Ratings & Reviews of 2020 Oscar Bait

This is your one-stop shop for ratings and concise reviews of The Library’s Oscar Bait Watchlist. I will update this page after each movie on the list is watched. The ratings will be out of 10 (a la IMDB, 10 being highest) and reviews will include a few thoughts I have on the film as well as Oscars nominations I think it will/should receive.

1. Another Round
   • 8/10 – Partly it gets dinged because of my own false expectations. I expected a non-stop rollick, but it was a much more poignant, heady contemplation mixed with adult day drinking. Still a really good flick, but not as light-hearted as I had planned.
2. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
   • 7/10 – If you don’t go for Sacha Baron Cohen’s particular brand of pranking schtick (and even if you do) even the hour and a half runtime can seem long. It’s funny, but nothing new. I think Cohen shined brighter in Chicago 7.
3. Da 5 Bloods
   • 7/10 – Quintessential Spike Lee: heavy handed in message and symbolism. It was good, but far from Spike’s best in my opinion. It felt really predictable, the way a Shakespearean tragedy foreshadows who will die and in what order. It was oddly similar in tone to Borat for its Trump-era shade.
4. First Cow
   • 7/10 – It’s a slooooooow burn. It’s a fine film about friendship, the wild west and the American Dream. Not a lot happens, but that’s kind of the point.
5. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
   • 8/10 – This staging of this movie made SO much more sense when I realized it was adapted from a play. This was a showcase for Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis. Boseman seemed to channel every ounce of life he had left into this performance and, in my opinion, should score the posthumous Oscar.
6. Mank
   • 10/10 – What can I say, I’m a total sucker for witty banter and movies about making movies. I wish people still talked like this in real life. This movie is cinephile catnip. The story of how Citizen Kane came to be is just as interesting as the Orson Welles classic itself.
7. Minari
   • 8/10 – It’s a really good movie, but you have to be in the mood for family drama, a slow pace and the hardships of rural immigrant life while still keeping the faith things will be okay.
8. My Octopus Teacher
   • 10/10 – I changed things up several times from the original list, especially after the actual nomination came out. This one blew me away. When I saw the trailer on Netflix a few months ago, I thought it was a hippy-dippy nature dive and could be generically categorized as such. After watching, I felt like I took in a life-affirming piece of art. Watch this movie. Find your own octopus.
9. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
   • 7/10 – If you love Charlie Kaufmann, get thee to Netflix and watch this movie. If you are struggling with depression or anxiety in your own life, probably give this one a miss. It’s heady, poignant and strange in all the ways that make Kaufmann a unique talent and, for some, an acquired taste.
10. Judas and the Black Messiah
    • 9/10 – Daniel Kaluuya can do any voice, any time, any way. Tour de force performances made this a must watch this award season and resulted in a pair of Supporting Actor nods.
11. Birds of Prey
    • 8/10 – Subbing in this one because a) it was a romping great time and b) News of the World lost a lot of Oscar Buzz steam and I may not get around to it. Great choreography and lady-kicked assedness.
12. Nomadland
    • 6/10 – I knocked this one down a few pegs because the hype I had going into it fell almost impossibly short of where I landed. It’s not a bad movie by any means, but I don’t get what all the fuss is about. I think it would have been better as a documentary.
13. Ammonite
    • 6/10 – Another sub for a movie I probably wasn’t getting around to (On the Rocks). The actresses were great and that sex scene was [steamy expletives redacted] level wow. But at the end of the day it dragged along like a gray English winter day.
14. One Night in Miami
    • 10/10 – I had a feeling that a movie about Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke hanging out in Miami would be awesome, but it exceeded my high expectations. The direction was fluid, the acting spot-on and it was the most interesting and nuanced conversation around race in America I have ever heard. As the screenwriter asked the cast, Are we ready to have a private conversation about race, publicly? Luckily, the answer was yes.
15. Palm Springs
    • 9/10 – Somehow the Groundhog Day formula works in just about any context. It’s fun, romantic and sneaky philosophical.
    • Oscar Nods: It got a screenwriting nod from the Writer’s Guild, so who knows? Maybe Best Original Screenplay?
16. Promising Young Woman
    • 9/10 – This movie made me uncomfortable as hell, and I give it praise for that. It took a private conversation that happens on a daily basis and splashed it in neon paint across the sky. This will walk away with several awards and deservedly so.
17. Soul
    • 10/10 – Kemp Powers had a huge year. The screenwriter for One Night in Miami also helmed another pitch-perfect Pixar flick. It celebrates the little things in life and smoothly folds in black culture, work-life balance, regrets in the face of death while still being ostensibly an animated kids movie.
18. Sound of Metal
    • 10/10 – THIS. MOVIE. SLAPS. I knew nothing about this film going in other than it was getting a lot of buzz. I came away thinking it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in years. I won’t give anything away, as I think going in cold was the best way to do it, but the themes of addiction and recovery drive a very powerful narrative.
19. Tenet
    • 10/10 – Holy mind-fuck Batman! The only reason this movie isn’t being considered one of the year’s top contenders is that most people couldn’t bend their mind around it. I have never seen anything like it on screen and the bounds pushed for imaginative filmmaking continued to be taken to their limits by Christopher Nolan.
20. The Father
21. The Forty Year Old Version
    • 10/10 – This is my sleeper pick that will (sadly) get overlooked come awards time. Radha Blank is a revelation while she pulls off the Starring/Directing/Writing trifecta in a warts-and-all story about her own life. It’s funny, at times intentionally cringeworthy, and it shows a fearlessness that is badly needed in storytelling. It’s fantastic and you should watch it.
22. The Midnight Sky
    • 6/10 – I’m a big Clooney-as-director fan, but this one fell flat. If you got Roger Ebert’s Book of Hollywood Clichés and turned to the space/odyssey/apocalypse sections, you could patch together this script pretty quickly.
23. The Prom
    • 7/10 – Over the top and outrageously entertaining. Jo Ellen Pellman (Emma) will steal your unruly heart. A good date movie for laughs and song and dance.
24. The Trial of the Chicago 7
    • 9/10 – Every bit as good as you’d expect from Aaron Sorkin with some tour de force performances from Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Rylance, among others. Also, if you want to win Best Picture, get Michael Keaton on screen!
25. The White Tiger
    • 6/10 – Similar to Nomadland, though far less hyped, I am flowing against the critical grain here. I didn’t like it. The characters may reflect real situations, but I’m not into a movie where there is NOBODY to cheer for.