Your 2025 White Pages Guide To The Oscars
It's Hollywood's most glamorous and prestigious... newsletter by a dad in Milwaukee who isn't that good at watching movies
You would be forgiven, I suppose, for wondering why a newsletter that usually focuses on overly earnest treatises about activism and community would devote an entire essay to the ten nominees for Best Picture at the Oscars. I can assure you that none of my answers will be satisfactory.
Why do I do this? Because I do it every year and it’s fun for me.
Am I an expert on movies? Not at all. As a working parent, I watch the majority of movies in the exact opposite manner from how the filmmakers intended— on a tablet, in twenty minute increments, immediately before falling asleep.
How can you think about things like movies when there is fascism afoot? Oh jeez, I don’t know about you, but I believe that if— intermixed with our efforts to stave off encroaching fascism— we’re not also watching movies and listening to music and reading beautiful sentences and losing ourselves in laughter and drinking great cups of coffee and eating even better slices of pie, then what are we even doing?
Actually, that last answer was pretty decent.
Yes, every year I provide my thoughts on each of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture. I started this project with the implicit thesis that these movies serve as an important cultural mirror, though that may not be true. We’re a pretty balkanized culture, as it turns out. I have no doubt that many more people this past year watched a Youtube video titled something like “We put a million dollars in a pit and made a hundred 8th graders start digging!” than I’m Still Here. Perhaps they missed out (I liked I’m Still Here) or maybe not. The 8th graders in a pit video might have been really trenchant.
I’ll say this, though. Whatever the state of mass culture and the ability of any single piece of art to change the world, the kind of films that get nominated for Best Picture are still fascinating public artifacts. They are, in the truest sense, stories that we tell ourselves in order to live. By “we” I mean people with whom I share a lot of cultural DNA— college educated, left-leaning tote bag carriers. White? Disproportionally. Male? Yes, in terms of the people placed in the center of the camera, though perhaps not when it comes to the audience. Desperately hoping that art can still influence the world? Oh yeah. That’s us.
So, with that nostalgic, on-life-support-but-not-dead-yet aspiration in mind, what do this year’s best picture nominees say about this unsteady moment in American history? Do they offer helpful insights as we build and sustain an opposition movement to the rising tide of oligarchy-by-malevolent-weirdos? And, oh yeah, were they any good, at least according to a tired middle-aged dad in Milwaukee with no formal training in film criticism (or any formal training in anything actually- my college major was Peace and Global Studies)?
Let’s see. In alphabetical order.
Oh, and I try not to give any wild spoilers, but I will reference plot points and vibes out of context, so if you’d like to watch a movie hearing as little about it as possible, maybe steer away!
ANORA
What is this movie about, at least according to a guy who doesn’t know anything about film criticism? Sex workers. Partially-assimilated outer borough ethnic whiteness. Oligarchs and whether they are our friends (no). That one person at work who you ABSOLUTELLY HATE and how jealous they’d be if you got super rich all of a sudden. The pros and cons of having buddies who work at a Coney Island candy shop. How much it sucks to be hired muscle for rich people. Love and dignity, and how they are both hard to come by under capitalism and patriarchy.
How well did it depict the experience of driving around New York at night trying to find a runaway enfant terrible? I have never had to do that, but I assume it’s very stressful. It looked stressful in this movie, anyway, so let’s say that the film did a good job on this front. Personally, I would have enjoyed the part where they took a beak and went to a diner, but none of the other parts.
What is its message for this political moment? This is a movie about class solidarity against the bosses and robber barons. Or at least the need for it! I think I can say that without giving anything away. Pretty good message, don’t you think? The guys who sign your checks might not be on your team.
Garrett, how would you fare either as a stripper or a tough guy hired hand for a Russian oligarch? I would be so bad at both of those jobs, in both cases primarily because I’d talk wayyyyyy too much.
THE BRUTALIST
What is this movie about, at least according to a guy who doesn’t know anything about film criticism? Buildings! Sans serif fonts! Booming brass scores! Unadorned concrete, baby! The promise of post-war America, and whether that promise was a lie. Assimilation, and whether that too is a trap. Jewishness. Brilliant artist men and how important it is for them to make their thing (I’m being sarcastic here, the movie is probably not). Philanthropy. Emasculation. The Holocaust. Israel. The limits of women’s agency in a world of Large Egoed Men Generally Butting Against Each Other. The question of who gets to tell your story. Heroin, Pennsylvania, and other drugs. A lot more, no doubt: you all this movie was approximately seventeen hours long.
Garrett, was your affection for this film compared to your opinion about past “let’s all gawk at the genius man” Oscar movies (Oppenheimer) partially because of how much you love/defend the movie’s titular architectural style? Oh that’s at least 80% of it. I absolutely realize that “middle-aged guy who argues about how ‘brutalist architecture can be beautiful, actually” is a complete trope, but have you seen the Geisel Library? Gorgeous.
What is its message for this political moment? I mean, probably? And also probably not? (This movie was saying so many things). But much more than that, I believe that one of life’s great joys are pieces of art that are so messy and overstuffed that it’s impossible NOT to have opinions about, positively or negatively. At a time such as this, The Brutalist offers America the greatest gift of all (that is, the chance to debate what the hell we think about The Brutalist rather than refreshing the news on our phones).
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
What is this movie about, at least according to a guy who doesn’t know anything about film criticism? Sunglasses, and how when you start wearing them you want to start being a cool rock-and-roller and not an earnest folkie.