General Thoughts

I’m looking forward to watching the show at the Academy’s east coast party at the Rainbow Room, not at its west coast party at the Academy Museum, where I understand they finally found a few feet of space to acknowledge the Jews who founded this business and the Academy. Everything is upside down. I mean, as far as the show, I’d rather not see the song and dance stuff — that’s Broadway — or even these hosts [Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes], who are notorious for their ‘wokeness.’ Ricky Gervais would have been better, and people would have tuned in.

Best Picture

I loved The Duke — and even nominated Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in their categories — and I hoped it would make it in here, but it didn’t. I thought this was one of the weaker years for best picture. I always ask myself, “Which movie would I want to see again?” You know, like the classic movies of the past? And this year, the answer was none. I didn’t even rank six of them. I hated the [The Power of the] Dog movie, except for its cinematography. It was so predictable and not subtle — you knew right away that Benedict Cumberbatch was a latent homosexual, the brother was a wimp, and the son was a little demented — unlike Brokeback Mountain, where the characters were so finely developed and interesting. In a way, I understood what Sam Elliott meant. I didn’t like West Side Story, which I call “Woke Side Story.” Individual pieces of the puzzle worked — I don’t think there was a bad performance — but the puzzle pieces don’t connect together.

I think he made a big mistake by focusing on the places that were going to be destroyed instead of on the people — and, as an immigrant myself who came to New York, I can tell you that new immigrants don’t have beautiful three-bedroom apartments like they have in the movie, and I’ve also never seen a store like Rita Moreno’s. And why did they take “There’s a Place for Us” away from the young people? It’s unbelievable. I was thinking, “Yeah, there’s a place for you — in the cemetery up the hill.” Aside from Bradley Cooper, who was pretty amazing and who I nominated, Licorice Pizza was a mess. The kid stays 15 forever, and he’s a fantastic entrepreneur? What was the movie about? Don’t Look Up was just a parade of a whole bunch of celebrities; Mark Rylance, one of my favorite actors, looked bored as hell. The best part of the movie, for me, was at the end, when the raptor eats Meryl Streep.

I admit I’m not a Dune-ie — I never read the book — but I went and saw it at an IMAX, and to me, it was just boring except for when Javier Bardem came in, and I didn’t care about anybody at all. Fabulous special effects, though. After Nightmare Alley, I just wanted to go out and have a drink — it’s beautifully shot, but, I mean, that’s the most depressing movie, and I didn’t care about anybody in that movie, either. Drive My Car was wonderful — it could have been a lot shorter, but I still liked it enough to nominate it. Nobody is going to go see it, but the writer/director was very clever about how he wove together the three stories, and I was deeply touched by it. CODA is like an old Hallmark Movie — it’s a lovely story, and it makes you feel good. Belfast was such a human story — wonderfully told, with great acting, so touching — and I almost voted for it. But King Richard was the story that stayed in my mind. Really inspiring. It was a real surprise for me.

VOTE: (1) King Richard, (2) Belfast, (3) CODA, (4) Drive My Car

Best Director

I thought the director of King Richard [Reinaldo Marcus Green] did an exceptional job and should have been nominated. I wasn’t a fan of what Steven Spielberg did with West Side Story. Paul Thomas Anderson is a wonderful director, but I don’t know what he was doing with this movie [Licorice Pizza]. The Drive My Car director did a wonderful job, although I think the movie didn’t have to be three hours long — did we really need to see all those rehearsals and stuff? The big hoopla about The Power of the Dog was because a woman made this movie; if a man had made this movie, it would have been treated as just kind of average. I thought Kenneth told the story of Belfast in such a beautiful way. It was a story of the heart.

VOTE: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Best Actor

Javier Bardem is one of my favorite actors, but not in this [Being the Ricardos]; I’d rather have spent the time tuning in to an old episode of I Love Lucy. Denzel Washington is a wonderful actor — I’m a big fan of his — but I was so incredibly bored by [The Tragedy of] Macbeth. It was all stagey. I like Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor, but not in this; I preferred him in the cat movie [The Electrical Life of Louis Wain]. To me, Tick, Tick … Boom! [for which Andrew Garfield is nominated] was too theatrical; it should be a Broadway musical, not a film. I voted for [King Richard’s] Will Smith. I never thought of him as a “best actor” until this performance, which was a true transformation. I was knocked out by him.

VOTE: Will Smith, King Richard

Best Actress

Renate Reinsve was wonderful [in The Worst Person in the World] and should have been nominated. The performances of all of the nominated women were stunning, but I thought that [Parallel Mothers’] Penelope Cruz gave the best performance of the year, and her movie should have been nominated too.

VOTE: Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers

Best Supporting Actor

[CODA’s] Troy Kotsur was wonderful — I loved seeing a deaf person swear and cuss like that — but I thought there was more nuance and shading in Ciaran Hinds’ performance as the grandfather [in Belfast]. It’s very hard to do what he did.

VOTE: Ciarán Hinds, Belfast

Best Supporting Actress

[Belfast’s] Judi Dench is always great, but she just didn’t have enough to do in this movie. I like Kirsten Dunst’s work a lot, but not in this one [The Power of the Dog] — it was just weeping and drinking and weeping and drinking. [King Richard’s] Aunjanue Ellis was extraordinary — very real and very believable.

VOTE: Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

Best Adapted Screenplay

CODA is just a lovely little story, which I remembered more than the others.

VOTE: CODA

Best Original Screenplay

I don’t like that they stopped sending us hard copies of the scripts. I used to actually read them. Now they send them online, but I like to hold them in my hands. The Worst Person in the World is wonderful, but I voted for Belfast because there’s so much heart packed into a simple story. It really stayed with me.

VOTE: Belfast

Best Animated Feature

I saw them all, and I loved them all. I just thought The Mitchells vs. the Machines was very relevant, as far as family dysfunction. I see families out to dinner, and every single person is on their phone. I even see it with people dating. It’s such a disconnection. So I thought the subject matter and the animation were both fantastic.

VOTE: The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Best Documentary Feature

They were all wonderful. But I voted for Writing with Fire because I remember when I saw it, I thought, “Isn’t it remarkable how a small voice in this world can make a difference?” It was really inspirational to me.

VOTE: Writing with Fire

Best International Feature

I volunteered to help pick the nominees, which means I watched a lot of international movies — all of the ones for my group [nominators are assigned specific movies to guarantee that those movies are given proper consideration] and many others — and I’m going to surprise you. The Worst Person in the World is terrific, but I voted for Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. This movie is so extraordinary. It’s about innocence and purity. You just don’t see this kind of movie anymore. It was food for the soul.

VOTE: Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

Best Cinematography

I really hated [The Tragedy of] Macbeth, but it did have wonderful cinematography. Same with the Dog one [The Power of the Dog] — it was just so beautifully shot that, even though I didn’t like the movie, that’s the one I voted for.

VOTE: The Power of the Dog

Best Costume Design

This wasn’t a tough one. The costumes were wonderful in Cyrano and the others, but the costumes in Cruella were absolutely stunning and appropriate for the characters.

VOTE: Cruella

Best Film Editing

I voted for King Richard again. The movie just kind of flowed.

VOTE: King Richard

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

I was tempted to vote for Cruella here, too. But the transformation of Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye was really kind of amazing. I was very impressed.

VOTE: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Best Original Score

I voted for Parallel Mothers because I loved the film so much, and I thought the score was unintrusive, unlike some of the other scores which overwhelmed the scenes.

VOTE: Parallel Mothers

Best Original Song

I found the Beyonce song [“Be Alive” from King Richard] to be shrieky. I voted for “No Time to Die” [from No Time to Die] only because I felt I had to choose one, but there’s not one of these songs that I will ever listen to again, unlike the songs that used to be recognized years ago, which you could actually hum and sing. I think that’s been missing for a few years now.

VOTE: “No Time to Die,” No Time to Die

Best Production Design

I thought that Dune looked really kind of amazing.

VOTE: Dune

Best Sound

All of them sounded great except Dune, which was a little overwhelming. I voted for Belfast because I thought it was subtly done — although I jumped a few times when I was supposed to!

VOTE: Belfast

Best Visual Effects

Dune and the James Bond movie [No Time to Die] had wonderful visual effects. But Spider-Man [No Way Home] had so many effects that made me go, “Oh! Ooh! Ah!” It’s just a wow of a movie — the visual effects are absolutely stunning.

VOTE: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Best Animated Short

They were all excellent, but The Windshield Wiper was sort of an adult one — it asked questions about human relationships — and resonated the most deeply for me.

VOTE: The Windshield Wiper

Best Documentary Short

I loved them all, but the one that stuck with me was When We Were Bullies. It made me think about my own life and how one thing can impact different people in such different ways.

VOTE: When We Were Bullies

Best Live-Action Short

The one where the woman gets snatched away and forced into marriage [Ala Kachuu – Take and Run] really got to me. I was on the edge of my seat throughout that movie.

VOTE: Ala Kachuu – Take and Run

Read more of THR’s Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots:

Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot No. 1: ‘Don’t Look Up’ Is a “One-Joke Movie,” ‘CODA’ Is “Excellent in Every Way”

Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot No. 2: ‘Worst Person in the World’ “Amazing,” ‘Licorice Pizza’ Blatantly “Racist”

Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot No. 3: “Couldn’t Get Through” ‘Drive My Car,’ Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Better Than Original