Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects  After the main trilogy, this is kind of depressing.  Content warning:  dead animals (apes, eagles)

Noa (Owen Teague) sets out on a journey of revenge after his tribe is murdered by rival apes.  He learns the teachings of Caesar from Raka (Peter Macon), a scholarly orangutan, and grudgingly tolerates a human, Mae (Freya Allen), following him.  He learns his tribe has been forcibly assimilated into the kingdom of Proximus (Kevin Durand), who yearns to have unquestioned dominion.  The key to this is hidden inside a bunker filled with weapons, locked away during the human wars.  Only Mae knows the way in, but she has an agenda of her own.

This movie feels extraneous but it does serve as a decent bridge between the Caesar trilogy and the original series or the 2001 Tim Burton remake, whichever you prefer.  Where the Caesar trilogy ends on a hopeful note (for some characters at least), this has a more ominous tone.  Which is fine, inevitable, really, I just wasn't in the mood to be brought down.  

The effects are good.  I don't know that they're great.  I feel like it's getting harder now because there's so much CGI in everything.  I wouldn't be mad if this won, but I feel like Dune 2 is going to take it.

Nosferatu (2024)

Nominated for Best Costume Design,  Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design  Content warning:  blood, child death, rats, maggots

Solicitor Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) has to cut short his honeymoon to his beloved Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) to travel to Transylvania and provide a real estate contract to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård).  What Hutter doesn't know is that the Count is an ancient undead who has been stalking psychically sensitive Ellen since childhood and now wants to claim her as his own.  Ellen has been having seizures and sleepwalking and generally being a nerve-wracking houseguest to the Hardings.  Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) summoned a doctor (Ralph Ineson) who called in a specialist, Professor von Franz (Willem Dafoe) who figures out the whole "accidentally bound to a vampire" thing pretty quickly.  Hutter tries to make his way back home while plague ravages the land and Orlok exerts his influence over Ellen.

The original Nosferatu was a plagiarized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula because the widow Stoker wouldn't sell the movie rights.  Which was fine in 1922. (I mean, it's not, don't plagiarize shit, but you know what I mean.)  But both Dracula and Nosferatu are now in the public domain and there's zero reason to not use the original.  Because if you don't use the original, none of the boat scenes make sense.  Nosferatu (2024) is set in Germany.  Transylvania --.> Germany is an overland trip.*

And that is me being pedantic.  The voyage of the Demeter is iconic whether it makes logical sense or not.

Production Design is impeccable.  The movie looks great.  There was clearly a lot of effort made to keep the spirit of the original while modernizing and adding a lot more backstory for Ellen.  Depp gives a towering performance.  If I'm super honest, Skarsgård was a little disappointing.  Loved the look.  He had the bushy Hussar mustache and bald head.  It's giving anorexic Dr. Robotnik.  Also appreciate that they kept him gross.  But his performance was a lot of growling and Christian-Bale-Batman-voice.  Everybody else got a chance to really shine, however, so maybe it's just the trade-off.

This is only my second Robert Eggers film and I flat hated the first one I saw so this is a marked improvement, but I still wouldn't rave about it.  It's not available quite yet so whip out that VPN.

*Reddit/Robert Eggers apologists have put forward that the boat took the Black Sea through the Dardanelles and then the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, and around the coast up to Germany but that sounds like a lot of people trying to justify when the real answer (plagiarism moved the setting from England to Germany) is much simpler.

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

  This is not the Planet of the Apes film nominated this year, but I couldn't watch Part 4 if I hadn't seen all previous entries.  I had seen Rise and Dawn but I missed War when it came out.  I don't know what I was expecting but "Ape Schindler's List" wasn't it.  Content warning:  war violence, concentration camp imagery, torture

Caesar (Andy Serkis) vows revenge on the Army colonel (Woody Harrelson) who killed his family.  He takes only his two closest friends and sends the rest of the tribe to a rumored sanctuary while he tracks down the colonel.  Along the way, he finds a mute human child (Amiah Miller) and a zoo escapee named Bad Ape (Steve Zahn).  Bad Ape knows where the colonel is holed up but Caesar is unprepared to find that his entire tribe had been captured and forced to work shoring up the defenses of the compound.  The colonel has gone rogue and is using the apes as slave labor to prepare for an assault by the rest of the military.  Caught between a psychopath's private army and the rest of the actual army, Caesar must decide whether to save his people or pursue his personal vendetta.

Bet you thought I was kidding about that Schindler's List comparison.  There are other obvious parallels to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, but there's a lot of Ralph Fiennes' Amon Goeth too.  Maybe because the plot is so dark, this is also the only film in the trilogy with a genuine Comic Relief character.  Now whether or not you find Steve Zahn funny is a matter of personal taste but it was interesting to note.

I saw the first two films in theaters but this was the first time watching them back-to-back and it is kind of astonishing how well they work together.  Especially since Rise had a different director.  It's to Matt Reeves' credit that he was able to craft two pretty seamless sequels and bring a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.  And of course, this would never have gotten off the ground if it weren't for Andy Serkis.  If there ever is an award for motion capture work, it should have his name on it.  

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects    I almost watched this for my 31 Days of Horror feature last year but it didn't quite make the cut-off.  This is the cover of the comic book, which I hope is better than the movie.

Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is desperate to get off the mining colony she is indentured to but the mandatory quota of hours has just been raised and her transfer is denied.  She learns that a small group led by her ex (Archie Renaux) has a plan to "borrow" some cryopods from a derelict research station before it is obliterated by the planet's ring and escape to hopefully greener pastures outside the grasp of Weyland-Yutani.  But they need her Synthetic, Andy (David Jonsson), to bypass the security inside.  Once aboard, they discover that the station was researching xenomorphs, but of course, by then it's too late.

This is set between Alien and Aliens and borrows plot points from everything through Covenant.  I can tell the plan was to unify all the films into one timeline but it really just seems like they were shoved in a blender and set to Chop.  I don't get the hype around Fede Alvarez.  He has not improved a single legacy franchise, as far as I'm concerned.

Visual effects are hit and miss.  The deepfake Ian Holm is atrocious and some of the CGI xenomorph movement blurs and looks a little fuzzy.  Not my favorite.  

A Different Man (2024)

Nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling     Our second Sebastian Stan performance and the one that should have gotten him nominated.

Edward (Sebastian Stan) has a rare cancer that causes tumors to grow on his face.  He joins an experimental drug trial that gives him back the life he thinks he should have had.  By chance, he discovers the neighbor he had a crush on (Renate Reinsve) has written a play about a man with facial deformities and the girl who loved him.  You can see where this is going.  He auditions for the part, using his old face as a mask but is quickly upstaged by Oswald (Adam Pearson), a man with facial deformities who is comfortable in his own skin.  Edward's life spins out of control as he grapples with a number of truths.

This just in:  Local man discovers beauty means nothing without a personality (and money but mostly personality)!  News at 11!

I called this The Substance for dudes and I'm not wrong.  Frankly, if either protagonist had a single (1) friend, neither one would have ended up where they did.  And/or a therapist.  Stan does a good job here but the material is frustratingly navel-gaze-y.  Pearson is a bubbly delight, but Reinsve feels underwritten in a Manic Pixie Dream Girl way.  For once, that actually serves the story since Edward mostly perceives her as an archetype, not a person, anyway.

Pacing is glacial.  There are long moments where the camera just pans between characters like Iñárritu in molasses.  I respect the attempt but it didn't work for me.  I just started fast-forwarding in 30-sec jumps and missed nothing.  

I thought this movie was a hot mess but it's streaming on (sigh) Max so you can see for yourself.  

Better Man (2024)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects    Content warning: drug use, attempted suicide

British singer Robbie Williams recounts his rise to fame as a member of a boy band, his split amid a haze of drug and alcohol abuse, success as a solo artist and crash as a human being, before getting clean and resuming his career.  But, you know, as a mo-cap chimp.

This is an absolutely bog standard musician biopic with the only difference being the mo-cap.  Is that enough of a novelty to win over an entire-ass franchise devoted to mo-cap chimps?  Who knows.  The musical numbers are fine.  I think the mo-cap is distracting.  I would have preferred just a straightforward film but this was clearly someone's vision.  

Is Robbie Williams famous enough for the biopic treatment?  According to this movie, he is very famous in Britain but is he Elton John famous?  Freddie Mercury famous?  Hell, I would have thought Mick Jagger would have gotten a biopic before this guy.  The entire movie is filled with his catalogue and I recognized precisely one song and didn't even know it was by him.  And I've been listening to pop music for 40 years.  

But he is definitely too famous to read this blog, so I feel okay talking shit.  LOL

This is not out on streaming yet so if you're really interested, feel free to dust off that VPN.

Gladiator II (2024)

Nominated for Best Costume Design    Content warning:  dead animals (CGI rhino), war violence, blood

Hanno (Paul Mescal) lived fairly happily outside the Roman empire until a legion led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) came and conquered them for the glory of the twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).  Hanno is sold to the gladiator stable of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a highly ambitious man with his own desire for vengeance, who recognizes a kindred spirit.  As Macrinus ingratiates himself to the emperors, Hanno competes and waits for his chance at the General whom he blames for all the excesses of the imploding empire.

Zero reason for this movie to be made.  It says nothing differently from the original and references it relentlessly.  It would be one thing if it had a point that it was trying to make, but it doesn't.  It's just nostalgia bait.  The costumes are good but they're also basically the same as from the first movie.  And there's so much CGI, you can barely focus on them anyway.

Washington walks off with this movie and it's not even a contest.  He's Macbeth in a toga.  Pascal is cashing a paycheck and Mescal is trying out his Russell Crowe impression.  You've seen better from both of them.

There are three speaking roles for women.  Two of them are fridged and the third is a spy with one line that doesn't further the plot in any way.  She is basically an extra.  

It's streaming on Paramount+ but so is Gladiator and if you have to choose, choose wisely.

The Apprentice (2024)

Nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor    I have no idea who the target audience for this is.  If you already liked Donald Trump, nothing you see here is going to change your mind, and if you already disliked Trump, you're probably sick of the sight of him and aren't going to watch this.  Content warning:  rape, homophobic slurs, antisemitism

In the late 70s, young real estate heir Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) wants to move out of his father's (Martin Donovan) shadow so he attaches himself to the coattails of notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).  Cohn blackmails, threatens, and blatantly lies his way through the dismissal of a discrimination lawsuit filed against the Trumps, earning Donald's admiration.  But as Trump's fortunes rise, Cohn lives long enough to regret the monster he in part created.

Sebastian Stan is fine in this.  He's basically doing a caricature.  At this point, I don't even think Olivier reborn could make me have an iota of empathy for Donald Trump.  I just don't have it in me and I resent the attempt.  But Jeremy Strong is so good, so good, that I did care a little bit about Roy Fucking Right-Hand-of-McCarthy-Let's-Kill-the-Rosenbergs Cohn.  Which means I am now rooting for him to win Best Supporting Actor.  Sorry, Yuriy.  

Zero reason for this movie to exist.  The good news is that it's not streaming anywhere and it will probably get buried in the next couple of months and we won't hear about it again until ten years from now or when Trump dies.  Whichever is sooner.

The Girl with the Needle (2024)

Nominated for Best International Feature    Content warning:  facial disfigurement, PTSD, drug use, attempted abortion with a knitting needle, infanticide, child abuse

I am so serious about these warnings.  

Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) works as a seamstress making war uniforms but not making enough to cover her rent.  She applies for a widow's stipend since she hasn't heard from her husband (Besir Zeciri) in over a year, but there's no record of him.  She has an affair with her wealthy boss (Joachim Fjelstrup) and thinks the resulting pregnancy is her ticket out of poverty but surprise!  It's not.  Desperate and poor, Karoline tries to self-abort in the baths but is prevented by Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a candy shop owner, who offers to take the baby and find a foster home if Karoline carries to term.  Since Karoline also needs a job after being fired by her Baby Daddy, she goes to work for Dagmar as a wet nurse, caring for the abandoned infants until they can be placed.  Things seem to be on the upward swing until she discovers what Dagmar is actually doing.

The Academy decided to embrace Women's Horror this year.  I'm still sad they didn't pick The Devil's Bath, which is almost the exact same movie, but I can guess why this one made the cut instead.  **DEEPLY CYNICAL SPECULATION AND ALSO MAYBE SPOILERS**  GwtN has an ostensibly happy ending (because she reconciles with her husband and adopts Erena, creating a stereotypical heteronormative family) and TDB does not.  Karoline shows remorse but lets Dagmar take the fall alone and faces zero consequences for her part while Agnes confesses and is executed.  Both are deeply tragic but GwtN pushes the horror onto a scapegoat and that one step away creates enough emotional distance for Academy voters to feel virtuous, instead of forcing them to confront the ways society has historically failed and punished women for existing, where TDB keeps the focus on Agnes, refusing to look away.  Also, the Academy fucking loves war and war-adjacent movies and dramatic uses of black-and-white film.  **END SPECULATION AND SPOILERS**

Every year, there's at least one film that is such a depressing slog it wrecks my timeline for watching.  This movie cost me three solid days.  It is unrelentingly bleak and I cannot stress the content warnings enough.  Do not put your mental health at risk for this.  It's streaming on Mubi, a stupidly named niche arthouse service, exclusively for now.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)

Nominated for Best International Feature   Content warning:  protest violence, blood

Najmeh (Sohelia Golestani) is trying to keep her family from falling apart after her husband (Missagh Zareh) gets promoted to Investigator for the theocratic Court in Tehran.  The position requires complete anonymity because of the fear of reprisal, so Najmeh cautions her two daughters against anything that would identify them or cause suspicion.  But Rezvan (Masha Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) are tired of the propaganda they've been fed their whole lives, and want to be involved with the on-going protests for women's rights.  When their father's gun goes missing, Najmeh must decide which is more important:  protecting her daughters or appeasing her husband.

The story itself is pretty basic --youth rebelling against authority-- and only elevated by the inclusion of actual protest footage that made it past the social media bans in Iran.  That is a hard watch but necessary.  Framing it in a fictional story probably had the added benefit of giving real-life authorities fewer people to target.  

The performances were good, especially Rostami, who acts as a moral compass for the film.  Pacing lags a bit, especially between setting changes, but that's a pretty minor complaint.  You might be able to catch this in theaters if you live near an arthouse one, but most likely you'll have to clicky-click that VPN if you want to watch it at home before the Oscars.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    No content warnings needed for this one!

Faithful companion Gromit feels the sting of rejection when Wallace (Ben Whitehead) invents a "helpful" robot gardener called Norbot (Reece Shearsmith) and seems to prefer its company.  But the pair's old nemesis, Feathers McGraw, is plotting revenge from his prison cell/enclosure and hacking Norbot is the first step.  Gromit must stop the rogue AI garden gnomes from destroying Wallace's good name and reputation and framing him for theft before Wallace is locked away.

At this point, the "turn evil" button/setting on robots is old hat but still funny.  I would have liked more focus on Feathers McGraw and less on the cops but I understand you need some characters to talk in your movie.  

If you are already a W&G fan, congrats on another successful entry.  If you're not, this won't make you one.  Head on back to Memoir of a Snail, fellow degenerate.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Memoir of a Snail (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature   Content warning:  animated nudity, child abuse, bullying, conversion therapy, homophobic hate crime, child death

Orphaned and separated across the continent, Australian twins Grace (Sarah Snook) and Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) dream of one day being reunited.  Grace retreats further into herself, becoming a hoarder and snail collector, while Gilbert rails against his cult-like foster family.

This is not a movie for children unless you feel like explaining a bunch of stuff.  This is in the vein of Mary & Max, also written and directed by Adam Elliot, and should not be confused with family friendly movies by LAIKA.  It ends up heartwarming but it takes its time getting to that point.  Still, we love stop-motion and it's always nice to see it represented.  

It's currently only available to rent or buy and if you like quirky, off-kilter characters, it's worth tossing some cash at for a one-time watch.

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    I was prepared to write this off as the obligatory Pixar inclusion but I actually really loved it.  

Riley (Kinsington Tallman) is a teenager now and her emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) have been working overtime to keep up.  But with new stressors --hockey camp, meeting her high school idol, finding out this is her last year with her best friends-- comes new puberty-enhanced emotions like Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (Ayo Edibiri), and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos).  Joy has been carefully tending Riley's Sense of Self only to have Anxiety begin to threaten her artfully chosen memories.

Once again, the Inside Out characters delve into thorny psychological concepts with wit and humor overlaying true understanding.  I love that the Core Memories from the first have become a garden of Beliefs that form Riley's sense of Self and how delicate they can be, but also how mutable.  The Self isn't static; it's constantly responding to new stimuli and changing into new shapes.  And that Joy's blithe insistence on only holding on to positive beliefs actually weakens Riley so that the first negative thing that happens causes her to spiral into anxiety.  

I don't want to go too deeply into the ending but I found it to have really powerful imagery that's mostly unspoken.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW**  She floods Riley's memory pond with conflicting --even negative-- emotions, forcing her confront her actions and sparking introspection, a more nuanced sense of Self, and enhanced maturity.  **END SPOILERS**  It's given the context of "feeling your feelings" but it was more than just that for me.  How we feel influences how we see ourselves and toxic positivity is just as damaging as its opposite.

Inside Out 2 is currently streaming on Disney+.

Flow (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature  This movie stressed me out.  

A cat must navigate a world threatened by rising water, finding relative safety on a boat with a crew of other random animals as they search for high ground.

This was the Oscar submission from Latvia and it's one of the strongest animated showings I've seen in years.  I felt genuine distress every time that cat was in danger.  I was a little distracted at first because the collection of animals is weird: a capybara, a secretary bird, a ring-tailed lemur, and a golden retriever, all of which are from different continents, but the architecture of the human (?) built structures is also weird so then I didn't care as much.  It's obviously some sort of fantasy setting.  (Tyler suggested it takes place in Hyrule.)  

There's no attempt made to anthropomorphize the animals so it's completely wordless, which means you have to pay attention to every frame.  This is not the movie to have on while you play on your phone.  

The animation is very soft and almost dream-like.  I generally don't pay attention to the score but it is also very soothing.  It reminds me of music you'd hear in a video game, present but not calling attention to itself.  In fact, I would not be surprised to find that this started out as a cut-scene or demo of a planned video game like Stray.  Too lazy to look it up though.

It's currently only in theaters (if you're lucky) or available through your handy-dandy VPN.

The Wild Robot (2024)

Nominated for Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Animated Feature     Dreamworks with a very strong showing this year.  Content warning:  animal death (animated, mostly off-screen)

A helper robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) crashes onto an island with wildlife as the only inhabitants.  Her attempts to "help" the natives are met with fear, distrust, and in some cases, violence until she accidentally hatches a goose egg and the gosling imprints on her.  Raising an infant of a non-programmed species is hard, so she enlists the help of Fink (Pedro Pascal), a fox, to fill in the gaps of her knowledge.

The moral of this story is Kindness is a Survival Skill, which is frankly a bold choice in this, the worst timeline.  It's a little simplistic when you really scrutinize it (wtf is the lynx supposed to do in this socialist utopia?  It can't just eat acorns) but for a kid's movie, it's a good baseline.

It does kind of feel like two movies smashed together.  There's the expected "robot learns to feel" storyline which takes up the first half, and then it just...keeps going.  This isn't necessarily a complaint.  We've seen dozens of the "robot learns to feel" stories, but because the beats are so familiar going beyond them can almost feel like fatigue.  Like when you watched the first half hour of Up and then you're like, Jesus, there's a whole-ass movie after this??  But life doesn't just stop once your kids leave the nest (ha ha, get it?) and it's nice that the movie acknowledges that.

It's streaming on Peacock.

A Real Pain (2024)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay    Content warning:  Holocaust, concentration camp imagery

David (Jesse Eisenberg) booked a trip to Poland with his slacker cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) to honor their late grandmother.  Benji is by turns charming and abrasive, causing friction in the rest of the tour group and leaving David to deal with the emotional turmoil left in Benji's wake.

This movie said nothing and showed even less.  There's a lot about familial guilt but zero acknowledgement that sometimes you have to let people go when they don't want to be helped.  Instead, it wallows in vague bad feelings.  

A slog and not worth your time, but streaming on Hulu.

Anora (2024)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing    Content warning:  homophobic slurs

Ani (Mikey Madison) is a stripper/sex worker who thinks she's hit the lottery when she meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch.  Ivan spends money like water, loving the freedom that comes from being young, rich, and 8000 miles away from his parents.  He knows it's his last trip to America before joining his dad's company and wants to make the most of it.  So he flies Ani to Vegas and marries her.  And then posts it on social media because he's an idiot.  His mother (Darya Ekamasova) immediately dispatches Toros (Karran Karagulian), who was supposed to be supervising Ivan, to have the marriage annulled.  Ivan bolts, leaving Ani to deal with the fallout.  

There is nothing original here and I have no idea why this got six nominations when Hustlers --a film about strippers directed and written by women starring a woman of color and based on a true story-- didn't get a single one.  I mean, I have an idea why, obviously, a film about a stripper written and directed by a man starring a white woman got nominated, but it's not polite.

Sean Baker is a rising star whose previous films have focused on marginalized people.  That is good and I fully support that.  Anora feels regressive and more like a story that would have been made in the early 2000s.  Madison doesn't bring anything really noteworthy to the character, other than being young, beautiful, and willing to be traumatized on screen (always Academy catnip).  Ani grimly clings to a fantasy so hard it moves past naïveté and into delusion, all while being completely unsympathetic.  Points for realism, I guess, because everyone knows a girl like this, but most people have the good sense to cut ties with them pretty quickly.  

But by far the most egregious nomination is for film editing.  This movie is two hours and 18 minutes long and it could have been cut by a third.  So many scenes were repetitive and added nothing we didn't already know.  Baker probably could have hired out for this instead of trying to do it himself.

Yuriy Borisov is a literal angel and deserves this nomination.  #TeamIgor You deserved so much better, my darling.

Conclave (2024)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design    Man, I love movies about popes.  This is not to say that I love the Roman Catholic Church as an institution or organized religion in general, but every story about a papal conclave is so full of drama and intrigue.  It's like the world's highest-budget Real Housewives of Jesus.

As Dean of the College of Cardinals, it is Father Lawrence's (Ralph Fiennes) job to convene a conclave to choose the next pope.  It is a hugely political affair with rival factions behind the hardline traditionalists led by Father Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), the moderates behind Father Tremblay (John Lithgow), and the reformists represented by Father Bellini (Stanley Tucci).  Moments before the doors are closed to sequester the priests away, a newly created cardinal, Father Benitez (Carlos Diehz), is admitted.  Dean Lawrence must keep the cardinals from being influenced by the outside world, but soon discovers that corruption may have already been spread.

There's at least one major spoiler.  I thought it was pretty obvious but that doesn't mean I'm going to ruin it for others.  Fiennes has always been great and he's very good here.  I don't know if he's going to win because I haven't seen anyone else in the category yet, but an excellent performance regardless.  Isabella Rossellini's nom feels like one of the Academy's belated Lifetime Achievement awards.  She doesn't have a lot to do here.  Tucci steals every scene.  The man does more with a look than most people do in their entire careers.

So far this is my favorite.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

Emilia Perez (2024)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Song (x2), Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Film Editing    Content warning:  kidnapping, discussion of medical procedures, cartel violence, mass graves, dismemberment (fingers cut off)

Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated Mexico City lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) gets an offer she can't refuse from a cartel leader looking to make a change.  In exchange for several million untraceable dollars, Rita researches and compares doctors worldwide to find a reassignment specialist and helps her client fake an appropriate death.  Years later, Rita is approached once more by the new and improved Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofia Gascón) who feels the heat has died down significantly enough to renew her relationship with her former wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children.  

Let me begin by saying that when I watched this I was unaware of the controversy surrounding it.  My first impression is that it was entertaining but had some significant flaws.  The plot meanders and could do with some tighter editing, and the songs (oh, it is a full-blown musical, by the way) are okay but lacked pizzazz.  I think contemporary musicals are like this.  You either embrace the OTT nature and lean in or you might as well just film a straight drama.  Saldaña is the star of this film and she should have been nominated for Best Actress, not Supporting.  No shade to Gascón, but Saldaña literally dances away with the movie.

So the main controversy is that this is a French film set in Mexico but filmed in Paris with no Mexican leads and the director admitted he did zero research and was plainly uninterested in any sort of nuance surrounding narcocultura, modern Mexico, or even transitioning.  And it shows.  This is very trope-y, generic, clichéd window dressing for a story that could have been set anywhere.  This could have been a Breaking Bad episode.  Audiard told reporters that he wanted to see if he as a 70-year-old white cis heterosexual man could make a film about transitioning without getting cancelled.  Is that a good enough reason?  Probably not.  But it happened anyway.  And Netflix has thrown a fuckton of money into campaigning for this Oscar season.  

As a piece of streaming entertainment, I thought it was fine.  If it were not nominated for 13 Oscars, it would probably just disappear into obscurity as a pandering, stereotypical cash grab.  But it is nominated, so now the question becomes is this outrage going to propel this film into being awarded Best Picture?

It's currently streaming on Netflix.