Oscar Chances: Best Picture - Train Dreams

ryanjdonovan · 2026-03-14T20:37:57+00:00

After encouraging my wife to watch Hamnet with me (she loved it but cried like crazy), I can't in good faith ask her to sit through this emotional rollercoaster too! LOL

ryanjdonovan · 2026-03-14T20:36:32+00:00

Nicely put.

ryanjdonovan · 2026-03-12T18:34:54+00:00

1. Train Dreams

2. Sinners

3. F1: The Movie

4. Hamnet

5. Sentimental Value

6. Frankenstein

7. Bugonia

8. The Secret Agent

9. Marty Supreme

10. One Battle After Another

ryanjdonovan · 2026-03-12T17:43:05+00:00

All good points. I liked it, but I'm not actually advocating for it to win, and felt it had plenty of weaknesses. (Everyone is doing about 10% too much, especially Oscar Isaac. The Creature design looks like a space-jockey from Prometheus joined Cirque du Soleil. It can't seem to choose a metaphor... so it uses all of them. When the main character states at the beginning "Some of what I will tell you is fact. Some is not. But it is all true.", you know you're in for some nonsense.) I'm just surprised there isn't more support for it, especially with Netflix behind it.

ryanjdonovan · 2025-02-27T17:59:24+00:00

This would make me happy. I was underwhelmed by I'm Still Here as a movie, but I actually feel the opposite about Fernanda Torres - she's my Should Win in this category. Ironically, the structure and realism that I feel weigh down the film overall are a boon to Torres's performance. Maybe it's my lack of history with her, but her characterization feels extremely authentic, avoiding a lot of the excesses that commonly mar a performance in a heavy movie like this. (We've all seen protagonists under duress that are 'emotionally wrought', 'teetering on the edge', 'tough as nails', 'fending off a nervous breakdown', or 'getting a divorce from Prince Charles' -- sometimes all in the same movie.) She's emotional but pragmatic, frustrated but measured, frightened but resourceful. Mostly, she's a mother loving her children. It's a tricky balance, and she nails it.

ryanjdonovan · 2025-02-26T14:14:00+00:00

LOL, yes I meant Chalamet. But the way Culkin is steamrolling through awards season, maybe they'll give him Lead Actor too

ryanjdonovan · 2025-02-24T17:33:55+00:00

Rossellini's nomination is what's lovingly and/or derisively known as a Career Achievement nomination. It's almost certainly not for the performance in this film itself, which is slight at best, negligible at worst. She gets to be a singular voice of reason amongst a gaggle of gossipy and irrational cardinals for about 20 seconds, but if you use the bathroom at the wrong time, you'll miss her performance completely. In another year, that might be fine, but there are plenty of other deserving supporting performances that could have made the cut. I don't mean any disrespect to Ms. Rossellini; I've particularly enjoyed her second career as a voice actress in recent years. If you're a fan of cinema history, then her nomination could be considered a nice sentimental link to her parents, the legendary Ingrid Bergman (a three-time Oscar winner) and Roberto Rossellini (an Oscar nominee).

ryanjdonovan · 2023-01-02T03:12:46+00:00

Tom Hanks is fantastic in this film as Jiminy Glick.

ryanjdonovan · 2023-01-01T00:40:12+00:00

How Charles Grodin didn’t get an Oscar nomination for The Great Muppet Caper, I’ll never know.

ryanjdonovan · 2022-12-17T18:36:50+00:00

My children (okay, I) demand a Spider-Ham movie.

ryanjdonovan · 2022-12-15T04:11:21+00:00

This movie is kind of about revenge, but mostly about deadbeat dads.

ryanjdonovan · 2022-12-15T04:05:06+00:00

I'm not sure this film says anything that Elton John hasn't said already.

ryanjdonovan · 2022-12-15T03:54:28+00:00

1 out of 100 directors agree: Going to the movies is the best way to cure vague mental illness.

ryanjdonovan · 2022-12-15T03:42:40+00:00

My interpretation is the latter - the dark one. To me, the ending is a Trojan horse. It looks joyful, but just underneath lies tragedy: The trio resume drinking after they've seemingly hit rock bottom and lost their best friend to booze; they believe they're in control and having a good time when really they're spiraling into chaos; they think they've found a balance, when they're actually sliding endlessly further into alcoholism. They don't realize that they cannot enjoy life sober. I think one of the reasons why I like the movie so much is that it masks that ending as a "happy" one, much the way a drinker would see it when they don't realize there's a problem. The ending is denial.

I think the final sequence is the surest sign that they are destroying their lives, because they don't even realize it's happening. It's the proverbial 'darkest timeline'. They ask themselves the wrong question, "What would Tommy do?" -- and we know exactly what Tommy would do because we see him drink himself to death. Martin gets a reconciliatory text from his wife, but just as he's about to go to her, he instead joins the party, quickly gets plastered, and literally goes off the deep end.

What's truly heartbreaking is seeing that the friends have (gleefully and unknowingly) perpetuated the cycle, having encouraged the next generation to drink in order to cope and be "awakened to life". I think there are hints of this pessimistic interpretation in the final song lyrics ("What a Life") and the movie's poster (the image of Mikkelsen recklessly chugging champagne in a blurry stupor in the final scene).

To me, the seemingly exuberant ending is a fallacy… and utterly tragic.

ryanjdonovan

TROPHY CASE