What the Oscars mean, and what they don’t

On Academy Award nomination morning, my overarching view of Awards season

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, with no major surprises. Oppenheimer led the way with 13 nominations, with Barbie, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Anatomy of a Fall all getting plentiful nominations. 

There were a few snubs that weren’t expected — Greta Gerwig for Best Director for Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon for Adapted Screenplay, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie for Documentary — but those were mostly functions of strong categories in a very strong year. 

This wasn’t a year in which any of the big contenders were movies I hated; in my ranking of the 2023 movies, I had the ten Best Picture nominees ranked  1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 15, 23, 25, 43, and 108. However, some of the movies this year that I loved and had in my top ten — Beau is Afraid, Saltburn, All of Us Strangers, The Iron Claw and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret — were blanked completely.

As for nice surprises, I was thrilled to see Robot Dreams get a nod for Best Animated Feature, although now that it’s nominated Neon might want to go ahead and schedule a release date for it. And there are a handful of nominated films — To Kill a Tiger for documentary, IO Capitano for international film, and the majority of the films in the short categories — that I have not yet seen. 

All that said- as you may remember from my manifesto when this newsletter launched, I do not view the Academy Awards and other awards as the be-all and end-all of movies and how they are judged. 

Sure, I take seriously my responsibilities as an awards voter for the three critics groups that I belong to, but I acknowledge that I have no say in who gets nominated for and wins Oscars. I root for movies, filmmakers, performers, and others I like to get recognition, and I always watch the awards. 

But at the same time, I acknowledge that the Oscars very frequently get things wrong, that it’s pretty much always been that way, and it’s not especially something worth getting angry about. History is usually a better judge of these things than the Academy is; Saving Private Ryan may have lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, but the latter film’s 25th anniversary came and went last month and was barely remarked upon. 

I also don’t think it’s worth worrying about the ratings of the Oscar show itself which, even though they decline most years, remain one of the most watched network broadcasts of the year that doesn’t involve the NFL. 

All the time, after a screening, someone will ask me if I think the film, or so-and-so actor, will end up getting nominated. But when I’m watching a movie, especially before November and December, where it will fit into Oscar politicking is just about the last thing on my mind. You may have noticed that I rarely discuss such things in my reviews. 

So I’ll be following the Oscar season like everyone else, and commenting on it here. But it will never form the center of my film analysis.