Marc, you can't compare from one year to the next on films nominated and Oscar winners.
You can but it's within each year that the competition is taking place.
And within those selected films each year is different.
I mean The Irishman competes with eight other films for Best Picture, within the same year.
And all other categories have five nominations each.
To me The Irishman is a winning film, 1917 is a winning film, Parasite is a winning film, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is a winning film, Joker is a winning film, Ford v Ferrari is a winning film.
1917 is my favorite. For the year 2019.
I like Dunkirk (2017).
Goodfellas, The Departed, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, ...all from a different era.
The Irishman is a mob story as in Casino, Goodfellas, The Departed, ... Scorsese's main recipe.
Perhaps that's why it didn't win any Oscar...all déjà vu, the Academy voters are tired of mob flicks.
I like Gangs of New York, I like Daniel Day-Lewis, the best actor. I like Phantom Thread.
For this year I had my biggest doze from 1917. So I'm very happy that it won what I consider very important in filmmaking...Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Mixing.
The music score in 1917 (Thomas Newman) is also first class, but the music score by
Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker is a notch higher IMO.
Music in films for me is very important, and so is the camera work, angles, lights, shadows, compositions, backgrounds, movements, ...all. I want to be inside the film with the actors, like in 1917. I don't want to be just a witness I want also to be a participant.
Try participating in Parasite; which side are you in, the side which it's more fun to be in...the poor family of course. I like that film for that concept...the poor class taking advantage of the rich class. It's exaggerated to the extreme, to the point of becoming radically an horror movie with red ketchup spilling here and there.
My own personal feeling; I'm more inclined mentally with movies in the style of 1917 than the style of Parasite. That's me, and it's not that important; what is is what the majority prefer more.
In the sense that's what sometimes gets more Oscars and opens more theaters for revenues and gives jobs to filmmakers from other countries in various languages.
It takes nothing out of 1917, absolutely nothing out from its own mastercraft.
I bet it was very close between 1917 and Parasite, perhaps 49 / 51 respectively.
