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Snubs and Salutes from the 97th Oscar Nominations

Emilia Pérez. (Featured) Selena Gomez as Jessi in Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 - WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS - PATHÉ FILMS - FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.

Thanks to two separate strikes at the end of 2023, the flow of 2024 as a movie year felt like a step down or a gap year following the Oppenheimer juggernaut at the 96th Academy Awards. The pairing of Christopher Nolan’s universally-revered film with Greta Gerwig’s massive blockbuster Barbie merged award-worthy Hollywood prestige to the tune of 21 combined Oscar nominations with general audience popularity arguably greater than any year since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’s record-tying haul 21 years ago. As it stands with the 97th Academy Award nominations announced today, 2024’s top two box office office earners, Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, garnered a total of one single nomination (Inside Out 2 for Best Animated Feature). If you combine the next top earners, Despicable Me 4 and Moana 2, that number stays one. Alas, after one banner year, the disconnect between general audiences and high-fallutin Oscar voters returns and it shows in this year’s nominations. As always, there’s plenty of snubs next to the giddy cinephile’s celebrations. Let’s get into them and toss a little grief around.

The strategy to delay Dune: Part Two didn’t entirely work

Timothée Chalamet in Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)
Timothée Chalamet in Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)

You have to go down to fifth on that worldwide 2024 box office chart to finally find a handful of Oscar nominations seen by a wide audience, and it’s the Denis Villeneuve sci-fi sequel. However, all it got was exactly that: a handful of five Oscar nominations. One of the biggest goals of Warner Bros. Pictures’s bump of Dune: Part Two from a primetime awards season debut during November of 2023 to the empty winter plain of March of 2024 was to not have it compete with Oppenheimer and Barbie (and in the latter’s case, split the studio’s own vote and “for your consideration” spending). It turns out the Oscar voter tendency of forgetting the majority of quality candidates before the month of November hit Dune: Part Two. They can feel positive about the honor of being in Best Picture field, but the slap in the face is Denis Villeneuve not among the Best Director nominees (a slot that likely went to the surprise inclusion of James Mangold for A Complete Unknown). If you gauged voters and cinephiles alike in the summer, Villeneuve and company would have easily raked double-digit nominations, Timothée Chalamet would have been nominated for this and not A Complete Unknown, and occupied a stranglehold on damn-near untouchable frontrunner status as the next great unawarded auteur’s flashy turn to have his golden career-defining moment. Instead, it scored fewer nominations (5) than the first film had wins (6). That’s a big, expensive miss for Warner Bros. Pictures.

The Academy has stopped loving Luca Guadagnino

Patrick talks to Art with his hands up.
Mike Faist (L) and Josh O’Connor in Challengers. Photos Courtesy of MGM.

Speaking of Chalamet, the seven years since Call Me By Your Name‘s firebranded four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor and a win for Best Adapted Screenplay do not feel all that long ago, when those honors were a high proclamation of exciting new acting and filmmaking voices to keep an eye on. Somehow, those same voters forgot who Luca Guadagnino was. Guadagnino loaded both barrels of the auteur shotgun with Queer, bringing some of Daniel Craig’s best praise outside of James Bond, and his largest commercial hit of Challengers backed by Zendaya as a star and producer. You can’t get much showier than those two! Neither of Luca’s films earned nominations when both really could have or should have. Craig deserved a look in that Best Actor field and, on many prognosticators’ score sheets, Challengers had the best original score of the year composed by multi-time Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as well as the best and most inventive editing from Marco Costa and a shot or into in the acting slots. The prolific Italian filmmaker’s next bite at the golden apple will have to wait for After the Hunt starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield as soon as next year.

The Hispanic minority gets a spotlight

Two young men look up at their reflection in Nickel Pots
(L-R) Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys. Image courtesy of Orion Pictures.

In 2025, we celebrate ten years of the recurring social media-fueled Oscar picketing hashtag of #OscarsSoWhite calling out a lack of diversity among the annual nominees. This year, one could easily single out some places where deserving Black representation is missing after only granted two acting nominees (Cynthia Erivo for Wicked and Colman Domingo for Sing Sing). Default legend Denzel Washington is a big name to leave out of Best Supporting Actor field, along with Clarence Maclin from Sing Sing, who has won several precursor trophies. Those two could have leaned that commonly contentious scale. Another case could have been made for Danielle Deadwyler for The Piano Lesson (which is now two Oscar-worthy snubs in a row for her after Till). While he got an Adapted Screenplay nomination for Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross deserved to be in the Best Director race outright regardless of minority labels as did his headlining actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, eating her second snub in a row after Origin. Leave it to performers with Hispanic heritage to save the day for diversity. The nominations for Colman Domingo, Karla Sofía Gascón, Monica Barbaro, Fernanda Torres, and Zoe Saldana constitute one-quarter of all acting nominations. That’ll keep part of the hashtag away for a year. You’d love to see regular acceptance make it go away entirely.

Follow the Netflix money

Emilia Pérez. Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in Emilia Pérez. Cr. Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 - WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS - PATHÉ FILMS - FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024. Rita dances at a charity diner, her song ripping to the hypocritical wealthy elites.
Emilia Pérez. Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in Emilia Pérez. Cr. Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024.

I don’t mind using a piece of this space to call for the movie business equivalent of campaign finance reform when it comes to expensive “For Your Consideration” marketing pushes targeting the attention of Oscar voters. At least at the nomination stage, it works. Look no further than Netflix’s field-leading haul from Emilia Perez and its 13 nominations. They’ve become one of, if not the, biggest FYC spenders in Tinseltown. 2025 marks the sixth year in a row (including three with multiple inclusions) that a Netflix film has been nominated for Best Picture. Among those contenders, The Power of the Dog (12), The Irishman (10), Mank (10), and Roma (10) also netted double-digit nominations. Even with that streak, they’ve missed winning the big one, and have even taken an 0-for-10 goose egg night from The Irishman. It’s like voters will let Netflix in, but then their favor runs out. Emilia Perez is far from a juggernaut and has its optical issues and pushback in the public and critical community. Can you honestly say that Emilia Perez is the hands-down obvious winner in any category of its 13? Is Zoe Saldana the undoubted leader of the Best Supporting Actress back? If not, it’s best case is probably Best Song, where it’s a double nominee in a watered down field that doesn’t include “Kiss the Sky” from The Wild Robot, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rub on “Tell Me It’s You” from Mufasa: The Lion KingGrammy nominee “Out of Oklahoma” from Twisters, and Miley Cyrus’s star power for “Beautiful That Way” from The Last ShowgirlWatch Elton John’s “Never Too Late” come out of nowhere to earn the Brit his Oscar hat trick and send Emilia Perez and Netflix home entirely empty-handed.

Oscar voters hate populist documentaries

A man lays back in a motorized wheelchair.
Christopher Reeve in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Image by Warner Bros. Pictures.

This feels like a crappy trend that’s been ongoing for a decade or longer. There’s annually always one or two documentaries that score larger studio backing and wide releases. In doing so, they become water cooler and social media favorites of happy, common moviegoers, to the point that those folks feel smart for knowing some classy nonfiction cinema come Oscar time. Critics’ groups coast-to-coast become from the voices of the people and laud those movies to huge tallies of precursor wins. Then, the Oscar nominations get here and dump, for the most part, a five-movie rack of questionable obscurity and snub something recognizable and widely beloved. It happened to Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Apollo 11, The Rescue, Val, and Remembering Gene Wilder over the years. For 2024, the excision landed on Super/Man: A Christopher Reeve Story, Will & Harper, and Music by John WilliamsI know the documentary field is as wide as it is untapped by most viewers, but throw the good public a bone in one of your five finalists.

The Academy is still not all the way ready to honor horror

Elisabeth looks at herself in the mirror in The Substance.
Demi Moore as Elisabeth in The Substance. Image courtesy of TIFF

This is another annual lament. The horror genre is still the redheaded stepchild of Oscar voters. While it’s very encouraging and downright wonderful to see top category love for Coralie Fearget’s The Substance earning five nominations, culminated by Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for Demi Moore. However, if the Academy really wanted to get dark and freaky, it could have done more than relegate Nosferatu to four measly arts and technical categories (all deserving spots, by the way) and completely omit the smaller wonders like Strange Darling and I Saw the TV Glow. Those efforts will have to settle for Independent Spirit Awards the day before, but even those categories are starting to get filled with big money nominees looking to double-dip precursor awards.

Let’s hear it for little folks playing big people

One man listens to another on the phone in the backseat of a limo in The Apprentice.
(L-R) Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice. Image courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment and IMDb Pro.

I’ll end on one more pleasant celebration. While Adrien Brody is the odds-on favorite in the Best Actor category to win his second career statuette and the likes of previous nominees Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, and Cynthia Erivo have new chances this year, 13 of the 20 acting nominations are filled by brand new nominees. That’s a beautiful thing to see, and a combination of fresh faces and overdue veterans. It’s hard to believe 2025 contains the first-ever career nominations for Demi Moore (The Substance), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), and Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), with the latter finally adding to the legacy of her esteemed family tree (Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini). Two of the biggest surprises were Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong playing indie Little-Engines-That-Could in scoring two middle-finger-to-the-White-House nominations for The ApprenticeThe futures are bright for discoveries like Yuriy Borisov and Mikey Madison of Anora, and don’t be surprised to see Ariana Grande get another one of these Oscar nominations next year (along with Erivo) for the second half of Wicked.

Written by Don Shanahan

DON SHANAHAN is a Chicago-based Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic writing here on Film Obsessive as the Editor-in-Chief and Content Supervisor for the film department. He also writes for his own website, Every Movie Has a Lesson. Don is one of the hosts of the Cinephile Hissy Fit Podcast on the Ruminations Radio Network and sponsored by Film Obsessive. As a school teacher by day, Don writes his movie reviews with life lessons in mind, from the serious to the farcical. He is a proud director and one of the founders of the Chicago Indie Critics and a voting member of the nationally-recognized Critics Choice Association, Hollywood Creative Alliance, Online Film Critics Society, North American Film Critics Association, International Film Society Critics Association, Internet Film Critics Society, Online Film and TV Association, and the Celebrity Movie Awards.

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