessly bounces between time periods to create a group of three characters who are complete and complicated. I loved meeting them and I keep returning to see them again. Their story thrilled me and the screenplay that crafted them deserves more credit than can ever be given it.
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win: Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez
Should Win: Felicity Jones for The Brutalist
Should Have Been Nominated: Joan Chen for Dìdi
There are a bunch of great performances in this category, all stuck under the looming elephant in the room. Monica Barbaro was an inspired nomination from A Complete Unknown. In many ways, she’s the emotional core of the film and while a win from her is hugely unlikely, I’m very glad she’s here. Likewise, I’m happy to see Isabella Rossellini nominated for Conclave, she gives a true supporting performance in that she appears in only a few scenes but those scenes elevate the entire film. Ariana Grande is the opposite end of the scale, appearing in most of her movie and being a little on the edge of a supporting or lead performance. However, she was fantastic and while I’m not the biggest fan of Wicked, Grande lifts up the whole film in a way I never thought her capable of. My personal choice would be Felicity Jones for The Brutalist. I’ve not really been a fan of Jones’ other performances before, but she is something else here. After being mainly absent from the first half of the film, the second half belongs to her. She is terrifying and heartbreaking and fragile, a true supporting performance that truly changes the film. All of these talented actresses though will lose to Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez, a clear leading performance. She has the most screen time of the film, the narrative is seen through her eyes, we start and end with her. It is blatant category fraud but, if we go by the other ceremonies, it works. To be clear, Saldaña’s performance is good, I just think it pales in comparison to the others and is plain and simple in the wrong category. She could easily be swapped out with the marvellous Joan Chen for Dìdi. That’s a film that hasn’t had much attention at awards ceremonies and while I understand why, it’s a shame that Chen got lost in the shuffle. I’ve loved her since I first saw Twin Peaks, but this is a totally different performance from her. She is the emotional core of the film and the reason I like it as much as I do. She would have been an inspired nomination.
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain
Should Win: Yura Borisov for Anora
Should Have Been Nominated: Jesse Plemons for Civil War
This category is pretty much sewn up, with Kieran Culkin winning every major awards show since the Golden Globes and refusing to budge since. Like Saldaña, his performance is very reminiscent of a lead performance. Some might say, it is a lead performance. I am too discreet to tell you that I think it’s a lead performance, so we’ll all just agree to disagree. However, this talk does all overshadow the fact that his performance is genuinely phenomenal. Losing to Culkin is a really great batch of nominees. I don’t love Edward Norton’s performance in A Complete Unknown (of the three nominated from the film, his performance is my least favourite) but he’s a great actor and I still think he does fine work. Jeremy Strong is another great nomination for his work on The Apprentice and his Roy Cohn is one of the most interesting villains of the year. He is despicable and detestable, yet plays the character with such depth that by the end, you do almost pity him. Speaking of villains, we have Guy Pearce for The Brutalist. I was listening to an interview with director Brady Corbet where he described Pearce’s character as a classic villain from fifties melodramas, which was the first time that clicked for me. Though the character fits this trope, Pearce endows him with a depth that meant he never felt like less than a real person, even as he starts to get really horrible. Of the bunch though, I’d be lying if I said I loved anyone more than Yura Borisov from Anora. I first saw him in Compartment No. 6 and I was delighted to see him pop up here. He builds on the work he did before and is a real highlight of a film that is mainly made of highlights. If we’re talking supporting performances, I think there is one performance this year that succeeds in supporting the film in limited screen time. That is Jesse Plemons in Civil War. He is literally only in one scene of the film, but it is the scene from the film you remember. The film shifts dramatically around him and becomes something different when he leaves. Whatever you think of the film, his performance is a stand out of both this film and from all films last year.
Best Actress
Will Win: Demi Moore for The Substance
Should Win: Mikey Madison for Anora
Should Have Been Nominated: Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Hard Truths
Here is the closest category to call all season, and therefore the most exciting. Before we talk properly, let’s rule out Karla Sofia-Gascon from Emilia Pérez. She has been at the centre of a real doozy of a shit show, with old tweets tanking the odds for her and the entire film. It is all very complicated and honestly, my main takeaway is that Netflix should have done more to support a trans person when people who have done much worse still receive industry support. Cynthia Erivo stands more of a chance but having won nothing all season, I don’t see her odds as high. To be honest, I reckon her main detriment is that there’s a second part of Wicked coming out this year and she may be getting earmarked for that. With these final three though, any of them could win. Fernanda Torres is the one with the possibility for an upset victory after her film I’m Still Here made it into Best Picture. She also won at the Golden Globes and, crucially, is amazing. If people are actually watching her film, she could take this. When it comes to these last two though, we’re on a coin toss. I didn’t know where to go between Demi Moore’s transformative and OTT performance in The Substance or Mikey Madison in Anora, giving my favourite performance of the year and completely owning the entire film. Madison would be my choice, but Moore has a great narrative. In the end, I did what every smart man does: I listened to my partner. She thinks Demi Moore will win (having seen Anora but not The Substance) and so that is my final prediction. For the performance I wish was here, I don’t know how you don’t choose Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Hard Truths. It’s big and it’s showy, but it’s also deeply felt. She does this one face in the film that I’ve thought about since October and if you’ve seen the film, I can’t see how it wouldn’t stick with you too.
Best Actor
Will Win and Should Win: Adrien Brody for The Brutalist
Should Have Been Nominated: Josh O’Connor for La Chimera
CHAOS WIN: Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice
Best Actor is a little more interesting than many feared this year, plus it’s replete with lots of great choices. I apologise, I haven’t seen Sing Sing but Colman Domingo is one of the most charismatic men I’ve ever seen, I put faith in him deserving his place here. I’ve also put down Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice as a chaos win. To clarify, this isn’t because of the performance. Stan does a really impressive job at not impersonating Trump but instead creating a character around the cultural idea of him. The only reason it would sew chaos is because you know for a fact that Trump would throw his toys out of the pram at it and we wouldn’t hear the end of it for months. Moving back to normality, we have star of Conclave, Ralph Fiennes. Having seen the film twice now, it can’t be understated how wonderful he is in this. He holds the thing together as its rock, yet allows that rock to crack over the film. It’s a joy. Many have Timothée Chalamet down for an upset and it’s certainly possible. He gives one of those biopic performances that the Oscars love, though with the exception that this is a good biopic performance, unlike most years (cough, Bohemian Rhapsody, cough). My only issue with this winning is that I don’t think it’s even Chalamet’s best performance this year, as he is sensational in Dune: Part Two. No, my vote, and indeed my prediction, is Adrien Brody for The Brutalist. What a powerhouse performance, a towering thing of layers upon layers that hurts all the way down. He leads an epic of a film and his shoulders don’t tremble once. Weirdly, it would be his second win for playing a Holocaust survivor, but that odd trivia aside it’s a win he would deserve. If I can though, let’s mourn the performance of Josh O’Connor for La Chimera. Though I was tempted to nominate him for Challengers, his greater work is here. He has to strike such a gentle tone that is properly unique and totally believable. Rohrwacher’s film is on its own unique wavelength and O’Connor is a pivotal part of why that works.
Best Director
Will Win: Brady Corbet for The Brutalist
Should Win: Sean Baker for Anora
Should Have Been Nominated: RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys
The more I look at my prediction here, the less certain I feel. It is between Corbet and Baker, have no doubt. Audiard is a bad choice, Mangold is an odd choice (derogatory) and Fargeat is an odd choice (complimentary), but the three all remain below the big two. The Brutalist is a film that feels classic in it’s scale, unique and single minded, which is the kind of thing we credit directors for. But then also, Anora presents a chaos, tames a chaos and then brings it all together into something beautiful. Baker has been talking a lot about how modern classic directors like Mike Leigh and Ken Roach have inspired him and if you start thinking of him in that company, you think of best director. Ultimately, I think Corbet will win but I would choose Baker. Both could swap at a moment’s notice. As my rogue choice though, I would have to choose RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys. What a film of vision, of uniqueness, of simple and pure cinema. The way he has spoken of his film in interviews is the way we speak of poetry. He will be one of the greats in years to come, as will his film.
Best Picture
Will Win: Conclave
Should Win: Nickel Boys
Should Have Been Nominated: The Beast and Challengers
CHAOS WIN: Emilia Pérez
We arrive at the big one, which you all always skip to the end for. It’s okay, I know it, let’s just pretend I didn’t put in hours of work to the last entries. In dead last, we have Emilia Pérez. No film has fallen quite so hard in quite so long and if it won, it would be the worst Best Picture winner since Green Book, maybe even Crash. We cross our fingers it won’t happen and it seems unlikely, but it would be a moment for sure. After that, I’d discount The Substance for it’s grotesque excess and Wicked because people will think about voting for part two instead next year (not that this helped Dune: Part Two much). A Complete Unknown is quite a lovely film that charmed me far more than I expected, which could aid on a preferential ballot, but ultimately will probably just sell lots of DVDs. Though fantastic, I’m Still Here is seriously unlikely to win because it was seriously unlikely to end up nominated in this category but once again, good on it for making it. I also think Dune: Part Two is nominated for essentially a formality, despite it being phenomenal. I’m rewatching the films currently with my partner and won’t watch Part Two until after this is posted but there’s a strong chance that this second watch could convince me it’s a masterpiece. Speaking of masterpieces, The Brutalist fits into a similar category to Dune because honestly, it’s probably too good and too odd for enough people to really love it more than anything else. I think it’s fantastic but it still just misses my personal top three.
Which leaves us with the final two, the two that I think are the most likely contenders for Best Picture. Anora is the bookies favourite right now and it would be a fantastic win. I just wonder if it will be too abrasive for many. It is loud, it is about sex workers and it is emotionally sticky, I don’t know if it is the crowd pleaser everyone thinks it is. Just from anecdotal experience, Anora did not perform well at the cinema I work at, someone came out saying it was the worst film they had ever seen. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but if the older demographic of Britain are anything like the older demographic of the Academy, it is a sign of the wind changing. No, I think it will be Conclave. Young or old, male or female, pope or no pope, people love this movie. In the preferential voting system, where the winner is often second or third on people’s ballots, Conclave will do well. I believe it so strongly that I even have a bet on Conclave to win. I made the bet in October because I’m insane, but I stand strong in it. If I could make one last plea though, as I’m sure you know, I would have loved to see The Beast or Challengers in conversation here. The Beast would always have been a long shot, a grand Lynchian delusion of a film, but Challengers is such an exciting and popular film that it still feels odd that it was never in the conversation. Time will be kind to it, as I think it will be for Nickel Boys. That would be a historic win, so it can never happen. It says too much, says it too well, is just too well made to ever be considered a Best Picture winner. As we stand though, there is still plenty of chaos in the mix for this ceremony. Even though I have an early start on Monday, I will be staying up for the anarchy that may ensue and hoping sleep deprivation doesn’t cause me to hallucinate the worst.
Hello! I am here to talk about the Oscars, because they’re dumb and pointless and don’t matter, which is why they’re so exciting and fun and feel like they matter. I usually do a predictions list before the nominations come out and sometimes I’ll pair that with a final one that predicts the ultimate winners. This time though, I figured I’d skip the first part and just try to go all in on these final predictions, giving a shot at predicting every category! What a weird and pointless endeavour! Still, what better way to celebrate the Oscars than with a time consuming and pointless venture? Each category will have my prediction for what will win and we’ll slowly add onto that. For a category like Best Documentary Short, I will probably struggle to find all the nominees, but in categories I’ve seen all the entries for, expect to see both “Should Win” and “Should Have Been Nominated” along with maybe some written words! We’re gonna have a lovely little mix of some speculation and some unasked for opinions, so buckle in and just scroll to wherever is most interesting for you!
Best Documentary Short Film
Will Win: The ABCs of Book Burning
Best Live Action Short Film
Will Win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The other films are going to struggle to compete against a name as high profile as Wes Anderson and while I’d have preferred a different short from this anthology, it would be a nice win and a funny little way for Wes Anderson to finally get an Oscar.
Best Animated Short Film
Will Win: Letter to a Pig
Best Documentary
Will Win: 20 Days in Mariupol
Should Have Been Nominated: Kokomo City
For a category in which so many great films can be made, I always despair a little at Best Documentary for choosing to reward the topic more than the film. Take last year, in which Navalny won over All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, a move that clearly only happened because no one saw either film. By that same merit, 20 Days in Mariupol is a slam dunk for the win, a look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine which is a conflict that us snobbish Westerners can all agree on and not one of those “complicated” ones. I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen any of the films in this category, documentaries often take longer to make it to UK shores than other categories do, so my snobbishness could well be unfounded. 20 Days seems like some genuinely good journalism and documenting of an ongoing and very real issue, it’s just not the kind of documentary I’m usually interested in. The kind of thing I’m interested in is Kokomo City. It’s a documentary that is a series of interviews with transgender sex workers, which gives an in depth and compassionate look at an underground scene but does so with a sense of levity and a genuine artistry. If you didn’t see it, seek it out, it’s the kind of film that an award like this should point attention towards!
Best Visual Effects
Will Win: The Creator
Should Win: Godzilla Minus One
Should Have Been Nominated: Oppenheimer
Even though I think The Creator is the worst film of the selection, its visuals are stupendous. On a budget that’s impressively low, the VFX crew created a world you fully believed in, even if its storytelling let it down. My choice though would be Godzilla Minus One, an even cheaper movie that is a magical thing to behold. Godzilla looks just as good as (and often better than) the American interpretations and you believe every second he’s on screen. Easily the most baffling omission though is Oppenheimer. I guess because they emphasised how many of the effects were practical, people believed it didn’t fit the category. But, a practical effect is still a visual effect! It’s a weird reverse of that thing where the original Tron was ineligible because they used computers for the effects. Bonkers! More impressive, it’s one of the few categories where Oppenheimer didn’t have a presence and yet it still feels like it was done dirty.
Best Film Editing
Will Win: Jennifer Lame for Oppenheimer
Should Win: Thelma Schoonmaker for Killers of the Flower Moon
Should Have Been Nominated: Johnathan Alberts for All of Us Strangers
Controversially, editing films that are really long is really impressive! Anyone can snip away at a film to get it to 100 minutes, but it takes a true master to make a long film flow with the ease of a film half its length. Both Jennifer Lame and Thelma Schoonmaker have done some of the best editing work I’ve ever seen, in ways both really big and really small. Truthfully, either of them could win and either of them would really deserve to win, I just wanted an excuse to mention them both in conversation. They edited films made by cinematic visionaries but those visions would have been nothing without the editors. Similarly, the ghostly power of All of Us Strangers comes from its editing. We slip between faces and images of faces in ways that blur time and identity and all ultimately come together to form this powerful emotional core. Intangibility of all kinds powers the film and a huge portion of that comes in how the editing slots together these intangible little things into a big thing that is coherent despite being ephemeral. What I’m saying sounds like nonsense but it’s editing that is almost impossible to describe, such is its inherently brilliant and cinematic nature.
Best Costume Design
Will Win and Should Win: Holly Waddington for Poor Things
Should Have Been Nominated: Stacey Battat for Priscilla
Three of the films in this category are the obligatory period drama picks, in which artists very successfully recreate looks from the past. I don’t mean to diminish their work but again, it’s not the kind of thing I get excited for. Barbie is a more interesting shout, in which everything has to look like something that a doll would wear, but Poor Things is an undeniably perfect choice here. Not only is there a period element in the Victorian setting, but there is this little bonkers thread that makes every dress, every suit, every weird pair of shoes pop. It’s a slam dunk choice. I would have enjoyed some love for Priscilla though, it is a film so precisely constructed in that way that all Sofia Coppola films are. With Priscilla’s outfits being an important part of the confinement of the film, they have to be perfect for the film to work and they truly are perfect. It could never surmount Poor Things but a nomination would have been appreciated.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Will Win: Maestro
Should Win: Poor Things
Should Have Been Nominated: Talk to Me
CHAOS WIN: Golda
So, this is a weird little category. As an award, it usually goes to one of two things; either a superhero movie or a biopic with a “transformative performance.” This year, it will be the latter, for weird and controversial reasons. Bradley Cooper is unrecognisable in Maestro, sure, but it hinges on this weird issue of a very pronounced fake nose. Much of the work is subtle, but that nose draws attention and it may just win the statue. The much worse version of this and my easy chaos pick is Golda, in which Helen Mirren wears a fake nose to play a political figure in the Israeli government. It is everything Maestro was criticised for and worse, just a terrible terrible film to talk about at a time when Israel are committing the crimes they’re committing. Fingers crossed it doesn’t become an awful footnote in Oscar history. What would deserve this is Poor Things, a film which has the perfect blend of obvious and squelchy effects (god bless Willem Dafoe’s face) and tasteful makeup work on Bella that evolves as she does. It seems like it and Oppenheimer will split the technical categories so my fingers are crossed here. A little recognition though for Talk To Me would have been a treat. Squishy monster effects never seem to get the appreciation they deserve and oh, what squishes we were gifted.
Best Cinematography
Will Win and Should Win: Hoyte van Hoytema for Oppenheimer
Should Have Been Nominated: Dan Laustsen for John Wick: Chapter Four
I don’t know how the hell El Conde got nominated, but at least that weird film with a blood sucking Margaret Thatcher gets some notoriety for the rest of time. I also don’t know why Maestro is in this category. Is it because it’s black and white? That’s pathetic. Killers of the Flower Moon is very pretty in places and Poor Things uses great cinematography to show off sensational production design (more on that soon) but this is absolutely an award that Oppenheimer has to take. Whenever I think of Hoyte can Hoytema, I think about him lugging around these huge IMAX cameras on these shoulders, a physical endeavour that he overcomes for the sake of creating some of the most beautiful images ever seen. And yeah, it’s easy to make space stuff look pretty, but making guys in rooms talking look engaging? That is an art and one that he will certainly be rewarded for. It wouldn’t beat Oppenheimer because there is clearly no better cinematography this year, but a nomination for John Wick: Chapter Four would have been a treat. These set pieces are stunning and succeed in looking beautiful while still keeping the action visible and coherent. Again, that sounds simple but I cannot imagine the logistics or planning that go into one of these sequences, let alone ten of them in a single film. Stunning stuff that still isn’t as exciting as blokes in rooms talking bombs.
Best Production Design
Will Win: Barbie
Should Win: Poor Things
Should Have Been Nominated: Asteroid City
Very good stuff going on in the category this year. Barbie is naturally the headline, which I think is helped by that whole “the world ran out of pink paint” thing that went on for a while. It is obviously brilliantly constructed, but I think it struggles to compete with Poor Things. A lot of its behind the scenes stills have shown a lot of green screens, but they’ve also shown unspeakably lavish sets, built with intricacy and care. Barbie would deserve the award but the world of Poor Things is such an alien world (especially compared to the world of dolls) that you have to fully believe in the world to let anything get in. Speaking of aliens though, show a little love for Asteroid City! I know it’s a cliché to say that Wes Anderson films are beautiful but God, this is a stunner. Plus, it’s entirely about construction and storytelling, so thematically it has to be on point! Anyway, a robbed film, we all treated it too harshly.
Best Sound
Will Winand Should Win: The Zone of Interest
Should Have Been Nominated: John Wick: Chapter Four
At one point, Oppenheimer had a shot with this award but the tide has turned. The sound is immaculate and again, it has to work for the film to work, but The Zone of Interest is an all timer. The sound of the film has to tell a separate story to the visual component of the film, which is so much more complicated than it sounds. Words are not strong enough to talk about what has been achieved so all I can recommend is that you check it out for yourself and feel absolutely terrible for a week! To go lighter though, I would have loved some appreciation for John Wick: Chapter Four. Action films are great because of how satisfying and cool the sounds of people being punched or shot or kicked in the face are and few films feature as much punching or shooting or kicking as John Wick. You can listen to the film and truly believe that you heard a man roll down two flights of stairs and that is the kind of movie magic I believe we should celebrate.
Best Original Song
Will Win: “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie
Should Win: “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie
Should Have Been Nominated: “Dear Alien (Who Art in Heaven)” from Asteroid City
CHAOS WIN: “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot
The nominees in this category mean that a film about the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos is now an Oscar nominee. Wild. If it wins, anarchy. In reality though, it’s a Barbie competition. The Academy love Billie Eilish so they’re very likely to reward her again for her (admittedly great) song that soundtracks the big emotional moment at the end of the film as well as the credits. While the film ends, it’s the song that sticks with you. However, I and many others love the deeply silly “I’m Just Ken”, a song which channels the melodramatic torment at the heart of the silliest man of the year. Somehow it still makes me giggle after all this overexposure, which is a marvel in and of itself. Call me a broken record, but I think Asteroid City should have been nominated. The “Dear Alien” song is a catchy and silly ditty which, unlike many nominations that often appear in this category, actually exists in the world of the film. I would always so much rather have that than just a song to play over the credits.
Best Original Score
Will Win and Should Win: Ludwig Göransson for Oppenheimer
Should Have Been Nominated: kwes. for Rye Lane
Again, this is one of those categories where there are a few nice options, where Poor Things could be a really cool winner… But nothing can stand in the way of Oppenheimer. I obviously love Ludwig Göransson for his work on Community and the fact that he has gone from this little sitcom that was always on the edge of cancellation to a colossal blockbuster without missing a beat remains genuinely impressive. It’s also a propulsive score that powers the audience through what could so easily be a challenging film and yet isn’t. I can’t imagine Oppenheimer without it. Another score that is a part of the films personality is the one for Rye Lane by kwes. Rye Lane is a film that is fun, such a breeze and very (without sounding completely cringe) cool, which the score amplifies. It is the perfect music for walking around and chatting and again, Rye Lane doesn’t exist in as perfect a form it does without that score.
Best International Feature Film
Will Win: The Zone of Interest
Should Have Been Nominated: The Taste of Things
I feel bad because I haven’t really done my dues with this category. It’s always tricky to catch the international films before the ceremony and so to be frank, I haven’t. To counteract that, I won’t say what I would pick, because I’ve only seen one of the films. That film though, The Zone of Interest, seems set to take the category. It is, after all, the only film in this category that is also nominated for Best Picture, its odds not hurt by the fact that it is also excellent. It will also be the first time that the UK picks up the prize in this category, enjoy that trivia nerds. I would have loved to see a nomination for The Taste of Things though. For those who don’t know, countries can only nominate one film to represent themselves and France chose Taste over Anatomy of a Fall, which also got nominated for Best Picture. This has resulted in a huge and slightly messy war in which Taste has been an unfortunate casualty, doubly unfortunate because it’s an incredible film! It’s this beautiful and meditative study on food and love and the space where those two blend into a tasty sauce, which I have been raving about since October. Please, I urge you to give it a chance, as long as you don’t do it on an empty stomach. It is such an underappreciated treat that is at risk of being lost to the footnotes of film history.
Best Animated Feature
Will Win and Should Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
This will be a quick one because I also haven’t seen much of the category, but that’s not going to slow me down too much because the two I have seen are the two that make up the competition here. It is coming down to either The Boy and the Heron or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Boy has a chance because Ghibli have never won this award before and with what is allegedly Miyazaki’s last film for the company, this would be the perfect time to reward him and Ghibli. However, the film is very abstract and requires you to work for it and I don’t know if all the people voting will appreciate that. Spider-Verse is the much easier film and a film which, admittedly, I prefered. It has its frustrating cliffhanger ending and the animators weren’t well treated, but God, what a picture. If you want to celebrate how far we can push animation, this is the most interesting case Hollywood has made for the medium since… Well, the last Spider-Verse film.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach for Barbie
Should Win: Tony McNamara for Poor Things
Should Have Been Nominated: Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon
After all the hubub about Gerwig not getting a Best Director nomination for Barbie, expect her to take Adapted Screenplay. I’m saying this like it’s a foregone conclusion but actually, this is a pretty competitive category, full of worthy winners. Poor Things, American Fiction, Oppenheimer and The Zone of Interest would all deserve the win, with Poor Things just barely edging out the competition for me for the simple reason that I find the dialogue very funny. But man, would it have been so hard to nominate Killers of the Flower Moon? This is such a large and complicated story which is somehow wrangled into a film that is not just watchable but compellingly so. I think it is witchcraft on all fronts and should be rewarded for that magic.
Best Original Screenplay
Will Win: Celine Song for Past Lives
Should Win: Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik for May December
Should Have Been Nominated: Ari Aster for Beau is Afraid
Past Lives only got two nominations but has this warm feeling behind it, where the people who love it just absolutely adore it. I wasn’t quite as infatuated but also I had the feeling that this was a film I could return to and constantly pick up more from. Many are rooting for either Anatomy of a Fall or The Holdovers, but I just have this gut feeling that Past Lives could take it. What will not win though is May December, a film that is nominated by basically a miracle. It is such a tricky story and very emotionally complicated and I cannot even fathom how you go about making a film about this topic that works. And while it never stood a chance, Beau is Afraid being nominated would have been incredible. Ari Aster poured his weird little heart out onto the page and created a film that is, without question, an Ari Aster film. It did not work for most people but it really worked for me and to be honest, I think how much it didn’t work for a people is a sign that this film had real impact. It’s a bonkers mess but weirdly works. Sue me, I would put it here.
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win and Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers
Should Have Been Nominated: Rachel McAdams for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Of all the categories this year, this is the one which is least likely for an upset. For the entire awards season, Da’Vine Joy Randolph has been clearing up and you know what? Totally deserved. Her role is amazing, she elevates the film and all her speeches have been awesome. I look forward to her winning this, it won’t be a shock but it’ll be a lovely moment. Apologies to the other nominees, no one else is coming close. Someone who could have come close though would have been Rachel McAdams for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. I believe this film is really going to stand the test of time and man, if America Ferrara is getting nominated almost solely on the back of that speech in the middle of Barbie, McAdams has a version of the speech which is so much smarter and more heartbreaking and has these beautiful layers going on that people of all ages and genders will gravitate to. She’s ace, should have snuck in here and then also lost to Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer
Should Win: Mark Ruffalo for Poor Things
Should Have Been Nominated: Charles Melton for May December
I find this a slightly weird category to write about because for me, I just can’t understand how Charles Melton is not only not the frontrunner for this award but isn’t even nominated. Not only is his performance better than any of the other ones in this category but it is also my favourite performance of the year full stop. You watch him on screen with this sick feeling in your stomach and see a boy trapped in a man’s body, failing to get out or even be fully seen. If you haven’t seen May December, watch it just for Melton’s performance, it is that good. Anyway, everything after that is quite underwhelming. By now, Robert Downey Jr. has the award in the bag, but some silly little guys could stand to cause an upset. Ryan Gosling was great as Ken and Mark Ruffalo plays a version of that character, turned up to a brilliantly nauseating level. Ruffalo would be my pick, but Gosling is more likely to come in with the upset if for some reason Downey Jr. doesn’t take the trophy.
Best Actress
Will Winand Should Win: Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon
Should Have Been Nominated: Vivian Oparah for Rye Lane
Best Actress is maybe the most competitive of the big five categories this year, coming down to two absolutely brilliant performers giving some of the best performances we’ve seen this decade. This two horse race isn’t to diminish the other actresses in competition, the other three are all great performers who did pretty great work across their careers, but imagine trying to beat Lily Gladstone or Emma Stone. The two have been handing the baton between each other since November and about a month ago, Stone seemed like the one to beat. Her role in Poor Things is a very strange one, but it’s a strangeness she’s allowed to lean into and make really funny. A role this comedic is rarely celebrated this much and that’s awesome! But, Gladstone has been my choice since the moment I saw Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s a more typically dramatic role, but one that she nails. Her eyes contain emotions that her face isn’t allowed to process and her body carries generations of weight that can never be off loaded. I am bad at talking about why acting works, I just think she’s amazing and this would be an amazing win for the Native American community, topped with what would be a very emotional speech from Gladstone. Indulge me though (you know, for a change), Vivian Oparah should have been nominated for Rye Lane. She got a surprise nom at the BAFTAs, but clearly no Americans saw the most gleefully romantic movie of this year or most other years. Both our leads deserve props for what they do, but Oparah gets the more dramatic arc and is hiding her emotions for much of the time, letting them all build into a really joyous finale. She’s ace, keep an eye out for her in the future!
Best Actor
Will Win and Should Win: Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer
Should Have Been Nominated: Andrew Scott for All of Us Strangers
CHAOS WIN: Bradley Cooper for Maestro
Can we all agree that it would be hysterical if Bradley Cooper wins this? It feels like Cooper basically handpicked the role for himself to win an Oscar and everyone could smell it and has refused to give him a single award this year. But if he does sneak in? I will piss myself with laughter, it would make the Oscars such a farce. Anyway, this was another two horse race for a while, but Paul Giamatti has since lost steam with his performance in The Holdovers. He’s lovely and warm, but he cannot compete with Cillian Murphy. IMAX as a camera format is almost exclusively used for big landscapes and spectacular action, not close ups, but in Christopher Nolan’s hands he make’s Murphy’s face the biggest face you have ever seen. In that face though, magnitudes. You read the world in his face, from ambition to terror to anguish. He’s fab and those terrible people with Peaky Blinders tattoos will enjoy an extra large can of lager to celebrate his win. Someone I thought genuinely could have had a chance getting nominated was Andrews Scott for All of Us Strangers. He gives one of those wonderful performances that blossoms as the film continues, where every new scene reveals something about his emotional state that you hadn’t considered before. By the time the film wraps up, you realise quite how much was on Scott’s shoulders (which is even after you realise he only has three co-stars) and also he’s great because he made me cry. A big omission here, but one that I think would still lose to Cillian Murphy.
Best Director
Will Win: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
Should Win: Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon
Should Have Been Nominated: Raine Allen-Miller for Rye Lane
After 25 years as a filmmaker with a track record that makes his contemporaries blush, Christopher Nolan seems primed to finally take home his first Best Director Oscar. For Oppenheimer, it’s fully worth it, a film which required an untold amount of wrangling to make coherent, let alone compelling. In what is an incredibly strong category (one in which I genuinely don’t think you could or should squeeze anyone out to make room for someone like Greta Gerwig), Nolan is the clear favourite for once. I would love to see Scorsese take it though. He has still only won this award once after ten nominations and Killers of the Flower Moon feels like the apex of a career already full of highlights. I feel similarly about it as I do Twin Peaks: The Return, in that I hope it isn’t the last thing we get from a legendary director, but it would be a phenomenal final note to end on. Say it with me though, justice for Rye Lane! I am a broken record and refuse to be fixed! Raine Allen-Miller has created a film that appears deceptively simple, but is such a gentle balancing act to perfect that she deserves immense credit. In the same way that Richard Linklater rarely gets the credit he’s due for choreographing the Before trilogy, Allen-Miller makes it look easy. Crucially, she also makes it feel new, a film that is indebted to the Before trilogy but not some mere imitator. It feels like in every scene, she picked the most interesting way to visually tell the story and never once made the wrong choice. I cannot wait for what she does next, but I also am forever grateful to her for giving us Rye Lane.
Best Picture
Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Killers of the Flower Moon
Should Have Been Nominated: The Taste of Things and Rye Lane
CHAOS WIN: Maestro
Alright, finally here. You have scrolled all the way down to read this one, past hours of work I spent writing, just to get my thoughts on Best Picture and to that I say: yeah, fair enough, let’s not waste anymore time then, eh? Maestro is by far the worst film on this list and while I would struggle to actively call it bad, it is a film that has no vision, no perspective and no real reason to exist outside of winning an Oscar. It would be an unbelievably funny win, a historic “how did that happen” moment and part of me almost wants it for the surprise. With that discounted though, we’re left with nine really solid nominees. American Fiction is a funny drama that’s about prejudice but also how that competes with how to actually live a life and then also a bunch of great jokes about being a writer. Anatomy of a Fall is an incredibly smart courtroom drama that’s less about whodunnit and more about what goes into what we believe about whodunnit. Barbie is a blockbuster that had no right being as great as it was, sneaking subversiveness into an impressive corporate product. The Holdovers is one of those “movies they don’t make anymore” movies that is warm and lovely while never sugarcoating the dark bits, more fit to be a holiday classic than it is a major contender in this category. Past Lives is a gorgeous and complex drama about two people and their feelings, the kind of thing that is set to resonate deeply with quite a few but also bounce off just as many people. Poor Things is far too weird and far too excellent to be a contender at this ceremony and somehow is. What a miracle it is, though your parents would do well to watch it when you’re not around. Finally, The Zone of Interest is a film that we are destined to talk for decades and is in real conversation with what the future of cinema could look like, of course it won’t win because it is too good for that.
Which leaves us with two. As I’ve been saying throughout this post and in my best of the year list, Killers of the Flower Moon is a masterpiece. It is a sprawling western epic about a true American evil, in which traces of joy are slowly infected by a darkness that has left neither me, nor America. In the process of doing so, it is also a display of some of our great film artists working at the top of their game, across editing, cinematography and acting to name but three. In every single way, it is the greatest film of the year and my favourite. Unfortunately, it seems to be about 26 minutes too long for most people, so to Oppenheimer it goes. To be fair to it, it really does feel like the movie of 2023. Not only did it gross an obscene amount of money at the box office, but it was beloved by critics across the globe, got audiences back into cinemas and showed the importance of large format cinema projection. It’s quite wonderful and deserves the win, which is good because I can’t see anything beating it to the finish line. Get this prediction in to all your friends to sound smart and then hey, boot up your lovely pristine TV and rewatch it, to absolutely blow the tits off your neighbours once the bomb drops and decimates your speakers. That’s the true magic of cinema.
Like that rash you have, awards season is back! It is time to boil down works of art to their likelihoods at getting little golden trophies because that’s what we like doing once a year. And I do like doing it! Genuinely! It’s fun and I like feeling validated when I get stuff right, but then also I get stuff wrong a lot and that’s fun too. And if nothing else, good to get the numbers up, right? So lets get right into it. Just five categories for these predictions, then the final predictions will be way more in depth because I’ll have done more prep. So it goes and all that. Then after this post I’ll finally get to my best of 2022 posts. They are coming, I promise. Before that though, wild prediction time, with three bets that will prove I can guess things and one bet that shows I think I have taste.
Best Supporting Actor
Likely Bets:
Ke Huy Quan for Everything Everywhere All At Once
Brendan Gleeson for The Banshees of Inisherin
Paul Dano for The Fabelmans
Unlikely But Worthy:
Mark Rylance for Bones and All
We’re starting by celebrating the men whose performances aren’t always designed to be showy, but elevate their films when delivered as well as these three are. I’ll start by predicting the actor who, amazingly, seems to be the frontrunner. That is of course the man above us, Ke Huy Quan. When Everything Everywhere All At Once released way back in the spring of last year, many (myself included) went wild for Huy Quan’s performance. He is at the heart of a scene which is one of the very greatest in this very great film full of very great scenes, in which he professes his love for Evelyn, across every universe. Plus, he has charmed on every stage he has appeared on this year, of course you want him at your ceremony. Also likely to be seen is Brendan Gleeson for The Banshees of Inisherin. That’s one of those films we’ll hear from a lot, but it’s because its sparse cast and crew are all at the top of their game. This includes Gleeson, who turns his typical gruffness into something complexly layered. It’s a great part that he never takes for granted. And finally, we’ll probably see a nomination for Paul Dano in The Fabelmans, another highly nominated film. Dano has had a great year, having earlier played The Riddler in The Batman, but I’m told he’s great here too. The UK release is later this month, but Dano has never let me down before, I don’t expect it now. As a little choice for me though, I am picking Mark Rylance for Bones and All. I can’t believe I just wrote that. Rylance has never been a screen presence I’ve been a fan of, always playing weird little guys with weird little accents. Sure, that’s what he does here too, but here it’s with an unpredictable energy that powers the film even when he isn’t on screen. It is an actor taking something that should feel stale but creating a freshness in it and that’s what I love about acting. However, Bones and All will be completely shut out because it is far too weird for anything close to the mainstream. Their loss.
Best Supporting Actress
Likely Bets:
Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin
Hong Chau for The Whale
Unlikely But Worthy:
Jessie Buckley for Women Talking
I find myself interested by this category which, for so much of the year, appeared to have no strong frontrunner and not even really more than a few fringe possibilities. That’s why I think the current frontrunner feels like such a rogue choice. Don’t get me wrong, Angela Bassett is sensational in pretty much everything she’s in, and is by no means below that bar in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I just feel that by being the strongest part of a mediocre film, it makes her performance seem mightier than it is. Perhaps it’s the narrative of this being “her time”. Bassett has only been nominated once before for an Oscar and seems the kind of actress who should have one. In lieu of a more obvious answer, here she is. As far as less obvious choices though, I think Kerry Condon is a fantastic choice for her work in The Banshees of Inisherin. It’s such a masculine film, heavy with the weight of male conflict, but she adds something different to the film. It’s not merely that she is a female presence, it’s the versatility of her presence. She is gentle and furious and ultimately willing to do what she hopes is for the best. Condon has the least showy role of the three leads, but it’s still a strong one. I am also reliably told that Hong Chau’s work in The Whale falls into this too. I’m yet to see the film but it is a film that is so strongly focussed on performances that rewarding them feels a clear choice. Plus, I know she was great in The Menu, I trust her strength as an actress. Speaking of trusting an actresses’ strength, Jessie Buckley! Last year she secured her first (of many, I assume) Oscar nomination and while the hype on Women Talking has muted, she is my favourite part of it. Her nomination isn’t likely, but it would be recognition for an actress who is yet to put a foot wrong and who is consistently underpraised. I just think she’s neat.
Best Actor
Likely Bets:
Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser for The Whale
Austin Butler for Elvis
Unlikely But Worthy:
Paul Mescal for Aftersun
Predicting this category was the easiest of the bunch, because three frontrunners have emerged and that’s all my format requires me to predict. Colin Farrell is slowly carving a very impressive winning streak this season and I have a sneaking suspicion that he may end up taking the trophy at the end of this all (but we can check back on that in March). For the time being, his work in The Banshees of Inisherin is brilliant and subtle work, well deserving of all its praise. He goes on a subtle emotional journey and it is credit to Farrell’s acting that we’re not entirely sure where we find ourselves by the end of the film. Also in an apparently equal ball park in Brendan Fraser for The Whale. He has been a fan favourite for this award since well before anyone had actually seen the film, because it’s a success story. Fraser was unofficially blacklisted from Hollywood and this marks a grand return for him. Hollywood rewarding themselves for welcoming him back after kicking him out? Sure, it’s hypocritical, but it’s the Oscars, we expect nothing less. What we also expect is Austin Butler to be nominated for his work in Elvis. I did not care for Elvis, but it certainly ticks the box for Best Actor contention. For two and a half hours, Butler is in almost every scene and transforms himself into a well known persona. That is pure awards catnip. We saw how Bohemian Rhapsody went, some of us even remember Judy. Butler is all but guaranteed a nomination, and we’ll track the rest from there. As I said at the start of this paragraph, there is ambiguity mainly around the two other places in this category. One who stands an outside chance is Paul Mescal for Aftersun. Aftersun is a very delicate film that says a lot without really talking about the things it says. As a film, it can get away with that because of the performances, chiefly the work of Mescal. His quiet collapse powers the film and gives a sense of dread whose origin we can barely place. Though Aftersun is a smaller film than others in competition, it is one whose power could (and should) see recognition.
Best Actress
Likely Bets:
Cate Blanchett for Tár
Danielle Deadwyler for Till
Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All At Once
Unlikely But Worthy:
Rebecca Hall for Resurrection
Cate Blanchett for Tár. That’s it. Everyone else go home. That diagnosis maybe doesn’t feel fair in a category with plenty of other worthy winners, but awards season has never been about fair. However, awards season also usually doesn’t recognise performances as good as Blanchett’s. She doesn’t play an existing character, she is largely subdued and the film itself is one that many have bounced right off. But holy hell, she is incredible. Nuance isn’t a nuanced enough word for what she is capable of in Tár. Admittedly, she isn’t the only powerhouse vying for attention. I hadn’t heard of Danielle Deadwyler before I watched Till, but she made me remember her name after watching it. It is a more obviously powerful performance, in which she has to portray the rawest kind of grief any human can ever experience. But also, Mamie is not a character who makes the obvious move and because of Deadwyler’s attention to emotional detail, we get to understand her decisions. A weaker actress would have made this a role that, while moving, could feel surface level, but that is not what Deadwyler is here for. My final choice of this bunch is Michelle Yeoh, the beating heart of Everything Everywhere All At Once. I don’t actually know how to describe what she does in this film, other than commit herself to its silliness. If any frame of EEAAO lacked sincerity, the audience would reject it. We didn’t though, did we? Yeoh is physically dominating the screen, pulling off the action moves that made her famous almost two decades ago and doing so with what seems to be a complete ease. She’s awesome. But if I may, let me push a complete wild card, who has no chance of a nomination. I talk of Rebecca Hall for Resurrection. To start, Resurrection is not a well known film and even many of the people who know about it haven’t seen it. What a shame. Horror is always on the back foot at the Oscars, which means a performance like the one Hall gives goes totally ignored. There is a monologue at the heart of this film, which exposes all the craziness to come and reliably lets audiences know where we’re going. The monologue is one unbroken shot of Hall talking. A single slip up would ruin the moment and she doesn’t dare. Were she terrible in the rest of the film and amazing here, she would deserve the nomination. The fact that she is this good for the whole film is criminal, which maybe explains why no awards jury have paid her the slightest bit of attention.
Best Picture
Likely Bets:
The Fabelmans
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Women Talking
Unlikely But Worthy:
Bones and All
The Northman
We have made it to the biggie! Did you skim read the other categories to get here? Probably, but that’s none of my business. It’s nice to have you around even just a little. This is also the biggest predictions list, because there will be twice as many nominations, so I need to predict twice as many champions. I’ll get straight into it, The Fabelmans feels a dead cert for a nomination. It is Spielberg talking about his childhood and the magic of the movies. Even having not seen it, that feels like a slam dunk for a nomination. Everyone is also expecting The Banshees of Inisherin to do well. It hit big out of the autumn film festivals and Martin McDonagh’s last film was very handsomely rewarded back in 2018. Good for it, weirder films deserve recognition. Speaking of, the prince of 2022 weirdness, let’s give it up for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Back when it came out, it was the box office story that could, a little miracle whose mere existence was cause for celebration. Now, all these months later, something bigger seems to be in its future. It was the film that everyone kept talking about and buzz is currency for the Oscars, which I hope A24 cash in on big time. Then, expect to see a showing from Tár. From the outside, it seems exactly the kind of awards-baity nonsense that is destined to get an Oscar, but it is far better than that. Sure, it is an almost three hour film about a composer who becomes embroiled in cancel culture, though it isn’t until you watch the film that you realise how much grander it is than that. And even then, it isn’t until the second viewing that it opens up even further.
These next two predictions are slightly less certain, but I think their odds are still good. Despite my disbelief in it as a possibility on its release, there seems to be a genuine chance that Top Gun: Maverick could get nominated for Best Picture. I thought that it was an outside chance because broadly speaking, the way you reward blockbusters is with huge box office returns. As the famous Mad Men quote goes “That’s what the money is for!” However, it has been such a crossover hit for every demographic and one that has endured in the public consciousness. If the Academy want to get public interest, nominating this will draw people in. What may not draw people in is Women Talking. Despite a positive response from every festival it played at, it has bombed at the US box office and has been fairly quiet at other awards shows. So where does it stand with the Oscars? I think it’s too impressive a piece to not garner interest, even if it won’t win anything. And, in a year when women aren’t going to be very present in the creative categories, it would look especially bad if Women Talking gets shut out of a category that had ten spots up for the taking.
My turn now though, to be wild and crazy. Crazy enough to suggest something like, maybe the Academy should nominate a horror film for Best Picture? I know, wild. Bones and All is bonkers and another knockout from Luca Guadagnino, who was once upon a time a contender for Best Picture. Maybe the difference is that with Call Me By Your Name, he cast a cannibal and didn’t make a film about them. Don’t blame me, I needed to get that joke out one more time before this film disappears from public consciousness. Anyway, the point is, this is a lush and sensual horror film that is about love and otherness and learning how to truly find yourself. I fully loved it, from my marrow to my nails. What I also loved was The Northman. We’ll chat more about it on the best of 2022 list but damn, what a feat of moviemaking. It is a muscular epic and the Oscars have never been shy of those before. But I think there is this weird edge to The Northman that will stop people quite digging into it. Not me though. It was technically the most impressive film I saw all year but also has the thematic and emotional depth to back it up. Words cannot describe how special this film is and apparently awards won’t describe it either.
(All pictures used are taken by me, poorly. If you’re interested in a companion playlist, follow this little link here.)
We’re still living in weird times. I think we always were, or at least always feel like we are, but this moment post-lockdown still feels precarious. As such, I find it hard to label this period as “post-COVID”, but it is absolutely a new moment. For me, as for so many others, that is signalled by the full fledged return of concerts. There is something so completely special about the shared experience of watching the creator of songs you adore sing the songs to you and a room full of other absolutely ecstatic fans. And obviously, we couldn’t do that during lockdown. It was one of the signifiers that normality would be back, when sweat and close spaces could be shared by us all once again. So, in a rare piece on music, I wanted to talk about what the last year and change has meant for me musically.
I have been incredibly lucky that since last September I’ve been able to tick off almost all my bucket list artists. Some of them were ones I discovered during lockdown, others have been a part of my life for years, but the past year has been a series of very special gigs where I got to celebrate them. I think there is something to be said for this year as an attempt at seeking catharsis for the time we have all had stolen from us. Not to be the cliché I can often be, but I certainly did plenty of that, including a trip back to Florida to try and seek closure on the year abroad that got cut short by the pandemic. With all this said, let’s start our mini odyssey through a year in music that ran the gauntlet from quiet sobs in the dark to primal screams at the world.
We begin the journey with the weirdest stop of the whole tour: Kero Kero Bonito. If you want to know who the hell this band is, start here. “Flamingo” is a weird song, so deep in bubble-gum pop that it is too sickly sweet for many, but it gives you a solid little insight into the thesis of this band. They fit in the genre of “hyperpop”, bouncing up and down to the sound of gleeful nonsense. Honestly, I know a lot of people who really struggle to take it seriously. One of those people is Andy, one of my best friends. We have a shared obsession with KKB, particularly the album Bonito Generation. He thinks it’s very silly, I have a weird adoration for it in the way that I cherish the weirdoes on the fringes of pop culture. Naturally, that meant we should go see them live. In Heaven, of all places, the gay club in London which even ol’ Hetero Henry really enjoys.
To be honest, being my first gig back, I would have loved the KKB gig even if it was terrible. As far as Andy is concerned, it was terrible. But I adored it. The band jumped between songs from their new, vaguely politically charged album Civilisation and then into their bubble-gum back catalogue, with remarkable ease considering the difference in tones. Both sides of their catalogue though define the thing that I wanted fully from this gig; fun. Never before have I been to a gig where I spent so much of it grinning ear to ear, whether from the on stage antics, the electric buzz of the crowd, or the confused look on Andy’s face. It was more than fun though, it was a gig that started to tie together themes in my life (if we dare treat my life like the third rate novel I continue to try and cast myself in.)
I have never really listened to the artist SOPHIE, but I know enough people that do that when they died suddenly at the start of last year, it was something that caught my attention. Here was this pioneering trans figure in music, who without me knowing anything about them, had paved the way for artists I do know and love. Their loss was sudden and is still felt, which was what made the KKB tribute so profound. The band ended a song with a picture of Sophie’s face on screen and everyone raised a fist in solidarity. Again, for poor Andy, I think this was a moment of confusion, but I knew enough about the web I was walking into to feel incredibly moved. These weirdo fringe genres in music are where people like SOPHIE, artists who proudly identify as every shade of LGBTQ+, are allowed to flourish. That’s why it was so important for KKB to have their gig at Heaven, this is music for people who aren’t in the mainstream. I don’t really fit that definition, but it doesn’t mean the effect was lost on me. And you know, then they played the theme from Bugsnax. It was that kind of gig. Stirring tribute to a pioneering trans legend, followed by a spectacular shitpost. It’s the kind of output and tonal balance that I perpetually aspire to. To top it off as the lights came up, I spotted Barnaby and Holly, two friends of mine from Uni. It was this moment that suggested the world opening up again, as seeing friends would once again be a possibility. That was a special cherry on a silly and delicious cake.
We leave a bit of time between this gig and the next, but that time is important. Because the next artist is Mitski. If you’ve talked to me in the past two years, you’ll know that Mitski became pretty much the most important artist of the pandemic to me. While on my silly little depression walks, I would obsessively listen to Be The Cowboy, an infuriatingly brilliant album. It contained all the emotional peaks I needed while in lockdown. There’s this pulsating anger on “Geyser”, a self-deprecating laughter on “Lonesome Love” and the freely flowing desire of “Pink in the Night”. Like I say, I was obsessed with this album. Borderline consumed by it. I couldn’t even listen to Mitski’s earlier albums for a while, because I was terrified they could never live up to Cowboy. When I eventually got around to them, I was obviously delighted, because they were also full of lyrically rich verses and pulsating, awesome rock noise. If I wanted to thrash, Mitski was there. If I wanted to cry, Mitski was there. During the later lockdowns, those were pretty much the only things I wanted and I could always turn to Mitski.
As a fan born out of lockdown then, my first chance to see Mitski would be touring her new album, which would turn out to be Laurel Hell, an album still strong as one of my favourites of the year. However, I wasn’t the only new convert from lockdown. Tiktok had done a lot of work spreading the good word (indeed, it was where I found Mitski), so tickets were a hot commodity. A commodity I found myself in ownership of. I was worried at first, because these songs are very personal to me, very intense to a degree where I didn’t know if I wanted to share them with other people. But I was proven wrong, of course. Mitski is a performer whose wavelength I am on, belting out the lyrics when she needs to and filling the instrumental gaps with what can best be described as an odd hybrid of performance art and dance. Her strange movements kept an ethereal level to her songs, meaning that even though we were now in the presence of the woman responsible for writing and performing these songs, there was this powerful distance still in place. And there was this door on stage. Mitski never approached the door, never opened the door, certainly never walked through it. It was just there. A metaphor for something. If you stopped feeling like your heart was being ripped out, you would be able to have a clear answer. I never got close.
It was at this concert though that I first noticed a worrying trend appear. I had seen similar videos of things like this on Tiktok or on Twitter, but it happened at my concert too. During the final song, an attendee in the front row passed out. I don’t know any of the details surrounding this, other than that the music was paused, first aid attendants were called and we were all left in this strange, spell-breaking lull. I have two theories about why people were passing out at concerts all this year. The first is very logical, in that people are willing to dehydrate and starve themselves for hours in order to maintain a place in the queue and therefore make it to the front of the stage for the performance, as a chance to see your idol at only an arms length. That drains the body and not everyone looks after themselves well enough to stay on their feet. The second theory is that fans can tie artists to seriously deep places in their own being, and so the emotional experience can just be overwhelming. I felt that. I kept myself well hydrated and well fed all day, and still felt myself shaken by songs because I had tied them to who I am. This year, concerts were a catharsis, a place for all those pent-up emotions from lockdown to be finally released. The problem is, two years of emotions don’t escape easily and even if you don’t pass out, you’ll get caught up. I saw Mitski with my friend Maddie and I was so caught up in the inside of my head that I didn’t realise the moment Maddie was having. Catharsis doesn’t always allow you to escape your own head and to Maddie, I’m sorry I didn’t better understand what you were going through that day.
There’s another break now, as we jump from April to June and to Lorde, the queen of my heart. I got into Lorde around the time of her second album Melodrama, but not quite in time enough to see her on tour. That meant I could only dream of the day of her third album arriving and signalling a new tour, as I once again screamed at the top of my lungs to “Green Light” and “Perfect Places”. My love for Lorde endured. It got to the point where I went from being nineteen and singing “I’m nineteen and I’m on fire”, to eventually getting older (I hear this happens to most people) and needing the voice of my generation to return. We had to wait through a lockdown and what felt like an eternal winter before suddenly, Solar Power arrived to warm us. You may remember, I quite enjoyed it. It connects Lorde to these different parts of my life, as it was released while I was working at a pub, an era I jokingly refer to as the dark days. Through this album, I found light, just as Melodrama offered comfort to teenage me. Suddenly, I get hit with lines like “I thought I was a genius, but now I’m 22” and my world swings into focus a bit. In that job, my brain had been completely off, and suddenly it rebooted. Lorde is an artist who connects me to that period before lockdown, but she also got me back into gear once the world started to open up again.
These factors all meant that it was imperative I get tickets to see Lorde on tour. I almost didn’t. Her first batch of tickets sold out before I could touch them and knowing that she was only playing “smaller venues” (read: not arenas), I didn’t think I stood much of a chance at a second round. But I did! I got tickets to the Alexandra Palace show and after doing some tricky co-ordination to ensure I could attend both this gig and my long delayed graduation, I was there. Lorde was finally in front of me. And she was glorious. She may only have three albums, but they’re three albums I completely adore and every song she pulled onto the setlist was a knockout. This particular day was during one of those crazily hot days during the Summer, where we could barely breathe inside, but the mood would have felt feverish anyway. Lorde is the kind of performer I adore. She will nail an emotional ballad and then settle down for some quick chatter with the crowd. Sometimes, the two co-exist. She gave a very impassioned speech about the recent overturning of Roe v Wade, during which she had to take a break because she was crying too hard to talk, but in which she otherwise remained startlingly level headed. And again, I can’t overstate how much she nailed all of her songs. I’m not ashamed to say that when the first beats of “Perfect Places” began, I let out a schoolgirl scream. Songs like this are what people like me are built on.
People like me also struggled in this concert. Remember earlier when I was talking about how it was a ridiculously hot day on this concert? That didn’t help with all the factors from the Mitski concert, with this concert also having to be stopped part way through because someone passed out. And I get it. Lorde is an artist very closely tied to who I am, being in the same room as her sort of changed my life. Your knees might not cope well with that. Plus, this was a gig where even Lorde let herself get overwhelmed at points. It’s not just fans who are attending concerts as bubbling balls of potential catharsis, the artists have build up too. Two years of being unable to tour, unable to get that instant feedback that singing offers. Especially for Mitski and Lorde, two social media shy artists, you don’t know how people respond until they’re in the same room. For everyone, a lot is riding on this. It was for me. The next day, I attended my graduation on about five hours of sleep and successfully managed not to fall over or embarrass myself. In the course of 24 hours, I had suddenly entered a new era of my life. One where I had graduated from university and where I had seen Lorde live. Some closure was achieved, dare I say.
Lighter fare now! Do you remember Carly Rae Jepsen? If you’ve talked to me in the last five years, you will, because I don’t shut up about her. And if you haven’t heard me monologue, then you’re probably just thinking “oh, the “Call Me Maybe” singer?” To that, I say NO! NO! SHE IS SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!! Step away from this article and listen to Emotion or Dedicated or The Loneliest Time or even any of the B Side albums that contain songs that weren’t good enough to make the final cut but are still better than 90% of the other pop songs out there. I’m serious. Do it. Because while I think that time has been surprisingly kind to “Call Me Maybe”, time has been even kinder to each of her albums since. She is as close to pop perfection as I dare comprehend. Any closer and my eyes would melt. She is also someone who I’ve fallen more in love with since starting my current job, where the blasting saxophone of “Run Away With Me” would signal the time to start closing the bar. While an angsty teenage Henry connected with Carly back in sixth form through her sadder tunes, modern day Henry loves the buoyancy.
All of this is to say that in the summer, I went to Somerset House to see her live. This was in the middle of that other incredibly hot period of the summer, but in a move clearly decided by some higher power, the gig was outside. No abnormal sweating from hidden places tonight, just vibes. And that was exactly what Carly delivered. She sprinkled in bits of banter in-between songs but otherwise adopted a “shut up and play the hits” mentality. Play the hits she did. I fell more in love with “Want You in My Room”, discovered the new direction that “Western Wind” was guiding us towards later in the year and joined every single person in the crowd blasting out “Call Me Maybe” at the top of our lungs. That moment though, when the aforementioned “Run Away With Me” started? Transcendent. I promise you it isn’t hyperbole when I say that the most comparable moment I’ve had to it was hearing “God Only Knows” performed live. My soul left my body and I felt blissfully emancipated from corporeality for just a moment. That’s all there is to say about Carly really. She promises escape, and she knows exactly how to deliver. Any chance I get, I will run away with her all over again.
Which leads us back to the heavy section of my music taste, with Phoebe Bridgers. I discovered her music just before the first COVID lockdown while I was still in Florida. My middle-class is going to show here, but I was listening to Chris Riddell’s Desert Island Discs when I first heard her music. A pandemic, swift return home and complete 180 of all I knew later, I was ready for the release of Phoebe’s second album Punisher. For the first few months of lockdown, I turned to the breezy pop of artists like Dua Lipa to escape but by June, I didn’t need escape, I needed a release. Punisher gave that to me. On these long lockdown walks that I would take during the summer of 2020, catching the sunset as I emerged from yet another overgrown footpath, that album was the comfort I wanted. That comfort took the form of Phoebe saying, actually, everything is very shit right now. Her struggles were not the same as mine (my Dad remembers my birthday, I don’t hate your mum and at that point no one had ever held me like water in their hands), but it just helped to hear someone else struggling. Back then I called it my album of the year and even if other albums from that year have since grown on me more, it was the album and artist that epitomised my year.
Following this is a struggle that will be familiar to many, in the panic to get tickets. Initially, there were three nights in London to get tickets for. I managed to get absolutely none. Fortunately for me though, a fourth night got added and I snuck my way into that with my greasy ticket-grabbing rat hands. From an artist like Phoebe, the gig was all I could have wanted. She played the sad songs with the weight they deserved, could leap across the stage with the very best of them and was an incredibly compelling presence between songs. Full credit to the crowd for fully going with all of these tonal changes too. The quietness of a song like “Saviour Complex” gets respected in the same degree that the loudness of a song like “Kyoto” gets respected. And speaking of respect, at this gig Phoebe played part of an unreleased song, which everyone avoided filming or recording. I’m sure one or two copies made it around somewhere, but for once, the phones went away. That’s how compelling Phoebe is. Most important of all though, she concluded the gig with “I Know The End”. For those out of the loop, the song climaxes on an extended and agonising scream that is where all the catharsis of the album escapes to. Played live, that experience is unparalleled. To be in a room and encouraged to scream as loud and as long as you physically can is what concerts are all about. This is a place to escape and from the sound of the room, you know that escape is exactly what everyone did. From the bottom of my shaky legs and all the way up to my damaged vocal chords, I can confirm I did the same.
With all this release though came more incidents of people passing out. At this concert I think I counted four. Full credit to the staff, they knew exactly how to handle these incidents and it didn’t interrupt the concert, save for an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Staff members were also equipped with water sprayers to keep audience members hydrated, on yet another “packed concert on one of the hottest days of the year” for me. Phoebe is one of those artists who myself and many others discovered during a time that has universally been classified as “bad”. I’m not surprised that it was another location for fan frenzy to take over and overwhelm so many, because this is a safe space to let emotions run. Unfortunately, those emotions aren’t themselves always safe. As a positive note to this story though, something amazing was happening in the background of this concert. I had just started talking to a girl on Hinge. Her name is Annie. We hit it off like I’ve never known before and I was almost annoyed that the concert would be a break from me chatting to her. It was here that she suggested I come back to hers after the concert. I didn’t, because I had work the next day and am a notorious square, but two days later I did visit her. It makes me elated to say that Annie and I are still together and are exceptionally happy. The start of this wonderful period in my life is forever tied to this gig, which makes a wonderful night that much more special.
I have often been described by friends as someone who looks like they’d be a fan of Arcade Fire. For a while that wasn’t true, but in 2019 that changed and I did indeed become a fan of Arcade Fire. I loved the openness of their songs, this almost cringe-inducing sincerity that makes even the clunkiest lines feel alive and essential. It is big stadium indie rock that dreams big and, at least in my mind, achieves big. All six of their albums are ones I can go back to with love, so they were my last bucket list artists to see. When the opportunity arose though, I hesitated. They were playing the O2 arena. All the other bands I’ve talked about played small to midsize venues. I’ve only seen one other band in a venue this size and since then, I’ve always gravitated to these smaller spaces. But, for a band that plays big, you know they need to go big. I sucked up my pride (and the dramatically higher ticket price) and bought tickets. My final bucket list band of the moment, ticked off.
Except, as you might have guessed from the lack of picture, I didn’t go. There is one big reason for that: the sexual misconduct allegations against frontman Win Butler. For a few days I was on the fence. This is a huge band made up of many people, I didn’t want to punish them for one person’s actions. But my feelings shifted. I couldn’t get into their songs in the same way anymore and while it’s easy to rationalise art as being this collaborative medium, the fact remained that it was the frontman of the band with these accusations. To look up to the stage and celebrate someone like that didn’t sit right with me. Even now, writing this months later, my heart is heavy at the decision. This would have been a cathartic concert. Arcade Fire’s songs are a pretty core part of who I am. Catharsis, however, isn’t as clear cut as we believe. It’s a myth. Sometimes it’s there and it helps, sometimes it isn’t and doesn’t. I denied myself the myth. Instead, I took the day off that this would have been and spent it with Annie. Life is too short to spend with shitty people like Win Butler. Spend it with those you love instead.
Speaking of people I love, I can trace my introduction to Japanese Breakfast directly to one man and one man alone, that being my friend George from uni. We bonded while editing the university newspaper together virtually, he watched me spill a can of Guinness down myself during one of those awkward Zoom call social events we used to have to do and he was one of the few people outside my house who I socialised with that year. He was a lifeline and with that lifeline came Japanese Breakfast. When Jubilee came out, it was all he would play, all he would talk about, all he could think about. I knew his taste was good (in all but friends, obviously), so I checked it out. And then checked it out again. And again. I couldn’t stop listening. Over the space of a year, it became a comfort album, as well as a marker of my taste in music continuing to grow. So with all that considered, a trip to a JBrekkie gig was a no brainer.
This particular gig was in a church. A literal church. Why, I do not know, but it made the event feel special. Gigs are already a somewhat spiritual experience, why not make it more literal? I was there with George and our friend Harry (also a survivor of our uni), as well as in the vicinity of three work colleagues and the very university lecturer whose awkward Zoom call social event I had spilled that can of Guinness down myself during. These are friends I’ve made and people I’ve met as a grown up. That made this a grown up gig for me. That was a cool feeling. Feelings of newfound maturity aside, JBrekkie did not disappoint. She sounds just as heavenly onstage as she does on her songs and brought new life to them all. After the gig, I found myself unable to stop listening to “Everybody Wants to Love You” and second to “I Know the End”, “Posing for Cars” is one of the strongest closes to a gig that I’ve ever heard. Also, Michelle Zauner (the real name of Japanese Breakfast) had a gong on stage, which she would often head towards and give a whack. That’s some stagecraft that I, as a clown, can get behind. Most of all though, this felt like the first gig where everything was back to normal. No one passed out, no one was weird, everyone was just there to have a good time while a musician they loved played songs they loved. It is a simple pleasure, but those are not simple to come by.
Finally, we are at the end. My last gig of the year are also the first band I ever saw live and the artist that I’ve seen the most in my life. They are Scouting for Girls. I can hear some of you cringing a little bit already. Yes, the ones who did “She’s So Lovely”. When I saw them at age 12, I thought they were the coolest thing in the world. To be honest, 11 years later, that opinion hasn’t swayed much. They’re showmen, pure and simple. The songs are the songs, but they know how to perform them to an audience who are stoked to hear them. They embody that classic thing with bands, where they’ll play one or two songs of their newer stuff, then just get straight back to playing the songs everyone came here to hear them play. They are the reason I love live concerts.
This particular gig was with Ben, one of my other best mates. We had seen Scouting for Girls before, so why not see them again as a great excuse to hang out together? Us two, his girlfriend and his housemate all went along to UEA, where I suddenly felt very old. Uni is somewhere I feel like I’ve grown out of, but I needn’t have worried. Once we entered the venue, we found hordes of older men and women there, which made me feel much less gross. The whole event was in fact very dad-core. Multiple men in front of us were in football shirts, watching a live feed of England in the world cup (in that game we lost, don’t worry about it). It lent a lack of pretention to the event. This wasn’t big or serious, it’s four guys on stage, hanging out with a bunch more people down in the audience. Play whatever hit you want and we will holler. “Elvis Ain’t Dead?” We’re stomping. “Heartbeat?” We’re jumping. “She’s So Lovely?” Don’t even get me started, people were launching off the walls. It was, in two words, immense fun. So many of my gigs this year have had weight. They’ve been artists I’ve never seen before, venues I’ve never been to before, songs that I needed to hear done right for my fragile little self-worth. What I needed was a gig to relax into. Scouting for Girls were that need, totally fulfilled.
I don’t know where live music takes me next. Like I said throughout, many of these artists were bucket list ticks for me, plus they were touring on huge albums that will presumably have quite a gap before the follow-up is finished. I only have one gig lined up currently for next year and that’s Sam Fender in Newcastle. It promises to be, if I do say so, off its tits. Otherwise, I’m going with the flow. Maybe old favourites will return. Maybe the stagnant pool of water that is my music taste will get some freshness. Or maybe I’ll just stay in and finally watch one of those films I’ve been meaning to get to. Whichever option I choose, I’m glad for this last year of gigging. It is something that has finally helped me get back on my feet in our post-lockdown world. If I can once again attend a gig and everything is normal in there, then maybe everything outside is normal too. It of course isn’t, but what a privilege to hold that illusion for a few hours. A shared delusion of exceptional quality.
By now, you probably know me. I love Twin Peaks. It is a show that does things for me that even shows I love more cannot do. It’s also a show that I will take any excuse to talk about for annoying lengths of time and this time, that excuse is the five year anniversary of the release of the first two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return. Let me set up what the angle is here then. This isn’t me reviewing all of The Return, this definitely isn’t me trying to explain what the show is about or what certain scenes mean, it’s just me talking about how I feel about these first two episodes after five years with them. I’ve seen the whole show twice before and am rewatching it again for this piece (and for a follow up one in September about the finale), so it’ll be a mix of me talking about things I’ve picked up this time and also reflecting on what it felt like back in that first summer of Twin Peaks. There will obviously be some spoilers for these episodes in the post, but by now you either have seen the show, will never watch the show or don’t click on articles where I chat Twin Peaks, I think we’re all clear.
We knew this would be the return of Twin Peaks. Anything more than that, you have to tune in.
In the run up to Twin Peaks making its grand return, we knew basically nothing about what the show was going to be. Eventually, we started to be drip fed information. One of the earliest and most curious pieces of information was a full cast list, which contained a bunch of surprising names. Monica Bellucci? Sky Ferreira? Michael Cera? It was odd and especially among the expected returning cast, a lot of these newer names stood out. What role they would play in the show we didn’t know but we knew to expect them around in some form or another. More cryptic teasers appeared in the run-up to release and offered just the barest of information about what was to come. First, it really was absolutely nothing, just footage of Angelo Badalamenti playing iconic music from the series, to the point where footage of David Lynch eating a donut felt like a big step up. Eventually, some of the final teasers gave us fleeting glimpses of iconic locations or characters from the original series and then, that was that. We knew this would be the return of Twin Peaks. Anything more than that, you have to tune in on 21st of May (or be at Cannes, but we can’t all be that lucky).
The first two episodes were released as one “feature length presentation”, which is why I’m clumping them together and though I really am going to try to not just talk this through scene by scene, I need to spend a moment on how well the opening sets us up. We open in the Black Lodge, the most iconic Twin Peaks visual there is. In fact, we open with footage from the original show, as Laura Palmer says to Agent Cooper “I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile…” Cut to, 25 years after we had last been in Twin Peaks, we are reunited with Coop and a character we will come to know as The Fireman. The Fireman gives both Cooper and the audience a series of clues that will help decipher the mystery, in a way that feels reminiscent of Lynch himself giving audience members clues to decipher Mulholland Drive. These clues all come back into play by the end of the series, but also don’t expect them to reveal the true hidden meaning or anything like that. They’re for exploration, not guiding. Coop says “I understand” but as an audience member, feel no shame if you don’t, whether on viewing one or five.
If this were a revival show in the same way that other classic shows have had revivals, we would immediately move from this into a scene of another beloved character getting up to classic hijinks. We kind of do, these early episodes have a surprising balance of that, but it isn’t quite that simple. The scene following the Fireman’s clues is one of Doctor Jacoby getting a delivery of spades. It’s odd in a way that Jacoby is odd, but not… Well, not immediately punchy. The payoff is worth the wait, but I remember initial confusion about why we were shown something that felt unsatisfying. The only immediately satisfying reunion is that of Ben and Jerry Horne, owners of the Great Northern Hotel. Little seems to have changed for them since the season two finale, with Ben still being a sleazeball who tries his best and Jerry being a guy who is free to goof around whenever he pleases. Other than with them, you’re going to have to wait for some really satisfying character moments. Once again, I cannot stress enough how much some of these moments justify their wait (a moment with Big Ed remains one of the most fantastically moving moments I’ve ever seen on TV), but don’t start The Return hungering for immediate comfort.
Things can never be as they were. We can never truly return home.
It’s one of the things that makes this revival such an impressive piece of work, because all our expectations are upended immediately and place us in total suspension. Things can never be as they were. We can never truly return home. Time’s arrow marches on with or without us. Nothing is as brutal a reminder of this as the appearance of The Log Lady. In real life, Log Lady actress and long time Lynch collaborator Catherine Coulson was battling cancer during the production of The Return and revived her character out of adoration for Lynch and Twin Peaks co-writer Mark Frost. There was no way of sugar coating this and so in the show too, The Log Lady is also battling cancer, requiring dialysis tubes and losing her hair due to chemotherapy. Her scenes are patient, as she says the last few messages her log needs to give the world and on the other end of the phone, Deputy Hawk listens with nothing but respect and love.
These scenes are still set in the otherworldly land of Twin Peaks but, as the best of Lynch’s work does, they ground fantastic worlds in understandable emotions; in this case, grief. Not every actor can return to Twin Peaks looking as glam and wonderful as ever, buoyed up by a little medical enhancement and a lot of good genetics. Not every actor can even return, like the much missed David Bowie and Jack Nance. And heartbreakingly, since the premiere of the show, we have lost yet more actors who brought their characters back for one last ride. There’s an argument to be made that because of this, The Return is a show forced half into mourning, which is never felt more strongly than in the absence or the imminent absence of those we have always loved.
Which leaves the question, what do we fill those spaces with? Lynch and Frost’s answer is, a huge world full of loads of other weirdness. In these two episodes alone, we dash between New York, Las Vegas and South Dakota in between our time in the town of Twin Peaks. That felt very weird for me on a first watch. The original run of Twin Peaks worked so well because while it gestured towards a larger world, it was almost always grounded in small town America, aggressively refusing to compromise on that vision. So in going out into the big city, had Lynch and Frost lost their spark? The answer, of course, is no. This isn’t a losing of a spark, just the two channelling their spark into a new circuit. We have good reason to be here, it just might take time before we work out what that reason is.
It might take time for some of those locations, but not New York. An enigmatic setup of a man, watching a box, itself watched by a series of cameras, is disrupted first by a sexual encounter and then by a violent one, as *something* (even now, I don’t have a great answer for what the something is) explodes through the box and murders the two lovers. Whether you know what this story means or not, you can grasp what the emotion means. We aren’t in the cutesy world of the original Twin Peaks series anymore, we’re in the world of David Lynch’s feature films, where sex and violence are hyperreal explosions perforating a surreal status quo. The freedom of modern TV means we don’t have to shy from gore or nudity anymore and Lynch is promising that he won’t. This is far closer to the griminess of Fire Walk With Me than even the darkest moments of classic Twin Peaks.
Sex and violence are hyperreal explosions perforating a surreal status quo.
While Lynch only directed a handful of episodes of the original Twin Peaks, he directed every single of the 18 episodes of The Return, which helps explain why it fits into this broader pattern of his filmography. For a caught up surrealism nerd like me, that was great news then and remains great news now. For those who wanted cutesy fun and a splash of murder, it’s also worth noting that Riverdale came out the same year, and may offer a watered down version of what you want. Because make no doubt, The Return is the show David Lynch wants to make. He doesn’t care if you understand it, he doesn’t care if you like it, he definitely doesn’t care if you think a scene is too long. You either have to take his world exactly as it is or accept that this isn’t for you. There is no shame in that, despite my Riverdale quip, this really is an acquired taste from episode one.
Once you have acquired that taste though? Oh my God, delicious! Re-watching the show, everything fits together so much more comfortably. I’m no longer worried about how (or if) everything will fit together, because I can see the bigger picture of the narrative. That feeling allows moments to really breathe. Comedy can be funnier, scares can be scarier and Matthew Lillard can be more Matthew Lillard. I wanted to talk about him (in my notes this section was just about him) but I had to tie him in to a wider thing somehow. I love his performance in The Return, fitting into the classic trope of a man accused of a murder he’s sure he didn’t commit, a role that offers such delicious room for him to flex the acting muscles.
When I first saw this episode, Lillard was just Shaggy from Scooby Doo for me (an admittedly great time, no slander here), but now that I’ve seen him in films like Scream, I have a better appreciation for him as a performer. The guy is crazy versatile and if you too only know him from those crazy roles in the nineties and early noughties, just watch his scenes from this on YouTube and prepare to have your socks knocked off. He is frightened, forceful and furious in incredibly subtle ways, balancing on the edge of about six different knives. Lillard gives one of the best performances in The Return and the more you see of the show, the more you’ll realise what an immense compliment that is. If you had any fears about what new characters might do to pollute a world you loved, he assuages them immediately.
“Shadow” evokes a comfort in me that everything will be alright, yet it still allows an excitement about the uncertainty to come.
And finally, after a very bonkers two hours, we reach the end of the episode. We’ve watched the Black Lodge tear itself apart (a metaphor so perfect I’m furious I never wrote an academic essay on it), seen old friends show their age and also been introduced to the new threads that we’ll spend the next 16 hours following, probably. So we have earnt one last return to Twin Peaks and where better to cool down than The Road House or, as it has now been trendily updated to, The Bang Bang Bar. Playing at the bar are the band Chromatics with their song “Shadow”, a song that now never fails to give me goosebumps. It is quietly and ethereally beautiful, excellent in ways that I am far too stupid to actually explain other than “it fits the vibe very well”. The song evokes a comfort in me that everything will be alright, yet it still allows an excitement about the uncertainty to come. There are plenty of other amazing songs played in The Road House, but “Shadow” is the perfect one for this moment.
In this scene, we also get one last reunion, as we are reunited with Shelly and James, two of the characters from the original series with the most screen time. Here we find Lynch and Frost at their sappiest, allowing two characters to reminisce. Though it was pretty much immediately made fun of by many fans, Shelly’s line “[James] has always been cool” always landed for me. It’s a lie, but a lovely one to indulge in, a rare moment where The Return does feel like the show fans expected it to be. Even this is undercut though by the appearance of actor Walter Olkewicz, last seen 26 years ago as Jaques Renault, a character who died. Why is he here? Is this the same character? Perhaps The Road House exists in a different world than the rest of the show? These three questions will never get conclusive answers, yet their appearance is the needed salt to undercut the sweetness of Shelly’s comment about James. No matter what it looks like, this will not be the return you expect from Twin Peaks.
There was so much just in these two episodes that I never got to mention. The first appearance of a woodsman, the brilliant use of uncanny CGI and the excellence of Kyle MacLachlan in two of what will eventually be four roles. The Return is so dense that after five years, it doesn’t feel like we’ve come close to finding everything and yet it is also so well balanced that this density is never cumbersome. Regardless, at this point you have to go along for the ride that Lynch, Frost and all their collaborators are taking you on, because the places they are going are wonderful and strange. I’ll be back in September to talk about the last two episodes so if you’re looking for my thoughts on the stuff in the middle, just message me, talk to me, demand my ever-so-interesting thoughts on the way “Episode 8” fits in with a globally surreal vision of the impact of the atomic bomb. But until then, I’ll write on something more accessible, I promise. Maybe another review, remember those?
Oscar week is here and if you’re anything like me, it snuck up on you! This year I was really hoping to do a big old write up of all sorts of categories, but I am running up against quite a few deadlines and still trying to do the obligations that no one expects from me but me. So here we are! Six big categories to run through, my amateur opinion to run through them with. As ever, I am not responsible for you using my advice in any sweepstakes you may be involved in, especially because my own predictions have changed since I submitted my predictions at my work sweepstakes. But this is all a bit of fun, awards are pointless and nothing matters, especially because Belfast will win and ruin any good will I had for the ceremony. So hell to it, let’s predict wildly! And while we’re at it, let’s lament those potential better winners! Oscars!
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win: Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog
Should Win:Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter
Setting the trend early, the Best Supporting Actress category is filled with some incredibly worthy nominees and some that, while not necessarily bad, feel puzzling. Chief of these examples is Judi Dench for Belfast. Dench is a filler vote, someone for voters to choose because they know who she is and not because she actually gave one of the five best supporting performances of the year. There was room for so many other incredible nominees to break through, but instead Dench’s wobbly accent and Cats-PTSD inducing monologue made it. She’s a great actor, but that doesn’t mean all of her performances deserve recognition. I also don’t feel strongly about Aunjanue Ellis in King Richard, though that may be because the film itself leaves me so cold. She has one great monologue in a kitchen, it will be the clip they show at the ceremony, I don’t want to besmirch a performance from a film I barely remember.
Now we get to three amazing performances from three actors who I think may stand a chance at taking the trophy. Ariana DeBose seems to be the bookies favourite at the moment, for her joyous performance as Anita in West Side Story. She was a totally new actor to me when I saw the film, but her and (the cruelly snubbed) Mike Faist have been my strongest impressions since seeing West. DeBose completely lit up the screen and has frankly earnt her place here for the “America” number alone. Something in my gut though says that Kirsten Dunst will pip her to the post, for The Power of the Dog. I feel like I am way overestimating the winning power of the Dog (classic me, betting on losing dogs), but this feels like the right time for Dunst. After decades in the industry, she has finally secured her first Oscar nomination and it’s for a great role. What should be the cliched “housewife turns to substance abuse” type role is lent a delicate fading of hope by Dunst, in what is my favourite turn from her since Fargo. Speaking of Fargo, the season four star Jessie Buckley is my favourite performer of the bunch for her work in The Lost Daughter. I think Buckley is one of the greatest working actors today and she finally gets Oscar recognition for a character who has to be understandable to the audience despite also making irrational and unlikable decisions. Despite being unlikable though, there is something in Buckley that draws us deep into the character and her work lends the film an anchor from which Colman can work in the present day sections. Her win here seems unlikely, but I can live with that because Buckley will almost certainly be back again to pick up that trophy some other year.
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Troy Kotsur for CODA
Should Win: Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog
This is a weird category, in that I think that every actor in the category is a really great actor, but not all are giving particularly great performances in their nominated films. Case in point, Ciarán Hinds for Belfast. Hinds is an actor who has had a wide and brilliant career, even giving good performances in delightful trash like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. However, he is in Belfast. We’ll talk more about the film itself later, but his role is kind of thankless, just off to the side. I guess he’s one of the best things in the film, but that is low praise. Similarly, Being the Ricardos is a bad movie, yet the brilliant J.K. Simmons is in it. He got nominated because his character appears one note and yet opens up to show another side. But also, he’s incredibly watchable, because he’s an actor who can string bronze out of hay. Again, he is one of the best parts of a film that is not good.
The other three actors however are all very worthy nominees for the roles they’ve played. Two of those three are from The Power of the Dog. Jesse Plemons has never given a performance I didn’t like and this is no exception. He’s a great counter balance to Cumberbatch’s lead, offering a genuine loveliness. One line delivery from him properly warmed my heart, in ways you wouldn’t expect from a film like this. Also not being what is expected is Kodi Smit-McPhee, an actor who has never wowed me but has a knack for choosing films I like (one day Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will get the acclaim it deserves). In Power, his character is a coiled spring, slowly unravelling until he pops. It’s a treat to watch and his performance is my favourite one of this category. For a while, Smit-McPhee was the frontrunner but at the last minute, it seems like Troy Kotsur will take it for CODA. This is no crime. CODA is not a film I am crazy on, but Kotsur is absolutely brilliant. His brutish presence hides a softness and while it’s hardly a big secret, it’s one that made me smile to see appear. He is funny and gross and has the biggest emotional moments of the whole film. If CODA deserves recognition for anything, it’s for Troy Kotsur.
Best Actress
Will Win: Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos
Should Win: Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter
I am not exactly enamoured with this field of nominees. Again, it’s a selection of very talented actors but absent of any career best roles. I will get it out of the way now, I haven’t seen The Eyes of Tammy Faye, so have no idea if Jessica Chastain is any good in it. She wears a lot of prosthetics, plays a real person and has been playing the awards season game well. I have a manager who thinks she’ll take the prize but I’m doubtful personally. I’m also going to be controversial, I don’t think Kristen Stewart is that great in Spencer. It hurts me to say that because the film has not seen the love it deserves, but I found Stewart’s performance (the sole Oscar nomination for the film) alienating in all the wrong ways. She has also not been getting much recognition this season, so I don’t think a win is on the cards, but her performance of Diana is one that will attract many voters regardless. Penelope Cruz is deserving of her place here though, for great work in Parallel Mothers. The film is a rollercoaster of melodramatic emotions and without someone to latch onto, many audiences would feel lost. Cruz is exactly that figure though, someone who the audience can latch onto with ease. There is something about her in Spanish speaking roles where she suddenly is an amazing actress (especially her collaborations with Almodovar), which is a trend Parallel Mothers thankfully falls into.
It is a toss up about who my favourite actress of the race is, between Cruz and Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, but I think I settle on Colman. She plays the same character as Jessie Buckley (talked about a little earlier up the page), yet does so in a way that feels totally unique. I think it’s a credit to the two actors to say that they make the same character feel totally separate and of course, Colman brings her best with her interpretation. She bubbles under the surface, being hard to read and yet paradoxically never too hard to understand. She’s not as great as in The Favourite, but she’s still the best of this bunch. Unfortunately though, I have a gut feeling that Nicole Kidman will win for Being the Ricardos. I can’t put into words why I think she’ll win, but I just feel it. That’s a special shame because her performance is terrible and exactly the kind of performance I hate. She plays an existing (and beloved) figure, looks unrecognisable and has multiple showy monologues. It hits you over the head with capital a Acting and I never believed it for a second. Yet I still feel like it’s where the Academy will lean. Let that show you how low my estimations of that strange little group are.
Best Actor
Will Win: Will Smith for King Richard
Should Win: Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog
In most years, the Best Actress category is the one with the performances I like the best whereas Best Actor is just men being gruff and playing historical figures. In a move of progressiveness though, this year the Best Actress category is uninteresting and Best Actor is full of some genuine gold. Not among that genuine gold is Javier Bardem for Being the Ricardos. Again, I don’t like this film and its reliance on big Acting, that abandons subtlety or grace for long monologues about old actors. I’m happy Bardem is getting a chance to play roles other than weird bad guys, but this is not the direction I want him to move in. We’ll brush over this briefly, I have not seen The Tragedy of Macbeth yet. I’ll try and see it before the actual ceremony but it has me intrigued. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have captured the attention of the Academy, as Denzel Washington is one of very few nominations for the film. I wish him luck, but he’s another actor who is here so often that a loss won’t be a big blow.
Big three time. Isn’t Andrew Garfield great? Just, in everything. He’s done stuff I liked more than Tick Tick Boom but this remains an impressive display of his talent. It is literally all singing, all dancing and so while it’s showy, what it shows is that Garfield is very talented indeed. He’d be a great outsider winner. That almost certainly won’t happen though, as one of these two gentlemen will take it. Current favourite is Will Smith for King Richard. I don’t like this film and I’m also not crazy on Smith as an actor (apologies to anyone offended). This is certainly some of his best work, but from me that’s low praise. But, he’s overdue an Oscar, maybe this is his year, before I Am Legend 2 or Bright 2 obliterates the actors existing good will. I’d personally go with the early frontrunner Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog. He’s an actor who I’ve liked before but never been that crazy on, yet in this role I was totally absorbed by him. His character has this rough exterior and it fades through the film, allowing you to glimpse through at the layers crafted underneath. I have no doubts that another watch would reveal even more to this great performance, but I’ll just appreciate it this much for now.
Best Director
Will Win: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car
I wouldn’t always talk about Best Director in my Oscar predictions, but this year I feel like there’s actually decent reason to discuss this category as well as Best Picture. As ever, I should clarify that as an observer it’s always hard to break down what makes a great director, but I’ll do my best to justify why these directors do or don’t stand a chance in the running. We’ll start with everyone’s favourite menace to society Kenneth Branagh, nominated for Belfast. He is nominated alongside four complete titans in the field and for a film that feels almost accidentally made. The only reason he could win is because it does feel very much like a personal film from him, but I wouldn’t write that acceptance speech if I were Ken. Similarly, a win for Steven Spielberg seems unlikely, despite him being Steven Spielberg. Don’t get me wrong, West Side Story is a cracking little film, but it has been very underseen and is Spielberg being the usual brilliant Spielberg. He’s great, but that’s no surprise. Similarly low in the odds for running is Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza. It’s a film that has been really well loved by many and one that demonstrates the trademark attention to detail that PTA brings to all of his films. However, it feels like a lot of the hype has died down, we’ll see how well it does at the actual ceremony.
All but guaranteed to walk away with Best Director is Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog. There’s a lot of cynical reasons for this. Her name has been front and centre for the marketing of the film, it’s a way of celebrating a Netflix film without letting it win Best Picture and it looks progressive having a woman win Best Director two years in a row. There is also an uncynical reason for Campion winning and that is that she has crafted a brilliant film. She has wrangled in top tier editing, cinematography and performances, all in a film that feels incredibly controlled. It’s hard as an outsider to know what else to credit directors for other than that. However, Campion is not my choice. Instead, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is my choice for the miraculous Drive My Car. Like Campion’s film, control is the word. This film is three hours long, yet somehow feels perfectly balanced. The longer a film is, the more it has to justify every minute and yet justify Hamaguchi does. I would not cut a single scene. I love Drive My Car and am backing it in every race this year, but this is one category where its loss would not feel a tragedy. Four titans (and one Branagh) enter the thunderdome, only one can leave.
Best Picture
Will Win: Belfast
Should Win: Drive My Car
It is the one everyone scrolls down to read every year, because it’s the only one that matters! Unfortunately, it’s not exactly a selection to set my soul on fire. There’s some good stuff, sure, but we have to shovel our way through the shit before we get to it, and even then we may discover yet more shit. Speaking of, Don’t Look Up! I don’t like this film and I don’t really know anyone who does. Yet, it seems to have some swell of support behind it. If it won, it would be pretty much the funniest possible outcome, causing an immense shitstorm through all sections of the internet. I am almost rooting for it. Not as bad but more unlikely a winner, King Richard is nominated for Best Picture. How? Moving on. CODA is being touted by many as the current favourite, but I am prepared to once again underestimate this film and its odds. It does nothing for me aside from a few nice scenes and some great performances, yet many like it. There’s a chance of victory, I’d rather something else win though, a win would seriously damage the films legacy when much greater films are in contention.
We now start to move more towards worthy nominees, but ones that also don’t stand a chance. Case in point, West Side Story. It’s gorgeous, an entertaining watch and a take on material that has previously won Oscars. However, it stands no chance. Dune also stands no chance. It’s a brilliant blockbuster made with genuine craft, yet it is big space nonsense. Maybe when Dune: Part Two comes out it will pull a Return of the King and get enough awards for the whole franchise, but this first entry will have to be happy with some technical awards through the night. Licorice Pizza is also a really well made and really likable movie, but it is rocking around with too many controversies in its boat to be a slam dunk of a choice. I liked it quite a lot when I first saw it, but I haven’t thought about the film much since, probably a bad omen. Elsewhere, we find Nightmare Alley, an excellent film made by an Oscar winner that no one saw and that most people who did see thought was too dark or too long. I, however, loved it. It’s big and indulgent, sure, but it’s a true craftsman getting to indulge so I was happy to be there. It also has no chance. So it goes.
Big three time! For most of this season, The Power of the Dog has been the Best Picture frontrunner, and why shouldn’t it be? It has big themes, it looks amazing and it just gives more and more to you as you continue to think about it. There are two reasons I don’t think it’ll get Best Picture though. First, its heat has faded. Awards season is all about riding the rollercoaster for as long as you can, but it seems like Power hasn’t quite got there. Second, it’s a Netflix film. That still feels like a big bridge for the Academy to cross, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. No, I think we’re at Belfast. I hate Belfast. The last three months have allowed a bad impression to only further sour, letting this poorly made film fester under the spotlight of my brain. But it’s in black and white, it plays songs people know and it has “crowd pleaser” written all over it in big gold font. With the way Best Picture is voted on, it is exactly the middle of the road kind of rubbish that could Green Book its way to a win. Exactly the kind of win that would shut out a worthy competitor like Drive My Car. It is the film in this race I am most in love with by a large margin, a patient ode to the transformative power of love, grief and art. The fact it could even be nominated here is honestly enough of a win for me, because it stands no chance of winning. But man, if it won, I would almost certainly throw my back out again celebrating, like I did with Parasite. It seems like my spine may be safe though, sadly.
As the year continues to lurch on and we fail to be wiped out by a disaster, either man-made or natural, we approach one of lifes few certainties; the Oscars will arrive and the nominations will be delighting, underwhelming and frustrating all at once. While we wait for the big moment to arrive in just six short days time, it’s fun to predict how disappointing the results will be. I do this every year and I’ll be honest, it’ll be hard to top the 100% success rate of last years predictions, especially with the very unpredictable slate of this year. This year though, you can still expect the usual mix of me grumbling about bad films doing well, sheepishly predicting incredible things for films I haven’t seen (but promise to have seen by the time of the final predictions) and then trying to push for some stuff that has no chance in hell in an awards ceremony not run by deviant freaks like myself. Buckle in, guess along and hope for the worst for Belfast with me!
Best Supporting Actor
Likely Bets:
Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog
Jamie Dornan for Belfast
Jared Leto for House of Gucci
Unlikely But Worthy:
Mike Faist for West Side Story
When it comes to Oscar predictions, the general stance I take is expect the worst but hope for the best. We will get to that corduroy elephant in the room in a moment. As for the other potential nominess, Kodi Smit-McPhee stands a chance at being nominated for The Power of the Dog, a film I have not seen. However, Netflix are putting its weight behind the film in marketing and Smit-McPhee fits the trend of being a young performer who could score a first nomination for a film that is well liked by many. Another classic narrative is the redemption arc, which Jamie Dornan could be looking for, bouncing back from the Fifty Shades films with Belfast. As you have probably worked out by now, I do not like Belfast, but Dornan is one of the few things I do like, his nomination would not be bad news at all. What would be bad news is Jared Leto getting nominated for his “work” on House of Gucci. I like the film more than most, but Leto seems to be deliberately sabotaging the film with his performance. And yet, his work is captivating people, he’s already picked up awards nominations, including from the prestigious Screen Actors Guild. Leto’s performance is the kind of one that should only get nominated when it’s a weak selection, but if he gets a nomination and Mike Faist doesn’t, something terrible has happened. West Side Story is a big film full of big performances, but I was swept away most by Faist. Every scene where he wasn’t on screen, I started to slip away. He is the heart of the film and should be recognised for his stellar work, more so than gibbering whale buffoon Jared Leto.
Best Supporting Actress
Likely Bets:
Ariana DeBose for West Side Story
Caitríona Balfe for Belfast
Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog
Unlikely But Worthy:
Cate Blanchet for Nightmare Alley
I was just waxing lyrical about Mike Faist in West Side Story, but if I were to have a second favourite actor in the film, it would be Ariana DeBose. Again, it’s the narrative of a newcomer breaking onto the scene, but DeBose is sensational and lights up the screen with her singing, dancing and comparatively less flashy acting. Her expected nomination would be well deserved. Like with the supporting actor category, we can expect another appearance from Belfast in the form of Caitríona Balfe. She’s good, I guess. I dunno, it’s hard for me to talk about Belfast, such little about it inspires joy in me. This will just be another nomination for the pile. My final sure bet is Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog. She’s in the classic category of being an actress away from the awards spotlight for a while (because no one saw her in Fargo apparently) and so no, I haven’t seen her film yet, but she’s reliably great in most stuff I’ve seen her in, I’ll predict a nomination for her. If I could squeeze another actress in, I’d go for Cate Blanchett in Nightmare Alley. This isn’t a totally unreasonable outcome but I think this and her role in Don’t Look Up will split votes, which is a huge shame because her work in Nightmare is some of the best she’s ever done. She’s a femme fatale who rips up the screen and casts this totally intoxicating sexual energy over Bradley Cooper’s character. I absolutely adore this performance, I want the best for Blanchett here, but I’ll settle for a Don’t Look Up nomination because it at least means more recognition for one of our great living actors.
Best Actor
Likely Bets:
Will Smith for King Richard
Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield for tick, tick… BOOM!
Unlikely But Worthy:
Nicolas Cage for Pig
There’s something about the Best Actor category which always seems to reward exactly the wrong kind of performances (looking at you Rami Malek and Gary Oldman) when there’s some brilliant and patient work out there. Case in point, Will Smith for King Richard. I found the film totally forgettable and I also wasn’t crazy on Smith, but it’s the closest he’s done to respectable work in a likable film in years, he’ll get a nomination. Benedict Cumberbatch will probably also get a nomination for The Power of the Dog because apparently every actor in this film will. He does an accent, it’s been a while since his last nomination, why not? And speaking of why not, who fancies a musical? Andrew Garfield hadn’t professionally sung before making tick tick… BOOM! and that fact alone could get him the nomination, because Oscar voters love an underdog story. Plus, he is genuinely good, so he’d deserve the nomination, only his second in a really impressive career for a young actor. But let’s put our hands together and pray for Nic Cage to see some justice for Pig. Cage has done so many great performances that it would feel dishonest to say Pig is his best, but it is up there for me even so. If nothing else, it’s the only performance of his that has made me cry and while I don’t know if the voting body will have had the same experience, I can only hope they do, giving this quietly hulking performance from a master of his craft the respect it deserves.
Best Actress
Likely Bets:
Kristen Stewart for Spencer
Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos
Lady Gaga for House of Gucci
Unlikely But Worthy:
Agathe Rousselle for Titane
The slightly funny, slightly sad thing about the Best Actress category is that the nominees here very rarely line up with the nominees for Best Picture, always something to bear in mind when making predictions, and also something for someone much smarter than me to analyse in huge depth. A perfect example of that trend is Kristen Stewart for Spencer. Though there’s a chance she could still be snubbed, her performance as a recognisable public figure is total awards catnip and the reasons I’m not a huge fan of the performance are exactly the reasons voters will like it. An even better example of this nomination trend is Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos. Have you seen this film? No. I also haven’t. Someone probably did. But Nicole Kidman is in it, wears heavy makeup and pretends to be a recognisable public figure. Catnip time. Different catnip comes in the form of Lady Gaga in House of Gucci. Her accent is all over the place and the film itself is messy to say the least, but she’s a real firecracker. Gaga stole a lot of attention with her last push for awards glory and while I don’t know if this one will be successful in the end, a nomination is all but guaranteed. All but guaranteed not to happen is a nomination for Agathe Rousselle’s work on Titane. I’ll get to the film in a minute, but it has essentially been shut out of pretty much the entire ceremony. Not a surprise but a disappointment regardless, because Rousselle will not get the love she deserves for a performance that is genuinely transformative and transcendental in ways that the other three are only on a surface level. The things she does in Titane are incredible and if Oscar voters won’t bang that drum, I will. She’s amazing, so is Titane, but you know my thoughts on that grand sexy nightmare already.
Best Picture
Likely Bets:
Belfast
Licorice Pizza
West Side Story
The Power of the Dog
Don’t Look Up
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Unlikely But Worthy:
Titane
Red Rocket
It’s the one you scrolled down to the bottom of the post to read! Best Picture! I think it’ll be one of those years where so many excellent films are passed on so that a handful of mediocre efforts can sneak in but there’s always a few diamonds, no matter how rough the rough is. One such diamond is not Belfast, a film that is bad. I don’t get it, but people are lapping it up. It is a film that is good in one way, by which I mean it’s good at convincing people that it’s good. It is obviously the frontrunner for Best Picture. I think Licorice Pizza will also be nominated, a film that is much more worthy. It has issues, ones that I understand some people struggle to see past, but it’s fabulously crafted and very easy to watch, but it will eventually win pretty much nothing. Speaking of fabulous craft, West Side Story! It’s Spielberg, it’s a great big musical and it’s based on a film that already has Oscar history. There’s a chance it might not get nominated but it’s not a big one.
Into the streaming section of the predictions, a section created by me accidentally while writing this (the subconscious works in mysterious ways). There are two Netflix movies I think will be in contention. First is The Power of the Dog, apparently the greatest film I’ve never seen. It is this year’s big prestige movie from the service and it has a big marketing push. Never underestimate the spending power of Netflix. But an outsider is Don’t Look Up, which everyone (including me, actually, for once) watched over Christmas. It has half of Hollywood in it and can be taken as a well meaning if unhelpful warning about climate change, so again, catnip. If Vice can get nominated, this film can too. Finally, I think The Tragedy of Macbeth stands a chance at nomination. I was either thinking this or CODA from Apple but Macbeth feels more like a safe bet. It’s a Shakespeare adaptation, made by a frequently nominated director, starring frequently nominated actors. I haven’t seen it yet, but why not, seems like it ticks a lot of boxes (this is me being very cynical, I do quite want to see it).
I’m not in the business of safe bets though, I want us to worship weird shit, the weirdest of all being Titane. It has not made the shortlist for Best International Feature and even before then, Drive My Car was the film most likely to break out of that category. But Titane owns my heart. It goes to places no other film does and does them in ways that makes me feel emotionally confused in the good ways. Nothing is like Titane, which is why it’s my everything. I’d also like to see (and feel safe knowing I won’t see) Red Rocket get some love. It is a film whose protagonist is about as despicable as they come, but that’s the entire point. Sit back and marvel at what an incredible piece of shit Mikey Saber is, delivered to us in ways that are consistently funny and upsetting and scary. It is also incredibly divisive, exactly because its lead is so detestable. I get peoples objections, I just love the hot trash of the world too much to refuse falling into it. But it isn’t in black and white, scored by charming songs or nauseatingly nostalgic, so Belfast will take it all the way to the end instead. So it goes.
Hi everyone. My name is Henry Jordan and I love trash. I love trash food, I love trash music and I especially love trash films. I love trash films so much that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on them (and if you’re interested in a more academic spin on the article you’re about to read, let me know and I can send you a copy). But I often have difficulty explaining that love to other people. Which is where this post comes in. With this being a new dawn for my blog, it feels right that I should get in a post as early as I can about the joys of trash and where trash virgins (not to be confused with trash virgins, if you catch my drift) can get their first fix.
I’ve tried to explain before what it is that makes trash films so great, but it’s very difficult without the help of a therapist, able to psychoanalyse why my brain is as broken as it is. So instead, I want to introduce you to five key films that show you different aspects of the badfilm experience. If any of these take your fancy, there’s a whole world of trash behind them that I’m trying to open the door for. They each come with a follow-up recommendation and I’m more than happy to supply any additional recs to those still curious for more. But essentially, if you’ve ever wondered what the deal is with bad films/trash films/however we want to define them, these are the ones I think you should start with. So gather round with your friends and your intoxicant of choice. Let’s dive down into this nightmare together.
The Room
If you’ve seen any film on this list, it’s probably The Room. However, this being a beginner’s guide, I still feel like we absolutely have to touch on The Room. It is the insane brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, a film which he directed, wrote, produced and starred in. The plot is… Well, like so many of the films we’re going to cover, the plot is inessential, but let me give it a shot anyway. There’s a man named Johnny, who has a girlfriend named Lisa. Lisa is cheating on Johnny with his best friend Mark, which creates tension and drama between them all. Around this is a boy named Denny who keeps popping into the titular apartment, Lisa keeps meeting up with her mother (who definitely has breast cancer) and there’s a whole host of other characters who do nothing and have no purpose. They all come in and out of this room in San Francisco (why San Francisco we do not know), until the film is over. This is The Room.
But a simple description of plot can’t do justice to The Room. Only watching it can, because only when watching it do you realise how poorly all its elements fit together. Johnny comes home to Lisa, complains about his job and then they have sex. It’s quite a long sex scene and a very uncomfortable one, but it’s one we will see again so buckle in for that. Then Mark (who again, is Johnny’s best friend, please remember this) comes round to also sleep with Lisa. This sex scene is less awkward to watch but still not great. Another sex scene comes ten minutes later and then the whole thing really goes off the rails. Random characters come and go (sometimes changing actor with no fanfare), Johnny does important chores like buying flowers and in case you forgot where this film is set, there’s occasionally a filler shot of an iconic San Francisco landmark. This continues for the entire 99 minute runtime with absolutely no reprive.
This nonsense string of events, tied together by apparently only the delusion of the screenwriter-cum-lead actor, is made even more excruciatingly brilliant by Wiseau. His performance is dire, every line sounding like it barely managed to escape his mouth, though not without being tainted by his very thick accent. You might think that other actors would do better but no, they’re also hampered by Wiseau’s awful dialogue and terrible direction, direction that is legendarily terrible. The infamous moniker of “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” is not unnearned, as every single time I rewatch The Room I spot a new terrible detail that rocks my world. The most notable one was that on viewing number five, I realised that the rainy window prop used for one of the sex scenes is actually a stand-alone part of the room, not even connected to the wall. It’s the reason why group viewings are so valuable to your experience of The Room, because a new pair of eyes can often reveal a mystery that you hadn’t even considered.
The Room embodies the kind of badfilm that exists because of single minded lunatics, one of the most fruitful genres there is. As such, it’s hard to find only one film to recommend here, but I’m going to go with Ben and Arthur. It has been called The Room for the homosexual community and that feels fairly spot on. Again, it is terrible dialogue, used to fill scenes that feel completely unrelated to each other, before leading to an entirely unearned conclusion of extravagant melodrama. Though once quite hard to find, I believe Ben and Arthur is currently kicking around somewhere on YouTube, so give it a look if you’ve already enjoyed the many pleasures The Room has to offer.
Miami Connection
If you’re planning on experimenting with badfilm, films that sit very comfortably within genres are one of the safest bets you can have. More specifically, horror and action seem to deliver reliably, because even their failures end up becoming endearing. While there are plenty of bad horror films I could recommend, I’m sticking to action today and recommending Miami Connection, one of my most treasured discoveries. It is the timeless tale of a rock band who must use their taekwondo skills and friendship to stop a gang of drug dealers and ninjas from bringing their stupid cocaine into Orlando. You know, one of those tales.
In the same way that The Room is frontloaded with a lot of sex scenes, Miami Connection is frontloaded with a lot of musical numbers. Fortunately, the songs are all absolute bangers and you will be streaming them as soon as the film rolls credits. To give you an accurate idea of how rad the band are, all I have to do is tell you their name; the one, the only, Dragon Sound. Though the lyrics are dorkily charming (such as those in their song “Friends“, about being friends for eternity, loyalty, honesty), the vocals and guitar playing genuinely rock. I love them so much that I bought a Dragon Sound shirt, which has been recognised twice in public to my intense delight. If you don’t find yourself humming at least a few of the songs days after a viewing, something has gone wrong.
The other thing that takes up the majority of the runtime in Miami Connection is fight scenes. Sometimes those fights are with guns, sometimes with swords, but mainly with awesome taekwondo skills. And if you’re thinking “hang on, but how do the main characters all know taekwondo?” then fear not, we have training montages, in which our band (who are also housemates and orphans and seem to share one tank top between them all, don’t ask) slow mo punch each other in the face. It is truly giggle worthy stuff that is essential to the film because it also paves the way for our finale, an action spectacle that ramps up the melodrama in totally unexpected ways. Even in the world of cheesy action movies, there are very few things like it, especially its closing message.
Speaking of the world of cheesy action movies, there are so many other choices for recommendation, but I know where my heart goes. My heart goes to Wakaliwood, the Ugandan action studio that makes and distributes its action movies from a slum on the outskirts of Kampala. Their films are low budget but high passion and even better, their best film Who Killed Captain Alex? is available for free on YouTube. If you enjoy it, buy merch from them and support their work, because this is that lovely little area where independent filmmaking and badfilm obsession cross over. It’s where the magic happens.
Showgirls
I don’t think Showgirls has a genre, but if had I to categorise it, it would be in the genre of Hollywood excess. It’s one of those films that cost a lot of money, made very little of it back and was a completely intoxicating trainwreck to watch happen. Lots of debate has been had in the 25 years since release regarding whether the film is secretly a masterpiece or is actively dangerous, including at the cinema I work at. One of my managers is very insistent that Showgirls is in fact a masterpiece, an insistence that is not shared by the other members of staff. I do not believe that Showgirls is a misunderstood masterpiece (as its place on this list proves, sorry Lorcan), but I remain captivated by it regardless. It took up a huge section of my dissertation, as I attempted to muddle my way through how the film works and after 3000 words I still didn’t get to the bottom of it.
So why does Showgirls compel me so? Let’s start with the plot. A woman named Nomi Malone (do you get it? No Me, I’m Alone) travels to Las Vegas to make her name as a showgirl. Though she starts off in the sleazy strip clubs on the outskirts of the strip, she soon dances her way up to the big leagues as an erotic dancer. The path to fame is littered with sex and scandal and more sex. I mean holy shit, there is so much nudity in this film. The original advertising played hard on this, clearly trying to bring in the horny men in their hordes, a tactic which backfired quite dramatically on the film. That fact becomes more hysterical the more you watch the film, as the nudity loses any eroticism and the films excesses become more and more absurd. The best big budget disasters are exactly this, films that collapse under their own excess. The fun of Showgirls in particular is just that the excess is an excess of the flesh (and you’d better believe there’s a late capitalist reading of that, see my dissertation for proof).
As with so many of the the films on this list, Showgirls is also brilliant because its dialogue is terrible. Instead of wasting all my time writing out my thoughts, I could have just put down three paragraphs of Showgirls quotes and you’d have understood. In that spirit, I’ll give you a couple of my favourites: “It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you”, “She looks better than a ten-inch dick and you know it!” or “I used to love Doggy Chow” to choose but three. These lines are delivered with admirably straight faces by the actors, whose playing it straight is one of the things that makes Showgirls compulsively watchable instead of nightmarish. David Lynch’s favourite boy Kyle MacLachlan is a sleazy guy with interesting pool habits, Gina Gershon is a screen-chewing starlet and as Nomi, Elizabeth Berkley is commendably committed. Berkley in particular suffered from cruel reviews on initial release and in supporting Showgirls so voraciously, I feel like I’m sticking a middle finger to the misogyny that nearly ruined her life. I’m also laughing at the film, but people are complex, we’re capable of both at once.
The trick with big budget disasters is picking ones that are terrible in interesting ways. A film like Pan is blandly bad, where Catwoman is so insane it works. A lot of it comes down to personal taste, so I’ll instead look a little lower budget for excess and recommend you the Patrick Swayze action film Road House. In Road House, Swayze is a bouncer for dodgy bars, brought into a particularly dodgy bar to clean the place up. He succeeds, by puching people in the face a lot. Then at one point, there’s some guy who turns up who wants to take over the entire town. Something about monster trucks, there’s a helicopter, an entire town becomes thirsty for blood. It’s action packed and homo-erotic and no, maybe not the same vibe as Showgirls, but it is a film as addicted to the same excess, making it also legendarily bad.
Vampire’s Kiss
Nicolas Cage is such an incredible actor that his films become something of a genre unto themselves. His films are sometimes genuinely brilliant or sometimes painfully boring, but he is always irrefutably watchable. Again, narrowing down options has been my only difficulty. Face-Off is prime Cage but too much of a good film to include, whereas Cage is brilliant in Deadfall until he is prematurely killed off and the film takes a dive. In the end though, it had to be Vampire’s Kiss. If you, like me, spent a lot of the early 2010s watching Nic Cage freakout compilations, a lot of Vampire’s Kiss is going to be very familiar to you, as it’s where so much of the best stuff comes from. This is Cage, in his prime, going all out on a concept that requires total dedication. You bet your sweet ass that Cage puts his all into it.
The setup is simple. While clubbing, Nic Cage’s character picks up a woman who he later believes to have been a vampire. He finds bite marks on his neck and therefore assumes that he is now becoming a vampire. We’ve all been there. It’s left ambiguous whether this is actually the case but regardless, he must deal with his “transformation” while still doing his job at the marketing house he runs. Cue Cage freakouts. Though the audience are left uncertain if Cage really has been bitten by a vampire, Cage believes it fully. He chases women through his building, hides from sunlight and even buys himself a pair of fake teeth to fit the part. It is the purely illogical, taken to its logical extremes.
As I’m hopefully getting across, this film is only as brilliant as it is because of Nic Cage. There are some truly vintage moments in here, even excluding all the ones that are such brilliant acting gestures that words couldn’t communicate them. As I list these scenes off to you, please bear in mind that these are all real scenes that really exist from a real movie. In one moment, Nic Cage screams the alphabet to his therapist (yes, the whole thing). In another, he attempts to crush himself under the weight of his own sofa. In one climactic moment, Cage is walking down the street with a piece of wood and begging passers by to kill him. Cage has done so much brilliant work in the field of the subtle over the years, but when he wants to go full insane, no one does it better.
To recommend another film, the only place I can turn is another Nic Cage film and this time we’re going to The Wicker Man. Please don’t confuse it with the original and actually great Wicker Man from the seventies, this is a terrible remake with Cage singlehandedly saving the entire film from obscurity. It is the origin of the iconic “No, not the bees” clip, as well as a film in which Nic Cage spends much of the third act running around in a bear costume punching women in the face. It is as stupid and brilliant as you could hope for from Nic Cage, it’s your next port of call for when you want to get back in the Cage.
Fateful Findings
And finally, we end on another single minded maniac. The one, the only; Neil Breen. Breen is, like Cage, a genre unto himself, although his roles are more numerous than Cage. You see, Breen is an independent filmmaker who stars in, directs, writes, produces and does so much more for his films. He does so much work on his films that he makes up fake company names for makeup or catering companies, to hide yet more work he has done. So far he has made five films and all of them are exactly the same flavour of completely batshit filmmaking, plot and acting, blended together to make the weirdest smoothie you’ll ever drink. Of all his films though, Fateful Findings may just be the crowning achievement.
For all the films I’ve covered, I’ve attempted to explain the plot to you. I am going to struggle doing that with Fateful Findings, as there is simultaneously no plot and too much plot. Let me try and explain it, stop me if it sounds like I’m having a breakdown. Breen plays a writer, who as a child discovers a magical rock in the woods with his crush (“it’s a magical day” we are told). Breen gets hit by a car, taken to hospital but it turns out he’s fine. His wife is addicted to pills and is stealing his painkillers because she is addicted to pills. She is addicted to pills. Please, it’s important. There’s also another couple, where the husband is an alcoholic and the wife is a former porn star, probably. They have a daughter who tries to hit on Neil, but then the childhood crush comes back and then “NO MORE BOOKS” and then the wife dies and then “I’m gonna shoot this damn car full of holes” and then “I can’t believe you comitted suicide” and then government secrets and then “I resign as president of the bank” and then it’s a happy ending, what a magical day. Got it? Good.
Even after all my time watching bad films, there is nothing like the films of Neil Breen. Sure, other films have bad acting or bad dialogue or awkward editing, but not like this. This is a whole other level of bad and it makes Breen’s films so consistently refreshing. Be warned though, there are times where the experience of watching his films can feel like the experience of reading the plot summary I gave. It’s a lot to take in and you may feel like your brain is trying to escape through your ears. All of Breen’s films are like this, whether it’s Fateful Findings or I Am Here… Now (a film in which space Jesus Neil Breen comes down to heal humanity) or Twisted Pair (Neil Breen plays mutant twins who are battling each other and it has nothing to do with testicular trauma). Though they can be hard to find, Breen’s films are worth tracking down, to experience one of the greatest artistic voices badfilm has ever given us.
In honour of Breen, let’s go back in time for the final recommendation, to another auteur whose terrible films are truly legendary. Badfilm fans already know it, it’s Ed Wood, specifically his masterpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space. Both Breen and Wood heavily use stock footage to pad their runtimes, but that’s not the only similarity between our two auteurs. Breen uses plenty of terrible digital effects, but it’s not hard to imagine that a version of him in the fifties would have used practical effects and sets in a similarly poor way to Wood. Wood also makes films where the plot is total incoherent nonsense and will cause your brain to break beyond belief. I had an experience with Plan 9 where I watched it while a flatmate was listening to the song “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” and I started laughing so hard that my flat had to come check I was alright. It’s transcendentally terrible. When you’ve enjoyed the work of the modern master, go back and honour one of the greats.
I had way too many films to pick for this list. Once you start digging through trash, you’ll be amazed how deep it goes, whether you’re in the straight to VHS era in the eighties or the “there’s no way this was in multiplexes” era of the past decade. I didn’t even mention some of my favourites, like Cyborg Cop (and its magnificent sequel), Hard Ticket to Hawaii and the entire Andy Sidaris catalogue, Ma, Troma’s War, Samurai Cop and Troll 2, to name only the best examples I’ve found over the last five years. There’s a whole terrible world out there and if you ever need a guide, I am always here to be your Virgil for this trash inferno. I love recommending trash to people and not just because it gives some purpose to the hours of my life that would otherwise be judged to have been wasted on this finite time we have on Earth. Recommending is fun, you’re having an existential crisis, shut up. Just come dumpster diving with me, lets find some trash and have a terrible time together.
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