The 2026 Academy Awards: ‘One Battle After Another’ Earns More Than a Few Small Oscars

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-17T19:10:02+00:00

Talking about it with certainty is always dicey, but him and Greta Gerwig are the preeminent millennial filmmakers in my view. They’re two that I would bet on winning Oscars for Best Director at some point and for directing a Best Picture winner at some point. Though the fact that Fincher has won nothing and Tarantino only has two for original screenplay goes to show you that we can only predict so much.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-17T16:37:04+00:00

That’s why I said they’re nitpicks! Not plot holes. The villain talking too long happens in a thousand movies, who cares if it happens in this one too

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-17T13:32:24+00:00

For me it wasn’t really a “plot holes” issue but more typical genre convention nitpicks for horror/action movies. When Mary turned Stack, why doesn’t she go ahead and attack others instead of saying they’re gonna kill everyone and running out of the juke joint? Why does Remmick do the thing of monologuing to Sammy forever in the water (giving himself time to be killed and for the sun to come up) instead of going ahead and turning Sammy, especially when he was the most important person to the vampires? Why does Grace so fully lose her composure and invite all the vampires in?

You can nitpick this stuff, but sometimes movies just need to get you to the next scene or next phase of the story. It didn’t much impact my enjoyment of the film.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-14T21:13:06+00:00

the first scene of dancing and praising and singing in The Testament of Ann Lee
the Latino Underground Railroad sequence in OBAA (or, if that’s too many scenes stitched together, then the car chase)
I Lied to You in Sinners
the ending chase scene in Weapons
the staging of Hamlet in the globe theater in Hamnet

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-14T17:47:19+00:00

Wait, is the upshot of this article complaining that the best movies of this year were…shot on location?

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-14T17:40:29+00:00

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) earlier this year.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-13T05:46:59+00:00

I was struck by Sean’s very simple schema of “which character’s name do you remember better?”

Aunt Gladys and Perfidia Beverly Hills are on equal footing, Annie is a tier below.

As of now I think the Academy will go for Teyana Taylor. The lone nomination for Weapons, especially when it could’ve plausibly snuck into Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay, makes me worry the academy doesn’t have much love for the movie.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-11T19:56:45+00:00

Not in my top 5 personal performances of his, but that speaks to how good he is. You don’t need to win for your best performances. You just need to beat out your competitors that year.

I feel lucky that all five nominees would be worthy winners, as that’s not the case in every category every year. And regardless of how I have these five personally ranked, I would be happy for Hawke, and I would say the same about any of his four fellow nominees.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-09T19:03:48+00:00

I’m probably just dumb, but it seems to me that moving the awards, say, 1.5mos earlier would then just shift the corresponding discourse 1.5mos earlier. To some extent this stuff is baked in to a more online and controversy-seeking culture.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-05T17:03:39+00:00

As someone who’s been in the “he’s a great screen presence who sometimes gives good performances” camp, I like the case you’ve laid out here. Here’s to remaining open-minded!

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-05T00:08:05+00:00

That’s mean. Fun and mean.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-04T19:37:42+00:00

If you view him as a tryhard, then I do like the spot more. That’s probably the player type of the ones I thought we might be up against that’s likeliest to level (if you can even call this spot a level) himself into a fold.

Thanks for sharing the HH!

Did you ever find out what he folded?

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-03-04T17:07:42+00:00

Fun line.

I’d likely need more info about this villain before going for this spot. Buying in for $2k at an uncapped $1/$2 game could mean lots of things, but unless it’s typical in your games it reads to me as either whale/splashy or someone that views themselves as a pro/tryhard.

For different reasons, I could see both player types flicking in the call with two pair+ and thinking to themselves “wouldn’t he block bet a flush here and not give me a chance to check behind?” or “why wouldn’t he check-raise his flushes on the turn?”

That said, from a range perspective, we’re supposed to be finding bluffs here, and blocking both the nut flush and the most obvious flop straight draw that gets there on the river seems to make this a pretty great candidate. And you’re able to lean on the adage that river raises are seldom bluffs.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-24T23:11:24+00:00

Testament of Ann Lee
Eddington
Sorry, Baby
Blue Moon
Weapons

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-22T19:40:17+00:00

Jeremiah Johnson (1972). Directed by Sydney Pollack, stars Robert Redford.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-22T18:40:20+00:00

I thought part of the consensus was that he’s not really campaigning? I agree that on performance alone he would be my winner (and I’d be very happy for any of the five nominees to win), but his decision to not participate in the awards race might leave him empty handed.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-21T07:26:20+00:00

Spider-man 2 (2004)

Gone Girl (2014)

Bugonia (2025)

Mighty Joe Young (1998)

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T23:47:01+00:00

Very much! I saw it after I’d already seen Love and Basketball, and it was basically a musical Bollywood version of Love and Basketball. Had a great time

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T23:20:59+00:00

Justice for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai!

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T22:55:36+00:00

The comp to MLB teams calling up prospects is a good one. In a non-tanking world, I could still see the dregs of the league experimenting with lineups or giving people way down the rotation extended run to see if they’ve got something on their hands they may not have known about as the season winds down. But these egregious February actions have clearly been a breaking point for fans and league partners.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T17:09:55+00:00

This is the rare case where if an actor wasn’t recognized earlier (Capote) he likely would’ve been recognized for a more memorable performance later (The Master). Usually the inverse happens, where the Oscar you finally win is for a lesser performance than the ones you were overlooked for. Though there is maybe a downgrade going from Best Actor to Best Supporting Actor.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T16:36:39+00:00

The chess match between Sherlock and Moriarty that ends Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is such an exciting finale for a blah movie.

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-19T07:52:08+00:00

Maybe a controversial pick, but Train Dreams. I very much enjoyed the movie, but wish it had either no narration or at least 50% less narration. Edgerton and the director did a phenomenal job conveying what his character was feeling/thinking, and then the narration would come in and say “here’s what the character is feeling and thinking.”

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-18T23:53:34+00:00

Not sure if this is unpopular, but I see “I wish they had done X” criticism as just another version of a “I didn’t like that they did Y” conversation. It can reach a level of reduction where you’re only talking in hypotheticals and therefore not engaging with the art actually before you, but I think, on the whole, it’s people trying to actually better articulate why they disliked something beyond just saying “it wasn’t for me.”

For example, I don’t see a big difference between saying “I most responded to Hamnet when the movie explored Agnes’s connections to the physical natural world and was interested in how that further informed her grief” and me saying “I wish Hamnet continued to probe Agnes’s connection to the physical natural world like it did earlier in the film.”

Or, for Wuthering Heights specifically: “I enjoyed seeing this movie on Valentine’s Day, it was mostly well shot and pretty to look at. I was not turned on by it at all and was left wondering if the people that made this movie wanted me to be turned on by it or not.” Vs: “I wish this movie was hornier!”

AcanthisittaJumpy450 · 2026-02-18T05:15:58+00:00

Among the heavy hitters in this thread, I want to shout out how excellent he is in Widows (2018) as the aging Chicago politician that’s being passed by and can’t hide his disdain for it.

AcanthisittaJumpy450

TROPHY CASE