With the Oscars airing this past Sunday, the movie season of 2023 has officially come to an end, including the media circus that is awards season. We watched Oppenheimer take home the big awards, we were surprised by Poor Things stepping over Barbie to compete in the same categories (costume, production design, stories about women discovering the world for the first time…), we saw Killers of the Flower Moon get left in the dust. Anyone who follows the awards circuit is undoubtedly burnt out by now, but I had too much fun last year making a list of silly fake awards to let the opportunity slip past me. So to officially-officially wrap up awards season, I present another list of movies and their various parts that stuck out to me over the past year: the highly unserious Post-Oscars Movie Awards.  

Best Performance by a Dog in a Motion Picture: Messi, Anatomy of a Fall 

Beyond being maybe my favourite movie of the year with maybe my favourite human performance (Sandra Hüller hive rise!), French film Anatomy of a Fall offers so much to admire: a tight, impeccable script; a hilarious cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P”; that one lawyer’s hair…but nothing is more impressive to me than the performance by the family’s dog played by the beautiful Border Collie named Messi. A performance so good I was really sitting there going “let’s get back to the murder trial in a second—is that dog real? How is it doing that? Is it a puppet?” If you watched the Oscars this past Sunday, you would have seen good boy Messi sitting in the audience, clapping politely for Robert Downey Jr’s win (turns out that was footage from the rehearsal—as a dog, he was too excitable for the actual ceremony). Jokes aside, all of the performances in Anatomy of a Fall are peak, including young Milo Machado Graner who plays Daniel and is distractingly good for a child.  

Message that went the most over my head: Barbie 

Hear me out. I’m not referring to the America Ferrera speech or the commentary on how the patriarchy harms both men and women—I get all that. Very important stuff. But what I don’t get is Barbie’s decision to leave Barbie Land after experiencing the real world. You’re telling me she gives up a place where she and her girls reign supreme and spend all their days rollerskating and having dance parties? For what, the misogyny and drudgery of the “real world”? Even the Kens had it made in Barbie Land, in my opinion (I would love for my job to be beach, personally). I know for the sake of narrative and proper messaging (especially for the kids) Barbie needed to want to grow, but from where I’m sitting as a tired adult in this increasingly difficult world…girl. I’ll swap places with you any day. Put me in that Dream House, I’m tired of relating to Depression Barbie.