Unrelentingly weird but I loved it. A mad scientist reanimates a dead woman with a baby's brain and she matures––sort of a coming of age story. Jack liked it, somewhat less enthusiastically. Emma Stone is terrific as the woman Bella, as are Willem Dafoe as the scientist, Ramy Youssef as the scientist's protegé, and Mark Ruffalo as a randy lawyer. Stone and Ruffalo have two of the movie's eleven Oscar nominations among its 97 wins and 394 other nominations. Other characters I enjoyed include Hanna Schygulla and Jerrod Carmichael as passengers on a ship and Christopher Abbott at the end.
Yup, nominated for Best Picture. All but one of the Oscar nominations for this movie are joined by nominations from the guilds and unions of the specialties: Screen Actors, Directors, Producers, Composers, Cinematographers, Makeup and Hair, Costume Designers, Production Designers, and Editors.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos (nominated) works from Tony McNamara's (nominated, but not by the Writers Guild) screenplay based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray.
The enjoyably strange music by Jerskin Fendrix (nominated) can be streamed on Apple Music. Fendrix has a cameo as a Lisbon restaurant musician.
Director of Photography Robbie Ryan (nominated) liberally shoots with wide angle and fish eye lens as he did in The Favourite.
The Makeup nominees Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, and Josh Weston, had their work cut out for them with Dafoe's crazy Elephant Man prosthetics. Holly Waddington's (nominated) costumes are gorgeous
The nominated Production Design team of James Price, Shona Heath, and Zsuzsa Mihalek won the Art Directors Guild prize for Fantasy film. and the Editing nomination of Yorgos Mavropsaridis adds up to eleven.
As most of my readers know, I watch the entire credit sequence of every movie. I enjoy prolonging the vibe with the music, as well as reading about the locations and music and getting rewarded with an occasional bonus (known as Crazy Credits on imdb). The bad news is that the main closing credits are practically unreadable. The good news is that they are framing some spectacular photographs. I particularly loved the ones of the ship's set design with inlaid wood on the walls and mosaics on the floors.
Stone and McNamara were last blogged for Cruella, Dafoe Nightmare Alley, Ruffalo for Avengers: Infinity War, Carmichael and Abbott for On the Count of Three, and Lanthimos and Ryan for The Favourite. I liked all 29 episodes of Youssef's series Ramy about Egyptian immigrants in New York. Hanna Schygulla, now 80, is a venerable German actress and I think I probably have seen her work. This is Fendrix's debut.
Stacey has nominations and wins for The Favourite and Cruella, Coulier won Oscars for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Iron Lady, Weston did good work on The Eternal Daughter, Elvis, and Bohemian Rhapsody. Waddington was costume designer for Ginger & Rosa and War Horse. James Price worked on Judy, Mihalek worked on Down by Love (2003), Argo (2004), and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Mavropsaridis was nominated for editing The Favourite. Heath is new to me. All the others have many credits besides the ones I named here.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics are richly with me, averaging 92%, while its audiences are a bit less well off at 79. The first day it was available, February 27, I bought it from Apple TV, only because it's not available for rent quite yet. It's still in theatres and I'm sure it will be rentable very soon.
There are some fun featurettes on the Rotten Tomatoes link above. Check them out if you like.
Now I have seen and written about all ten Best Picture Oscar nominees. I liked all of them a lot and can't pick a favorite!
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