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10 movies to watch if you liked these Academy Award Best Picture nominees
Local film experts recommend pairings for the Oscars contenders.
With ten nominations for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, there’s something for nearly every kind of film lover — including a nearly-four-hour-long exploration of the collapse of the American Dream and Timothée Chalamet riding a sandworm.
Are you caught up on each film (and controversies that surround them)? Did you watch one and think, “Wow, I need more of this”?
Local film experts Kevin Koppes, owner of the cinema cafe The VU, Maria San Filippo, film scholar and associate professor at Emerson College, and Boston.com culture writer, Kevin Slane, gave their top recommendations for movies to stream if you answered “yes” to the above.
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The 97th Academy Awards air on March 2 at 7 p.m. Read on for movies you can add to your watch list before or after the ceremony.
If you liked “Anora,” watch “Something Wild” (1986)
The fairytale-gone-awry qualities of “Anora” are a match for the 1986 comedy thriller “Something Wild”. Maria San Filippo, film scholar and associate professor at Emerson College, cites “Something Wild” as a “thrilling joy ride in the company of a wild woman that suddenly turns terrifying.”
How to watch: “Something Wild” is available to stream on Tubi.
If you liked “The Brutalist,” watch “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984)
“Like ‘The Brutalist’, ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ is a long-format (the definitive runtime comes in just under 230 minutes) period piece centering on a small group of characters attempting to reconcile their past selves with their present circumstances and future ambitions. Themes of the American immigrant experience and the pliable morality of financial success loom large in both films, as do the ghosts of previous lives (chosen or otherwise).
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Ultimately, both ‘The Brutalist’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ feature highly-decorated casts and crews, broad-brush storytelling, and the respective building of striking structures and impressive fortunes on the back of complicated relationships.” — Kevin Koppes, Owner of The VU
How to watch: “Once Upon a Time in America” is available to stream on Prime Video.
If you liked “A Complete Unknown,” watch “I’m Not There” (2007)
“‘A Complete Unknown’ makes clear that Bob Dylan is an enigma who tries on different personas like a new pair of sunglasses. Todd Haynes’ experimental, nonlinear 2007 film ‘I’m Not There’ puts even more distance between Dylan and the audience, casting six different actors (including Oscar winners Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, and Christian Bale) to play abstract representations of six different phases of Dylan’s life.” — Kevin Slane, culture writer for Boston.com
How to watch: “I’m Not There” is streaming on Prime Video and Tubi.
If you liked “Conclave”, watch “Munich — The Edge of War” (2021)
“‘Conclave’ is one of several films adapted from novels by British author Robert Harris, who specializes in twisty political thrillers that play fast and loose with historical fact. Before ‘Conclave,’ the most recent Harris adaptation was ‘Munich – The Edge of War,’ an underseen Netflix movie about Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s (Jeremy Irons) attempts to appease Hitler in the lead-up to World War II.” — Kevin Slane, culture writer for Boston.com
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How to watch: “Munich – The Edge of War” is streaming on Netflix.
If you liked “Dune: Part Two,” watch “Ran” (1985)
“Having now thoroughly filled the void left by Disney’s inability or unwillingness to produce Star Wars feature films, the latest ‘Dune’ movies have been critical and commercial successes. Where previous TV and film adaptations of Frank Herbert’s literature often struggled to balance style and substance — and to distill dense, voluminous writing for the screen — Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ films establish a distinct aesthetic, keep the strokes broad, and deliver what audiences want: epic action.
In that same tradition of action-heavy literary adaptations, Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran,’ based on Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear,’ offers dizzying battle scenes, peerless costuming and set design, and some of the most haunting cinematography ever captured on film. No, ‘Ran’ isn’t science fiction. But if the thrill you get from “Dune: Part Two” comes more from dramatic tension and sweeping combat sequences than from spice and giant worms, give ‘Ran’ a look. — Kevin Koppes, owner of The VU
How to watch: “Ran” is available to stream on Kanopy.
If you liked “Emilia Pérez,” watch “Crash” (2004)
“Like ‘Emilia Pérez,’ ‘Crash’ capitalizes on back-patting representation and authorship indifference to address issues too large, sensitive, and complex for the filmmakers to even pretend to do them justice. Both films garnered major awards attention and largely positive reviews, both films miss a target they can’t even see, and both films are as deep and inspiring as a single sheet of printer paper. Enjoy.” — Kevin Koppes, owner of The VU
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How to watch: “Crash” is available to rent on Prime Video.
If you liked “I’m Still Here,” watch “The House of Sand” (2005)
“‘I’m Still Here’ is a harrowing story turned into a remarkable movie that probably should — and almost certainly won’t — win the Oscar for best picture this year. A painfully contemporary historical drama, ‘I’m Still Here’ weaves the personal and private into the public and political, thanks in large part to what should be Oscar-winning performances by Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres.
Stars of screens both large and small in Brazil, this mother-daughter team also delivered an acclaimed dual performance in 2005’s ‘Casa de Areia’ (released in the U.S. as ‘The House of Sand’). Another beautifully shot historical drama, ‘The House of Sand’ is a story of family, loss, and desperation that, like ‘I’m Still Here,’ showcases Montenegro and Torres’ talents to masterful and devastating effect.” — Kevin Koppes, owner of The VU
How to watch: “The House of Sand” is available to stream on The Roku Channel.
If you liked “Nickel Boys,” watch “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” (2018)
“Director RaMell Ross first gave audiences a taste of what he calls ‘the epic-banal’ in his 2018 documentary ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening,’ which tells a nonlinear story of residents in Alabama’s Black Belt. Like ‘Nickel Boys,’ the film elicits strong empathy and understanding by erasing the distance of the camera and placing the audience in an immersive point of view.” — Kevin Slane, culture writer for Boston.com
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How to watch: “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” is available to rent Apple TV and Prime Video, and available to stream on Kanopy.
If you liked “The Substance,” watch “Dead Ringers” (1986)
If you liked the sharp criticism of body standards and Demi Moore & Margaret Qualley’s feud in “The Substance,” you should give “Dead Ringers” a watch. Maria San Filippo highlights the similarities in the two films’ takes on “dueling doppelgangers and feminist female body horror.”
How to watch: “Dead Ringers” is available to stream on Peacock.
If you like “Wicked,” watch “Mary and Max” (2009)
“Minus the cornea-scorching visuals and singalong-friendly musical numbers, ‘Wicked’ is a story about the promise and possibility of unlikely friendships. Enter Adam Elliot’s 2009 stop-motion feature, ‘Mary and Max.’ Elliot, whose ‘Memoir of a Snail’ is nominated for Best Animated Feature this year, blends humor, hope, and heartache in ‘Mary and Max,’ the story of two pen pals on different sides of the world whose common bond is a genuine interest in one another.
Sure, ‘Wicked’ is dense with bombast, star power, and fantasy flash, but if the narrative and characters themselves were part of the magic for you, ‘Mary and Max’ will likely do the same.” — Kevin Koppes, Owner of The VU
How to watch: “Mary and Max” is available to watch on AMC+.
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