The nominees for the 97th Academy Awards were announced last week and to no ones surprise, they didn’t get it write. I realize that’s a subjective statement, but it seems like everyone’s in lock step. How did a culturally ignorant film like Emilia Perez garner the same amount of nominations as Titanic, La La Land and Oppenheimer? Why was Luca Guadagnino snubbed for not one, but two of the best films of the year? Those are questions that the Academy will never be forced to answer, so it leaves myself and other movie fans puzzled. Nevertheless, I can still air out my gripes of the biggest snubs this year.
Best Picture
A Real Pain dir. Jesse Eisenberg
It’s not often that we get a true, slice-of-life film that rules as hard as Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore film, A Real Pain. Following two cousins who couldn’t be less alike, we see them traverse Poland in hope of reconnecting with one another and getting in touch with their own heritage. On top of that, there’s no fat on this film. It’s a straight 90 minute emotional rollercoaster of quirky dialogue between Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg.
Where Eisenberg makes this film work is that he breaks norms of a film like this. In a typical movie with these similar themes we would’ve seen Culkin’s character fooling around with Jennifer Grey’s character or Culkin would have joined Eisenberg for dinner at the end of the film. Those things didn’t happen. A Real Pain felt as real as a movie can get and that’s refreshing.
Best Director
Denis Villenueve for Dune: Part Two
While I enjoyed films like A Complete Unknown or The Substance, I don’t think Mangold or Fargeat should’ve been nominated over Villenueve. I don’t even need to bring up Emilia Perez because Jacques Audiard, a true hack, should’ve never been nominated. I’d hear the argument from Mangold or Fargeat, but not Audiard. Nevertheless, I believe Denis Villenueve should have received a nominations for Best Director purely because of how grand and verbose the scale of Dune: Part Two is. It’s an undeniable science fiction masterclass that isn’t being recognized fully because it came out in February.
Best Actor/Actress
Daniel Craig in Queer
Daniel Craig’s career is defined by playing two characters: James Bond and Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out franchise. While he has great performances in films like Road To Perdition, Logan Lucky and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, to many, he’s defined by two characters. His role in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, my favorite movie of the year, is the best of his career. It’s raw and extremely tender as we follow a lonely man longing to be loved. While bleak in its overarching approach, Craig adds charm to the role that William S. Burroughs, the author of Queer, intended. I found it to be brilliant and should’ve been nominated over Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice and Ralph Fiennes in Conclave.
Best Supporting Actor/Actress
For the Best Supporting Actress category, I don’t necessarily have any “snubs”, but I do think it’s kind of bogus that Ariana Grande gets a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Wicked when she was a co-star of the film. I understand that the story is about Elphaba, but to tell the story of Elphaba, you need Glinda and she has probably the same amount of screen time (maybe slightly less) than Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba.
Don’t make it seem like this is an anti-Ariana take because I feel the same about Kieran Culkin being nominated for Best Supporting Actor in A Real Pain is a farce. The movie was about these two cousins and it felt like a 50/50 split between Eisenberg and Culkin when it came to screen time, dialogue and story importance. Nevertheless, I don’t really have a snub for Best Supporting Actor either. If we’re going off whatever fucked up parameters the Academy is using, then I guess Culkin is a “supporting actor”. I don’t think he should win (despite being great). I think Guy Pearce should win for The Brutalist.
Best Original Screenplay
I Saw The TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun
Not only did Jane Schoenbrun write a brilliant script tackling the topics of gender identity and obsession, but they crafted one of the most genius fictional television shows within said script with The Pink Opaque. In my mind, it’s wild to build your script around a fake TV show where the surface level premise is about two sisters battling monsters and the moon and in the end, they lose. Schoenbrun builds the characters of Owen and Maddy from start to finish with such depth that when the final scene hits, you’re left gutted.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Hit Man written by Richard Linklater, Glen Powell
Despite Hit Man not being a fully true story, it was based on a story by Skip Hollandsworth about a college professor who worked for the Houston police in the late 1980s and 1990s as a fake hit man. Linklater and Powell expanded that story into a fun, upbeat thriller with charismatic dialogue and extremely likable characters. It’s a swift moving film and that’s due to its sharp script. Linklater has only been nominated for five Oscars over his nearly four decade long career so I’m not stunned that this wasn’t nominated, but it should’ve been.
Queer written by Justin Kuritzkes
Having read the book that the film is citing (subtle flex), I was amazed by how Justin Kuritzkes and Luca Guadagnino stuck so close to the source material. It’s a controversial and beautiful novel and Guadagnino and company portrayed that perfectly. The script flaunts the tenderness of some characters and the rigidness of others and when you think about Emilia Perez being nominated in this category, a film that bastardized the idea of transgenderism, I get more upset that Queer wasn’t nominated.
Best International Feature
La Chimera dir. Alice Rohrwacher
To call La Chimera the “Italian Indiana Jones” would do a disservice to the characters and world that Alice Rohrwacher built, but if that’s the selling point to get people to watch it, then call it the Italian Indiana Jones. There’s a special magic that La Chimera possesses. It’s a magic that makes you yearn to be a treasure hunter that smokes cigarettes and runs from the authorities with your pals. While 2024 was a strong year for international features, I think La Chimera should’ve gotten the nod over Emilia Perez and or The Girl With The Needle.
Best Cinematography
Conclave
You could go to just about any shot in Conclave and think it’s one of the best shots of the year. Whether it’s the Cardinals crossing the concourse with their umbrellas or them convening in the auditorium under subtle lighting, it’s a spectacle of a film. Not to continuously bash Emilia Perez (I’ll keep doing it, I hate that movie), but Conclave should’ve been nominated over Emilia Perez and Maria. They’re too unremarkable movies with unremarkable looks to them. Conclave is the opposite of that.
Best Original Score
Queer composed by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Queer is such an elegantly crafted film as it focuses on tender and raw relationships and emotions that it needed the proper score to accompany it. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did just that. They provided a background levity to the two clashing personalities of Lee and Eugene that only emboldened the struggling relationship between the two. While it wasn’t the best score that the duo put out this year, it was one of the five best. I’d argue that Queer and Challengers, which we’ll get to, should’ve been nominated in this category over Wicked and Emilia Perez.
Challengers composed by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Back-to-back snubs for Reznor and Ross. It’s puzzling honestly. The Academy doesn’t hate Reznor and Ross. They’ve won two times prior (The Social Network, Soul) and have been nominated a total of three times since 2010, but for some reason this year wasn’t their year. While Queer was an elegant score, Challengers was an extremely high octane one that matched the intensity and intimacy of the sport of tennis. Not only do I think this score should’ve been nominated, I think it should win Best Score.
Best Sound
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Whether you watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in theaters or at home (I’ve done both), you’d be lying if you said you didn’t get a chill down your spine when you heard the post-apocalyptic vehicles rev their engines as they crossed the desert. Similar to a snub in the same category from last year, Michael Mann’s Ferrari, I think that when a sound designer can make you feel like you’re right next these vehicles, it’s special. Sure, Wicked and A Complete Unknown did a solid job with sound, but I feel as if they’re only nominated because there was more work put into tweaking sound in the songs used in the film. The same goes for the abhorrent Emilia Perez.
Best Visual Effects
Much like Best Supporting Actor and Actress, I don’t have any snubs for the category. My biggest issue lies with the fact that Alien: Romulus was one of the five films nominated for the award and it infamously used AI to recreate the likeness of Ian Holm. For a category like Best Visual Effects, how can you reward a film with a nomination when they’ve broken one of the (newer) mortal sins of film making by using artificial intelligence.
Best Live-Action Short
Coreys dir. Dan Streit
2024 was the year of Conner O’Malley. He had an outstanding supporting performance in I Saw The TV Glow, was responsible for the best comedy special of the year, was the focal point of a hilarious and bleak mockumentary and he starred in the best short film of the year, Coreys. In twelve minutes, O’Malley and Dan Streit blend comedy and body horror into an extremely enjoyable and edgy short film that shows how a man named Corey spirals into a state of madness in search of other Coreys. I’m not shocked it didn’t get nominated, but in comparison to other shorts and even some feature films that were nominated, Coreys is far creeper and far more entertaining.
