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Andrew Cooper/Sony Pictures

Best Picture

Little Women was badly acted and confusing, and I have no idea why they cast four British actresses to play American girls. [Emma Watson and Florence Pugh are British, but Saoirse Ronan is Irish-American, and Eliza Scanlen is Australian.] And every time they said they were poor, I gagged — they're living in a beautiful two-story house, and they have a cook. Jojo Rabbit was cute, but I found myself unable to laugh about Hitler — I don't think that's funny. Marriage Story was phony: You don't have an off-Broadway director and an off-Broadway actress living in a nice house with no day job — if an off-Broadway actor makes $150 a week, that's a lot. If someone besides Martin Scorsese had directed The Irishman, it wouldn't have all the accolades; it does because of his years in the business. It was too long and too repetitive, and the reverse-aging did not work — they erased the lines in their faces, but they still walked like old men. [Francis Ford] Coppola got it right in The Godfather when he had different actors play the characters when they were young and when they were old. Besides, I didn't care about any of the people in the movie. I really liked Ford v Ferrari — I loved the two actors and the moral of the story — and I wish they had promoted it more; it's worthy of more attention than it has gotten. Parasite is beautifully done, but it didn't hold up the second time, and I don't think foreign films should be nominated with the regular films. I liked Joker more than I thought I would; I put off seeing it for a long time, but it was actually a beautifully done film about mental illness, and I thought about it for a long time afterward, which is always a good sign. I loved 1917, but Quentin Tarantino's film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was even better the second time than the first. I was in L.A. in the '60s, and I thought he captured that era perfectly. 1917 was a very good but pretty straight-on story about the horrors of war; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was more complicated and stayed with me longer.

MY VOTE (1) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; (2) 1917; (3) Joker; (4) Parasite; (5) Ford v Ferrari; (6) The Irishman; (7) Marriage Story; (8) Jojo Rabbit; (9) Little Women