This article is thanks to the contributions of Ethan Chamberlain, Patrick Dickerson, Scarlett Jade, Dan McMahon, Amanda Ramirez, and Jon Scott.
A Case for Horror Films
By Scarlett Jade
As the 96th Academy Awards draw ever closer it’s a good time to take a look at some of the Oscar nominations, or better yet, those that aren’t nominated. I’m talking about horror. For the longest time the horror genre has been left out by the Academy and that drastically needs to change. The last decade has given us some noteworthy horror films with amazing screenplays, direction, cinematography, and of course acting. Films such as Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) (to which actress Toni Collette should have been nominated for an Oscar for her performance), and more recently with Ti West’s Pearl (2022).
The horror genre is a way of storytelling that is so much more than graphic imagery and scaring people. It is storytelling that is raw, real, and forces audiences to be vulnerable. It pulls us out of our comfort zones to experience stories that make us hang onto the edge of our seats with anticipation while retreating into ourselves at the same time. Horror is a genre that has been ignored for far too long and it is about time that the Academy takes note when deciding on their nominations. It would certainly be refreshing to say the least, and after 96 years of the same thing with only very occasional exception, wouldn’t you agree?
The State of the Best Director Race
By Ethan Chamberlain
Looking ahead to the Best Director competition this year, it feels for the most part as though it’s been decided since July of last year. I’m of course talking about Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan. Anyone who can make a three-hour long biopic about a World War II scientist that spends its third act taking on the guise of a courtroom drama and turn it into one of the most tense, riveting theatrical experiences in recent memory would deserve the award on that alone. But to then have it be such a massive success at the box office? Nolan’s impact in showing studios the kind of movies audiences want to see can’t be denied.
Of course, the Academy Awards have been known to be a fickle thing, and saying the decision is a lock would be foolish. One likely nomination we can expect to see would be Nolan’s opposite number in the Barbenheimer craze; Barbie‘s Greta Gerwig. Maybe this year will see her finally claim the little golden man. Another shoo-in for the nomination is Martin Scorsese for his vital, timely work on Killers of the Flower Moon.
While those are the three nominations I feel fully confident in calling, there’s two spots open and plenty of worthy directors in the running: Past Lives‘ Celine Song, May December‘s Todd Haynes, Alexander Payne for his work on The Holdovers. Maybe this is the year Wes Anderson finally gets a long-deserved award for his work with Asteroid City? Then of course we have the man who spent 6 years learning to conduct for a 6-minute scene: Bradley Cooper and his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro.
Who will the Best Director award go to? Well, as I’ve said, I think it’ll be Nolan, but maybe don’t go racing to place your bets just yet…
Willem Dafoe for Oscar Gold
by Dan McMahon
Willem Dafoe’s performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things is one of his greatest. Taking on a character similar to that of Dr. Frankenstein, Dafoe literally takes on the role of god when he should not be in that position. His performance alongside co-star Emma Stone is incredible because he has created her when he had no right to. But the character still shares an incredibly emotional bond that we see develop through the film as Stone’s character herself develops. Dafoe’s deliverance of the tragedy that is his character is incredibly powerful despite us knowing how he tries to play god without the right.
It’s not a secret that Willem Dafoe is my muse. His roots in absurdist and experimental theatre have lead to him being the most emotive actor in the industry. Poor Things is an absurdly weird film that Willem Dafoe excels in, and he deserves yet another Academy Award nomination for his work.
It’s Time for More Nominees
By Patrick Dickerson
When the nominees for the 96th Academy Awards are announced on Tuesday, it will be the 88th year in a row where nominations are limited to five nominees. With the exception of Best Picture, nominations for each category have been limited to five or less nominees since the 9th Academy Awards in 1937. But the question is: why? Why does the Academy limit its recognition to just five directors, five scores, five documentaries? If the Academy Awards truly are dedicated to rewarding the best films of the year, why aren’t they nominating more movies?
When the Academy expanded the number of Best Picture nominees to 10 starting with the 82nd Academy Awards, it was thought that in addition to recognizing more movies previously shut out of the category, it would also increase the diversity of the nominees for Best Picture. Since the change, we have seen animated films (Up, Toy Story 3), action (Mad Max: Fury Road, Black Panther, Joker, Top Gun: Maverick), sci-fi (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Gravity, The Martian, Avatar), a horror film (Get Out), and a five-year streak of nominations for international/non-English-language features (Roma, Parasite, Minari, Drive My Car, and All Quiet on the Western Front). I do think this openness to more variety in the Best Picture category led to some significant winners: CODA‘s ASL-heavy family drama, Parasite‘s historic win as an international feature, Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s long past due win for a science fiction movie, and Moonlight‘s groundbreaking story about the black and queer experience. With 10 nominees, we might even eventually see a documentary rightfully nominated for Best Picture. And on Tuesday, we might see one of the most diverse slates of Best Picture nominees yet (Two international features? Movies about black, Asian, indigenous, and queer folk? Comedies??)!!
With the success seen from expanding the Best Picture nomination list, it seems only natural for the Academy to expand the nominations for the other awards. With #OscarsSoWhite and other diversity concerns (and lack thereof in the Academy membership), an opportunity to expand the nominees of the various categories seems like it might be warranted and in the Academy’s best interest. Beyond that, there are plenty of films that deserve the recognition that an Oscars nomination brings and could be a beneficial step towards ensuring that a more diverse slate (and therefore, one that more truly captures the best-of-the best) is represented when the nominations are announced. Think of the 95th Academy Awards: a really strange campaign was undertaken by indie film To Leslie to get its star, Andrea Riseborough, nominated for Best Actress, and they were successful! The only problem was that Riseborough’s nomination seemed to be at the expense of black women like Danielle Deadwyler in Till, a biopic about the mother of Emmett Till. While this is not a comment on if Riseborough deserved the nomination, it is a comment on the fact that Deadwyler absolutely should have been on that list of nominations, and yet was snubbed.
I’m not saying we need to expand the nominations to 10 in every category, but even just one additional nomination (or 6 total) for the awards could be a huge boon for the Oscars. It would allow for more space in nominating diverse actors in diverse roles (diversity in both the nominee and in the movie they are performing in). If there was a 6th nominee in Best Actress last year, then we could have celebrated Riseborough’s nomination instead of wondering the what-ifs of it all. And if there was a 6th nominee, we might have avoided one of the biggest faux pas of recent Oscars memory: Lupita Nyong’o’s snub for Best Actress for Us.
And it’s not just the actors. Would we see more women nominated for Best Director? More non-European movies nominated for Best International Feature? More animated films for adult audiences nominated for Best Animated Feature? Almost as many movies release in the US in 3 months today as in the whole year in 1936. Why are we still working with 88-year-old rules? It is time for the Academy to change.
The 2024 Nominees for Best Stunts, if the Academy Weren’t Cowards!
By Jon Scott
Stunts. We love them, we think they’re rad as shit, and we respect the hell out of them. And yet, somehow, the big snooty snoots at award shows won’t give people who literally put their lives on the line for our own entertainment every day on set. (Except for SAG but like why are y’all nominating Barbie for stunts? There is one play fight scene.)
There were four major films this year that absolutely wowed audiences away with its approach to fight scenes and stunt choreography. These four more than deserve their fair shake here, which were going to give them today. And the GateCrashers nominations for Best Stunts (and the theoretical nominees for a much-needed Academy Award for Best Stunts) are:
Extraction 2
I’m starting out with this one first because I want to add a quick caveat. The rest of these films all got theatrical releases…..except this one. Netflix decided that, instead of liking money, this one would go straight to their streaming service. Which is insane because this 1000% should have been in theaters.
Director Sam Hargrave, a former stuntman, wowed audiences at the height of the pandemic with his hard hitting, practical approach to action in the first Extraction. Three years later, Hargrave and producer/star Chris Hemsworth go balls-to-the-wall insane with this sequel. The film features a 21-minute one-shot that does not cut. It is one of the most breathtaking sequence I’ve seen in a film this year. Hargrave goes seamlessly from a prison riot, to a car chase, to a fight on a moving train, all without ever taking a breath. We just keep moving, never stopping. It’s exhilarating to watch.
Netflix tends to have this really annoying thing where they put a film out on their streaming service and don’t do diddly shit in terms of marketing, putting it in theaters, or giving it a physical media release. It’s a piss-poor business decision, and it’s a shame Extraction 2 is stuck only on a streaming service.
Sisu
This one I was lucky enough to catch in a theater, and in Dolby no less (for those outside the US, films shown in Dolby tend to have bigger screens, louder sound, immersive as a whole really). Seeing this film in this setting was honestly kind of perfect.
The movie is simple in its setup: a seemingly ordinary gold prospector finds a whole lot of gold. Decides to take the gold to the local bank miles and miles away. Only problem is: it’s World War II. Nazis exist. They suck. They steal the guy’s gold. But, turns out they fucked with the wrong dude. This simple prospector is, in fact, a legendary Finnish commando who’s essentially a one-man killing squad. What follows is one dude endlessly (and violently) fucking up Nazis.
And you know what? It’s satisfying. The film has such a simplistic setup yet goes for the big bombastic nature of early John Wick. The film opts less for operatic planned action and instead goes for a grittier, ruthless kind of violence.
And also, who doesn’t love seeing Nazis get their shit rocked?
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
If there’s one man who treats action and stunts like it’s an art form, it’s Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. At this point, Cruise is not a real human. Man is a walking stunt effect. Every single time he graces us with his screen presence, the man just keeps upping himself every. Single. Time.
MI 7 is no different. Coming off a wildly successful run with Top Gun: Maverick (and weathering through this film in the midst of COVID-19), Cruise once again proves why he’s one of the most legendary action stars of our time. Driving a tiny car through the cobble streets of Rome. Yeeting himself off a cliff to catch a train. So. Much. Running. There’s nothing that this man won’t do for our own entertainment. And ya know what? God bless him and director Christopher McQuarrie for it.
John Wick: Chapter 4
Okay story time: the day I finished my last final for college, I went to the local movie theater in town to see Mad Max: Fury Road on release day. What followed was the most exhilarating, insane action movie I’ve ever seen. I walked out of that theater deliriously giggling at the carnage I witnessed, and I’ve been chasing that high with action movies ever since.
That feeling returned once more with the latest entry in the John Wick franchise. If Tom Cruise and Chris McQ treat action with delicacy and care, Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski look at action and go “what’s just the coolest shit we can possibly do?”
And they go balls-to-the-wall here in terms of how insane this gets. It’s hard to pick a favorite moment here, as there’s just so many. John Wick uses nunchucks as a windmill to violently beat a dude. The stair fight that’s straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The Hotline Miami top-down homage. DONNIE FUCKING YEN JUST WHALING ON DUDES WHILE BEING BLIND AND IT RULES. Honestly, with the way this film ends, if this is the final entry in this franchise, we went out on the absolute highest note possible.
In short: Action movies just rule. Plain and simple.
Fuck an Award
By Amanda Ramirez
The problem with awards is that their distinction ascribes an additional layer of pretension and inaccessibility to a form of media that already feels unapproachable to many.
To paraphrase from several sources, including Merriam-Webster, Oxford Languages, and the encyclopedia, the definition of film, movie, and motion picture is a recording of moving images that tell a story. And the definition of story is a recounting of “imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.” And entertainment, as it’s widely known, is something meant to provide one with amusement or enjoyment. That is the point of a movie: to be enjoyed.
People often forget that, particularly as awards season rolls around. A film is somehow seen as better or more worthy than others because it’s been nominated for an award. But it’s important to remember that it is such a privilege to be able to consume motion picture entertainment, especially in today’s economy. In 2022, the average price of a movie ticket was $10.53. Additionally, streaming services only seem to be getting more and more expensive every year, and DVDs have been on their way out of fashion since Netflix switched to streaming exclusively in 2011. Seeing a new movie—even going to the movie theater once—is a massive luxury that many can no longer afford, and an expense that becomes increasingly less attractive the more our options dwindle.
Think of some of your favorite movies. The ones that you return to again and again. How many of them are award winners? Better still, how many of them did you watch before awards were even a thought? If given the option, how likely are you to watch Best Picture Academy Award Winner Crash (2004) over any number of animated delights, Godzilla, Star Wars, or James Bond blockbusters, or 2010s superhero films, which only began getting nominated for (and receiving) awards in earnest in 2016? (wipe that constipated look off your face)
Awards—as important as they are in celebrating the tremendous hard work of everyone involved in the making of a film—remain notoriously white, cishet, and male across the board. Awards shows do not, cannot, and will not come close to representing the sheer number of motion pictures released in North America each year (about 600, give or take), yet the attention and distinction they bring only makes that number feel infinitely smaller, essentially burying hundreds of worthy and potentially enjoyable pieces of media.
The point I’m trying to make is that everyone’s taste in storytelling is different. The things we find joy in, the things that make us smile, are wide and varied. But when the loudest and most prominent voices are seen as the end-all, be-all of motion picture ratings, where does that leave the person who can only see one or two films a year? Where does that leave low-budget, independent features that can’t hope to compare with awards buzz chatter?
At the end of the day, who cares about an award? The only thing that matters is if the movie made you feel something.
Anyway, I’m gonna go watch Five Nights at Freddy’s again.
The nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced via livestream on Tuesday, January 23, 2024.