Concluding my rundown of personal 2023 Oscar nominations, today I’ll look at the Best Director category.

Great movie direction is even harder to assess than great movie acting. How do you weigh the wide range of skill sets needed to successfully helm a movie, whether it’s working with the actors, deciding where to put the camera and when to move it, or setting the overall tone of the piece?

I think of a film director as a boss in charge of multiple departments: sets, cameras, actors, music. The best directors guide each of those departments toward a specific vision — a vision that is apparent from the first frame to the last.

Three directors who just missed my list are Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.), Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), and Chad Stahelsk (John Wick: Chapter 4). Those are three very different movies that all bear the stamp of the bosses in charge.

And the nominees are…

Wes Anderson – Asteroid City
Every Wes Anderson film bears his stamp completely — he’s one of the only auteurs working today whose films are impossible to mistake for anybody else’s. He executes his singular vision beautifully once again in Asteroid City, a movie about nothing less than the meaning of life.

Greta Gerwig – Barbie
Gerwig brings this candy-coated confection to brilliant life, inventing a look and feel that felt timeless as soon as it hit the screen. This accomplishment is even more impressive in light of her other two — very different — feature films. What can’t she do?

Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things
Sometimes Lanthimos’ style can be a bit much — I’m not a huge fan of the wide angle lenses and pinhole cameras — but he creates such a unique and mesmerizing world that I have to give him his due. And it must take a special director to coax these performances from the fearless cast.

Alexander Payne – The Holdovers
This is the only movie to land three slots in my acting categories and much of that credit belongs to Payne, who has always had a knack for directing nuanced performances. But I also fell in love with the comforting 70s aesthetic he infused into every second of the film.

Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall
Triet is in complete control of her audience in this taut drama, never showing us more than she wants us to see, leaving us guessing while peeling back layer upon layer. I swear I held my breath through 20-minute stretches of this fascinating film.

And the winner is… Justine Triet. She is the one filmmaker here who was completely new to me, and I am still in awe at what she was able to accomplish.