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Oscars 2025 Best Picture Reviews: Part One

Jon The BlogcentricLeave a comment

The 2025 Academy Awards have announced the ten films worthy of being nominees for the Best Picture award. All ten are different in their own ways and their own styles. All of them are good at showing why they are being considered for the Best Picture award. Even in the first of my five reviews of the Best Picture nominees, we have two films that are polar opposites. One of the nominees in my review is an arthouse film by a Greek director who has become a big name in the arthouse film scene. The other film is one of the biggest summer blockbusters of the year done by a rising name in Hollywood. Both films are great in their own ways.

Bugonia

This film has two themes that are common in our modern world. The first theme that stands out is the power balance of those in control and those below that they command. That’s something of common discussion in our modern world that really gets a lot of conversation and a lot of angry responses. Especially as we see the wealth gap consistently widen in our society. I’m sure there is frequent talk on social media of revenge plots and revenge wishes that somewhat resemble Teddy’s and Don’s on Michelle. The second theme reflecting what stands out in our modern world is that of conspiracy theories. Thanks to social media, they’re all over the place. They range from government conspiracies to aliens living among us and there’s no limit to what they can be. The film is also very reflective of the type of person who believes their conspiracy theory to be true. Sammy completely believes his belief in aliens from the planet Andromeda to be the truth. Everything he read from the book fits the narrative of Michelle. The only person he will befriend is his autistic cousin Don. When he hears opposition from anyone, he becomes hostile or even violent.

The film appears to play around with a far-fetched conspiracy theory and tries to create a scenario of what if such a certain conspiracy theory turns out to be true? Sammy’s plot of revenge appears ridiculous but it’s also personal. Michelle is CEO of a pharmaceutical company that used his mother to test out a medicine that left her comatose. Teddy is convinced she is an alien and not only does he and Don commit their revenge on her, they plan it days before a lunar eclipse so they can get what they want before the mothership they anticipate will take her away. At first, this appears ridiculous as Michelle is still rational in thought while Teddy is belligerent. She knows how to use the power of the word to expose Teddy’s weakness and is very good at resisting whatever torture methods Teddy and Don inflict on her. As the eclipse looms, Michelle appears to play around with Teddy’s alleged charade but after she finds a dirty secret behind Teddy, she confronts him to give him an alternative theory to his conspiracy. A theory he can’t handle. The ending will not only leave you thinking the conspiracy is true but give you a shock ending. One that’s semi-apocalyptic!

Once again, Yorgos Lanthomos delivers a great film. This film is actually based on a 2003 film from South Korea called Save The Green Planet. Here, he teams up with Will Tracy, a former writer for The Onion, to adapt the story into an American scenario and relating to the present. Now a film set in the present is not something I would expect from Lanthimos. All the films I’ve seen from him are either set in the past or exist in another universe altogether. Those who’ve seen Poor Things know that Lanthonos can do science fiction, but a film about aliens living in human form is something many of us would not expect. Once again, he takes on a story that one would expect to make for a dreadful film and makes it work. It could be Tracy’s writing, could be Lanthimos’ directing, or it could be the acting from the actors, but they make it work. Lanthomos again does the impossible by making something that has a big risk of failing succeed with flying colors!

Excellent acting again from Emma Stone. She’s been seen in big-name films for almost 20 years and she still knows how to work the role well. She is acted in the last four Lanthimos films. Again she works the role well and takes command of the picture. She makes what could be a ridiculous character work like magic! Also worthy of praise is Jesse Plemons. He does an excellent job of playing a conspiracy-obsessed man. He does a great job of capturing the common mind of such a person on how they live a world of their own and are hostile to opposition. He really convinced me. Aidan Delbis is great in his film debut. He’s autistic in real life and he captures the chemistry between him and Sammy very well.

The film also has a lot of standout technical work such as the set design from James Peice, the makeup and hair by Torsten Witte and the original score from Jerskin Fendrix.

Bugonia is a shocker of a film. It’s a shocker in the style of film and as a film with a twist of an ending. This is one film to expect the unexpected!

F1: The Movie

A movie about fast facing cars makes for an attention-grabber for the hypercompetitive summer movie season. A pure sports film about auto racing isn’t as much of an attention-grabber like the mix of fast auto driving and action as in the Fast And The Furious films. Having Brad Pitt in the film does help but there has to be more to it. Scenes of fast racing always make for a thrill ride but there will still have to be a good story to go with it. The film does provide it with the story of a racing team that struggles to survive, an older racer who wants to prove he’s not washed up and a younger racer who has in a lot of potential and is hungry to win. There’s the clash of racer’s egos and a technical director who’s trying moves and methods that are unorthodox and even risky. Add in the fierce rivalry between the two, illegal moves and a romance in the way, and you have a good story. With many actual Formula One racers added into the film, you can tell this is a film that means serious business. It even goes into family relations of how Joshua and his mother have conflicting opinions of Joshua pursuing a Formula One race career and even the mother’s reactions after her son’s near-fatal crash. It’s not the Oscar fare type of story but it does make for a film that’s more than just the effects.

As for the effects, the film delivers on this. When you have a film about Formula One auto racing, the crowds are naturally going to expect a film that delivers the experience of race car driving. Most of us will never live that thrill and a movie is the closest we’ll ever get outside of a video game. The film does capture the high-speed moments a racer commonly experiences as well as the crashes and the intensity of the races. Outside of the effects, it also captures a lot of top training moments and the tension of the Formula One season and the difficulties of being a racer on the circuit as well as the challenges in making it for both the racer and the team. The film goes all over the spectrum in delivering a story about Formula One racing that captures the overall essence and challenges of being part of the Formula One circuit.

This film is another accomplishment for director Joseph Kosinski. It seems unnoticed, but Kosinski appears to be a rising name for blockbuster films. His success started with 2010’s Tron: Legacy and continued with Oblivion and Only The Brave, but he finally achieved Oscar acclaim with Top Gun: Maverick. Here, Kosinski works to make a fresh story about Formula One racing work with the story he co-wrote with Ehren Kruger. This story is not as deep as most of the films nominated for this year’s Oscars but the story delivers a lot more than the stories of common blockbuster fare. The story takes the audience beyond the Formula One racetrack and shows the common difficulties a Formula One racer has to face along with giving the racers Sonny and Joshua more personality and more depth than you’d see in roles of common summer blockbusters. It’s a story that goes beyond what one expects.

Brad Pitt is great as racer Sonny Hayes. A racer who never had his chance but sees a chance during a time he’s not fit to race again, that could be played off in simple manner. Brad gives the role of Sonny some depth and makes Sonny relatable as well as keeping the story from going cardboard. Damson Idris does a great job of playing rising racer Joshua Pearce. He does a very good job of playing a racer that is hungry but arrogant and has a lot to learn, His rivalry with Sonny while also being a student adds to the story. Javier Bardem is also great as the team owner Ruben Cervantes. He does a great job in showing Ruben anticipating good results but nervous because of what he fears could happen to his team. Kerry Condon does a great job in her role as a technical director who dares to pull risky moves and even challenge the rules. Sarah Niles is also very good in playing the mother who’s supportive of her son’s career but also fearful.

The technical aspects of the film area especially great. Claudio Miranda delivers winning cinematography for this story delivering the right shots to capture the excitement of racing. Stephen Mirrione delivers top editing in piecing together a story that works. Hans Zimmer adds in a score that fits the film excellently. The film’s visual effects team delivers excellent effects to give the audience the thrill ride of racing they expect to get out of a racing story.

F1: The Movie is a racing movie that goes beyond being a simple racing story. It delivers in a story with intensity and gives characters with a lot of dimension. It also doesn’t compromise in the action moments and the effects that the movie crowds expect it to deliver.

And there you go. This is my first pair of reviews of this year’s Best Picture nominees. I’m planning to have it two films per blog so you can expect to see four more blogs to come.

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: Poor Things

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Emma Stone plays a woman whom, thanks to a transplanted brain, is able to rid herself of the nasty men in her life in Poor Things.

There have been oddball romances before but Poor Things is something else. It’s interesting how some weird science can change a woman’s life for the better.

If you’ve seen Yorgos Lanthimos’ past films, you’ll know he doesn’t shy away from bizarre stories or an eccentric way of storytelling. Here, we have the story of a pregnant woman in Victorian England Dr. Godwin Baxter finds in the river dead from a suicide jump. Dr. Baxter brings her back to life, thanks to the transplant of the brain of her deceased unborn child and names her Bella. Soon his assistant Max McCandless falls in love with her. Unfortunately as Max is about to marry her, she is pursued by a swindler named Duncan Wedderburn who knows the story and wants to take full advantage of her naivety by being the one who marries her. He taker on travels to Lisbon, Alexandria and France with her but she’s too much for him to handle from giving away all his gambling money to the poor of Alexandria to living in a brothel in Paris. It’s through the women in the Paris brothel that she develops her empowerment and Duncan’s engagement with Bella falls apart. Just as she’s ready to marry Max, Duncan has a revenge plan. He reunites her with her former husband: a General named Alfie Blessington. It’s as he reminds her of her past as a woman named Victoria that she falls for him again. it’s of his controlling abusive nature that she’s reminded why she did her suicide jump from a bridge. Alfie things he’s got her, but Bella isn’t Victoria anymore and things change.

It’s funny how there are two films with the theme of female empowerment nominated for an Oscar. The first is Barbie and the messages of trying to achieve empowerment when you’re seen as the exact opposite was found very entertaining by the summer movie crowd. This film is not exactly a film that would win huge crowds. The film, nevertheless, is oddly charming. It is a surprise how a doctor who appears to be a Victorian Dr. Frankenstein is able to bring back the life of a wife who committed suicide through her unborn child’s brain, have her develop, and then find her empowerment though her bumpy road to recovering her thought. In her recovery, there were many opportunities for her to become prey again from Duncan to Alfie, but she always won in the end. Her naivety makes her give Duncan’s money winnings away in Alexandria, causing him to find her too much. Her time with the prostitutes in Paris gives her a great education with love and herself. Her new-found empowerment helped her see Alfie Farrington as the brute husband he was and why she jumped in the first place. This time, she knows how to deal with the man that drove her to kill herself in the first place.

Another funny thing is this film is not only the story of Bella but also the story about the men in her life. At first, you want to think that Dr. Baxter is the controlling one. He took her when he found her dead, removed the deceased unborn child, and performed the lobotomy. When you see all of his creations and all the living creatures of half-and-half animals, you think Bella is the latest subject for him to toy with. You also want to think Max McCandless is just a man who sheepishly does whatever Dr. Baxter tells him to do. That is until you learn of the other men that come into her life. Just as the two try to raise her, Duncan tries to take her into being his own toy, only to lose big-time. Just as McCandless tries to marry Bella, Duncan “reunites” her with Alfie and reminds her of her life as Victoria and of his brutish controlling nature which never changed. In the end, it’s Dr. Baxter and Max who end up being the best men in her life. Dr. Baxter performed the lobotomy that helped her forget herself as Victoria and become Bella. Max is the one who truly loved her and cared about her. It’s no wonder the two are happy to continue Dr. Baxter’s works post mortem.

Top respect should go to Yorgos Lanthimos. Hard to believe this is his first feature since The Favourite. Lanthimos is known for creating absurd situations and somehow make them understandable and watchable. Here, he does it again. He takes a case of a Frankenstein-like experiment and it succeeds in creating a story a woman stronger than she was before her suicide jump. And through her unborn infant’s brain! He knows how to make the odd entertaining and make it work. Also worth acknowledging is scriptwriter Tony McNamara. This story, which he adapts from an Alastair Gray novel, makes the bizarreness of it all understandable, oddly intelligent, and enjoyable. A story like this is one of the least likely places you’ll see a story of female empowerment, but it happens here!

Also excellent is the acting from Emma Stone as Bella/Victoria. Just as this film is Lanthimos’ comeback film, he reunites with Stone to do it! Doing a role of a woman with a transplanted infant brain and having to rapidly mature from and infant’s thinking to an adult’s thinking is a hard task to do even if this were a dramatic film. This role could have been a joke, but Emma knew how to make it work for the story. She makes Bella/Victoria into a believable character from her infant-like ways to her child-like naivety to her sexual maturity to her new-found empowerment. And to make the comedy of it all work to boot! An excellent accomplishment.

The film also has a lot of great supporting performances like Mark Ruffalo as the swindling Duncan Wedderburn who loses in the end. Also great is Willem Dafoe as Dr. Godwin Baxter. He is great in convincing you he’s less of a controlling mad scientist and more the best father figure Bella could have. Ramy Youssef is also great as Max McCandless. He does great work playing the man you think has the least chance of winning Bella’s heart, but does.

Where do I start with the technical accomplishments? I never anticipated a science fiction love story to come from Yorgos Lanthimos The costuming from Holly Waddington, the makeup and hairstyling team, the set design team, they all did a great job of taking the audience back to the past and mixing in futurism to fit the times. The cinematography from Robbie Ryan and the  music from Jerskin Hendrix add to the film’s enjoyment. The visual effects also did a great job in creating the mad science of Dr. Baxter. Especially the half-and-half animals. The effects were both funny and amazing.

Poor Things is a delightful mix of science fiction, romance and comedy. It first seems like the type of film you would not go out to see, but you’ll be glad you did.