The Verdict: 2023 Academy Awards Nominees

The first edition of a new column sets its sights on the 2023 Oscar nominations.

Welcome to “The Verdict,” a new weekly segment on Airplane Mode in which I baselessly judge everything I’ve been watching or thinking about in comparison to what other people seem to be thinking.

The idea is simple. Each Friday, I’ll go over some of the movies, TV shows, and other random tidbits I consumed during the previous week and will categorize them into one of three categories: Underrated, Overrated, or Perfectly Rated. If I watch Avatar: The Way of Water and wonder how such a forgettable movie is possibly making 2 billion dollars, I’ll put it into the Overrated section. If I fail to understand how people are hating on Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery even though it’s incredibly awesome, I’ll put it in the Underrated section. In the Perfectly Rated section, we all get to agree that a movie like Everything Everywhere All At Once are awesome—unless you, yes YOU—think it was somehow overrated. (Comment your disagreements below!)

While I hope to cover some chunk of recent releases in this segment, much of it will also be older movies and TV shows that I’ve only recently watched. In part, I hope to use The Verdict as a repository for my thoughts on whatever I watched and thought about throughout the previous week. So, if I finally catch up with the odd Akira Kurosawa classic or little-known festival favorite, you might find my thoughts here. Who knows! Whatever it is, I will be using The Verdict as my venue for hot takes and reductive categorization. Putting media into the Over/Under boxes is one of the quickest ways towards provoking discussions and disagreements among friends. I’ve long enjoyed doing it—I hope you enjoy it too.

For this first week, I’ll be doing something a bit unusual. Rather than go through my media consumption list, I’ll be tackling that most exciting of January movie news: the Academy Award nominations. January is typically a boring month at the movies, and this year was no different. Awards Season took up most of the press instead, as the Jerrod Carmichael-led Golden Globes got a bunch of celebrities drunk, and the Academy Award nominations made everyone get up in arms. Including me! So, for the inaugural edition of The Verdict, I present to you my overzealous takes on the 2023 Oscar nominations.

Underrated: Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Still from Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Like so many great films that came before it, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is relegated to a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, hidden away from the Best Picture nomination it deserves. Marcel the Shell seems silly at first glance, and though it maintains a humorous heart throughout its runtime, it is also genuinely profound, with some of the best characters and performances you’ll see all year. Jenny Slate is so good as this adorable talking shell, giving more heart and soul than many of even the best performances from 2022. Like, Michelle Williams is really good in The Fabelmans, but did she play a shell on a journey to find her family? Didn’t think so.

Underrated: Women Talking

Still from Women Talking

Women Talking, Sarah Polley’s brilliant exploration of female agency in a Mennonite community, completely deserves its nominations in Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. But it deserves more, dammit! Paritcularly in a year where five men are nominated for best director and one of them is for (*vomits*) Triangle of Sadness, I am left to ask why in the hell the Academy didn’t think Sarah Polley isn’t a pitch-perfect candidate for the list. What’s more, Women Talking is filled to the brim with fantastic flourishes: Stark cinematography, low-saturation color grading, and a great pop music needledrop all contribute to the kind of directorial vision that the Academy tends to love. I am thus choosing to boycott Ruben Östlund for this year’s best director nominations in favor of Sarah Polley. Speaking of Ruben Östlund…

Overrated: Triangle of Sadness

Still from Triangle of Sadness

There is no doubt in my mind: Triangle of Sadness is the most overrated movie of 2022. Somehow, Ruben Östlund’s film has resonated with critics, the public, and the The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences alike. And I just don’t get it! As a lowbrow comedy, it makes some degree of sense—rich people get drunk on a yacht and vomit themselves close to death is a funny sentence unto itself—but as a Palm d’Or winner?? I just don’t get it. The movie feels profound in moments, and it is rather well-made—one cannot deny Östlund’s technical proficiency. Yet Triangle of Sadness is also a film that repeats its same basic point again and again: Rich people are shallow and stupid, and don’t know how to take care of themselves. After two minutes of watching the film, I got it. Then I sat through another two and a half hours of the same thing.

Overrated: Avatar: The Way of Water

Still from Avatar: The Way of Water

This one comes with the asterisk that it’s good to see the Academy prioritizing the movies that people actually went out and experienced in theaters, rather than arthouse vanity projects that made under $10 million at the box office. (I still love you, Tár and EO). None of this changes the fact that this Avatar sequel is the year’s most eminently forgettable experience, laced with so much CGI that the line between reality and simulation becomes meaningless. And the Academy nominated it for Best Picture!

With the first Avatar, I kind of get it. Pandora was such an all-encompassing digital sandbox the likes of which we had never seen; rewarding that level of technical artistry makes some sense. But The Way of Water lacks the novelty of its predecessor, especially at a time when CGI slugfests dominate our movie screens anyway. This bland sequel is likely to go down as one of the Academy’s blandest nominations.

Perfectly Rated: Top Gun: Maverick

Still from Top Gun: Maverick

And now for the part where we can all agree: Top Gun: Maverick is the blockbuster that deserves the Best Picture hype. Consider it in comparison to Avatar: The Way of Water. Both are legacyquel action thrill rides with record-breaking box office receipts, and both got people out of their homes and into the cinemas even as COVID fears remained palpable. Yet the difference between the two is evident: Maverick easily trounces The Way of Water in wit, spectacle, and special effects, featuring a kickass Tom Cruise performance that milks every ounce of his boyish charm. If Maverick wins Best Picture, I won’t be complaining. Of all the nominees, though, one stands out more than the rest…

Perfectly Rated: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Still from Everything Everywhere All At Once

2022’s biggest bright spot was undboutedly Everything Everywhere All At Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Kung Fu family drama set at the crossroads between infinite realities. It made over $100 million globally on a $25 million budget, showcased Michelle Yeoh’s genuine star power, single-handedly ressurected Ke Huy Quan’s career from dormancy, and was a glorious reminder that the cinematic experience is necessary and life-affirming. And the Academy recognized that! Everything Everywhere has swept up eleven nominations in ten categories, each of them entirely deserved. It will probably lose out to The Fabelmans or The Banshees of Inisherin, which is a shame. These are both great films, but they are also both conventionally great, which cannot be said for the Daniels’ genre-bending masterpiece.

Then again, I might be wrong. Just three years ago, Parasite won the Academy’s highest honor, unexpectedly beating out the likes of Academy mainstays Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. The elation that followed from that announcement was unparalled, shocking us all with the recognition that the Academy could, in fact, choose the film that resonated with cinephiles and the public alike. Everything Everywhere All At Once is 2022’s Parasite. Let’s hope it takes home all the awards it deserves.

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Agree or disagree with these takes? Have any under- or overrated Oscar picks of your own? Let me know in the comments!