Oscar longshots we’d like to see nominated in 2024
Forget the sure things, these dark horse contenders deserve some surprise Academy Award nominations
Film Features Oscar
We’re just a day away from this year’s Academy Awards nominations announcement and a few names are dominating the race. We can predict with reasonable certainty multiple nominations for the likes of Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers Of The Flower Moon, and Poor Things. In fact, we already have. We also expect strong showings for The Holdovers and Anatomy Of A Fall. But the Academy always likes to throw in a few surprises to make things interesting. Last year’s Best Picture nominations for All Quiet On The Western Front and Women Talking were unexpected but not unwelcome. We wouldn’t have put money on Paul Mescal or Andrea Riseborough to receive nominations either, before they were recognized for their lead performances in Aftersun and To Leslie.
So who might sneak into the nominations this year? That’s a tough call, but we can make the case for some of our favorite longshot candidates. Even if their odds aren’t great, they’re still worth talking about in the leadup to the Oscars ceremony on March 10.
For more of The A.V. Club’s Oscar coverage, be sure to check out our predictions for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Song.
36 Comments
I really didn’t like Astroid City
You’re kinder than me. I felt as I watching it, like Wes Anderson had finally, truly and completely disappeared up his own ass.
I feel he got there considerably earlier.
I mean, really for me the jump the shark moment was The Royal Tenenbaums. In that film, his immaculate attention to detail worked, because it served the story. But after all the praise and awards nominations, the lesson Anderson took from it was to run with the style, as opposed to the story, and increasingly his films became about that, to where the last three or four films really have just felt like parodies made by someone else.
His biggest problem is lately his stories are just too half baked to sustain a feature. French Dispatch felt like three or four failed story treatments, that he mashed together to make an anthology, and one that was only partly successful. Asteroid City, for me at least, had absolutely nothing going for it, not even the story or the visuals. It felt like an AI attempt at an Anderson film. It was inhuman.
I mostly agree, though I genuinely love “The Darjeeling Limited” and have never quite been able to put my finger on exactly why–especially considering the reviews for that one aren’t as kind as most Anderson films. Speaking of which, he’s one director that seems to have a very wide span between ‘critics scores’ and ‘audience scores’ on nearly every film.
Same. And I like a lot of Wes Anderson’s movies, but Asteroid City was insufferably twee.
The thing that draws me to Wes Anderson is, if nothing else, his films are gorgeous to look at. I’ll happily take a move that is at least a visually splendid experience, even if it fails on every other level. I felt like I didn’t even get that with Asteroid City, because it was so overwelmed by Andersonian whip pans, and perpendicular tracking shots, that there was not enough time to take in any detail, and after a while, I just gave up.
It was so so bad that I just stopped watching it. It would have been better as a painting.
it was a decent facsimile of a wes anderson movie.i enjoyed the stop-motion bits, but i just love stop-motion in general. and yeh, i do think wes anderson should do stop-motion exclusively.
YOU CAN’T WAKE UP IF YOU DON’T FALL ASLEEPI was liking a lot of that movie just for the vibes and the story-within-a-story, but then all the actors started chanting that at me and I knew it was way over my head
I really did not like the framing device they used in it. The central story itself was OK.
The only part I liked about it was when the gummy hit at the exact moment (SPOILER ALERT) the stop-motion alien showed up.
I’ve found that I absolutely have to be in a ‘Wes Anderson’ mood before watching any of his movies or I find them absolutely insufferable and full of themselves. If I’m in the mood they delight me to no end. I’ve yet to be in the Anderson mood since the release of this film and that’s after a couple of ‘false starts’.
The prediction page links aren’t working, btw.Is being helpful enough to finally get me out of the greys? I’ve been posting on this site for twenty years, originally as abcdefz. Just curious.
The score for the Boy and the Heron was phenomenal for sure. Maybe it’s nostalgia but his score for Princess Mononoke will always be an all timer for me.
I insist that Godzilla Minus One be nominated for Best International Feature, and would like it to get one or more of Screenplay, Lead Actor or Lead/Supporting Actress – the actors do great work to raise an already-brilliant movie further.
Couldn’t agree more. I’d give it every technical award if I could just knowing how great it looks for how little money it was made for. One of my absolute favorite movies of last year for sure, and it caught me completely by surprise (I only even went because one of my sons is a Godzilla nerd and asked to go on opening night). Movies like this need and deserve accolades.
Godzilla can’t be nominated for International Feature because Japan didn’t submit it…they submitted Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days instead
Good to know. Well, not /good/, because dagnabbit they picked the wrong movie, but now I’m free to wish a Best Picture nom upon it.
I really really want to see Rachel McAdam’s win Best Supporting Actress, though at this point the moment does seem to be behind Da’Vine Randolph, who also gave a great performance. McAdams was so, so good, so warm and understated. She is truly our most underrated actor. I dare say, she’s her generation’s Carole Lombard, equally brilliant at dramatic or comedic roles.
I can’t believe it’s at the point where Greta Lee is a longshot. It seemed she was a lock a few months ago, but now after all the preliminary awards shows, it does indeed seem she is on the outside looking in (Gold Derby as her at #6). It’s a shame, because Past Lives was my favorite movie last year and she was incredible in it. I’d easily take Lee over Carey Mulligan in Maestro or Margot Robbie in Barbie.
Agree. Maestro was so nakedly, shamelessly Awards-baity, that every single scene seemed to exist purely to serve as a possible “For you consideration” clip. Work like that doesn’t deserve to be recognized. Greta Lee’s absolutely does.
No chance that Boy and the Heron doesn’t win Best Animated. What’s it going up against, Spiderverse?
I could see Turtles being decent competition, but they are truly on different wavelengths.
I think Turtles is a lock for a nomination as it is genuinely a good movie. Spiderverse is a lock as well. But those two are nominees–Boy and the Heron will absolutely win this. I can’t fathom another movie even really challenging it.
Blackberry is easily my choice for the best of the “product biopics” just because it has the guts to go all the way to the product falling off a cliff and taking all its creators with it. The final symbol of the company hitting rock bottom, which is perfectly set up through the whole movie, made me gasp out loud in the theater.
“And Godzilla Minus One did it on an estimated budget of around $10 million (no, really, there’s no zero missing there).”Yeah, and that’s because the effects guys were basically slave labor. Not exactly a thing to celebrate.
Well it was sold to me as a ‘labor of love’ by all parties involved so that’s how I choose to see it.
hvac service softwarehelps you organize your business to increase both proficiency and efficiency.This platform manages and tracks your customers, coordinates HVAC Job scheduling and tech dispatching, empowers back-office with easy to use estimation and invoice templates for increasing sales. Grow your HVAC profit with Field Service Management Software. https://service.works/
I think Zone of Interest is in, which is awesome, cause it definitely feels outside the box as far the academy awards go. I haven’t seen Maestro, so i’m a little biased in this take, but I think the 5 best actresses should be Stone, Gladstone, Lee, Portman, and Huller. In terms of outsiders looking in on Original Screenplay, I like Asteroid City a lot more then Saltburn, but I wish something more outside the box would get a nomination like The Boy and The Heron, Beau is Afraid, and Bottoms.I’ll def take Andrew Scott over DiCaprio or Domingo…and for supporting actor i’d actually prefer Melton & Sessa over Sterling K. Brown (and i like Brown and American Fiction, just think there’s better SP performances this year).
I haven’t been able to convince myself to watch “Beau is Afraid” yet, mostly because I absolutely love “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” so much and have seen enough of the reviews to know there’s just no way this movie can live up to the heights of those two. I will, eventually, I’m sure, but I may need to read more articles from others enamored with Aster’s writing and directing to convince me…
Okay, am I the only person who wasn’t as enchanted as everyone else with Nimona? Good animation and strong thematic virtues, but then you factor in the confused worldbuilding (it’s set in the near-future, but there are knights?), protracted storyline (an event happens around the hour mark that would seem to signal the natural endpoint of the story, but then it keeps going) and leftover Blue Sky humor (Hey, guess what? A movie produced in 2023 used “Awkward.” as a punchline. I’ll say it again for the cheap seats: A movie produced in twenty-twenty-fucking-three! used “Awkward.” as a punchline.) and I just don’t see this as serious competition to Spider-Verse or The Boy and the Heron. Also, the title character is very unlikable for most of it.
I could have sworn we already did this.
Poor Things was a fail. Very disappointed.
Very insightful article, really appreciate it. As it help me to create medical spa greentreehttps://gtaesthetic.com/
Very insightful article, really appreciate it. As it help me to create retail operations managementhttps://taqtics.co/retail-operations-management/
The films I enjoyed the most in 2023 were Fremont, Late Night With the Devil, Beau is Afraid, The Holdovers, and Linoleum. They were all films that reminded me why I put such a premium on going to the theater regularly (before I stopped once the ya-know-what swallowed the world in 2020).