Oscars 2024: The Screenplays

Jeremy BeckOscars
Ralph Fiennes in Conclave; Yura Borisov in Anora

We’re moving right along in our analysis of this year’s Oscars. Having previously weighed in on the supporting actors, plus various below-the-line categories, it’s time to wrestle with the world’s dumbest profession: writing. People get paid to do this? Seems absurd.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

NOMINEES
A Complete Unknown—Jay Cocks and James Mangold
Conclave—Peter Straughan
Emilia Pérez—Jacques Audiard
Nickel Boys—RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
Sing Sing—Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield

WILL WIN
Conclave. No multiple rounds of voting required. Read More

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Oscars 2024: The Supporting Actors

Jeremy BeckOscars
Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain; Zoe Saldana in Emilia Perez

Now we’re cooking. The past few days, we’ve looked at 2024’s miscellaneous Oscar categories great and small, which means it’s time to dig into the races that might actually interest normal people. First up, the supporting actor races, where the outcomes are virtually assured but my personal preferences are rather less clear.


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

NOMINEES
Monica Barbaro—A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande—Wicked
Felicity Jones—The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini—Conclave
Zoe Saldaña—Emilia Pérez

WILL WIN
Saldaña. It helps that she’s the lead of her movie, but that’s not her fault. You can make a half-convincing case for Grande (also a co-lead) if you argue that the Emilia Pérez backlash will preclude Academy members from voting for it in any major category. But Saldaña has been saying all the right things on the circuit, where she’s been scooping up every trophy in sight. With luck, she’ll use her speech to accuse the audience of acting like a baby, making noise, don’t know what to do. Read More

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Oscars 2024: The Big Techies

Jeremy BeckOscars
Ariana Grande in Wicked

Yesterday, we looked at seven miscellaneous Oscar categories that most people tend not to care about. Today, we’re changing pace and focusing on five incredibly sexy filmmaking disciplines that get even the most jaded viewer’s heart pumping. Better strap in.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

NOMINEES
The Brutalist—Lol Crawley
Dune: Part Two—Greig Fraser
Emilia Pérez—Paul Guilhaume
Maria—Ed Lachman
Nosferatu—Jarin Blaschke Read More

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Oscars 2024: The Odds and Ends

Jeremy BeckOscars
A scene from Flow

Welcome to Oscars week! Over the next five days, we’ll be walking you through all 20 feature categories at the 97th Academy Awards, providing predictions, preferences, and assorted gripes. Now before you grumble that the Oscars don’t matter, let me stop you and say: I agree. The notion that bestowing a trophy on a particular work of art somehow imbues it with greater value is, of course, nonsense.

But while the Oscars can’t change how you feel about a particular movie, they do serve a valuable historical function, providing a snapshot in time of the industry’s collective consciousness. Some decisions hold up well, others age horribly, but the point is that they’re there—etchings in stone to be commended or condemned as the decades pass. Read More

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Ranking Every Movie of 2024 (sort of)

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Lupita Nyongo in A Quiet Place Day One; Daisy Edgar Jones in Twisters; Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding; Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge; Willa Fitzgerald in Strange Darling

Last week, we exhaustively ranked and wrote about every TV show we watched in 2024. Today, we’re doing the same thing with movies—but not really. I spend most weeks reviewing individual films in detail, so beyond publicizing yesterday’s Top 20 list, I’m not undertaking some massive cinematic year-in-review project. Instead, this annual exercise is more designed to serve as a personal recordkeeping function, allowing me to memorialize all of the 2024 releases that I watched and to assign them relative levels of caliber—not in the form of a literal ranking, but by dividing them into qualitative tiers.

What do you get out of this? In theory, two things. First, for each movie listed, I’m including a parenthetical detailing which streaming service it’s currently available on, if any. (Obviously this information is subject to change, especially given the parsimonious whims of our studio overlords, but it’s accurate as of today.) Second, if you ever find yourself asking the age-old question, “What movie should I watch tonight?” then in theory this piece gives you a hefty bank of data, allowing you to make an informed decision rather than just surrendering to the almighty algorithm. Read More

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