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A Gender Justice Guide to This Year’s Oscar Nominees, Part 1
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Trying to decide which movies to escape into this winter? We’ve got you covered with not just one, but two guides to this year’s Oscar nominees (you can check out part two here). Whether you’re looking for a movie to transport you out of the onslaught of attacks on women and LGBTQI+ people, or films to help you understand it all, we’ve got recommendations for you.
The Substance
Review by: Lark
Nominated for: best picture, best actress (Demi Moore), best original screenplay (Coralie Fargeat), best makeup and hairstyling, best director (Fargeat)
The Substance was a movie made exactly for me: Demi Moore, check. The main character is a fitness instructor, check. A little body horror and gore, check. A critique on the unattainable and unbelievable beauty standards placed on women, check! Safe to say I was very excited to see this movie, and it did not disappoint. Seeing the lengths Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore’s character) will go to preserve her body, looks, and the fame that comes with both, felt both like a two-hour Twilight Zone episode and sadly, very relatable. The duality of Elisabeth and Sue (Margaret Qualley’s character) fighting for the spotlight and taking the saying “spite your nose to save your face” a little too literally resonated with so many women. The pressure to age but not too much, to be yourself but keep up with the times, to constantly be better, brighter, and more beautiful than everyone else or run the risk of metaphorically being put out to pasture, it can get to a girl!
Highlighting these themes in such a visceral way really puts into perspective how the negotiations we make with ourselves — and they are negotiations — can be so detrimental and seem trivial when laid out in the ridiculous way they were in The Substance. When I first saw the movie, I loved it and thought it lived up to the hype. But shortly after, I felt a little jilted. We’re supposed to believe that Demi Moore, a woman who is the epitome of traditional American beauty standards and who has not visually aged since she rose to fame, is the right person to play the role of the aged-out, stale starlet? It took me until seeing Moore get nominated for an Oscar — her first time — to realize, yes, we are supposed to believe that because that is what happened. You can mold yourself into the “ideal” definition of a woman, pour yourself into your work and family and community for decades, and still be overlooked. No one is safe from the beauty standards put upon us and that’s what makes The Substance one of the scariest movies of all.
I Saw The TV Glow
Review by: Erin
Nominated for: NOTHING!
2024 was a great year for queer and trans movies — but you wouldn’t know it looking at this year’s awards nominees. And no, I’m not counting Emilia Pérez, a movie written, directed, and mostly starring a cisgender cast and universally panned by trans people (and the esteemed Letterboxd community, where it has a 2.2 star rating). Emilia Pérez’s nomination sweep is even more frustrating given that one of the best movies I’ve seen about the trans and queer experience, I Saw the TV Glow, was released last year and has basically been ignored during awards season. I don’t think movies about trans and queer people should be pitted against each other — but I am strongly suggesting you give your money to art made by actual trans people instead of paying for cisgender garbage!
I Saw the TV Glow tells the story of two teens who connect over a mysterious TV show, the Pink Opaque (which is a delightful homage to Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The show’s sci-fi plot eventually bleeds into reality. What happens over the course of the film quickly moves from dreamy suspense to nightmare (though I promise the movie is not actually scary — except in an existential way). Through the increasingly blurred lines between reality and fiction, I Saw the TV Glow places you right within the dread, fear, and hopelessness of how it feels to suppress who you really are.
Right now, our government is using the trans community as a scapegoat and a way to fearmonger about people who are “different.” That’s why art like I Saw the TV Glow is all the more relevant and deserving of its flowers. Near the end of the movie, Jack Haven’s character Maddy gives a powerful monologue where they describe paying someone to bury them alive. To some it might be a heavy-handed metaphor, but for anyone who has experienced the pain of hiding your identity because it’s the only way to survive, it’s a visceral description that hits home. I Saw the TV Glow‘s message is that perhaps you can exist without living as your true self — you can go through the motions, hold down a job, keep the status quo — but is that really living at all?
The Brutalist
Review by: Alison
Nominated for: best picture, best director (Brady Corbet), best actor (Adrien Brody), best supporting actress (Felicity Jones), best supporting actor (Guy Pearce), and more.
So, is this a 3.5 hour movie? Yes. And though the run time definitely daunted me, I was surprised to have been entertained throughout. I recommend seeing it at The Alamo; unlimited popcorn and soda will get you through.
This didn’t feel like the Oscar-bait biopics of the 00’s and 10’s. Rather than indulging in idealized nostalgia, The Brutalist has a warning. The Van Buren family and friends’ obliviousness to the Holocaust feels like it could be repeated today, as too many fellow Americans are tuning out rather than defying the resurgence of MAGA policies. We rarely see depictions of America’s role in World War II as anything other than heroic. But as our federal government implements policies to separate migrant families, block access to and even criminalize vital health care like abortion care for pregnant people, and eliminate all legal protections for transgender people, each of us should think about how history will remember our response.
Anora
Review by: Ariel
Nominated for: best picture, best actress (Mikey Madison), best supporting actor (Yura Borislov), best original screenplay, best director (Sean Baker), best film editing
Anora is an unflinching and refreshing look at working-class America. Sean Baker’s film refuses to paint sex work in broad, one-dimensional strokes — instead weaving his protagonist’s job seamlessly into the broader realities of economic survival. Ani, the film’s quick-witted and self-aware main character, understands her precarious position in a capitalist system but she navigates her world with sharp instincts and a refusal to be diminished. When the son of a Russian oligarch stumbles into her life, she doesn’t hesitate — she sees an opportunity and takes it, not out of desperation, but with the same pragmatism that defines so much of working-class ambition.
The film certainly has moments of deep tragedy, but it remains vibrant, funny, and human in its treatment of labor, power, and dignity. Anora never pities its protagonist — Ani’s resilience isn’t framed as noble suffering but as something sharper, instinctive and unsentimental. By embracing both the humor and hardship of her world, Anora captures an honest depiction of working-class life, free from condescension or easy moralizing.
