Hamnet

I know I've been a real grinch this year, but it's hard to get excited about my favorite art form when stuff like this and One Battle After Another are the major award contenders. These two films stand as glaring on-ramp signs on either end of the hollow-movie-dressed-up-like-it-means-something highway, causing everyone to rush past the films that actually use narrative and characterization to create meaning. Chloé Zhao’s shallow, vapid, bereft of all mystery adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's speculative historical fiction novel about the tragic loss of Anne Hathaway's/Agnes Shakespeare’s young son is about as bad as Oscar-bait gets.