Every Best Picture nominee at this year’s Oscars, ranked from worst to best
Here's where our chief film critic stands on Dune, Don't Look Up, and the rest
Film Features Oscars
When nominations for the 94th annual Academy Awards were announced this year, 10 movies made the Best Picture lineup for the first time in 11 years. Many words could be expended here on the fluctuating number of available slots in that top category, which over the last decade has allowed for as few as five or as many as 10, depending on the amount of consensus support the films got during voting. This year, though, the Academy changed its rules and explicitly set the lineup at an even 10 movies, which the organization hasn’t done since the dawn of the 2010s. Perhaps they were hoping a guaranteed full double-digit slate would nudge that gigantic Spider-hit into contention, the better to boost sliding ceremony ratings. They’ll have to make due with Dune, and also maybe the streaming smash Don’t Look Up.
Best Picture is a full spectrum of budgets and subject matter this year, ranging from that aforementioned sci-fi monolith to what has to count as one of the artiest and least likeliest of nominees in this category ever. (Hint: It’s the one all the Oscar bloggers were up in arms about critics’ groups honoring in the early days of our endless awards season.) The actual quality of the movies up for the big prize ranges, too—though, of course, that’s always true and always a matter of opinion. Consider the full ranking of the Best Picture nominees that follows simply one man’s opinion, formed after another year on the review beat, watching spectacles he loved, coming-of-age dramas he didn’t, and everything in between. Fair warning: The list starts with a blast crater of disapproval, and takes a few clicks to get much more forgiving.
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Nightmare Alley at 6? That bad a year for film, I guess.It’s the only of these I’ve seen, and I found it terrible the same way Crimson Peak was. Beautiful to look at (less so than Crimson Peak), but vapid and void of purpose.The worst part was that the ending was telegraphed so obviously and early. But the story said nothing, the acting and characters were dull, and I know it’s a remake of 80 year old source material, but I’ve seen Tales From the Crypt tell the same story multiple times, but better
FFS, I was rushing headlong to say this and was actually relieved someone beat me to it. NIGHTMARE ALLEY felt so hollow, arch, and wholly predictable to me (without the benefit of familiarity with the original), that its design was all I felt it had going for it.
KING RICHARD, on the other hand, may have been safe and pleasantly predictable in its own ways, but man, that was a film I was not looking forward to and – from the go – found thoroughly satisfying. More than ALLEY, more even than DUNE (which also had a gazing hollowness I couldn’t abide).
Having not yet seen LICORICE PIZZA or DRIVE MY CAR, I would nod with appreciation if DOG ended up sweeping all its award categories.
The first hour of Nightmare Alley may very well be Del Toro’s masterpiece. Then you realize the characters are leaving the most interesting thing in the movie and there’s still NINETY MINUTES TO GO.
I couldn’t quite believe that that choice was made. You set up that entire spectacle and then just abandon it? It really made me wonder what the movie intended to do for the next 90 minutes to top it—but then failed to.
And the ending was so contrived it was risible.
That bad a year for film, I guess.The state of the Best Picture nominees doesn’t really tell you much about the state of the year in film. The two are vaguely related at best.I actually liked Nightmare Alley quite a bit despite agreeing with some of your criticism. And it comes in one place higher on my Best Picture ranking than it does on Alex’s. But it’s my 28th favorite movie of the year at present and I still have several that I want to see.
“And it comes in one place higher on my Best Picture ranking than it does on Alex’s.”
Yeah, you would be the self-important twat who advertises that he has a top ten as well.
I love Guillermo and I love the original Nightmare Alley… but yeah this one was a stinker. Each actor felt like they were in a different movie. Cooper kind of sleepwalks through it unless he’s overacting. Toni Collette, who I love, was all over the place. Beautiful to look at but a bit of a mess everywhere else.And this year was definitely the year impacted by COVID. Safety protocols bloated the cost of production so there was a lot less in the “middle tier” of budgets that usually fills the Oscar noms. That all being said, I’m still stunned there was nothing for Green Knight.
I admit I didn’t know Nightmare Alley was a remake based on a novel when I went into it. I went into it solely on the trailers that made it seem like an almost horror movie set in a Carnival with a dark secret.
Holy hell was I disappointed.
I actually loved Crimson Peak, warts and all, but Nightmare Alley was a disappointment. Something about the pacing felt weird and yes, absolutely, I hadn’t seen the original but still thought “oh, great, yeah, they’re explaining X plot element. I can’t wait for this to be the exact ending to the movie because we need a frying pan to the head.”
Having said that, the psychiatrist’s office was amazing. The performances were better than they had any right to be, but it’s just not a good movie the more I think about it.
Too much hate for Don’t Look Up. It’s no masterpiece but I thought it was fun.
Yeah, I don’t get all the criticism either. I was interested in seeing it from the start but held off because I heard so many negative things. Once I did see it, I really enjoyed the plot, the satire, the acting. Did I bust a gut laughing? No. But a lot of it was funny, and the ending has stuck with me for weeks. All in all, I’d say it was a success. Maybe I liked it so much because it seemed like an updated end-of-the-world sci-fi movie from the 60s.
For starters, it was at least 45 mins too long. They should have cut all of the scenes with Chalamet and also the scenes with Dicaprio and Blanchett hooking up as I don’t think they added anything to the story. The acting was good except that the tech billionaire guy felt like a bad SNL character and he was hard to watch. There was one good running joke (getting charged for the free food) and a few earned chuckles from some of the Jonah Hill lines but otherwise it was actively unfunny. This all adds up to a long boring slog. I’d love it if someone made a film that fits in somewhere between this and Idiocracy though.
Definitely too long and too many characters that none of them were fully fleshed out. Jennifer Lawrence was great but beyond the “no one listens to women” one or two off joke/criticism her character was unneeded. Fold her character into Leo’s and make it a woman and we’re good to go.
A shlumpy woman who has an affair with a male newscaster?
I liked the length. It seemed like the cowboy astronaut guy was going to save the day Armageddon-style (boring) and then everything was turned on its head and the movie became a lot more current and interesting. That was the first of at least a couple of turns I didn’t see coming, which I enjoyed.I agree about Chalamet, but I thought the Dicaprio/Blanchett stuff was integral to the plot. It’s so easy to get sucked into the game and forget what’s important. And still think you’re doing what’s right. Creepy.
The satire was way off though. Much of what should have been funny was too close to reality (bureaucratic lethargy) or too far from it. In Dr. Strangelove mostly everything was close to believable. The big joke at the end of Dr. Strangelove was the generals were willing to blow up the world for sex. They played the card and ended the movie. In this one…corporatist were willing to risk the world for money – which is not necessarily wrong but also not funny as former rodeo man Slim Pickens riding a bomb like a bucking bronco. They risked the world for cash and lost…and the movie kept going. All the main characters and their children and grand children were shown being incinerated – which was not funny in any way – and they showed the bad guys getting away – which was not really satire unless you think of them as the phone cleaners in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy but their uselessness was not clear either.
I love the scene where everyone gets incinerated. I didn’t think it was funny, but I was definitely moved by it. The heroes lost, but they maintained their humanity.As opposed to the survivors, who were not only dumb but also mostly old people as far as I could tell. Would they even be able to continue the species?We’ll probably have to agree to disagree, but I found a lot to like in the end of the movie especially.
No I agree with you, it was a great scene. It just seems it was a scene from a better movie. For me the tone was off. It was just not satirical but tragic and would have fit in a disaster epic like Titanic or even Deep Impact. Maybe if the monsters at the end ate everyone right there and then I would have liked it more. I assume that is what is going to happen anyways.
I didn’t even know it was a satire going in, but once it became clear the movie isn’t funny “haha” but funny as a critique, Don’t Look Up just
clicked for me. The pressure of putting a positive spin on science for the sake
of convenience? Yes! The way fear (the appropriate response ) can be villainized and chastized, while playing the game can
get you farther- even if you get so swept up you nearly become a
sellout? Yes! The desire to mine the rock for resources because Big
Tech runs the world, and it gets to the point where we have no choice
but to rely on capitalism to save us? Yes! Our knack for prioritizing
trivial things like celebrity breakups over impending doom because of
where the ratings and clicks trend? Yes! The inevitability of politicizing
a world-ending event as a campaign strategy? Yes! The tribalism that
comes with slogans because we can’t get out of our own echo chambers?
Yes! There’s cynicism, there’s apathy, there’s toxic positivity (How
does a concert from Arianna Grande fix the problem? It doesn’t!), and
when the film concluded with failure, and NOT saving the day, I was
happy to see this movie was giving me everything I wanted!
As the Fisher quote goes: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism.” This
film and I were on the same wavelength, the whole way. I guess it preached to the choir, but Don’t Look Up progressed in a way that felt natural and authentic to how infuriating
we’ve become as a society, and I totally buy that this is mostly
how such an event would play out in real life (because it kind of is
already is with any number of existential crises right now).
I mean, the criticisms seem pretty well deserved for a movie with this much self-importance and a director who seems to be competing with Todd Phillips to be more up their own ass while whining about people not liking their movie.
This is a ranking of the best picture nominees, not a ranking of every movie made last year. I haven’t seen every movie on the list (have made my way through 4 of them) but Don’t Look Up is simultaneously 1) A completely serviceable, entertaining movie and 2) the worst of all the best picture nominees I’ve seen so far. Both can be true.
Every real person I’ve ever talked to liked it a lot. Online critics have too much pick me energy.
I guess I’m a fake person. I always suspected it, but it sucks to find out this way.
Whew! I was worried there might not be a smug cock who needs to make a general statement all about themselves. Thanks.
I assure you, plenty of us “real people” think it’s garbage. Hardly anyone I know liked it.
I was planning to skip it based on the reviews that called it unfunny satire with sledgehammer subtlety, but have now read enough comments to the contrary that I’m going to give it a shot. I don’t feel the need to be preached at, but as someone who is skeptical of the capabilities and motivations of government officials it sounds kind of up my alley. In the Loop is one of my favorite comedies of the last ~10 years.
I mean, its the AV Club where they laid off their entire staff just because they didnt want to move half way across the country to a more expensive city with no cost of living adjustment. And you expect honest and thoughtful critiques from the scabs they replaced the old staff with? This place is clickbait central, all they care about is writing some stupid shit you just cant help but comment on.
I know tons of people who very much hated it. And online critics are also people, by the way. They tell you what they thought, except they write it down. I can’t believe how often viewers act like critics are grown in a test tube, or that they themselves aren’t being critics when they say they like or dislike a movie. That stance is just dumb.
Libs are very quick to call these types of movies smug, as if it’s a race to get to the word before Fox News can. Like, we’re not one of those stuffy coastal film critics, we’re one of the good ones! We think it’s smug too!I have to admit, it ain’t real funny though.
Smug is not a disqualifier. I mean I know people who still love The West Wing, which was wall-t0-wall smug for what, 30 or 40 seasons.
That might be because The West Wing, a drama, was actually funny sometimes.
What’s weird is the Venn diagram of people who think West Wing was too smug but love the smugness of Don’t Look Up.It’s nearly a circle.
It wasn’t that it was smug, it was that it was dull as dishwater.
And painfully unfunny.
At least dishwater has substance floating in it, this movie didn’t even have that.
I honestly don’t even agree with the idea that the movie is smug. Preachy and didactic, sure. But self-satisfied? I don’t see it. I mean, the whole point of the movie is that everyone agrees that the comet is a problem; it’s just that moneyed interests prevent regular folk from stopping it. The movie isn’t saying, “Climate change is a problem is a problem, ya dummies.” It’s starting from the premise that climate change is a problem and then saying, “Follow the money.”
I enjoyed it. My family works “that must be a bronteroc” into conversation pretty frequently now. Mark Rylance was great.
Don’t Look Up was preachy and unsubtle which, hey, maybe some people need that to get a fucking clue about climate change and misinformation, etc. even though the likelihood of this movie being watched by people who aren’t already liberal is pretty small. But ok, let’s say that’s who you’re aiming for. Then at least make the jokes funny and hire someone who actually knows how to edit a movie.
Gotta remember that liberals are far closer to conservatives than actual leftists
what’s your point and how does that have anything to do with this movie sucking?
Nobody but Republican shitbirds use the term “leftist”
lolLeftists use the term leftist.
What childish nonsense. BOTH SIDES! BOTH SIDES!
You nailed it, the movie was so poorly executed and seemed to be catered to the crowd that loves/lives to hate trump and his followers. Most of the people that liked it are in that crowd and need things spoon fed to them to get it.
I don’t get the hate either. I don’t think it’s Oscar material, but I laughed my ass off throughout. Meryl Streep as Donald Trump 2.0? Every single thing Timothee Chalamet says? “Sir, can I just be vulnerable in your car for a minute?”
I know! More like Don’t Look Up My Generally Positive Review of the Movie! AMIRITE?!?
It was so broad and the Meryl Streep character was bad but it was entertaining.I hope it wins just for the gnashing of teeth and rendering of garments.
“It was so broad”
Yeah, it’s ALMOST as if it were satire or something…
Bad, but it WAS entertaining.- The A.V. Club
I agree; fun and entertaining. I found the governments reaction to cataclysmic information to be exactly what would probably happen. I think the entire premise behind impending doom is thought provoking because the world would absolutely revert to chaos the moment the announcement would be made. You thought hording toilet paper was bad the last 24 months…
It was absolutely entertaining and funny. Maybe not laugh out loud but one of the better movies I’ve seen lately. And I disagree with all the “it’s too long, needs editing” criticism. This is the era of binge watching bore you to tears series that last 6 seasons or more when they should have wrapped it up after two at most. Even one of my favorites – Yellowjackets – has waaay too much present day fluff which adds very little to the plot. They won’t give us what we’re waiting for, even though we all know, to keep us coming back for more. Good for money, bad for the viewer. I have no complaints about a 2 1/2 hour movie that keeps me entertained.
I don’t understand why it became this flashpoint, so I checked it out. It was fine, mostly I just found it way too preachy and not very funny. Definitely felt every single one of its 138 minute runtime too.
See, fun was the last word I’d describe it as. I didn’t have fun during the movie at all and was all ready for it to end. I mean, performance wise, is was a terrific film…but I just didn’t love it, despite wanting to love it oh so much
But in the context of best picture does fun cut it?
People are mad that it makes them feel bad about themselves.
I kinda have to agree with a lot the criticism though. Much of the comedy fell flat for me and I’m not sure because the timing or the jokes themselves weren’t particularly funny or the fact that they’re all underpinned by the movie’s aforementioned preachyness about society’s willful ignorance of a global threat. Leo DeCaprio was fine and Jonah Hill was….well…Jonah Hill. Meryl Streep trying to do Glenn Close in Mars Attacks just didn’t work.
Mars Attacks was fun and didn’t take itself seriously under a thin veneer of comedy.
We watched Don’t Look Up back to back with Mars Attacks a few weeks ago and let me tell you…Mars Attacks washes the “Don’t Look Up is broad” taste out of your mouth real quick.
Fun, but not Oscar material, maybe. To be honest, I spent most of its running time wishing and hoping it would be funnier and that everyone was either overracting or not bothering at all, but I did think that last dinner scene really brought it all home and was a really beautiful piece of filmmaking.
It was awful. People watched it because it was on Netflix which gives you an instant audience of millions who will watch anything.The worst part was how unfunny it was. As my daughter would say, the whole thing was “cringe”.Oscars get more and more pointless every year.
It’s no masterpiece…Which is fine, but then you’re admitting there’s movies more deserving of the nods.
I love “Don’t Look Up”. Its favorable comparisons to “Dr. Strangelove…” & “Network” are justified & those 2 classics were hated as much as they were loved when they first hit.On a side note: As a 100% “cat person” I could’ve done without the monster in the masterful “The Shape of Water” not biting the cat’s head off, but I tolerated it as a monster acting like a monster.
I tried to watch it with my best friend and we could not even finish it (we watched like half an hour). Same thing happened to my sister. In our opinion, the film isn’t entertaining at all. Its message is increadibly on the nose, and it’s clear that it believes to be subtle and nuanced. It was a really unpleasant experience (the editing, the music, the characters,…). It was an SNL sketch that took itself way to seriously, thus making it not very funny (in our opinion). And really its message is so obvious from the get-go, they don’t try to make it at least entertaining and fun. Everything goes exactly as you’d expect, and it takes so long to properly start. I remember the scene where they were at the white house waiting… oh my god, it just would not end, it was so excruciatin, we get it, politicians don’t care. How is this not simply frustrating? Same thing happened when they go on the news. It was scene after scene of visual frustration.
Sorry for the rant. Have a good one.
I made it an hour and a half in, had to stop because it was just long unfunny and poorly executed. I waited 10 minutes and figured if I went this far, I should finish it. Didn’t get any better and was disappointed because it was a film that should have been so much better based on the plot and cast. You are on point about it being a bad SNL sketch that took itself too seriously and went on way too long.
Some people just don’t know a good film when they see it.
The biggest gripe repeated over and over is that “It’s no ‘Doctor Strangelove’” Of course it isn’t! You can’t hold that standard to ever satirical movie, that’s absurd. But it’s still a solid satire with some great gags, Lawrence’s character being perpetually perplexed the General charged them 10 dollars for chips and water was my favourite running gag of 2021. (Runner up running gag, “Goddamn eels” from Spider-Man: No Way Home which should have been nominated outta freakin’ 10 movies)
I went in blind, only knowing that it was an asteroid movie starring two people I’d never expect to see in an asteroid movie. One actor I really like, and one actor I kind of don’t. Directed by a guy I can’t stand at all. AND I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT IT.
When you’re doing satire you don’t need to do SATIRE. This is the problem with Don’t Look Up which is a monstrous piece of unfunny, eye-roll inducing poo.
Here’s more hate. I hated it. Sorry.
Yeah… a sociopolitically timely broad farce (with a couple of tasty bites of Easter egg for those who stick around through the credits) that I wouldn’t shortlist for any high awards but am glad I watched.
Wait, Don’t Look Up was supposed to be funny?!
Well, it was a black satire. If you laugh more at chubby men hitting each other with ladders, it wasn’t really your speed.
I thought it was a documentary or at least one of those “dramatized based on true events” docudrama’s with a higher budget and better cast than usual.
I would have knocked out Don’t Look Up and put either Spencer or Zola. They both aren’t perfect narratively, but both films capture the trauma of constricting circumstances in life in ways I haven’t felt before on the screen.
I don’t know if it’s cinema or me, but I actively disliked every single one of these movies. Is this a symptom of long-COVID?
They say Covid causes loss of taste… in movies!
Yes…that was the joke.
I’m beginning to wonder if I now just don’t like movies. It is rare for me to be watching a movie these days and not be feeling like I wish it would end so I can get to the next streaming show on my list instead.
I mean, the best of TV has been destroying movies for many years now.
It’s a symptom of 1) Children, superhero, and other paint by number films being the only movies with a decent budget/ROI, leading to2) streaming platforms slowly but surely taking over the adult drama/foreign language films part of the market, leading to such films being made with an even smaller budget, and3) COVID-19 accelerating both of these trends.
Good list. My ranking is a little different, but I had many of the same thoughts about the individual films.https://letterboxd.com/offensivename/list/best-picture-2021/
West Side Story…really?!
West Side Story did a great job expanding on the scope of the original and deepening the story but couldn’t match the vocals and choreography. Between this and the Elgort performance it’s too flawed to edge out Power of the Dog.
I’d put The Power of the Dog ahead of WSS. Nevertheless, I’m a big fan of Spielberg’s movie, and I’m giving it big (albeit easy) points for having their actors use their own singing voices, with Ziegler’s doing pretty well compared even to Marni Nixon’s. And as much as I dislike Elgort, I also prefer his singing voice to Jimmy Bryant’s. As for the choreography, I loved what Justin Peck did. I thought the dancing was skilled and just furious, enough to distinguish itself from the original without feeling like it needed to best it.
A lot of movie musicals have their actors use their own singing voices. That’s an extremely low bar if that’s what impressed you about this.
But the original film version didn’t.
Andy Kaufman had an incredible routine with his then-roommate Richard Beymer as a guest on “Hasbeen Corner,” pretending his career would’ve gone much better if he got to sing Maria. “Well now’s your chance… sing Maria for us!” He gets up to do it, the audience is with him, and he totally botches it and storms out. “You’re right! I AM A HASBEEN!”
Beymer taped it all on B&W video. Wish those reels would be released in some fashion.
My post was a response primarily to DrMedicine’s first sentence since it wasn’t obvious.
Elgort was the biggest issue I had with West Side Story. I loved all the restagings. I really liked all the other actors, particularly Faist and DeBose. But even putting the MeToo allegations aside, Elgort was a big dull lump at the center. It’s still a four star film and comfortably in my top 20 of the year, but Elgort brought it down a notch for sure.
Without going into great detail, I’ve actually seen all of the movies they nominated for once and thought The Power of the Dog was easily the best among a relatively weak list. I think your list is probably reflective of most of my reaction to the year, other than you obviously liking West Side Story more than I did.
The reception for Don’t Look Up has been only cold in the US to be honest.For the rest of the world, that movie is both hilariously frighteningly close to reality.Great movie.
have yet to make an American who didn’t like the film that wasn’t one of the people being parodied.
God, stop making more of those people, we already have more than enough.
Really need a one child policy. Not per family. Just one American child per year. That should sort it out.
This is exactly the kind of smug, holier than now bullshit that’s making people hate the film even more. I’m definitely not one of the people the film is making fun of. I believe in climate change. I’m not in the media in any way. And I found it to be an unfunny, unoriginal slog. So congratulations. You’ve met one.
I got a good laugh out of this, thanks.
Your review and especially your reply above are the kind of smug, holier than thou bullshit that has led me to come to this site less and less as time goes by.Sorry the message didn’t stroke you softly on the head as “one of the good ones” while being delivered.
What movie did you watch? Don’t Look Up is exactly a film that strokes you softly on the head and tells you that you’re one of the good ones. That’s one of the things people are referring to when they call it “smug.” The message is very much “We all get it, but those ignorant hicks are too busy obsessing over celebrity relationships and worshipping billionaires to see what’s going on?” Have you considered that the fact that it tells you you’re right and smart and everyone else is too dumb to notice a giant fucking rock hurtling at them is exactly the reason you like and it exactly why people who realize how shallow and unhelpful that is don’t like it? How on earth can anyone see that film and think it’s some kind of transgressive statement that offends liberals. Do you honestly think people got their feelings hurt because they made fun of Good Morning America? LMAO
The people who you think this movie is stroking on the head are the kind of people who don’t need to be stroked on the head and told they’re one of the good ones. They’re fatalist about our species and have decades of lived experience that makes the movie’s beats about late capitalism’s inability/unwillingness to stray from paradigms that have worked for the ruling class thusfar in search of an outcome that is better for everyone else rather than just themselves. They finally made a movie for said fatalists and those outside that demographic are baffled why the movie resonates with so many people.
Based on your responses it’s easy to see how you feel the way you do. “The message is very much ‘We all get it, but those ignorant hicks are
too busy obsessing over celebrity relationships and worshipping
billionaires to see what’s going on?’” is painfully stupid to the point I almost didn’t want to respond to you. Did you even watch the film? You say “everyone else is too dumb to notice a giant fucking rock hurtling at them”, but that’s not what happens. Everyone knows it’s coming. They just tell themselves it won’t affect them or that someone smarter and richer will figure it out.
JFC….FYI: The movie isn’t about ignorant hicks, it’s about rich people manipulating society to a shared, preventable disaster because they’re myopic narcissists. Way to tell on yourself, you chore of a human. And you get paid for this media illiteracy? I know they don’t let you have a union so the pay can’t be that good, but come on.
They finally made a movie for said fatalists and those outside that demographic are baffled why the movie resonates with so many people.Do you honestly think that Adam McKay was the first person to make a fatalistic film? Or even a fatalistic film about climate change specifically? Wow. Watch more movies, bro. Then maybe you’ll get that these same topics have been covered ad nauseum by much better, more thoughtful artists than guy who made Talladega Nights. People who actually have insights into human culture and don’t give in to lazy, humorless satire. Everyone knows it’s coming. No, they don’t. Because they don’t look up. It’s the fucking title, genius. Sure, it’s willful ignorance, but it’s still ignorance at its core. Yes, there’s also a “rich people are bad” message to the film, but that’s not a remotely original thought and there’s zero depth to that part of the film. “I bet the rich would try to profit off this terrible tragedy.” No shit. Of course they would. Why do you think there’s anything remotely profound about this kindergarten level, Chrissy Teigen liberalism? I love how you guys think you have to explain the must blunt, obvious movie in history because clearly anyone who didn’t like it was either offended or didn’t get it. I get it, man. Everyone gets it. We just don’t think it’s good. And you get paid for this media illiteracy? I know they don’t let you have a union so the pay can’t be that good, but come on.What? Do you think I work for The AV Club? Thanks for the compliment I guess? I’m just another commenter like you. Though thankfully not too much like you.
This is exactly the kind of smug, holier than now bullshit that’s making people hate the film even more.*Nod*
I’m not in the media in any way.Yep. I was weary when I saw David Sirota’s name attached, and was completely turned off when the middling reviews started coming in and he launched in to his typical “OH THE ELITES ARE HOLDING ME BACK!” bullshit.That’s right. The guy who worked with a number of Academy Award nominees/winners both in front of and behind the camera to make a movie for one of the biggest (if not the single biggest) streaming platform in the US (world?) complained about “elites.”I just sighed and decided his movie could fuck off in to the sun.
“For the rest of the world, that movie is both hilariously frighteningly close to reality.”
It’s “both” what?
I’m not American and my friends and I found it unfunny and all in all passable at best ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You need new friends
I am not American, and did not like the movie. It was watchable, that’s about the kindest thing I can say about it.
*Looks for The Last Duel*
*Remembers The Last Duel didn’t get a single nomination*
*Is sad*
Totally agree. Don’t Look Up was a much bigger cultural thing, but The Last Duel is a film I still think about, while DLU has been completely forgotten.
I’m with you. The Last Duel was intelligent yet brawny, insightful but completely watchable. It’s filmmaking done right, and maybe it was hard to market so that’s why it flopped, but yeah, it’s a way better movie than Don’t Look Up
Don’t Look Up is the movie they put on the list so the average person with a Netflix sub has likely seen at least *one* of the nominees.
Damon’s mullet cost them big time.
And this ‘do didn’t help:
it was so fucking good and i’m so glad i caught it in the theatre.
I’d concede that Last Duel is better than Nightmare Alley; there’s that. My personal quibble with it is that I absolutely did not need to sit through that rape scene more than once and I think it was a failure of imagination to decide that this was absolutely the only way to get their point across (that she was unequivocally raped and that her assailant cannot truly, possibly have mistaken it). But maybe I’m being overly sensitive; I just think the format was inventive for this particular story but didn’t fully pan out.
I definitely don’t agree that it was a “failure of imagination” – I think the brilliant part of what the rape scene shows us is that it ISN’T that different in each of their tellings. Driver even says later that she made the “customary protest.” But with just a few subtle shadings from her POV, it shows how a man and a woman at the time would view a rape very differently indeed.
Yeah, I was “pleasantly” surprised at how similar the two scenes were. I was expecting to see a full-on passionate love scene for one, and rapey for the other. Instead we got essentially a rape scene shown through the male gaze (The Accused, anyone?) and one through a female gaze. Subtle but quite smart, and perfectly acted in both instances.
Will I ever watch it again? NOPE. But I’m glad I saw it the one time.
Well put!
dune better not win any category for sound. their mix was all over the fucking place. that movie was so fucking loud and you still couldnt hear what the people were saying.
I thought we all agreed after Tenet that sometimes it’s the intention of the filmmaker to not have the dialogue heard tho? What is your obsession with knowing what people are saying? In those moments you likely weren’t supposed to be focusing on that.
I didn’t have any trouble with the sound, but I watched it at home, so had some control of that.
Yeah, I agree. Dune shouldn’t win because Kahlessj saw it somewhere that had bad sound.
“This critic has never bought [Belfast]’s reputation as a Best Picture frontrunner.”I totally agree. I’ve seen way more people talking about how it’s an Oscar frontrunner than talking about the movie itself. Hopefully that means that one of the more interesting nominees can “upset”
The trailer for Belfast seemed like something a movie about the showbiz industry would cut together to represent the in-universe awards frontrunner.
I hope Power of the Dog wins. It deserves Best Picture.
Yeah. I reckon it’s the front runner.
This movie was good. The review was not. Also, you can’t fault McKay for preaching to the choir; that’s how all media works today. Everything is too compartmentalized. The internet needs to go away; the social media aspect AT LEAST.
Imagine if McKay wrote a satire about climate change but it was about Q stopping the deep-state Jews from using lasers to blow up the Sun. At this point, that what the people who are not in the “choir” would believe.
Hot take: West Side Story sucked. Why is it that musicals get a pass? Make a decent looking musical with a couple of big names in it and you’re guaranteed an Oscar it seems like.If it wins this will be one of those we look back on and cringe.
Don’t Look Up isn’t preaching to the choir. It’s about how politicians and the media are captured by billionaires like Isherwell, and will only save us from extinction accidentally, as a byproduct of their profit motive. The only way to ensure we avert extinction is to reject the Isherwells and Orleans of the world. The movie is actually hopeful about humanity, because it shows people doing exactly that, just not in time.
We have 8 years to halve carbon emissions and return to 1970 levels of emissions in order to avert extinction. That’s not something that will happen with tech solutions. That only happens through the abolition and overthrow of entire industries and practices.
Climate-wise, we’re at the part of the movie where Dr. Mindy gets out of his car to look up at the comet. The 2030 deadline is represented by the China/India/Russia mission. And the dinner table scene represents what we’ll have to do in the 2030s (and 2040s, if we’re lucky) once we move past the point of no return.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/critics-of-dont-look-up-are-missing-the-entire-point
People get the point. They just don’t like the movie. The fact that people like you and the makers of the film seem to think that’s impossible is really ridiculous.
I haven’t seen the film, but I find anyone trying to bring a Nathan J. Robinson (the avatar of punchable, self-satisfied, vanity socialists) article into the conversation to be immediately suspect.
Exactly.It offers zero solutions and is just more of the new doomposting style of activism that’s wasting too much time telling us how doomed we are and not actually doing any work to support the people already in office trying to make change.You can already tell by how people are circling the wagons and running that same argument about how the only people who hate it are the ones it’s “about” because it’ll likely miss out on any of the big awards and they’ll walk away “victorious” because it means the elites were too scared (or some nonsense)
Don’t Look Up isn’t preaching to the choir.
Bullshit. There isn’t a single person who’d watch that movie and get “offended” or “called out” because they already look at Hollywood like a bunch of detached buffoons and the movie was dumb enough to make one of their main points of mockery a Hillary Clinton stand in rather than the most obvious choice given *gestures at the last five years in which it was made*
Thank you for the West Side Story love. Even if someone isn’t jazzed about musicals in general, the filmmaking is so far above the work being done by any filmmaker half Spielberg’s age, you just sit there, slack-jawed at its kinetic vibrancy, at the almost physical impact of the images.
it’s almost as if he has hundreds of people at the top of their game working extremely hard
Is Power of the Dog a spin off of Yellowstone, or the other way around?
It’s a cross between Their Will Be Blood and Browback Mountain. Both of those films were better but I still think Dog was good.
“Spielberg’s take, with its graceful tweaks and its imaginative reimaginings (dig that keep-away game of “Cool,” dance to that walk-and-talk “America”), isn’t necessarily better than its 50-year-old predecessor.”
50-year-old predecessor? Try 60-year-old predecessor.
ok boomer predecessor.
?
A silly joke, sorry. 60 year old West Side Story is a baby boomer, not Gen X like a 50 year old production would be.
ha ha ha ha facts are for old stupids
No, I can’t agree with this. Malignant was definitely number one.
Without picking on anyone film, lets face it, the Oscars are a high stakes, highly political, artsy popularity contest where industry influencers play a big role. My view of cinema for the last two years overall could be summarized in two words: dumpster fire. This has been a great time to make films, but a horrific time to release films for a return on investment, so knowone is releasing anything that’s worth a damn. Furthermore, the industry is experiencing a great reset that has people watching movies at home, and developing new viewing habits, on their 85″ TV with Dolby ATMOS sound and saying, I could get used to this… so F*** $50 is concessions, and irritating people in a theater. Honestly, I don’t care who wins an Oscar during Covid-19, its like being elected to a government position when there’s a vacant seat, versus having to actually beat an established incumbent.
Maybe you should watch more movies. There were a lot of great ones that were released this past year.
Ok. Name one that you would watch more than once.
I’ve watched Malignant an embarrassing number of times
I’m not the person you asked, but I’d happily watch Dune, West Side Story, Pig, Zola, The Green Knight, Titane, Malignant, The Suicide Squad, Candyman, No Way Home, Shang-Chi, and Barb and Star multiple times. A few of those I already have, either a second time in theaters or again upon home release. And that doesn’t even include the major acclaimed films from last year I haven’t caught up on yet, like Red Rocket, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Worst Person in the World, among others.
soooo many good films the last year! Zola, Spencer, Red Rocket, Power of the Dog, The Novice, Malignant, etc. are all really good movies that need second viewings!
That’s not a very good metric for whether a film is good or not. I’m not big on rewatching films even if I love them. But I’ve already offered to watch The Hand of God with my wife since she missed it when I saw it. I wanted to watch The French Dispatch again immediately after seeing it because it has so many intricate details in the background that I missed. Would have already watched Mass again probably if it were on one of my streaming services. Red Rocket, The Green Knight, The Power of the Dog, The Harder They Fall, The Worst Person in the World, C’mon C’mon, Pig, A Hero, Petite Maman, Shiva Baby, West Side Story, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. There are a ton of movies that I’d like to rewatch someday. Even three hour Drive My Car I’d like to rewatch at some point.
i don’t get it. you’re saying the last 2 years have been bad for cinema…but your points are just ‘it’s a weird time to release a movie’. i mean, i think everyone agrees the industry has been in a weird place because of the pandemic, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of movies coming out.in your mind movies magically stopped being good in 2020? really?
Don’t look up didn’t feel nearly as self righteous as people make it sound. People make it sound like a finger jumped out of the screen and wagged at these poor reviewers. I think a lot of it is just the expectations that you have when you went it. There hasn’t been a satire like this in a long time and reviewers don’t know what to do.This is why I miss Ebert. Guys like Dowd and Neyman, etc. are too busy trying to show you how smart and well versed they are to give any broader movie a real shot. Ebert would have the confidence in his craft, to tell it like it is.
While I intend to, I have not yet seen Power of the Dog, partly because of the many people I know who have seen it not a single one of them liked it.
You intend to see it but haven’t because people say it’s bad? So…DO you intend to see it?
I haven’t watched it just because I know damn well the dog dies
There is no live dog so don’t worry about that! The dog is a mountain.
Does the mountain live?
Is…is that his power?
And the ‘power’ is the stench after they find it 3 weeks later?
Well you’re gross
It and Suicide Squad are the only movies from last year I’ve seen.
definitely the best movie of the year, your friends have bad taste my dear.
Some of them do for sure (like the ones who told me I would love This Is Us) but there’s a broad range of tastes in this pool and includes industry people which makes it all very surprising. I look forward to disagreeing with them.
hehe fair, I jest! Some may have found it slow but I was absolutely gripped from start to finish!
I thought it was incredible. The acting and directing are top notch. The ending is also fantastic.
I liked it but if we’re talking “asshole grows a soul” movies from 2021 I’d rank Pig slightly higher.
It’s a Jane Campion movie, and I suppose that at some level you like those or not. It is visually amazing, has good performances of interesting characters, and moves at a stately pace. Speaking of whom, is there any hope at all that the necessary people, along with the requisite amount of money and an interested network, would be available for a third season of Top of the Lake?
Trying to rank films in numerical order of “quality” is such a weird, pointless, and stupid act. It’s just pandering for arguments and clicks.
Life has always been able to be boiled down to pandering for arguments and clicks. Welcome to life, I guess.
I rank you at 3 for that comment.
Don’t Look Up > DuneKing Richard was a paint-by-numbers biopic, West Side Story was a dull pastel reproduction of the vibrant original. Nightmare Alley was pretty cool. Power of the Dog should probably win.
Were the visuals in Dune *that* great? I saw nothing that made me go Wow, and nothing original. It looked a lot like DV’s other movies, and Lynch’s version for that matter, plus Giger and Moebius’s 45 year old Jodorowsky Dune sketches, and a lot of Moebius in general. A lot of the CGI looked flat to me, and the irony was that with all of DV’s bellyaching about it being on HBO, I saw it in the theater first and thought it looked better on TV. Not saying it was ugly, either — there were many pretty pictures, but to me that was the problem: this was a movie, not a gallery slideshow, and DV did his usual lousy job of making those pictures seem occupied. This is a story about planets and entire civilizations at war and I felt like there were a few dozen people in the whole universe. All the attempted grandiosity added up to a really claustrophobic experience for me. Also calling bullshit on Power of the Dog, for similar form-over-function reasons. As Dowd points out, this was actually a simple, by now cliched story that Campion overcomplicates, obscures, and (brutally) lengthens for artiness sake. I have no issue with long, slow movies btw but this story didn’t need that treatment. Also not saying it wasn’t worth watching — the visuals were indeed wonderful, the acting was fantastic top to bottom, and there were some really powerful scenes, but it felt pretentious and self-conscious.And I’m glad at least a few people agree with me that Don’t Look Up, while not “Best Picture” material, isn’t the Worst Movie Ever. Yes — it’s way too long, some of the satire is too broad — but I laughed a lot and thought some of it was sharply observed. We live in ridiculous times where going broad as possible hardly does it justice. Preachy? Um, yeah… that’s the kind of movie it is. O/A feels like this is a victim of internet mob mentality. Maybe Worst Writer/Director Ever McKay can commiserate on that with Worst Band Ever Nickelback.
I enjoyed Dune quite a bit. My one big knock against it, and I think it’s a problem that merits discussion, is that it is decidedly one half of a movie. It can’t stand on its own. It ends so abruptly. Hell, even “ends” is the wrong word. Because there’s no satisfying conclusion or tie up. More aptly stated, it just … stops. It’s like if David Lean screened Lawrence of Arabia and randomly cut it off at the 2 hour mark and was like “so … whadja think?!” Wouldn’t everyone in the room say, “um … we want to see the rest of it before we can draw any conclusions”?
I agree. Before the noms were announced, I expected Villeneuve would get a nod for Best Director but the movie wouldn’t be up for Best Picture. I missed it just a bit.
That’s a good thought and would have made a heck of a lot more sense.
What’s wild is that production of part 2 was dependent upon how part 1 performed. Maybe this approach created some pull-through demand for a sequel, but on its surface seems like a major risk. I guess Villenueve went into it with confidence he’d get the chance to tell the rest of his story.
What we’ve seen so far is the first of three movies necessary to tell the full story of Muad’dib. Then there would be two movies to tell the story of Leto II and then however many it takes for the story of Duncan Idaho and the psychic sex nuns.
Well, while all that is true except for the part where it cuts off at the 2:35 mark. Which is to say that there is about that much left and a 5:10 film is untenable. I hope that the second films works as well and wins all the awards because making a coherent version of Dune is an achievement and this version, so far, is amazing.
It will be really interesting to see how the story is told in the second movie and how it is received by the ‘new’ audience. The military / spy thriller of the first half is a different to the documentary on religion of the second half. Generally speaking.
There is still a lot of action to help the medicine do down.
The Power of The Dog sucked. Period.
Yes, by all means take the junkiest, buggiest site, and format your fucking articles as ‘slideshows’. Is it because Dowd is maybe the only remaining good writer on the platform that AVClub opts to render this article all but unreadable by clogging it up with obnoxious pop-up video ads? JFC
Get uBlock Origin for PC, or Blokada for phone
I agree with some of these and disagree with others!
Hot take alert!
I only have an opinion on those I have an opinion on.
Dune was pretty to look at, but boring as hell. Hopeing the next installments are less drab. (Watched the original for the first time after watching the new one, and it was anything but boring).
Dune Part 1 for Best Picture Oscar? Uh-huh… And Don’t Look Up? Haha.Jane Campion’s movie will win everything, even if it was meh.
“a teenage entrepreneur (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour) and his slightly older but not much more emotionally mature crush”
I cannot fucking believe we are still doing this South Park-episode-released-in-2000-fucking-6-ass-shit. She is anywhere between ten and thirteen years older than this FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD.
Not only is this movie creepily sympathetic to this fucking weird, predatory loser – but a lot of it’s fans seem to be betraying a very gross double-standard on which combinations of gender make it okay to be a grooming shitheel.
At least Call Me By Your Name, the last big age-gap discourse that I can remember in one of these prestige pictures, had the good sense not to have them end up together and to make it clear that their relationship has a greviously disproportionate power dynamic and level of emotional investment.
This movie just has cutesy-poo bullshit, how great and dreamy and funny and wacky it is that this sullen adult keeps almost fucking someone who just graduated to Accutane.
Only one I saw was dont look up. I am shocked that got an oscar nom.
Some of these have yet to be released over here in the UK, and I really regret missing both Licorice Pizza and West Side Story, but managed to see The Power of the Dog at the London Film Festival last year, and found it underwhelming: A plodding melodrama which takes a trio of great actors and doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. Cumberbatch has trouble filling his chaps, strutting around and sneering at everyone like Sherlock in a Stetson, Plemons is the weakest I’ve ever seen him, and Dunst is fine until she starts her am-dram “Oh, I’m drunk” acting. And the bullying homophobe is actually (gasp) gay? Who saw this coming? Who didn’t?
I look over this list – and the list from last year, to be honest – and don’t really see anything that’s going to get people excited about the Oscars. Even Dune seems to me like a movie a lot of people like but don’t love. The most interesting nom is Don’t Look Up which I think has a lock on being this year’s punching bag, so maybe it’ll actually win like Green Book and Crash.
Article convinced me to see West Side Story this weekend, though.
when you say a movie “sings” your review stops singing
It may not be anyone’s favourite year for movies, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t at least an interesting round-up for the Oscars.As a Brit, I didn’t see Licorice Pizza until January but it would have easily made my first or second spot for 2021 if I had. Putting the uncomfortable age gap to the side (although that’s kind of the point), it was the most fun cinema-going experience I had since the pandemic started. Drive My Car is also superbly written, although I agree it overplays its hand in the final hour.I finally caught up with Nightmare Alley last night at home. I was surprised by how fantastic I thought it was. Definitely the best Del Toro joint since Pan’s Labyrinth and one of the most powerful final shots I’ve seen in a long time. Even more surprising is how much people on here seem to disagree, but oh well. I’m with Scorsese in hoping that it finds a wider audience in the coming months.
Don’t Look Up was brilliant. Hilarious and poignant. Perhaps it hit a little too close to home for some. And if you don’t think Meryl Streep being eaten by a space turkey is hilarious, then the movie was probably not for you.
You must be HIGH to rank Belfast so low. That film was near perfect. Meanwhile you rank Shitmare Alley 7th?! That show was a total slog and ended miserably. What a joke.
Shitmare Alley! Lol love it
It seems to me that the hate for Don’t Look Up comes most from the places and people that see themselves in the movie. The movie certainly does have it’s flaws, but the way it mocks and ridicules the current culture is fantastically spot on, one of the most ruthless and merciless bits of satire ever since the first Borat movie.
Ours is a culture where scientists are held in contempt and have to degrade themselves on entertainment shows just to be heard, where literally idiotic things take center stage in the news cycle, where political demagoguery is at an all time high and where the internet far from being an open forum of exchange breeds the most absurd forms of cultishness. It is a culture where scientific illiteracy thrives and both sides of the political spectrum simply ignore things from science they don’t like. This movie parodies this perfectly in so many small and not-so-small moments, right down to the self-centered doofus who thumbs his nose at both sides.
I’m just here to plant my flag for Drive My Car. Astounding filmmaking. He had a helluva year!
Another slideshow.Anyone want to list the order here in the comments? Because fuck slideshows.
So we didn’t need another West Side Story but it’s the best film on the list.We did need another Dune but it’s “dry” (haha!) and isn’t the best on the list.Got it.
Cool. So you didn’t actually like any of these movies?
Man, they really scraped the barrel to get 10.
Licorice Pizza the shittiest movie I saw this year, in any format, of any year. Hi everyone!