Lily-Rose Depp deserves the Best Actress Oscar

...and yet, she's not even nominated (and other Awards Season thoughts and recommendations).

Ahhhh Awards Season. One might’ve thought that after the cataclysmic fires of just a few weeks ago the networks, major stars, and awards pundits would’ve taken a different approach to the only season people in Los Angeles have on their calendars. Personally, I would’ve wanted to see a major shift in the Oscar telecast (especially considering many of the major players in the industry’s homes have burnt to the ground): maybe to something like a good old fashioned telethon! But Hollywood is gonna Hollywood and the show must go on!

I have a suspicion that, because this will be the first telecast streamed live (on Hulu), there was too much money involved in the production to back down from the glitz. And my more conspiratorial suspicion revolves around the recent absolute mess with nomination frontrunner Emilia Perez’s lead star being, well… just read some of the tweets yourself. I think some execs are probably glad that the heat has shifted from the literal (deciding to go forward with the usual ostentation amidst the city’s wreckage) to the metaphorical heat of the frontrunner’s total and complete public meltdown. Of course, this too brings up issues, specifically the fact that they had to scrap the newly-typical format of bringing up past Best Actress winners to present to this year’s nominees (the ‘Fab Five’ format many people have come to love).

I used to live and die by the Oscars: I’d see every single thing nominated, including all of the documentary and animated shorts, and eventually got to being able to predict like 23 or 24 out of the 25 categories. [Shoutout to Hannah with whom I tag-teamed the NYPost’s Oscar Pool around 2017😂] But as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have shifted away from the Academy’s typically lauded fodder, and feeling more and more heartbreak and annoyance with the winners has led me to take a bit of a removed approach to the show. But even if you try and remind yourselves the Oscars don’t matter, it can still be very annoying to see something celebrated you think is absolute garbage! Like this film critic, the 2011 Oscars was my first experience of radicalization against the Academy’s tastes and, let’s just say, 14 years later us Social Network stans have been absolutely vindicated:

Anyway, here are my recommendations for “Awards Season” films broken down into three categories:

Tier 1 = Excellent films I loved.

Tier 2 = Really good films I enjoyed.

Tier 3 = Films that aren’t great but still worth watching.

And all of this is with the giant caveat that I have not yet seen: The Nickel Boys, The Last Showgirl, A Complete Unknown (which apparently is predicted to win Best Picture?!), and I’m Still Here. Oh, and I didn’t see Emilia Perez because I’ve yet to hear anyone say one good thing about it and also ***gestures wildly***

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Tier 1

1. Nosferatu - Nosferatu is fucking excellent. Robert Eggers is a true folk artist, fusing the science of cinema with chthonian, artistic storytelling. His approach reminded me of Camille Paglia’s chapter “The Daemon as Lesbian Vampire” in her seminal SEXUAL PERSONAE where she tackles Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic vampiric poem, Christabel: “Coleridge and Poe are seized by visions that transcend language. Psychoanalysis overestimates the linguistic character of the unconscious: Dreaming is a pagan cinema.” And later:

   “The Coleridgian moral inversion operates again. Christian prayer produces pagan epiphany. Heaven is either deaf or sadistic. The materialization of vampires in Christabel perversely awaits the invocation of a divine name. It is as if daemonic power is intensified by Christian assertion. A lust for profanation hangs in the air like a shadow-mist. It suddenly takes brilliant shape. In a burst of luminous, numinous cinema, the vampire Geraldine appears in all her white beauty. “Mary mother, save me now!”¹

   Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen gives one of the best performances I’ve seen in years: the sequence where she goes from embodying sadness and fear to being completely overwhelmed by rage, then escalates into a truly fucking terrifying demonic possession and then deftly transitions back to sadness and devastating remorsefulness is unbelievable… And then in other scenes she is so tender and lovely! I can’t wait to see what she does next.

2. The Brutalist - As good as the hype. The second half has generated some valid criticisms, but I found it extraordinarily powerful if completely disturbing. I walked home in a catatonic state, so I won’t soon forget this 3.5 hour-er. The fact that it was made for under $10 million and looks this good leads me to consider Brady Corbet as one of the best young filmmakers out there.

3. Anora - Excellent story and pacing, fun and yet quietly devastating at times. Mikey Madison is incredible.

4. Conclave - Extreeeeemely my vibe. Although I found the twist ending lacking in justification and a bit too trite, I’m actually hoping Conclave wins Best Picture because it’s a really intriguing story, it’s gorgeously shot and executed, and they have the best memes of this Awards Season, which itself has come to mimic the gossipy backstabbing of the film’s central Papal conclave.

5. A Real Pain - I’m so glad I rented this extremely tight and wonderfully written film by Jesse Eisenberg last weekend. Kieran Culkin (poised to win Best Supporting Actor) is unsurprisingly excellent in his role as the Roman Roy-esque loose cannon cousin who joins Eisenberg on a tour of Poland in the wake of their Polish grandmother’s death. But I must also give a HUUUUUGE shoutout to The White Lotus Season 2’s Will Sharpe who is so lovely and genuine as the group’s tour guide that it actually brought tears to my eyes multiple times. I love this film because there are moments when the built up tension could explode into chaos, but Eisenberg masterfully backs down and de-escalates, resulting in an absolutely lovely viewing experience.

6. September 5 - A fascinating retelling of the 1972 Munich Olympics Israeli hostage crisis, I was sad to see that September 5 did not get a Best Picture nod because it’s an incredibly tight thriller revolving around an absolutely tragic event in modern history, usually the type of fare Oscar voters love [think: Spotlight, The Post]. Set entirely within the newsroom of the ABC Sports coverage team in Munich, September 5 wrestles openly with the question of images in our modern world and our addiction to live coverage of horrific events.

   “How does this end?” the phenomenal John Magaro asks before sending out a producer to cover the hostages and terrorists arriving at the fateful military airport:

   “In a shootout?” He thinks for a split second.

   “We’ll need sound.”

Tier 2

1. The Substance - awesome French body horror exploitation film-slash-skewering social satire. Despite my Lily-Rose allegiance, I’ll be happy to see Demi Moore rewarded for her excellent performance. Also, Coralie Fargeat is the only female to score a Best Director nomination this year, and it’s very well deserved.

2. Juror Number 2 - Clint Eastwood’s still got it! For fans of courtroom dramas that ask the audience to wrestle with our own sense of justice and right and wrong.

3. Gladiator II - wrote about how much I enjoyed this sequel here:

   Winter Roundup

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Tier 3

1. Maria - This is my biggest disappointment of the season. I love Pablo Larrain and his peek-behind-the-curtain films about very famous women. While I hoped this would round out the Jackie-Spencer triptych on par with those two great films, from the first shot of Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas this film just does not land. At all. Unmotivated direction and a huge disconnect between Callas’ voice and Jolie’s performance, I really wished they’d chosen to focus on a period of Maria’s life where she doesn’t sing, because there are parts of the film that are gorgeous and devastating, but overall it’s a thumbs down.

2. Goodrich - a surprisingly assured second feature from Hallie Meyers-Shyer (of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer nepo fame). There’s definitely an inescapable corniness to the plot and the dialogue can be cringe at times, but I found the central relationship between an adult daughter (played by Mila Kunis) and her father (Michael Keaton) to be incredibly tender and heartwarming.

3. Joker: Folie à Deux - I should not be trusted with opinions on comic book adaptations, but I actually thought the musical element of this sequel worked really well - the movie is dark as fuck (literally and figuratively), but Lady Gaga is unsurprisingly great in her total commitment to a crazy role, and Joaquin Phoenix is fucking creepy which is the point of these kinds of movies, right?!

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Tweet Interlude with a suggested accompaniment:

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I hope this weekend brings with it rest, relaxation, and some really amazing movies. Or a really good movie! Or a movie that’s fine but overall you’re not mad you watched it. For lack of a better sign off, enjoy some gorgeous Conclave stills:

1. More Paglia on vampires if you want it: “Geraldine’s daemonic aggression resides in her eye. Vampires have a phallic eye, probing, penetrating, riveting. In the hallway, the heart fire flames, ‘And Christabel saw the lady’s eye, / and nothing else saw she thereby.’ She is obsessed. Subjugated. At her moment of maximum power in the bedchamber, Geraldine rises to her “lofty” height, an erection fueled by her dominance of the mother-spirit, Christabel’s submission and genuflection, and the wine she changes into Christabel’s blood. This is the full moon of the vampire eye: ‘Her fair large eyes ‘gan glitter bright.’