Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

Ah, Quentin Tarantino, one of the directors I have the most mixed feelings about. As a rule, I take his name as a warning yet find his movies pretty good, if typically overrated. Why make this the second Best Picture nominee I see for the year? Well, it happened to be showing at a convenient time for me, I didn't trust either parent to want to watch with me, and I'd already watched the 1994 adaptation of Little Women twice.

Set chiefly in 1969, OUaTiH follows Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series; and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his buddy and former stunt double. The biggest contrast between them is in how they handle the decline of their careers: Rick cries at the realization of it and then struggles to recover, but Cliff is content to have become something of a butler to him. Also, Rick hates hippies while Cliff takes an interest in one of them -- until he discovers just how unruly she and her friends are. They are the Manson Family....

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Well, how do you like that: I said before, "I doubt I'll take a chance on Australia or The Great Gatsby." What changed my mind? My dad's invitation to watch the DVD with him. By this time, I had forgotten Baz Luhrmann's involvement and started wondering whether I would find the story more engaging than I had in the F. Scott Fitzgerald book.

Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) narrates from a mental hospital how he knew his most captivating New York State neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio, perhaps practicing for the same year's The Wolf of Wall Street). Gatsby is an obscenely rich man of mystery, throwing lavish parties attended by just about everybody for miles around. But he confides in Nick that it's all an effort to draw the attention of the woman he loves, who happens to be Nick's cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan). She married man's man Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) back when Gatsby felt too poor to marry. With Nick's help, Daisy does come back into Gatsby's life, but of course this means inviting trouble....

The Revenant (2015)

When I realized that I had seen only two of the Academy Best Picture nominees for the year, I got a little antsy. It's been ages since I saw fewer than half the nominees before the ceremony, and those that I had seen are not expected to win. Between heavy snow and my imminent international vacation, I wouldn't have much more of a window for the favored pics, so my dad and I gave this priority on the weekend.

The story is inspired by a key 1823 event in the life of fur trader Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), namely a battle with a mama bear that he just, eheh, barely won. Since his party just lost many men to an Arikara tribal raid, they are reluctant to stick around, but Glass is in no shape to be moved along the terrain. The captain (Domnhall Gleeson) pays two men to stay with him, along with his adolescent half-Pawnee son, Hawk. Alas, in the temporary absence of junior Jim Bridger, John S. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) tries to suffocate Glass and kills Hawk for interfering. He then talks Bridger into leaving Glass for dead lest they all die. But Fitzgerald underestimates how much a father's vengeance facilitates recovery....