It’s been fashionable to say that the Oscars are irrelevant for quite some time now. Movies are less central to the cultural conversation than they used to be. Recent Best Picture winners like Nomadland and CODA weren’t exactly entertainment milestones the way Forrest Gump, Titanic, and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King were. Nobody made a sitcom episode about how boring Moonlight is, the way Seinfeld lampooned the fervor over The English Patient. Attempts to integrate the Snyderverse into the Academy Awards ceremony last year failed spectacularly (and quite predictably).
But then, every few years, you have somebody mixing up an envelope, and Warren Beatty deciding to just go with it and announce the wrong Best Picture, or Will Smith slapping somebody for a stale joke about a past-its-prime Demi Moore movie minutes before he’s due to win an Oscar himself. (If you’re going to get slapped telling a joke, at least let it be about a culturally relevant movie!) Moments like these have gotten everybody talking about the Oscars the way they used to — except for the part about the actual movies.
The last couple Oscars ceremonies were compromised by COVID, and the complications that ensued in actually releasing movies into theaters. (Precious few people saw Nomadland or CODA in a cinema.) This year, they’re back in more or less their full glory, and somehow have managed to nominate the two highest-grossing films of 2022, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way Of Water, for Best Picture. That’s very unusual these days. If it had happened in 2020, we would’ve had Bad Boys For Life up against Sonic The Hedgehog. In 2019, it would’ve been Avengers: Endgame versus Disney’s live action The Lion King. Of course, these are also sequels to action movies — also unusual in this category. Everything Everywhere All At Once, which has been sweeping up precursor awards left and right, is an action-comedy, a hybrid of two genres the Academy doesn’t generally favor. It’s about as far from Out Of Africa as a movie can be, a signal that long-standing traditions in taste are changing. (For better or worse.) This year’s Best Picture roster is a surprisingly action-heavy, culturally relevant lineup by Academy standards, and people — not just women! — are talking.
So what’s it like being a contrarian to a lineup of Oscars nominees that already feels contrarian to the Academy’s usual taste? A little weird! My Not-Oscars are more traditionally Oscar-y than the actual Oscars. Everything’s topsy-turvy! I’m so confused! Here’s what I picked!
BEST ACTRESS
Ji-Min Park – Return To Seoul
Olivia Colman – Empire Of Light
Ana De Armas – Blonde
Cate Blanchett – Tár
Emma Thompson – Good Luck To You, Leo Grande
*
Honorable Mentions:
Dale Dickey – A Love Song
Zoë Kravitz – KIMI
BEST ACTOR
Brendan Fraser – The Whale
Jeremy Pope – The Inspection
Eden Dambrine – Close
Gabriel LaBelle – The Fabelmans
Bill Nighy – Living
*
Honorable Mentions:
Daryl McCormack – Good Luck To You, Leo Grande
Caleb Landry-Jones – Nitram
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees Of Inisherin
Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans
Oh Kwang-rok – Return To Seoul
Anthony Hopkins – Armageddon Time
Ashton Kutcher – Vengeance
*
Honorable Mentions:
Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees Of Inisherin
Stefan Crepon – Peter Von Kant
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Hong Chau – The Whale
Kerry Condon – The Banshees Of Inisherin
Anne Hathaway – Armageddon Time
Kristen Stewart – Crimes Of The Future
Samantha Morton – The Whale
*
Honorable Mentions:
Li Jun Li – Babylon
Sheila Flitton – The Banshees Of Inisherin
BEST DIRECTOR
Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans
Andrew Dominik – Blonde
Lukas Dhont – Close
Todd Field – Tár
James Gray – Armageddon Time
*
Honorable Mentions:
Charlotte Wells – Aftersun
Sam Mendes – Empire Of Light
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins – Pinocchio
Kazuo Ishiguro – Living
Samuel D. Hunter – The Whale
Andrew Dominik – Blonde
Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill – The Black Phone
*
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Todd Field – Tár
Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans
James Gray – Armageddon Time
Martin McDonagh – The Banshees Of Inisherin
Ruben Östlund – Triangle Of Sadness
BEST SCORE
Empire Of Light – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Blonde – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
Babylon – Justin Hurwitz
EO – Pawel Mykietyn
Ted K – Blanck Mass
*
BEST MUSICAL MOMENT
“Naatu Naatu” – RRR
“My Pussy” – Babylon
“Ciao Papa” – Pinocchio
“Imperya” – Ahed’s Knee
“Let’s Dance” – Bardo
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Blonde – Chayse Irvin
Babylon – Linus Sandgren
EO – Michal Dymek
The Fabelmans – Janusz Kamiński
Empire Of Light – Roger Deakins
*
BEST ENSEMBLE
Triangle Of Sadness
Babylon
The Fabelmans
Armageddon Time
TÁR
WORST VACATION
Men
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Barbarian
Triangle Of Sadness
Vengeance
*
WORST DINING EXPERIENCE
Fresh
The Menu
Triangle Of Sadness
Babylon
The Whale
WORST AT BEING RICH
Andrea Riseborough – To Leslie
Zlatko Burić & Sunnyi Melles – Triangle Of Sadness
Margot Robbie – Babylon
Kate Hudson – Glass Onion
Jessica Chastain – Armageddon Time
*
BEST AT BEING POOR
Dolly De Leon – Triangle Of Sadness
Jeremy Pope – The Inspection
Daniel Zolghadri – Funny Pages
Cooper Raiff – Cha Cha Real Smooth
Aubrey Plaza – Emily The Criminal
*
BEST ASS
EO
The Banshees Of Inisherin
Triangle Of Sadness
Navalny
*
REAL NOBODY 