The Oscars aren’t about the best films. They’re a snapshot of the times

The cast and crew of “Anora” celebrate their best picture award backstage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 2025.

Dear Mick LaSalle: Do you actually care about the Oscars? Or are they just good column fodder? If you do care, why?

Dear Tom Lucas: I watched the Oscar ceremony in 1978, when I was a teenager — that was my first time. Every other time that I watched the show it was because I was covering it in some capacity.

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For a few years in the late 1990s, when I also worked as the film critic for KGO-TV, I emceed a few black-tie Oscar events, which was fun. Then, starting in the mid-2000s, I had the annual assignment to write a sort of combo news story/commentary about the ceremony.

But do I “care” about the Oscars? I imagine if I really cared, I’d watch the show just for my own enjoyment, but 1978 aside, I’ve never done that. I can’t imagine ever doing that. It’s a four-hour show with about 10 minutes of entertainment in it. Am I really supposed to sit there all night on the off chance that Will Smith might slap somebody?

This sequence shows actor Will Smith, right, approaching then slapping Oscars host Chris Rock during the awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in 2022.

I do sometimes, however, find it fascinating to see what’s nominated and what wins, not in terms of art but in terms of social and cultural history. The Oscars have a way of preserving in amber the common ideas, values and assumptions of a particular year. Sometimes those ideas, values and assumptions are wrong or stupid, but that’s just fine. That’s even more interesting.

I also like that Oscar season is the time of year when the general public pays attention to movies, even if they’re paying attention to an aspect of them that I care less about than they do.

Dear Mick LaSalle: What are your favorite second-tier films?

Tom Cruise arrives at the U.S. premiere of “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” at Lincoln Center Plaza in New York on May 2025.

Dear Jeremy Gorman: There’s something to be said for a movie that aspires to do nothing but entertain. There’s a generous impulse behind that sort of film. I’m thinking in particular, not of entertainment extravaganzas that strive to be entertaining for all time — like say, Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” movies — but rather movies that are designed to divert people for a couple of hours and are then forgotten. Because they’re not aiming for anything resembling immortality, these movies are often refreshingly spontaneous and honest.

Every year, there are probably 20 movies that fit that description, but the first movie that comes to mind is Neil LaBute’s “Fear the Night” (2023), with Maggie Q as a woman who goes to a bachelorette party in the woods and soon finds herself fighting off a band of homicidal home invaders.

The second that comes to mind is “Those Who Wish Me Dead” (2021), which has everything in it — contract killers, spectacular fires, lightning strikes, explosions, people bursting into flames and Angelina Jolie. It’s not exactly a good movie, but it’s a well made, highly entertaining bad movie. And sometimes that’s what you need. You can’t watch Ingmar Bergman films every night.

Angelina Jolie waves upon arrival at a screening of “Eternals” at the BFI IMAX in London in 2021.

Dear Mr. LaSalle: The close to your column (published in print on) March 8 must be your best ever, at least to those of us who grew up with Tab.

Dear Mr. Biehl: Thanks. Tab, one of the first diet sodas, was really awful. It’s amazing it lasted on the market for 57 years (1963-2020). It tasted a little like soap.

Dear Mick: If I read esteemed movie critics other than you (not as esteemed as you, of course), would you think of me as “cheating” on you?

Dear Ted: No, that’s fine, Ted. It’s like this: If you have readers, set them free. If they come back, they’re yours. If they don’t, they were never yours to begin with.

Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at askmicklasalle@gmail.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.