Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2024

The Contenders:

Anora (winner)
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked

What’s Missing

When it comes to making suggestions for what could have been nominated for Best Picture, I try to stick with movies that I have not just liked but have genuinely rated highly. For me, this means that they should have a rating of 4 out of 5 or higher. And, as per tradition, a lot of my mentions are going to be for those categories Oscar routinely ignores (although that seems to be less the case now). Films like Heretic, Alien: Romulus, Blink Twice, and Oddity are going to be left out from the jump. The overtly pro-transgender I Saw the TV Glow might have been too political for the Academy, and it could be argued the same for the post-apocalyptic 40 Acres (although to be fair, this was not available in 2024 and was for 2025). Lisa Frankenstein is both horror and comedy, and despite being better than it had any right to be, it’s going to be easily overlooked as well. The same is clearly true of Memoir of a Snail, since it’s a very rare nomination for an animated film. The Last Showgirl probably wasn’t big enough, and Love Lies Bleeding too odd in places. The real shock? No nomination for Nosferatu.

Weeding through the Nominees

10. It won’t be a shock that I’m going to remove Emilia Pérez from the jump. Of the 10 nominees, it’s the one that I didn’t like enough to recommend to anyone else. There is a good movie wrapped up here somewhere, struggling to get out, but it can’t escape the gravitational pull of weird choices and unmemorable songs. It feels like we’re supposed to like Emilia Pérez and it’s somehow a moral failing to speak ill of it. I get that there is often a sense of virtue signaling, and the Academy is no stranger to that practice, but it genuinely helps to have an actually good movie when you want to virtue signal.

9. Is The Brutalist better than 9th place? Probably, but the length of it sure as hell isn’t. Like it or not, what the movie expects of its audience matters, and a film of this length telling this story is unnecessary. There’s a lot to like with The Brutalist, but ironically there would be a lot more to like with a lot less of the film. This is a story that could be told in half the time, and could be told brilliantly with some clear indulgence with 90 minutes cut from it. Anything that could or should win Best Picture needs to justify its length, and this movie simply can’t do that.

8. I picked Ralph Fiennes for my Best Actor for this year and for his performance in Conclave. Ultimately, this is a film that is less than the sum of its parts. All of the performances here are extremely good. This is an interesting film and one worth watching, and it’s not a film that encourages mind wandering. So what’s the problem? The problem is that there are two twists in this film. One of them is good and surprising. The other is so blatantly obvious that I twigged to it in the first few minutes of the film. I understand the importance of tropes and why they exist, but tease me at least a little.

7. I struggled initially with Anora, and it probably is a better film than my first impression of it. There was a lot of it I didn’t fully understand until the third act. For me, the issue is getting to that third act. I don’t like the characters in this movie in general, and I didn’t like spending time with them. I got to the point where I feel badly for them, but I still don’t like them, and when I feel like there’s no one for me to latch onto, I often struggle with the movie in general. I get why people like this movie, but I don’t like it as much as I’m supposed to. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.

6. Wicked is too long. The movie, which is the first half of the stage production, is fifteen minutes shorter than the whole Broadway show including the intermission. For half the story? So why is it this high when I had the same complaint about The Brutalist? Simple--Wicked has the sort of cinematic qualities, production value, and overall look that makes it worth watching, length be damned. And, for the movies of this year that were clearly musicals, it’s the one that has the songs that are absolute bangers. I may not watch it again, but it’s a genuine experience watching it.

5. I love Frank Herbert’s Dune, and even wrote a couple of books on the computer games based on them, so why is Dune: Part Two this low? Honestly, it’s specifically because of how attached and invested in the original source material I am. There are significant changes made to the story for this middle film in the trilogy, changes that are going to have a huge impact on how the story plays out in the third film. Will the story still hold together? Sure—but it also is going to be vastly different in a lot of ways from the source material. I object to that, and while I admit that’s my hang up, at least I admit it.

4. We’re doing the Timothée Chalamet two-fer here with me putting A Complete Unknown in fourth place. I actually like this movie pretty well, and I think the story it tells is a good one and a story worth telling. I just like the other movies from this year more than I did this one. And you could argue that my issue with film length should apply here as well—but I never found this movie to drag at all. The truth is that when there are ten movies on the slate, there are going to be movies that I like pretty well that are going to slip down to some lower numbers. That’s the case here.

3. I’m Still Here is an important film, and I appreciate that it got a lot of attention come award time. This is a film that talks about important issues and tells a real story, and one that is disturbingly relevant in the world today, which makes its presence here even more important. In a lesser year, I would have no issue with this being the second non-English language film to win Best Picture, and I think I could make a case due to the importance of the topic and how much it matters right now. The truth is, though, that I think the other two films are better, and one of them is arguably as important.

2. I struggled initially to get through Nickel Boys not because the movie is bad, but because it was a movie where I definitely needed to be in the right headspace to watch it. Again, this is a movie that is clearly relevant today, and one that demonstrates where we are as a society and where we should be. This is a film that is important to see and that is worth tracking down. Honestly, on a different day, my rankings for 2-5 could be completely different. It feels like I could write all of these movies’ names on strips of paper and pick them at random and not hate the order that they end up in.

My Choice

1. Of the actual nominations, my choice is The Substance, even with the fact that it spins out of control in the third act to some degree. The more I think about it, the more that losing that control might actually be the best evidence that the film was completely in control the entire time. Again, this is a relevant film, one that speaks to real issues, albeit through a lens of horror. In a completely open field, I might suggest Memoir of a Snail, as the only 5-star film I have right now from 2024, but realistically, The Substance is the film that will almost certainly have the most long-lasting affect on film in the years to come, and it should have been rewarded for it.

Final Analysis