One of the most reliably frustrating things about the road to Oscar is the self-reinforcing cycle of awards prognostication. Sometimes as little as a day after the curtain has come down on a year’s Oscar ceremony, there will be sites predicting the nominees across the major categories for next year’s ceremony. Fast forward a year and you may be excused for thinking that a nomination was determined less by the talent behind or in front of the camera than willed into being by pundits who believe in being “right” above all else.
Self-reinforcement, though, can start in different ways, such as a roomful of laughter. To the disappointment of no one except possibly M3GAN, the most memorable moment of this year’s Oscar nominations announcement was when Riz Ahmed said, “My Year of Dicks,” before pausing for dramatic effect, knowing what would ensue. In this moment, it felt as if it was no longer a matter of what film would win this award so much as who would be tasked with getting the most comic mileage from saying the title of Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s film on Oscar night.
And, you know, we’re okay with that. Our heart belongs to João Gonzalez’s Ice Merchants, a moving ode to the relationship between a cliff-jumping father and son. Gonzalez has a minimalist’s sense of scale that results in more than a few moments that are liable to leave the viewer seized with vertigo. Gunnarsdóttir’s short, an account of a 15-year-old’s sexual awakening, is no less dizzying, though mostly as a result of its eclectic mix of styles. In years where there’s little ambiguity about what’s taking Oscar’s top prize, we’ve done well by drawing a straight line between best picture and animated short, and if there’s one thing that My Year of Dicks does better than all the other shorts in this category, it’s turning down for what.
Will Win: My Years of Dicks
Could Win: Ice Merchants
Should Win: Ice Merchants
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