The Oscars: Glazer’s Speech

Somebody was going to mention Palestine. This we knew. After all, the Academy asked a room of cynical film executives and incisive artists to celebrate themselves in front of a live television audience. What more could we expect than a spitting contest of performative agendas? We should concede, first, that the Oscars have always been a charade.

The Oscar Nominees: The Ones I Liked*

I may have aged another year, but I remain in the same state of arrested development that holds dear a decade-long obsession with the Academy Awards. This year, at least, has been an uncharacteristically good year for the kind of prestige awards fodder that ends up nominated, and though (as always) I didn’t like everything, I found a lot of really enjoyable bits in almost all the best picture nominees, even the bad ones. I’ve already reviewed Killers of the Flower Moon, The Zone of Interest and Barbie/Oppenheimer for The Sun (not to mention the excellent reviews of the last two from other Staff Writers), but there are six more Best Picture nominees that are worth talking about. Although the distinction is arbitrary, I’ve split them into two articles, one covering the ones I liked (or reservedly recommend) and another the ones I liked less (or think might merit a skip). Without further ado, here are the ones I liked: 

American Fiction 

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, adapted from the 2001 novel Erasure, attempts to simultaneously satire the current state of Black literature and backdoor a compelling family drama in the space of two hours.

The Blood-Curdling Sadness of All of Us Strangers

I took my mom to see All of Us Strangers over the break, after American Fiction had sold out and Poor Things had seemed a bit explicit for a family viewing. She liked the movie but noted that the conclusion had confused her: Why wasn’t Adam sadder in the end? After all, the final “twist” of the film is unambiguously devastating, and he does seem to take it fairly well. I found it less frustrating from a narrative perspective, but nonetheless troubling for the film’s conclusion. Sold as this year’s  “most likely to make you cry” film, All of Us Strangers does not simply tug at the heartstrings or offer a moment of cathartic melancholy, but rather renders in its viewer a sense of unshakeable loneliness, as necessary to the human condition as is its denial to a peaceful existence.

‘Everything Everywhere’ at the Oscars

The Everything Everywhere All at Once sweep at the Oscars shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s been familiar with the race for the past six or so months. It’s been in the driver’s seat the whole time, and the ceremony proved to be the coronation that most expected, with few other films finding their place on the stage. Sweeping every above-the-line category in which it was nominated, the film has now entered Oscar history as one of the most decorated films ever at the Academy Awards. Such an honor couldn’t have happened to a stranger film, representing at once one of the first genre exercises recognized, an absurdist comedy with a distinctly contemporary sense of humor, and a film with a diverse cast about the Asian-American experience. It’s been quickly canonized and attributed classic status, but how good really is it? 

The opening sequence to Everything Everywhere is spectacular, easily the best in the entire film.

The 2023 Academy Awards Return to the Mellow Ceremony We Know Them As

The 2023 Academy Awards marked the 95th anniversary of the annual award ceremony, and unlike last year, the night was calm and drama-free. The previous year’s ceremony gained attention for the “slap heard around the world” when Will Smith, who won “Best Actor” later that night, slapped actor and comedian Chris Rock on stage while he was presenting an award. This year’s Oscars were much more mellow, with celebrities on their best behavior and no real surprises as far as who took home awards and who left empty-handed. Of course, host Jimmy Kimmel made a few references to last year’s drama in his opening monologue, but luckily, nothing like that incident was seen this year. Instead of being overshadowed by scandal, this year’s ceremony celebrated some deserving and historic wins across all categories.

Oscars 2023: The Best of (most of) the Rest

In my quest to review all of the Best Picture nominees at a rate of one film per week starting with the beginning of the semester and leading to the Academy Awards, I neglected one fact: The date of the Oscars. Unfortunately, as I recently realized, I am now out of time to write and publish the remaining few reviews in such a time span. As such, this article will cover three of the remaining nominees, excluding one which is the presumptive winner and another which is an optimistic hedge (you may guess which is which). Those articles should be coming next week, and if neither film ends up as the actual best picture winner, I apologize. 

Triangle of Sadness

There was a period of time (somewhere between the 1950s and 1970s or so) when European anti-capitalist satires were some of the best in film. I refer mostly to the brilliant exploits of Luis Buñuel, but also to a more general satirical inventiveness, even including such terrifying classics as Salò.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a Photocopy of a Photocopy

The last time a filmed adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for Best Picture, Variety suggested distribution by the League of Nations, its premiere was sabotaged by Hitler’s Brownshirts, and the film was banned in Australia for fear that it would undermine faith in the military. Its then-radical pacifistic message proved to be a prescient omen between two World Wars and the filmmaking language it’s credited with inventing became a blueprint for the entire war genre subsequent to its release. 

The 2022 remake, a German-language Netflix production from relatively unknown director Edward Berger, attempts to argue for existence on the same grounds. A war in Ukraine and apparent proximity to nuclear catastrophe would suggest the need for a reminder of the horrors of war. In reality, the new All Quiet on the Western Front represents a lateral step in the history of the war film; it ironically retreads the same path of the genres’ previous decades while undercutting its own premise through distanced filmmaking and attempts at distinction. 

The 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front opens cleverly, depicting a horrifying battle through the eyes of non-characters, all rapidly dying. Very quickly, we realize that the continuity between the opening and the main plot is the uniforms, taken off the dead men before being washed and recycled for the next stage of recruits.