Academy Awards 2019: How good are the best picture nominees?

As the Oscars nominations are announced, we take a look at the eight films up for best picture.

The Favourite

The latest from director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) garnered five stars from our critic Nicholas Barber, who described it as “a filthy, violent and outrageous period comedy that drips with bad language and worse behaviour, and will appal anyone who is expecting a more conventional royal drama” – yet is also “strangely touching”. Set in the palace of Queen Anne (played by Olivia Colman, who has received a best actress Oscar nomination for her role) at the dawn of the 18th Century, “this juicy tale of political and sexual intrigue… bends every rule of the carriages-and-country-houses costume drama”. Its “deft script” and “universally superb performances” ensure that none of the characters – including two schemers played by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, both of whom have just been nominated for a best ing actress Oscar – are one-dimensional. And while it could be mistaken for a bawdy pantomime, Barber argues it’s actually a kind of tragedy: “If its heroines could only work together instead of against each other, who knows what they might achieve?”

Green Book

Based on actual people and events, the story of a black pianist (Mahershala Ali, nominated for best ing actor) who hires a white nightclub bouncer (Viggo Mortensen, nominated for best actor) as protection when he tours the segregated American South in 1962 only received two stars from our critic Caryn James. She argued that “only someone who has never viewed a movie before… will fail to see where this odd-couple, buddy-comedy road movie is going.” The film’s stars make Green Book “watchable and often entertaining, despite its predictability and glaring flaws” – according to James, “Ali is so strong a presence that he can convey depth and thoughtfulness with a single glance, almost delivering a character where the screenplay doesn’t”. But that isn’t enough to save what James describes as “a warm bath of clichés”: instead, she argues, Green Book “is proof that a film can be awards-ready without actually being very good”.

Black Panther

The first superhero movie to be nominated for best picture was also the biggest film of 2018 at the US box office – and was praised by Barber for having a “radical vision in mind – more radical, indeed, than that of any previous Hollywood studio blockbuster”. Director and co-writer, Ryan Coogler (Creed), tells the Marvel story of Wakanda, an ultra-modern utopia hidden in Africa as “an Afrocentric Bond movie” that turns into a sci-fi fantasy. In doing so, Barber argues, he “has taken every genre in which black characters are traditionally sidelined, and then, with considerable flair and boldness, he’s combined those genres and put black characters right at their heart”. With a majority black cast, the blockbuster is a game changer, says Barber. “Ask yourself: when was the last time any feature film, whether or not it was made by a Hollywood studio, posited that an African country might be the happiest, most prosperous and most scientifically advanced place on Earth?”

Roma

Dedicated to writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s real-life nanny, Roma is “beautiful in every way” argues James, who gave the film five stars. Playing the maid of a family in Mexico City during the 1970s, Yalitza Aparicio (who had never acted before and who has just received a best actress nomination) “displays the layers of emotion that the character grapples with as she finds herself pregnant, then abandoned by her boyfriend” – emerging as “both an ordinary woman and an extraordinary screen heroine, resilient and unsentimental”. Cuarón (who has just received four personal Oscar nominations as producer, director, writer and cinematographer) creates “glorious, complex images” and “moments of everyday naturalism”: he “has taken his own memories, turned them into a dazzling fiction, and handed them to viewers like a gift”. The first Netflix film to be up for best picture, Roma lives up to its hype, believes James, describing it as “simply the most exquisite and artistic film of the year”.

Blackkklansman

“Probably Spike Lee’s best film in years,” is Emma Jones’s verdict on the true-life tale of an African-American policeman and his Jewish colleague infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. “Well-structured, well-scripted, and despite its subject matter, often extremely humorous”, it’s also stylish – “a homage to that suave 1970s African-American detective Shaft”. Lee “clearly feels that the way to deal with racism is to laugh at it” – but the humour doesn’t overwhelm the subject, with moments where the tone changes, such as when Lee contrasts the Black Power and White Power movements. “It’s a blockbuster of an American film,” argues Jones.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Barber gave the Freddie Mercury biopic three stars – but singled out Rami Malek’s performance as Queen’s charismatic frontman for praise. The film “looks like a daytime soap opera and it runs through the same chord progression as every previous rock biopic”, according to Barber. And the 12A / PG13 certificate has drawn complaints when, as Barber points out, “in reality, its hero was so debauched that he could have given Casanova lessons”. Yet the crowd-pleaser does acknowledge this – “Mamma Mia, it ain’t” – and the star deserves his best actor nomination: “Malek makes the role his own: he seems to be possessed by both the pouting, preening showman Mercury was in public and the sulky lost soul he could be in private”.

A Star is Born

Another three stars for Bradley Cooper’s remake of the 1937 film of the same name – the fourth remake since the original, which won the Academy Award for best picture (or ‘outstanding production’, as it was then known). According to Barber, “A Star Is Born puts terrific care and attention into depicting the night when the lovers meet and mosey around town together, but after that it flicks cursorily through the rest of their professional and personal lives as if it were glancing at someone else’s holiday photos. It never looks closely at who they are or what they want.” Yet the film hits some high notes, among them the performance of Lady Gaga (nominated for a best actress Oscar) – who is “so appealing, open and down-to-earth in her first major role that she deserves her pick of whichever gangster movies and romantic comedies come along. If nothing else, a film star is born.”

Vice

The Dick Cheney biopic from The Big Short director Adam McKay also received three stars from Barber, who argues that there is “plenty of lampooning of male stupidity and over-confidence” as well as “postmodern gimmickry” like “fantasy sequences, fourth wall-breaking monologues, ironic voiceovers and even a burst of cod-Shakespearean dialogue”. Yet Vice is “more focused and engrossing than McKay’s last film because it concentrates on the life of one intriguing, almost legendary man”. Christian Bale (just nominated for a best actor Oscar) undertakes one of his trademark transformations as Cheney – “you soon stop noticing that Bale is buried under layers of latex and accept that he has slowly but surely turned into an enormous egg with glasses perched on the top” – while Sam Rockwell (who’s received a best ing actor nomination) is “especially entertaining as a goofy Dubya”. It might deliver “sustained volcanic rage”, but McKay’s approach offers limited insight into its leading character, according to Barber. “Vice, for all its wit and flair, comes to reveal the limitations of McKay’s flashy and splashy brand of satirical non-fiction.”

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