The good news is that, unlike last year when “Everything Everywhere All At Once” won for best picture, this year’s horrendous and disgusting disaster “Poor Things” did not win best picture. The bad news is that Lily Gladstone did not win Best Actress for “Killers of the Flower Moon” which would have made her the first American Indian to win an Oscar. The Academy decided to give the Best Actress award to Emma Stone for Poor Things, and a performance that I thought after seeing this horrible production, an actress would be too embarrassed to accept any award, due to the series of insane and crazy scenes Stone portrayed in this film.

I was disappointed that Paul Giamatti did not win Best Actor, however, Oppenheimer was a stronger overall movie than Giamatti’s “The Holdovers”. Cillian Murphy was excellent in the lead role of Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer won 7 Oscars, and most critics were expecting many more wins. My main problem with the movie was the non-stop background music throughout, even during many important dialogue scenes. Robert Downy Jr. won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Killers of the Flower Moon was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 0. This also happened with Martin Scorsese’s 2019 movie, the Irishman. Scorsese has been nominated for 16 best director Oscars and has only won one for “The Departed”, released in 2006. There is something very wrong with the voting members concerning Scorsese.

Best picture

• “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• “American Fiction”
• “Anatomy of a Fall”
• “Barbie”
• “The Holdovers”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Maestro”
• “Past Lives”
• “Poor Things”
• “The Zone of Interest”

Best supporting actress

• Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers” — Winner
• Emily Blunt, “Oppenheimer”
• Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”
• America Ferrera, “Barbie”
• Jodie Foster, “Nyad”

Best animated short film

• “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko” — Winner
• “Letter to a Pig”
• “Ninety-Five Senses”
• “Our Uniform”
• “Pachyderm”

Best animated feature film

• “The Boy and the Heron” — Winner
• “Elemental”
• “Nimona”
• “Robot Dreams”
• “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best original screenplay

• “Anatomy of a Fall” — Winner
• “The Holdovers”
• “Maestro”
• “May December”
• “Past Lives”

Best adapted screenplay

• “American Fiction” — Winner
• “Barbie”
• “Oppenheimer”
• “Poor Things”
• “The Zone of Interest”

Best makeup and hairstyling

• “Poor Things” — Winner
• “Golda”
• “Maestro”
• “Oppenheimer”
• “Society of the Snow”

Best production design

• “Poor Things” — Winner
• “Barbie”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Napoleon”
• “Oppenheimer”

Best costume design

• “Poor Things” — Winner
• “Barbie”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Napoleon”
• “Oppenheimer”

Best international feature film

• “The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom — Winner
• “Io Capitano,” Italy
• “Perfect Days,” Japan
• “Society of the Snow,” Spain
• “The Teachers’ Lounge,” Germany

Best supporting actor

• Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”
• Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”
• Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”

Best visual effects

• “Godzilla Minus One” — Winner
• “The Creator”
• “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
• “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
• “Napoleon”

Best film editing

• “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• “Anatomy of a Fall”
• “The Holdovers”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Poor Things”

Best documentary short film

• “The Last Repair Shop” — Winner
• “The ABCs of Book Banning”
• “The Barber of Little Rock”
• “Island in Between”
• “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”

Best documentary feature film

• “20 Days in Mariupol” — Winner
• “Bobi Wine: The People’s President”
• “The Eternal Memory”
• “Four Daughters”
• “To Kill a Tiger”

Best Cinematography

• “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• “El Conde”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Maestro”
• “Poor Things”

Best live-action short film

• “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” — Winner
• “The After”
• “Invincible”
• “Knight of Fortune”
• “Red, White and Blue”

Best sound

• “The Zone of Interest” — Winner
• “The Creator”
• “Maestro”
• “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
• “Oppenheimer”

Best original score

• “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• “American Fiction”
• “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Poor Things”

Best original song

• “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” — Winner
• “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony”
• “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie”
• “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot”
• “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Best actor

• Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”
• Colman Domingo, “Rustin”
• Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”
• Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”

Best director

• Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer” — Winner
• Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
• Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”
• Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”

Best Actress

• Emma Stone, “Poor Things” — Winner
• Annette Bening, “Nyad”
• Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”
• Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”

Human interest, a true story that is almost impossible to believe ever happene and excellent acting are just some of the accolades that describe just about one of the best movies about a real event that I have ever seen.

The story of the new movie “Ordinary Angels” is about a hairdresser Sharon Stevens, played by Hilary Swank who is a serious alcoholic who refuses to admit she has a problem. Sharon is a person who is looking for a purpose, perhaps to make sense of her life of constant drinking, being divorced for many years, and estranged from her only son, who hates her. Sharon sees a picture of a 5-year-old girl in a local newspaper who needs a liver transplant and her life is transformed. After seeing this one article in the paper, all Sharon cares about is saving this child and her family.

Ed Schmitt, played well by Alan Ritchson is a married man with two daughters who lost his wife Theresa to an illness in 1993 when she was only 35 years old. To make matters worse, Ed had a hospital debt of 432 thousand dollars for the time Theresa was dying in the hospital. Ed then gets the news that his adorable 5-year-old daughter Michelle Schmitt, played by Emily Mitchell needs a liver transplant due to a rare liver disease. The weekly and monthly hospital bills to save Emily are both endless and outrageously high, threatening the family’s livelihood with additional worries of potentially losing their home. The life of Ed Schmitt considering what he had to endure with first losing his wife and then the fear over his severely ill daughter is at times, very hard to watch. This story is one of the worst examples of real life hardship I have ever seen in any film.

Making Ed’s life worse is a severe tornado that severely damages the family home in Louisville Kentucky, ever-increasing his problems and overwhelming debt. Then Sharon Stevens steps in and devotes her entire life to helping Ed with his financial problems and also tries to save the life of his 5-year-old daughter.

The best scene in this entire movie was the meeting between Sharon and the callous, cruel representatives of the medical insurance company, who could have cared less that a 5-year-old girl would die and her entire family ruined because of overwhelming medical bills of 432 thousand dollars. Sharon asked them to eliminate the entire bill and when one of the representatives laughed at her request she asked, “Did I say something funny”.

Another one of the many problems that Sharon had to deal with was Ed Schmitt and his male ego who over time, started to resent Sharon’s constant help, forgetting that under the extreme circumstances of criminal medical bills and his 5-year-old daughter dying, the only thing to do was to accept as much help as possible. There is no way anyone could deal with problems this extreme by themselves, facing something like this. Within a situation this extreme, the pride of any man wanting to take care of his own family should take a back seat. Additionally, the ending of this movie is so unbelievable it’s almost impossible to believe that it really happened.

I thought the acting in this movie was great, with Hillary Swank giving her greatest performance since “Million Dollar Baby”, released in 2005. Alan Ritchson (who currently is the star of the Amazon Prime “Reacher” series) is also very good in his role of a father who is overwhelmed with horrible grief and worry. Actress Nancy Travis is also very good in the role of Ed Schmitt’s mother.

Once again, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 80% are way too low with some of critics not even liking this great film about empathy (so rare in this world) and a great person helping others in need. My rating for this film is 95% and a very strong recommendation. Unfortunately like last years “Air” released in April 2023, this movie has been released too early for Oscar consideration.