Anatomy Of A Fall, Poor Things & more Best Picture Deep Dives

We made it. Well, almost, William still has to watch The Zone of Interest but otherwise all Best Picture nominees have been watched ahead of tomorrow evening’s ceremony. Tomorrow you’ll get a full rundown of winner predictions in your inbox. For now here are the rest of the Best Picture deep dives!

PSA: The Oscars are on tomorrow, March 10, at 6:00 PM CT / 7:00 PM ET on ABC. An hour earlier than normal! Also it’s Daylight Savings to make things even more confusing.

ANATOMY OF A FALL

A French legal thriller that tells the story of a woman on trial for the alleged murder of her husband.

Annie: I loved Anatomy of a Fall. I was on the edge of my seat, I didn’t know how it was going to turn out, the characters were compelling. You weren’t sure who was telling the truth throughout the whole thing, which made the story so interesting. I like that it played with how people can tell a story in a certain way to get a certain result. I’m glad I saw it theaters because it added a lot to the experience, including the older woman who sat next to me and offered me some of her Twizzlers. Sandra Hüller was amazing and I’m so glad she’s nominated. And I’m thrilled that Justine Triet got a Director nomination.

William: My takeaway was the court system in France is bananas. You can just have a free for all! That kept throwing me off. It feels like you could have a court case for tax fraud and the opposing person could say “and you might be a murderer too!”

Annie: I wonder if people in France find it as interesting to watch, because that’s their reality, whereas we were like, what is happening?

[SPOILERS BELOW]

William: I liked it but didn’t love it. The ending is ambiguous, and we spent too much time dedicated to questioning everything for it to be 100 percent ambiguous. And a lot of movies like this are! But at the end of the day, it felt like we needed to know. Even though other people disagree, including Annie, I feel like there’s no way she killed this guy.

Annie: I said I don’t think she killed him either!

William: No, you said you weren’t sure.

Annie: I said I could see it going either way based on how they told the story, but ultimately I don’t think she did it.

William: I felt like there wasn’t even a case for her killing him.

Sam: Me too, they were basically convincing me that she did it.

Annie: I thought it was a little murkier. But ultimately, I don’t think she’d put her child through finding the body.

Sam: I also don’t think she had that big of a motive. They fought. But her take on the relationship was just different. Her sexuality was being attacked and used against her and they tried to use that to make the viewer and jury think she did it, but that just leans into farce. Why would you have to attack that to prove she did it?

Annie: Definitely. The more compelling arguments were around the physics of the fall. I was so stressed during the last 10 minutes, I thought something weird was going to happen.

William: So did we.

[SPOILERS ARE OVER]

Annie: We need to talk about Snoop [played by Messi]! I love this dog.

Sam: I love that every Oscar season there’s an animal that people are excited about.

Annie: I pick Snoop over Jenny the donkey.

William: Jenny the donkey got too much love.

Annie: Plus Messi can go to events! Although apparently everyone is all upset about that. Put a dog in your movie next time and stop complaining!

William: With Jenny, they sometimes brought around a different donkey!

Annie: Did you see that Messi struggled to book roles before?

William: Yeah, but let’s not give the dog a personality.

Sam: Awww. He’s a struggling actor!

Annie: He probably went on strike last year!

Sam: They cut Messi’s “I’m an actor” story from the SAG Awards.

Anatomy of Fall is available to rent or buy and is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Justine Triet), Actress in a Leading Role (Sandra Hüller), Original Screenplay and Film Editing.

BARBIE

After experiencing an existential crisis, Barbie travels from Barbieland to the real world to try and recapture the simplistic life she once knew.

William: I’m going to start this one off.

Annie: [Sarcastic] Great, more men talking about Barbie.

William: Barbie didn’t go far enough! It doesn’t do a lot differently from other movies that come out. It’s spoon-fed feminism. There are like two scenes-

Sam: You’re wrong.

Annie: That’s wrong, but I do understand where you’re going with this.

Sam: Feminism isn’t all about women! The scenes with Ken are addressing feminism too.

William: They’re saying, let’s say the most obvious sentences that we can in 10 different ways. I wanted more. I wanted it to challenge audiences. Instead of challenging audiences, it went, is it easy to understand? Do you have no questions? It coddled audiences. People should get educated. The [feminism] in this movie is so basic.

Annie: I do agree that I wanted it to do more. I love Barbie but I also have issues with it. I famously left the movie feeling a little disappointed after the first viewing. To me there was more interesting feminist commentary in Little Women.

Sam: They also alluded to a lot of red tape that they had to work around to get the movie made. This might be the most feminist version we could get.

Annie: Margot Robbie was talking on a PGA panel recently about how they had to choose their battles. Ending on the gynecologist line was a fight. And if they had to fight over that, which is fairly innocuous, I can’t imagine what else.

William: I just think it gets a little too much credit for not accomplishing much.

Sam: The highest grossing movie last year is about a girl’s toy by a major production company with a female writer and director.

Annie: And producer.

Sam: That’s monumental. And think of the subject matter it was trying to tackle! I agree that its impact didn’t hit me as much, but I don’t think it was avoiding the topic.

Annie: I think at its core, and what Greta has specifically cited as one of the most important parts of the movie, Barbie was most successful at exploring the complicated human and female experience. That was the most effective part. When I saw Barbie the second time, I had a much more profound experience watching it and I cried. And those were the parts that really hit me. When she sees the older woman, talking about how much pain there is in the world, dealing with conflict and sadness and depression. That component was more well developed than the monologue that everyone is talking about. I think it’s easy to ignore how much Margot Robbie does for the flashier Ryan Gosling performance, which I also loved, but I think Margot is the heart and soul of the movie. The whole epitome of this, and honestly what the movie addresses too, is we get this one huge blockbuster hit that’s written and directed by a woman, and it has to be everything to everyone and get nominated for every award and achieve everything. We just need more, big budget movies created by women! And some of them can have basic feminism, some of them can tackle it in a more detailed way.

William: Let’s say some positive things. Barbie was very funny. Ryan Gosling was really good.

Annie: Very funny. I love the musical style of the whole thing. The sets and costumes were beautiful. I loved the commitment to not using special effects. That decision really made the movie.

William: It did. It would have looked disgusting with CGI.

Annie: There were so many expectations tied to Barbie. But think about what this movie could have been without Greta Gerwig attached to it. It could have been terrible and it was really fun and well thought out. This was such an impossible task.

Barbie is available to watch on HBO Max and is nominated for Best Picture, Actor in a Supporting Role (Ryan Gosling), Actress in a Supporting Role (America Ferrera), Adapted Screenplay, Original Song (I’m Just Ken and What Was I Made For?), Costume Design and Production Design.

POOR THINGS

After being brought to life by a scientist, Bella Baxter goes on a journey of self-exploration.

Annie: Do you want to start? I’m still gathering my thoughts after watching it last night.

William: I don’t know what to say. I didn’t really like it, personally.

Annie: I think I liked it. It’s not my normal type of movie, but I did enjoy it much more than I was expecting. Talking to you and Sam before watching it, I went in with the right perspective of accepting this fantastical, sci-fi world. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. You have to lean into the quirky aspects of the movie and the world. A story about a woman who has all these men trying to control her and she learns to embrace her freedom? Sign me up. Emma Stone was fantastic. I really lost her in it. I liked the way you watched Bella make decisions in this very methodical way. Do I like this? Do I want to do this? Why would I do this? Am I being influenced by this person? It was a really interesting character lens. Mark Ruffalo was hilarious, starting from the second he tripped going up the stairs. Do I wonder what this movie would have been like if it was written and directed by a woman? Yes. And I’m not trying to take agency away from Emma Stone. As a Producer and lead actress, she certainly had influence but she didn’t write or direct the movie.

William: I don’t know what to say about Poor Things. It wasn’t for me. I couldn’t really get into it much. This was a tough one. It’s my least favorite of the Best Pictures so far. I still need to watch The Zone of Interest. Yorgos Lanthimos really committed to what he was creating. And great job to him because that’s hard to do! And it’s hard to get people to accept this weird world he created, and I think it was easily accepted by audiences because it was set up very well. Not every movie is for everyone, and this just wasn’t for me.

Annie: The parallels between this and Barbie were kind of insane.

William: That’s what a lot of people are saying.

Annie: The woman running the prostitution house is Weird Barbie. She was like, “you have to know what’s going on in the world.” And that’s what Kate McKinnon says in Barbie. Mark Ruffalo is Ken. I could do this for the whole movie. It’s funny to have two movies in this awards cycle that tell similar stories, of characters who start out passive and uninformed and go through an awakening to start living more actively in the world, in such different ways.

Poor Things is available on Hulu and is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos), Actress in a Leading Role (Emma Stone), Actor in a Supporting Role (Mark Ruffalo), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Original Score, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design and Film Editing.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Based on the book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true story of a spree of murders of the people of Osage Nation.

Annie: To be transparent, I did split this movie up over two nights. I watched an hour and a half the first night and the other two hours the second night. I went to bed after watching the first part and was so excited to finish the next day. I really liked this movie, and I didn’t expect to. The last thirty minutes to an hour started to feel a bit disjointed. It felt really tight up until that point and the storytelling was so methodical, but the ending felt a little more frantic and confusing. The wheels started to come off the wagon a bit. I really enjoyed the movie. But my big issue with the film is this. I don’t understand why the story centered on Leo DiCaprio’s character, Ernest Burkhart. I think that was a mistake. I would have loved to see the entire thing from Mollie Kyle’s (Lily Gladstone) perspective. I wanted way more of her. Choosing your main character defines the story you’re telling. And I thought centering it on Ernest and this supposed love story was fundamentally a weird choice. I also had a very hard time tracking what Mollie was thinking and what was motivating her decision making. Why does she marry Ernest? This is a critique of the script and not of Lily Gladstone, who I think does a fantastic job with the material she’s given.

William: I also thought it was weird it centered Ernest but we never knew what he really thought about everything and what his opinions were. If you have Lily Gladstone doing this great performance with Mollie, it’s weird to feel like you didn’t hear from her. I agree, I felt like the first half was much stronger than the second half and the second part became a whole different movie. In the first half, it centered so much on the Osage people and then you stopped hearing from them. This is an annoying thing to say, but this movie is edited terribly. My understanding of the book is that you don’t know the truth of what’s going on the entire time, and that’s not the case in the movie. I wonder if they should have brought that into this a bit more? The reveal wasn’t a reveal, you assumed what was going on.

Annie: It was hard to tell if the movie wanted it to be a big reveal or if they wanted us to be pretty aware the whole time, and since they tried to play it both ways, it fell a little flat.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

William: I think it was always implied that Ernest was involved but when it was officially confirmed… it felt like nothing. It was weird for it to be ambiguous and then not really revealed.

[SPOILERS ARE OVER]

Annie: It’s hard with something like this. Because this is all based on a true story. It’s a tough decision between building suspense in the movie or acknowledging that people already have the background knowledge of the story. At the same time, unfortunately, this story isn’t something that everyone is necessarily familiar with, so you could have probably leaned into the unknown a bit more. I did talk to mom because she’s read the book. And she said the book reveals information as the story goes. But the book is told from the perspective of the FBI, so it follows Jesse Plemons’ character. And apparently Leo was originally in talks to be the FBI agent but didn’t want to. I wonder if he had signed onto that role if they would have framed the story around the FBI agent, which I think would have also been better.

William: Yeah, the tagline of the book is The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. That’s interesting. When Jesse Plemons finally showed up, I said to Sam, can you imagine if all of a sudden Leo showed up now in this movie?

Annie: I was waiting for Jesse Plemons to arrive the whole time. I always need more of him. What did you think of the last scene with the radio play?

William: I hated it. What was that about? If you’re going to do that, fine, but it can’t feel like it came completely out of nowhere. It needed to feel connected to something.

Killers of the Flower Moon is available to watch on Apple TV and is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Actress in a Leading Role (Lily Gladstone), Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert De Niro), Cinematography, Original Song (Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)), Costume Design, Original Score, Production Design and Film Editing.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

The Zone of Interest tells the story of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family, who live next door to the concentration camp.

[William still needs to watch this one]

Annie: This movie was very haunting and disturbing, and I think it would have been more effective as a short film, instead of a feature length story. The commentary about the banality of evil is very powerful but because of this message, there isn’t much going on in the movie itself. And that’s partially to serve a purpose. It’s wildly jarring to watch this family experience normal family life while also being active participants in genocide. There is a scene between two of the kids playing in the yard that I cannot stop thinking about. But I think this all would have been more effectively telegraphed in a 30-minute movie instead of a 106-minute one.

The Zone of Interest is available to rent or buy and is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Glazer), Adapted Screenplay, Sound and International Feature Film.