It’s that time of the year again. The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced on January 23, with “Emilia Perez” leading the pack with 13 nominations overall. “Wicked” and “The Brutalist” followed closely with ten nods apiece, with this year’s Best Picture lineup boasting a healthy mix of populist box office champs (“Dune: Part Two”), buzzy festival standouts (“Anora”), meaty actors’ showcases (“The Substance”), sturdy musical biopics (“A Complete Unknown), critic-proof indie darlings (“Nickel Boys”), and sentimental favorites (“I’m Still There”).
Barring one particularly grating choice, it’s hard to find much fault with this year’s slate of contenders. However, for those who still regard the U.S.-centric Oscars as the ultimate arbiter of artistic greatness, it is disappointing that even with the expansion from five to 10 Best Picture slots, some of last year’s finest films — from “Challengers” and “The Beast”, to “A Real Pain” — fell down the pecking order and were left out of the running entirely. Ditto Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Denzel Washington, Daniel Craig, and Nicole Kidman all getting the shaft in the acting categories.
As we approach the film industry’s annual awards pageant on March 2, what once looked like a wide-open year with no clear front-runner is slowly shaping out to be a three-horse race between “Anora”, “Emilia Pérez”, and “The Brutalist”, with the latter emerging as a strong contender and set to sweep a bunch of major categories including Best Director and Best Actor. It’s hard to imagine Oscar voters passing up the opportunity to give Brady Corbet’s portentous post-war drama their biggest stamp of approval and pat themselves on the back for acknowledging a ‘serious movie’ tackling ‘serious issues’, but “Anora” gained some late momentum after taking home the top prize at the DGA Awards. It’s a game of inches, really, but we’re going to give it an honest shot anyway with this comprehensive ranking, from worst to best, of all ten of the nominees for Best Motion Picture of the Year. Don’t forget to tune in on Sunday, March 2 to find out who comes out on top.
10. Emilia Pérez
You know the awards season has truly kicked into high gear when a divisive rabble-rouser that made headlines for all the wrong reasons and kept failing forward at every major industry precursor including the Globes ends up shoehorning its way into the forefront of the Best Picture race (while becoming the de-facto villain of this year’s campaign trail).
Taking up the mantle from “Crash”, “Green Book”, “Don’t Look Up” and “Maestro”, that dubious honor now belongs to Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical about a drug kingpin (Karla Sofía Gascón) trying to dupe the Mexican cartel with the help of an ace city lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) by faking his own death, undergoing gender-affirming surgery, and turning a new leaf as a woman. Unsurprisingly, there’s been much online quibbling over the fact that a film that ostensibly celebrates Mexican culture was shot in France with zero Mexican-born actors by a French director, who back in January issued a public apology after facing immediate blowback for his tone-deaf handling of trans issues and depiction of Mexico.
Yet here we are. Despite the abysmal word of mouth, migraine-inducing songs, and Karla Sofía Gascón’s self-imploding campaign, Netflix’ buzzy contender has managed to hang around in the best picture conversation all year long. And judging by its whopping 13-Oscar nomination haul (more than double that of “Parasite”!), it still has a legitimate shot of going all the way. Gascón surely blew her chances to come out on top in a stacked lead actress line-up after a bunch of her old racist tweets resurfaced online, but bet on Saldaña to pick up the slack and prevail in the supporting slate after committing category fraud.
9. A Complete Unknown
Never underestimate the Academy’s natural tendency to acknowledge well-made yet surface-level biopics that fade from memory pretty much as soon as you’re done watching them. Dressing up and lip-syncing as a true-life pop icon is always a reliable shortcut to an Oscar nomination (just ask Rami Malek or Austin Butler). Due credit to Timothée Chalamet for putting in extra shifts during a blitzkrieg Oscar campaign that’s seen him perform Dylan songs on SNL, pop up on multiple famous podcasts, and even roll up to the red carpet of the film’s London premiere on a public e-bike.
Though more of a mumbling impersonation than a bona fide dramatic performance, Chalamet was pegged early on as an Oscar hopeful and was always poised to eke out a nod for plunging himself into the role of one of the most singular, influential, and enigmatic American artists of the 20th century. Less expected is the presence of two of his co-stars (Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro) in the acting line-ups, while James Mangold notching a best directing honor at the expense of Denis Villeneuve and Edward Berger had many of us scratching our heads.
Not that anybody should question the “Walk the Line” director’s credentials as a dependable old warhorse with a clean-cut style, but his creative decision to follow the prestige-biopic playbook to a tee without adding anything new to the table — c’mon, we all knew it was going to end with Dylan going electric at the ’65 Newport Folk Festival — maybe wasn’t the right call when reckoning with the legacy of a complicated genius who defied imitation and always marched to the beat of his own drum. I guess it looks and feels like Oscar material (derogatory), but “A Complete Unknown” doesn’t stack up against Todd Haynes’ treatment (“I’m Not There”) and lacks the narrative and staying power to go all the way.
8. Wicked
Just like clockwork, whenever awards season rolls around, countless thinkpieces sound off the alarm to remind us of the obvious: Oscar viewership is down. Shocking, right? Sure, you could chalk it up to the overall decline of live TV across the board, but the harsh truth is this: your average Joe will only tune in to the broadcast if their favorite movies — that is, big, popular moneymakers they’ve actually seen or at least heard of — head into the ceremony with a real shot at snatching up the big awards.
Bearing this crucial context in mind, what better way for the Academy to attract a large audience and boost ratings this year than to tap into the massive Gen Z fan base of “Wicked” by making room for John M. Chu’s hit musical adaptation in their ballots? Just to give you an idea of their dedication: Leading up to the nominations announcement, a legion of hardcore devotees were already sharpening their pitchforks and bracing for outrage over a potential Cynthia Erivo snub in the best actress race — especially after she walked away empty-handed from the Globes. Luckily for them (and the rest of us), their fears were put to rest as the titular witch of the west claimed her spot among the five finalists, pushing the film’s total nomination haul into double digits.
The first half of this two-part theater adaptation may feel like 14 hours long, but we’re glad Ariana Grande’s comedic chops didn’t go unnoticed (not that one of the biggest pop idols in the world needs the clout or anything). Still, this is the kind of lowbrow fare that’s happy just to be nominated and only has a fighting chance in below-the-line categories.
7. The Brutalist
If the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes taught us anything, it’s that there’s no excuse for replacing actual human artists with generative AI. But to steal others’ work to create architectural images and building designs for a movie about the plight of an impoverished Hungarian Jewish architect sticking to his vision while struggling to make ends meet under capitalism? Now that’s just lame.
After patting himself on the back for not selling out to corporate Hollywood while being showered in accolades and unanimously hyped up as the new poster boy for capital-C Cinema, Oscar-nominated director Brady Corbet owes all an apology after mailing it in by resorting to the plagiarism machine model known as Midjourney to avoid paying visual artists for their work. And while deserving of praise for embodying the tortured soul of the film as László Tóth, Adrien Brody is poised to set an alarming precedent when he inevitably walks off with a statue for a performance that, sadly, was revealed to be enhanced and modulated using AI tools in post-production to correct his lacking Hungarian accent.
All that aside, there’s a lot to appreciate about this bloated yet undeniably ambitious 215-minute awards magnet. Even if the story ends on a whimper, this is a well-acted, technically competent film with heady ideas about the immigrant experience and the folly of the American Dream. It’s also refreshing to come across a cocksure young talent eager to prove his worth and ready to take big swings (whether he has the screenwriting chops to back up his oversized ambition is another matter entirely). That every pull quote hails “The Brutalist” as the ‘next great American epic’ with every pundit name-dropping the likes of “There Will Be Blood” and “The Godfather: Part II” in their reviews frankly set expectations a bit too high for this one (shooting on 35mm VistaVision can only get you so far).
Corbet is no Paul Thomas Anderson, mind you, but his drama Globes winner has been utterly immune to controversies and hasn’t stopped racking up trophies from critics’ groups leading up to the Oscar ceremony, so there’s little reason to doubt it’ll replicate the success and clean up shop here as well.
6. I’m Still Here
There was no suspense over whether Fernanda Torres would scoop up a much-deserved actress nod after winning a Golden Globe in an unusually competitive field, but if any awards prognosticator tries to convince you they had this Brazilian sleeper hit in their best picture ballots going into January 23, they’re probably lying through their teeth.
Our heart belongs to “All We Imagine as Light” (Payal Kapadia, your moment will come), but all’s right with the world when the Academy didn’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate international cinema for the fourth year running — a welcomed trend that proves that diversifying the Academy membership was a much-needed move to improve its notorious poor track record with foreign-language movies that require voters to, as Bong Joon-ho might put it, overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles.
Walter Salles’ gut-punching dramatization of the search for a 1970s Brazilian engineer who vanished without a trace during the country’s military has an ace in the hole in Torres’ tour-de-force performance as a resilient woman hellbent on uncovering the truth behind his husband’s fate. But “I’m Still Here” was still generally thought a long shot for the Best Picture shortlist right until it blew every forecast out of the water to become the first-ever Brazilian production to break into the top category. It won’t happen unless the heavyweight contenders cancel each other out by splitting the vote, but this scrappy underdog could become the new CODA and pull in ahead in the home stretch.