Biased review of Oscar movies

I see how disconnected I am from cinema when of the films nominated for best picture at this year's Oscars I only saw the two that are considered popular and that caused the famous Barbienheimer event, so I prepare to see as many films as possible of the Oscar nominees to give a personal, subjective opinion and only under my criteria as to how they are, as well as make a couple of bets to see how aligned I am with the critics of the academy.

American Fiction

From the director Cord Jefferson whom I had never heard of, although it may be that I stayed in the days of James Cameron and Ridley Sccot, but doing a quick search I saw that there are no great films in his history so apparently he is making his debut. I do have his protagonist Jeffrey Wright as a secondary character in several films, and it seems to me that he is a talented guy as a leading man. Now if we talk about the movie, you should know that I write this at the same time I'm watching it. From the beginning, the film hooked me with the concept of the moral hypersensitivity of today's society, what is commonly called "the glass generation", has become such a strident and everyday show in today's society that I would bet that it will become a A recurring theme in movies as it is today in internet memes, and I see the character with a good approach, something like: When being miserable is well justified. But now I'm 20 minutes in and the movie suddenly slows down, now it's a mini family drama with touches of comedy. But Wow! unforeseen turn at minute 21 hahaha and I regain my attention again. It is interesting how they present the dramatic writing process in a comical and in some ways ridiculous way. It seems to me to be a very simple but fun criticism of the melodramatic stories that are so popular in Hollywood. In general I liked the movie a lot and it scared me for two things, on the one hand in the first 20 minutes the pace is slow and I feel like it couldn't capture my attention, but this changed progressively, and even more important is that the The theme of the oppression of the Afro community in America is a theme that is always used to win awards in movies, the drama 12 Years a Slave, The Color Purple and the like are sentimental films to charm the critics of the academy, and I thought this would be another movie along those lines, but little by little the movie takes off and ends up being a scathing criticism of precisely that sentimentality that causes positive discrimination against the Afro community by society. I give this movie a score of 758/1257.

Barbie

For me this movie was a surprise, for a long time before its premiere it was a recurring joke to say with my family (with whom I watch the movies) that we were going to see the premiere of Barbie, it was a gag referring to how ridiculous it was. You could see the plot presented in the trailer and the aesthetics overloaded with colors suitable for an audience different from me. So in the end I didn't see this film in theaters, I saw it later in my little house with a company that is close to extreme feminism, and I must say that the film surprised me, although it is far from being on any list of my films. favorites, I got several laughs, I thought that his jokes were well thought out and in general terms I really enjoyed the story and the dialogues, even the explosive and super saturated aesthetic becomes something everyday and that it contributes to the narrative within this world from Barbie. But now I want to talk about the negative side, something that caused fights the day I saw the film with two companions and that is that although I liked the film I did not find female empowerment anywhere, for days I was left wondering if there was a subtext that I was not understanding but time and time again I came to the same conclusion: The Barbie movie does not vindicate the position of women, in fact I think it sinks them further and strongly reinforces the stereotype of superficiality, vanity and stupidity that is supposed to be against what that the feminist movement fights. So on the feminist side of the movie, I didn't understand it.

Oppenheimer

Well, finally this was the one that won the Oscar for best film and while I understand the reasons why it won the award, I had faith that American Fiction could have a chance. And the reason why I preferred the other one is not because I think this is a bad work, in fact I loved it, I enjoyed the film very much but it has some details that did not leave me calm and that deducted some points from my experience when watching it. , but let's start with the good: The film is spectacular, the contrast between black and white and color to separate the narrative from the introspection of the characters, telling different times in which the story develops (something that Nolan had already done in Memento) is tremendous, and everyone's performances are tremendous, the setting and narrative immerses one in the time in which it takes place with the social concerns and styles of the context. In general, I give my thumbs up to this film and I understand that it was nominated and won the Oscar not only because of the impeccable quality of the film and its performances but also because of all the movement it generated. In addition, I would call it a family film. , at the same level as Titanic, which has politics, spectacularity, introspection, historical context and many other things so that from your grandfather to your son they are able to enjoy some of the history. But well, now making it clear that I loved the film, I will say the things that I did NOT like: During the preparation of the film, there was a lot of news that Nolan had specifically requested that the film be made in 70 mm in Imax format, this created a “hype.” "In my opinion, being the director of Inception and Interstellar, this request would be due to the fact that the spectacular nature of the scenes would be incredible and I needed the best format available, but the truth is that in this film there are no particularly spectacular scenes, it is a work that He talks about the characters, with scenes of dialogue, walks together to the lake, people taking notes and at that moment I asked myself: Do Nolan really need the Imax format for this? This could have been recorded with a cell phone camera, and the worst of all is that the scene most anticipated by everyone, or at least the one I expected, that of the Trinity test; the first explosion of the bomb, that is the moment in which the Imax format should have shone, creating an explosion that would shake the chairs and bring the public a little closer to the magnitude, power and destruction that the bomb represents, but Nolan decides to show us the faces of the characters watching the explosion, and again I say, Not bad! In fact, it is easy to understand this within the context of a film that is more of a character study than a story development, but again I wonder: If you are not going to show the spectacular nature of the explosion, why the Imax format? And one last thing that left me dissatisfied the moment it won the award for best film is to think, well, let's look at what gives this work points, Cilian Murphy's face does half the work, a lot of people around of the world is interested in the story of the creation of the atomic bomb and period dramas are always favorites at the Oscars, that's why I think American Fiction was a better candidate to win the award, not because it was better than Oppenheimer but because with less resources could do much more.

I still have to see these films from this year's nominees, so as I see them I will give my opinion.

The Holdovers

The Zone of Interest

Poor Things

Well I'm back here almost two months after this post hahaha, it took me a while but I finally saw the movie "Poor Things" or poor creatures as we known in Latin America, and I must say "poor me", I am the poor creature after seeing such a waste of a movie, I don't know if it's because I had my expectations too high due to the critics praising it for a long time but when I saw it I felt that it was a poor movie, with an empty message and that plays at being smart without much merit. Like many movies that I consider bad, this part of a supremely interesting premise is wasted and thrown to the ground, although the idea of ​​an adult person (a woman in this case) who receives the brain of a girl and must develop in the world with moral parameters different from those of society is very attractive, here everything is reduced to sex, it is the only dimension of morality that they explore and it becomes so repetitive that by the 425th fuck of the character I was already checking my phone because twitter was more interesting. I won't go into much detail about this movie because it would be giving it more importance than it should have, so I'll keep it simple.

The good:

• Willem Dafoe, his acting is very good
• The photography and the visual style, it looks very good but that doesn't make up for the script.
• The dehumanization of the operating room scenes

The bad:

• Emma Stone, the whole movie is pathetic
• The music, they wanted to be deep and experimental and the music is unbearable
• The final twist, the villain who appears in the last 10 minutes of the movie, it was clear that his body would be used to save Willem Dafoe's mind, it was like the obvious twist and in the end they make a twist that is not obvious but is much more stupid, insipid and anticlimactic.
• Everything else, the movie is ugly and that's it.

Past Lives

Anatomy of a Fall

Maestro

Killers of the Flower Moon