Jeremy's 2024 Best Picture Rankings

It is 1:30 on Sunday, the Oscars start in four and a half hours, and I have just finished watching my last of the Best Picture noms. At this point, I've actually watched 49 of the 53 movies nominated for Oscars so far, and I think I can squeeze one more in before the ceremony, if I write this quick enough, so let's get this thing started, let's rank them Best Picture Nominees!

Category 1: Movies that are bad and should not have been nominated for Best Picture

10) Maestro

Let me start by saying something nice about this movie: Carey Mulligan is a genuinely good actor. She kills it in this movie, as she does in every movie, she deserves her nomination for Best Actress, I'd rank her at like third out of the five on my personal rankings for that award. Let's talk about the rest of this movie, it is absolute garbage. I am certain this is the worst feature length movie I watched for this year's awards. Bradley Cooper is playing some weird caricature of a human being, with a completely unnecessary prosthetic nose. He uses this voice that makes it sound like he has a head cold and can't breathe through his nose. Also, there is literally no story told in this film, beyond how terrible their marriage is. I only knew one other character's name, because the movie does not introduce any of its characters. It is insane to me that people watched this movie and couldn't see through the award bait garbage. Thank god Leonard Bernstein isn't alive to see this as the representation of his life. Also, the REM song drop is embarrassing. EMBARRASSING. What a waste of time this movie is.

Category 2: Movies that were good and did deserve to be nominated

09) Past Lives

People love this movie, and it does not resonate with me like that. Don't get me wrong, I saw it when it first came out, I gave it a 7.5/10, that's three out of four stars. But there are people who this is their favorite movie of the year. And I am happy for them, but it just wasn't my favorite of the nominees. But hey, don't get it twisted here, Maestro got a 3/10, and that 3 is all on the back of Carey Mulligan, Past Lives is a very good movie, it deserves to be here. The performances were great, I loved the way both NYC and South Korea were shot. Good stuff. Liked it.

08) American Fiction

It pains me that this falls so far back because I love Jeffrey Wright. But the messaging of the movie is a little on the nose, it has that Adam McKay "I'm teaching you a lesson through this movie" kind of vibe to it. However, the parts of the movie that revolve around the family, and not around the concept of black media not having to have a message, are really fun and effective. Sterling K Brown and Jeffrey Wright both deserved their nominations, but neither are going to win. Still though, once again, good stuff.

07) Killers of the Flower Moon

This is the movie I just finished watching. I kept hoping for a Saturday morning showing to present itself the last couple of weeks and it never did, so I hunkered down and watched all three and a half hours at home and it was good. Leo gives a great performance, definitely deserved a Best Actor nom more than Bradley Cooper's two and a half hour riff on what being a real human is. I would say my biggest complaint about this movie is that it is basically just another version of the Scorcese mobster movie, just now it's set in early 1900's Oklahoma and is about the murders of the rich Osage Nationers. It was good, but I think I've reached my fill of Scorcese mobster movies. Give me some more tortured rich dude movies or mysteries or kids movies or something. Scorcese horror movie, Shutter Island was forever ago. Also, this movie had a slew of technical issues, like there is a time they noticeably dub over DeNiro saying "a couple months" and there's a scene where the boom mic is coming in the side of the shot.

06) Barbie

Don't come at me for this one, Barbie was great. But the more I saw other movies nominated this year, the more I saw Barbie slipping down the standings. Margot Robbie deserved to be nominated over both Annette Bening and Lily Gladstone, Greta Gerwig not getting nominated for Best Director though....ehhh, the people who are nominated definitely did a better job, I'm not too upset about that one. But, I mean, who is reading this and hasn't seen Barbie? Everyone saw it, you know what it is. I liked Ryan Gosling, I liked America Ferrera, there is no way either of them deserves to win an Oscar for these performances. Barbie is fun though, I am glad it made so much money, I love the message of the movie, and I love me some Micheal Cera.

Category 3: Movies that were great and deserve to be nominated but don't deserve to win Best Picture

05) The Holdovers

This category is only one movie long because I do think The Holdovers is a step above the last four movies, but not quite on the level necessary to win the big prize. Movies from this category have definitely won Best Picture before, but I don't think it's going to happen this time. The Holdovers though, it was basically a perfect encapsulation of the snowy cold months at college. It takes place over Christmas Break, the campus is quiet (the campus is not actually a college in this movie, it's a northeastern boarding school, but basically the same thing), the snow is falling, and there's a sad Damien Jurado song playing. I loved it, walking on a quiet snowy campus was one of my favorite things about college. Da'Vine Joy Randolph is probably going to win Best Supporting Actress and I think she is deserving. Jodie Foster and Emily Blunt were also good, but not as good as Joy Randolph, her roll has power behind it. Also Paul Giamatti is a great slightly grumpy, slightly tipsy, old academic. I think Cillian Murphy deserves to win Best Actor, but Giamatti is a close second and the only person I think would even be close to deserving an upset win.

Category 4: Movies that were great and deserve to win Best Picture

04) Anatomy of a Fall

Now we get to the part of this thing where we talk about the tremendous year that Sandra Hüller has had. She is the lead actress in two different Best Picture nominees, and she gets the Best Actress nod for this one. For me, she comes in second to the insanity that was Emma Stone's performance in Poor Things, but a solid second place, well above the other nominees. This is a French courtroom drama, it's half in English, half in French, it heavily involves an instrumental steel drum cover of 50 Cent's PIMP. The little boy in this movie is really good, give him the Best Supporting Actor nomination that DeNiro got. Also, love the dog.

03) The Zone of Interest

This movie is fucking brutal without ever showing a single bit of bloodshed. It's all looming in the background: shots fired in the distance, train smoke on the outside of the fence. The regular life that these fake kings and queens are living in this community is disturbing, only because of how normal it is for the majority of the time. It really sat with me for a long time after I saw it in the theater, and why Christian Friedel isn't nominated for Best Actor and Bradley Cooper is, is a mystery to me. See this movie, it's awesome. The music intro is nuts, the scene at the end with the cleaning is a crazy choice. I am tickled that a movie like this is getting recognized.

02) Poor Things

Absolutely delightful. Poor Things takes all the goofball eccentricities from The Favourite, ramps them up to 10, and shoves sex drugs and LSD down their throats. Beyond even the actual main storyline of this film that basically Emma Stone is a Frankenstein monster, there are a million other little weird things, like the color of the sky, or Willem Defoe's super gross and weird burps. And Ruffalo. What a scenery chewing performance in the best way. He's probably not going to win Best Supporting Actor because of Robert Downey, Jr, but they are tied for me. Ruffalo is like a Tasmanian Devil in this movie and Emma Stone just grabs him by the hair and makes him stand still. I loved this movie, give Best Actress to Emma Stone.

01) Oppenheimer

A boring choice for number one, I get that. But what can I say? It was my favorite of all these movies, it's genuinely great. I was even kind of skeptical going into it because Dunkirk left me kind of dry, but Oppenheimer is a great movie. The three different timelines run together seamlessly, unlike in Dunkirk, and all the performances are really, really good. I love Christopher Nolan, and I think this is my favorite of his movies post Dark Knight. It seems like a forgone conclusion that this movie is going to win all the stuff, and I think it is mostly deserved. It might be more fun if Poor Things or Zone of Interest won, but Nolan deserves this one. Also, this was a good movie to be a history novice with, I had no idea about any of the congressional hearing stuff, all of RDJ's storyline, sometimes it's good to be dumb.

Well it's 2:42 so I think I have time to watch another movie before the ceremony. And I need to eat some food.