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 Flow, The Girl With The Needle, Elton John: Never Too Late and Sugarcane.
Flow dir. Gints Zilbalodis
The film has two nominations.
- Best Animated Film Frontrunner
- Best International Film – Latvia Longshot
Flow is basically a silent film that is populated by a world full of animals behaving like animals. There is no sarcastic cat, wise cracking dog or sage advice giving secretary bird. While these animals are all present, the cat is skittish and afraid of other animals, the dogs are both playful and territorial and the secretary bird is majestic and a predator. The film follows a black cat who one day on a walk gets caught in a massive flood that raises the waters so high that cities are submerged. In a Life of Pi sort of circumstance, an assortment of animals including the three mentioned above along with a lemur and capybara navigate this new world on a sailboat. They encounter other animals such as a whale, a pack of dogs and more. The closest thing we get to anthropomorphic details of the animals is that the secretary bird and capybara are able to steer the sailboat with their feet, navigating the waters.
The film was animated using Blender, an open source 3D animation program, making it the first time the preferred program for amateur animators has been nominated in this category at the Oscars, which is a big deal. The film was produced for just $3.6 million, compared to the likes of Inside Out 2 costing $200 million and The Wild Robot for $78 million. Its closest comparable was Memoir of a Snail being made for $4.5 million. If Flow wins, that would be like how Godzilla Minus One was made for under $15 million and won Best Visual Effects last year. The race for Best Animated Film is essentially a case of David vs Goliath. It will either come down to Flow or Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot. Flip a coin and you basically have the odds of who will win. Personally I think the fact that voting members are more likely to be Dreamworks employees will help The Wild Robot, but crazier things have happened!
In terms of Best International Film, Flow joins a rarified club of being only the third animated film to be nominated in this category joining Waltz With Bashir (Israel) and Flee (Denmark). It also marks the first time that Latvia has made the final five after previously submitting films sixteen times. Personally it is an interesting choice to nominate a dialogue free movie (this is the second time this has happened after Algeria’s Le Bal was nominated in 1983), when the spirit of the award is to celebrate movies not in English produced in other countries. The fact that it has more than one nomination means the Academy likes it, but to what extent, I’m not sure. You can’t discount Emilia Pérez, despite its insane controversies because it has 13 nominations. If an upset occurs, I’m Still Here is likely the benefactor, which puts Flow as a longshot to win this category.
I expect Flow to go home with 0-1 wins.
The Girl With The Needle dir. Magnus von Horn
The film has one nomination.
- Best International Film – Denmark JHTBT
Every year there is at least one utterly devastating nominee in the International category and this year it’s Denmark’s turn. The Girl With The Needle starts out as just regular depressing with a young woman, named Karoline, unable to pay rent because her husband who is missing in WW1 action hasn’t officially been declared deceased so she can’t qualify for widowers benefits. Things get better when she starts to see the owner of the factory she works at, getting pregnant and engaged but the man’s mother intervenes and he tosses her aside. While at a bathhouse Karoline unsuccessfully tries to perform an abortion on herself using a knitting needle. Another woman helps her and tells her that she facilitates adoptions for poor women and to see her when the baby is born. Karoline gives her the baby and since she was fired from the factory offers to work for the woman to help other women. Things get much bleaker from there as the woman in question helping these young women is up to something much more sinister.
The International category this year is in a unique space as there hasn’t been a The Zone of Interest, All Quiet on the Western Front or Drive My Car, a film that everyone agrees is the best of the bunch by a wide margin. Sure the Academy thinks that movie is Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here has its ardent supporters, but it isn’t like one in years past. With women’s reproductive rights having re-taken center stage in American politics, a film like this conceivably could have been a front runner, but perhaps its utterly depressing narrative hampers it from being looked at more seriously. Needle is the least likely film in the crop to win as three of the films are nominated in other categories and The Seed of the Sacred Fig is getting better reviews. It’s just happy to be there and we can see if director Magnus von Horn or star Vic Carmen Sonne end up back at the Oscars in the future.
I expect The Girl With The Needle to go home with 0 wins.
Read Brodie Cotnam’s review of The Girl With The Needle.
Elton John: Never Too Late dir. R.J. Cutler and David Furnish
The film has one nomination.
- Best Original Song – “Never Too Late” Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt, Bernie Taupin JHTBT
With Elton John retiring from touring on a major scale (he has indicated he will play one off shows from time to time), the leadup to his final American show was to be played at Dodger Stadium, the site of his iconic 1975 show that made him the biggest rock star in the world, a film crew followed him. The doc cross cuts between his rise from the late 60’s through the mid 70’s at his peak and his Farewell Yellow Brick Road World Tour. Despite Rocketman, a biopic about John, coming out only in 2019 there is still a lot of great information to be gleaned and anything that is old news is made interesting by hearing Elton himself being so candid about his life. That includes his drug problems, being a queer artist when it wasn’t acceptable to be out and more. If you’re a fan of Elton John, this movie is a fun trip down memory lane and if you aren’t, take solace in the fact that is superior to almost every artist documentary that is made with them still being alive (and unable to reveal the real skeletons).
The song in question that got nominated was co-written by John and his longtime writing partner Bernie Taupin. It’s a duet with Brandi Carlile that sounds like it could have been released circa 1970-1975 where he put out a staggering nine (9!) albums. Back then it could have been Kiki Dee on this song or been the follow up single to Tiny Dancer. It’s classic Elton John and is a pleasing song for the ears. In fact the biggest loss for the Oscars not having the Best Original Song nominees being showcased this year is missing out from what could have been an iconic Elton John performance. John, who is already on his fifth Oscar nomination and has two wins (for The Lion King and Rocketman), is just happy to be here. Emilia Pérez has two nods and Diane Warren is always lurking in the shadows with a folding chair raised above her head, so Elton and company should just enjoy the free booze and the shitshow that will likely go down with whomever wins this award.
I expect Elton John: Never Too Late to go home with 0 wins.
Sugarcane dir. Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat
The film has one nomination.
- Best Documentary Darkhorse
Documentaries are great at exploring the injustices in the world, especially raising them to American audiences, the target demographic for the Oscars. Up here in Canada we have our fair share of history to be ashamed of. From 1876 up to the far too recent year of 1997, the Canadian government sanctioned the removal of indigenous children to be put in boarding schools, mostly run by the Catholic Church, to “deal with the Indian problem” aka forcibly assimilating children in what was called the residential school system. The key word was by force. The children were taken from homes by our national police, the RCMP, and were beaten, malnourished, raped and murdered by the people who supposedly were there to teach and protect them. The film follows director Julian Brave NoiseCat as he documents the intergenerational trauma inflicted upon his family and community. His father is an alcoholic and a shut in that can’t even visit family, his grandmother won’t reveal who the father is of her own son is after she got pregnant at the school, a local priest (who is indigenous) refuses to believe his DNA testing that his biological father might have been the headmaster of his school and more. This film is about confronting trauma head on and forcing the colonizers to admit what they did, especially in the wake of the 2021 findings that there were several hundred bodies buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Outside of No Other Land, the most timely of the political documentaries this year, Sugarcane might be the next most prescient one. If voters don’t feel comfortable voting for Land, which would involve them looking at the politicians and policies they themselves may support, Sugarcane could be the benefactor of votes. I’m never confident picking the winner of Best Documentary and at the time of writing I’ve only seen three of the five nominees so I don’t quite have a full grasp on the category yet so I have Sugarcane as a darkhorse, but I’m not really sure of its odds yet.
I expect Sugarcane to go home with 0 wins.
