I find myself having a bit more time this Oscar season, so I’m dusting off an old regular feature I used to write. Every year I break down the Best Picture contenders on the podcast, but I used to complement these pods with blogs writing about films that weren’t nominated for Best Picture, but show up elsewhere. This was something I did for several years back on Live in Limbo, where the podcast originally started at. Twice a week (if my schedule allows it) I will break down the odds that three or so films have to win their categories. Each nomination will be given a Frontrunner, Darkhorse, Longshot or Just Happy To Be There (JHTBT) designation.
Click HERE to read past entries. In this edition I will be talking about A Real Pain, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail and Gladiator II.
A Real Pain dir. Jesse Eisenberg
The film has two nominations.
Best Supporting Actor – Kieran Culkin Frontrunner
Best Original Screenplay – Jesse Eisenberg Longshot
This is Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial effort following up on 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World. Here he plays David Kaplan who is travelling with his cousin Benji (Keiran Culkan) to visit Poland on a Holocaust tour and see their grandmother’s home town to honour her since she recently passed away. The cousins were close growing up, but now as adults they have drifted apart. David is married with a young child and lives in NYC while Benji still lives in his hometown and up until recently was still living with his parents. Benji is depressed and had tried to commit suicide leaving David confused about who his cousin is and his relationship with him.
Kieran Culkan has been racking up wins all award season already bagging awards from the Golden Globes, National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, and plenty of local critics groups as well as having currently pending nominations from the likes of the BAFTA Awards, Critics Choice, Gothams, Film Independent Spirit Awards and many more. Best Supporting Actor might be the most locked in award right now out of the 23 categories. This is a runaway freight train where you wouldn’t even make money if you bet on this because it is such a sure thing. Calling him a Frontrunner does a disservice to other Frontrunners that could still be overtaken. It is Keiran Culkin and four other nominees.
The crazy thing is, this is category fraud of epic proportions. The movie is a two hander, and while it starts and ends on David it is all about his relationship and perspective on Benji. Culkin is as much a Supporting Actor as Zoë Saldaña is a Best Supporting Actress in Emilia Pérez and it is frustrating that the Academy is willing to allow studios to campaign in ways that guarantee awards when actors like Edward Norton and Yura Borisov have less screen time to compete.
Eisenberg was touted as a potential Best Actor nomination, but instead settled for a Best Original Screenplay nod. Here he tells the story of two family members who formerly were close but both men can no longer reconcile who the other was as a child compared to as an adult. Benji bemoans that David no longer is spontaneous or free spirited, a trait that he himself has kept up. While on the other hand David, now with a career, family and responsibilities can’t understand why Benji refuses to get his life together and do more than smoke pot and live at home. Combining the horrors of the holocaust with the happy memories of their grandmother the trip to Poland is a cathartic one on many levels. The film also tackles depression and suicide in fresh ways, especially with the scene when David reveals it to the travel group and confesses he can’t possibly understand how someone so full of life like Benji would do such a thing.
The film has incredible stiff competition (it’s a stronger category than the adapted contenders) and faces an uphill battle against the presumed frontrunner for Best Picture and two of the boldest films of the year. The only movie I have below A Real Pain is September 5, whose lone nod comes here. It’s a longshot, and a very long one at that.
I expect A Real Pain to go home with 1 win.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl dir. Merlin Crossingham and Nick Park
This film has one nomination.
Best Animated Film JHTBT
Aardman Studios, the company behind the Wallace & Gromit franchise, is one of the most beloved by the Academy. Since the Best Animated Film category was created back in 2001 they have received five nominations placing them in a tie for sixth place behind titans like Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks and Studio Ghibli. They’ve also been nominated nine times in the Best Animated Short category too. They won the feature category back in 2005 for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and with Vengeance Most Fowl it represents the sixth time a Wallace film has been honoured.
Here we continue the adventures of the absent minded inventor Wallace and his trusty dog Gromit who is always there to clean up his mistakes despite never getting the recognition he deserves. In this film Wallace creates a garden gnome which runs on AI to fix whatever you need around the house, except Feathers McGraw, an incarcerated penguin (who dresses like a chicken) hacks into the gnome to program it for evil and only Gromit can save the day.
The film as usual features stunning claymation animation that we have come to expect from an Aardman and W&G film. The jokes are a plenty as the plot is essentially a James Bond parody with Feathers acting like a Blofeld type of character. Knowing how hard the animators work on these films is half the fun of enjoying them. Even as the work has gotten smoother and the clay less noticeable, the charm of these movies are still extraordinarily high. In a year where there is another claymation movie, Dreamworks doing their most beautiful work yet and a little film from Latvia making a big splash, Vengeance Most Fowl is unfortunately just happy to be there.
I expect Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl to go home with 0 wins.
Memoir of a Snail dir. Adam Elliot
This film has one nomination.
Best Animated Film Longshot
Speaking of the Best Animated Film category, we have another film from that there. Director Adam Elliot is no stranger to the Academy having won a Best Animated Short Oscar back in 2004 for Harvie Krumpet. Memoir of a Snail is only his second feature film after 2009’s Mary and Max. For Memoir, he is partially basing it on his own life but it is the story of a set of twins, Grace and Gilbert Puddel who lose their mother at birth. Despite a tough life growing up, they had freedom and the love of their father who unfortunately dies while they are still young. The foster system splits the two up as they live on opposite ends of Australia. The story is told from Grace’s perspective as she bounces around different foster families never fitting in, while Gilbert is stuck living with religious fanatics and coming to terms with his sexuality. They plan on reuniting, but being so young and dealing with their own hardships, it makes it next to impossible. It isn’t until Grace befriends the elderly Pinky, a free spirited woman that she begins to take control of her own destiny.
This is only the second R rated film to be nominated in this category after Anomalisa, as the film features nudity and some coarse language. It is another claymation film, like Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, but while the team at Aardman have smoothed out the look of their characters, Memoir feels like it was made by one person painstakingly sculpting each individual character by hand. The movie is funny and sad, tugging at your heartstrings in all directions. It also feels uniquely Australian from the sensibilities in the script to the who’s who of Aussie talent, including Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Eric Bana, Nick Cave and more. Considering the Academy has always given out the award to family friendly films, that automatically puts Memoir at a disadvantage. It also isn’t as slick looking as The Wild Robot or Inside Out 2. But that is where the charm of this movie lies, and for my pick it’s the best of the crop, unfortunately it’s a very distant longshot.
I expect Memoir of a Snail to go home with 0 wins.
Gladiator II dir. Ridley Scott
This film has one nomination
Best Costume Design – Janty Yates and David Crossman Longshot
Back in 2001 Ridley Scott’s Gladiator won five Oscars among them, Best Picture and Best Costume Design. The winner was Janty Yates who has returned to do the costumes for the sequel this time sharing the nomination with David Crossman (the pair also were nominated last year for Napoleon). Gladiator II takes place sixteen years after the first time with new emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) ruling on the promise of ever expanding the Roman empire. After General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) conquers Numidia in North Africa he brings back slaves, one of whom is Hanno (Paul Mescal) who ends up being sold to fight as a gladiator to Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave himself. While Hanno is winning battles in the coliseum it is revealed he is actually Lucius Verus Aurelius, the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius the protagonist of the first film. From there we watch as Lucius works to free himself and take control of his destiny.
The costumes were good enough to warrant an Oscar for the first film, and they continue their excellence here. With a swords and sandals picture, you know there will be lots of togas. The dual emperors wear golden plates of army overtop pristine white robes. Macrinus enjoying the good life that being a free man offers wears lavish colourful robes with enough jewelry to drown him. Seeing the differences in costumes from the gladiators to the power players that run Rome show off all the styles at play. The film is lavish to look at and the costumes are a big reason why. The sequel released 24 years after the original was met with indifference and negative reviews, but I’m here to say that I think it is a superior film to the original, mostly because I’m not sentimental about the first one like a lot of people are. Unfortunately my personal feelings on the film’s quality don’t matter here. Other than A Complete Unknown,Gladiator II faces much stiffer competition and is a longshot in this category. Hail Dondus!
I expect Gladiator II to go home with 0 wins.
