This week’s Oscar nomination announcement was greeted with excitement and disappointment. Some decried the supposed snubbing of Barbie star Margot Robbie and the film’s writer-director Greta Gerwig, as the box office hit came away with eight nominations – including best supporting actor for Ryan Gosling’s performance as Ken.
As Gosling himself noted: “There is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film.
Against all odds with nothing but a couple of soulless, scantily clad, and thankfully crotchless dolls, they made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and they made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.”
Oppenheimer, its 2023 box office rivalry – which inspired this Listener quiz – claimed the top spot with 13 nominations, and Poor Things followed with 11.
For less-than-avid moviegoers, the nominations may simply be a reminder to catch up on a certifiably good film. Still finding it difficult to decide? Read Listener reviewers Sarah Watts and Russell Baillie’s takes on the Best Picture nominees …
Anatomy of a Fall
“Complete with an enthralling insight into the French legal system, it may not sound like everyone’s mug of glühwein, but Anatomy of a Fall is also superb as a twisty personal drama and a portrait of a marriage. It’s also devastatingly realistic in demonstrating the fallibility of memory and how our experiences are altered by trauma.” – Sarah Watt
Where to see: Available to rent on online services.
Barbie
“With this bittersweet recollection, I was rather hoping the Barbie movie would be something of a documentary and fill me in on everything I had missed out on when my friends went to play at other friends’ houses. It doesn’t quite do that. But clever writer-director Greta Gerwig (of 2019′s Oscar-winning Little Women) somehow manages to deliver a lighthearted film about existential dread and female oppression and empowerment. The script is littered with Barbie lore and fascinating facts, plus wittily pointed lines and the relentless teasing of Barbie’s “superfluous” platonic boyfriend, Ken. It’s a toy-based meta-comedy, one that subverts expectations of movies based on playthings and is aimed as much at grown-ups as children.” – Sarah Watt
Where to see: Still in some cinemas and available to rent online.
The Holdovers
“The film is swept along by the three terrific lead performances. Giamatti is typically excellent; as a grieving mother, Randolph’s Mary oscillates convincingly between coping and caving into her loss, and Sessa’s Angus is stroppy, wistful, secretive and guileless all at once. We all have teachers we remember, for good or bad, and this twist on Dead Poets Society meets The Breakfast Club dressed up in hideous 70s attire may leave you nostalgic for your own school days.” -- Sarah Watt
Where to see: In cinemas.
Killers of the Flower Moon
“David Grann’s riveting book about the 1920s murders of dozens of Osage Native Americans who had become rich due to their forced exile to an Oklahoma reservation that turned out to be prime oil country, might take a few hours to read. Killers of the Flower Moon is a page-turner that packs a lot in, from how the killings became a showcase for the nascent FBI to how the so-called “Reign of Terror” resonates with the Osage today. Watching Martin Scorsese’s less-riveting adaptation of the book starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio also takes a few hours: some three hours and 26 minutes. As another Scorsese portrait of the evil that men do, it has its moments. But as a saga of American greed, racism, colonialism and gangsterism, well, there’s a very good book that does it better.” – Russell Baillie
Where to see: Apple TV+ and online rental.
Maestro
“Mostly, Maestro is a series of vignettes -- some lateral-minded, some thundering with music, some unbearably sad, some briefly delivered in the form of a musical or visually evoking the period in which they are set, all smelling of Bernstein’s ever-present cigarettes. Bernstein contained multitudes and Cooper does a terrific job of capturing them – his showmanship and brilliance on the podium comes in a long sequence where he conducts Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral, England, in 1973. It’s the showstopping centre to a great film, one that pips Oppenheimer for the greatest great-man biopic of the year.” – Russell Baillie
Where to see: Netflix
Oppenheimer
“It’s a movie of a vast supporting cast of big names, including Matt Damon as Manhattan Project boss General Leslie Groves, with brief appearances by Tom Conti as Albert Einstein and Gary Oldman as Truman. Oldman, after playing Churchill, now only needs a Stalin to collect the set. The film belongs to Murphy’s mesmerising portrayal of Oppenheimer, a man who changed history and then tried to deal with the consequences. But even he is eclipsed by a brighter star, the one he unleashed in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. It’s not just any old movie explosion. In Nolan’s hands, it’s brilliant and devastating.” -- Russell Baillie
Past Lives
“Arriving on our screens after much festival acclaim, including our own Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival, Past Lives is touted as a love story for, and about, the ages – and in the most subtle way, this is true. But it’s more honest and psychologically insightful than the standard screen romance. … With realistic dialogue and believable performances, Past Lives feels gripping and true. And the notion that we are exactly where we are meant to be, and that each of life’s choices has brought us to this moment for the right reasons, may even bring solace to some viewers. For anyone who’s ever thought idly about their childhood crush or first love and wondered “What if?” Past Lives proposes a beautifully considered and emotionally astute answer.” –- Sarah Watt
Where to see: Available to rent online.
Poor Things
“Emma Stone is having a moment. Maybe that was always on the cards, what with this being her second film with director Yorgos Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara after 2018′s The Favourite, their movie about an English monarch and her ladies in waiting, which was quite unlike any before it. If The Favourite was a brilliant upending of the royalty period film, here, the Stone-Lanthimos-McNamara triumvirate have repeated the feat with Frankenstein-like mad scientists and their creations. It’s a film which out-Burtons early Tim Burton and out-Lynch’s Elephant Man-era David Lynch. It might be an absurdist steampunk feminist comedy of an elaborate design (in its visuals, costumes and music), but Stone’s performance is a lightning conductor for the whole thing. She keeps it sparking for its 140 minutes playing Bella as a mix of Frankenstein’s daughter and a happily horny Eliza Doolittle.” – Russell Baillie
Where to see: In cinemas.
Of the two other Best Picture nominees, Zone of Interest is released in cinemas on February 22 and American Fiction doesn’t yet have a local release date.
