In the early hours of January 24th, the nominations for the 95th Academy Awards were announced. Actors Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) and Allison Williams (Get Out) did the honors. Unfortunately, Williams’ deadly singing robot co-star M3GAN didn’t join the celebrations, although she was certainly there in spirit.
With a quartet of blockbuster films in competition – Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as well as Elvis – this year’s Oscars had a unique opportunity to expand its global audience beyond the record-low viewing figures of 10 .5 million in 2021. So has the academy benefited from this? Or did it work out in 2009, where it failed to get The Dark Knight and Wall-E nominated for Best Picture, leading to rule changes and lots of hand-wringing?
Director Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s highly original left-field hit Everything Everywhere All at Once leads all films with 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, who wrote history as the first openly Asian nominee in the category ( Merle Oberon was nominated for The Dark Angel in 1936 but hid her Asian ancestry). The German-language war drama “All Quiet on the Western Front” from Netflix meanwhile surprises with nine Oscar nominations, including “Best Picture”. The academy loves war movies, doesn’t it? Other pleasant surprises include Angela Bassett, who received a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress award for her performance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Brian Tyree Henry, who earned his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for the little-publicized Causeway, and Paul Mescal earns his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor as a tormented young father in Aftersun.
Unlike last year, the Academy did a good job of nominating a variety of performers in most categories, although it failed to win two leading black contenders, Danielle Deadwyler (Till) and Viola Davis (The Woman King) to nominate for Best Actress , and did not honor a single woman in the Best Director category.
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Those were the five biggest snubs to come out of this year’s Oscar nominations.
Tom cruise
While Top Gun: Maverick received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and a surprise nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, the man who makes sure everything runs smoothly couldn’t muster an Oscar nomination for Best main actor”. In addition to being the biggest movie star alive and maybe the last real one, Cruise has a history of being screwed by the Academy. He has never won an Oscar for acting, although he has had deserved wins for Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, and has not been nominated for an Oscar for more than two decades. He has only three acting roles in his entire career (the above two films plus Born on July 4th). Did Cruise’s Scientology shenanigans put him at odds with the Academy? They certainly didn’t help.
Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis
This year’s Oscars have the unfortunate distinction of honoring zero black actors in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories, despite a string of meritorious achievements. The omissions are most apparent in the Best Actress category, where two strong twists were expected to deserve recognition: Danielle Deadwyler’s role as Mamie Till, the mother of the murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till, in “Till,” and the metamorphosis by Viola Davis into a warrior general Nanisca of the Agojie in The Woman King. Both Deadwyler and Davis were active during the campaign period, but neither got the nod. Deadwyler’s snub is perhaps the most shocking, considering how serious the role is and how she rose to the occasion.
female directors
Yes, it’s been another year without a woman being nominated for best director. I was hoping Charlotte Wells would be recognized for her artfully understated direction of Aftersun, a personal and heartbreaking story of a troubled young father (Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter (Frankie Corio) spending one last summer vacation together in Turkey would, but it shouldn’t be. Instead, Ruben Ostlund received credit for Triangle of Sadness, which the author says was one of the swankier, narratively hackneyed films of the past year. Perhaps Greta Gerwig will help correct these mistakes with this summer’s Barbie.
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Dolly de Leon
Speaking of the Triangle of Sadness, the film has one saving grace: BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning Dolly de Leon nods for her inspired role as Abigail, a cleaning lady who becomes something of a tribal leader once a luxury yacht is filled with some of The worst one percenter you’ve ever seen capsizes and the survivors find themselves abandoned on a remote island. Using her keen survival skills, de Leon turns the tables on these spoiled wimps, living in her own private apartment on the lifeboat and convincing Carl (Harris Dickinson), an insecure male model, to have sex in exchange for special privileges. It would have been nice if de Leon, a veteran Filipino stage and screen actress, had been recognized by the Academy for her tremendous dedication.
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Paul Dano
Despite a two-decade career of outstanding performances, including in acclaimed films like Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood and Prisoners, Dano has yet to earn a single Oscar nomination. The thought was that he would do something for his tender role as Burt Fabelman, the stern but gentle computer engineer, father of Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans, but it wasn’t to be. It’s a shame considering how some of the film’s more operatic performances are recognized while its low-key strong doesn’t — coupled with Dano’s massive year between that and his Riddler in The Batman. On the other hand, Dano was also cruelly snubbed for playing the full Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy, which should have earned him every nomination under the sun.