Never let it be said the Academy doesn’t still have a few tricks up its sleeve. Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday morning, and Jane Campion’s meditative take on the western genre, The Power of the Dog, led the way with 12 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for Campion herself, and four acting nods.
Right behind that was the first half of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune, which landed 10 nominations, including Best Picture. Shockingly, however, Villeneuve was left off the Directing list, which puts a dent in the film’s chances at taking home the big prize.
Likely taking the fifth slot in Best Director from Villeneuve was Japanese master Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose Drive My Car was the biggest surprise of the morning, earning four nominations, including one of the coveted 10 Best Picture slots. Drive My Car was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature.
Joining The Power of the Dog, Dune, and Drive My Car in the Best Picture race are Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story, with the Academy moving back to a 10-nominee lineup this year rather than the between-five-and-10 system of recent years. Kenneth Branagh (Belfast), Steven Spielberg (West Side Story), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza) fill out the Director lineup with Campion and Hamaguchi.
This is Spielberg’s eight nomination for Best Director, putting him in a tie with Billy Wilder for third-most all time. Martin Scorsese has nine, and William Wyler tops the list with 12. West Side Story also represents Spielberg’s 10th Best Picture nomination, which is the most all time in the category, breaking a tie with Scott Rudin. Meanwhile, Campion, who previously was just the second woman ever nominated for Best Director, makes history as the first woman to receive multiple Best Director nominations with her second nod in the category.
Over in the acting categories, the biggest surprise of the morning’s announcements was the inclusion of Kristen Stewart in Best Actress for her work as Princess Diana in Spencer. Before all the hubbub of the awards season began, Stewart was looked at as a frontrunner for the win in Best Actress, but after missing out on nominations from both the Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy, it was an open question whether she would even make the final five.
Perhaps tying Stewart for biggest shock of the day was the actress she likely edged out for a nomination, Lady Gaga, whose leading turn in House of Gucci ironically was the only performance cited by both SAG and the BAFTAs. Instead, Gaga will sit on the sidelines as Stewart competes for the prize with Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter), Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos), Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), and in a minor surprise, Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers.
All in all, it was a good day in the Cruz-Bardem household as Cruz’s husband, Javier Bardem, was nominated in the Best Actor category for his work alongside Kidman in Being the Ricardos. It is a rare feat for a married couple to be nominated for acting Oscars in the same year, made rarer still by the fact that Cruz and Bardem are both previous Academy Award winners, albeit both in the supporting categories.
Along with Bardem, the Academy recognized Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Andrew Garfield (tick, tick…BOOM!), Will Smith (King Richard), and Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth) in Best Actor, leaving out lauded turns by Nicolas Cage in Pig and Leonardo DiCaprio in Don’t Look Up.
Heading the supporting categories were the three nominations garnered by performers in The Power of the Dog, Jesse Plemmons and Kodi Smit-McPhee in Supporting Actor and Kirsten Dunst, earning a long-overdue first nomination, in Supporting Actress. It should be noted that Plemmons and Dunst join Cruz and Bardem as married acting nominees in the same year.
Also nominated with Plemmons and Smit-McPhee in Supporting Actor are Ciarán Hinds (Belfast), Troy Kotsur (CODA), and JK Simmons (Being the Ricardos), while Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter), Ariana Debose (West Side Story), Judi Dench (Belfast), and Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard) join Dunst in Supporting Actress.
Bradley Cooper had been one of the outside possibilities in Best Actor but instead garnered recognition as one of the producers of surprise Best Picture nominee Nightmare Alley. Guillermo Del Toro’s stylish noir remake earned four total nominations for its cinematography, production design, costuming, and for Picture. Also at the top of the nominations list were Belfast and West Side Story with seven nods each and King Richard, which earned six.
Among the more interesting below-the-line nominations were a Makeup and Hairstyling nod for the Eddie Murphy comedy sequel Coming 2 America, 31 years after the first film was nominated in the same category, and tick, tick…BOOM! landing in Best Editing despite missing out in Best Picture.
Predictably, Dune ruled the crafts categories with nominations for Cinematography, Production Design, Costumes, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, Original Score, Editing, and Visual Effects. It is an impressive haul that would portend better things had Villeneuve not missed out on that crucial Best Director nomination.
We will get into more specifics later in terms of what this means for the various awards races, and there are all the guild awards yet to come, but for now, The Power of the Dog seems to be in pole position with Belfast and West Side Story just behind.
I wrote yesterday that I was hopeful we would see some nominations for international films outside the International Feature category, so I was thrilled with all the recognition for Drive My Car, as well as the nominations for Cruz and composer Alberto Iglesias for Parallel Mothers. Love for The Worst Person in the World, nominated for Best International Feature, carried over into Best Original Screenplay but did not translate into a Best Actress nomination for star Renate Reinsve. The stellar Flee, meanwhile, pulled off a triple nomination with places in the lineups for International Feature, Documentary, and Animated Feature. Hopefully, this will lead to more people checking out this brilliant little film.
On the other hand, I specifically hoped we would see less reliance on biopics in the acting categories, and instead, the Academy doubled down. Three nominations for Being the Ricardos, including the somewhat out of left field nod for Simmons, two for King Richard, and one each for tick, tick…BOOM!, Spencer, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Again, I am not saying I dislike all or any of these performances. I am just asking for creativity.
I was happiest for Garfield, who gives what I think is the best performance of the year in tick, tick…BOOM!, and for Dunst, who has delivered tremendous work essentially for her entire life and is finally getting the recognition she deserves from her peers. The three nominations for The Lost Daughter, including Maggie Gyllenhaal for Adapted Screenplay, are all well deserved. As a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan, I will be rooting for him to earn the EGOT with a win in the much-derided (in this space anyway) Best Original Song category, which for once, is not wholly embarrassing.
It would have been nice to see some love for The Green Knight, either its gorgeous cinematography or Dev Patel’s fabulous leading turn, and I was disappointed tick, tick…BOOM!, my favorite American film of the year, missed out on a Best Picture nomination. But, we can’t have everything.
More to come on these nominations in the coming days and weeks, including breakdowns of all the races, category by category, and some other fun stuff.
