I can’t believe it’s been 9 years since Inside Out came out. I remember how much I loved it back in 2015 and how it was just screaming for a sequel. Well luckily, they took their time with it to get it just right so it can live up to the legacy of the first, and it’s finally arrived. So what is it like?
Plot
Riley has turned 13 and her emotions have guided her to grow a strong sense of self. However, one night the headquarters is rocked by the onset of puberty, and the arrival of 4 new emotions, led by Anxiety. Anxiety’s influence sends Riley into a spiral as her core emotions are banished in favour of the new recruits. Joy and the others then have to make it back to headquarters to return Riley to her normal self.
Puberty was the obvious place to go with a sequel (and was alluded to in the original film) so it’s no surprise that that’s what they did, but the question was always how they would do it. I think what they did with it was really clever, not only adding the new emotions but adding new elements to the way Riley’s mind works as she matures. It meant they weren’t just rehashing the previous story just with new characters, but had new adversities to overcome instead.
Characters
All the characters from the original film are back and the same as ever (despite a couple of the voice actors being different) so I’m sure your favourites from back then will still feel the same to you. I was always a big fan of Joy and Disgust myself. Amy Poehler really was born to play Joy and you can tell just how much she loves voicing the character, which translates into star power as she leads this movie completely.
However if we wanna talk about star power we have to talk about Maya Hawke in the role of Anxiety, because she really gives Poehler a run for her money as the main antagonist of the film and de facto new leader of Riley’s mind. I think the feeling of anxiety is something we’re all extremely familiar with so Hawke and Pixar had a tough job to try and embody that in a character and they definitely pulled it off. The way she skittishly moves around and the frazzled look she has, as well as the way she takes over so swiftly and absolutely. There’s a scene towards the end that really gets the experience of intense anxiety dead on.
I also enjoyed Ayo Edebiri as Envy, who kind of became a henchman to Anxiety, but she had this adorable little squeaky voice along with it, which really put across the insecurity that envy brings. There was also Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) who was the nicest of the new group and develops a really sweet relationship with Sadness, as he would. The only new character that felt a little underdeveloped was Ennui who, despite being French which was a hilarious touch, didn’t really have much to do besides being a little sarcastic; I didn’t really get her purpose.
World
There was so much world-building in the original film, with establishing the different areas and aspects of the mind, that I didn’t see how much more they could really add-in. But my god did they have plenty of new ideas. There was so much more to explore and learn about in the world of Riley’s mind, as well as the chance to revisit some of the old places, like Imagination Land. And they managed to explain the addition of some new places in the mind cleverly, as Riley’s mind is simply expanding and maturing as she grows. This also opens the possibility of new places to explore in the next film.
My personal favourite addition to the mind was the belief system, where Riley’s memories can spawn beliefs about herself that come together to form her sense of self (the MacGuffin of the movie). I liked how this sense of self was also able to pilot Riley somewhat remotely without the emotions having to take full control. Which was a great way to symbolize how as you grow you become less of a slave to your emotions and adapt to situations more innately. It’s all just very creative and clever.
Animation
I obviously rewatched the original film before I saw this one, and one of the things that always stood out about it was the use of colour. Inside Out is a very bright and striking in its character and world design and has this almost glittery watercolour effect to the design of the mind sections. They obviously kept that around for the sequel and things are just as bright and whimsical in her mind. They also had some fun with different animation styles which is always fun to see, including paper stop motion, 2D and a glitchy video game character.
But what stood out to me was the outside of the mind sections, aka the real world. I hadn’t really realized just how far we had come in terms of photorealism in Pixar animation until I watched these two films back to back. Obviously, the human characters are still cartoonish in their look and proportions so as not to cross into the uncanny valley, but they still feel more real looking. And as for the environments, we’ll they may as well have been live action with how scarily good they looked.
Future
The movie seems to be doing pretty well already so I have no doubt its success will result in Disney greenlighting another movie in the series. Amy Poehler has already said she’d like to keep playing Joy in future movies. Obviously growing up comes with many emotional challenges and new emotions to face so there are plenty of places to go with this concept. However, the older Riley gets, the harder it’s going to be to keep things family-friendly and relatable to kids, so I’d be interested to see how they navigate that hurdle. I’ll definitely be seated for an Inside Out 3 though!
Pixar
Now, Pixar has had me worried recently when they announced their plans for the future. Their last few movies haven’t done so well financially so they have obviously been a little worried. So, as a result, they said they were going to focus less on original ideas, citing Turning Red and Luca as examples of ‘directors’ autobiographies’ that didn’t do well, and instead focus on existing popular IPs. And that’s really disappointing. They seem to have forgotten that the reason those two movies didn’t make money is because Disney forced them to go straight to Disney+, but people still loved them. Also, Lightyear was based on an existing sting brand (perhaps their strongest) and that tanked critically AND commercially. The only thing that proved their point was Elemental, which despite being a great movie (one of my favourite films of last year) didn’t do so well when it was first released (though it did actually make plenty of money as it stayed in cinemas).
But completely panicking and deciding to stifle new ideas after one hiccup is not the way to go. Obviously, it’s great to get sequels to the films we love like Inside Out, but I truly hope the success doesn’t spur them on to continue this ludicrous plan and run this studio, once known for its phenomenal creativity, off the creative cliff. I guess we have to hope that Elio helps put things back on track next year.
I don’t think there was much chance that they would screw up this movie with how well they executed the original, but thank god they didn’t! If you lived Inside Out I’d definitely recommend seeing this new instalment. You won’t regret it
As it tracks, the original is usually always the best. The concept of modern man landing on a planet where apes are the dominant species and humans are animals is very simple, so it’s easy to jump into and go along with. But what they do with that premise to explore humanity and pose questions about our own future is extremely interesting and still remains relevant. The twist ending is one of the most famous in history because it’s so impactful and well-executed. If you go in knowing it (which to be honest most people do as it’s been over 50 years) you can see the setup and the hints, it doesn’t just come out of nowhere.
Inexplicably, they managed to make the worst one immediately.
This is definitely the best of the 4 sequels as it had the most interesting premise and the most to say, which is the strength of the brand to begin with. It’s a very simple premise as they essentially just reversed the original by having the intelligent apes come back in time so now they’re the odd ones out and the humans are in charge, but instead of just repeating the original movie there’s a different payoff to it.
This film does a pretty good job of building off of what the previous one set up, although I did find the first couple of acts a little bit of a slog to get through.
I was expecting so much after the setup of the battle in the last film, but this movie ended up being the most boring to me. I think the poster and even the name of the film made me expect some epic film about a war between humans and apes, but it ends up being very low stakes and nothing much really happens.
So points are already docked for being a remake of an already good film, but what bothers me most about this film is that it completely misses the point. I don’t need remakes to be exactly the same as the original (in fact I don’t like that) but what they need to do is understand what made the original good and try and stick to that. I just feel like Tim Burton didn’t understand Planet of the Apes.
And so we reach the inevitable reboot. I do think it was a smart choice to reboot the series with a prequel rather than trying to remake the original again, but they have left the door open to remake it down the line and strongly hinted at it.
This is where I really got into the new series. I feel like Matt Reeves got handed this franchise and really got it and knew where to take it.
The word I would use to describe this film is epic, because that’s what it reminded me of. It felt like a classic epic war film but with apes in it. It’s a sweeping story of conflict, revenge and imprisonment that takes place across a long journey, a lot is going on and it does it well.
And here we are at the newest release, which really became a movie of two halves for me.
This thriller follows two mothers and housewives in the 1960s, Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway). After Alice is unable to save Céline’s son from an accident that results in his tragic death, her historic anxiety brings on an intense paranoia. She becomes convinced that Céline blames her for the death of her son and is out to get her murderous revenge.
What this movie really reminded me of was the ‘psychobiddy’ genre of movies from the 1960s that began with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). When older actresses like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford found roles were drying up due to misogyny and ageism in Hollywood, they found new life in horror films playing deranged and murderous older women. Obviously, things aren’t quite as bad today for older actresses (though ageism isn’t totally gone) and we have ozempic now to keep everyone looking tight, but this still feels like a modern-day version of that strategy. Hathaway and Chastain are both in their 40s, so they’re around the point when actresses usually get cast in more and more ‘motherly’ roles. So to take that and use it to capitalize on the recent internet trend of calling older women ‘mother’ and lead a movie is very smart. It totally paid off.
This biopic follows the career of the late Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) from the conception of her first album to her tumultuous relationship with her husband Blake (Jack OConnell) and her mega success with her second album.
I think the major problem is the casting of Abela. I don’t want to rag on her too much because she clearly worked very hard on this role and her singing was pretty good as far as Winehouse impressions go. She just simply didn’t capture what made Amy so special. She didn’t have that bite and cheeky humour that I come to expect from the singer. She seemed more like an innocent deer in the headlights throughout the film, and often felt like she was speaking in slow motion to get the accent right.
This movie is set in a dystopian near-future America, where the president is serving a third term in the midst of a violent civil war. We follow Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a renowned war photographer and journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) as they attempt to travel to DC to interview and photograph the president before he gets captured and executed by rebels! They are joined by aging veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and young budding photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny).
Dunst and Moura’s performances as the lead duo are really fascinating, as they show two outcomes of what being constantly surrounded by war can do to a person. Dunst’s Lee is closed off and hardened by her experiences, never getting emotional or connecting with the horrors she sees but simply capturing her shots. Whereas Moura’s Joel is excitable and nihilistic, turning the fear into thrill instead of taking it in. Both end up hitting breaking point at different points in their journey and in different ways. In the middle of the two, you have Spaeny’s Jessie who at first struggles with the terror she flings herself into, despite Lee’s advice. But as she starts to grow into the task you see her take on the aforementioned traits of both her new mentors, so as they break down she rises up. I really loved Spaeny in last year’s Priscilla so I was excited to see her pop up in something again so soon. And this role is so different I’m already seeing what range she has as an actress. She’s definitely someone to watch.
The film follows old friends Art (Mike Faust) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as they compete in a challenge tennis match, watched by Art’s coach and wife Tashi (Zendaya). The match is interspersed with flashbacks of how the two met Tashi as teenagers and grew apart over the years as they competed for her affection both on and off the tennis court in a sexually charged love triangle. There’s not a whole lot of decent tennis movies, and I think this is definitely joining the ranks of the best ones. It gives tennis and sex in a steamy little love triangle.
I thought this might be a Best Actress Oscar bid for Zendaya when I first saw the trailer, but having seen it I do t think it’s that kind of role. There’s no big transformation or a huge emotional scene you can campaign with, I personally wouldn’t nominate it. If this movie gets enough traction and is still in the conversation next year it could still happen though, which I wouldn’t be mad at. I’m a big fan and I want her to get a nomination sometime. Overall though I think this movie is a bit too youthful and sexy for the Academy’s tastes.
I think I’ve exhausted all I have to say about Oppenheimer at this point after talking about it for so long. Obviously, it’s not what I would have chosen to win, but it is deserving; it’s a very good film.
As I said in my predictions, this is Nolan’s time, he’s been wanting it for a while (he got very close with Dunkirk) and this is finally his moment.
Given that Oppenheimer was the big winner of the night, it would have been strange for the lead (and titular character) to not go along with it. A similar principle to Michelle Yeoh winning last year. The person who stars in and carries the weight of the best picture of the year is a large factor in what makes it a success, and that is so true for Murphy. I think the only thing he really had going against him was that it was his first nomination, and he was up against 2 people with nomination history, but that very rarely actually matters if the performance is good enough to eclipse a legacy actor.
This really was the biggest surprise of the night for me. Even though I knew there was a strong chance that Emma Stone was taking it, I had really convinced myself it was going to be Lily Gladstone. But it goes to show you that every season is different and you can’t always predict things just based on what happened last year. In my heart of hearts, I wanted it to go to Lily. I adored her movie and her performance in it, and you could just tell how much it meant to her to be not just nominated but represented. My heart broke for her every time they showed her during the acceptance speech.
Now this is the complete other side of the coin, going from a huge star getting celebrated for their body of work to a relative unknown getting their first big praise. Randolph up until this point has mostly done smaller supporting roles, television and Broadway (she does have a Tony nomination from 2012). So she’s not extremely well known to a lot of people outside of the industry, or they at least wouldn’t realise if they recognized her from something they’d seen. I first saw her in Only Murders in the Building as the detective, where I loved her, but it took a minute for me to put two and two together and realise this was the same actress.
I knew it was going to happen but I’m still extremely happy. ‘Academy Award winning picture Anatomy of a Fall’ sounds correct.
So, on the point I made in the last category, the reason I think most people thought Barbie was going to win the screenplay was that Greta Gerwig wrote and directed. If you want to acknowledge the work she did on this movie, give her the screenplay award. But as soon as she wasn’t nominated in Director, the writing (no pun intended) was on the wall. Now the plot thickens when you realise Cord Jefferson was in the same boat, a writer-director not nominated for directing, and it’s his first movie. So how did he beat Gerwig?
That’s my second one wrong and I’m not mad about it because it’s who I wanted to win anyway.
A surprise to no one once again, but a welcome winner. If you haven’t seen The Zone of Interest yet I would highly recommend it, though it is a very tough film to watch. I was left feeling quite hollow for the rest of the evening after watching it. But that’s the power of a good film. It’s one of the most fascinating pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen in a while.
I’m very happy with this win. As much as I loved the costumes in Barbie, as I said in my predictions, I was more impressed and excited by Holly Waddington’s costuming in Poor Things. It was really great to see her get up on that stage and accept her first Oscar. I adored her costumes for this movie so I’m very excited to see what her next project is going to be, no doubt she will be in high demand after this.
This one genuinely upsets me. Yes, the sets and design of Poor Things were amazing and it’s not undeserved, but the film also won costume and makeup, it didn’t need this too. Barbie had the most amazing commitment to production design I’ve ever seen in a film and I just think it came down to the academy not liking the movie enough, which just seems unfair to me. They could easily have shared the love, but they chose to give all the design awards to one movie instead.
I need to eat my words because for once they didn’t give this award to the most makeup but to the more creative use of makeup. I do think this was likely just a case of them not liking Maestro as much as Poor Things, but it was the more inspired choice at the end of the day.
I don’t have much to say about this that I didn’t already say. It’s not a score that particularly stuck with me after I saw the film unlike the scores to Poor Things or Killers of the Flower Moon, but I’m not a musically knowledgeable person so I can’t speak well on what is good composition only what makes me feel the best.
If you had told me a few months ago that Barbie was only going to win 1 Oscar I would have told you to shut up, yet here we are. I guess it should be glad that it could win this but it was only in competition with itself anyway so it was practically handed to it.
This is obviously going to Oppenheimer, it’s literally won everywhere, and nothing else has a chance. As I’ve said before, I think it’s a great movie and it does deserve the recognition. Personally, I would choose Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie or The Zone of Interest, because they did things that were so new to me and blew me away with their creativity, whereas I saw Oppenheimer as a very well-made awards-friendly biopic. But at the end of the day, if you make something that appeals to what awards voters always love, and you make it extremely well, you’re onto a winner.
Oppenheimer strikes again. Christopher Nolan and his film are going to be the big winners of this season, but in this category, I totally agree. Nolan is someone who’s built a huge name for himself, he’s consistently making great movies, he’s beloved by the industry, but the Oscars have never appreciated him. So, it’s great that he’s finally made a film that connected with them. Everyone has agreed that it really is his time, and you can tell he’s going to be so grateful to finally get that Oscar.
Towards the beginning of awards season, this seemed to be a bit of an exciting competition between Murphy and Giamatti. Both of them won at the Golden Globes the Giamatti won at Critics Choice which people thought would go to Murphy. Murphy won at BAFTA which wasn’t surprising but then when I won at SAG it seemed pretty sewn up.
Finally, an exciting race, and in one of my favourite categories. This is one of the only major categories that is not so obvious, as it’s a two-horse race between ‘The Stones’ (Lily and Emma). Both of them give amazing performances so it’s hard to quantify who’s better, and they both have things in favour of and against them winning here.
The supporting categories are pretty much sewn up at this point. When the season began, people thought that this was going to mainly be a contest between Gosling and Downey Jr, but unfortunately for Gosling that never materialised, and Downey has won absolutely everything. As I said when I reacted to the Golden Globes, he’s such a beloved actor that this is definitely one of those awards where a good performance coincided with an opportunity to reward someone everybody wants to celebrate.
As I guessed, this is going to be a clean sweep for Randolph, who has won every single prize up until this point. I loved her performance in The Holdovers, it hit all the right beats of funny, tragic and heartwarming, plus she was doing an accent.
With Barbie ousted from this category, there is now no competition for Anatomy of a Fall. Justine Triet and Arthur Harari are absolutely winning this one and I couldn’t be happier about that. Anatomy is one of my absolute favourite movies of last year, I cannot stop telling people to watch it. This is probably the only category it has a chance to win in, so that’s another reason why it’s going to win, so they have a chance to give the film its well-deserved Oscar.
Now people for a long time people have been saying that whichever screenplay category Barbie is in it will win. It’s one of the biggest movies of the year, its screenplay was lauded, it’s a chance to give Greta Gerwig her Oscar. It makes sense.
Now this is another interesting one, because all the wins are split between Spider-Man and The Boy and the Heron. What I’ve noticed is the more international voting bodies, like Golden Globe and BAFTA are going for The Boy and the Heron whereas the more America based bodies like PGA and Critics Choice are going for Spider-Verse. Now the Oscars being an American academy does suggest that the ball is in Spider-Man’s court, and I think that’s where it’s going to go. I personally would love The Boy and the Heron to win, as I think Studio Ghibli is overdue another Oscar at this point.
As is always the case with this category in the last few years, whichever nominee is also nominated for Best Picture is going to win it, so that means it’s going to The Zone of Interest hands down.
This is always one of my favourite categories, because I love movie costuming more than I probably should for someone with no fashion sense. At the moment it’s looking like a toss-up between Barbie and Poor Things as they are the films that have both won awards so far. While they both have their merits, I think this should go to Poor Things and I think it might. What was cool about Barbie was that they recreated real-life Barbie doll clothes in human sizes, however, Jaqueline Durran has 2 Oscars and she just won 4 years ago for a Gret Gerwig movie.
Now, this category has exactly the same nominees as the last one, with the exact same 2 front runners, but I’m completely reversed on who I think should win. Poor Things has some truly beautiful production design, from the house at the beginning, to the boat Bella sails on to the towns she visits around Europe and I can see why it’s in the running to win this.
This award should be renamed Most Makeup, because it always goes to the movie with the most prosthetics, and hair is always ignored (If they cared about hair then Barbie would have got a nomination). So that distinction I guess goes to Maestro this year.
This one is set in stone, it’s going to go to Oppenheimer; it’s won every award going. Ludwig Góransson’s score is beautiful and haunting so I get it and I’m not mad about it. however, at the risk of sounding like a constant Oppenheimer hater, I genuinely prefer the soundtracks to Killers and Poor Things. I’ve listened to them both a lot more since seeing those films. Robbie Robertson’s Killers soundtrack has a great western, 20s vibe that I just live for and Jerskin Fendrix’s Poor Things soundtrack is unhinged and crazy in a way that just beautifully encapsulates the feeling of that film.
The only thing more annoying than John Williams being nominated for existing is Dianne Warren getting nominated LITERALLY every year for original song. She could honestly just fart on a microphone, and they would nominate her, it’s getting absolutely ridiculous. So now the Flamin Hot Cheetos movie is Oscar-nominated. It wouldn’t be so bad if the songs and films she’s nominated for actually had any chance of winning, but they’re never that incredible and she’s subsequently never won. She’s been nominated for the last 7 years in a row with 15 total nominations; it’s mad.
If you read 
The story follows on from the end of Part 1, with Paul and his mother finding the Fremen and deciding to live with them in the desert and learn their ways, Paul hopes to fight with the Fremen to overthrow the Harkonnen who killed his father and overthrow his house for control of the planet Arrakis, while falling in love with Chani, a fremen warrior. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen leader appoints his ruthless nephew to oversee the planet and fight the rebellious Fremen. While all this is happening, Princess Irulan, the emperor’s daughter keeps track of events in her journal and wonders whether Paul may still be alive, unknown to the empire.
As this is a sequel I wanna talk about the new characters, and I’m gonna include Zendaya as Chani, because she was only in the last 15mins of the last film. That woman is such a superstar, she really knows how to carry a blockbuster in the supporting role, and I need to see her lead one soon. Her chemistry with Timothee Chalamet is brilliant, they have a particularly sweet scene together sat on top of a sand dune that I really enjoyed. But she never feels like just a romantic add-on despite honestly being written as one, because Zendaya just brings this strength and this relatability to her that makes her so engaging.
The one person I was really excited to see, because I’m a huge fan of hers, was Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, but I was really disappointed. She’s barely really in it, and when she is she just spends the time sitting and standing around and just reacting to what everyone else is doing. She had no real agency or importance of her own which just felt like such a step back for female characters. I know this book was written in the 60s but Zendaya made it work.
My favourite part of any sci-fi or fantasy story is the world-building. Getting to explore the various planets or locations and meet different species is always so fun. So I think my disappointment with both of these dune movies is that they spend the majority of the time focusing on just one planet, and it’s a pretty dull and miserable one. Now I know the point of Arrakis is that it’s a tough and harsh environment to live in, and that’s pretty key to the point, but it doesn’t make for a fun experience being stuck there. As a wise person once said, “I don’t like sand”.
Visually this is a very stunning film, and I think that’s what mainly drew them to wanting to adapt this book as a movie rather than a series, despite its long and complicated plot. So even if I was bored at least I had something pretty to look at. The bit I mentioned before where everything went grayscale was a stand-out moment for the cinematography and effects, but there was also the opening scene where everything had a kind of orangey hue in the harsh desert light that I found really gorgeous.
I think I’ve realized my main issue with this movie is that it wasn’t very fun. Now I love a serious movie don’t get me wrong. But when I saw the trailer i saw a sci-fi action movie that’s really enjoyable to watch, and what I got was nearly 3 hours of people being very serious, quite maudlin, with deep intellectual ideas that I needed to ponder. That is all well and good if that’s what you want and I’m sure that’s what many people really love about it, but it wasn’t an entertaining experience for me.
If you know me, or you’ve read my 
Oppenheimer really was the big winner tonight, with a total of 5 awards. By the time best picture came around it was pretty clear where the wind was blowing, as I guessed it was. It looks like Oppenheimer is set to have a pretty successful awards season all around.
As the night progressed it became increasingly clear that they did not love Barbie as much as I thought they were going to, and it seemed obvious this award was going to the secondary pick, Poor Things. Barbie probably didn’t win this one because it instead got the handout of the new ‘Box Office Achievement’ award, which I didn’t bother predicting because obviously it was going to win that one, it made the most money. Even though that award was stupid, it did at least allow us to see the Barbie team get up on stage and celebrate their movie.
As I said in my predictions, this award always came down to Cillian Murphy vs Bradley Cooper, and I think recently the tide has been turning against Cooper. I see a lot of sentiment that he was trying a bit too hard to win an Oscar and that’s off-putting to some people, and this is just another little hint to that. Add to that that Murphy is the lead of the frontrunner for Best Picture and Cooper may actually be dead on arrival this season.
I was so happy when my prediction came true. I loved Killers of the Flower Moon so much, and a big part of that was Lily Gladstone, she was so captivating as Molly Burkhart, as the vehicle for which we see and empathise with this Osage family that was targeted she had to hold a lot on her shoulders, and she did it with such subtly and nuance.
As I said in my predictions, this was not a particularly competitive category, So Paul Giamatti had a pretty easy win here. But this is one of two wins for the night for The Holdovers so it’s clearly a movie to look out for. I’ll be seeing it when it comes out in the UK next week.
Another no-brainer. There has been heaps and heaps of praise for Emma Stone these last few months, with many calling it the performance of her career. Just from seeing the trailer and hearing interviews, I can see how strong the performance is and I haven’t even seen the film yet. No one else in this category really stood a chance.
The only acting award I got wrong. Ryan Gosling losing to Rober Downey Jr was the moment I started to see the wheels fall off on all my Barbie predictions. To be fair I did say it has been a pretty close race between the two of them and it depended on which movie the Globes gravitated to more, which was clearly Oppenheimer.
This woman has been sweeping the season. I believe she’s gotten almost everything she’s been up for so far, but this is her first major televised award. It may be too early to call but I predict she’s going to have a clean sweep and win at every major awards show this season.
As I predicted, I think the universe has decided that this is Christopher Nolan’s year. At this point, he’s an iconic director, with so many giant movies and a really strong creative voice, and he’s never won before. And with another huge hit on his hands, I think everyone has kind of just decided that it’s his time, and I think that’s fair. I said I would like to see Greta Gerwig get that same kind of sentiment, given what she’s achieved, but she definitely has more movies in her so I think her time will come. For now, we celebrate a true living icon.
This was THE surprise of the night for me, I almost flew across my room. Now I would have loved Barbie to win this don’t get me wrong, but Anatomy of a Fall is one of my absolute favourite movies of the year and I didn’t actually think it was going to win anything. So, to see it win not just this but also Foreign Language Film was so incredibly cool. It won the same number of awards as Barbie and Poor Things. The downside is it beat Past Lives both times, which makes me nervous for that film down the line, but for now, I’m just happy to see this wonderful film get recognised.
Well Barbie won, does it matter that I picked the wrong song? Even though it’s a beautiful song and it comes at a very pivotal moment in the movie, ‘What Was I Made For?’ is my least favourite of the three Barbie songs cos I don’t think it really represents the film well. The other songs are fun and upbeat and one is very silly, and that’s what the movie is despite its deeper meaning. But I guess the voters want to go for the most artistically reputable song. In the end, all I can think of is that TikTok of that lady singing it wrong. And at least Barbie won something else.
As usual, I didn’t do predictions for the TV side of the awards, because I don’t watch a lot of shows, but I still have thoughts. I was really glad to see Elisabeth Debicki win for The Crown, she literally is Diana in that show and I was very worried when she didn’t win for that performance last year. I feel bad for Imelda Staunton as she’s now the only one of the three Queen Elizabeths to not win a Golden Globes for the show, although I didn’t think she was terribly good in the role.
I was really happy to see The Bear win 3 awards. Since it won a bit last year I made a point to watch it and I love it so much. I think Ayo Edibiri is going to become a pretty big star; her speech was so chaotic and adorable. I can’t wait for season 3.
Starting off with an extremely strong category already. 4 of these movies were in my 
The big surprise in this category is that May December is apparently a comedy and that The Color Purple didn’t get nominated!
Though this is a fairly strong category, and I think Colman Domingo and Leonardo Di Caprio are strong contenders to get plenty of nominations down the line, I truly think this whole awards season is going to come down to Bradley Cooper vs Cillian Murphy for Best Actor. One headlined a 3 hour epic which became one of the biggest movies of the year and the other transformed into a real person in a movie he spent years making and also directed. My heart would give it to Cooper but I think it’s most likely to go to Murphy based on the power of Oppenheimer.
This is such a tough category for me cos I actually love all of these performances and would genuinely be happy for any of them to win. I would be the most surprised to see Cailee Spaeny or Anette Bening win as their movies aren’t the strongest players, but the other 4 all have a fairly decent shot at the win. The person I would give it to, and who I think is going it take it, is Lily Gladstone. Her performance was not just brilliant, but I’ve been so impressed by the knowledge of the Osage community that she gained and also brought to the role, and that’s such an awards-friendly narrative. The strongest competition she has is probably Carey Mulligan, so I’d say she’s firmly in the running right now.
This is a fairly weak category only in the sense that most of these actors probably won’t show up in many more places this awards season. It’s really nice to see Timothée Chalamet in here for Wonka, I really loved him in that film, and it’s nice to see Matt Damon and Nicholas Cage too. However, this award is realistically going to be between Paul Giamatti and Jeffrey Wright. Both are performances I haven’t managed to see yet so simply going off the reactions from people who have, I’m going to predict that Giamatti has the edge in this one.
This is a crazy category. Kudos to Alma Pöysti for showing up here unexpectedly and to Jennifer Lawrence too, she was fun in that movie but I didn’t consider her showing up in awards season for it. I am dad not to see Halle Bailey get in for The Little Mermaid, I really think she had a shot and she deserves it, especially after all the abuse she got for her casting.
The consensus seems to be, based on the small awards that have already been given out, that this is a two-horse race between Robert Downy Jr and Ryan Gosling. However, Charles Melton has picked up steam recently and won a few things too so I wouldn’t count him out completely. As for who I think is gonna win, it’s so difficult. Both the aforementioned frontrunners are actors who’ve been in the game for a while and not got big awards recognition, one gave us a really fun comedic performance and the other has been praised for his dramatic performance and transformation. I think people seem to have fallen in love with Gosling just a little more, so I’m going to place my bet on him.
For the second year in a row, this category is super competitive, and I really don’t know quite where it’s going to go. I really like seeing Rosamund Pike here as she was my favourite thing about Saltburn. Gutted not to see America Ferrara here for Barbie but she got in at the Critics Choice Awards she’s not out of the race yet.
I’d love this to go to Greta Gerwig for her significant achievement, as she is now officially the most financially successful female director in history. And while we’re talking about woman, I’m happy to see Celine Song make it in and would have been even more delighted to see Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall make it too.
Barbie is gunning really hard for this award so it seems like the most obvious choice, and it’s the one I’m going to go with. But honestly, this is a really strong year for screenplays, and if Past Lives is going to win anything it’s going to be this, and I would be so happy for it. I also need to shout out Anatomy of a Fall for having been written in both English and French, plus apparently, they changed the language of some scenes mid-production, so they basically wrote it twice.
THREE Barbie songs suggests that Barbie is probably winning this category. It has a 50% chance. But eh question then becomes, which of the three songs is winning. I would love it to be Dance the Night, as it’s my favourite one, and it was kind of the soundtrack of the film. But given the amount of promo they gave I’m Just Ken, even before the movie came out, I think that’s the one they’ve probably been campaigning the hardest so it’s the most likely winner. The interesting thing is, the Oscars have a rule where you can only nominate up to 2 songs from 1 film, so we’ll see which of the three gets shafted when we get there.
So, everyone is saying that this is going to go to Spider-Man, and I agree it will. It was just as artistic and bold as the first film, which I loved. What stopped this from being one of my standout movies of the year was that it was very much was a part 1, meaning it didn’t feel like a complete movie in a way. Who knows that may be on some voters’ minds too and it could end up losing here. I would love to see it go to The Boy and the Heron (Studio Ghibli have incredibly never been nominated by the Golden Globes before) or even Elemental, two of my favourite films this year. But good for Disney’s Wish for not completely dying after nobody saw or liked it.
I love a strong female performance, and Sandra Hüller brings just that as the centerpiece of this courtroom drama from France. As a woman accused of killing her husband after he’s found dead at the bottom of their chalet home, the mystery hangs on whether she can convincingly keep you guessing as to whether she did it or not. She manages to balance that fine line between guilty and not guilty and never appear too obviously either way, leaving the audience to make up their own minds. I was gripped the whole time, as there are also so many nuances to the character and her relationship to the case, such as her language barrier, celebrity author status and visually impaired son, that pile onto the stakes of the possible outcome.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the big cinematic event this summer was Barbenheimer. Now I could have put both Barbie and Oppenheimer on here as a kind of double feature, but I have to be honest about the fact that Barbie left the bigger impact on me. The way Greta Gerwig and team created this whole world around Barbie, from the sets to the costumes to the music, we were fully immersed in Barbieland. And on top of that, it was incredibly well written and acted, it was funny, it was clever and it had something to say. After seeing this film, Barbie became my entire personality for about a month and I’ve still thought about it constantly since. This movie filled me with such joy, just thinking about it makes me smile.
So, in November I got to see My Neighbor Totoro on stage, and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. If you ever get a chance to see it you absolutely should. But the high from that show put me on a bit of a Studio Ghibli kick and I eagerly awaited the newest movie from the Studio and director Hiyao Miyazaki.
As I said in my 
As happy as I am for Jamie Lee-Curtis, I still believe Stephanie Hsu deserved the Oscar for Supporting Actress, so I was keen to see what she would do next. I’m also a big fan of Adele Lim’s screenwriting for Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon, so I was excited to see her directorial debut with the comedy Joy Ride, staring Hsu as well as Ashley Parkx Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. My god is this a funny film, I was in hysterics throughout. The film follows Audrey, who was adopted from China by a white American couple, as she travels to China with her best friend Lolo to close a business deal and try and find her birth mother. Obviously, things don’t go according to plan and it’s stupid, raunchy, irreverent but most importantly it has a heart, and I found myself crying at the big climax. We’re going through such a moment for Asian talent right now and it’s great to see a comedy with a predominantly Asian cast, written by Asians from an Asian perspective. There is space in every genre of movie for everyone and the more authentic stories we have across those genres, the better movies we’re gonna get!
So, what a lot of people had to say about this film was that it was too long. So going in I was expecting a slog of a 3 hours, stroking Martin Scorsese’s ego. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I didn’t feel the time at all, I was gripped for every minute of those three hours. Crime dramas are Scorsese’s bread and butter so he was really showing off what he does best, and it’s also a western, which I have a real soft spot for.
It feels a little bit weird to put a Disney live-action movie on this list, as I generally hate the idea of them and think they’re wholly unnecessary. However, I can’t deny the impact this one had on me. I’m kind of obsessed with it, I’ve watched it twice since I saw it and I feel compelled to listen to the soundtrack whenever I’m by the sea. I think a big credit goes to the lead performance from Halle Bailey. As I said in 
Every year it seems we get a big flashy biopic of a famous entertainer in the hopes it will win some Oscars. Bradley Cooper’s biography of Leonard Bernstein, which he’s written, directed and stars in is absolutely one of those projects, but the thing is it’s really good. I saw this movie as a brilliant in depth character study, focusing on Bernstein and his Wife played by Carey Mulligan. And those performances are what make this movie. We spend so long focusing in on those characters (often quite literally with the cinematography) throughout their long relationship, there’s really no room for either actor to falter, and of course they don’t. Cooper’s transformation into Bernstein is so studied and intricate, he’s in very strong running to win that overdue Oscar. Yes some people have taken issue with the use of prosthetics and I understand that, but to me it was not noticeable and didn’t detract at all from his performance. But Mulligan is who really stole the show for me as Felicia. She did such interesting work with her voice to emulate her while also doing all the other acting things she always does, and with many emotional scenes of anger, sadness and fear as well as romance, she’s really the emotional core of Bernsteins journey. If you wanna see two people act the hell out of a movie this really is one to see.
A lot of the films on this list are large flashy productions, but Past Lives is a very small quiet film which is what makes it so fascinating. It creates an intimate and close portrait of two childhood friends from Korea who reunite after years apart when one moved to America and the other stayed behind. What made this movie special to me was the way it explored human relationships. It unpacked how time changes things but also how we imprint and connect with people based on our cultural similarities. And I think it showed that we as humans often never really know who we are and what we want. The performances from Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are beautiful, as well as the way writer/director Celine Song uses the visuals and sound to evoke those feelings of memory and kinship. It’s one of those movies that makes you feel sad, but in a good way.
When they first announced they were making a Willy Wonka prequel I thought it was a horrendous idea and it would be terrible. After I saw a trailer I felt a similar way, and even after I heard people saying it was good I wasn’t convinced. So I was very surprised when I absolutely loved it. I love a movie musical, and especially the golden age of the genre where everything was big and loud. This movie is a lavish, high-production blowout musical with great songs. It also just got that Roald Dahl brand of whimsical silliness down, which is hard to do. The centerpiece is of course Timothée Chalamet as Wonka himself, who just exudes this naive quirky positivity that never gets too much but rather pulls you in and makes you believe in him. And every other actor is just hamming it up in the best way too. I just had a really fun time and it made me really hungry for some chocolate.
Jeremy Greer 