The 2O2Oscars: Chops and Tops
- Mar 18
- 20 min read
If you're reading this, you likely already know the 98th Academy Awards took place on Sunday. In some past years, I've supplemented my pre-show primer with a wrap-up companion piece breaking down the ceremony, the biggest surprises, my biggest grievances, etc. But truthfully, I don't have too many parting thoughts about the awards this year! Indeed, the biggest surprise of all to me was how few surprises there were; a year that felt primed for chaos with so many unknowns surrounding all but a couple of the major races instead pretty much went chalk, as the betting favorites (however slight they may have been) won in just about every race. Perhaps another surprise is that... I was actually okay with that! I had some quibbles, each of which will be addressed at some point in this piece, but for the most part, I walked away happy with the wins for One Battle After Another and Paul Thomas Anderson, for Jessie Buckley, and for Sinners' victories in a handful of categories. The plus side of an amazing year in cinema! Pretty much all my favorite movies had something to cheer about!
Instead, and this is a sentence I can't imagine I ever thought I'd say, I was inspired by the Twitter discourse in recent days to go in a different direction with my Oscars post-mortem. No, not the ridiculous, toxic Twitter discourse that has plagued the last couple Oscar seasons, in which the younger generations' media literacy issues have been on full display. I didn't think it could get worse than some of the insane comments I saw about Anora and The Brutalist last year, but I can't even begin to tell you how many absolute dud takes about Hamnet, Sinners, and One Battle After Another I was subjected to in the weeks leading up to the big show.
Mercifully (and predictably), though, most of that chatter simmered down in the 24 hours after the proceedings in the Dolby Theatre wrapped up. Taking its place instead were conversations and debates over where the new crop of winners ranked among the winners in recent years. Many a viral prompt asked people to "rank the last 5 Supporting Actor winners," and the like, spawning a lively discussion over the validity of winners past and present. For the first time in an eternity, the film discourse felt fun to wade through! I enjoyed seeing the takes and reasoning from everyone, regardless of whether I thought they nailed it, or was in complete disagreement.
Too gun-shy to wade into the Twitter conversation, and still bummed about how many of this past year's movies missed the deadline to crash my Best of the Decade piece last summer, I've decided instead to take my thoughts on the matter here, the safe confines of my blog. We're going to do a condensed version of the Academy Award for the decade thus far: the winners of the "Big 6" of Picture, Director, and all the acting awards, plus the two Screenplay awards as well. I had to cut it off at 8 major awards, otherwise I'd get carried away and begin re-litigating every single award from past years. We're sticking to the conventional Oscar field of 5 nominees, too, and given that we've had 6 full years of film this decade, for every category I will necessarily begin by explaining which past winner doesn't make the field.
I'm no Conan O'Brien, so I won't waste more time before getting to the awards. Let's kick it off in the writing categories!
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Chop:
Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman (2020)
Look, I'm not an Emerald Fennell hater the way so many brave Twitter warriors suddenly are. In fact, this is still the only film of hers that I've seen. And for the most part, I liked it! But I didn't love it. And most of the reason I didn't love it is down to the screenplay. It felt like Fennell, for all her wit and incisive commentary, frequently came up short of any particularly breaking observations. I also was underwhelmed by the ending, which felt rushed and contrived. It's not a bad screenplay or a bad winner by any means, but in comparison to a strong crop of winners, that's enough for it to be the odd (wo)man out here.
The Crop:
Justine Triet & Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Sean Baker, Anora (2024)
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast (2021)
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Ryan Coogler, Sinners (2025)
There has frequently been a strong correlation between the Screenplay winners and the Best Picture winners, and one glance at this field shows that to be the case. All five of these winners were Best Picture nominees in their respective years, and two of them took home the main prize as well. This award marked the lone prize on the night for Branagh's Belfast, and the French-German legal drama Anatomy of a Fall, and was Ryan Coogler's big moment for his smash success Sinners. Meanwhile, this early win was an indicator of what would turn into a huge night for Sean Baker's Anora and The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All At Once, all of whom would also walk away with statues for Best Director and Best Picture.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Justine Triet & Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall
This will not be the case for all or even most of the 8 categories in this article, but this first one at least was a no-brainer for me. The only debate really came down to whether I wanted to ensure a win for Ryan Coogler, one of my favorite working directors today. I did love his brilliant Sinners, and was thrilled for his victory. But for that one as with most of these other nominees, the screenplay is one very good part of a very good movie, it's not the star. Anatomy of a Fall is a brilliant film-- one of my favorites in recent memory -- and the screenplay is the star. Triet & Harari's script is a masterclass in intrigue and character development, leaving the audience mystified as to the trial at the center of the plot throughout the entire runtime, but luring you in and keeping your intrigue to the end. If you're as online as I am, you already know what clip I've chosen to highlight, and if you're yet to watch this film, you may even be rolling your eyes at it. "Does this movie have any other scenes?," you're probably thinking to yourself. But this clip makes the rounds on social media regularly for a reason: it's a perfectly-executed explosion following a meticulously-written slow simmer up to this point.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Chop:
Christopher Hampton & Florian Zeller, The Father (2020)
This was a perfectly fine movie, but its strengths lie in the acting performances above all else. Anthony Hopkins, who won for this role, as well as previous Oscar winner Olivia Colman bring the heart and impact to this sad story, considerably more so than the writing itself does. It was adapted from Zeller's play in 2012, and I have a feeling this story felt much more impactful in play form than it did in cinema.
The Crop:
Cord Jefferson, American Fiction (2023)
Sian Heder, CODA (2021)
Peter Straughan, Conclave (2024)
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (2025)
Sarah Polley, Women Talking (2022)
This decade's Adapted Screenplay winners are an interesting bunch. I liked all 6 of the films and screenplays, to varying degrees, but there was a very clear 3-3 split in two ways: for one, 3 of these that I considered among if not atop the best films of their years, and certainly the strongest screenplays, and 3 to which my reaction was, "Okay! Nice! That was good!" It's also, similarly to the dynamic we had in the Original Screenplay field, an even split between the winners whose triumph in this field was part of a big night for them (CODA, The Father, One Battle After Another) and those for which this award marked their sole recognition on the night (American Fiction, Conclave, Women Talking).
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Unlike the Original Screenplay field, though, this was a very tough call for me, between the aforementioned "Top 3." Paul Thomas Anderson's screenplay for One Battle After Another is just about note-perfect, an impressive feat for a movie nearly 3 hours in length. But, similarly to how I felt about Sinners above, it was just one brilliant part of a brilliant movie, and not necessarily the MOST brilliant part, whereas the screenplay really was the star of both Women Talking, a film entirely about women talking, and Conclave, a film almost entirely about men talking. Between those two, I am slightly more partial to Conclave as a movie, but I do think Sarah Polley's screenplay is the more impressive feat. I'll confess to not reading the novel of the same name, but I understand Polley's interpretation was a very faithful one, making only slight adjustments to the place and time. And to make a movie taking place almost entirely in the same unremarkable setting, with a plot almost entirely driven by conversations and debates among its characters, truly captivating, emotional and eye-opening is such an impressive feat of writing. I would have been happy for Women Talking to garner much more awards attention than it did, but if it had to win only one, this was the one.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Chop:
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
This was one of the easiest chops not just in this article, but truly, of any Oscar winner in recent memory. I don't have any animosity towards Jamie Lee-- indeed I'm quite fond of her --nor even her performance. She was given a silly role in a bizarre movie, and she performed it perfectly! But it was such a silly and insignificant part of Everything Everywhere that even a nomination for this award, let alone a win, felt strange. And when taking into account some of the other nominees in that 2022 field-- Curtis's mesmerizing castmate Stephanie Hsu, the stunning Angela Bassett in Wakanda Forever, the brilliant Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin --this win starts to look borderline criminal.
The Crop:
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story (2021)
Amy Madigan, Weapons (2025)
Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers (2023)
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez (2024)
Yuh-jung Youn, Minari (2020)
I won't sugarcoat it, this award's winners over the last decade or so have been pretty bleak, especially compared to some of the winners we could have had. That Zoe Saldaña made the final cut speaks to just how bad the Jamie Lee win was (and in Zoe's defense, she did an admirable job; it's not her fault the film she won for was perhaps the single-worst film to be nominated for major Oscars I've ever seen). However, there are some likable and deserving winners here, and I do appreciate the fact that the supporting categories have often presented the Academy an opportunity to award a more diverse array of actors and films.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Yuh-jung Youn, Minari
I'll confess I still haven't seen Weapons, but the way most everyone who saw it immediately saw the vision for Amy Madigan being a serious Best Supporting Actress contender tells me it wasn't ridiculous that she took home the statue. And I quite liked the performances of both Randolph and DeBose, and found their wins entirely deserving. However, Yuh-jung Youn was the only instance so far this decade in which I was really excited about the winner. It's not just that wins for older actresses are uncommon at these awards, and wins for Korean actresses even less so, although that is certainly a big part of it. Yuh-jung also was genuinely my far and away favorite of the nominees that year. She's the beating heart of the restrained and beautiful Minari, the movie's biggest personality and a perfect representation of the generational and cultural divide amongst the Korean-American experience.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Chop:
Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer (2023)
I know. I know. I can hear the screams and feel the tomatoes from film Twitter, especially the male corners. Let me explain this pick, because I want to clarify: I do think RDJ does a terrific job in Oppenheimer, and have been increasingly impressed with his performance in each rewatch. But for starters, Supporting Actor is one of the only, if not THE only major Oscar category that has yielded pretty much all bangers this decade; it was going to a harsh chop no matter who the victim was. Furthermore, I think it's fair to say several of his peers had more to do to excel in their role; for as good as RDJ is as Lewis Strauss, it still mostly feels like you're watching Robert Downey, Jr. And finally, unlike pretty much every other winner in the 2020s, except for the most recent one, there's a little bit of the Jamie Lee Curtis dynamic at play in that 2023 had so many exciting candidates for Supporting Actor-- both nominated and non-nominated --that a more conventional performance and yet another win for Oppenheimer on that night felt a bit underwhelming.
The Crop:
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (2024)
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah (2020)
Troy Kotsur, CODA (2021)
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another (2025)
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Like I said above, this is a pretty terrific crop of winners we've been blessed with in the 2020s, honestly. Every single one of them deserving, and in my opinion, with the exception of Downey and reigning winner Sean Penn, every one an exciting win as well. Penn was a conundrum for me, not only in the real-life 2025 race, but in this mythical super-race as well. Between his two prior Oscar wins and his general lack of likability, I was not excited for him to win at all, so much so that I will go ahead and spoil: he's not winning this award for me. But at the same time, he was objectively brilliant; stripping the wins of context and personal feelings, he probably did give the single-best acting performance out of any of these winners, so much so that I felt I couldn't in good faith "chop" him, either. More straightforward are the remaining 4: sure, more than one was arguably a lead in their movie rather than a supporting role, but each one of them turned in the standout performances of their films, terrific and nuanced.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
I'm not kidding when I say I considered picking each of the above nominees at different points (yes, even Penn, for the reasons I lifted above), such was the quality of this field, and also the variety in winning performances over the years. But for me, all roads led back to Daniel Kaluuya, who pound-for-pound turned in the most impactful, at times jaw-droppingly good, performance of any of his peers. I do have to acknowledge the fact that there were perhaps no bigger perpetrators of the "category fraud" Oscars followers frequently yell about than Judas and the Black Messiah, which somehow got away with placing each of its co-leads, Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, in the Supporting Actor category. This is a film largely about the power and the plight of Fred Hampton, and there's no doubt Kaluuya is a leading man as Hampton. But such is life; I can't change the fact that he was nominated in the Supporting category, and as far as winners for Supporting Actor go, it's hard to do better than Kaluuya did, the British actor living fully into the larger-than-life figure the young man from Chicago was as a Black revolutionary.
BEST DIRECTOR
The Chop:
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog (2021)
I don't love cutting one of the female nominees out of this historically male-dominated field, trust me. But it's an unfortunate truth that the two women who have won this award in the 2020s have happened to helm my least favorite movies of the bunch, as well. I wouldn't say that's the directors' fault in either case, in fairness; both Nomadland and The Power of the Dog fall under the banner of films I would describe as "technically brilliant, emotionally disengaged." I had very few bones to pick about any of the trappings of each movie, but neither captivated or for the most part even interested me at all. That said, I had an easier time appreciating Nomadland, and that plus the fact that Chloe Zhao would go on to give us Hamnet, is enough to make the decision for me between those two.
The Crop:
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another (2025)
Sean Baker, Anora (2024)
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer (2023)
Chloe Zhao, Nomadland (2020)
The downside of eliminating Campion from this field is that it removes the one exception to what is increasingly becoming the norm: a 'Best Director' also winning Best Picture. It didn't use to necessarily be that way. In the 2010s, less than half of the Best Director winners were from the eventual Best Picture winners, but starting with Bong-Joon Ho and Parasite in 2019, 6 of the last 7 have doubled up, with Campion being the lone aberration. I am partial to the wealth being spread around, to be sure, but at the same time, take a look at some of those names above. Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan are the most esteemed and popular directors of their generation. Chloe Zhao is four features into her career, and the three non-Marvel entries have all been critically adored. Sean Baker has been the darling of the indie film world since his debut. And nobody could have made a Best Picture winner like The Daniels did, harnessing chaos and absurd humor to tell a deeply original and shockingly poignant story.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Allllll those nice things I said above were true and I meant them. But that doesn't mean this was a hard choice for me. As much as I greatly esteem The Daniels and Chloe Zhao and the work that they did, it would be disingenuous for me to pick them, given how much more highly I thought of other movies both in this category and even in the same year they won. And I was quite fond of Anora and it lends its success as a film largely to Sean Baker's style, but it feels like such less of a cinematic feat than what Anderson and Christopher Nolan, who this decision was only ever going to be between, were able to pull off. Oppenheimer was a massive accomplishment, no doubt, and Nolan deserved his award in 2023. But there's plenty of fat that could have been trimmed and things that could have been altered in the 3.5 hour runtime. I've thrice watched One Battle After Another, and genuinely, I don't know that there's a single thing that I would change about it. PTA's every detail in this one is magnificent, and perhaps nothing amazes me more than his ability to bring out masterful acting performances from everyone, including non-professional actors. Those "real people" play a significant part in this film, and the below clip, a mashup of the bone-chilling performances from real-life former federal agent Jim Raterman perfectly exemplifies the effective touch of realism Anderson injects in all his movies.
BEST ACTOR
The Chop:
Brendan Fraser, The Whale (2022)
I hate to do it to him, really. I was very happy for Brendan when he won a few years ago, and I'm still happy for him. But the happiness was almost entirely centered around what an unlikely comeback story it was for someone who by all accounts is a lovely person and was the unfortunate victim of the abuse that's rampant in Hollywood. (A less gracious but also true reason I was happy was that I really thought that Best Actor award was going to Austin Butler's deeply committed but almost cartoonish portrayal of Elvis.) Context aside, the fact that this was an Oscar-winning performance is deeply unserious. Fraser's performance is perfectly fine, but this definitely felt like an award for putting on pounds and pounds of prosthetics every day more than anything else. Justice for Colin Farrell, MY Best Actor winner from 2022!!!
The Crop:
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist (2024)
Anthony Hopkins, The Father (2020)
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners (2025)
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer (2023)
Will Smith, King Richard (2021)
Much dismay has been expressed online over the quality of Best Actor winners in the last decade-plus, and I get it. Few in recent memory have felt like inspired choices, and more than one of the movies in question (if not the performances themselves) have been laughable. But, especially with the absence of Brendan Fraser, the above bunch really aren't so bad at all, in my opinion. You could argue that more than one of them won their award for the wrong role in their filmography, no matter how good an actor they might be, and I wouldn't disagree with you. You could argue that more than one of them was a boring or disappointing choice on Oscar night compared to some of the nominees that could have won, and I wouldn't disagree with you there, either. But I don't think you can argue the quality of any of the above actors at all, nor can you claim that those recent winners didn't do a good job, even if you may not have deemed it Oscar-worthy.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
That said, the lone nominee here that manages to check both the "genuinely exciting winner" box and the "genuinely terrific performance, perhaps a career-best work" box is Cork County's own Cillian Murphy. Among the many things I loved about Oppenheimer is the fact that it gave a true star turn to Murphy, who before this was one of the deeply under-appreciated talents of his time. Yes, we've had a recent epidemic of awards defaulting to biopic portrayals and this did nothing to stop the trend, but in fairness, most actors and actresses aren't living in the skin of the people they portray the way Cillian Murphy was. He completely disappeared into this role, making me forget I was watching an Irishman in the 2020s portray a Jewish American in both the 1940s and 1960s. As excited as I was to see the film, I did go in knowing very little about J. Robert Oppenheimer and a little quizzical over what made him a figure so interesting that a 180-minute epic could only capture part of his life story. It was Murphy's portrayal that made the answers clear to me.
BEST ACTRESS
The Chop:
Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)
I just hinted at this in my write-up of the Actor category, but there's been an epidemic of major acting Oscar winners in the last, oh, 10-15 years that seem to be receiving "career achievement" awards rather than a trophy for genuinely turning in the best performance of the year. That tendency has disproportionately been true of the Best Actor races, in all honesty, but Jessica Chastain's win was a a rare (but egregious) example of it on the Actress side. Chastain is a tremendous actress, one that honestly could have had two deserved Oscars before the one she ultimately got, and she did a perfectly fine job in her depiction of the titular Tammy Faye Messner. But, even though she was portraying a real-life figure, her performance did feel a lot more in line with Brendan Fraser's (prosthetics!!! a different tenor than we're used to!!! carrying an otherwise very forgettable movie!!!) than it did Cillian Murphy's. Considering some of the marvelous performances nominated alongside her-- Olivia Colman and Kristen Stewart in particular --this was the lone Best Actress win from the 2020s that felt like an active disappointment.
The Crop:
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet (2025)
Mikey Madison, Anora (2024)
Frances McDormand, Nomadland (2020)
Emma Stone, Poor Things (2023)
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
I mentioned the increasing Director-Picture double-winner trend, but another increasing trend is the importance of a lead acting win to a Best Picture winner. It's always helped, to be clear, but there didn't use to be such a strong correlation between the two; 3 of the 5 women above starred in the eventual Best Picture winner, and the two that didn't, won in years in which the Best Picture winner didn't have a Lead Actress nominated. That's not to say a nominee from Oppenheimer or One Battle After Another would have been able to topple Emma Stone or Jessie Buckley, mind you; their performances were spoken about breathlessly from moviegoers and critics alike, and understandably so. And in the case of Madison, McDormand and Yeoh, it's not hard to tell why the Academy was able to draw a through-line from the quality of their work to the quality of the movies themselves. In each case, the success of the Best Picture winner largely hinged on the leading actress's ability to turn in a complex, captivating, emotionally nuanced performance, and boy, did those women deliver.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
This was a harder choice than Best Actor simply because of the quality of this race compared to that one. Unlike her Irish compatriot, Jessie Buckley faced stiff competition in this field; the last three years in particular have given us generational performances in the winner's circle for this award. Even while I cheered for the storylines of a Sandra Hüller or Lily Gladstone win that year, I had to admit that it may be a long time until Emma Stone's brilliant work in Poor Things was topped....and then Mikey Madison came along. And the way she gave life to the titular Anora and completely disappeared into the life of a 20-something Russian immigrant, Brooklyn-based sex worker had me saying it may be a long time until her performance was topped... and then Jessie Buckley came along. Hamnet was more divisive than I expected it to be among moviegoers, with many expressing annoyance at its portrayal of emotion and the fictional story surrounding Shakespeare's family, but just about everyone could agree on Jessie Buckley's magnificence. Speaking personally, it's been a long time since I've been so floored by an acting performance; I was in love with Buckley's Agnes by the time her first scene ended. Hamnet explores the depths of such grief, but also the grand-hearted love and joy between its characters, and Buckley so powerfully wears and weighs every last emotion.
BEST PICTURE
The Chop:
CODA (2021)
I do want to start by saying that I personally did really like CODA; more so, in fact, than one or two of the Best Pictures that made this final field. It's become lumped in with the likes of Green Book and Crash in the annals of "ridiculous Best Picture winners," and I don't find that totally fair. It's an abnormally simple and formulaic movie to win the prestigious award, to be sure, but Sian Heder's film told an underrepresented story, and for all the saccharine that permeates it, has enough heart and authenticity in its acting (and singing) that it never veers into corny or overindulgent. People also strip the win from its context: this was the first year in cinema since the peak of the pandemic, and a story like this felt like a balm. Furthermore, people forget how dire that 2021 field was; the only nominee I definitively liked more than CODA was one I knew had no real chance of winning anyhow (Dune).
That long caveat aside, though, it's not being compared to the 2021 nominees in this piece here, it's being compared to the other winners of this decade. And regardless of how much I may have liked and appreciated CODA, it does cut an even more unserious figure against the other five.
The Crop:
Anora (2024)
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Nomadland (2020)
One Battle After Another (2025)
Oppenheimer (2023)
The Oscars frequently yield as much (if not more) criticism of their choice for Best Picture than they do celebration, and as a result, I don't think we've properly acknowledged the exciting variety of winners in recent years. In the 2020s alone, the Best Picture winners have been: a hyper-realistic story of a widower leaving her old life behind to pursue a nomad life; a coming-of-age story told mostly in ASL about a hearing girl in an otherwise completely deaf family; an absurdist multiverse dramedy about the immigrant experience and the family divides that result from it; a 3-hour sweeping biopic about a nuclear physicist told through two timelines running parallel; a depiction of a young sex worker's Cinderella love story that suddenly turns into an action caper; and a black-comedy action thriller that envelops the story of a father fighting to protect his child in the context of political forces and revolutionaries that feel awfully pertinent to today's sociopolitical times. I think it may be time to retire the "Oscar bait" moniker because as you can tell, truly no two of those winners have been the same, nor have they much resembled any winner of years past. I certainly have been more partial to some Best Picture movies than others, but each of these was deserving and groundbreaking in its own way.
The Top:
And the Oscar goes to....
One Battle After Another
Given that the 202Oscars Best Picture field directly mirrored the Best Director field, though, the winner of the main prize should come as no surprise. And indeed, my 'ranking' of the various nominees here pretty directly follow suit from those in the Best Director category. There's a tier that both Everything Everywhere and Nomadland belong to, which is "films I really respect and understand the love for, but just didn't land as much with me." Sean Baker's Anora sits sort of in a zone by itself, in that I really liked it-- much more so than I anticipated I would, in fact --and it was among my favorites of that year, but it also feels like one of the best of a relatively weak year rather than a truly timeless film. That leaves Oppenheimer and One Battle After Another, both of which I feel comfortable describing as modern-day masterpieces, different as they may be from each other. But, as I mentioned in my Best Director discussion, as tremendous a cinematic accomplishment as Oppy is, there are parts of it that feel underdeveloped or unfulfilled. I don't feel that way about One Battle, a near 3-hour movie that doesn’t feel anything like its runtime. It's hilarious and absurd, it's bleak and timely, and it's a showcase for acting masterclasses across the board. There's also crack in it; immediately after seeing it for the first time, I didn't even know how much I liked it, I just knew that I was already ready to see it again. Each ensuing rewatch has convinced me of its standing among my modern-day favorites. Once it hit digital streaming platforms, it became a near-daily occurrence to see people posting their favorite clips from it on Twitter, and every single time, without fail, I would stop to rewatch it. Every single scene from it feels perfect to me, and I leave you with perhaps the most perfect of all-- a flawless needle drop and time jump in the story:
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