So, the Oscar nominations are out, and a lot of people are happy, a lot are angry, and a lot of people really can’t make themselves care. Personally, I had cognitively understood “they’re kind of silly and unnecessary and don’t mean anything,” but it took “Inside Llewyn Davis” getting almost entirely passed over this year for me to really feel it.
However, I’d like to add a little something in defense of the Oscars. Are they dumb? Yes. Do we need them? No, absolutely not. But they’re a nice little way for us to look at the opinions of “the industry” and compare them to ours. They are extremely visible, which makes them easy to hate, and the claims they make to certainty are very, very annoying, but replace “Best” with “Our Favorite,” and you can understand them as what the Oscars are—a reflection of the taste of the people who make mainstream American movies.
This can A) make the Oscars much, much more tolerable, and B) allow us to look at something like the fact the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences thought “Dallas Buyers Club” was a more important film than “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and try to learn something. What you learn depends completely on how you feel about those two films—and film in general—but that’s just like, your opinion, man.
So yeah, the Oscars are neither good nor bad, they’re just loud and financed. Make of it what you will. And all this being said, I’m nothing if not a man with a platform and some opinions, so here, presented without comment, is an organized list of things I loved about movies this year.
(And yes, the list of things I wish I’d seen is long and includes, among many other, “Short Term 12,” “The Wind Rises,” “The Hunt,” “Before Midnight,” “All Is Lost,” and “Captain Phillips.” Sorry, if you loved these and are disappointed by their exclusion, but maybe you should make your own list.)
Favorite Pictures
- “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- “Her”
- “Upstream Color”
- “The Act of Killing”
- “Spring Breakers”
- “12 Years a Slave”
- “Frances Ha”
- “Prisoners”
- “Blue Jasmine”
- “Computer Chess”
Favorite Directors
- Joel Coen, Ethan Coen – “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- Spike Jonze – “Her”
- Shane Carruth – “Upstream Color”
- Joshua Oppenheimer – “The Act of Killing”
- Steve McQueen – “12 Years a Slave”
Favorite Actors
- Oscar Isaac – “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- Joaquin Phoenix – “Her”
- Hugh Jackman – “Prisoners”
- Chiwetel Ejiofor – “12 Years a Slave”
- Michael B. Jordan – “Fruitvale Station”
Favorite Actresses
- Scarlett Johansson – “Her”
- Cate Blanchett – “Blue Jasmine”
- Greta Gerwig – “Frances Ha”
- Sandra Bullock – “Gravity”
- Amy Seimetz – “Upstream Color”
Favorite Supporting Actors
- James Franco – “Spring Breakers”
- Ben Foster – “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
- Jake Gyllenhaal – “Prisoners”
- Michael Fassbender – “”12 Years a Slave”
- Jeremy Renner – “American Hustle”
Favorite Supporting Actresses
- Amy Adams – “Her”
- Sally Hawkins – “Blue Jasmine”
- Mickey Sumner – “Frances Ha”
- Kristin Scott Thomas – “Only God Forgives”
- Lupita Nyong’o – “12 Years a Slave”
Favorite Documentaries
- “The Act of Killing”
- “Cutie and the Boxer”
- “Leviathan”
- “Good Ol’ Freda”
- “Blackfish”
Best Foreign Language Film
- “A Touch of Sin”
- “The Act of Killing” (Technically?)
- “Museum Hours”
- “Wadjda”
- “The Broken Circle Breakdown”
Favorite Cinematography
- “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- “Spring Breakers”
- “Only God Forgives”
- “Prisoners”
- “12 Years a Slave”
Favorite Editing
- “Frances Ha”
- “Upstream Color”
- “Spring Breakers”
- “Computer Chess”
- “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Favorite Production Design
- “Her”
- “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- “12 Years a Slave”
- “Spring Breakers”
- “Only God Forgives”
And yeah… just love film, however you choose to.
Tell Austin what you think of his movie curating at wellens@wisc.edu
