Oscars 2025: Forced to see Sean Baker happy
march 3 2025
*contains minor spoilers for Anora
I want everyone to stop talking about the oscars forever so that it dies forever. but my beliefs don't align with my actions (and neither do yours), so I'm going to write about the oscars.
anora was bad. a complete unknown was a music biopic. conclave was alright. dune 2 was good. the substance was alright. I didn't watch the other ones.
Nosferatu was the best thing to come out of this mediocre year for film but you know.
I forgot wicked even happened until the opening. I didn't watch it but I think the hype was a psyop.
conan was a more tolerable choice of a host than usual, that might be the best thing I have to say… other than that, I have no investment in celebrities; I also don't have any negative feelings about the actor/actress categories because I don't care.
finally, anora. I wasn't suprised, and I'd exhausted all my scorn for the film in the period after its release so I wasn't especially angry, either. anora was fun to watch, but nothing more than that; I just started to resent it after watching men grossly overrate it because they could disguise their hard ons for mikey madison as feminism.
anora as a character is so dissatisfying. I couldn't be convinced that she's incapable of having any relationships with other women at all, and it's too obvious to me that it comes from the director's disinterest in the character beyond her relationships with men. I was waiting the entire movie for more of her sister, only for anora's only significant interactions with other women to add up to (1) a jealous cat fight and (2) ivan's domineering mother. sean baker insists he's a feminist for speaking to sex workers, but he isn't doing anything material for women. what about the actresses watching a woman once again only succeed in the industry after offering up her body? it says something about the reality of your feminism when hollywood is ready to accept you with 6 nominations, 5 awards, and lots and lots of money.
that's all my cope for now.
