The Wild Robot, my favorite film of 2024, nominated for three Academy Awards!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest! The game is simple but time-consuming: after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announces their latest nominations for the Academy Awards, I make plans to catch the nominees in every category, 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. They have the Super Bowl; I have the Oscars.

I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short released between 2021 and 2023 — running the full gamut from the highest-priority Best Picture contenders down to the mediocre flicks with negative Tomatometer scores that show up only for Best Original Song. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Oppenheimer, and every Best Picture nominee from 1984 to the present, many of which were memorable and worth the hunt. I’ve enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets.

Sometimes I have to wait for smaller films to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re available on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes my only option is a streaming rental for a few dollars more. For extreme cases and a bit of savings, I used to turn to Redbox kiosk rentals, but alas, as of last July they are no more. I go wherever the Quest takes me, while my wife Anne waits patiently at home or in another room, like Penelope looking forlornly at her calendar and wondering why that pigheaded Odysseus insists on stopping at every single time-wasting Mediterranean island in his way.

Last year 53 features and shorts were nominated in all, and I achieved 100% completion by deadline. I saw the 53rd, Io Capitano, the very weekend of the ceremony itself. I can be rather tenacious about this, and have to be especially patient with the same holdout category every year, the Best International Feature nominees. They’re traditionally the final works to open in our market because their distributors are typically the smallest and the most surprised whenever AMPAS deems them worthy of the spotlight. And there’s no guarantee Indy will rank highly enough in their hastily assembled limited-release rollout to hook me up in time. As I said, last year I cut it really close.

Can I complete my scorecard on time for the second year in a row? To be honest, I had a better head-start last year. Of this year’s 50 nominated works, I’ve already watched the following ten in theaters and written about nine of them in previous entries:

• Alien: Romulus
• Anora
• The Brutalist
• Dune: Part Two
• Inside Out 2
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Nosferatu
• A Real Pain
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

(I just saw The Brutalist in theaters this past Tuesday. Its review is on my immediate to-do list!)

I caught the following three nominees on home video in 2024 and wrote about them as part of a single 4200-word marathon:

• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Maria

Since January 1st I’ve streamed two more films that tested Oscar-positive after the fact. Doing my homework early sounded like a good idea at the time and (mostly) paid off.

Those value-added results:

* Gladiator II (Paramount+): WERE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED ENOUGH THE FIRST TIME? Twenty-four years after his grandiose Best Picture win, Ridley Scott returns to the Roman Empire for another Colosseum battle royale with increasingly improbable opponents (super-monkeys! a rhino rider! sharks!), demented brother-emperors (Kraven‘s Fred Hechinger and Stranger Things‘ Joseph Quinn, especially histrionic), a mighty prologue of Napoleon-scale warfare (the only good parts of that film), returning cast members Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi (who’s a year younger that Scott), Maximus’ son recast with Aftersun‘s Paul Mescal, and maybe 10% fewer historical inaccuracies. Too aware of his un-Crowe stature, Mescal’s Numidia-raised prodigal gets by on agility, tenacity, and an ire with ever-shifting targets. The indisputable ruler of this sequel is Denzel Washington, still fired up on Tragedy of Macbeth energy as a former slave risen through the ranks to become the Roman Don King, with his sights aiming ever higher. As a slam-bang popcorn flick in period dress-up (source of its sole Oscar-nom), it held my attention despite the absurdities, though Anne insists Denzel would’ve been better served headlining a Septimius Severus biopic.

* Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix): The world’s greatest man/dog stop-motion-animated team is back! (No, not Davey and Goliath.) Once again the cheese is prized, the Rube Goldberg inventions are primed, the puns are penned, and the Academy nods toward Aardman yet again for a potential fourth statuette for creator/co-director Nick Park’s mantel. Anyone who’s loved their past works will appreciate this direct sequel to their second short The Wrong Trousers (which turned 30 last year!), in which their old foe Feathers McGraw, still behind bars, concocts a scheme to vex Our Heroes involving lawn gnomes, the local zoo, and Wallace’s own contraptions. None of the Hitchcockian Trousers flair is in evidence and some subplot fluff involving the local constabulary merely stretch this to the 80-minute mark so it can qualify for Animated Feature honors rather than compete in Best Animated Short yet again. They needn’t have, really. On the bright side, it’s cracking new Wallace and Gromit!

…

Per MCC annual tradition, I plan to catch all the Animated Shorts and the Live-Action Shorts in their annual Shorts.TV theatrical runs in mid-February:

• Beautiful Men
• In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Magic Candies
• Wander to Wonder
• Yuck!
• A Lien
• Anuja
• I’m Not a Robot
• The Last Ranger
• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

That leaves me with 25 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 two documentary categories) are:

• The Apprentice
• Better Man
• Black Box Diaries
• A Complete Unknown
• Death by Numbers
• A Different Man
• Elton John: Never Too Late
• Flow
• The Girl with the Needle
• I Am Ready, Warden
• I’m Still Here
• Incident
• Instruments of a Beating Heart
• Memoir of a Snail
• Nickel Boys
• No Other Land
• The Only Girl in the Orchestra
• Porcelain War
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig
• September 5
• Sing Sing
• The Six Triple Eight
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• The Substance
• Sugarcane

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 keep putting up with me!