Once Upon A Time in Hollywood… Ain’t that the truth.

Oscar Winners 2020

The Best Picture upset (most had it as a serious contender, but a long shot as a winner due to the dual nomination with Best International Feature and that one being in the bag) can only be a good thing for the ceremony, a further strike against predictability (whether or not it was a response to Green Book and the ongoing campaigning over representation among nominees). While some are grumbling about dual Best Picture category wins, anyone familiar with the BAFTAs is more than used to that sort of thing. Most of the rest of the biggies, director aside (although, not unexpected), were widely expected, so it also means that, in an era where the race is scrutinised to death, that it hasn’t exhausted itself long before the ceremony.

And the ceremony? I only caught the highlights, very fortunately by the look of some of those musical numbers. Some decent Chris Rock gags (“Jeff Bezos is so rich, he got divorced and he’s still the richest man in the world"; “Marty, I gotta tell you, I loved the first season of The Irishman”). Bring back the MC, though. Don’t act like you don’t want one. Be honest that no one has the cojones to brave the Twitter storm; picking the right one can mean ratings, apart from anything else.

I picked 14 of the winners this time, fairly par for my slack course since I started recording my guesswork in 2013 (they go: 11, 16, 16, 15, 14, 16, 15).

Best Picture

Winner: Parasite (Kwak Sin-ae and Bong Joon-ho)

I guessed: 1917

“We never imagined this to ever happen.” Nor did 90% of the Oscar pundits. I’m relieved it wasn’t 1917, which represents Hollywood at its most unremarkable and self-satisfied (technical achievements aside).

Best Director

Winner: Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)

I guessed: Sam Mendes (1917)

Result! It also underlines that there was enough solidarity behind the Best Picture that it wasn’t merely a flukey result of the preferential vote (I also think Bong’s a much better director than he is a writer, but that’s true of 99% of directors who are directors first).

Best Actor

Winner: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

I guessed: Joaquin Phoenix

What kind of medications is Joaquin on? Not ones you want to take just before you go up on stage. You certainly wouldn’t want to get into a staring match with him. That said, I can’t fault most of what he had to say.

Best Actress

Winner: Renee Zellweger (Judy)

I guessed: Renee Zellweger

Was Renee bored of all the awards by this point? She seemed to be forgetting her speech as she delivered it. One of those acting wins (others include Jeremy Irons, Jessica Lange, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges) for a film no one bothered seeing.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

I guessed: Brad Pitt

Inevitable. Brad’s speechwriters deserve an award for their work this season.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

I guessed: Laura Dern

Gushing with the best of them (“Some say never meet your heroes, but I say, if you’re really blessed, you get them as your parents”), but mentioning Bruce in an acceptance speech is always a positive.

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Parasite ((Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won)

I guessed: Parasite

There’s discussion one whether Bong’s tally should count as equalling Walt’s (since International Feature goes to a country). I think it should. I mean, who’s taking the thing home?

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi)

I guessed: Little Women

I had the winner as my interesting choice, because Taika threw out the book, rather than because it’s a good screenplay (it stinks). So Waititi’s officially part of the establishment now. He didn’t even take the piss in his speech.

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Toy Story 4

I guessed: Klaus

Outrageous that this merely decent fourquel won when at least two others were far superior. I guessed a Pixar win, only in the wrong category.

Best Cinematography

Winner: 1917 (Roger Deakins)

I guessed: 1917

I don’t know, you go an eternity of nominations without a sniff of a win, and then the statuettes won’t stop coming.

Best Production Design

Winner: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh)

I guessed: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

So Quentin’s film takes home two Oscars. Two more than Marty’s.

Best Costume Design

Winner: Little Women (Jacqueline Durran)

I guessed: Little Women

Greta has to make do with a win in the frocks department. Very gender-stereotyped, that.

Best Make Up and Hairstyling

Winner: Bombshell (Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker)

I guessed: Bombshell

Let’s be clear: this was not for the work done on Nicole Kidman.

Best Film Editing

Winner: Ford v Ferrari (Andrew Buckland and Michael McCusker)

I guessed: Parasite

Can’t argue with that.

Best Sound Editing

Winner: Ford v Ferrari (Donald Sylvester)

I guessed: Ford v Ferrari

See above.

Best Sound Mixing

Winner: 1917 (Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson)

I guessed: Ford v Ferrari

I had the 1917 sound award in the wrong category.

Best Visual Effects

Winner: 1917 (Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler and Dominic Tuohy)

I guessed: 1917

James Corden. James Corden. James Corden. Will that banish him?

Best Original Score

Winner: Joker (Hildur Guõnadóttir)

I guessed: Joker

All women are superheroes? Yeah, lap that nonsense up. Hildur had sure been prepped too.

Best Original Song

Winner: Rocketman (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, Elton John

I guessed: Rocketman

Elton’s second Oscar.

Best International Feature

Winner: Parasite (South Korea)

I guessed: Parasite

Wouldn’t it have been funny if hadn’t won this but still won Best Picture? No? Okay, then.

Best Documentary Feature

Winner: American Factory (Steve Bognar, Julia and Jeff Reichert)

I guessed: Honeyland

Everyone was saying American Factory, but I just wasn’t having it. Netflix got two Oscars, then.

Best Animated Short

Winner: Hair Love (Matthew A Cherry & Karen Rupert Toliver)

I guessed: Kitbull

The mistake of thinking, because you didn’t think much of something, it surely won’t win (Jojo Rabbit syndrome). Still, a flawlessly on-message speech, that one.

Best Documentary Short

Winner: Learning to Skate in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) (Carol Dysinger and Elena Andreicheva)

I guessed: St. Louis Superman

I should have gone with the received wisdom there too.

Best Live Action Short

Winner: The Neighbors’ Window (Marshall Curry)

I guessed: Nefta Football Club

I wouldn’t call anything in this category an upset, but I don’t think The Neighbor’s Window was generally predicted.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Star Trek Beyond (2016) (SPOILERS) The odd/even Star Trek failure/success rule seemed to have been cancelled out with the first reboot movie, and then trodden into ground with Into Darkness (which, yes, I quite enjoyed, for all its scandalous deficiencies). Star Trek Beyond gets us back onto more familiar ground, as it’s very identifiably a “lesser” Trek , irrespective of the big bucks and directorial nous thrown at it. This is a Star Trek movie that can happily stand shoulder to shoulder with The Search for Spock and Insurrection , content in the knowledge they make it look good.

He's not in my pyjamas, is he?

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (SPOILERS) By rights, Paul Mazursky’s swinging, post-flower-power-gen partner-swap movie ought to have aged terribly. So much of the era’s scene-specific fare has, particularly so when attempting to reflect its reverberations with any degree of serious intent. Perhaps it’s because Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker (also of The Monkees , Alex in Wonderland and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! ) maintain a wry distance from their characters’ endeavours, much more on the wavelength of Elliott Gould’s Ted than Robert Culp’s Bob; we know any pretensions towards uninhibited expression can’t end well, but we also know Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have to learn the hard way.

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998) An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar. Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins , and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch , in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whet

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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