2024 Oscars Preview: 15 Questions Answered by The OnScreen Blog Team
By Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Editor, and Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
With The Oscars coming on March 10th, The OnScreen Blog staff broke down some of the top conversation-starting questions surrounding the 2024 Oscars. Yes, many of them center around Oppenheimer, because, well, it was a movie centering around a nuclear scientist in the 1940s that made a billion dollars with 13 Oscar nominations. So yes, much of the conversation will center around that. But we hit other topics. See below for Greg and Ken’s answers to the top questions of Oscars 2024.
Question #1: How would you rate the Best Picture Nominees of 2024 on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the equivalent of 2020 (The year Nomadland won and nobody saw any movies due to the pandemic) and 10 being the equivalent of 2013 (the year 12 years A Slave won, and also included Gravity, Wolf of Wall Street, Her, Captain Phillips, and more)
Greg: It’s a strong 8 out of 10. All of the movies are at least interesting, which feels like faint praise, but many years feature nominees that are very artistic, but not particularly geared for box office from any slice of the mainstream audience. Unfortunately, only 4 movies from this nominee group generated north of $50 million at the global box office, so, this can’t go near the top of the list of strongest nominee slates, but it’s a very good group.
Ken: I think the nominees from 2023 are a solid 8. There is a variety of strong options, a solid case to be made for 2-3 movies, and I think nine of ten movies are deserving nominees, with the one outlier being Maestro.
Question #2: Oppenheimer is the heavy favorite (-1200) to win Best Picture. Does it deserve to be a lock amongst these other nominees?
Ken: This year, I think so. If I could use a sports analogy, every championship contender has its strengths and weaknesses, and the champion usually ends up being the team that is better at what they do than what other teams are at what they do best. Oppenheimer and Past Lives, two movies I loved, have very different strengths, but Oppenheimer does what it does at a slightly higher level of execution, IMO. Plus, there’s the degree of difficulty.
Greg: I think so. Oppenheimer is not my favorite Nolan movie or my favorite Best Picture contender of the last few years, but it is a significant achievement in storytelling and filmmaking, making a biopic about a scientist into a billion-dollar movie. And it is, overall, an exceptional film, probably the only exceptional film amongst a very good group of nominees.
Question #3: If Oppenheimer wins Best Picture, it would be the best movie to win Best Picture since ______?
Ken: Everything Everywhere All At Once is in my Top 10 of all time, but saying since last year is probably an unsatisfactory answer for this discussion, so I’ll instead go with Parasite in 2019, which is a masterpiece.
Greg: 12 Years A Slave, though I could be talked into Everything Everywhere All At Once being better.
Question #4: If Barbie was voted as Best Picture, please predict what your emotions would be in the immediate 5 minutes afterwards:
Greg: Enraged? Frothing at the mouth? I wish I were joking? It honestly might make me quit writing about movies, because if the Academy considers a movie about kids’ dolls written to make adult women laugh with jokes only very online adults would laugh at a best picture contender, then movies aren’t worth saving.
Ken: I would think that maybe the Academy voters went a bit too far in overcorrecting for the perceived snubs of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig in Best Actress and Best Director, respectively, but I have it at #5 in my personal Best Picture power rankings, so I wouldn’t consider it a miscarriage of justice.
Question #5: Your favorite (not necessarily best) movie of this year’s current nominees is_______?
Greg: Normally it would be any Scorsese movie nominated, but I wish Dicaprio’s arc as Ernest was more believable. Ernest seemed to slip too much into devious mode too early in the arc, which is a mode I think Dicaprio is more comfortable in. Anyways, Past Lives is my favorite. Celine Song overperformed with a storyline that has been done many times by the Hallmark channel, but it was exceptionally executed with a strong performance by Greta Lee.
Ken: Probably Oppenheimer, as I named it my #1 movie of the year, but I have a real soft spot for The Holdovers.
Question #6: Oppenheimer is nominated for 13 Oscars. How many will it win, and how many should it win?
Ken: Tough. I’m going to say it will win 8, but should win 7. I actually think Gosling and Ruffalo are just as deserving of Best Supporting Actor as Downey.
Greg: Just a gut feeling this will be the year the Academy honors Chris Nolan. It won’t win 13, but I think it wins 10-11 is a pretty sure thing.
Question #7: If Oppenheimer wins Best Picture, should the movie be considered definitive Christopher Nolan? Is it the best Christopher Nolan?
Greg: Inception is still the one movie I would show to aliens as the best example of a Chris Nolan movie because it is his best example of a non-linear story combined with an intense soundtrack along with some mind-bending plotlines. I also think its also his best movie, but I won’t argue too hard against Oppenheimer being his best.
Ken: In my personal Nolan rankings, I have Oppenheimer fifth behind Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento, and The Prestige. Those are all 5 stars for me while Oppenheimer is 4.5 stars, just a notch below. After a recent rewatch, I bumped it ahead of Dunkirk. So while I wouldn’t consider it definitive, it is growing in my estimation.
Question #8: If you had to nominate 10 movies from the last 10 years for the best picture since 2014, who would you pick, assuming every pick had to be nominated for Best Picture?
Ken: I love this question, and all I can say is thank God for Letterboxd, where I have a lot of lists ranking years and decades.
10. La La Land (2016)
9. Tar (2022)
8. Get Out (2017)
7. Oppenheimer (2023)
6. Lady Bird (2017)
5. Parasite (2019)
4. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
3. Whiplash (2014)
2. Boyhood (2014)
1. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Greg:
10. Mad Max: Fury Road
9. Get Out
8. Parasite
7. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood
6. The Irishman
5. Oppenheimer
4. Everything Everywhere All at Once
3. Dunkirk
2. All Quiet on the Western Front
1. Banshees of Inisherin
And yes, I realize only two of them won Best Picture. What can I say, the Oscars has been bad the last 10 years?
Question #9: What storyline are you most interested in this year’s Oscars?
Ken: I think I’m most curious to see how the acting categories play out. Best Supporting Actress seems like a wrap to me, but I think it is at least a two-person race in the other three categories, with Murphy vs. Giamatti, Stone vs. Gladstone, and RDJ vs Ruffalo vs Gosling.
Greg: I want Barbie to win zero Oscars, even though it will likely win Best Adapted Screenplay.
For the record, I’m happy it made a billion dollars. We need more movies making a billion dollars. But we don’t need movies like this treated like an Oscar contender.
Question #10: After watching The Holdovers, would you say Paul Giamatti is an underrated, overrated, or properly rated actor?
Greg: Properly rated. He’s very good at playing this type of character in The Holdovers, he’s just not the most diverse actor we have today. He’ll get his due when all is said and done, and deservedly so.
Ken: Underrated.
Question #11: You will remember this movie year as the year of the __________?
Ken: Easy. Barbenheimer. I did the double feature that opened Friday and it was a genuine event.
Greg: Barbenheimer. I honestly don’t know what other answer there could be.
Question #12: The one actor and actress performance out of all of the acting nominees you will remember is__________?
Greg: Lily Gladstone, with Cillian Murphy a close second. I thought Gladstone played Mollie Burkhardt perfectly, and it was needed considering how uneven Dicaprio was as Ernest.
Ken: My joke answer, as an actual Ken, would be to say Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie, but I will remember Emma Stone in Poor Things above anyone else. It’s a descriptor that gets thrown around too cavalierly, but this was the boldest performance of her career, and I thought she locked up her second Oscar the second the credits started rolling.
Question #13: Who SHOULD win the following Oscar categories:
a. Best Actor
Greg: Cillian Murphy
Ken: Cillian Murphy
b. Best Actress
Greg: Lily Gladstone
Ken: Emma Stone
c. Best Supporting Actor
Greg: Robert De Niro, even though he has zero chance of winning.
Ken: Mark Ruffalo
d. Best Supporting Actress
Greg: Is No one a possible answer? Out of the nominees, I’d pick Blunt, I guess, but this is one of the least memorable nominee lists in a while. I know Randolph is going to win, but, I don’t know, you’re telling me there weren’t 20 other actresses who could have given that performance, if not better?
Ken: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
e. Best Director
Greg: Chris Nolan
Ken: Christopher Nolan
f. Best Song
Ken:”I’m Just Ken”
Greg: Any song except “I’m Just Ken”
Question #14: Which movie not nominated for best picture are you rooting for the most to win an award?
Ken: I’m kind of surprised by the lack of options here, as the Best Picture nominees dominate so many of the categories. I’ll say Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in Best Animated Feature, just because it is operating on a completely different level of animation than almost anything else.
Greg: Past Lives
Question #15: Which movie (or actor/actress) (if any) are you actively rooting against to win (and why)
Ken: Maestro. I thought it was the only undeserving Best Picture nominee in the bunch. Leonard Bernstein was a great American musician who worked across many genres and mediums, but he is not someone I am well acquainted with beyond his name. That movie did nothing to show me what made the man tick, how the magic was made, so to speak. It was more concerned about the tumult of his personal life. I did not come out of that movie having a better understanding and appreciation for Leonard Bernstein, which felt like a missed opportunity.
Greg: I like Bradley Cooper too much to root against Maestro, so, do I even need to say my answer?Barbie!