This was Best Picture Weekend, courtesy of the Philadelphia Film Society. It's a great service, although it would be much improved by respecting high holy days, by which I mean not overlapping with the Superbowl. All they had to do was screen Sunday's movies starting as early as Saturday's.

True, that would interfere with an actual holy day for some, but am I wrong in thinking that some attendees possibly missing one Sunday service is a lesser crime against inclusion?

Anyway, I've seen everything except Train Dreams now and here are my thoughts:

Marty Supreme is a helluva ride. Full of wonderful performances. Also a movie about a narcissistic asshole. But the ending arguably makes it someting more. And I saw it with someone who's been on the wrong end of several narcissistic assholes, and they loved it. Sometimes you just to acknowledge the fun. I have a silly spoiler-tastic fan theory which I'll share later, after a cat pic.

The Secret Agent is arguably a better car movie than F1, and the camera only lingers on cars for a few minutes. But it rambles a bit, and opinion was divided in our party. I liked it, mostly for getting at the day to day absurdities of life under corrupt authoritarian rule. But it doesn't deserve Best Picture. It's certainly no I'm Still Here.

F1 is Brad Pitt's Top Gun: Maverick. There's no way it deserves to be best picture. It is a fine exemplar of the sports movie genre, and people who love cars will find themselves very well taken care of. We get two women whose story is not just about a man. There are a few lovely moments in which the director allows themselves to show us the great variety of motoring experience, both racing and non-, beyond Formula One. I wish there had been more.

I watched two-thirds of Bugonia on TV with my sister in Tacoma. I napped through part of it, but it's not fair to lay the full blame for that on the movie. Bugonia is another Yorgos Lanthimos — Emma Stone joint. Speaking as someone who loved Poor Things: Bugonia is fine, but I don't regret watching it on a TV. I enjoyed the ending.

I saw Sinners back when it was in general release. What a trip! The dual performance from Michael B. Jordon is impressive. But a certain speech on the political economics of vampirism really put it over the top for me. They cleaned up on nominations and I would not be at all displeased if it wins Best Picture. It is interesting that this movie doesn't feel the need to have any sympathetic white characters, although it does have sympathetic asian characters. I think we can take it, for once.

I also saw Frankenstein earlier in the year. Confusing the man with the monster is a tired joke, but here they blur in a new way. Strong cinematography, strong acting as well. May our creations be half as humane.

Hamnet is a beautiful, heartbreaking film. Feminist takes on Shakespeare are haunted by Virginia Woolf's riff on the topic ALMOST A CENTURY AGO 👻🤣,  and for good reason, but that space has been explored. Chloé Zhao gives him a wife who is an equal power, and his failings are those of a man ridden by a dream, not a man who takes women for granted. In the end he shows himself to have been present all along. Something in my eye dammit.

One Battle After Another is two hours and 42 minutes. And I didn't begrudge a single one of them! Like Marty Supreme it is a helluva ride, but it has more to say. I realize it's a Pynchon adaptation, and I haven't read the book, but I think Paul Thomas Anderson was also trying to will the revolution back into being and connect it with the present moment. I think I'll watch this movie again at some point.

... And that brings us to Sentimental Value. Which is basically the same movie as Hamnet. The same big idea: self-actualization itself has an empty heart, but can redeem itself by connecting art back to the personal. I was paying attention all along. I know it's painfully obvious to say it reminds me of Ibsen, just because there are Scandinavians in rooms. But there are Scandinavians in rooms, and I do enjoy that.

Who should win? I'd say... Hamnet, actually. Followed by One Battle After Another, or Sinners. No big surprises there. These are good movies. But I don't think there are any clear-cut jaw-dropping room-clearing slam-dunk never-seen-anything-like-it best goddam-movie-of-the-decades this year. Not like last year, which gave us I'm Still Here and Nickel Boys. Hell, even the deeply problematic Emilia Peréz was a fascinating watch. (It helped that I didn't know its flaws going in.)

But the prize went to Anora, because Anora was a tour de force of filmmaking itself especially given the budget available. And the Academy has a soft spot for that.

So who will win? Going by the nominations, it seems clear One Battle After Another or Sinners will take it. And in recent years, all else being equal the expanded Academy has tended toward diversifying the pool of winners. For a change. So I'm thinking Sinners will walk away with Best Picture.

However, I must point out that I still have not seen Train Dreams. If I fail to see Train Dreams before the ceremony, it will definitely win Best Picture.

Here is a ridiculous cat picture, followed by a spoiler-tastic fan theory about Marty Supreme.

OK, ridiculous fan theory:

There's a rich asshole in the movie. He is Marty's nemesis. Marty largely gets the better of him, until he doesn't.

But there's a speech at the end that's completely out of its time and place:

"I was born in 1601. I'm a vampire. I've been around forever. I've met many Marty Mausers over the centuries. Some of them crossed me, some of them weren't straight. They weren't honest. And those are the ones that are still here. You go out and win that game, you're gonna be here forever too. And you'll never be happy. You will never be happy."

Of course, Marty proves him wrong. Well... sort of. He wins the game but renounces the life of a showgirl narcissistic bullshitter.

But after the movie ended, R. looked up the guy who played the rich asshole. It's Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank (which I don't watch), aka a tremendously successful businessman and general winner in the lottery of life. I mean, the man has Emirati dual citizenship for business reasons. He's been accused of fabulous frauds. He and his wife are infamous for dodging responsibility for a boating accident. And speaking as a WASP... he has the WASPiest possible patriarch-at-Thanksgiving face and he knows how to use it. Ugh, this guy.

So a day later it hit me: this speech was not in the script. Kevin O'Leary was ad-libbing. He was telling the simple truth. Kevin O'Leary is a vampire, born in 1601.

It explains everything.