6. Sing Sing
Fresh off his first-ever Oscar nod for playing the gay Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin, Colman Domingo was pegged early on to crop up in the acting lineup for the second year running (and he did). This time around, the 55-year-old actor sucks up all the oxygen in the room as John “Divine G” Whitfield, a wrongfully incarcerated Black man who finds a renewed sense of purpose writing and performing plays for the prison’s theater group. It’s a juicy role that gives ample opportunity for the Emmy-winning actor to flex his dramatic chops. But he also knows when to step back and let his other co-stars shine — particularly the remarkable Clarence Mackin, a former Sing Sing inmate who helped co-write the script.
As expected, Domingo’s stellar turn didn’t escape the notice of Oscar voters. Many pundits predicted Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” to make the Best Picture cut as well. After all, the Academy can generally be counted on to acknowledge any prospective contender boasting an invigorating, feel-good message (bonus points if it also happens to celebrate the transformative powers of art).
Chalk it up to bad timing or A24’s lackluster Oscar campaign, but what on paper had all the makings of a Best Picture shoo-in — much lip service has been paid about the cast being largely comprised of formerly incarcerated non-actors — ended up missing out on the most high-profile races, with only a fighting chance in below-the-line categories like Best Original Song and a consolatory Adapted Screenplay nod.
7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
A consolatory Best International Feature Film nomination frankly doesn’t begin to do justice to this ripped-from-the-headlines family drama. Assuming the Academy sought to reward the timeliest and socially conscious film of the year with their highest honor, they had a shoo-in that checked all boxes and then some in the Cannes-winning “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”.
Shot entirely in secret by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof shortly before being forced into exile and being served with an eight-year prison sentence by his home country’s draconian regime, Germany’s official entry for the 97th Oscars casts an unwavering eye on the powers-that-be through the lens of a careerist Tehran judge freshly appointed to Iran’s Revolutionary Court. As civil unrest and mass arrests unfold in the aftermath of real-life Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022, our conflicted protagonist allows his morals to slip away while signing countless death sentences by the day, with his new job slowly driving a wedge between him and his family.
We never seriously expected the subtitle-allergic Academy voters to rally behind an unwaveringly bleak 169-minute foreign movie about systemic injustice and oppression, but the fact that it was left off the Best Picture list still stings.
8. Juror #2
It’s not like Clint Eastwood will be losing any sleep over a perceived Oscar snub, the immortal 94-year-old American icon has firmly secured his legacy with five Best Picture nominees to his shelf already, including two winners in “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”. But not enough attention has been paid to what’s arguably his best work since 2006s “Letters from Iwo Jima” — an old-fashioned courtroom drama starring Nicholas Haul as a Georgia journalist and expectant dad selected for jury duty who suddenly realizes he might be involved with the ongoing murder trial in more ways than one.
Despite becoming an improbable sleeper hit on streaming, “Juror #2” chances at Oscar glory were always going to be slim after being unceremoniously pulled from theaters by Warner Bros. merely a week after its October rollout — in fact, it only screened in less than 50 theaters stateside with no marketing push in the works whatsoever. The studio obviously dropped the ball by hanging one of its biggest living legends out to dry. But at least Eastwood’s supposed swan song found a second life when it hit cable and scratched that middlebrow legal thriller itch. Honestly, I can think of worse ways to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon than firing this one up on Max.
9. A Different Man
Oddly enough, last year we got two equally exceptional ‘be-careful-what-you-wish-for’ movies that centered around struggling actors who try to get their professional careers back on track by undergoing an experimental medical procedure that drastically transforms their appearance. Sadly, only one of them (Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”) managed to generate enough buzz and keep enough momentum over the year to last through the awards season gauntlet and snag a Best Picture nod, with Aaron Schimberg’s darkly comic breakout feature getting lost in the shuffle after earning raves at Sundance.
Sebastian Stan at least got some love from the Academy after unexpectedly nabbing his first acting honors for giving a decent Donald Trump impression in Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice”. But for our money, his best role of the year (if not his full post-Marvel career so far) goes to Edward, a New York actor born with neurofibromatosis who tries to turn a new leaf as a conventionally handsome man but, in a cruel twist of fate, ends up losing out on a plum off-Broadway role to a fellow thespian (Adam Pearson) who happens to suffer from the same disfiguring condition.
Had it been properly marketed, “A Different Man” could’ve easily picked up enough steam to make some noise during this year’s campaign trail, but A24 decided to bet all their chips on Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” instead. It remains to be seen whether that strategy will pay off.
10. The Beast
Heartfelt tributes to David Lynch continued to pour on this month as the film world mourns the loss of one of its most irreplaceable and enduring icons. Yet, his legacy lives on today through a new generation of filmmakers who repeatedly cite his work as a central reference point. Coralie Fargeat’s cracked-mirror vision of L.A. (“The Substance”) is obviously patterned after “Mulholland Drive”, while Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw the TV Glow”) cited Twin Peaks as “the most cathartic and rich experience of watching media that I’ve had in my adult life”. Meanwhile, Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink” delivered a small dose of Lynchian terror on a shoestring budget, with an uncanny sound design wholly indebted to Lynch’s signature use of white noise.
Then there’s this trippy Henry James adaptation by French writer-director Bertrand Bonello (a self-proclaimed “Fire Walk with Me” fan). A time-hopping, genre-splicing techno-thriller that seamlessly bounces from 1910 Paris and 2014 L.A. to a dystopian 2044 ruled by A.I., “The Beast” may come closer than any non-David Lynch film to capturing the uncanny and disorienting vibes of the late director’s dreamscapes.
Complete with a Möbius strip structure, crisscrossing timelines, eerie doppelgangers, and even Roy Orbison needle drops, the film stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as different iterations of would-be lovers who pull together, drift apart, and reconnect across time and space. The viewer is largely left to their own devices to follow the narrative breadcrumbs and fill in the gaps — which certainly didn’t help its case among Oscar voters. But as Hollywood bids farewell to a fearless and oft-misunderstood genius who never pandered to his audience, is there any better tribute than acknowledging this challenging but rewarding work among the year’s best?