Best Picture

[tskirvin]

I've seen 7.5 out of the 9 Best Picture nominees this year. Some thoughts.

1917

It's a World War 1 movie, and it's good at its job. I don't really know what more to say than that; it portrays the horrors and banality of war in a shocking manner, and the central "one shot" gimmick is only a little bit in the way.

Ford v Ferrari

This movie was perfectly good, and I see why others found it appealing. It's a movie about cars and racing and bonds between men and corporate culture; at its core it's a sports movie, so not quite my thing but I do appreciate what it is.

The Irishman

Scorsese does another mob movie, this time about Jimmy Hoffa with a side dose of meditation on age. It probably needed to be split into at least two parts in order to really work; parts of it were classic Scorsese, parts of it were simply slow and meditative, and they don't really work together that well.

Joker (didn't see)

I really don't want to see this movie. I hate the Joker as a character so much, regardless of this movie; ever since he combined "chaotic evil" with "perfect omniscience", sometime around _Dark Knight_ and well after Mark Hamill's take on him, I've been angry at the very concept of him. He works in relation to Harley Quinn, and he *doesn't* work in relation to Batman. So I don't want to watch an origin story about him, thank you very much.

Jojo Rabbit

The trailers made it out to be a wacky story about Hitler and a 10yo kid, and that wasn't right. Instead it's a WW2 movie about Germany and hatred and survival and futility and all of the standard stuff, just focusing on the perspective of a child. It was sad and painful and strong. I really liked it a lot.

Little Women

I had never seen an adaptation of Little Women before this one, so I really didn't know what to expect, nor did I know for sure where the lines were between "what I should expect" and "what Gerwig added to the mix". Everything about the movie was excellent - actors, script, directing, sets, costumes, and the interpretation of the material. It's probably my pick for second best.

Marriage Story (half-watched, may not complete)

I watched about half of this last night, and stopped. It's a movie about a painful divorce between theatre types involving lots of money and multiple cities and a kid; so there's parts of it that are "but for the grace of the Gods go I", and there's parts that are simply out of my world. It was painful and ugly and made me feel about how I expect that people that don't like blood feel about action movies.

Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood

I feel like this movie fits Tarantino fans perfectly. It mostly baffled me, but I didn't really know much about the time period it was supposed to be covering, and didn't come out really caring.

Parasite

This is the best picture. This should win. This was a truly excellent and thoughtful movie about class and duty and a variety of other things that I still don't feel comfortable talking about because the spoilers are still worth avoiding.