Mikey Madison: Anora (winner)
Karla Sofia Gascón: Emilia Pérez
Fernanda Torres: I’m Still Here
Demi Moore: The Substance
Cynthia Erivo: Wicked
What’s Missing
As is often the case, I’m going to bring up a bunch of performances from this year that would never get within a mile of an actual nomination, but that I think are worth looking at. We can start with the horror genre, as tends to be the case. Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East would be interesting choices from Heretic, although this is much more Hugh Grant’s movie. Lupita Nyong’o is always good and she’s far better than the material in A Quiet Place: Day One. I can generally take Sydney Sweeney, but she’s quite good in Immaculate, and Hunter Schafer is brilliant in Cuckoo. Carolyn Bracken doesn’t have the sort of career that attracts Oscar attention, but Oddity is a revelation from her. Naomie Ackie owns Blink Twice, and it’s an unpleasant role. Cailee Spaeny is the best thing in Alien: Romulus, and since that’s the best Alien film in a long time, that’s saying something. Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder are both wonderful in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The two biggest misses, though, are Lily-Rose Depp in Nosferatu and Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl.
Weeding through the Nominees
5. We live in a world where you have to be careful when you speak poorly of Emilia Pérez, since it’s easy for this to be interpreted as being anti-trans. I don’t have a huge issue with the performance of Karla Sofia Gascón aside from the fact that I don’t really like the movie that much. Oscar is always at least somewhat political, and this feels very much like a political nomination more than anything else. And, honestly, if a nomination for this category and this film were needed, Zoe Saldaña was the non-category fraud choice.
4. We have another situation where I don’t really want to put anyone in fourth place because I like the rest of the nominations pretty well. Putting Cynthia Erivo in fourth is far more about the movie than it is about her performance. Wicked is fine, but it’s very long—it’s the first half of the stage production, and about as long as the entire stage production including the intermission. The songs are good, and Erivo does everything she can with the role. I don’t hate this nomination, but I like the other movies more.
3. I genuinely did not understand Mikey Madison’s win until the end of the movie. Up to that point, I didn’t think her performance was really that exceptional. It felt like a very long impression of the Jersey Shore cast. But at the end of the film, when Madison’s Anora finally feels the weight of everything that has happened to her and she attempts to salvage anything, including her dignity, Madison is magnificent. It sells the whole film. So, I get it, but I wish there had been more of that in the first two hours.
2. I like Demi Moore’s nomination for The Substance, but I would have been almost as happy with a nomination for Margaret Qualley. The two of them needed each other to make this happen. Moore’s nomination is deserved, but I can’t see why this meant Qualley was overlooked, even for Supporting. As a horror fan, I love that this movie got the recognition and nominations that it did, and I wouldn’t have been terribly upset had Moore taken home the trophy. While she wouldn’t be my choice, it would feel like a victory for the genre I spend a lot of time watching.
My Choice
1. I’m Still Here, a film that is becoming more and more relevant in this country thanks to the actions of ICE, won the Oscar for International Feature. This is a difficult film to watch because of the subject matter. While the guts of the film are about the missing man at the center of the story, Fernanda Torres is the heart of it, the eyes through which we see the abduction of her husband, his continued disappearance, and the discovery of what actually happened to him. It’s a gripping performance, and it should have been rewarded.
Final Analysis
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