OBAA wouldn't have been my choice for best picture, either, but it had some beautiful pieces of film-making. The long shot while running through the Sensei's safe house was great, and the car chase at the end was a) gorgeous, and b) visually not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. I can see what Academy voters liked about it, in addition to the "this director has been nominated so many times without winning, so maybe he finally deserves one" angle, which I think maybe had as much to do with it as anything.

It's very pretty, but the book is much better

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland

Quality is not really near the top of Oscar eligibility criteria now, is it?

Well I think there are some people that disagree.

Academy members aren't always good at picking "good" movies. I'd argue they're actually pretty bad at it. Every once in a while they guess correctly. At least my 2 cents.

What on earth is a AAA film?

The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.

It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.

OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.

I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.

OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.