Past Lives
I did get around to watching this film at my go-to independent cinema in London and I’m glad that I did. The story of two South Korean friends, going from childhood friends to online chatmates (anyone remember Skype?) to eventually getting a chance to reunite in person twenty years later was very interesting to experience, especially with the captivating opening shot acting as an “in media res” to start things off. It’s not the most action-packed film, but a solid watch all things considered. I feel like it’s a bit safe to be considered for Best Picture, but a notable nomination for international cinema.
Oppenheimer
Last but certainly not least, my local cinema brought back Oppenheimer amongst all the other BAFTA winners and Oscar nominees, so I took an afternoon to watch it, which I don’t regret at all. This is probably Christopher Nolan’s greatest film and it deserves the nomination wholeheartedly. Everything between the visuals, effects, scene-setting, and narrative is brilliant.
Cillian Murphy does a fantastic job as does Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Lewis Strauss. The structure was a little hard to follow at first and while the film does need to cover a lot, the runtime felt a bit too long with the big scene coming in the middle with a good hour still to go. Nolan also has to work on the sound design, with the amazing, yet overpowering score covering some of the dialogue in some scenes. The “courtroom” scene, if you can call it that, didn’t match up to the suspense of Anatomy of a Fall’s courtroom but it was still an interesting way to approach the two intersecting narratives. Best Picture? It depends on who you ask, but it’s a strong contender for sure.
Final Thoughts
Seeing all of the nominees, minus Poor Things for reasons I explained in my earlier article, not much has changed in my predictions. Oppenheimer deserves to be Best Picture as an overall package and I still think it’s favoured to win. I would still be pleasantly surprised if Anatomy of a Fall takes the award though, since that’s still one of my favourites from this year’s list. Past Lives was good, but with contenders like these, it needed to be great. Of course, any of the ten films have a chance to earn Best Picture and I’d be happy with most of them if they won. (I’m looking at you The Zone of Interest.)
The 96th Academy Awards will be televised live, coast-to-coast, on March 10th, 2024 at 7 pm EST/4 pm PST on ABC. Most of the Best Picture nominees for 2024 can be found on various streaming or video-on-demand services.