2022 should have felt like a crowded movie year, with scores of films held back for 30 or more months awaiting a theatrical release window after the COVID pandemic had settled into some kind of predictable normalcy. But when many of the pictures that seemed like they were too good to just toss onto a streamer were finally released, it felt like an equally unceremonious dump into nearly empty theaters for ridiculously short runs with little to no advertising. Films like Armageddon Time, The Wonder, Till, The Son, Corsage, She Said, Call Jane, Decision to Leave, Broker, and Saint Omer came and went with little fanfare. And some would-be-crowd-pleasers like Thirteen Lives, Ambulance, and Confess, Fletch got treated by their respective studios as if they were embarrassments.  

But one exciting aspect of so many prestige pictures getting lost in the shuffle is that, for the first time in a long time, the Oscar-nominated movies span the full calendar of release dates—and are not limited to the last couple of months of the calendar year. Major films that came out in the first half of 2022, like Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, and The Batman, were not forgotten by nomination time. And international releases and smaller art house films that became must-see pictures, like RRR, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Marcel The Shell with Shoes On, were allowed to develop a massive fan base via positive word-of-mouth and multiple multiplex and art-house reissues—just like back in the days of third-run movie theaters and sleeper hits.  

Also thrilling is how many first-time nominees there are this year. In the acting categories alone, a full sixteen folks got their first major Academy recognition: from young up-and-comers like Austin Butler, Stephanie Hsu, and Paul Mescal, to long-overdue acting royalty like Michelle Yeoh, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Nighy, and Jamie Lee Curtis.  

On the morning the 95th Oscar Nominations were read out by Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams, I suddenly became hopeful that maybe, for the first time in a long time, the Oscar show might not be a shit show. For one thing, Ahmed and Williams took the job seriously and treated the task they were handed like professionals. They had clearly practised the pronunciation of many of the names on the various shortlists so as to not look like idiots and embarrass the Academy, as far too many of the folks selected for this early morning duty have done in recent years. Yet the typically awkward announcement ritual still had moments of levity and spontaneity, like when Ahmed read two of the animated shorts titles back-to-back—My Year of Dicks, and An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It, giving them the same gravitas as more prestigious titles. That the Academy was nominating movies with monikers like these signalled that the eventual Oscar broadcast might be fun, even in categories the TV-watching public often considers boring. And while, as always, there are as many films nominated that I disliked as liked, many of the categories feature names I wasn’t expecting to see. Those surprises are a big part of what used to make the Oscars so much damn fun.

Of course, the biggest awards-season controversy of 2022 was the seemingly out-of-nowhere nomination of Andrea Riseborough for the tiny indie film To Leslie. British TV director Michael Morris’s character study, in which Riseborough stars as an alcoholic trying to put her life back together, only grossed $27,000 at the box office and was not a film most Oscar voters had even heard of, let alone seen, until right before the voting commenced. Riseborough was the beneficiary of a highly targeted and strategic whisper (and shout) campaign launched by Morris’s wife, actress Mary McCormack—who is not a member of the Academy and therefore not bound by any of its rules about campaigning.  

Other actors who are Academy voters, specifically Frances Fisher, did cross the line. One of her many social media posts named other likely nominees and, while it didn’t disparage them, that practice is a clear violation of Academy rules (though Fisher was in no way connected to the production of To Leslie). Worse, the two actors she named in her post were Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler (for their work in The Woman King and Till respectively). Both actresses had scored multiple nominations in the various awards and critics’ prizes that precede the Oscar nominations, so Fisher called them “a lock” for Oscar nominations in her post. But considering that both Davis and Deadwyler are Black, and in the Academy’s 95-year history only one Black woman has ever won the Best Actress Oscar (Halle Berry, for Monster’s Ball in 2001), to say they were “a lock” was, to apply a word I do not overuse, “problematic.”

This upset would have been a mild, but amusing insider kerfuffle had Riseborough edged out Michelle Williams, whose anticipated nomination for The Fabelmans is, in my view, a far more inappropriate Best Actress choice than Riseborough. While a case can be made, it’s a stretch to call Williams’s part in The Fabelmans a “lead role.” But the Academy has no rules about what constitutes a leading role versus a supporting role, so Williams and Universal Pictures (like so many actors and studios before them) are free to run in whichever category they think they have the best chance of winning. But Williams did not lose her anticipated slot; Davis and Deadwyler did. So, the optics were not great. Two of the year’s best performances by Black women got “snubbed” in favor of yet another white lady (a British one, no less!) putting on “poorface” and giving the Academy their favorite type of performance—an alcoholic on a redemption journey.

Of course, an upset like this one is a huge part of what makes the Oscar race entertaining. It was exciting to see a grassroots push succeed over the multi-million-dollar studio-funded Oscar campaigns that so often drain the fun out of award season by making all these shows so similar and redundant. It’s also hilarious to see how easily manipulated the Academy voting body is. Riseborough’s nomination was met with shock by so many. People asked, how could this have happened when similar recent grassroots attempts like the one for Mary Kay Place in Diane (2018) or Alfre Woodard in Clemency (2019) didn’t succeed? The answer is simple: CODA.  Any halfway savvy marketer could see that the reason Apple TV’s tiny little indie CODA won the 2021 Best Picture over Netflix’s The Power of the Dog or other well-funded nominees from deep-pocketed distributors, was because the film was so small that most Oscar voters didn’t see it (or even hear of it) until right before they had to vote. CODA’s quick rise through critics’ top ten lists and early award ceremonies—its Best Ensemble Cast win at the SAG awards especially—meant that a lot of Academy Members saw that film weeks or even days before voting.  

Even without factoring in the advanced age of many in the Academy, no one in our contemporary society holds anything in their brains very long any more, due to the constant bombardment of information. It’s not surprising that when people try to think back on the films they saw last year, they may only recall the ones they most recently viewed, or those few that stayed in theaters all through the year. Aside from that small handful of must-see-in theaters pictures, people simply are not going out to the pictures like they used to. Even if they were, it’s not like the days when The Silence of the Lambs, Rain Man, or Amadeus would stick around in your local theater for months, constantly reminding you of their existence and perhaps even luring you back in for a second or third viewing. And Academy voters aren’t seeing the big “for your consideration” billboards as they drive around LA with the same frequency as they did pre-COVID. These changes combined to make it the perfect time for a strategically targeted grassroots effort. So in addition to CODA's appealing content qualities, it had the benefit of being the last movie many voters saw. The Riseborough campaign set out to make sure this year that To Lesslie was the last film voters saw before filling in their ballots.

The heavy hitters who jumped on the Riseborough bandwagon were impressive. The week before the Oscar nominations were due, those of us who follow Film-Twitter experienced something that felt like mass -hypnosis. All of a sudden, the name Andria Riseborough was everywhere. Major actors were talking about and posting about Riseborough—and hosting screening parties of To Leslie. Cate Blanchett, who has swept most Best Actress awards in the months leading up to the nominations, was even singling out Riseborough when talking about her own wins for Tár. It was wild, and it got Oscar fans buzzing about how the aggressive campaign might successfully deliver a nomination for the actress.  

When the effort did prove successful, the Academy called a hasty conference to review their policies and practices. “How could this long shot have happened?” asked the folks who thought that adding two popular-vote, pseudo-category Twitter contests, #OscarsFanFavorite and #OscarsCheerMoment, to last year’s ceremony was a good idea. I know these folks are at least thirty-five years behind the times, but surely they had heard about the 'Boaty McBoatface’ online research vessel naming contest, the GameStop short squeeze, and the Donald Trump rally sabotaged by TikTok kids, right?  

The fact that the Academy was reviewing its rules was met with almost as many social media head-explosions as the initial naming of Riseborough as one of the Best Actress nominees. If the Academy were to rule that Riseborough had somehow cheated because, in lieu of the backing of a major studio machine flooding millions of dollars into an “approved” campaign she resorted to having her peers say good things about a performance they felt was deserving, it would make the Oscars look as corrupt as the Golden Globes. And even if the Academy had disqualified her nomination, it’s not like the next highest vote-getter would have slid into her place. (It doesn’t work like that). 

The Riseborough controversy was fascinating to watch play out because it taps into underlying flaws in the industry in terms of how “the best” is determined, as well as foundational issues in the wider culture around recognition for the work of Black women. I was not at all surprised that the movie Till didn’t score any nominations. Despite being the type of film the Academy usually goes for—a biopic set in the bygone days when overt racism was easy to denounce—it was a small film released very late in the year that had no white lead actors for the majority of Academy voters to identify with. Still, the Academy has a history of nominating, and even awarding, movies voters didn’t see simply because the movies seemed “important.” This pattern was borne out in 2013 when 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture despite many Oscar voters later claiming (without shame) that they didn’t actually see the movie. “Slavery-was-bad-and-, thank-goodness-that’s-all-over-with-now" narratives have been, and probably will remain, popular with Academy members. But movies about the Jim Crow era, like Till, which suddenly seem a whole lot more timely than they did even ten years ago, might be a tough sell for the typical liberal-minded but status-quo-loving Oscar voter to make the effort to see.  

I’m far more surprised that The Woman King did not score a single nomination, and that’s not just because I'm a big fan of its director, Gina Prince-Bythewood. (For one thing, she’s the only filmmaker, so far, who has ever responded to one of my reviews—about her 2014 film Beyond the Lights—in a way that let me know she’d actually read the whole piece and not just the Twitter capsule.) But The Woman King was a major release whose tremendous box office performance faired far better than anticipated. Plus, it’s the rare type of modern prestige blockbuster the Academy sometimes goes for. Its achievements in the craft categories were also more than impressive—especially when you consider this huge historical epic was made during COVID-19. But apparently, most Academy members didn’t go to see it. Something about it just didn’t appeal to them.

In an article she wrote for the Hollywood Reporter, Prince-Bythewood shared her experience of the myriad backhanded compliments she received from Academy members who came up to her at screenings saying how much they loved her movie and how “shocked” they were that they liked it because they “didn’t think it was going to connect with them at all.” Or how their kids or friends “had to drag them” to see the movie because they just “didn’t think it would hold any appeal for them.” The sheer volume of this type of “praise” (and the fact that it was intended as praise) really does confirm the internal, unacknowledged bias that many people who are not Black women have when it comes to looking at a poster, a trailer, or other forms of advertising with only Black women on it.

Still, while many of the Academy’s blind spots and hypocrisies have been in full force, 2022 was a banner year for Asian-American nominees. This didn’t feel like the usual Academy tokenism but actual recognition of outstanding work, and not limited to the express train of Everything Everywhere. While that hit film scored nominations for its Asian co-director, producer, and three of its stars, we also saw nominations for documentary director Shaunak Sen, animation director Domee Shi, screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro, composer M.M. Keeravani and lyricist Chandrabose, and serial scene-stealing actress Hong Chau.

Over the past decade, it’s been fascinating to watch the positive and negative ways that social media campaigns have affected the Oscars. I’ve always been skeptical and cynical about people trying to engineer social change via the dubious route of a small, highly visible, but otherwise rather insignificant institution like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which thinks of itself as progressive but in reality has been decades behind the times. In 2014, when the #OscarsSoWhite Twitter campaign was started, I asked my social media "friends" who shared it how many of them had bought a ticket to any of the three major films directed by Black women released that year—Selma, Beyond the Lights, and Belle. I was not surprised the majority of them had not (and, many who had only seen Selma had not paid for a ticket). I’ve always believed that when dealing with corporations (and movie studios are nothing if not bottom-line-driven corporations) voting with your dollars seems the best way to make change, not whining on social media.

However, the changes the Academy put in place as a direct result of #OscarsSoWhite were undeniably major improvements. Academy members who have been inactive in the industry for more than seven years no longer enjoy the lifetime privilege of voting for the Oscars. Despite a lot of anger from older members about getting downgraded to non-voting “emeritus membership,” this new policy enabled the organization to expand its ranks to far more younger, non-white, and international members who live outside the bubble of Hollywood.

It was also exciting to watch how both Academy members and the general public took to social media last year to lambast the Oscars producers for the disgraceful idea of moving eight of the less celebrity-driven technical awards out of the live broadcast. That change not only failed in its goal of shortening the Oscar show, but it succeeded in outraging people who love the Oscars and unleashing even more mockery and contempt from those who hate it.

The controversy around the Andrea Riseborough nomination is just the latest social media dust-up that has made the Oscars seem, if not exactly more relevant, at least more interesting than they’ve been in many years. It certainly made more people aware of this great actress, known for her chameleon-like quality of disappearing into roles rather than for a movie star screen persona.  It also got more viewership for To Leslie. One of the most vital aspects of the Academy Awards is that they have gotten audiences out to see movies normally eclipsed by blockbusters with multi-million-dollar ad campaigns that often take up multiple cinemas at the local multiplex. I’d be interested to see the numbers for how many more people saw Aftersun, Causeway, Living, Blonde, The Whale, EO, The Quiet Girl, Close, and even The Banshees of Inisherin and Tár after the nominations were announced. I know anecdotally from my local indie cinemas that ticket sales for films already on their “Best of the Year” programs instantly sold out the day after the nominations were announced.

With that, I’ll launch into my aspirationally annual tradition of ranking all the nominated films of the year. I don’t always have the time, inclination, or opportunity to see every Oscar-nominated film each year, but despite often sounding like a grumpy old man when I complain about aspects of over half the pictures selected by the Academy, I truly love the process of seeing every nominated film when I can. In 2022, with the exception of only the five films at the very bottom of my list, this exercise was not only easy, it was also a tremendous pleasure.

(all feature titles link to reviews)
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#54: BABYLON – 3 nominations 

The list of movies I wish I could un-see is so small I can barely count the number on my fingers. There are thousands of films that I don’t like, think are terrible, can’t believe other people love, etc. But there are just a tiny handful of pictures I wish had never been made. Damien Chazelle’s simultaneous hate-letter to Hollywood and love-letter to himself represents everything I despise about the auteur theory run amuck. But since Chazelle did get his nominated collaborators to achieve the levels of excess he asked of them, I suppose I can’t fault production designers Florencia Martin and Anthony Carlino, costume designer Mary Zophres, and especially composer Justin Hurwitz for rising to the challenge. I just wish their efforts were in service of a film less ugly, spiteful, and shamelessly derivative of far superior movies. 

#53: BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS ★ - 1 nomination
Cinematographer Darius Khondji has an impressive resume ranging from Jeunet & Caro’s Delicatessen and David Fincher’s Panic Room, to James Grey’s The Immigrant and the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems. But his work on Alejandro Iñárritu’s glorified home-movie, shot in long, ponderous, wide-angle tracking shots is unimaginative at best and pedestrian at worst. Seriously, anyone with an iPhone or Go-pro on a selfie-stick could have lit and filmed those cavernous sets as creatively as Khondji and Iñárritu did here. What were the cinematography branch members smoking when they saw fit to nominate this smug, tedious, blandly shot movie?

 

#52: THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE HORSE ★ – 1 nomination
I can’t think of a single more vapid or sanctimonious offering ever nominated for an Academy Award than this Animated Short, adapted from the best-selling illustrated book by Charlie Mackesy. The story follows the blossoming of a friendship based on acts of kindness between the four titular protagonists. It’s one of those sizably budgeted, celebrity-voiced British entries that often pop up in this category. [I’d just like to take a moment here to express gratitude for every piece of popular children's storytelling I was fed as a young person, even those with the most overt religious moralizing. From Winnie the Pooh and The Chronicles of Narnia to A Charlie Brown Christmas and even Davy and Goliath, for crying out loud. Thank you to all the good, bad, and subpar children’s writers I grew up with who value narrative above messaging. You did right by me!]

#51: TURNING RED ★ – 1 nomination
I poured a lot of my thoughts about the current state of children’s movies and Millennial storytelling trends into my harsh review for this Animated Feature nominee. Suffice to say, I consider this film a huge missed opportunity to commit to the specificity of the story it set out to tell. I also detested its unremitting pace that, like so many of its contemporaries, left no space for any moments of reflection, and just force-fed every idea, theme, and gag to the audience.
 

#50: BLONDE ★– 1 nomination
Here is proof, for me anyway, that many Academy voters nominate and even award Oscars to films they did not actually watch. I believe most who voted for Blonde might have checked out some of this atrocious nightmare-fantasy-biofiction to get a sense of how well Ana de Armas embodied Marilyn Monroe, but I honestly don’t think they watched most of it. de Armas doesn't embarrass herself in this role (the way she does in the same year's laughably inept Deep Water), but Blonde is not a film, or a performance, I think anyone would want forever associated with their name. 

#49: TELL IT LIKE A WOMAN ★ – 1 nomination
Diane Warren has been nominated 14 times for Best Original Song, and some of those were for kick-ass tunes. So, it would be a real disappointment if she were to finally win it for the lackluster “Applause" from this barely-a-movie anthology film in which only two of the seven segments are any good. Warren also won a lifetime achievement Oscar this year for her amazing career of songwriting. Sometimes, when a great artist is given an honorary award it feels far more fitting than were they to receive a competitive win for something generic. Such is the case here. Besides, I have no doubt Warren will be back with more nominations for more hit songs.  

#48: BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER ★ - 5 nominations
One could argue that Ryan Coogler deserves an adapted screenplay award for all the adapting he had to do while at the helm of this incredibly challenged sequel, which lost its lead actor before going into production. But juggling the death of your main character along with all the stupid requirements of a franchise product that exists within the Marvel Cinematic Universe probably can’t ever result in a coherent work of art. Wakanda Forever is a movie that must forcibly shoehorn in a subplot the only purpose of which is to set up a barely related TV show. Marvel is a corporate entity that literally is not above running a commercial during a funeral.  

The nomination for Visual Effects is a joke. This studio is now known as much for its rushed, shoddy VFX work as it is for capes and spandex. Wakanda Forever is nowhere near the worst VFX offender in the MCU, but it’s still hard to make a case for the generic visual effects in this movie, even if you only compare it to the first Black Panther. The nominated Original Song, “Lift Me Up,” by Coogler, Tems, and Rihanna, isn’t anything transcendent. The Makeup and Hairstyling by Camille Friend and Joel Harlow are cool, and the Costume Design by Ruth E. Carter is fantastic, but most of the designs are carried over from the first picture, which she won for. Angela Bassett’s Supporting Actress nod makes her the first actor to be nominated for a superhero movie. Is that really part of the legacy we want for this wonderful actor? Bassett has been nominated twice before, This time may, unfortunately, be her best shot to get an Academy Award. It’s just too bad she’d be getting it for a role that mostly consists of standing in front of green screens and either looking sad or emoting angrily.
 

#47: ELVIS ★ – 8 nominations
Just like Blonde, the old adage persists here: if you play a real star the Academy will nominate you (even if they don’t bother to watch the whole movie). Austin Butler would seem the man to beat for Leading Actor this year, especially considering the death of Priscilla Presley—that’s a cynical thought but I’m sure it will be a factor. In terms of the rest of Elvis’s nominations, as with all Baz Luhrmann pictures, the style of shooting and editing make it impossible for me to judge the Cinematography, Production Design, Costumes, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, and, frankly, the acting as well. As for the Best Editing nomination, this is yet another example of the Academy confusing the word “best” with “most.” Elvis is one of the few Best Picture nominees that I consider not worth bothering with, but it does have some great music.



#46: THE FLYING SAILOR ★★ - 1 nomination
This abstract Animated Short from Canada is inspired by the account of a sailor present at the infamous 1917 Halifax maritime disaster. The incident, in which the Norwegian vessel SS Imo collided with a cargo laden with TNT and other high explosives, was the largest man-made explosion in history. As a result, over 1700 people were killed, many more were injured, and one sailor was flung over half a mile but lived to tell the tale. That last aspect of the incident gets visualized via the POV of this naked man—I guess all his clothes were blown off his body?—as he hurtles through the stratosphere and his life flashes before his eyes.  It’s a cool idea. But the film feels oddly unfinished. 

#45: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE ★★ – 10 nominations

I’ll be surprised if 2022’s most nominated film does not take home the Best Picture honor. Though I seem to be one of only a handful of people who think this movie is silly, relentlessly paced, and ultimately shallow, I still think it would be fitting for it to win the year’s top prize. It was unquestionably the little movie that could—racking up phenomenal word of mouth and causing people who hadn’t ventured into a theater for years to come out and see it multiple times. (Even I saw it twice in theaters.). I’ll personally die a little inside if the writing/directing duo known as Daniels goes home with the Original Screenplay and/or Director awards because I think both the script and direction are trifling efforts masquerading as substantive. And, regardless of if they win or not, I foresee a future of me sitting through many more films by this plucky, young, and energetic team.

On the other hand, I’m excited about the likely prospect of wins for this cast. I think all the performances in EEAAO are strong. I’m a longtime fan of actors who, should they win, would get their Oscars for roles extremely well suited to them. None of these potential wins would be “Scent of a Woman wins,” in which a great actor gets an Oscar for a subpar performance of a terrible part in a bad movie. It would be deeply satisfying for Michelle Yeoh to win the Lead Actress Oscar for playing multiple versions of her various screen personas, especially her early Martial Arts pictures.

Ke Huy Quan is an actor remembered fondly by so many of us from Temple of Doom The Goonies. When parts were not forthcoming after his early childhood success, Quan went on to a second show biz career as a stunt coordinator. For him to come full circle and win Supporting Actor for a role that capitalizes on both his comedic chops and screen-fighting skills would be Fitting and touching. It would be especially poignant in a year when Steven Spielberg, who gave him his start, is also nominated. And for Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s never been up for an Oscar but has had BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for her great work in Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, and others, to win for a comedic role would be poetic justice for this gifted performer who’s still known more for horror than for comedy. This ensemble cast has been racking up wins at virtually all the pre-Oscar award shows, and their speeches have not disappointed.
 

#44: THE WHALE ★★ – 3 nominations
I don’t think it would be controversial for me to state that, almost empirically, The Whale is not a good movie. I’ve not seen the play it is based on, but this film feels like a bad stage production made worse by an auteur director ladling his own thematic obsessions on top of something already staggering under the weight of its own pretensions. However, Brendan Fraser’s Leading Actor performance transcends both the script’s self-conscious dialogue and the fact that he’s acting through a fat suit. Despite the on-the-nose writing, Fraser taps into truths about suicidal depression that feel honest and touching. The Whale is not a movie about an obese man, any more than Leaving Las Vegas is about an alcoholic. So those who are infuriated that a star like Fraser—who is merely overweight as opposed to morbidly obese—is playing this role are seriously missing the point.

I’m a fat person myself, and while my weight issues don’t stem from chronic depression (quite the opposite!), I found Fraser’s performance filled with small insightful moments that rang true to my own experience of compulsive behaviour. Of course, I can’t blame people for missing the nuance in Fraser’s work here, since it is so overpowered by the bigness and obviousness of the screenplay and directorial choices. The last two minutes of this movie are as bad as anything in Babylon, Bardo, or The Boy, The Fox, His Wife and Her Lover Go To White Castle (or whatever the hell that terrible animated short was called). It is also great to see Hong Chau, the cat burglar of scene-stealers, score an Oscar nod for her work here (perhaps goosed a bit by her even more winning turn in the same year’s The Menu). Regardless of a win, I foresee many better parts for Chau down the road.

#43: EO ★★– 1 nomination
I’ve been thrilled to see the newly re-launched distribution arm of the legendary Janus Films company doing so well with movies like last year’s Drive My Car and this year’s EO, both of which seemed unlikely commercial hits that could easily get lost in all the hype of Oscar campaigning. I can’t say I consider Jerzy Skolimowski’s donkey’s-eye-view of humanity worthy of its International Feature nomination, considering some of the other films that were shortlisted. But between EO, The Banshees of Inisherin, Triangle of Sadness, and that quick scene in Navalny, 2022 certainly was the year of the donkey in cinema! 

#42: WOMEN TALKING ★★ – 2 nominations
I assumed I would appreciate this Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay nominee more upon second viewing, but it turned out I liked it less. I’m a big fan of Sarah Polley, and I appreciated her commitment to the bold choices she made in adapting Miriam Toews’ novel—the modern setting, the erudite language, the Ultra-Panavision aspect ratio, the desaturated color pallet, the casting of stars with strong contemporary screen personas, and using that Monkees song. . . twice! But each of these choices pulled me out of the story and got me wondering about logistical questions as to the setting when I should have been pondering the thematic questions the film is meant to raise.   

#41: THE FABELMANS ★★ – 7 nominations
Steven Spielberg has directed two films that could legitimately be considered the greatest movie ever made. He is also responsible for some truly awful pictures. His 2018 offering Ready Player One sits right next to this year’s Damien Chazelle atrocity Babylon on that tiny list of films I wish I’d never seen. Then again, his movie from just last year, the seemingly ill-advised remake of West Side Story, was my pick for 2021’s best picture. Like West Side Story, The Fabelmans has received seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. That achievement must be satisfying for the 76-year-old filmmaker, as The Fabelmans is his most personal picture yet. But while it’s as technically well-crafted as we expect from a Spielberg movie, it also showcases the filmmaker’s less admirable tendency to be over-the-top, precious, and saccharine. Compounding this propensity for schmaltz, The Fabelmans is autobiographical, so the overt sentimentality feels all the more awkward when dealing with his parents and childhood self.

Michelle Williams gives a strong performance as the family’s emotionally challenged matriarch, but for her to win Best Leading Actress for this role would be a shame. Firstly, it’s a stretch to call her the lead actress of this movie. She’s the closest the film has to a character as prominent as Spielberg’s young surrogate, but in this film, everyone, and everything, is in support of the young protagonist. Spielberg calls the film an ode to his parents, but it feels more like an ode to himself. Moreover, what makes Williams so special as an actor is the way she plays women whose life experience has caused them to repress their emotion and expression in ways that feel both authentic and fascinating. The five-time nominee has been recognized for this unique ability in films like Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine, and Manchester by the Sea—and she’s displayed the same talent in all the amazing characters she’s created in Kelly Reichardt movies. For her to win for what feels like a manipulative Spielbergian construct, rather than a true Williamseqsue embodiment of a character, would seem like an injustice. For this role to have really succeeded, it would need a Gena Rowlands-level performance and exist in a picture directed by someone far less careful and polished than Spielberg. And as much as I love seeing the great Judd Hirsch land a Supporting Actor nod at age 87, everything about his two-scene character in the movie is hardly exemplary of great acting, writing, or filmmaking. 

#40: AN OSTRICH TOLD ME THE WORLD IS FAKE AND I THINK I BELIEVE IT ★★ – 1 nomination
We now arrive at a stretch, in this list, of short films that I think are perfectly fine, but are so far from special that it seems crazy they were nominated for Oscars. Australian Lachlan Pendragon’s stop-motion Animated Short is witty and attractively designed, but it doesn’t set itself apart from the literally hundreds of similarly themed animated films one can find on YouTube, or at any art school student show, or at dozens of summer camps that still have stop-motion animation stands. For 100 years now, people have been riffing on Luigi Pirandello’s iconic play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The meta-premise of a protagonist discovering that the world they exist in might all be a fabrication and that they might be fictional themselves has been cinematically explored in everything from Chuck Jones’s surreal Looney Tunes short “Duck Amuck” to Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol’s acclaimed The Truman Show—not to mention last year’s insufferable Free Guy. Pendragon’s take on this idea has a stop-motion character discovering the limitations of his movements and surroundings, which leads to the realization that he is just a puppet. Academy Animation Branch voters: I know you’ve seen this as often as I have. 

#39: MY YEAR OF DICKS ★★ – 1 nomination
Speaking of overly familiar concepts, this five-chapter autobiographical chronicle of a teenager’s bungled attempts at losing her virginity is a good twenty years too late to feel fresh or innovative. The script comes by way of memoirist Pamela Ribon, a storywriter on animated hits like Moana and Ralph Breaks the Internet. While My Year of Dicks is a great title, the film isn’t up for Best Title. It’s nominated for Best Animated Short, and this is some of the ugliest and unimaginative rotoscope and computer animation I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been watching these shorts programs. Also, like so many of this year’s short films, nothing about the way this story is presented sets it apart from literally thousands of similar renderings of the same idea. In this case, you can see/hear this same basic story told in this same self-deprecating style at dozens of small theaters, comedy clubs, bars, bookstores, coffee shops, story slams, radio programs, podcasts, and other media. In nearly any city in America, someone is telling this story. If this version of the tale added up to something unique that set it apart from all those others, then it might be worthy of an Oscar nomination. Do yourself a favor, skip this and rent Maggie Carey’s The To Do List (2013) instead.

#38: HOW DO YOU MEASURE A YEAR? ★★ - 1 nomination
It’s not just the animated shorts this year that feature entries that fail to differentiate themselves from dozens of home movies you can see any time on YouTube. This sweet little undertaking (I have a hard time calling it a “film”) comes from Jay Rosenblatt, who was nominated the previous year in the same category for When We Were Bullies. The conceit of Rosenblatt’s latest Documentary Short nominee is a bit like a condensed version of the 7-Up series or Boyhood. He videotaped his daughter Elle every year on her birthday from age 2 to 18, asking her a series of the same questions. Neither of them watched the interviews until after the project was completed. I can’t knock his judicious editing of these recordings or claim that the result isn’t both enjoyable and interesting. Watching young Elle transition from adorable tyke to sullen teen to thoughtful adolescent all on the same sofa in the same living room is compelling. But knowing this film is nominated for an Oscar, you expect it will end up saying something far more profound or poetic than the expected conclusion we get. Still, watching it in the context of the first crop of upbeat documentary shorts in many years, it made for a nice kick-off and tone-setter. 

#37: GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO ★★ - 1 nomination
I have no qualms about the exquisite craft on display in this Animated Feature. Mark Gustafson’s stop-action puppetry is superb and well worthy of the nomination. But the recipient of the award, and the one who will likely make the speech should it win, will be the man whose name is in the title. As I wrote in my review, my issues with this film have to do with the storytelling and characters, not the animation. It isn’t that I dislike del Toro’s pictures; I just find his signature obsessions are far less fascinating to me than they are to him (and clearly many others). The best scenes in this picture are the ones with Tilda Swinton’s Death character, who oversees the afterlife and has many heart-to-hearts with the titular little wooden boy. I could hang out with this Chimera and her rabbit henchmen for ages, but there are a whole lot of other scenes that get pretty tedious.

#36: HAULOUT ★★ - 1 nomination
This documentary short by the brother and sister team of Maxim and Evgenia Arbugaeva is shot in a remote region of Eastern Russia where huge colonies of migrating walrus stop to rest. The film centers on marine biologist Maxim Chakilev, who has spent three cold, solitary months in this location for the past twenty years, tracking these beasts and how climate change is affecting their trek and survival. The film earns its nomination for one hell of a great reveal shot early on, but the mostly wordless picture feels a tad overlong. Even at just 25 minutes, I think there was ample time to provide more specific information about this man’s work and these animals’ plight. 

#35: THE BATMAN ★★+ – 3 nominations
Unlike past years, I managed to see all of the nominated superhero pictures in 2022. Comic book superhero adaptation is a genre I tend to avoid, so I’m grateful that the Academy only nominated two such pictures this year. But director/co-writer Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson were enough to get me to buy a ticket to yet another iteration of DC’s most durable character. I enjoyed the first hour or so of this 176-minute, darker-than-dark version of the Dark Knight. Its nominated Visual Effects, Sound, and Makeup & Hairstyling all contributed to keeping me engaged for as long as I was.

#34: IVALU ★★+ – 1 nomination
In Anders Walter’s 16-minute Live Action Short, adapted from a Danish graphic novel, a young girl named Pipaluk searches for her older sister, Ivalu, who has run away or otherwise disappeared. Told mostly via voice-over of Pipaluk thinking about and searching for her sister, and visuals of memories the two girls shared, this poetic short would have worked a whole lot better with about 75 percent less narration. The faces of the two girls and the sights and sounds of the vast Greenland environment Walter captures would have been more than enough. 

#33: TO LESLIE ★★+ - 1 nomination
The Academy loves a drunk. Cinema loves a drunk. But with so many films about alcoholism (and so many actors who have won Oscars for playing drunks), it’s hard to come up with a movie that has anything new to say on the subject. To Leslie doesn’t cover any previously unexplored territory and is riddled with more than its share of clichés. Andrea Riseborough gives a very good performance, worthy of her surprise Lead Actress nomination, but she would have been far better if she had a better screenplay to work with.

 

#32: STRANGER AT THE GATE ★★+ – 1 nomination
Joshua Seftel’s Documentary Short is probably the most polarizing of the year’s nominated short films. It’s certainly the most politically charged, but how much one responds to it will depend on how much you either appreciate or resent the way Seftel sets up his story, then subverts our principal expectations, while simultaneously confirming some of our subconscious assumptions. This portrait of a former career Marine who plotted to blow up an Islamic center in his small Indiana hometown features a wealth of interviews with seemingly everyone connected to the event. Clearly, everyone involved wanted to tell this story, but the moral of the tale feels too simplistic for the many complex issues the movie touches on. It’s more than just the way the film is structured that doesn’t sit well when you watch it unfold. In a year when the documentary short nominees lean far more towards the upbeat and optimistic than in every other year since I’ve been watching them, this one feels a bit too rose-colored.  

#31: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS ★★+  – 3 nominations
Ruben Östlund’s broad social satire was the first of many films this year to take easy, but oh-so-enjoyable and richly deserved potshots at the uber-wealthy international elite. Though it won the Palme d'Or, this movie still seems a surprising choice for the Academy to select for Best Picture. Its Director and Original Screenplay nominations seem a little more in line with what Oscar voters tend to reward. Though I didn’t love Triangle of Sadness, I enjoy seeing a film that features this much upchuck- and diarrhoea-based comedy honored with the imprimatur of consideration for both Cannes and the Academy’s top prizes.

#30: AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER ★★+ – 4 nominations
As in 2009, I can’t fault James Cameron’s chutzpah and confidence in his ability to top himself both in terms of box office numbers and technical award nominations. The first of many proposed Avatar sequels was viewed as a joke in the months leading up to its release. “Who is this for?”; “No one even remembers or cares about Avatar”; “This film will never make back its astronomical budget,” were the cries of thinkpieces and people on social media. Cameron shut those up in a hurry, as the movie no one supposedly wanted to see quickly became the biggest hit of the year.

Cameron remains a hero of cinematic achievement, even if much of what he creates and champions puts me off—like making “live-action” pictures rendered entirely in a computer, and like shooting movies at high frame rates that make all the verisimilitude he strives so hard for look like a bad video game. The sequel to 2009’s Avatar was a long time in the making, and it is a slight improvement over its predecessor in terms of its nominated Visual Effects, Sound, and Production Design. Cameron and his teams are more at home in the water than in any other aspect of the fake nature they digitally create. But, even with a room full of A-list screenwriters, he can’t seem to come up with a script that makes me care about the characters that populate his imaginary world. Despite its many achievements and its box office status, I just can’t see this film as deserving of a Best Picture nomination.
 

#29: ALL THAT BREATHES ★★★ - 1 nomination
This Documentary Feature from India is an unusual entry in the category, as it feels almost like a narrative or experiment in blending fiction and non-fiction, though I don’t believe it is either one. The film follows the daily lives of two brothers who run a bird hospital in a village in Delhi, and it looks at how the surrounding instability of the climate and the political and economic strife slowly change their environment.

#28: THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT ★★★ – 1 nomination
Here’s another short film that doesn’t exactly feel revolutionary in either form or content, but it does provide a fresh perspective on an old story. Anne Albergue’s archival Documentary Short tells the story of Watergate whistleblower Martha Mitchell, the wife of President Nixon’s Attorney General John N. Mitchell. The style, appeal, and forceful personality of the U.S.’s first highly visible and outspoken “cabinet wife” comes through well in the many film and TV clips utilized. Albergue tells Mitchell’s story through a contemporary lens that focuses on how the Nixon administration gaslit Mitchell when she suspected that the president and friends of hers in Nixon’s reelection committee were in on the Watergate burglary. The short further explores how the power of the press was used to paint Mitchell as an unstable, hysterical woman. In the end, Mitchell was known for her statements about how the Watergate scandal would lead to more honesty and transparency in government as well as the ability of the populace to no longer be easily fooled by disreputable politicians. These sentiments also play very differently in 2020 than they did in the 1970s—a fact Albergue doesn’t feel the need to explicitly comment on.

#27: AN IRISH GOODBYE ★★★ – 1 nomination
Ross White and Tom Berkeley’s Live-Action Short follows two brothers in rural Ireland who bury their late mother and discover she’s left behind a bucket list of activities she hoped to complete before death, but hadn’t even started. With a title like An Irish Goodbye, I was expecting something far darker and funnier. The film satisfies well enough, but it lacks real emotional resonance. 

#26: LE PUPILLE ★★★ - 1 nomination
In a year when far too many of the nominated shorts were overly reminiscent of things I’ve seen many times before, this Italian Live Action Short by Alice Rohrwacher felt unique and original. Captured with a mix of 16mm and 35mm film, shot in a playfully haphazard style, and apparently inspired by a letter written by a child in a 1940s Catholic boarding school, Le Pupille tells the story of a rebellious little girl who gets the best of her Mother Superior. Though sometimes cloying, it’s amusing and sweet. 

#25: NIGHT RIDE ★★★ – 1 nomination
This Norwegian Live Action Short by Eirik Tveiten has a strong premise about a cold commuter who hijacks a tram on Christmas Eve and must deal with the passengers she picks up. While the picture doesn’t fully live up to its amusing set-up, it does what a comedic short film does best—engage the viewer and make its points while stirring up emotions, thoughts, and laughs. 

#24: PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH ★★★ – 1 nomination
Color me shocked at how much I enjoyed this Animated Feature spin-off from the Shrek Cinematic Universe. This funny fractured-fairy-tale-adjacent movie won me over despite the typical frenetic pacing and self-aware qualities I dislike so much in current kids’ movies. Part of what transcends these issues is the theme of mortality that forces the protagonists to occasionally slow down and contemplate his situation. It’s wild that all five animated features nominated this year deal directly with death. In the case of Pinocchio and Puss, Death is literally a character in the films (and the best character in both cases!). The vocal performances, design, and script for The Last Wish are as good as DreamWorks Animation has ever gotten.

#23: FIRE OF LOVE ★★★ – 1 nomination
A major aspect in many of this year’s best documentary features was the showcasing of incredible archival material created by the subjects of the films. Sara Dosa’s nominated Documentary Feature about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft is perhaps the best example of this trend. So much of the amazing 16mm footage, still photography, and other material this married couple recorded and collected would never have been seen by such a large audience were it not for this visually arresting picture. I wish Dosa was as interested in the science of volcanology as she is in the unique love story between these two individuals, but her documentary remains a powerful and informative film.

#22: THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS ★★★ – 1 nomination
Another tale of a couple doing what they love is this exquisitely photographed Documentary Short about people who care for elephants in the Mudumalai National Park in southern India. Bomman and Belli are employed at the Theppakadu Elephant Camp, where they rehabilitate lost and abandoned baby pachyderms. Over the course of several years of filming, this patient picture captures and conveys the love these individuals have for the animals in their care as well as the intelligence and personalities of the elephants themselves. Even for someone like me, for whom stories and images of adorable animals have little effect on the old heartstrings, I found this movie and its subjects irresistible. After its 39 minutes, I was left moved and inspired.

#21: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON ★★★ – 1 nomination
Another film that surprised me with its emotional resonance is this odd little gem of an Animated Feature. How great to see a full-length movie based on a series of viral videos that actually feels suited to feature length, rather than a mere collection of shorts stretched out into long form. Filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp and actor/comedian Jenny Slate weave the story of their one-inch-tall talking shell, who lives in an Airbnb with his grandmother after a family tragedy, into a touching picture that makes the tired, often lazy Mockumentary format feel fresh and alive again. It is also a novel approach to an animated feature.

#20: CLOSE ★★★ – 1 nomination
This somewhat surprising International Feature nomination from Belgium, about an intimate friendship that gets disrupted at the onset of high school, plays like a cross between a Dardenne Brothers film and a Teen Vogue photoshoot. It may not work for everyone, as the narrative and style are rather deliberately contrived, but the lead performance by first-time actor Eden Dambrine makes the film more than compelling.
 

#19: EMPIRE OF LIGHT ★★★ – 1 nomination
Speaking of films that may not work for everyone, the latest film by Oscar-darling Sam Mendes—whose 9 features to date have scored a total of 33 nominations—will probably be a lot farther down on the lists of most others who engage in this annual Oscar ranking ritual. Empire of Light is both another of those “older-filmmaker-looks-back-on-their-youth" pictures, as well as one of those “the-magic-of-the-movies" movies, but it was one that sure worked for me. Its lone nomination is for the cinematography by the peerless Roger Deakins. Even though I consider it near sacrilege that a movie celebrating a cinema set in the 1980s would be shot digitally rather than on 35mm, I can’t deny that Deakins is one of the few directors of photography who can make digital images look as warm and beautiful as celluloid. And Empire of Light not only looks great, but its look also feels appropriate to its subject. 

#18: ICE MERCHANTS ★★★ - 1 nomination
Easily the best of this year’s crop of Animated Shorts, this wordless, visually dynamic film tells an elegiac tale about a father and son who live high on the cliff face of a mountain where the freezing wind produces blocks of ice that they parachute down with to sell to people on the ground. The stark color palette and sparse sound design, as well as the score (composed by director João Gonzalez), distinguish this picture from the rest of the competition. Moreover, this short movie makes its points about the threat of climate change in a completely unexpected manner. With subtle metaphors that make you ponder the film’s themes, rather than a telegraphed message, the movie comments on the fragility of human life and a human way of life. Easily the most beautiful of the 2022 animated shorts, Ice Merchants is also the only one of this year’s five offerings that feels truly original.

#17: AFTERSUN ★★★ – 1 nomination
Paul Mescal scores his first nomination as the Lead Actor in Charlotte Wells’s semi-autobiographical memory film about an 11-year-old girl on vacation with her 31-year-old dad. Mescal rises to the unique acting challenge of conveying the essence and internal struggles of a character we only see through the eyes of his young co-star. While there was certainly buzz for this film and this performance, and the Lead Actor category was not crowded with obvious options this year, it still felt like a pleasant surprise for this young performer with only three films under his belt to land a spot.

#16: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT ★★★ – 9 nominations
The year’s second biggest nomination tally (after Everything Everywhere) went to this latest adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s quintessential antiwar novel. This Best Picture, International Feature, and Adapted Screenplay nominee is also tapped for Visual Effects, Cinematography, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, and Original Score. All are worthy nominations, in my opinion, except for Score (the same three notes over and over) and Cinematography. Like so many other contemporary filmmakers, director of photography James Friend and director Edward Berger fall victim to the lure of what can now be achieved during the post-production color grading process. They are far from the worst offenders when it comes to this trend, but in the case of this picture, the preciseness of the film’s photographic look undercuts the effectiveness of all the other technical departments. The Oscar-worthy ability of the VFX, Sound, Art, Costume, and Makeup and Hairstyling teams to create what feels like such an organically haphazard and unpredictable grunt’s-eye-view of WWI gets diminished by a visual aesthetic that causes the viewer to pull back and appreciate specific photographic and color choices.

#15: ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED ★★★ – 1 nomination
The Documentary Feature branch of the Academy is notorious for not awarding filmmakers who have already won the Best Doc Feature Oscar. But they might make an exception in the case of Laura Poitras, who won in 2014 for CitizenFour. Poitras’s portrait of photographer Nan Goldin is another example of a documentary feature that judiciously uses material shot by its subject. Goldin’s life and her activism—aimed at art museums that have elevated and cleansed the name of the Sackler family, who own the company that manufactures OxyContin—are explored in depth. The film is a little chilly, which is characteristic of Poitras’s style, but it makes its points well. And the 69-year-old Goldin is a dynamic subject and a force to be reckoned with. 

#14: NAVALNY ★★★ – 1 nomination
Daniel Roher’s film about Alexey Navalny, the prominent Vladimir Putin critic, and alleged poisoning victim of the Russian president, is another nominated Documentary Feature whose best footage is material shot by its subjects. The centerpiece of the picture has Navalny and Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev filming a phone call in which they record men unwittingly confessing to the attempted murder of Navalny. While the movie mostly sidesteps the less loveable, less sexy sides of the Russian opposition leader, it’s a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining doc. 

#13: THE SEA BEAST ★★★+ – 1 nomination
Netflix may be on a mission to destroy the cinema-going experience, but along the way they sure have produced some damn good movies. Still, I was as surprised as anyone to find that my pick for the year’s best Animated Feature would be a Netflix original. The story is structured and paced like an adventure picture from a bygone era, back when filmmakers who made kids' movies trusted that their young viewers had enough patience to sit through the quieter bits that are essential to the action/adventure genre. And this swashbuckling comedic thriller possesses both a timeless, long-ago-and-far-away quality as well as a modern sensibility that has nothing to do with winking at the audience or making self-conscious jokes. The Sea Beast is one of the year’s best surprises.

#12: MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS ★★★+ - 1 nomination
I was so happy to see this utterly endearing throwback to the days when small British pictures made their way over to America to charm and delight the art house crowd. While the movie’s only nomination is for Costume Design, that seems fitting (pardon the pun) for this adaptation of Paul Gallico’s much-loved 1958 novel. The story centers on a widowed London charwoman obsessed with Christian Dior haute couture who travels to Paris to buy her own Dior gown. I think the delightful Lesley Manville is deserving of a Lead Actress nomination too, but that was not in the cards.

#11: A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS ★★★+ - 1 nomination
Of all the documentaries I saw in 2022, the one that had the most profound effect on me not only wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, to date, that film—Subject—doesn’t even have a distributor. Subject made me think about the current state of the film and television industry, the current state of news, entertainment, and infotainment, and the current state of Capitalism, all through the lens of what documentaries have become in our modern media landscape. Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s Subject tells its story through the perspective of people who were forever changed as a result of “starring” in a “hit documentary,” some of which were made or started long before the concept of a hugely profitable, zeitgeist affecting doc film or streaming series was unimaginable. I watched the movie as a former documentary director, a current documentary funder, and an occasional documentary producer.  The questions Subject raises about the ethics and responsibilities inherent in making non-fiction movies in our current “golden age of documentaries” had a lasting effect on me.

No film I saw post-Subject hit me harder than Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A House Made of Splinters. The documentary takes place in a temporary orphanage located near the frontline of the war in Eastern Ukraine and follows several children who have come to stay there. The social workers at this warm and inviting facility create a safe home for these kids while the state decides their fates—most of their parents are dealing with poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, or homelessness. Nominated for Documentary Feature, this is unquestionably a powerful film, made all the more charged and immediate since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

The filmmakers took special care when capturing the incredibly intimate and heartbreaking stories of these children, working carefully to help them understand the documentary process and assuring them they could say “no” to anything they didn’t want filmed. But can a seven- or eight-, or even twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid truly and knowledgeably give or withhold their consent in circumstances like this? Yet, even if the answer is that they can’t, is there anything going on in these kids’ lives that they would freely consent to? In the grand scheme of things, being filmed (or even exploited) by a documentary crew is hardly the most consequential imposition on these young people or the biggest disruption to their emotional development. The film is clearly advocating for these children and their caregivers. Within that context, it’s difficult to see Wilmont’s movie as exploitation. Still, the level of intimacy, the inspiring picture of dedication in the face of so much hopelessness, and the deeply private scenes of grief and joy, distress and release, and having to grow up way too fast that is made public in this astonishing picture are both its most profound qualities and its most disturbing aspects.
 

#10: LIVING ★★★+ – 2 nominations
The first Oscar nod for the BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning 73-year-old British star Bill Nighy comes for his wonderfully understated performance in Oliver Hermanus’s Living. The film is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 Japanese classic Ikiru, which itself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro is also nominated for his Adapted Screenplay. This new telling of the story, set in 1950s London, plays in ways both narratively familiar and emotionally different from both its cinematic and literary sources, which is part of what makes it such a good remake. In many ways, this Leading Actor nomination for Nighy’s perfectly polished performance seems well suited to the actor’s well-worn screen persona. Since he didn’t show up on the radar of most moviegoers until he was into his fifties, we have tended to think of Nighy as the rather proper, older English gentleman he usually plays. However, in most of his roles there is the sense of an impish young prankster wanting to jump out of his dignified persona. In this way, the lead role in Living is a departure for the actor, as it is the story of an older man desperate to recapture that younger, more playful aspect of himself, but for whom the forces of inertia have almost totally suppressed that side of him.

#9: THE QUIET GIRL ★★★+ - 1 nomination
The main reason Ireland hasn’t gotten an International Feature nomination until now is that the award used to be for Best Foreign Language Film. And, while many Irish movies have been nominated for Oscars, they have all been in English. The Quiet Girl is a rare Irish import made in the Irish language, which, while still the country’s official national language, is spoken by a fairly small minority of its population. Colm Bairéad’s adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2010 novella Foster is a powerful movie about kindness in the face of hardship. The film’s simple narrative and themes are so exquisitely brought to life that it’s hard to believe this film is the first feature by the director, producer, and wonderful young star. I’m only sorry this movie has to exist in the same list as The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Both are ostensibly simple tales of kindness. The difference is that one is simple-minded and vacuous, while the other uses its plain, straightforward story to explore layers of complexity and wisdom.  

#8: THE RED SUITCASE ★★★+ - 1 nomination
From the haunting opening shot to the striking final image, my pick for this year’s best Live Action Short tells the gripping story of a young Iranian girl who arrives at Luxembourg airport, unable to speak French, German, or English. We soon discover why she’s travelled there and we become instantly invested in her fate. Cyrus Neshvad’s tense drama plays like a thriller that never lets go, despite the way it carefully ratchets the tension up and down. Many of us have experienced the otherworldly sensation of being in a nearly empty airport late at night, but seeing it through this character’s eyes, this setting becomes a truly hostile alien landscape. The performances are fantastic across the board; from the young, silent protagonist to the airport workers we barely see or hear. No one overplays their role. This film demonstrates the power of a truly excellent short. 

#7: CAUSEWAY ★★★+ - 1 nomination
Brian Tyree Henry scores his first Oscar nod as the Supporting Actor in this terrific three-hander in which Jennifer Lawrence plays an Afghanistan War vet suffering the effects of a traumatic brain injury. Henry plays a car mechanic who strikes up a friendship with Lawrence’s character. Though far better known for his TV work, Henry has been steadily turning in notable film performances in lead, supporting, and bit parts since 2015. Causeway is a small movie, and not exactly full of surprises, but it’s a perfect example of one of the things cinema does best—tell a story of two people who make an unlikely connection. The performances by Henry, Lawrence, and Linda Emond, who plays the mother Lawrence’s character joined the military to get away from, are all note-perfect. No one in front of or behind the camera takes one false step in this taught, memorable indie. 

#6: RRR ★★★★ - 1 nomination
From one of the year’s smallest pictures to one of the biggest. The rousing, rollicking, ridiculously entertaining Indian epic RRR deserved far more nominations than just a nod for its outstanding Original Song. It most certainly should be on the Best Picture list, as it was one of the most celebrated events of the year, one cinema programmers booked repeatedly in various venues and one that inspired devoted fans to come and watch it over and over—often dressing as the characters and bringing props, Rocky Horror-style. Director S. S. Rajamouli would be a welcome addition to the Director list, and I think this film is just as deserving of an Original Screenplay nomination. While it seems a silly and intentionally campy over-produced thriller, RRR recalls films like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (another film I’d give an Original Screenplay Oscar) and reminded me of what true epic movie storytelling is supposed to feel like. Epic movies are not just long movies; they are films whose sweep of narrative justifies a longer-than-usual running time. If you were fortunate enough to see RRR when it was re-released in giant cinemas for short engagements with big crowds, you were in the right place for 2022’s most memorable movie-going experience. 

#5: ARGENTINA, 1985 ★★★★ - 1 nomination
Argentina’s courtroom docudrama about the events surrounding the country’s "Trial of the Juntas" was one of only six of this year’s nominated films that I considered 4-star pictures (I didn’t see any this year that I thought rose to the level of 5 stars). This was another surprise nomination considering the shortlist for this category included films like South Korea’s Decision to Leave, Denmark’s Holy Spider, and France’s Saint Omer—to say nothing of the acclaimed international features that didn’t make the shortlist: France’s Happening, Ukraine’s Klondike, Spain’s Alcarràs, and Hong Kong’s Where the Wind Blows.

Many critics dismissed this film as little more than a TV movie, and I felt that way too when the film started, but within a very short time, Santiago Mitre’s movie swept me up and kept surprising me, though I usually could tell what would happen next. When a picture continuously startles you, even in its most predictable moments, that’s a damn good movie. I would have given a nomination to Mitre for Director and Original Screenplay, and I think Ricardo Darín is more deserving of a Lead Actor nomination than all but two of this year’s actual Best Actor nominees.
 

#4: TOP GUN: MAVERICK ★★★★ - 6 nominations
The movie I consider 2022’s most consequential picture, was the film that staved off the inevitable end of commercial movie theaters for at least a few more years. The picture deserves its nominations for Visual Effects, Film Editing, and Sound (and, maybe, Original Song) because, in an era of empty spectacle and muddy CGI, Maverick was a rare blockbuster film that provided tangible thrills and sensations inaccessible to nearly all of us mortal moviegoers. Noah Gittell, film critic of the Ringer and the Guardian, put it best when he wrote, "The reason I love Top Gun: Maverick so much, and why I think it's worthy of Best Picture, is simple and a little silly: We all dream of flying. It's a core, universal wish. Hollywood has tried to grant us this wish for 90 years, and Maverick is the closest they've ever come."

I, for one, am also pleased to see the film score an Adapted Screenplay nod. Even though the basic storyline was my biggest beef with the movie (as it was with the original picture), I’m fascinated by how the embrace of this film, its narrative, and its themes reflects our current cinema culture.

Top Gun: Maverick, in so many ways, follows the exact same flightplan as its 1987 progenitor—the same story beats, the same style over substance aesthetic, and the same pushing of the technology of its day to put something on screen that audiences hadn’t seen before. Yet the very same folks (and type of folks) who dismissed the original upon its release as the worst kind of empty, formulaic studio product hail this sequel as a return to quality, old-school cinematic storytelling. I think that speaks more to the current state of commercial moviemaking than to the writing skills of Peter Craig, Justin Marks, Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie, but their nomination underscores a key aspect of screenwriting that the Academy usually overlooks—economy.

While Maverick is one of many films this year that clocks in at over two hours, each scene that takes place on the ground is tightly honed, providing the actors with only the dialogue and action needed for them to convey their characters’ inner thoughts and feelings without cumbersome speechifying. Even the most emotional parts of the original Top Gun play more like necessary plot points than explorations of characters’ inner lives. The death of a main character and its aftermath don’t hit us in our gut any more than the romance between the leads comes across as two people experiencing a genuine connection. In the sequel, however, emotional scenes land with real power. Of course, much of this is due to the extra-textural aspects of casting. But a major part of why these characters work as well as they do is that the film’s writers, editors, and director do not concern themselves with forced backstory, extraneous exposition, or any of the “origin” bullshit most franchise pictures have been obsessed with the past decade. In this case, the writers and filmmakers allow the actors to convey a palpable sense of shared history.

The way this screenwriting team essentially ported over a story from an existing movie and, within that template, crafted a new narrative and characters that manage to feel both fresh and emotionally resonant in ways that are entirely different from the original picture, is not dissimilar to how Kazuo Ishiguro deftly adapted Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru into Living. This is why a sequel like Top Gun: Maverick belongs in the Adapted Screenplay category, and also why its writers deserve this nomination. Should the movie win a screenwriting Oscar it would be a great omen for the future of tent-pole cinema. (But, of course, it doesn’t have a chance in hell.)

#3: GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY ★★★★ - 1 nomination
Unlike Top Gun: Maverick, Glass Onion falls in the Adapted Screenplay category not because it is, in any way, a retread of the movie it is “adapted from,” but purely because it’s a sequel—based on characters created by its own screenwriter. I’ve always been hot and cold when it comes to the work of Rian Johnson, but he delivered this year’s most entertaining picture. Glass Onion is not a brilliant piece of screenwriting, and it isn’t trying to be. What it attempts to be is a clever and fun little satire dressed up in an ornate but ultimately insignificant puzzle box. That it succeeds beyond all expectations at this aspiration is a feat worth celebrating. That it was the year’s biggest crowd-pleaser (with the exception of RRR) is especially noteworthy in this critical year of getting crowds back in theaters. It’s a crime that Netflix only let this escape its streaming box for a single week. But I can’t fault the film for the foolishness of its distributor.

#2: THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN ★★★★ - 8 nominations
Martin McDonagh’s fourth, and best, feature film lands squarely in my #2 spot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if twenty years from now I’d place it as #1, since it’s the most timeless picture I saw this year (with the possible exception of Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning). While I don’t personally think it earns its slot in the Film Editing, Original Score, or even Director categories when you consider some of the year’s more exceptional examples of these crafts, its Best Picture, Original Screenplay, and four acting nominations are second to none. Were it up to me, the Leading Actor award would go to Colin Farrell (though I don’t think he will win). As with his fellow nominee Bill Nighy, and the Lead Actress contenders Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, a win for Farrell would be one of those rare occasions when an actor gets an Oscar for the perfect role.

Far too often, the Academy awards an Oscar to a great actor for a subpar turn they did the year after they played the part they should have won for. That would not be the case if Colin Farrell won for playing perhaps the most quintessentially Colin Farrell role ever created. McDonagh obviously wrote the part of Pádraic Súilleabháin for Farrell the same way he wrote Colm Doherty for Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson, nominated for Supporting Actor, belongs in the Lead Actor category as well. The Banshees of Inisherin is a story about two men as much as Thelma & Louise is about two women, but Oscar campaigners do everything in their power to ensure that a movie’s stars do not end up competing against each other. Gleeson is as deserving of a win as Farrell, but I have a feeling he’ll have more chances at another nomination even though he’s a decade older.

The actual Supporting Actor in the piece is Barry Keoghan. Even though he would not be my first choice to win, his position on the Academy's list is well-deserved. And there is no question in my mind that the year’s best Supporting Actress was Kerry Condon. Playing the sister of Farrell’s character, Siobhán, Condon embodies what is meant by a supporting performance. And the way McDonagh writes the part epitomizes what this kind of role can do in the hands of the right actor. I could not be happier that this film was as successful and scored as many accolades as it did, though I fear it will go home empty-handed on Oscar night.

#1: TÁR ★★★★ - 6 nominations
The most enjoyable aspect of being a Gen-X movie fan in 2022 was watching so many people 15 to 20 years older, and 15 to 20 years younger than I, loathe, detest, and sound off on Todd Field’s brilliant character study Tár for completely opposite reasons. While Tár is one of the most astute depictions of the era we are currently living through, capturing so many specific details that define the decade, it is crazy to reduce this rich picture down to "a movie about cancel culture.” It’s an ageless picture about the way power corrupts, and it’s a fascinating study of how so many people in our society invent themselves via sheer force of will and a willingness to drink their own Kool-Aid.

Should Cate Blanchett win her third Oscar (putting her in the rarified company of Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Walter Brennan, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Frances McDormand) for her Lead Actress turn in the film, it will be one of those ultra-rare wins awarded to an actual career-best performance. And Field’s screenplay, which humorously dissects the consequences of what can, and should, happen when elites fall victim to their own propaganda, is, in my view, the year’s best Original Screenplay. As the year’s Best Director, I think Field is also second only to Gina Prince-Bythewood for The Woman King and Park Chan-wook for Decision to Leave—both of whom were not nominated. Tár also deserves its nominations for Cinematography and Film Editing, and I would have given Hildur Guðnadóttir a nod for her Original Score (she also composed all the music not by The Monkees in Women Talking).

Blanchett has swept the Best Actress field in nearly every award show and critics’ prize on the long road to the Oscars. That achievement usually ensures a lock on the top award, but these days inevitability fatigue can easily settle in, and voters may decide to go another way. Also, Blanchett is the only one of the five women in her category who is not a first-time nominee. The Academy may decide not to reward a two-time winner, and eight-time nominee, when they have a chance to honor someone new or, more likely, someone long overdue like Michele Yeoh. I think this will make the Best Lead Actress category the most exciting award of the evening.

I do not think Tár will take the Best Picture Oscar, but I certainly think it deserves to. The film gives us an exploration of celebrity, power, identity, new media and old media, artistic achievement and accolades, and how all these elements are wielded in cloistered creative communities and in our society as a whole. It is a timely and timeless tale of how the powerful can convince even themselves that their own naked self-promotion comes from a place of deep authenticity and honor. I can’t see how there’s a better encapsulation for both the 2022 Oscar season and the past several years of Western civilization.