Thoughts from the 2024 Oscar Death Race
Or, the unanswered question of why I do this to myself every year.
For the past few years—at least three, and not solely because of Letterboxd, but definitely since I’ve started tracking my viewing habits—I’ve sought out every Oscar-nominated film ahead of each year’s ceremony. (There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to it, so I’m not alone in doing this.)
I can’t tell you why I do it. My old job didn’t require me to do it—and it’s not like I had a primary place to write about awards season this year—although it certainly helped with coverage if I saw whichever film was dubbed the season’s Villain or was the most polarizing and could write about it. (This year’s was Maestro, an aggressively fine movie that got blown out of proportion because Bradley Cooper committed the so-called cardinal sin of publicly wanting an Oscar too much in a realm where countless filmmakers spend months openly—and often charmingly—campaigning to win one and studios and streamers alike spend millions to foot those bills.) I don’t participate in any Oscar pools—low-stakes ones with friends or ones with money and bragging rights on the line—so it’s not like I can mine my knowledge of sitting through some god-awful shorts to predict which cloying or emotionally manipulative ones will win those trophies. Watching everything means I get that much more annoyed when something I hated wins1.
Between that job, film festivals I covered, going to the movie theater too much (my one major vice since I moved to New York), and my first year voting on awards as part of a critics organization, I’d already watched every Best Picture nominee by the time those nominations came out; sometimes, I already had the chance to watch them two or three times. (My record this season is Anatomy of a Fall, which I saw four times between September and February.)
And this year’s crop was no different: Out of the 53 films (features and shorts) up for at least one Oscar at the 2024 awards, I had already seen 30 features by the time those nominations were announced on Jan. 23. What that left me was a pattering of movies that looked bad and hoped to avoid that got one or two random nominations in technical categories like Best Makeup & Hairstyling; a crop of films—usually among the Best Documentary Feature Film and Best International Film categories—that looked good but had yet to be given a proper release or had qualifying runs when I was out of town; and the shorts.
Those random lone nominations
This isn’t the section for anything restricted to a single nomination in its corresponding medium or because it’s an international production—Across the Spider-Verse and The Boy and the Heron should’ve both also gotten in for Original Score, imo—or a Marvel movie with a nomination for Visual Effects, or even a sole acting nod like Danielle Brooks in The Color Purple or Colman Domingo in Rustin. These are the ones where there’s an equal chance that their inclusion makes perfect sense or will make you go, “Wait…what?!”
Think something like El Conde (coincidentally, the subject of my final Dot newsletter after I caught it in theaters back in September) getting a nomination for its excellent cinematography. Or American Symphony getting in for Best Original Song but not Best Documentary Feature. Or the Best Original Score and Best Original Song spots that feel earmarked for John Williams and Diane Warren, respectively; at least people have actually heard of Flamin’ Hot, the movie in which Warren’s latest Oscar-nominated song appears, this year. Or Golda getting in for Makeup & Hairstyling.
Sometimes, they can surprise you. I’d definitely recommend El Conde (from director Pablo Larraín) of the subset, which is weird and absurd enough (and with a wtf twist for the ages) to be worth watching even if it doesn’t always work for me. But others are complete slogs, movies so bad and dull that I question why enough people watched those films to nominate them before remembering that the only person I can blame for this now-annual task is myself2.
Documentary Feature and International Feature Film
These two categories can get pretty political in an inside baseball kind of way, each for entirely different reasons.
For International Feature Film, look no further than the shit show this year that led to France selecting the incredibly French period romance The Taste of Things—a great movie in its own right that you should seek out and got unfairly maligned amid all of the controversy—over the courtroom drama (and Palme d’Or winner) Anatomy of a Fall for this category. From reports and analysis of how events and snubs unfolded, what went down sounds messy as hell, but in the end, France ended up with egg on its face: The Taste of Things made the shortlist for International Feature Film but didn’t receive a single nomination, while Anatomy of a Fall received five Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), became an awards darling (shoutout to Messi the border collie, a very good boy), and Justine Triet and Arthur Harari went home with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
But there are less pleasant aspects to the politics of this category beyond this race. The requirements for the percentage of non-English language in an International Film contender can affect a country like Nigeria (whose official language is English) and lead to its films being disqualified. The bodies designed to make a selection are opaque and vary by country, and countries that choose films via some government committee can completely shut out filmmakers critical of that government. The nominated films are often largely Eurocentric, often to the detriment of what’s available outside of that bubble; save for Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days (Japan’s submission), a European country submitted every other movie in this category. Aside from this year’s winner The Zone of Interest and Perfect Days, I’d also recommend seeking out Society of the Snow.
Documentary Feature’s political entanglements come in the form of what gets nominated in the first place. In late January, there was a kerfuffle after several popular and high-profile documentaries like American Symphony (an eventual PGA winner) and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (which already won four Creative Arts Emmys before Oscar nomination day) didn’t make the cut. It led to calls for reform because of the mentality of, How do you nominate these docs that almost nobody has heard of instead of the ones about Michael J. Fox or Jon Batiste? As Sam Adams pointed out in Slate, the hand-wringing is kind of dumb, especially since the docs that did get nominated are fantastic.
Sure, sometimes you might have a clunker like My Octopus Teacher, but more often than not, in the years I’ve been paying attention, there are some worthy ones to watch. All are available on streaming, but check out Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and category winner 20 Days in Mariupol.
The Shorts!
Oscar shorts tend to be one of a few things: They’re movies about Important Topics (bonus points if the topic is also relevant right now); their existence is an argument for making a longer feature film version; they’re surface-level explorations of a complex topic and hurt by the runtime restrictions; and only sometimes do the films feel complete.
I caught all the documentaries at home or online and went to the theaters for the live-action and animated shorts. And they were mostly fine and forgettable? But here are some I liked.
Live-action: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which kinda feels like a copout because of the Wes Anderson of it all, and it was the only one that wasn’t super depressing. Also, Netflix’s announcement that it’ll release all of Anderson’s Roald Dahl short films as an anthology only after Anderson won its Oscar dampened things a bit.
Animation: Our Uniform, which does something really inventive by animating directly on clothing.
Documentary: I was really cool on most of these, but if I had to choose one, The Last Repair Shop. Or Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, which is both silly and the shortest of the lot.
What I’m Reading
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: The second book in this series still features lesbian necromancers in space, but this time around, there are confusing storytelling devices, a mystery that may or may not involve self-inflicted amnesia, and much of the story being relayed in the second person. (It’ll make sense. Eventually.)
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett: The Emily Wilde saga is quickly becoming one of my favorite series, and it’s got everything: Fae, cozy academia, mild absurdity, and a sweet romance at its core.
The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft by Diana Helmuth: I’m not very far into my friend Diana’s memoir yet, but I so appreciate how approachable she makes everything feel, especially when my main reference points on witchcraft are from pop culture.
Having not experienced how terrible Disney+ and Hulu ad breaks are until recently, I agree with every word of this rant from Matt Zoller Seitz.
Speaking of Anatomy of a Fall, the logistics of the French legal system—also depicted in all of its wtf-ery (a totally legal term) in the 2022 film Saint Omer—finally makes a modicum of sense.
Knitwear of the Week
Knit: A dark blue cashmere sweater shimmering under the bright lights of Avengers HQ.
Worn By: Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), in depressed Leftovers-infused survivor’s guilt mode, in Avengers: Endgame.
Costume Designer: Judianna Makovsky
All the credit for the latest KotW goes to Eric Francisco, a fantastic entertainment reporter you should all be reading. We were chatting about movie knitwear recently when he asked if he could tell me about an overlooked/underappreciated sweater that he loved—which you should all do if you get the chance—and pointed to this number from Avengers: Endgame. And you know what? It’s great!
This is brand new information to absolutely nobody, but Chris Evans knows how to wear the hell out of a fucking sweater3.
Want to nominate your own Knitwear of the Week?
I’m now offering you a chance to nominate your favorite piece of cinematic knitwear. I’ve got more information about what I’m looking for here. So, if you’ve got one, send an email over to knittingflicks@gmail.com with your pick!
This year, I landed 21/23, missing only Best Actress (that’s gonna sting for a long time) and, very happily, on Animated Feature. Because yes, we should give far more awards to Hayao Miyazaki while we still can. But—and I credit the Little Gold Men podcast for this insight—if you know what to look for and/or go for the worst films with an important message, the shorts are a bit easier to figure out than you’d think, although there are always exceptions.
I log everything I watch on Letterboxd, so go there if you want to know more about what I thought about these films; only some of the reviews are meme-y.
Per the Knives Out rule, only the white Aran sweater is ineligible for KotW. All other Knives Out knitwear and/or knitwear worn by Chris Evans in other film and TV projects are still fair game.