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I didn’t like Marty Supreme as much as everyone else did. Like One Battle After Another, it’s a finely crafted film with characters and narrative I don’t care for. That seems to be the theme of this year’s awards season: I love the art that goes into the making of the film, but couldn’t care less about everything else. Admittedly, this year’s contenders jockeying for an Oscar are good, but I wasn’t excited to watch many of them.
Again, it’s not to say that these were horrible movies; I was just putting off watching them as if it were homework. There’s The Secret Agent, which gives us an outstanding performance from Wagner Moura, but the 160-minute runtime isn’t exactly a selling point when it comes to a movie about political corruption and turmoil in Brazil.
The David Michôd-directed Christy is supposed to give us a riveting story about legendary, trailblazing boxer Christy Martin – but it stars Sydney Sweeney, and I just can’t take her seriously in this role with all the exhaustingly obnoxious rigamarole surrounding her.
I managed to watch the filmed version of Broadway’s Merrily We Roll Along starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsey Mendez. The seminal Stephen Sondheim musical is eligible for the Golden Globes, but not the Oscars, and was a fun watch, but I asked myself after: “Why did that have to be made?”
This brings me back to Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a movie I did not care for, but I get why everyone likes the Timothee Chamalamadingdong ping pong extravaganza. It’s riveting and has that urgent Safdie pace, which draws you in. It’s wildly alluring. It did all that for me, but the characters had no redeeming qualities, and it was so difficult for me to go on this journey with this privileged, arrogant, obnoxious asshole of a ping pong player. But maybe that was the whole point: assholes will always get ahead in life and then (SPOILER ALERT) have a baby, and all will be healed.
But not all movies are slog to watch for me. The international entries for the Academy Awards have been a pleasure to watch. One being Japan’s Kokuho, directed by Lee Sang-il. Based on the novel of the same name by Shuichi Yoshida, the movie clocks in at a whopping 175 minutes, but this was one of those stories that needed the narrative real estate, as it followed the career of a son of a gangster-turned-kabuki superstar from the 1960s through 2014.
The cinematic epic, which stars Ryo Yoshizawa, Ryusei Yokohama, and Ken Watanabe, paints a gorgeous portrait of Japan throughout the decades as we see the brotherhood of two kabuki actors be tested over the course of 50 years. The dramatic face painting scenes had the excitement of when the queens in RuPaul’s Drag Race are beating their mugs and spilling the tea as they prep to walk the mainstage.
Left-Handed Girl, Taiwan’s entry for Best International Feature Film, comes from Shih-Ching Tsou, who is a member of Sean Baker’s talent collective. She has worked with the Oscar-winning filmmaker from Take Out to Red Rocket and Left-Handed Girl marks Tsou’s feature directorial debut and shows off her remarkable skills as a storyteller — all with impressive performances by actress Ma Shih-Yuan and the young Nina Ye, who was six years old when they filmed the pic.
Going from Marvel’s Moon Knight to helming Egypt’s entry into the Oscar fray, Sarah Goher’s feature directorial debut, Happy Birthday, is a coming-of-age pic that puts a lens on the real-life children who work as maids in upper-class neighborhoods in Cairo. The child actors Doha Ramadan and Khadija Ahmed deliver exceptional performances that could have easily gone the insufferable route – and it has a nice, tight 96-minute runtime!
Everyone loves the true crime WTF-ery of Geeta Gandbhir’s triggering documentary The Perfect Neighbor, and it is almost a shoo-in for a spot in the doc category at the Academy Awards. But Laura Poitras knows how to put together a timely documentary that will have you glued to the screen.
Teaming with Mark Obenhaus, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker helmed Cover-Up, an exploration of the work of legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. A preservation of traditional journalism and a rallying cry for the need for accurate and honest reporting, the doc shows how journalism should and could be used as an accountability tool to use on the government and the horde of politicians that inhabit it.
Films like the afterlife dramedy Eternity and bio-drama Peter Hujar’s Day seem to be just thrown into the ring like wrestlers in WWE’s Royal Rumble. They are entertaining and finely made films to watch and consider, but aren’t necessarily looking to sweep the Oscars. But both films have been faring well in the awards circuit, with Eternity getting a Critics’ Choice Awards nom for Best Comedy and Peter Hujar’s Day landed five Film Independent Spirit award nominations, including Best Feature.
One movie that I wish would have gotten more love this awards season is Andrew DeYoung’s off-center dark comedy Friendship, which has enjoyable nuances of Better Off Dead absurdity. It’s so unserious that it’s serious, and Tim Robinson is the comedy star that unfortunately lands in Hollywood’s blind spot.
After fearing it would lean into white savior savior, I was proven wrong and surprisingly charmed by Hikari’s Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, and Mari Yamamoto. The light cinematic fare brings more understanding to these real-life rental family agencies in Japan.
I’ll close this round of “Thoughts on…” with Sentimental Value. Yet another finely made and finely acted film that I wasn’t chomping at the bit to watch. There was so much buzz surrounding this film, and I think all of that is thanks to the all-powerful trifecta of Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Renate Reinsve. They are definitely the MVPs of Joachim Trier’s quiet but impactful drama of generational trauma and family dysfunction.
As I watch this year’s slate of awards season contenders, it’s clear that stronger movies come from a global perspective with diversified characters that present us with culturally-rich, but very universal narratives that connect with audiences. That said, not only does representation matter in art and culture, but it also helps elevate it and makes it less boring. We especially need that in a time when film, TV, and media are being diluted with each merger and drooling thirst for “content”.
