My Pre-Oscars Film Diary: Part I
Welcome to what my Letterboxd would look like if I remembered to review every film.
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One thing about committing to awards season: there are always more contenders than it seems. By my count, the “post-festival season watchlist” I created for myself back in September has grown from a modest 12-15 to a still-climbing 38.
In my first round of Oscar nominee predictions, I said that the core element of my predicting strategy was carefully monitoring the awards circuit to track which films picked up key precursors. But naturally, there’s another, even more important element to identifying those few key films that will make it to the big day: actually watching them.
So, in addition to tracking the awards circuit, I’m also gradually making my way through the contenders. As promised, I still plan to write full-length reviews of a few Best Picture contenders. But just as there are far more contenders than nominees, there are far too many contenders to review before the ceremony. In fact, just tallying all of the thirty-something films from my predictions list is too big an undertaking for one article. So I’m breaking up the task: leaving 2024, I’ve made it through 15 contenders, including seven likely Best Picture nominees. In the first weeks of 2025, I plan to make my way through the rest. Meanwhile, in between reviews, I’m supplementing with a shorter-form approach to share my thoughts on some of the films that didn’t make (or just haven’t yet made) my review list.
Challengers (Amazon MGM, dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Original Score
Summary: Thirteen years after an injury cut short her tennis career, Tashi Duncan is the brilliant but unsatisfied head coach for her superstar husband, Art. But when Art enters an athletic rut, Tashi concocts a plan to reignite his passion with a surprise opponent: the couple’s former best friend.
Thoughts: Twice this year, I have been absolutely floored in theaters. Challengers was the first. In a banner year for Luca Guadagnino, the director has put out perhaps his best work yet. Though he’s absent from this film, the legacy of longtime Guadagnino muse Timothée Chalamet is in capable hands; Faist is delightfully pathetic in this rare non-musical role, and O’Connor does some of his best work yet spinning a new facade for his tragic loverboy niche. But ultimately, both men are merely supporting acts: in the grand arc of Zendaya’s movie star tenure, Challengers will be remembered as the first film to really tap into her most exciting qualities as a performer. Guadagnino’s least graphically sexual, most sensual work to date is easily the defining film of the year—if only any awards body would recognize it as such.
A Different Man (A24, dir. Aaron Schimberg)
Contender for: Best Actor, Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Summary: Struggling actor Edward (Sebastian Stan) leads a lonely existence in New York, debilitated by an isolating facial difference. So when an experimental medical treatment offers him a new life, he’s eager to start again. But after the transformed Edward meets a man with an identical facial difference (Adam Pearson), he’s forced to wonder how much he’s actually healed.
Thoughts: If the people who orchestrate actors roundtables are to be believed, 2024 is the Year of Sebastian Stan. Personally, every year since my first viewing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been the Year of Sebastian Stan for me; it’s just that this usually makes for a quiet, occasionally heartbreaking year. But somehow, it would seem the curse has finally lifted.
As I gleefully announced immediately upon emerging from the AMC Lincoln Square 13 this past September, A Different Man is excellent. It is that most precious kind of career-best performance, one that lays bare the talent that previous projects failed to appreciate. Stan is brilliant as the tortured, self-obsessed Edward—but he was brilliant as I, Tonya’s volatile man-child Jeff Gillooly, as a capitalistic serial killer in Mimi Cave’s Fresh, and as tortured, self-obsessed Gossip Girl foil Carter Baizen. The difference is that Schimberg knows exactly what to do with Stan’s deceptively self-effacing exterior, endlessly expressive face, and surprisingly sharp comedic timing, and matches his talent with a script that brings out his best. On the off (but not impossible) chance Stan snatches the fifth Best Actor slot for his work in A Different Man, it will be well (and finally) deserved.
The Substance (Mubi, dir. Coralie Fargeat)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Summary: When her unceremonious firing as a TV aerobics instructor pushes her into the throes of a mid-life crisis, former movie star Elisabeth Sparkle embarks on an experimental beauty treatment meant to help her start anew.1 But The Substance comes with unexpected consequences—and Elisabeth may have to learn them the hard way.
Thoughts: I don’t need to tell you The Substance is sharply original, unabashedly gory, and altogether unforgettable; the film’s ever-growing nomination sweep is indication enough. Before awards season kicked off, Fargeat’s delightfully weird horror satire felt poised for snub territory; my forecast would have been a possible nomination for Demi Moore with limited recognition for the film’s supporting performances or Fargeat’s outrageous screenplay. But in a welcome twist, The Substance is now a serious contender in just about every eligible category, and for good reason. It manages to be self-indulgent and gory for the sake of gore without feeling obnoxious. It’s biting and unflinching in its commentary without sacrificing its story. It is heartbreaking and hilarious—often at the same time—thanks in large part to Moore, who threads the needle between devastating and gleefully insane.
From Maria to Babygirl, to underdog Nightbitch, 2024 is doubtless the year that the well-established, middle-aged movie star reemerges for a tour de force that crowds the Best Actress race even further. But even in a crowded race like this one, Moore’s daring, fearless turn in The Substance stands alone.
Saturday Night (Sony, dir. Jason Reitman)
Contender for: Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay
Summary: It’s October 11, 1975, and in 90 minutes, the first episode of NBC’s new sketch comedy series, Saturday Night, will air live to millions of viewers. Backstage, the sets are unfinished, the cast and crew are threatening to walk, and the network executives are getting cold feet. Can young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) save his show before the cameras start rolling?
Thoughts: Perhaps it’s Reitman’s closeness to his real-life inspiration, but something about Saturday Night feels more like a revue of sentimental impressions than an actual story. We see an exasperated NBC censor declare “SNL will be forgotten,” just before the start of its five-decade run. We hear an embittered Milton Berle tell Chevy Chase, “You’re not a star, kid,” already knowing the arc of history will bend in another direction. We linger on an ethereal Gilda Radner and John Belushi, knowing their time on Earth is short. None of this works to effectively convince us that the genius we’re being told exists on this scrappy floor of 30 Rock is actually present in the theater with us. Saturday Night fails to be as funny—or even as entertaining—as the early-days sketches it pulls for reference.
Though LaBelle, Tommy Dewey, and Lamorne Morris are excellent as Lorne Michaels, Michael O’Donoghue, and Garrett Morris, the rest of the SNL ensemble feels more like a cast of repertory players doing their best impressions of their sorely underwritten characters. Instead, it’s the non-SNL cast—Cooper Hoffman as scrappy young NBC executive Dick Ebersol, Willem Dafoe as his skeptical boss David Tebet, and JK Simmons as Berle—who truly steal the misguided, awkwardly paced show. Saturday Night will probably miss out on nominations in the few categories where it still has a chance, but it’s hardly a snub.
The Apprentice (Briarcliff, dir. Ali Abbasi)
Contender for: Best Actor, Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Summary: In 1970s New York, a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) comes of age under the mentorship of cunning lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
Thoughts: The Year of Sebastian Stan continues. I’ll admit I was briefly hesitant to see Stan as a young Donald Trump. But I’m glad to have changed my mind: with The Apprentice, Stan accomplishes the near-impossible and finds something human in the past and future president. It’s no A Different Man (as a connoisseur of the Sebastian Stan oeuvre, I will call it his second-best performance in his tied-for-fourth-best project2), but it’s well worth the praise it’s received. Somehow, Stan pulls off the tightrope act of communicating Trump’s essence without teetering into impression territory for a figure who’s already been the subject of countless impressions. But the real scene stealer here is not Stan’s pitch-perfect Trump, but Jeremy Strong’s brash, grandstanding turn as Roy Cohn, a man who lies, cheats, and blackmails his way into earning the slogan on his AIDS memorial quilt panel: Bully, Coward, Victim. In Strong’s hands, there has never been a more influential American villain; he may be right.
Part satirish political biopic a la Vice, part dysfunctional love story, The Apprentice is a tragicomic Frankenstein, but here, it’s the monster who abandons his maker. And unlike his literary predecessor, this misguided creation refuses to fade into obscurity.
Conclave (Focus, dir. Edward Berger)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score
Summary: One month after the Pope’s sudden death, fatigued Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is placed in charge of running the conclave, a secretive process by which cardinals from around the world sequester themselves in the Vatican to elect the next pope from among their ranks. But just before the doors close, Lawrence discovers a secret: one—or more—of his colleagues may not be who they seem.
Thoughts: Conclave, I can say without hesitation, is the (other) movie of the year. It is a political thriller about the most secret of political processes—the papal conclave—and one that manages to soar in a year when many other attempts at the genre would have fallen flat. Conclave could easily be read as a pre-election parable—a conservative showman attempts to win support by stoking the flames of xenophobia while an Icarian liberal falls from power when he fails to develop a platform beyond being everything his opponent is not, and in the background, a world-weary cardinal begs the question, must we always be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils? But even that analysis fails to capture the levels at which Conclave operates. In the same breath, it questions the meaning of faith in a church so rife with evil and corruption, then—and I cannot stress this enough—lifts an entire scene from Mean Girls.
It’s difficult to call the performances in Conclave “career-bests,” when the truth is more that every single cast member accomplished exactly what they were brought in to do, making for an ensemble that towers over its cinematic contemporaries. With an all-star cast, stunning visual storytelling, and twists unlike what any other film this year has to offer, Conclave is the beautifully bitchy crown jewel of 2024.
Juror #2 (Warner Bros, dir. Clint Eastwood)
Contender for: Good question, actually.
Summary: When he’s summoned for jury duty, a young father-to-be (Nicholas Hoult) finds himself assigned to a murder trial and soon discovers he may be inadvertently responsible for the death at its center. Is protecting his own future worth convicting an innocent man?
Thoughts: Juror #2 was a great idea that failed, devastatingly, to live up to its own ambitions. Under a more apt writer (at the very least), it very well could have been Nicholas Hoult’s ticket to the fifth Best Actor slot. But Juror #2 did not have an apt writer. Instead, its choppy, irrational dialogue and loose, sometimes nonsensical story make for a film that never quite embodies its big ideas. By the time the otherwise unremarkable movie reaches its striking final scene, Hoult’s competent performance (as well as that of Toni Collette, who stands out as the film’s cunning District Attorney) feels all but wasted on a script incapable of supporting their talent.
Heretic (A24, dir. Scott Beck & Bryan Woods)
Contender for: Best Actor
Summary: Two Mormon missionaries—one a secret skeptic (Sophie Thatcher), the other a true believer (Chloe East)—find more than they bargained for when they end up at the door of a curious intellectual (Hugh Grant).
Thoughts: Heretic admittedly falls apart in its third act, but that is no fault of Grant’s. From the second he appears on screen, Grant is fully committed to his turn as the ultimate weirdo. Given the Academy’s history with horror, Grant’s performance in Heretic may not make the final Best Actor lineup, but for the aging rom-com star, it’s a genius career pivot.
A Real Pain (Searchlight, dir. Jesse Eisenberg)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay
Summary: After the death of their grandmother, cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) reunite for an odd-couple trek through Poland to visit her ancestral home.
Thoughts: Kieran Culkin is on a historic sweep of Oscars precursors for his work in A Real Pain, and it’s not difficult to see why. Eisenberg’s sophomore film gives Culkin room to embody all of his most endearing quirks. That the two leads are playing from deep in their well-worn archetypes doesn’t stop A Real Pain from being emotionally enticing—Eisenberg has simply recognized their niches and carved a lovely story around them. Considering its awards season luck thus far, A Real Pain is starting to look like this year’s Past Lives, a film that feels tiny in scope, but rich with emotional impact—and even richer with critical praise. It feels like a shoo-in for nominations in Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it nab a slot in the Best Picture lineup as well.
Emilia Pérez (Netflix, dir. Jacques Audiard)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound, Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Summary: In Mexico City, defense attorney Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is at a crossroads when she’s recruited by a brutal cartel boss (Karla Sofia Gascón) for a secretive one-time job. But when her employer re-emerges four years later with a new identity, Rita finds their lives may be too intertwined to escape.
Thoughts: With embarrassing gender politics and even worse execution, Emilia Pérez might (might) not be the worst film of the year, but it is the most baffling. It’s not that the songs themselves are particularly awful (though to be fair, Audiard’s lack of Spanish fluency does mean the lyrics veer overly simplistic), or that the film has any shortage of adequate performances (Gascón and Saldaña are particularly exciting to watch). But Emilia Pérez is fundamentally, conceptually bad. If there ever was a way for a beginner-level-Spanish-speaking French creative team and an almost entirely non-Mexican cast to successfully tell a story—by way of crime-drama musical—about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions in secret, only to enact a sort of Mrs. Doubtfire-esque scheme on her former family, Audiard & co. did not find it. Emilia Pérez, for all intents and purposes, should be an embarrassment. Instead, it’s a frontrunner for Best Picture.
Wicked (Universal, dir. Jon M. Chu)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects
Summary: Years before Dorothy finds Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North cross paths as young women—social outcast Elphaba and Queen Bee Galinda—and discover there may be something dark lingering beneath the Emerald City’s glittering surface.
Thoughts: Wicked had all the makings of a great movie musical: a pre-written stellar soundtrack, a pitch-perfect cast, and technical mastery at nearly every level. True, I was never a fan of the film’s two-part approach, and true, this first entry into the duology might be more enjoyable when its sequel is readily available. But even so—Wicked, even a modest half-Wicked, could and should have been great. Then came Jon M. Chu.
As Elphaba, Erivo is transcendent. As Glinda, Grande makes a glorious return to her theatre kid roots—and this is to say nothing of Jonathan Bailey, an inspired Fiyero if there ever was one. In the few moments where we can actually see Oz in all its technical glory, the sets, costumes, and practical effects are truly stunning. But is any of it enough to undo the curse placed on Wicked by its own director?
When Chu is not actively panning away from group choreography, ensuring his audience never sees any dancer’s entire silhouette for even a full eight-count, he’s somehow disrupting some other element of the magic—from the amazing technical achievements to the emotional stakes—that made the stage musical iconic. Chu’s Wicked is stilted in a way that’s hard to comprehend. Constant, insistent backlighting aside, does Jon M. Chu actually hate the movie musical?
September 5 (Paramount, dir. Tim Fehlbaum)
Contender for: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay
Summary: Through a combination of original and archival footage, September 5 tells the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis—in which members of Black September infiltrated the Olympic village and captured nine Israeli athletes—from the point of view of the ABC Sports team, who made television history when they broadcast the attack live.
Thoughts: Perhaps, given its subject matter and release year, September 5 was always going to be radioactive. But where The Apprentice makes the most of its controversy, September 5 spends its entire (curiously brief) runtime terrified of its own story. For one, the film’s principal characters are reduced to little more than names and catchphrases, leaving usually entertaining actors like Peter Sarsgaard (who co-stars as personality-deficient ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge) with embarrassingly little to do. But on a larger scale, this trick doesn’t leave room for much of a story at all.
Forget nuance when it comes to the politics behind the hostage crisis at the center of this film: its creators would rather you know nothing about the event than glean even an ounce of their opinion. Fehlbaum’s use of archival footage is masterful, flowing so seamlessly with the rest of the film that the line between actor and real person becomes all but invisible—but to what end? September 5 is so blatantly afraid to say anything at all that ultimately, its technical achievements amount to little more than interesting gimmicks used in service of an empty story, one even its usually-great cast can’t save.
Maria (Netflix, dir. Pablo Larraín)
Contender for: Best Actress, Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Summary: Isolated in her final days, iconic opera singer Maria Callas fantasizes about a return to the stage and reflects on a once-turbulent private life as her grasp on reality begins to slip.
Thoughts: If and when Angelina Jolie earns her third Oscar nomination for her turn Callas, it will be well-earned and incredibly necessary. In Maria, she’s equal parts glamorous and devastating as a fading star in her final days. As a whole, Maria settles at the top of Larraín’s 20th Century Icons trilogy, executing its segue into the surreal better than 2021’s Spencer. But Larraín also seems to anticipate that his audience is not here for the movie as a whole—as Callas, Jolie is the ultimate star.
Queer (A24, dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Contender for: Best Actor
Summary: In 1950s Mexico City, middle-aged American expat Lee (Daniel Craig) drifts through a lonely, aimless routine of anonymous sex and dissociation. But when he meets young, closeted GI Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), life—and queerness—begin to take on a new meaning.
Thoughts: Queer is a lush emotional epic and a slow burn in the truest, most shattering sense of the word. If Guadagningo honed his skills as an adaptor of subversive literature and a storyteller of romantic tragedies with Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All, he’s perfected them here.
True, Starkey may be my least favorite of Luca Guadagnino’s boy-muses (though to be fair, for anyone following Timothée Chalamet x2, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor, it would be difficult not to take last place), but he’s still perfectly seductive as Eugene. Ultimately, however, Queer is Craig’s film—and he’s never been better. Following Challengers was always going to be a Herculean task for Guadagnino’s next project, but with Queer, the director (and writer Justin Kuritzkes, who is behind both screenplays) is hardly resting on his laurels. Between the film’s stunning visuals and Craig’s soul-crushing loneliness, Queer proves its director is never done evolving.
Nosferatu (Focus, dir. Robert Eggers)
Contender for: Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay
Summary: When her husband (Nicholas Hoult) is mysteriously sent to Transylvania on business, a young newlywed (Lily-Rose Depp) finds her long-suppressed visions have returned—this time, alongside a much more tangible nightmare.
Thoughts: If Conclave and Challengers were the movies of the year, it’s only because Nosferatu is timeless. Or, like all Robert Eggers creations, it belongs to a bygone, pre-cinematic era in some otherworldly but almost tangible realm. Nosferatu finds the perfect blend of nodding to its 1922 and 1979 cinematic predecessors—and its original literary inspiration—while still managing to feel as fiercely singular as Eggers’ original work. More importantly, it’s Eggers at his best, his unflinching brutality, folkloric sensibility, and obsessive eye for historical detail brought together for an entrancing, bloodthirsty, erotic, unending Gothic nightmare.
Beyond Eggers, Nosferatu sees an entire all-star cast at their best. Bill Skarsgård is at peak form as the goriest, most uncontrolled iteration of the monster. Nicholas Hoult continues his Juror #2-era exploration of cowardice mixed up in love as would-be hero Thomas Hutter. Willem Dafoe is at his freakiest (with perhaps the director who understands him best) as van Helsing counterpart Professor von Franz. Chief among them, Lily-Rose Depp has finally found her niche as the tragic, disbelieved heroine Ellen Hutter. So rarely does a Dracula adaptation get at this under-discussed core tension of the novel: the consequences of a woman being disbelieved. But Eggers runs full-speed at this complication, making for perhaps the most tragic—but also the most compelling—Nosferatu yet.
Next on my Watchlist
A Complete Unknown (Searchlight, dir. James Mangold, in theaters 12/25) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay
Babygirl (A24, dir. Halina Reijn, in theaters 12/25) — Contender for Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay
Between the Temples (Sony, dir. Nathan Silver, now streaming on Netflix) — Contender for Best Supporting Actress
Better Man (Paramount, dir. Michael Gracey) — Contender for Best Original Song
Blitz (Apple, dir. Steve McQueen, now streaming on AppleTV+) — Contender for Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Song
The Brutalist (A24, dir. Brady Corbet, in theaters) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay
Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros, dir. Denis Villeneuve, streaming on Max) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay
The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM, dir. Rachel Morrison) — Contender for Best Supporting Actor
Flow (Janus Films, dir. Gints Zilbalodis, in theaters) — Contender for Best International Feature, Best Animated Feature
Gladiator II (Paramount, dir. Ridley Scott, in theaters) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor
Hard Truths (Bleecker Street, dir. Mike Leigh, in theaters 1/10) — Contender for Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay
I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Walter Salles, in theaters 1/17) — Contender for Best Actress
Inside Out 2 (Pixar, dir. Kelsey Mann) — Contender for Best Animated Feature
The Last Showgirl (Roadside Attractions, dir. Gia Coppola, in theaters) — Contender for Best Actress
Nightbitch (Searchlight, dir. Marielle Heller, in theaters) — Contender for Best Actress
Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM, dir. RaMell Ross, in theaters) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay
The Outrun (Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Nora Fingscheidt, available as VOD) — Contender for Best Actress
The Piano Lesson (Netflix, dir. Malcolm Washington, streaming now) — Contender for Best Supporting Actress
The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Pedro Almodóvar, in theaters) — Contender for Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Films Boutique, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, now streaming on AppleTV+) — Contender for Best Director, Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay
Sing Sing (A24, dir. Greg Kwedar, returns to theaters 1/17) — Contender for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay
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Collage by the author.
Okay, I know it might seem hard to believe that either film is “fiercely original” when my descriptions of The Substance and A Different Man sound so similar. But trust me on this one—though they might make for the ideal double feature, both films are nothing if not singular.
Top 5 Performances: A Different Man, The Apprentice, I, Tonya, Fresh, the scene from The Falcon & The Winter Soldier where he tries to go on a date.
Top 5 Projects: A Different Man, Gossip Girl, I, Tonya, The Apprentice (tied with Logan Lucky), Fresh.