Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2020

The Contenders:

Judas and the Black Messiah
Minari
Promising Young Woman (winner)
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor, 2020

The Contenders:

Anthony Hopkins: The Father (winner)
Min Chadwick Boseman: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Gary Oldman: Mank
Steven Yuen: Minari
Riz Ahmed: Sound of Metal

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director, 2020

The Contenders:

Thomas Vinterberg: Another Round
David Fincher: Mank
Lee Isaac Chung: Minari
Chloe Zhao: Nomadland (winner)
Emerald Fennell: Promising Young Woman

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2020

The Contenders:

The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland (winner)
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Putting Down Roots

Films: Minari
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on various players

I’ve been mulling over what I want to say about Minari for a little more than a day. It’s not that I didn’t like it; as a matter of fact, I think it’s a lovely movie in many respects. It’s that I genuinely don’t know what I have to say about it. It doesn’t feel like a movie that generates a great deal of conversation in a lot of ways. There are plenty of places where it could generate conversation tuned in a different way, but it is the movie that it.

Minari is the story of the Yi family in the mid-1980s Jacob: (Steven Yeun), Monica (Han Ye-ri), and children Anne (Noel Kate Cho), and David (Alan Kim). David, we learn, has a heart problem, and his parents tell him constantly not to run. We also learn that Jacob and Monica are much happier speaking Korean while Anne and David speak Korean, but also speak English like American natives. The Yis have moved to Arkansas from California. In Arkansas, Monica is able to work as a chicken sexer (she wasn’t fast enough for California). Jacob does the same work, but is really there to start a farm. His goal is to grow Korean vegetables to feed the thousands of Koreans moving to the U.S.