In an awards season as thin-looking as this one, it seems very possible that Oppenheimer sleepwalks to the Best Picture win it seemed destined for as soon as it premiered. That could be damning with faint praise for many other movies, but I found this one to be the rare readymade Oscar juggernaut that I’m happy to support, a smorgasbord of great actors, astonishing technical achievements, and unnerving questions that makes even the silly biopic moments go down easy. As its unbelievable (and irreplicable, despite how hard studios will be searching in vain for the next “Barbenheimer”) box-office run can attest, there’s something for everybody here; my mom and sibling got bored during the hour in Los Alamos but were won back completely by the final hour of closed-door government hearings. I basically loved it all, but what I’ve really loved is the spotlight it’s shone on the work of editor Jennifer Lame, a genius whether dealing with aimless twentysomething New Yorkers or possible world-ending catastrophes. With such an obvious achievement in both the most and the best editing, a densely-packed behemoth that she paces like Frances Ha running down the street to “Modern Love”, she’s likely on her way to one of the easiest and most deserving Oscar wins in recent memory even as the Academy egregiously snubbed her on two previous Best Picture nominees. I’m not silly enough to claim she was even potentially in contention for Mistress America, but that would be a much better world than this one.

Babes in Toyland (Kino)
La Cérémonie (Criterion)
The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments (Indicator)
The Eight Mountains (Criterion)
Expend4bles 4K (Lionsgate)
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Metrograph)
The Fugitive 4K (Warner)
Gator (Kino)
Godland (Criterion)
Love Actually 4K (Universal)
Mean Streets 4K (Criterion)
Oppenheimer 4K (Universal)
The Police Academy Collection (Shout Factory)
Saw X 4K (Lionsgate)
Stalag 17 4K (Kino)
Tori and Lokita (Criterion)
White Lightning (Kino)