Today is the day that the Academy announces their nominations for their multitude of categories. Of course, like every year, the Academy can’t please everyone, including me. At first glance, I found ten monumental snubs for the 96th Academy Awards and I wanted to shine some light upon Leonardo DiCaprio not getting nominated for Killers of the Flower Moon and Julianne Moore being snubbed even though she’s amazing in May December.
The Iron Claw (Best Picture)
The question circling around The Iron Claw is simple — did it come out too late? Last year, in the case of Best Picture nominees Avatar: The Way of Water and The Fabelmans, that didn’t hurt them. But 2023 has been a much stronger year in film. I think that by the time Sean Durkin’s gutting biopic hit theaters, people had made up their mind on what would be nominated for Best Picture. And that’s wrong. The Iron Claw is far more powerful than Barbie or Maestro, but due to its tragic nature that critics would rather shun than face, Durkin, Efron, and the film as a whole received no Oscar nominations.
Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon (Best Actor)
In one of his most evil and complex roles of his career, Leonardo DiCaprio did not get nominated. But that’s the way his career’s gone. He wins for The Revenant, but doesn’t win for The Wolf of Wall Street or The Aviator and doesn’t even get nominated for Django Unchained. The Academy has never gotten DiCaprio’s career right and this is just another example. He straddles the line of blissful ignorance and cunning evil as Ernest Burkhart. Comparing him to those who were nominated, he wasn’t better than Paul Giamatti or Cillian Murphy, and he’s on the level of Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction. However, DiCaprio acts circles around both Colman Domingo and Bradley Cooper. This might be the most egregious snub.
Zac Efron in The Iron Claw (Best Actor)
I expressed my disdain with Cooper and Domingo above and I’ve got the fifth name to slide into their spots with DiCaprio. Zac Efron gave the performance of his career in a role that required both physical wear and tear and emotional toughness that we’ve never seen from him before. Prior to The Iron Claw, Efron was the High School Musical kid. Not the actor who can turn into an emotionally beaten wrestler trying to keep his family together. At some point, the Oscars have to stop giving “makeup” nominations. Bradley Cooper should be out and Efron should be in.
Greta Lee in Past Lives (Best Actress)
My bias leaks into my writing when it comes to discussing Greta Lee in Past Lives, but I think she gave the second best performance of the entire year. Her emotional maturity that’s flexed throughout the films put her on another level compared to other actresses like Carey Mulligan and Annette Benning who was in a piece of fiction that’s billed as a dreadfully boring biopic. This is one of the all-time bad snubs by the Academy in the past 15 years. Quite possibly the worst.
Charles Melton in May December (Best Supporting Actor)
At one point, it looked like there was a two horse race for Best Supporting Actor between Melton and Robert Downey Jr. Now, Melton is going to the glue factory. He’s out of the race, which is a shame. I found his performance in May December to be mature for an actor his age. He straddled the line of maturity and youthful innocence so well that you felt he was the films true “X factor” with his emotions. That’s rare to happen coming from a young actor. It’s more rare when he’s acting alongside actresses like Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.
Hong Chau in Showing Up (Best Supporting Actress)
I’d like to preface this by saying that I didn’t like Showing Up. It was too artsy for its own good and wanted to be philosophical. Showing Up did neither and made me feel immense boredom. Where it lacked in entertainment value was made up by Hong Chau as Jo. Her bitter role with undertones of both passive aggression and slight care played nicely off another great Michelle Williams role. Williams and Chau bounced off one another so well, yet neither got a nomination. Cruel world we live in.
Julianne Moore in May December (Best Supporting Actress)
I just fawned over Melton in May December, and I’m about to do the same for Julianne Moore. While Melton needed to posses youthful innocence to be believable in this role, Moore needed a suppressed aggression that’d continue to bubble as the film progressed. On the surface, we see a happy family. But below it, we see Moore in a role where she feels guarded all the time. As those layers peeled back as May December progressed, I appreciated Moore’s performance far more than moments prior.
The Killer (Best Original Score)
I’m going to exclaim this confidently, but the best composers currently working in film are Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. For them to not get nominated for their score of David Fincher’s The Killer is INSANE. I comprehend that Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon should be nominated, but The Killers score is superior to American Fiction, which I liked very much, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which had a lot of nostalgic flare. This didn’t feel like Fincher’s year, and that’s been made clear, but to deny Ross and Reznor is upsetting.
Jackals and Fireflies (Best Live Action Short Film)
Directed on only a Galaxy S22 Ultra, Charlie Kaufman, one of the most creative writers of the past three decades, mended poignant dialogue with seamless visuals to create a beautiful short that hasn’t left my mind for months. Seeing that I’ve been a Kaufman fan for a while, it was tough to put my bias aside. But I loved this short — truthfully, it was my favorite of 2023. After watching some of the shorts that were nominated, I can’t figure out why the Academy avoided it. It’s truly puzzling.
Ferrari (Best Sound)
My final snub that I’ll goto bat for is Michael Mann’s Ferrari not being nominated for Best Sound. Inherently, it’s not a great film. The script’s a tad messy and I struggled to get past Shailene Woodley’s terrible Italian accent. Where Mann and his crew did excel was in the sound design of Ferrari, especially in the racing sequences. The way that the sound design team could make you feel like you had your ear right next to the engine of the cars and could then drown out the silence to make the viewer focus was brilliant. I don’t think Ferrari would’ve won, but it deserved a nomination for sure.