This year’s Academy Award nominees were just announced on Tuesday and I’m not used to watching them sneakily at work instead of setting an alarm to get up early. Rather than run down all the categories, I’m just going to call out the storylines I’m watching for as the show approaches.
I’ve decided from now on I’m going to avoid using the word “snub.” As writers smarter than me have pointed out, claiming someone was snubbed assumes any nomination is taken for granted and diminishes the achievement for those who were nominated. This year had plenty of surprising misses, but no snubs.
It’s Oppenheimer? Always Has Been.
Congratulations to Christopher Nolan for winning Best Director and Best Picture.
The big top-of-the-ticket races have been relatively drama-free the last couple years. Everything Everywhere All at Once steamrolled to victory so decisively last year that I barely engaged with awards season at all. Oppenheimer is the clear, clear favorite, but it isn’t quite at that level of dominance. I can see a world where the Academy zags on the last award of the night.
Not so much for Best Director. When you’ve been such a significant vision in modern filmmaking for so long, with both strong artistry and financial success, it has to happen eventually. Everything has fallen in place for a Schindler’s List Spielberg- or The Departed Scorsese-style “It’s his time” award.
Somewhat poetically, Nolan will have to beat Scorsese to earn that. Killers of the Flower Moon seems to my eye to be the only remote challenger for Best Director, if the voters decide they don’t have many more opportunities to give Scorsese a second statue. But it’s more likely they’re content to continue nominating him.
Kenough, Already
Barbie netted 8 nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. That is a huge sign of respect for a movie based on a ginormous intellectual property. This is simply not the type of movie the Academy usually goes for. I think the closest analogue is Black Panther from 2018. When you’re such a huge cultural (and box office) phenomenon that also shows significant artistic vision, you can’t not be nominated.
All this is to say I am baffled by the backlash.
Yes, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were not nominated for Directing and Actress respectively. But too many people have twisted that into “Gerwig and Robbie were not nominated at all,” which is simply false. Gerwig is nominated for the screenplay with her husband, and Robbie, as a producer, would receive a statue if it won Best Picture. Of the two not-snubs I’m more disappointed for Robbie. That performance is a delicate balancing act that she absolutely nails. As for Gerwig, I feel confident calling Barbie the weakest movie in her filmography, though that’s in large part because the only other two movies she’s directed are masterpieces. The directors branch also tends to be the branch most eager to reject a movie that, y’know, contains a Chevrolet ad in the middle. No one should be surprised. Don’t lose sight of how successful this movie was on Tuesday.
Anyway, two categories I’m watching out for Barbie are in the crafts: Costume Design and Production Design. We’ll see just how much the power of pink can propel you.
International Flair
I imagine anyone surprised by Barbie missing out in their preferred categories took particular notice of two names that showed up repeatedly: The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall. Both are nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. These films have two things in common:
- Both are (primarily) foreign language films. One of the biggest sea changes in the Academy over the last decade has been its concerted attempt to diversify, culturally and internationally. You have to go back to 2017 for a film year where there wasn’t at least one foreign language Best Picture nominee. In addition to the two mentioned, this year we have a third: Past Lives, spoken in both Korean and English. All three of these films are also nominated for their screenplays.
- Sandra Hüller. The Toni Erdmann actress received (calling my shot here) her first Best Actress nomination for Anatomy of a Fall, and I’d bet she garnered plenty of votes for Zone of Interest as well.
And that’s why I want to push back on the Barbie discourse. We should be celebrating the nomination for a German actress’s tri-lingual performance. We should be celebrating that a leisurely paced Holocaust drama by an experimental filmmaker started selling out showings this weekend off of the Academy’s praise. All three of these films are absolutely worth checking out, and if you hadn’t heard of them before, well, you have now. That’s one of the most important things the Oscars can do.
Are the Actors Okay?
The actors branch, on the other hand, seems stuck in a rut. A full half of the 20 acting nominees are based on a real person, 11/20 if you count Ken as a real person which I do.
The acting branch is the largest and therefore I suppose tends to be more populist, by which I mean they have Netflix subscriptions. Did you know Colman Domingo played Bayard Rustin in an Obama-produced biopic this year? I haven’t seen it, but I sure haven’t heard good things! Remember Nyad? Annette Bening and Jodie Foster are apparently the best things about that movie, but did we really need to nominate them over, say Rachel McAdams from Are You There God? Over Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore? Not that I’m surprised the actors hated May December. (I admittedly haven’t seen Nyad. Maybe they’re right!)
Which, of course, brings us back to Barbie. Margot Robbie missing out on Best Actress feels especially surprising when America Ferrera did get in for her supporting performance. She was… fine? I’ve seen suggestions this is a sign Supporting Actress was a weaker category, but I don’t buy that when Florence Pugh (Oppenheimer) and Penélope Cruz (Ferrari) were totally viable options.
These picks just secure the feeling that all four of these categories are locked up. Paul Giamatti will win Best Actor unless Oppenheimer can fuel serious new momentum for Cillian Murphy. Speaking of Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr.’s Supporting Actor trophy is ready for engraving. Lily Gladstone will win Best Actress unless Emma Stone campaigns her tush off. And Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Supporting Actress is the single safest bet you can make this year.
Mission Accomplished
As a massive fan of the series I was surprised to learn that no Mission: Impossible movie has ever been nominated for an Oscar. Not for editing, not for sound, not VFX, nothing. For perhaps the most critically appreciated action franchise of the 21st century to completely miss out on technical categories where Disney’s annual Star Wars felt obligatory makes such little sense that it barely registered to me. MI has just never been in the picture. I suppose it’s a little ironic that it finally broke through for the most commercially disappointing entry in the series.
Also receiving his first ever nod from the Academy: Godzilla! Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have put it on my ballot, but it’s hard not to be happy for them. I can’t wait to see Goji on the red carpet.
We Don’t Have a Clique Problem
It feels very silly to be, like, concerned about the state of the Oscars, but once I heard this pointed out I can’t stop thinking about it: This is a relatively small lineup of films.
Every year there are 10 Best Picture nominees and 10 screenplay nominees, due to original and adapted being separate categories. Of those 10 films… 9/10 overlap. (May December and Killers of the Flower Moon are the odd ones out.) This is extremely disappointing. When you dig into the also-rans that got some nominations but not Best Picture, you find films like Napoleon and The Color Purple. And not much else. Used to be the Best Makeup category would be 3 films that showed up nowhere else. They’ve since expanded it to 5, and 3/5 makeup nominees this year are Best Picture nominees.
Is this an effect of the distributors playing the awards game smarter? Are the Academy members actually watching fewer movies? I have no idea. I just hope we can get back to a place where the full list of nominees is just a little bit weirder.
They Were Too Cool For This, Anyway
Finally, let’s end with an homage to the great movies that won’t be attending this year’s show. Because part of what makes the Oscars the Oscars is their ability to disappoint.
- The Killer, a victim of Netflix (and also David Fincher’s apparently disinterest in awards)
- The Iron Claw, a victim of A24’s lack of infinite campaign resources
- Ferrari, a victim of… of what? How was this not even nominated for, like, sound?
- Asteroid City
- Priscilla
- All of Us Strangers
- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
- And many more