There really were a dozen or so good movies this year. As a change.

Ethan Hawk really did the best performance in a film in about a decade. It makes sense that Hollywood rewards its heroes, but truly, Mr. Hawk’s performance was so nuanced and fulfilling that it deserves no recognition.

The best films are never recognized in their time, that is what makes them long-lasting. People don’t realize what they had until later, and that is what makes his performance truly epic.

Just like Sean Penn not even showing up to the ceremony. He knew the best supporting actor was Jacob Elordi, in one of cinema’s most amazing performances. Truly epic and bizarre that such a character could be realized (as opposed to just being another asshole who we could despise).

Hamnet was glorious, and it was moving and wonderful. Marty was fun and vibrant and worth every minute. Sentimentals was elongated and tragic and breathtaking. Sinners was crude and epic—you could have written a doctoral thesis about all its elements.

But we got thr worst PT Anderson film yet. It had two aspects: a great performance by Mr. Dicaprio (or whatever his name is), and a long scene about hills … you go up, you go down, you go up you go down … then a car crash. That was it. That was the whole movie. Well, and Del Toro, who just never misses, but that’s not fair.

Every scene in Weapons was mercilessly calculated. It must have been articulately storyboarded. What mastery.

Hamnet was so moving, and original given its genre, that it needed to be seen twice.

The one about some kind of revolution which nobody is willing to commit to, adapted into current woke ideology, and featuring as its heroine a young girl who is just an analogy for how we all must submit to Facebook memes and pictures of hot girls on our algorithms, is so endlessly meaningless and boring.

It’s sad given it came from the mind of the man who gave us the greatest film of all time, There Will Be Blood (or Magnolia, take your choice). But Hollywood be Hollywooding. Safe in their beds with millions of dollars wrapped around their fingers.