Some Positive Thoughts on Our Oscar Nominees...
Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 5:00PM by Eric Blume
EMILIA PÉREZ | © Netflix
Each Oscar nomination morning, there’s always that moment of sadness or anger over our favorites being left out of the race. It’s part of the fun of the awards season really…righteous indignation feels damn good! And I’m sure, for all of you, this year was no exception. There’s always something to gripe about on how the Academy did someone dirty, or how they’re sheep about following the trends, etc.
BUT, let’s have some fun and look at some of the positive things about this year’s nominees…
I'M STILL HERE | © Sony Pictures Classics
THE CHANGING ACADEMY
The Academy itself has a lot more members than it used to…close to ten thousand now(!), with many, many more international members, and a greater sense of diversity, too. The “steak eaters” (old straight white men) who formed the bulk of the Academy for many decades are still alive and well, and still conservative in their voting (note the lack of any nominations for any movie about sex…Queer, Babygirl, Challengers, etc.). But a new wave is slowly replacing them, with very cool results.
This is the second year in a row where our Best Picture list has not one but TWO foreign films on the list. Last year, we had Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. This year, we have Emilia Perez and I’m Still Here. (The year prior we had All Quiet on the Western Front and Triangle of Sadness…the latter in English, but largely a “foreign film”.) And it’s not even as if the Academy likes a certain “type” of international film…Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here couldn’t be more different in tone and style, one all gas pedal and one all brake. This is a gigantic paradigm shift from years past.
In the case of I’m Still Here, it really feels like Fernanda Torres’ Golden Globe win pushed the film into priority viewing for voters, resulting in three nominations for the very quiet, slow-burn picture. One can only think/hope that if the marketing people could get two or three MORE international films on the radar like that, this trend can grow. Whatever you may think of the pictures, the momentum in this direction is very exciting.
SEPTEMBER 5 | © Paramount Pictures
QUALITY AND BREADTH
Last year, I thought we had perhaps the single most perfect Best Picture line-up ever…there wasn’t a dud in the bunch (and I thought Oppenheimer was probably only 7th best!). This year we also have ten very solid pictures. Maybe one or two aren’t your favorites. Again, we all have our personal choices on what may have been overlooked…I’d drop out Wicked and A Complete Unknown and replace them with A Real Pain and September 5, personally. But all ten films are smartly made, director-driven, impressive movies. There’s no Green Book, Vice, or Bohemian Rhapsody (all in 2018). Nothing with the threadbare afterschool-special dynamics or amateurish sentimentality of CODA. No steak-eater title like Hacksaw Ridge.
Plus, this year’s nominees are a fairly broad spectrum, covering several genres (drama, comedy, musical, horror) and telling stories with protagonists from many different worldviews. Also, 50% of the Best Picture nominees have a female protagonist at their center…we’ve never had that in the modern era!
THE SUBSTANCE | © MUBI
BIG SWINGS
Film Critic Guy Lodge mentioned today how insane it is that “two batshit French auteur projects” (Emilia Pérez and The Substance) are up for Best Picture. And it’s true. Again, regardless of your thoughts on either film, these two movies are indeed batshit crazy big swings that in prior years never would have made it into the ultimate race. In my opinion, both are bold, exciting storytelling that the Oscars should be encouraging and celebrating, rather than mainstream pabulum.
The Brutalist is also a gigantic swing that got big rewards, a weird, difficult, uncommercial picture made independently on a shoestring budget. This is the kind of thing last year’s Best Screenplay winner Cord Jefferson was encouraging: let’s make 20 movies for $10 million, instead of one movie for $200 million!
So keep mourning your Oscar snubs, that’s only human. And the Academy still has its boner moments (Diane Warren, no Challengers score, etc.). But the last few years have shown some truly seismic shifts towards the positive, and lord knows we need all the positive we can get nowadays. Happy Oscar season!
Reader Comments (17)
Thank you for this.
Yep! There are some things to mourn, and plenty I don't like, but there's so much to celebrate!
I'm Still Here: A true best picture surprise!
Nickel Boys in best picture - I had counted it out
Coralie Fargeat: Keeping up the 2020\s tradition of female representation (four years out of five this decade)
Ralph Fiennes first nomination in almost 20 years!
Yura Borisov, Guy Pearce and Edward Norton: Great performances by great actors in what is sometimes a fairly boring category
Monica Barbaro and Mikey Madison: a couple of star-is-born types who knock their roles out of the park
The Girl with the Needle: bleak, hard to watch, but impeccably made
Wild Robot across the board, and alongside Flow and Wallace & Gromit in animated picture
No Other Land, nominated and hopefully winning, alongisde some other impressive documentaries - not a celebrity bio in sight.
The nominations will always disappoint, but they also accomplish all that!
Isabella Rossellini has an Oscar nomination!
Mike, believe it or not, this is the first nomination for Fiennes in 28 years.
It's really fun to look at these nominations and to consider that some of these BP nominees and actors just wouldn't have been nominated for these performances 10-20 years ago. I think the internalization of the academy has been a big success. In many ways, we're seeing the fruits of the "OscarSoWhite" hashtag come to life. It's great to see the academy honor different genres and modes of filmmaking.
I also just think that many of this year's nominees are entertaining and watchable. Going back to some years in the 80s and 90s, that just wasn't a thing.
I'm also just excited about some of the nominations. It's great that Sing Sing got three nominations. I love that BP has multiple genres and types represented (horror, hard sci-fi, comedies, dramas, 100 million dollar films and 10 million dollar films). I'm happy that Nickel Boys is in and that 14/20 acting nominees are first timers.
Most of all, I'm very happy that Ralph Fiennes is back after being overlooked for so long. He had buzz for The End of the Affair, Sunshine, The Constant Gardener, The Duchess, and the Grand Budapest Hotel. I'm happy he's back, and I hope he has an Oscar comeback akin to Anthony Hopkins.
Agreed on most of this but Mike in Canada I can't jump on your Mikey Madison bandwagon.
What a nails on chalkboard performance,that scene where she is screaming infact that whole scene had me almost reaching for the remote control.
I can't imagine who enjoyed spending over 2 hrs in their company.
Wae: I used to be so good at math!
4 out of the last 5 Palme d’Or winners have gone through to Best Picture nominations. Three of this year’s nominees were Cannes premieres. I never thought we’d see the day where Cannes was the film festival with the most Oscar relevance, but here we are.
Also, this is the first time EVER in which two of the nominees for Best International Film are also up for Best Picture. Obviously not the first time two international films have been nominated, but the first time that there are two overlaps between those two categories.
Thank you for this article. Agree on everything. I would add that this year we have three foreign films in best picture as I consider The Substance in big part a french movie.
And we can also say that finally the doors for horror movies are open considering that we have The Substance with 5 and Nosferatu with 4 nominations?
And a trans actress is nominated!
It’s odd to celebrate the purported “new” “diversity” of the Academy and applaud the absence of “steak-eater titles.” Is it so unacceptable to have 1/10 BP nominees or 1/5 BD nominees that you find off-putting due to genre, style, etc? Now and then you do get an American Sniper or a Hacksaw Ridge and although those movies aren’t my cup of tea, the fact that a critical mass of voters appreciated them (among 9 other, more acceptable *to you* titles) seems to reflect more viewpoint diversity, not less. Was All Quiet a steak-eater film, I loved that one. Dunkirk? The Darkest Hour? Help me find the line here, lol.
I said this on another post but the fact that the commentariat try to draw red lines around certain topics/projects is what drives voters into the arms of a movie like Emilia Perez, which superficially checks a lot of “progressive” boxes irrespective of quality. I would even say Green Book was a product of “heart in the right place” grasping for an inspiring progressive message.
“Thank god there are no tofu-eater films” feels like something we’d take issue with.
I spent a lot of last year complaining about how weak 2024 was for film compared to 2023, and I still think 2023 was exceptionally strong. Yet, looking at the BP Oscar nominees, of the 7 I've seen I have to say they are pretty solid for the Academy - and overall, as you note, show a level of daring we could only have dreamed of 10 or even 5 years ago. I'll take it!
Positive?
What's positive about it?
This "changing Academy", "new Academy" are killing the Oscars and the world as we know it.
What's coming next? Best Blockbuster? Best Super-Hero film? Best cameo of a You Tuber? Best leading genderless performance?
Frankly, I couldn't disagree more with this post.
DK,
I understand your point and completely agree with you!
"This "changing Academy", "new Academy" are killing the Oscars and the world as we know it."
LOL.
The anger and negativity to this positive post is truly, truly comical.
Exactly this way. And everyone knows it.
Irony doesn't affect me.
When you write, you should understand that people don't have to agree with your statements.
Even more so when they are so fragile and express only your own opinion.
Peace! With or without laughs.
Fabio my friend, please continue to come at me! Seriously! i am absolutely not fragile and love a good argument.
But I am confused by yours. You ask "what is positive about it?" when the article itself explains what i think is positive about it. it's awesome that you disagree. but you don't argue my points...instead you mention the Academy adding categories? when that is not what is happening? honestly, i'm just confused. the entire point of cinephiles engaging is to debate. but just saying "i couldn't agree with this post more" without addressing the details of the articles doesn't open discourse.
DK calls me on a good point: yes, diversity should include the steak-eater title. I like that he came back out me and called me on a note of myopic generalization on my part. I think what I was trying to do with my article is just take a moment during a time in the world where things are very difficult and scary and negative, and point out what I feel are some positive things about the nominatons. And I welcome all healthy, positive, provocative discourse to anything I write, or anything on the site.
Peace back to you.