My 2023 Oscars Ballot! Plus 'Creed III' And 'Operation Fortune'
#216: Fill out your own ballot and join my picks pool before the ceremony on Sunday! "Creed 3," "Operation Fortune," "The Red Shoes," "The Best Offer"
Edition 216:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
This week: Catch up on my reviews of this year’s Best Picture contenders, and see where to stream them before Sunday’s Academy Awards. Then, I reveal my Oscars ballot. But that’s not all! We’ll talk Creed III, Operation Fortune and hand out our usual streaming suggestions!
The 95th Academy Awards
Hey all! “Hollywood’s biggest night” is Sunday, and even though the season finale of “The Last of Us” is airing at the same time and at this point may be a bigger deal culturally, the Academy Awards are something like this newsletter’s Super Bowl.
With that in mind, if you haven’t already, now is the time to join my Oscars Picks Pool. It’s free-to-enter, with a winner-take-all cash prize (supplied by me) of $2 times total number of entries. So get all your friends to join to juice the pot!
Enter your Oscars ballot here: https://forms.gle/HrBshp7Xi9hKK9mS7
I’ll drop my own Oscars ballot at the bottom, but first I wanted to give you all a handy primer on where to stream all of the movies that will be mentioned on Sunday night.
If you want my own personal recommendations, here’s how I’d rank the Best Picture nominees in terms of which you should watch before the ceremony:
Everything Everywhere All At Once - Showtime
Top Gun: Maverick - Paramount+
The Banshees Of Inisherin - HBO Max
The Fabelmans - $VOD
All Quiet On The Western Front - Netflix
TÀR - Peacock
Women Talking - Amazon Prime
Triangle Of Sadness - Hulu
Avatar: The Way Of Water - Theaters
Elvis - HBO Max
And drum roll please …. here’s my official Oscars ballot! I think Everything Everywhere and All Quiet are going to clean up most places, and I’m betting the Elvis hive will be stronger than expected for Austin Butler and in production categories. Last year I got 16 of 22 categories correct, good for fifth in our pool, but this year I’m coming for it all!
Best Original Screenplay: The Banshees Of Inisherin
Best Adapted Screenplay: Women Talking
Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way Of Water
Best Sound: Top Gun: Maverick
Best Production Design: Babylon
Best Original Score: All Quiet On The Western Front
Best Original Song: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Elvis
Best Live Action Short Film: An Irish Goodbye
Best International Feature: All Quiet On The Western Front
Best Film Editing: Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Documentary Short: Stranger At The Gate
Best Documentary Feature: Navalny
Best Costume Design: Elvis
Best Cinematography: All Quiet On The Western Front
Best Animated Short Film: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse
Best Animated Feature: Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Angela Bassett -- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Ke Huy Quan -- Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Yeoh -- Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Austin Butler -- Elvis
Best Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Schienert -- Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All At Once
Something New
Creed III (Theaters): Michael B. Jordan takes the helm in what is now pretty clearly the Creed franchise, and not the Rocky extended universe. That R word is never uttered in this movie, despite the very familiar plot line of a world champion giving a title fight to an underdog off the street. I applaud Jordan’s first directorial effort for attempting to interject some nuance into a franchise that has always relied on cartoonish villains and caveman-level motivations. But I do wonder if those are the things that made rooting for Rocky so easy?
On the page, equal time and attention is given to both Jordan and his ultimate antagonist, but on the screen the balance of power swings heavily in the direction of Jonathan Majors. This is mostly because of his supernova talent and charisma, which overpowers even MBJ. Majors can no longer be considered as anything other than an A+-list star and one of the best actors of our generation. Here, his story is infinitely more interesting and easy to root for than Jordan’s, which makes it both awkward and less exciting to follow a final fight whose conclusion is inevitable. Usually in boxing movies, we only follow one perspective, so when the fight comes we root for our guy with every punch.
This was a perfectly fine popcorn flick, by 2023 standards (yikes). I actually do have some hope for MBJ as a filmmaker, mostly because here the best parts had nothing to do with boxing — convenient, because the boxing action was pretty questionable. Though the movie felt middle of the road by many standards, it didn’t annoy me in the way many recent blockbusters have, so I give it relatively high marks.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (Theaters): Some directors have such a distinct style that understanding their movies is almost like speaking a different language. Think about, like, Wes Anderson. His exquisite, symmetrical frames might seem odd to the uninitiated. Same goes for Tarintino’s cussing (and violence), Edgar Wright’s fast-cutting to music or Michael Bay’s explosions.
If Operation Fortune is the first Guy Ritchie movie you’re seeing, you might consider it to be a knock off hybrid of Ocean’s 11 and Mission: Impossible, which would be wrong (yet also generous). If you speak fluent Ritchie, like I do, then it’s something else entirely. The man who brought us The Gentlemen, RocknRolla, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and his best, Snatch, returns to the world of fast-talking Cockney criminals he has mastered so many times. The cast is basically the Ritchie repertory theater company — Jason Statham and Hugh Grant’s voices are especially suited to the creative insults — and this time we get some fresh blood in Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett and Cary Elwes (known to many as Westley in The Princess Bride).
Is the movie ridiculous? Absolutely. It’s one of those convoluted, globe-trotting adventure type movies where the heroes are invincible geniuses who save the world from evil billionaires. The only thing that updates this version is that the movie’s MacGuffin is an AI software (the first of what I imagine will be many ChatGPT-inspired plots), and for the first time I can remember, more of the movie’s consequential action takes place over the internet than in the real life punching and shooting. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of that too. For fans of Ritchie, it’s more of exactly what we love.
Something Old
The Red Shoes (1948, HBO Max): This movie was recommended to me as “one of the greatest films of all time,” which is tough shoes to fill and often just means a movie is both very good and very old. This fits the criteria, though presented in unbelievable CinemaScope format with gorgeous cinematography, it does maintain a timeless quality that cancels out the fact that it’s 75 years old and 195 minutes long.
That runtime is needed to fit in several full-length dance sequences in this story about a traveling ballet, which comes complete with the difficult genius maestro, aspiring ballerina and promising young conductor. Singin’ In The Rain, A Star Is Born, Black Swan definitely, even La La Land owe huge debts of gratitude to this movie for its storytelling style and substance. Ultimately it’s a story about the artist’s ambition — should one pursue love or career success? The answer costs our young protagonista her life.
Something to Stream
The Best Offer / La Migliore Offerta (Tubi): Written and directed by Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore (director of Cinema Paradiso), this movie actually comes off very British thanks to its London location and lead actor Geoffrey Rush, who plays a meticulous, incredibly successful and potentially shady antiques dealer who takes on a job with a mysterious new client. He’s OCD, she’s a recluse, and they fall in love…but something’s not right. A sense of unease runs through the whole movie, thanks mostly to an incredible score from the legend himself, Ennio Morricone.
If the movie seems a little odd, that’s intentional. I really enjoyed how specific it was, as its quirkiness helps to elevate the sense of unease that ultimately pays off in the big twist ending. Jim Sturgess (you might know as the lead from gambling movie 21), Donald Sutherland and Sylvia Hoeks fill out a solid cast, and it’s no small feat to leave a viewer constantly questioning where the story is headed next. Compared to so many movies that feel the same, this was a breath of fresh air.
Trailer Watch: No Hard Feelings
Jennifer Lawrence won a Best Actress Oscar at age 22, and had four nominations by age 25. She’s been a superhero in X-Men and one of the biggest movie stars in the world in the Hunger Games series. She took a few years off, or at least away from the spotlight. But come on. Is this really where she’s at in her career now? A raunchy comedy B-movie?