Marc Glassman’s 2023 Oscar Picks – Part One

 

Academy Award Nominees and My Choices 2023

Part One

By Marc Glassman

 

Let’s start with one of my favourite categories, the best

 

International Feature Film

THE NOMINEES ARE:

 

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Germany

 

ARGENTINA, 1985

Argentina

 

CLOSE

Belgium

 

EO

Poland

 

THE QUIET GIRL

Ireland

 

As usual, all of these films are high quality selections, chosen as the best films from their home organizations, such as our own Telefilm Canada. I was very impressed with all of them, particularly Belgium’s Close, a moving teenage suicide drama, but it hasn’t been winning at  other awards ceremonies. The buzz has been around All Quiet on the Western Front, the first German feature adaptation of the acclaimed anti-war novel. The original film version of the book was made in Hollywood in 1930 and it’s a classic, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Nazis banned the book and the film after they came to power. Nearly 100 years later, this version is stunningly realized. At the British Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, it won seven prizes, including best film. Its evocation of the brutality of hand to hand combat and tank warfare gives us a startling insight into what is going on in Ukraine right now. All Quiet on the Western Front isn’t just history. The tragedy of warfare continues today.

 

Another category that I love is 

 

Documentary Feature Film

THE NOMINEES ARE:

 

ALL THAT BREATHES

Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer

 

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, John Lyons, Nan Goldin and Yoni Golijov

 

FIRE OF LOVE

Sara Dosa, Shane Boris and Ina Fichman

 

A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS

Simon Lereng Wilmont and Monica Hellström

 

NAVALNY

Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris

 

This is a stunning group of films. Navalny, by Canada’s Daniel Roher, is a great piece of investigative journalism highlighted by an amazing “gotcha” moment. Fire of Love has never-to-be-forgotten images of volcanic eruptions. A House Made of Splinters is an intimate film about children in Ukraine. But the two likely winners are All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras’ moving account of radical artist and photographer Nan Goldin’s successful fight to bring down the opioid producing Sackler family in the art world, and All That Breathes, a deeply humanist look at two brothers in India, who have dedicated their lives to a bird sanctuary in Delhi. I’d love All the Beauty and the Bloodshed to win but I think it’s still too controversial so the winner will be the very deserving All that Breathes.

 

Another category I adore, perhaps because I could imagine doing it myself, is 

Best Adapted Screenplay

NOMINEES

 

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Screenplay – Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson & Ian Stokell

 

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

Written by Rian Johnson

 

LIVING

Written by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie; Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks

 

WOMEN TALKING

Screenplay by Sarah Polley

 

It’s rare that you get a Nobel Prize winner in this category but Kazuo Ishiguro, who is up for the Oscar for Living his adaptation of the Kurosawa classic, shows such understanding of Japanese and British cultures that it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing it as well. As a Canadian, one must point out the wonderful work Sarah Polley did in turning Women Talking, Miriam Toews’ philosophical novel, into a dramatic film. But the winner will come between Rian Johnson’s slick, brilliant satirical mystery Glass Onion and All Quiet on the Western Front. Comedy always loses out to tragedy so let’s go with All Quiet as the winner.

If they’re not adapted, then screenplay writers get to create material. Once again, there are some very good scripts and films here.

 

Best Original Screenplay

NOMINEES

 

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Written by Martin McDonagh

 

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Written by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

 

THE FABELMANS

Written by Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner

 

TÁR 

Written by Todd Field

 

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

Written by Ruben Östlund

 

This category will come down to a three-horse race between The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans and Everything, Everywhere All At Once. While they all have fine scripts, I think Everything, Everywhere will be acknowledged for acting and editing and The Fabelmans for directing. That leaves the superb playwright Martin McDonagh, and his Banshees, which has already won at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs as the Oscar winner. 

 

Finally, in the

Animated Feature Film category

NOMINEES

 

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, Gary Ungar and Alex Bulkley

 

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

Dean Fleischer Camp, Elisabeth Holm, Andrew Goldman, Caroline Kaplan and Paul Mezey

 

PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

Joel Crawford and Mark Swift

 

THE SEA BEAST

Chris Williams and Jed Schlanger

 

TURNING RED

Domee Shi and Lindsey Collins

 

While some people might go for the bizarre stop-motion Marcel the Shell, I think the best animated feature will be a choice between Turning Red and Pinocchio. I would love it if Turning Red, which is set in Toronto, and the first Pixar film solely directed by a woman, our own Domee Shi, would win in this category. But the buzz is around the big man, Guillermo del Toro, and his passion project, Pinocchio. I don’t love it but it has Oscar written all over it.

 

Listen to the audio version of Marc’s picks below: