Oscar Best Picture Nominees described in one sentence
And what makes a picture "The Best"
The Oscars/Academy Awards were last night. I didn’t watch the awards themselves, because I find award shows boring, but I have watched five of the films nominated for Best Picture, which feels like more than most years, perhaps a testament to 2023 being a year of great films, and a year of very popular films making the Oscar’s cut.
So, inspired by the writer
, I’m going to give you my one-sentence takes on the five “Best Picture” contenders I saw, including the Best Picture Winner, Oppenheimer.George Saunders writes,
“When I’m presented with a new story, I first read it for fun and pleasure. Then, if there’s a need to assess or analyze it, the next thing I’ll do is try to come up with what I’ve taken to calling (for no reason I can recall), “the Hollywood version” of the story: a “precis,” a pithy one- or two-sentence summary.”1
I wish I could include Killers of the Flower Moon, but I haven’t seen it yet, as I keep telling myself I’m going to read the book first… One day…
Anyway, here we go.
Five Best Picture Nominees in One Sentance Each
American Fiction: A writer proves identity politics and book awards are both total nonsense.
Barbie: A Barbie doll tries to escape the patriarchy and fails.
Oppenheimer: An American Jewish scientist gives his all to end World War II by inventing a deadly bomb and then is surprised and feels guilty when his life’s work actually works.
Poor Things: Emma Stone orgasms for two hours in various puffy designer dresses whilst pretending to be an intellectually disabled child.
Past Lives: Two lovers realize they weren’t meant to be, at least not in this lifetime…
And ok, ok, that’s probably not the fairest treatment of Poor Things, though it’s accurate.
To be more kind, I’ll say:
Poor Things: After a pregnant woman commits suicide, a castrated mad scientist reanimates her corpse with the brain of her unborn child, allowing her to experience childhood in the body of a very sexually charged adult.
If I Had to Rank and Why
Despite my shade on Poor Things (a truly effed-up premise) I liked all of these movies!
However, I liked American Fiction the least, and I think I liked Past Lives the most. Interestingly, both films involved novelists as their main characters, plus multiple other writer characters in these movies, so I’m surprised I didn’t enjoy American Fiction more, as I tend to love movies about writers, but I’ll get to why it was my least favorite of the five below.
My enjoyment and affection ranking would probably be:
Past Lives
Poor Things
Barbie
Oppenheimer
American Fiction
However, “Best Picture” to me involves more than how much I liked it. I think the Best Picture award is a mix of what did we love + what was hardest to make, what was groundbreaking, or a filmmaking feat.
What Makes a Picture the Best?
In terms of loveable and hard-to-make, out of these options, Barbie and Oppenheimer probably took the most “work.” They both had high stakes, working off well-known IP, with big budgets, and pressure to get things “right.”
Poor Things was also a lot of work with elaborate sets, CGI, and high-profile, expensive actors.
Past Lives and American Fiction, not so much work or money.
Speaking of money, does it matter in terms of “best”? Here is how the films compared financially in terms of production cost:
Barbie = $145 million
Oppenheimer = $100 million
Poor Things = $35 million
Past Lives = $12 million
American Fiction = Not clear, estimates range from 1.8 million to $7 million.
And in terms of profit, Barbie was also #1 for 2023, earning $1.4 billion dollars. WOW.
I loved the music and aesthetic of Barbie, but the script didn’t wow me. I wrote my thoughts on it here. I also didn’t love the ending. It was TOO Hollywood, play-it-safe. It needed more Issa Rae, which luckily, we got more of her in American Fiction! Yay. Though American Fiction also needed more Issa Rae…
Plus, the third act of American Fiction dragged for me. My partner and I found some of the characters so annoying and cheesy that he wanted to turn off the movie. We couldn’t believe it had been nominated for Best Picture. Like we laughed, but it had more of a straight-to-Netflix vibe. And if I had to pick a dark comedy to represent 2023, I liked Beef better.
Furthermore, why wasn’t Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid nominated for anything?? Poor Halle Bailey. I loved her performance as Ariel. The movie far exceeded my expectations and was spectacular. I saw it in the theater and I couldn’t believe they’d taken an already wonderful film and somehow improved upon it! Incredible visuals. Great singing. Rumor has it that Disney removed the movie from the nominee list, but this isn’t confirmed. Weird. Seems like a political choice or a snub to me.
I guess Beef and The Little Mermaid both had scandals/outrage attached to them, so maybe this is why they weren’t nominated.
Oppenheimer also took a lot of work and I loved the score and visuals, but the whole Robert Downy Jr. Senator plotline bored me, and as soon as they set off the bomb, I was ready to be done with the film. It felt about 30 minutes longer than necessary. I almost left the theater before it was over. So, Downy Jr.’s win for Best Supporting Actor surprised me. I would have picked Mark Ruffalo’s Poor Things performance over RDJs character.
Poor Things was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, whose past work I’d loved, like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both incredible films that I preferred to Poor Things. The visuals, locations, sets, and costumes were stunning. The score was cool. I loved how Willem Dafoe blew out weird bubbles and had half-dog/half-poultry pets. The whole thing felt very Cremaster Cycle meets Barbie meets Nymphomaniac I&II meets Twin Peaks the Return, meets The Lighthouse, but the plot itself was heaped with uncomfortable doses of pedophile/Lolita vibes and I got tired of looking at Emma Stone’s sexual climax face. It felt like a male fantasy film to me. One positive thing was its genre-blending. I loved that it was a weird mix of soft fantasy, sci-fi, dark comedy, satire, coming-of-age tale, historical, mythical, magical, and a monster movie.
And yeah, so we come back to Past Lives, a simple, heart-racing love story, three characters, pure storytelling, nothing fancy, but dyaaammmm. It delivered, and it lingered with me. I can’t say much about the plot without spoiling the story, but I keep thinking about the movie. It captured something real. It captured the complexities of love. I felt all the feelings while watching it. No notes on Past Lives, a perfect film and apparently the director’s first film. Crazy! What a debut. Seems weird though to give the Best Picture Award to this movie though as it took so much less “work” than the others from a filmmaking perspective, but it just goes to show, STORY IS EVERYTHING.
I plan to watch the other nominees for Best Picture too:
The Holdovers
The Zone of Interest
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon
From what I understand, they’re all great movies.
I also saw Dune 2 over the weekend and really enjoyed it, though it had some plot holes. Still, it's highly entertaining, probably better than Dune 1 if I had to rank them. See it in the IMAX. The sound effects, score, and sandworm rodeo are epic.
Now You
Let me know your thoughts. Which movie of 2023 was your favorite? Have you seen any of these?
Do you watch award shows?
If you’ve seen the other films nominated, how would you reduce them to their one-sentence “Hollywood Versions”?
Did you think Oppenheimer should have won Best Picture, or did you have another favorite?
Want More?
I also loved the podcast episode
did on the Oscar Best Picture nominees, and he actually watched all of them. Though I didn’t love American Fiction as much as he did. You can listen to his review of all the films here.Or, if you’re in an atomic, Oppenheimer mood, grab my partner Agah Bahari’s nuclear coloring book.
From “In the Basement” by George Saunders
The Holdovers is really good. Almost great, but not quite.