Pre-Oscar Film Catch-Up

A scene from Flow.
Credit: Dreamwell/SacreBleu/Take 5

As 2024 draws to a close, I'm trying to catch up with potential award nominated and winning films before the Golden Globes are dispensed on Jan. 5 and the Oscar nominations come out on Jan. 17. Just yesterday, I took in the Latvian animated film Flow at the Angelika Center, killing two birds with one stone since it is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Feature and Best International Film. It's a beautifully silent work chronicling the adventures of a cat as it copes with a natural disaster in what seems to be a post-human world. The images are breathtaking as the feline escapes a flood and makes friends with various other animals in their quest for survival. 

As noted in an earlier blog, this year is a bit different because it seems not as many high-profile films are available on the various streaming services as previous years. It was so easy to catch so many of them in 2022 and 2023, but now it seems the studios have wised up post-pandemic and not released their big projects for home viewing so soon. 

Karla Sofia Gascon and Adriana Paz in
Emilia Perez.
Credit: Page 114/Why Not Productions/
Pathe Films/France 2 Cinema

Emilia Perez is a rare exception since Netflix purchased it and I could watch it at home. The French film spoken in Spanish and set mostly in Mexico has received the most Golden Globe nominations and could take quite a few slots in the Oscar race including International Film and possibly a Best Actress nod for Karla Sofia Gascon, which would make her the first transgender performer to be nominated. Gascon shines as the title character, a macho drug-cartel boss who always wanted to live a fully-realized life as a woman. It's a musical to boot, making it a truly unique and arresting feature. (There is also an Oscar-short-listed Doc. Short about transgenderism on Montana state representative Zoey Zephyr available on YouTube. Trans people are the last minority the right can still demonize without being socially stigmatized. I watched part of the doc., but I stopped because it was so painful to watch her being treated like a witch in old Salem by her Montana Senate colleagues. I will catch the rest of it soon.) Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez could also garner Supporting Actress noms for Perez. 

Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, and Lesley Manville
in Queer.
Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis/A24

Daniel Craig takes a radical departure from James Bond with his sensitive star turn in Queer, based on William Burroughs' controversial semi-autobiographical novel. He won Best Actor from the National Board of Review. Best Actor is fairly wide open with Craig, Adrian Brody (The Brutalist), Timothee Chalamant (A Complete Unknown) and Coleman Domingo (Sing Sing) all in the mix and no clear front runner. Lesley Manville is also marvelous and unrecognizable as an eccentric botanist Craig's character encounters in the Ecuadorian jungle.

Kieran Culkin is a lock for the Best Supporting Actor nom for A Real Pain and Jesse Eisenberg will probably nab an Original Screenplay slot. Director-writer Eisenberg and Culkin play cousins visiting the Poland of their recently-departed grandmother. The trailers indicated it would be a goofy comedy, but it's much deeper. Culkin conveys the outgoing, over-the-top cousin's charismatic, unfiltered personality but also his quivering fearful core, the "real pain" of the title.

Angelina Jolie delivers an "Oscar-bait" performance as  Maria Callas in another Netflix feature, but the film only scrapes the surface of the operatic legend's life including an imagined meeting between the title character and JFK (which probably never happened). I want Marianne Jean-Baptiste to win Best Actress for Hard Truths (or at least get a nomination which she was denied by the Golden Globes). Nicole Kidman seems to be the front runner for Baby Girl. We saw the trailer and it seems to be a gender-reversed Fatal Attraction. Also on the list to be seen are The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, and two films which probably won't get nominated but I want to see them anyway--The Room Next Door and The Last Showgirl--because of the lead female performances.

2024 Oscar contenders seen:
Between the Temples (Angelika Film Center)
Conclave (Angelika Film Center)
Gladiator 2 (Regal Kaufman Astoria)
Wicked (IMAX at Lincoln Square)
The Piano Lesson (Netflix)
Hard Truths (Walter Reade/Lincoln Center)

Maria (Netflix)

His Three Daughters (Netflix)

A Real Pain (Kew Gardens Cinema)

Emilia Perez (Netflix)

Queer (Angelika Film Center)

Flow (Angelika Film Center)

Doc. Shorts

The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Netflix)

Eternal Father (New Yorker/YouTube)

Live-Action Shorts

I'm Not a Robot (New Yorker/YouTube)