Shortly after being attacked and infected by a wild animal in the woods, Blake (Christopher Abbott) looks to console his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth,) who was understandably shaken by the events. He apologizes, explaining that sometimes fathers try so hard to protect their children from scars that “they end up being the ones scarring them.” For the director that smartly turned The Invisible Man into a meditation on believing women, this brief moment felt like the first thread of an idea that never fully forms in Wolf Man. 

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.(Oh god it might be Emilia Pérez, maybe Wicked isn’t so bad.)) Cavalcade is the sixth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

After a few delays due to the devastating fires in and around Los Angeles, the Academy finally announced their nominees for the 97th edition of the Oscars. It has been long documented, including on this site that the strikes back in 2023 meant a lot of traditional awards films were unable to be completed and released for 2024. Functionally this shifted Academy voters into a discovery mode. Perhaps nothing encapsulates this dynamic more than the 13 nominations for Emilia Pérez, a strangely paced musical about a trans cartel leader. The best picture nominations are as eclectic as ever between traditional Oscar-bait type films like A Complete Unknown or The Brutalist alongside body horror oddity The Substance and two international films in the French produced, Mexican set Emilia Pérez and Brazil’s I’m Still Here. Broadness in the nominees is, in a way, a good reflection of the lack of consensus the year’s very best have had.

As always, we will be breaking down the flashy, above the line categories: All 4 Acting categories, Directing and Best Picture. We will give an estimate of where the race stands, analyze the biggest surprises and highlight some of the most deserving films, performers and directors who missed the cut.

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.) All Quiet on the Western Front is the third film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

As a project for 2025, we at Spinning the Reel are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.) The Broadway Melody is the second film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

I watch a lot of movies every year. Just in 2024, my wife — Anna — and I watched over 350, with almost half of those being brand new releases. To help compensate for the deluge of new films, we try to focus our home viewing on little projects. Last year we decided to watch all of the Disney Animation Studio catalogue and Pixar features. We found it a cool thing to do together, a great way to fill in some blank spots and a dispiriting tour of the downfall of a studio once devoted to artistry that now puts out whatever the hell Moana 2 was. But I digress. This year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.)

Another year has come to a close and that means that it is again time to look back on the year in film. 2024 has been lamented in some corners as a relatively weaker one at the movies more broadly, with the release calendar altered significantly by the writing and acting strikes of 2023. Still, as with any other year in film, if you watch enough, 2024 brought an incredible wealth of brilliant cinema. So much so, in fact, that I have decided to expand this list to 15 films rather than the usual 10.