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Oscars 2025 Best Picture Reviews: Part One

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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: Killers Of The Flower Moon

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Lily Gladstone (L to R), Robert de Niro and Leonardo di Caprio star in Killers Of The Flower Moon, a true crime drama that’s also an ugly part of history.

Killers Of The Flower Moon is a film of a crime story we often forget. It’s one we need to be reminded of, especially because of the times we live in.

Let’s face it. American Fiction may show how bad the entertainment industry is at dealing with entertainment featuring African Americans. How easily we forget Hollywood has also had a terrible history in it’s depictions of Native Americans. I’m sure those “Cowboys And Indians” movies come to mind, and boy did they age badly! The depictions of Native Americans have been better over the years, but imperfect. Sure, we have Dances With Wolves, but stereotypes are still present in a lot of entertainment or Indigenous actors lack presence and proper depiction in films.

As bad as the depiction of Native Americans are in Hollywood films, it’s nothing compared to the treatment of Native Americans in its centuries of history. We’ve all learned the history. The influx of settlers and the ruling colonialists throwing them off their land, the various “Indian Wars,” the reservations created, their own Residential School system, it’s a sorry history. Sure makes those games of “cowboys and indians” you used to play an embarrassing memory, doesn’t it? Here, we have an incident that has gone forgotten over the years: The Osage Murders that happened almost a full century ago.

We see the story. The indigenous are forced off their land into anywhere. The Osage were one such people lucky to find their own wealth through natural resources. Soon, the Indigenous of Osage were wealthier than the white people. However court orders white guardians to guard their wealth. One man enters the community and plays an elder to get the wealth. His nephew even falls in love with an Osage woman he’s the driver of and eventually marries her. Then the crime happens,. Many Osage in the town are killed, including three of the women’s sisters. Even the nephew is prompted to give his wife insulin poisoned with heroin and she nearly dies. As she recovers truths are unraveled and soon the elder and his sheepish nephew face the music for what they’ve done.

This story’s presentation of the murders and the crime can be seen through many angles. The thing about the film is that it not only focuses on the murders but it also focuses on the greedy white men, most notably William Hale, who sought to take that very wealth. Over time, crime comes to the town of Fairfax, Oklahoma with murders coming with the greed. Sounds like your common mob story, but that’s what it became. A story of a white mob killing the Indigenous people for their riches. As much as this is about rich Indigenous people being killed in the name of greed, it also comes across as an unnoticed “Indian War.” You’ve heard the history. Hundreds of Indian wars between white settlers and the Indigenous peoples. The war ends with many of the Indigenous killed and they’re forced off their land. In this story’s case, it appears as a war over the riches and who should have control. Once again, white people feeling they should be calling the shots. And in the state of Oklahoma in the 1920’s. The Osage had many signs sensing something would be wrong. From white people showing up in their towns to the alert they received from the 1921 Tulsa race riots to marching in a parade along with the Ku Klux Klan just behind them. A lot of signals. And with these murders happening around the time the FBI was being formed, the film succeeds in making this incident look like the incident that pioneered the FBI to be instituted.

Even with this being a crime story, it’s also a love story of a love that blossomed and died because of this. Ernest Burkhart drives Molly and falls in love with her. The love appears genuine between the two. They marry with Hale’s blessing and form a family. Then tragedy comes with many of Mollie’ sisters and her family dying ugly brutal deaths. Meanwhile Ernest is constantly under Hale’s thumb. He’s constantly torn between the love of Mollie and his loyalty to following Hale’s orders, including his order to give Molly insulin laced with heroin. Mollie would have been the last of her sisters to die, but she survived. Over time, secrets unravel. That last scene between Ernest and Mollie narrowed the story down. What should have been love between the two became betrayal and near-murder.

This is another good achievement from Martin Scorsese. In all of his sixty-five years in film making, Scorsese isn’t afraid to dive into new territory or try new things. This film he directed and co-wrote with Eric Roth is a telling story of the incidents that happened and how it affected a peoples. It shows how a story of a crime committed in the name of greed from almost a full century ago is a case of the systemic racism many Americans believe to be the right thing and insist on having.

There are some Indigenous film critics that feel this story could have been done better if written by an Indigenous writer. I do agree an Indigenous scriptwriter would have done a better job of telling this story from the side of the Indigenous people. Nevertheless, this is a crime story. If you’ve seen Scorsese’s past works, it seems as though Scorsese is the master of crime dramas. He does an excellent job of showing the crime that happened and the greed that fueled it. He also succeeds in showing the Indigenous people in a dignified manner and stays away from the common cliches white writers normally give Indigenous stories. Even the ending as the present-day Osage people are shown celebrating themselves is a big change of pace and worthy of admiration.

The acting of Leonardo Di Caprio as Ernest is good, but this is not his best effort. I’ve seen better acting from him before. Nevertheless he does succeed in making you question the history. Did Ernest truly lover Mollie? Or did he marry her to get her riches at the cost of her life? Ernest did have involvement with murdering her sisters and their families, but did he want to intentionally kill Mollie with her laced insulin? Di Caprio’s acting will make you question. Of all the acting, the standout is the performance of Lily Gladstone. She succeeds in making it look more like Mollie’s the film’s protagonist as Mollie’s the one caught in the middle. Lily does an excellent job of acting without overacting. Her performance really tells a lot of the story of a women going from being in love to going through unimaginable tragedy to almost being a victim herself to herself achieving her own independence. She’s also good at conveying despite braking free, there’s still the hurt of betrayal left behind. Also excellent is Robert de Niro as William Hale. Having worked with Scorsese many times, de Niro does a good job of showcasing Hale as the community “elder” who’s a crime boss when people aren’t looking. That’s something common in mob stories, but de Niro succeeds in making Hale look like exactly that.

Additional good acting performances come from Cara Jade Myers for her performance of the rebellious Anna Kyle, Jesse Plemons as investigator Thomas Bruce White, and Tantoo Cardinal as the grieving and sick mother Lizzie Q. Rodrigo Prieto does a great job with the cinematography. Thelma Schoonmaker does a great job with the editing, but it does leave you questioning whether the film should be 3.5 hours long. The production design is excellent in recreating 1920’s Fairfax. Jacqueline West does a great job in costume design in accurately recreating the Indigenous costumes flawlessly. Finally the score and music composed by the late Robbie Robertson add to the drama of the story and the triumph at the end.

Killers Of The Flower Moon is a great story showing how a crime spree is very reflective of systemic racism. It also does a great job not only recreating the story, but showcasing the people that were in the middle of it, both perpetrators and victims.

Oscars 2019 Best Picture Review: The Irishman

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment

Irishman
Robert de Niro (second from left)  plays Frank Sheeran and Al Pacino (second from right) plays Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. A story about loyalty and betrayal.

Just when you think Martin Scorsese has done everything he could in film, along comes The Irishman. This film may not be his best, but it adds to his stack of films one can call great works.

Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly the master of gangster films or Mafia films. We have sensed there would be successors in the likes of Quentin Tarantino, but that has not yet come to be. Tarantino has his own gangster style, but Scorsese films are the Mona Lisa’s of gangster movies, if you can truly call a gangster movie a Mona Lisa! Scorsese has shown his versatility in film making since the beginning of this century. His films since the new century began have taken a wide range of genres from epic to fantasy to a family film to business-scam drama to dark comedies to religious biopics. However when watching The Irishman, his first gangster movie since The Departed, it only seems natural that gangster movies were what Scorsese was born to do. Although films in the other genres he tackled are very good, it just seems natural that way. Even the excitement of having Scorsese ‘all-stars’ like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel adds to the excitement. Additions like Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale and Anna Paquin also add to the excitement.

Now the film has a lot of common elements you’ll expect from a Scorsese gangster movie. It tells of a man and his involvement with the mafia and of his daily duties. It also goes back to his past in how he developed the right type of insensitivity to become as consistent hitman. It also tells of some of his more legendary kills. The film also adds something different. It adds in the story of the ‘vacation of a lifetime.’ It’s not something you’d expect to be in a Scorsese film, but it’s done in a fashion you’d expect to see from Scorsese.

However it’s the aftermath that one would not expect to see in a Scorsese film. It’s like it almost shifts to a completely different film for the last half-hour. That’s what hit me about the film. It not only tells the story of a man who committed a lot of murders and also allegedly committed the murder of the man behind the most intriguing missing person case in the past half-century. It tells of the aftermath of how he would come to regret his actions over the years. Even of how he appeared to have it all and win it with fear during his lifetime, but would be doomed to die alone. You can pinpoint exactly where in the scene where Peggy ask Frank about Jo and Frank calls a distraught Jo up trying to comfort her, but knowing he’s the one who killed her husband. That’s a change of pace from Goodfellas about a mobster who lived the mob life, was imprisoned for it and regrets nothing. Even before the scene of the killing of Hoffa, there are freeze-frame montages that mention of the aftermaths of others involved in the Philly mob Frank Sheeran and Russell Bufalino were a part of, including those shot dead or imprisoned for life.  I think the whole theme of the movie wasn’t just mob life, but how everyone involved pays in the end.

Now one thing we should remember is that we should not completely embrace this story as a true story, even though it’s very accurate. The film is based off the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Brandt is a former homicide prosecutor, investigator and defense attorney and he’s the man who interviewed Frank Sheeran shortly before his death. During the interview, Sheeran told of his life as a hitman and of his own involvement with Jimmy Hoffa. Sheeran confessed it all to Brandt months earlier and saw a priest the last few months of his lives so he could die with a clear conscience in December of 2003. The case of Jimmy Hoffa is still unsolved and his body has never been found. The FBI have had a lot of stories and sources, but it’s Sheeran’s story that’s the one they’re most going with. However there are still some naysayers that are claiming that Sheeran lied in the interview. Whatever the situation, this missing case is still unclosed. I won’t completely call Sheeran’s story the whole truth, but I believe he makes a strong case and it’s hard for me to sense him lying.

Once again, Martin Scorsese proves himself to the be master of gangster movies. Quentin Tarantino may take ruthless killers to a new level, but Martin is still the master. This film that he directs with a script written by Steve Zaillian is a complex film to pack into 3 hours and 20 minutes. Usually if a film is that long, I would expect the director to justify it. Martin has delivered a lot of three-hour films in the past, but I’m convinced he has justified the time here. If you yourself are one of the people that has been fascinated by Jimmy Hoffa and his missing story, this will be a film that will intrigue you.

It’s not just the story that will intrigue you, but how the Scorsese/Zaillian creates it and arranges it from beginning to end. It starts as the audience visits a nursing home, tours around seeing family after family and comes across a lonely man: Frank Sheeran. Then it jumps into 1975 and the story of how Frank, his wife, his mob boss Russell Bufalino and Russ’ wife Carrie were going on a ‘trip of a lifetime’ from Philadelphia to Detroit. Then it paves on how it led to all this from Frank’s days of truck driving to introduction to the mob to being a hitman for hire to a close friend of Jimmy Hoffa. The story shows of Hoffa’s rise, downfall and attempted comeback. It also shows Frank’s struggle of who should he be loyal to: Hoffa or the mob? It slows the moment of the ‘big day’ down and it delivers the aftermath with feeling that cuts deep. Also it treats the film as if Sheeran is giving us an interview. Almost like we’re Charles Brandt! I have to say the format of the film works and will keep one intrigued whether they’re a fan of Scorsese films, fan of mob films, or just have an interest in Jimmy Hoffa. It’s interesting how the film begins with “In The Still Of The Night” and it’s nice to hear and is replayed at the end, but it sounds haunting at the end. The film and its layout of the story makes it work.

Big credit to Robert de Niro for playing the role of Frank Sheeran. To do Frank, he has to cut deep into the man and how he went from a fearless killer who was able to adopt the coldness of killing to being the man with regrets in the end and wants to die with a clear conscience. Robert does an excellent job of it. Also excellent is Joe Pesci playing the mob boss who wants to call the shots of Sheeran and Hoffa. Pesci really knew how to steal the scenes in the film. Al Pacino was also great as Hoffa. He did an excellent job in delivering a multi-dimensional and complex performance of a man in history who was just as complicated as he was a legend. There were a lot of good supporting performances from Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale and Harvey Keitel. However one of the biggest standout performances came from one with little dialogue: that of Anna Paquin. Her role of Peggy Sheeran required her to say with her physical actions and facial expressions and she did an excellent job. Even one of the few spoken lines she had in the film “Why haven’t you called Jo?” would pave the way to where the film changed from a story of mob work to the story of regret.

The film should also be admired for its technical merits too. There’s the visual effects team that did the top-notch CGI effects to take the ages of de Niro, Pesci and Pacino back 30 years without them needing heavy make-up. It’s not just the actors acting younger than their ages but the CGI too! There’s also the costuming of Sandy Powell and the set designs by Bob Shaw and Regina Graves to take the film back to the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. There’s also the inclusion of music into the film that takes the film back to its set times. The score from Robbie Robertson also ads to the film.

The Irishman may be a true story, or it may be one big lie. However you put it, it’s a very telling story that paints a vivid but dark picture of what might have happened in one of the most intriguing missing cases ever. It’s also another film Scorsese directs and puts together in excellent fashion. It’s easy to see why it’s another contender for this year’s Oscars.