The Brutalist (2024)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Production Design    Content warning:  rape, drug use

Lazlo Tóth (Adrian Brody) escaped the Holocaust and immigrated to America.  While working at his cousin's furniture store, he garners the attention of business magnate Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), whose patronage allows Tóth to stretch his creativity and design a community center.  But Tóth's self-destructive behaviors combined with latent anti-semitism and Van Buren's overbearing need for control threaten to destroy everything he has built.  

I couldn't engage with this on any level.  It was one of the nominees I was most looking forward to and my disappointment is severe.  

There is zero reason this needed to be nearly three and a half hours long.  Tectonic plates move faster than this movie.  It's so interested in subtext it forgets to have actual text.  It doesn't have anything noteworthy or different to say and it's not fun to watch.  

That being said, the cinematography is really beautiful.  Also, the use of editing to allude to events without showing is extremely well done.  If it wins anything, I hope it's one of those.  But I sincerely want it to lose everything else.  It's not my most hated film of the year but it's a close second.