Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Everything Everywhere All at Once, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

Starting in 2020 I upgraded to the Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, in which I see how many nominees I can watch in all categories before the big ceremony. Thanks to the expansion of streaming services I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short for the years 2021 and 2022, even in minor categories like Best Original Song. I enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets. Sometimes I have to wait for smaller nominees to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes I go for a streaming rental. In extreme cases a Redbox disc rental might be warranted. I go wherever the Quest takes me.

Of this year’s nominees, I’ve already watched the following ten in theaters and written about them in previous entries:

• Barbie
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Creator
• Godzilla Minus One
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Since January 1st I’ve seen two more in theaters that need their MCC entries finished ASAP:

• American Fiction
• The Color Purple

I caught the following five nominees on home video in 2023 and wrote about them as part of a single 4800-word marathon:

• Elemental
• The Holdovers
• Maestro
• May December
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Since January 1st I’ve streamed five more films that tested Oscar-positive after the fact, then threw in a sixth last night. Doing my homework early sounded like a good idea at the time and (mostly) paid off. Results varied as follows:

* Anatomy of a Fall (Vudu rental). Every year the critics fly at least one film below the populist radar and into the awards limelight, where they infiltrate my sometimes shamefully narrow bandwidth and bring balance to my amateur art-patronage. Such is the case with this French courtroom drama about a German woman (Sandra Hüller, who also headlines fellow Best Picture nominee The Zone of Interest) accused of pushing her French husband off the roof of their mountain chalet while their son was out on a walk. Writer/director Justine Triet avoids American legal-potboiler cliches as the authorities scrutinize every facet of the family’s life to the point of marrow-level lab dissection (the title isn’t a lazy Preminger homage) and speaking to those awful situations where so many unknowable factors require the observer’s perception of what really happened is a decision rather than a discernment. Also, our nominee for the Best Dog of the Year goes to Messi, the border collie who plays family companion Snoop and who (I Am Not Making This Up) won the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted “Palm Dog” award. If you’re hung up on all the ambiguity, keep your eye on Snoop. A dog knows.

* The Eternal Memory (Paramount+). I’m shocked the Academy overlooked the Michael J. Fox documentary, but we caught one that did make the cut. This bittersweet piece from Chilean director Maite Alberdi (whom we last saw with 2021’s also-nominated The Mole Agent) charts the ups and downs of an aging power couple of sorts — TV journalist Augusto Góngora, whose career dates back to the Pinochet regime; and actress Paulina Urrutia, who was elevated to the position of Minister of Culture and the Arts once democracy took hold. Fast-forward a few decades: Góngora is in the throes of Alzheimer’s and only really has Urrutia to guide him through the twilight years. They’re both super lovable and it’s heartbreaking to see her limits tested as his consciousness flits from keenly jocular to sudden befuddlement and back again, alternating with clips of their glory days, especially through the most turbulent of times. It is also the end credits’ sad duty to inform us Góngora passed away in 2023, making any and every souvenir of his very self and his contributions critical to make known to those like us who didn’t.

* Killers of the Flower Moon (Netflix). In a sweeping epic 25 minutes longer than Avengers: Endgame, Martin Scorsese avails himself of today’s cinematic tech to spotlight another wave of toxic white criminals who ransacked the lives and property of less powerful people to build their warped vision of an American empire. Once again this means centering the bad guys that his A-lister buds always love to play, though a more traditional and satisfying structure would’ve put Lily Gladstone up front as the Osage woman whose family suffers the most casualties, which weigh immeasurably upon her nonetheless unbreakable will. But nope, the camera saves all its most special hugs for Leo as an impressionable thug who’s five IQ points short of being Forrest Gump’s pa, because without the team-up star-megawattage of DiCaprio and DeNiro, this might not have been made in the first place…or if it had been, it would’ve had maybe one-one thousandth the budget at best. I still might’ve preferred that version.

* Nimona (Netflix). It’s been wild watching ND Stevenson escalate from the comics world (Lumberjanes, Sleepy Hollow) to TV showrunning (Netflix’s cutely brawny She-Ra reboot) to feature-film animation. Now here we are with a loose, blustery graphic-novel self-adaptation about a sometimes aggravating rogue changeling with a murky past (voiced by Chloë Grace Moritz) who chooses the sidekick’s life alongside a future-kingdom’s knight (Riz Ahmed) framed for murdering the queen. Viewers sensitive to, er, “culture war” issues may blink at one or two of its core romantic entanglements that are very much Of The Times, but it’s also a spry, surprise-packed, EXPLOSIONS-forward reaffirmation for any lonesome outsider who’s ever drowned in so many crowds that their anguish convinced them they were the irredeemable villain.

* Past Lives (Vudu rental). Every year the critics fly at least one film below the populist radar and into the awards limelight, and it’s a rare year for lightning to strike twice. 24 years ago a South Korean boy and girl have their friendship torn asunder when the girl’s family moves to America. 12 years later the internet is a thing that reconnects them in ways that were once the stuff of sci-fi. Then they let another 12 years slide and see what happens. Greta Lee (Russian Doll) is no timid rom-com quarry as the now-grown NYC writer who gracefully navigates the awkward discussions of What Might Have Been, What Could Be, and, most importantly to her, What Is. Writer/director Celine Song shows what can happen when we do or don’t allow tears, and helps us accept – despite our incredulity – that sometimes people love who they love for deeper reasons that are none of our business, even/especially if their heart’s desire is a schlub who’s named his literary magnum opus Boner.

* Society of the Snow (Netflix). Remember when Hollywood adapted the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team who survived for 72 wintry days after a plane crash stranded them in the Andes under the most unthinkable conditions? And the lead Uruguayan was Ethan Hawke? The whole team’s back, 100% less white, retaining far more of their real-life names, and menaced by state-of-the-art effects and Oscar-nominated Makeup and Hair-Styling (mostly for accurate ravaging by the elements). With a resume ranging from The Impossible to Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom to Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, director J.A. Bayona retells their story – from its uniquely terrifying plane crash to subdued yet gripping survival horror – powerfully, sensitively, and without a trace of the sensationalism that always distorts a First-Worlder’s expression whenever they crack wise about post-disaster cannibalism.

…

Per MCC annual tradition, I plan to catch all five Animated Shorts and the other four Live-Action Shorts (plus a Henry Sugar big-screen encore!) in their annual Shorts.TV theatrical runs in mid-February. That leaves me with 21 more nominees to go before I sleep. Some are still in theaters, some proprietary to specific services, some available for rental, and some in unwatchable limbo as of this writing, which is not cool and hopefully temporary. Those other nominees on my to-do list (including the Documentary Short Features) are:

• The ABCs of Book Banning
• American Symphony
• The Barber of Little Rock
• Bobi Wine: The People’s President
• El Conde
• Flamin’ Hot
• Four Daughters
• Golda
• Io capitano
• Island In Between
• The Last Repair Shop
• Napoleon
• Nai Nai & Wai Po
• Nyad
• Perfect Days
• Robot Dreams
• Rustin
• The Teachers’ Lounge
• To Kill a Tiger
• 20 Days in Mariupol
• The Zone of Interest

So: Oscar Quest has begun! Updates as they occur, only here on MCC! And maybe on social media if I’m in the mood! And in our living room if you’re my wife and prone to putting up with me!