All the 2024 best picture Oscar nominees ranked, from worst to best
In ranking this year's best picture nominees from worst to best, I am essentially doing (in reverse order) what every Academy Awards voter does when filling out their preferential ballot. The differences, of course, are my unimpeachable taste and my extreme verbosity, neither of which I make any apology for. Here goes:
10. 'The Holdovers'
As more than a few indignant readers have reminded me in recent months, I'm very much in the bah-humbug critical minority on Alexander Payne's comedy about three disgruntled boarding-school souls forging an unlikely holiday bond. That said, I'm hardly blind to its virtues: the fine performances of Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa and Da'Vine Joy Randolph; the aspirational Hal Ashby vibes; the wintry New England melancholia. Like it or not, "The Holdovers" has as recognizable an artistic stamp as any best picture nominee this year. Even when Payne isn't working from his own material (David Hemingson is a strong contender for the original screenplay Oscar), his affectionately jaundiced, sweet-and-sour worldview comes through.
But I don't buy the sweetness or the sourness, and I'm not entirely sure Payne does either. For a film that's been hailed as a too-rare story about real, recognizably flawed human beings (what can I say in response besides, " "?), his conception of these characters feels mechanical to the point of insincere. Giamatti's tetchy teacher and Sessa's ornery student spend scene after repetitive scene proclaiming why and how much they dislike each other, presumably so we'll be all the more floored by the touching common ground they inevitably and laboriously discover. Randolph's grieving cook, Mary, is given comparably short shrift, dragged in so that her tears can be harvested at carefully timed intervals and then conveniently
