2025 Oscar Nominees (pt. I)

I’m Still Here

The Brutalist

Well well well, dear readers, I’m not sure if you can smell that wormy smell, but I think there’s Oscar bait in the air. That’s because this week we’re diving into the first round of 2025 Oscars Best Picture nominees—a tradition I have shaved down to just four films and two weeks’ worth of celebrating. As much as I love the theatrics and fashion and potential for controversy that coalesces into this yearly celebration of cinema, I find that I am less charmed and enthused by the Oscars the further that I delve into the world of film criticism. I’m not just disillusioned by the blatant snubbing and narrow range of perspectives often represented at the Oscars, but by the permanent popularity contest of it all. The members of the Academy vote for their besties in the industry, they vote for people just because they’ve been nominated before or they feel like someone is owed something for their careers as a whole, rather than based on the specific performance being recognized. As Bowling For Soup once said, high school never ends, and the established alliances and attitudes in this biz will prevail. Regardless of who’s in the running, hell or highwater or devastating mass-spread fires, the Oscars will happen just as they always have. I still love this nearly-100-year-old tradition of celebrating cinema, I even love rolling my eyes at every masturbatory acceptance speech and joke made by rich people, for regular people. At least we are free from the Jimmy Kimmel era of the Oscars, and this year’s ceremony will be hosted by one of my favorite comedians and hosts of all time: Conan O’Brien. Even if I roll my eyes, even if I have anxiety about the alarming number of nominations Emilia Pérez has, I will be watching the Oscars on March 2nd. Now, I’ve already seen most of the Oscar-nominated movies, so all that are left are the ones that I patently do not want to see. Why do I subject myself to watching movies I am disinterested in? Why, for you, dear reader! And so I can accurately and honestly critique and be the hater that I am meant to be. That being said, I was very pleasantly surprised by tonight’s first film—a movie that I barely heard about before the Oscars announcement was made, that still not enough people are speaking about, Walter Salles’ Brazilian feature, I’m Still Here.

Based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir of the same name, I’m Still Here follows the Paiva family during a terrifying and pivotal point of their lives, while living under the authoritarian military dictatorship in Brazil. Fernanda Torres plays the family matriarch, Eunice Paiva, who keeps a loving and happy home for her husband Rubens and their five children in Rio de Janeiro. Because I’d watched the groundbreaking queer film The Devil Queen, I was somewhat familiar with this horrifying 21-year period in Brazil, but I was eager to learn more about this topic. I’m Still Here felt eerily relevant, as we’re shown an idyllic, beachside paradise of a family home, filled to the brim with gorgeous, good-humored youth, juxtaposed against the increasingly-consistent sound of helicopters and the presence of military vehicles. The year is 1970: the music is grooving, the sun is shining on tanned bodies, the mood is high, and yet a feeling of dread is steadily creeping in. While the Paiva family and friends enjoy the day frolicking in their backyard beach, the eldest daughter, Vera, along with her friends, are stopped at a random police checkpoint. They are aggressively roughed around and accused of being communists, and only set free when one of Vera’s friends reveals that his father is an attorney. When Vera finally returns home, she is understandably a bit shaken. And after a Swiss ambassador is mysteriously kidnapped, Eunice wonders if they should tag along with their family friends, who plan to move to England. Political instability and social paranoia hang in the air, but Eunice’s husband Rubens, a former Brazilian congressman, wants to wait it out. What Eunice and the kids do not know, though, is that Rubens has been aiding expatriates for quite sometime, and the extreme far-right ghouls who are steadily taking over have their eyes on Rubens. On a normal, bright, sunny day in January of 1971, a group of armed civilians enter the Paiva home, and casually and confidently tell Rubens that he has to come with them. Rubens calmly acquiesces, changes his clothes, gives his wife a kiss, then leaves with a man, while the rest of the men stick behind to keep an eye on Eunice and her children. The next fifteen to twenty minutes of I’m Still Here follows this tense afternoon-into-evening, as these strange men with guns linger and glare and eat the food in the fridge—Eunice having no choice but to be a gracious hostess to a party of men who invited themselves in. The whole time, Eunice inquires about her husband’s whereabouts, but the men tell her nothing. They look her dead in the eye and say, “I don’t have that information.” Eventually, Eunice and one of her older daughters are forced to go with the men, while the housekeeper stays and watches the children. Eunice and her daughter are blindfolded and driven to an unknown location, where they are tortured and kept prisoner in the name of acquiring more intel. These brutish men show Eunice a binder full of photos of friends and strangers, and demand that she point them in the direction of other communists. Her daughter is let go after 24 hours, but Eunice is kept prisoner for a miserable, distressing twelve days, with little food and absolutely no answers given. Then, suddenly, Eunice is set free just as inexplicably as she was taken. She is now safe at home with her kids, but Rubens is still nowhere to be found. As the days and weeks go by without any answers, as the Paiva family is surveilled by more armed civilians, and Rubens’ surviving activist friends give little hope, you feel the same sense of overwhelming anxiety that Eunice feels. Eunice’s dedication to finding the truth about her husband’s disappearance never wavers, though, and it results in her going to law school and becoming one of the world’s few experts on Indigenous Rights in Brazil. The forced disappearance of Rubens Paiva is just one of thousands that this cruel regime carried out during this era, and my heart breaks thinking about all of the stories left untold or unknown by the world. It also makes me think of every innocent citizen in present-day Amerikkka, being abused and deported and separated from their families, simply because some guy said so. This chapter in Brazilian history is so shockingly dark, and to this day the Brazilian far-right tries to deny that any atrocities ever occurred. There was even a failed boycott of this film upon its release, because I’m Still Here dares to educate Brazilian and international audiences on this significant and tragic time. It was positively chilling to observe the events that take place in I’m Still Here, to witness the excessively-violent police force and emboldened civilians who harmed their neighbors out of desperation and greed. I was afraid this film would just be tragic and therefore depressing, but I cannot accurately describe how suspenseful and frightening this movie is, and by result, how much it lit a fire under my ass. While it is heartbreaking and horrifying to watch our government strip rights from the people they were elected to serve, we cannot sit idly by and just accept this regime and its fear tactics. They have shock and awe and the world’s ugliest billionaire’s money to play with, but the people have the power, we always have. Whether it be Brazil or America, we can learn from history, we can arm ourselves with knowledge and become acquainted with the warning signs of fascism. Films that can present the truth in entertaining and accessible ways have never been more necessary, as our attention spans and collective memories shrink and as we continue to repeat history. And to watch Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva take matters into her own hands, and seek justice in the face of militant conservativism, media censorship, and blatant abuse of power, was inspiring, to say the least. This film makes you feel as if you’re right alongside Eunice and her family as they bravely seek to prove that this kidnapping did, indeed, occur—despite the authorities’ attempted erasure of their own crimes. Fernanda Torres gives such a subtle, but raw and real performance, it knocked the wind out of me. I know I’m Still Here likely isn’t going to win Best Picture, but it would be amazing if it won Best International Feature, which it is nominated for as well. Even sitting in the worst seat in the whole theater (front row, far end) I was mesmerized by this film—by its ability to make its joy and hope just as palpable as its terror and despair. I’m Still Here is more like a horror movie than a drama, so I was gripped by this far more than I’d anticipated. I love when a historical film manages to hook me and keep me interested, but what happens when a totally fictionalized historical film, unbound by the restrictions of truth, is still boring? You get Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, that’s what happens.

Oops, I did it again. I watched a movie I knew I wouldn’t like, and then I didn’t like it. The Brutalist is nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, so I know that I am in the minority here, and that a great deal of people did enjoy all three and a half hours of this film. And I wanted so badly to like this one! I’m a big fan of Brady Corbet’s first film Vox Lux—a film that very few people even saw, let alone liked. Perhaps I’m less enthused by The Brutalist as a Jew who’s already seen a good deal of Holocaust films, as an American who’s already seen a good deal of industrious, inspiring, heartbreaking, “American dream” films, but the AI controversy associated with this film is what bummed me out the most. I’m not going to harp too much on this topic, mostly because I am anything but succinct when it comes to my fierce hatred of AI, but to learn that lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones had their voices altered with Respeecher to make their Hungarian accents sound more authentic (lmao), is just kind of lame and embarrassing. An actor’s job is to completely embody their role, to inject enough humanity and personality into their characters to make us root for them, or at least believe in their existence for a little while. If an actor is incapable of doing an accent well enough to be convincing, they probably shouldn’t be cast, or the director should believe in their cast enough to let them take a few creative liberties in terms of accuracy. Production designer Judy Becker also claimed that the film's architecture consultant used the AI software Midjourney to, “create three brutalist buildings quite quickly", but Brady Corbet has denied this claim. Corbet worked on this film for nearly six years, developing the script, casting and recasting, and dealing with various COVID shutdowns, so I understand why him and his fellow industry friends are so passionate about this great, big, long, fictional epic. It’s just a bummer to me! That AI was used at all, and that it ultimately amounted to a film that I, personally, found to be mid. But the Oscars loooove to reward mid films, and The Brutalist is one of the most buzzy mid films of this awards season. The film follows fictional Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and Bauhaus-trained architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), after he is separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy.) He emigrates to America through New York Harbor—his view of The Statue of Liberty is ominously, probably symbolically askew (and people shit on The Substance for being too heavy-handed with its metaphors, lmao)—and eventually in 1947 he lands in Philadelphia, where his cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola) lives. Atilla is fully Americanized now, with no sign of a Hungarian accent and his blonde shiksa wife on his arm, much to László’s surprise. László begins to work for Atilla’s furniture business, which leads him to the wealthy captain of industry Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce.) After a miscommunication and a botched job with the furniture company, Van Buren wants to hire László. This occurs after a lot of personal and economic turmoil, though, and László is now addicted to heroin, despondent and desperate, but still working in an effort to be with his family once again. Van Buren is charmed by László’s lack of ego, and is eager to have him design and construct an auditorium for him. Van Buren gives László a nicer place to stay, sets up the necessary paperwork to have László’s wife and niece come join him, and seems genuinely giddy about this project, but something feels off. Van Buren’s privileged posse and petulant children (Joe Alwyn and Stacy Martin) gawk at and fetishize László’s victimhood, badgering him with trivializing questions about the war and the camps and the trauma. Van Buren is seemingly plagued with severe mommy issues and inadequacy issues, and has put all of his hope into László, whom he has already placed on an impossible pedestal. On top of this, László’s modern, brutalist designs do not please Van Buren’s other contractors and workmen, and tensions begin to rise at the build site. Even when he is reunited with his wife and niece, László’s anxiety is high, and he can’t help feeling like his creative vision is being threatened by a desire to cut costs and avoid making aesthetic waves. I shan’t spoil anything else, not just because you should see it for yourself, but because I felt like much of the narrative was sacrificed to make room for its stunning, sprawling cinematography, which, even watching on my tiny screen at home, was fairly powerful. The camerawork and editing in The Brutalist does deserve praise, but I would’ve liked it if the story and characters were afforded just as much attention. My one critique of Vox Lux is that it was so over the top with its filming style and cinematography—the usage of sudden, random black and white photography, the usage of narration from a character who’s not even in the movie, intense and evocative shots that didn’t give us a ton of time to process what we’re seeing—and The Brutalist does give me the same vibe. It’s as if Corbet really wanted The Brutalist to be uber, uber cinematic, like a “proper go to the theater movie” to quote Harry Styles. It can be a bit much, and can feel like a distraction from the story (or lack thereof) but if the story is interesting, I can forgive all of these flashy choices. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t particularly interested in this story, and in the end what stood out to me wasn’t the architecture or the music or the performances, but how many handjob scenes are in this movie. There are three handjob scenes, that I counted, and while I don’t necessarily hold this against this film, it did seem kinda odd. And, I’m sorry to all the handjob enthusiasts out there, but this just seems like the least cinematic of all of the sex acts. Because I’d had a feeling that I wouldn’t love this film, I was not disappointed by The Brutalist, but I was rendered sleepy. I hope that doesn’t offend any lovers of this film, and I would love to know which one of the handjob scenes was your favorite (mine was the one where Adrien Brody cries.) I do think it’s cool that this film was shot entirely in VistaVision—a widescreen format that runs 35mm film horizontally through the camera to create eight perforation film frames, twice the size and resolution of standard films—and it is the first film in 61 years to be entirely shot this way. Love it or hate it, The Brutalist is currently the strongest contender for Best Picture, and Adrien Brody is everybody’s pick for Best Actor. But he’s already won an Oscar (for playing a Holocaust survivor)! And Timothée has already lost to Gary Oldman, I’d hate it if he also lost to an already-Oscar-winning actor who used performance-enhancing AI. But I won’t give up hope and I won’t stop watching the films nominated this year—even though the only two I have left seem like they will make me cry. Whether this is because they’re sad or terrible remains to be seen, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I hope you’ll cross it with me, friends. No matter how brutal it gets, I’m still here (watching movies.) Toodles!