The Power of the Dog is the favorite to take home the Best Picture award at the Oscars but the public loves CODA.
CODA has a lot of heart and is a warm, enjoyable movie with a lot of entertainment value. Power of the Dog is an art film disguised as a Western. It’s not surprising that average people prefer CODA. Put me in the camp with the average people. I’m not saying CODA is a better film, but given the choice of rewatching one or the other, I’m on team CODA. Power of the Dog may be a great film, but it is the least enjoyable to watch among the nominees I watched.
My friend and I try to watch all the nominees each year, and our reactions give you a look across the spectrum of viewers. I have an analytical approach, occasionally love an art film, but always prefer a movie that leads with its heart rather than its head. She is a mainstream viewer who wants to be moved and/or entertained. Mind you, these notes represent our visceral responses, not my opinion about the quality of the filmmaking.
The two we loved were CODA and Belfast. She loved CODA the most of all nominees by far, while I loved the two about equally.
I also loved Nightmare Alley – I even went back and watched the older version – but I didn’t even ask her to watch that one because she would find it dark and depraved. I’m OK with darkness and depravity, at least when they are at arm’s length. I was shocked, however, and kind of pleasantly surprised that this kind of genre pic made the list of nominees.
I really liked Licorice Pizza, which was just weird enough for me (Sean Penn’s greatest role since Spicoli), but she hated it, didn’t understand the humor or the references, and considered it a complete waste of her time.
We both liked King Richard and kinda liked Don’t Look Up, but didn’t really consider them Best Picture material. You can make a case for King Richard, but the nomination of Don’t Look Up shocked us both.
We were split on Power of the Dog. I admired it, but didn’t admire it enough to vote for it over Belfast or CODA if I had a ballot. She hated it almost as much as she hated Licorice Pizza.
She didn’t watch West Side Story with me. I was lukewarm about it in general, but just loved Rita Moreno and was shocked when she didn’t get a nomination.
Neither of us have watched Dune or Drive My Car yet.
I liked two films better than some of the nominees: Cyrano with Peter Dinklage and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. Those are both way better films than, for example, Don’t Look Up. OK, to be honest, I’d place the new Spiderman film and even Being the Ricardos ahead of Don’t Look Up. I think the Academy was sort of dazzled by the fact that the biggest stars in the world agreed to appear in that film.
I guess if I’m really honest, I might place some Pauly Shore movies ahead of Don’t Look Up.
Yeah, I’m exaggerating, but you get the point.
I wish I could remember where I read this, but saw an article about how “adult” cinema- going out and seeing intelligent or artistic movies, not just Oscarbait movies but critically and artistically acclaimed ones- are not mainstream anymore. Movies are not mainstream. Stuff like Spiderman makes billions because fandom is mainstream- It being a movie is immaterial to its success.
I like movies, and I tend to like Oscar movies- I loved to really liked 6 of the BP nominees this year, and most of the rest were okay. Don’t Look Up was the only embarrassment. But I do think writing off the general public is a mistake. That’s the kind of attitude that keeps movies not mainstream. Nominating SpiderMan isn’t the answer- I like it a lot, same level as the nominees I liked (I also am a Spiderman fan, so I was probably blind to some flaws) but just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s Best Picture. I think you could mainstream something like Power of the Dog- Christ, it’s not Salo. Not Spiderman mainstream of course, but so people would watch it and care about it. The Oscars used to help do that.
The point in the article was made up to prop up an argument that the Oscars shouldn’t care that their ratings are tanking. The general audience doesn’t like movies anyway, so fuck it. Make the show for the people who do- five hours long, with lots of clips, every category, long speeches. Treat it like the Super Bowl but on HBO Max or something. I’d watch it in that case, if they would take it seriously and not compromise their ceremony.
The WSJ polls the audiences on Oscar movie popularity:
1. Dune
2. Don’t Look Up
3. West Side Story
4. King Richard
5. Power of the Dog
6. CODA
7. Nightmare Alley
8. Belfast
9. Licorice Pizza
10. Drive My Car
Of course they only considered the nominees, of which the top four are really the only ones that have been widely seen. If they did this same analysis with all pictures, I think the new Spiderman movie would be the people’s Oscar choice, with Dune still close to the top.
I think many, if not most, people would like Belfast (for example) if they watched it, but the problem is marketing. How the hell do you persuade Americans to go to a black-and-white movie about a conflict that’s impossible to summarize succinctly, featuring people who speak in heavy regional accents? It’s actually a heartfelt movie with some popular potential, but it sounds like a typical Sundance movie, conjuring visions of unsmiling Albanian lesbians eating pudding.
WSJ points out “Consider two top 10 lists. On one, the 10 movies from 2021 that were nominated for this year’s best-picture Oscar. On the other, the 10 movies from 2021 that led the U.S. box office in ticket sales. The overlap between the two: Zero.”
Per Box Office Mojo, Dune, at #13, was the only nominee to crack the top 37, so it’s basically the only nominee anyone has ever heard of, except West Side Story, which received a lot of publicity but didn’t sell that many tickets.
And they wonder why the ratings for the Oscar broadcast keep declining.
A bit misleading as “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Nightmare Alley,” “West Side Story” and “Drive My Car” were/are available on HBO-Max and “Power of the Dog” and “Don’t Look Up” are available on Netflix.
If the new Spiderman really killed MCU, which is killing film, I would say it deserves to sweep the Oscar’s for jumping on the grenade. The newest Spiderman makes a compelling case. Spiderman gets all of Iron Man’s super abilities bc they were friends and it just rubs off. The abilities are useful for the turnkey ending that cures supervillains with a magic shot. But the magic shot would also end the marvel cinematic universe bc the turkey solution cures the mutations that underlies the super abilities for both hero’s and villain’s in the Marvel Universe. Best of all Spiderman with Iron Man superpowers only needs a 5 minute tech babble montage because it is the turnkey ending. It was easy if you use Stark’s tech to cure and not destroy. The overproduced formulaic movies end and we don’t get to see another Uncle Ben character cooked like rice. Dream baby dream.
I think The Last Duel should have gotten a nomination, it was fantastic.
I’ve been meaning to watch that. I always like Ridley’s work.
meh, and you can quote. 😛 Actually only saw West Side Story, btw such originality, eh. Bill Maher did a piece on last yrs nominees ~ Debbie Downers ie change the Oscars to the Debbies as in they were all frickin’ depressing! 😮
Indeed, changing it from 5 to 10 when there usually aren’t (5) deserving best movie nominees may have been a mistake. Full disclosure last film saw at a theater was Heaven’s Prisoners 1996 because Teri Hatcher did a full frontal. 🙂 Yielding back the balance of my time …
I thought West Side Story was flat out THE movie of the year, and Spielberg’s best film since Minority Report (and he’s done some terrific films since then!). The musical numbers were exhilarating, shot and edited as brilliantly as musical numbers ever have been. The performances were top-notch, and I was also surprised Rita Moreno didn’t get nominated. And the film moved me to tears both time I saw it.
I liked most of the other nominees to one degree or another — Licorice Pizza was super charming, Drive My Car is slow and challenging but deeply moving once it hits that third hour, Dune is a lot of fun and a visually and aurally sumptuous experience, Belfast was delightful and touching, Nightmare Alley is kinda slow but generally excellent. I was fine with all of those as nominees.
King Richard was fine, but I have no idea why it got any attention outside of the performances. Entertaining enough, but pretty standard in general, and its emotional threads are all pretty well resolved before the final game, whose stakes are entirely “will they get the multi-million dollar sponsorship before they even go pro”, which is an incredibly weak reason to care about the climactic game in a sports movie. Smith and Ellis were great, and I’m glad they’re in the race, I just didn’t see anything else Oscar level there.
Power of the Dog is a deadly slow slog, unpleasant, low-energy, and one-note. Artfully done for sure, and that’s fine if there’s a strong payoff — Drive My Car is similarly challenging, but absolutely makes it worth the effort. But Power ultimately has a pretty thin story (it could have been 90 minutes without missing a thing and still been deliberately paced), and that third act, while interesting, just didn’t give me anything emotionally for the struggle making it there, and also I don’t think made any real thematic point that wasn’t fully explored in the opening scenes. (Toxic masculinity and homophobia being a deadly pairing, which, sure, but I got that during the opening dinner.) I can take unpleasant if it’s got a point, and pretentious if it’s entertaining, but both are too much. I guess I’d consider it a fairly good movie purely on the artfulness with which it’s constructed and the rich performances, but my parents hated it, and I can’t say I actually *liked* it any more than they did.
Don’t Look Up was just flat-out a bad movie, with a terrible script, and then executed in off-putting ways. A waste of good actors and an important theme.
I still haven’t seen CODA, because it’s only available on Apple+, and I don’t have that. It has a couple of scattered screenings where I am this week, but only at times when I’m working. If it had a physical release, I would absolutely see it, but nope, gotta keep it ghettoized to the streaming service to eek out a couple extra subscribers.
The movies I felt should have gotten in were the bonkers Titane (which is way too insane to get in, but it was my second-favorite film of the year) and The Last Duel. I wouldn’t have been upset about French Dispatch making it in. And it never would have happened, but I found Suicide Squad delightfully deranged. I haven’t seen Cyrano, but given my love of the play, previous films, and the casting of Dinklage, I imagine I’ll be down with it.
As far as popular movies – more popular than Dune – the only one that really strikes me as worthy was No Time To Die. It’s understandably divisive, but it’s a thematically rich, ambitious, and risky approach to the series while still delivering the spectacle beautifully. I don’t think any of the other blockbuster hits were worthy, even if I liked Spiderman, Free Guy, Fast 9, and especially the impressively solid A Quiet Place Part II.
I could accept West Side Story as the winner more cheerfully than The Power of the Dog. It’s dazzling in its way. I was lukewarm because I have seen the show performed at least a dozen times. My first wife (who was Irish, with nary a drop of Hispanic blood) once starred as Maria, so I’ve heard the songs a bazillion times and know every note by heart. It remains my favorite musical, but I’m kinda tired of it, and I just wasn’t interested in yet another interpretation, although this was an excellent one, maybe the best. I thought it was genius to let Rita Moreno sing Somewhere instead of the lovers. I had a little dust in my eye during that scene.
Blunt and Krasinski really do a great job with those Quiet Place movies, don’t they? I know that they’re going to do a part 3, but this is not my kind of movie, so I’m eager to see what Krasinski can do with Imaginary Friends.
I think you missed the stakes at the end of King Richard, which were all about whether RW’s vision bucking conventional wisdom and entrenched practices would be vindicated and whether Venus would successfully assert herself independently of her father’s overbearing influence and avoid crumpling like Capriati. Since its a biopic about a real person, we know she went on to have success, but even though I was watching tennis at the time I didn’t remember or had incomplete awareness of the details.
It’s easy to discount King Richard because as a biopic and a sports movie it has so many advantages as a crowd-pleaser (at least for those with open minds not clouded by racism) that the other films might as well be competing with a hand tied behind their back. But I have to be honest–I laughed out loud and cried more during this movie than any other so far by a factor of three. To paraphrase a Tweet a read yesterday, if you think its so easy, try it.
Maybe I will like CODA as much as I like King Richard–if so it will be a very good year. Agree that West Side Story was very good and very impressive. It makes me tempted to claim Steven Spielberg is underrated, unlikely as that sounds. I just personally can’t imagine wanting to sit through it again.
I’ve seen every best picture nominee except CODA and think it’s a good group of films, not as good as some years, but definitely worthwhile. Worst two for me were Don’t Look Up and Dune. Favorites so far are King Richard followed by Belfast and The Power of the Dog in some order, followed by Licorice Pizza, Drive My Car, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story, which was tremendously impressive but not my bag.
I saw the original Nightmare Alley just recently so I may check out the new version. I’ll probably never see any of the other new ones. I’ve mostly ignored Hollywood films for a long time. I mostly watch older films and foreign shows. Hollywood will need a huge attitude readjustment for this to change. The companies that own the Hollywood studios are just too big and that doesn’t work well with any artistic creation (see the music industry). The directors and creative talent just don’t have enough freedom to really do anything great.
Of the films I’ve seen, I would say a mediocre crop at best. Have not watched CODA, Belfast or Drive My Car. I think Power of the Dog is vastly overrated, and obscured much of the subtext of the novel.
King Richard was ok, but common. Licorice Pizza was a lot of fun, but definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. I liked Nightmare Alley a lot and of the films I saw would be in my top two. Dune did a great job capturing a difficult book (and was visually stunning) – my mom even followed it, and liked it; it would be my other top two pick. I liked Westside Story (probably better than the original – but those are fighting words.)
Hate, hate hated, Don’t Look Up.
Not gonna lie. I thought you were making a joke with “The Power of the Dog” until I viewed the article. That’s an actual movie!
It’s subjective. I didn’t care for any of them.
That perfectly explains why the Oscar ratings keep dropping. Either the general public never heard of the nominated films, or they hated them.
Cathy and I watch the nominees every year, but she would never see any of them if she were not my friend, and she almost always hates them. If my memory is true, CODA is pretty much the only one she has truly loved in the past eight years. She didn’t even fall in love with King Richard, despite the fact that she is a tennis fanatic.
Seen half the flick noms. No plan to see the rest. FWIW, Belfast, Don’t, Dune, Licorice, Power. Only liked Dune & Power, & not overly.
Dune wasn’t great, but did make me want to reread the book, which I don’t do often.
I miss dinner & a movie every Friday night with my college buddy. Did that till he fell ill, led to a fatal heart attack. 20 years ago, next year. Well, I miss Ebert, too.
Another soon after college buddy liked Power. I went for Benedict, was rewarded by a nice turn from Dunst. Maybe her best role to date. To me the ending was no surprise, I couldn’t understand why people were puzzled about it.
I’ll root for Buckley in supporting, though I haven’t seen The Lost Daughter. I will.
I love Wes Anderson, but I hated Dispatch. It went thru all the motions, but came across to me as heartless. In fact, his films that I didn’t like is inching towards 50%. I didn’t, in particular, enjoy Fantastic Mr. Fox.
I like Matt Damon, so I have hope for The Last Duel. Ripley, Hunting & Martian almost had me thinking Damon was a sure bet. Clooney teaming with Coens, I thought I needed to see Suburbicon. But ATM, I feel it’s not worth the $3 to rent it.
Another one I liked is The Green Knight. But I’m a lot less into movies lately. TV has picked up some of the slack. Normal People really grabbed me. Easily the best thing I’ve watched in a long time. As ever, YMMV.