Pre-Oscar Viewing: Napoleon

Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon
which will not conquer the Oscars.

On this weekend before the Oscar nominations are announced, we watched with Ridley Scott's Napoleon on Amazon for $20. (It's no longer playing in theaters in the greater NYC area.) Before it opened earlier in 2023, this historic epic sounded like perfect Oscar-bait (over two hours, real-life figures, historic sweep, plenty of battles, etc.), but it received tepid audience response and mixed to bad reviews. Now it looks like it might only cop a nod for costume design and perhaps special visual effects, and those chances are iffy. 

Slate dubbed the film a "spectacular mess" and I have to agree. If we hadn't listened to the podcast Real Dictators (narrated by Dr. Who Paul McGann) while driving to see my mom in Pennsylvania and relatives in New Jersey on Thanksgiving, I wouldn't have a clue as to what the hell was going on. Phoenix is drab in the title role and Vanessa Kirby adds a modicum of spice as Josephine but not enough to make this overbaked casserole palatable. You have to admire Scott for staging a plethora of epic battle scenes with horses plunging into icy, frozen water and canons ripping limbs from bodies. Yet there is so little in the way of exposition and context, we never learn the importance of these clashes and what the little emperor was trying to accomplish. Did he unify a fractured post-revolutionary France or grab power and territory for his own egotistical gratification? Was he a Hitler-like thug or a champion of the people? Or  both? Scott and his screenwriter David Scarpa never answer those questions. We get some supertitles with a sentence or two of explanation and the date. Oppenheimer was just as complex a subject, but Christopher Nolan made the conflicts, objectives and contexts much clearer.

Was Bugs a better Josephine than
Vanessa Kirby?

Sidenote: Napoleon is the only historical figure to have encountered Samantha from Bewitched, Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and Bugs Bunny.

In other award show news, I caught up with the Critics Choice and Emmy Awards on DVR and both were funnier and faster than the misbegotten Golden Globes. Chelsea Handler and Anthony Anderson were smoother than Jo Koy. Oppenheimer continues its march toward Oscar glory having won eight accolades at the Critics Choice. 

2023 Potential Oscar Nominated Films Seen So Far
Oppenheimer (34th Street AMC and again on Amazon Prime)
Barbie (Regal Union Square)
Asteroid City (Angelika)
Golda (County Theater, Doylestown, PA)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Regal Kaufman Astoria)
Rustin (Netflix)
The Killer (Netflix)--Tilda Swinton could nab a Supporting Actress nod
Maestro (Paris Cinema mezzanine and again on Netflix)
May December (Netflix)
Past Lives (Amazon Prime)
Poor Things (Regal Kaufman Astoria)
The Holdovers (Regal Union Square)
American Fiction (AMC Empire 25--Times Square)
Anatomy of a Fall (Amazon Prime)

Nyad (Netflix)

Napoleon (Amazon Prime)

Society of the Snow (Netflix)

The Zone of Interest (Angelika)

Still: A Michael J. Fox Film (Apple TV +)
Les Menus Plaisir--Les Troisgros (Film Forum)
20 Days in Mariupol (Frontline/PBS/Watched on the Passport app)
American Symphony (Netflix)

Beyond Utopia (Independent Lens/PBS)

Stamped from the Beginning (Netflix)

The Eternal Memory (MTV Documentaries/Paramount +)

Short Films
Live Action
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Netflix)
The After (Netflix)

Yellow (YouTube)

Knight of Fortune (New Yorker/YouTube)

Red White and Blue (YouTube)

The Shepherd (Disney +)

Invincible (YouTube)

Animated
Boom (YouTube)
Pachyderm (YouTube)
Once Upon a Studio (Disney +)

Pete (YouTube)

Letter to a Pig (YouTube)

Eeva (YouTube)

Documentary

How We Get Free (Max)

Island in Between (NY Times/YouTube)

Deciding Vote (New Yorker/YouTube)

The Last Repair Shop (LA Times/Searchlight/YouTube)

If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis (Independent Lens/PBS/watched on the Passport app)

Between Earth and Sky (POV/PBS website)

The Barber of Little Rock (New Yorker/YouTube)

Camp Courage (Netflix)

The ABCs of Book Banning (MTV Documentaries/Paramount +)

Last Song from Kabul (MTV Documentaries/Paramount +)

Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games (ESPN +)