The favorite to win Best Actor threw opera and ballet under the bus. The favorite to win Best Actress made the man who would become her husband get rid of his cats. The favorite to win Best Picture – with a record-breaking 16 NOMINATIONS – is a vampire movie. Can we just go back to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, please?
I’ll be loading up the cupboard with anesthetizing snack foods for my annual viewing of the Oscars, an event for me that, for most of my life, as something of a family ritual, has always been more than the sum of its parts. I know I’ve written about my personal relationship with Oscar before – growing up in a family of ardent movie lovers that annually gathered around the tube over a banquet of shrimp, buffalo wings, chips, dips, and palate-cleansing fruits and vegetables, to take in the latest installment in the Academy Awards continuum.
If I’m to be honest, the custom was mostly driven by my stepfather and me, who retained the minutiae of just about every movie we’d ever seen; but my mother was also game, as likely as not because it was family time and she liked to see the designer gowns. In those days, it was essential to be tuned in at the start, for the red-carpet arrivals. We needed to see Sean Connery (or, for Mom, Cher) climb out of that limo. Now, to hang on to my brain cells, the red carpet, with its vapid interviewers, must be avoided at all cost. That’s the time to figure out how to get a connection (I don’t have cable), to make sure that all the manwiches are ready to go, that all the vegetables are chopped, and to pop the hors d’oeuvres in the oven.
The illusions of Hollywood glamor and sophistication may be no more, but even in these days of diminishing returns, there continue to be a few pleasures. I’m not so interested in most of the actors, but every once in a while, there’s an emotional acceptance speech, or some documentarians who exhibit real passion when they finally receive their moment of recognition (even if there’s a better than 90-percent chance of them unempathetically getting played off). I love any montages devoted to the movies itself. Most of all, I sit riveted by the “In Memoriam” segment, in which, theoretically, all those who passed over the last year are honored. Oscar really loused that up for a few years running, through hypercaffeinated editing and a misguided focus on live performers whose function it should be to complement the images and to honor the dead. I’m hoping Conan O’Brien, as emcee, will take the sting out of any disappointments.
As you can imagine, the category of Best Original Score has always held particular interest for me. But alas, very few of the nominees write traditional orchestral scores anymore. Most of what’s being composed today might work well in the movies themselves, but a lot of it now functions more as sound design. Little of the nominees’ “music” could ever be recreated in a conventional concert setting. Of that under consideration, I think only Alexandre Desplat’s “Frankenstein” is composed in the classic tradition. But it won’t win. Please God, don’t give it to Max Richter for “Hamnet” – a score that was so weak, I can’t get over the fact that the film was produced by Steven Spielberg.
That said, this is probably another Ludwig Göransson year. Göransson previously won for “Black Panther” and the overbearing score for “Oppenheimer.” Somehow it doesn’t seem right that Ludwig Göransson would receive three Academy Awards, when Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and Bernard Herrmann only ever won one. But here we are. Göransson’s blues-inflected score for “Sinners” is certainly effective, even if, like most film scores these days, it won’t live on outside the film. Those days are gone, my friends.
Which reminds me: in the off-chance that any filmmakers actually read this, unless you’re making “Lawrence of Arabia,” can we please bring running times down to two hours again? I thought TikTok was supposed to be eroding everyone’s attention spans? Of the Best Picture nominees, only Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia” (which I skipped, because I still remember “Poor Things”), “F1” (90 minutes, but still wasn’t interested), and “Train Dreams” (gorgeous, if a bit poky), kept it under two hours. Following the wisdom of P.T. Barnum, always leave them wanting more.
Occasionally, I’ll offer more extensive predictions. I don’t think I’m going to bother this year. I certainly don’t have many nominees I am rooting for. It would make me happy to see “Train Dreams” get Best Picture, but it won’t happen in 2026. I have to say, “Sinners” gives it a run for the money in the cinematography department, one of “Train Dreams’” strongest points. But like the much-vaunted “Hamnet” – arguably the least interesting Shakespeare movie ever (still better than “Shakespeare in Love”) – “Sinners” only goes to the next level at the very, very end. If it weren’t for a scene that doesn’t appear until early in the film’s credits that lends it an unexpected touch of humanity (from a vampire, no less), I don’t know that I would have thought it any more than a three-star movie.
In fact, “Sinners” might have been a much better film without the vampires – with an absorbing set-up, interesting characters, an unhurried pace and admirable restraint (until it all goes out the window), plenty of period detail, jaw-dropping cinematography, and good acting. For me it was a little too much like somebody got carried away because they just happened to discover metaphor. It could have been a great movie had writer and director Ryan Coogler explored the same themes in the context of a straight gangster film. But that would have been a totally different, reality-based movie. And it probably wouldn’t have attracted as much interest.
Anyway, I’ll be watching the Oscars, living in the past, hoping for some continuity with better times, and stuffing my face with comfort foods.
Good luck to all the nominees, except Chalamet and Jessie Buckley, the cat-hater.
ADDENDUM: I would love to see Ethan Hawke win for his tour-de-force as Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” but between Chalamet and Michael B. Jordan (in his double performance in “Sinners”), there’s no question it’s going to be an uphill fight.
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