Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were announced Tuesday morning, and as expected, Christopher Nolan’s atomic-age biopic Oppenheimer led the way with 13 nominations, one shy of tying the all-time record. The epic story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the program to build the first atomic bomb was nominated in all the big categories, including Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Adapted Screenplay, along with significant below-the-line support, and it remains the frontrunner for the top prize. Right now, it’s simply a matter of how big that win will be.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ and Emma Stone’s comic fantasy Poor Things earned 11 nominations, including Picture. Lanthimos and Stone are both producers on the movie, so each ended up with multiple nominations on the day, Lanthimos for Picture and Director and Stone for Picture and Actress. Mark Ruffalo also was nominated for Supporting Actor, his fourth such nomination.
Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s recounting of the Osage oil murders, landed 10 nods, including Picture, Director, and Actress for Lily Gladstone, who becomes the first indigenous woman nominated for Best Actress.
Barbie came next with eight nominations, including Best Picture, but Greta Gerwig missed out in the directing category, which will go down as the biggest snub of the year. Despite broad crafts support, the film also failed to nab an Actress nomination for Margot Robbie or an Editing nod. Nevertheless, both Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera earned supporting recognition in their respective categories, so the love is out there for the billion-dollar behemoth.
Rounding out the 10-strong Best Picture race are American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Maestro, Past Lives, and The Zone of Interest. Both Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet) and The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) also garnered directing nods, suggesting the international flavor of the Academy is only getting stronger.
Triet becomes just the eighth woman to be recognized in the directing category, while she was also nominated for Original Screenplay, alongside partner Arthur Harari, while star Sandra Hüller got a well-deserved nomination for Best Actress. The film also hit in the Editing category.
Films that land in the Picture, Director, Editing, screenplay, and acting categories tend to be strong contenders, and while I’m not suggesting Anatomy of a Fall will challenge Oppenheimer for the top prize, at the very least, the French nomination committee has to be kicking itself for not submitting the film in the International Feature competition. The French went with Tran Ahn Hung’s The Taste of Things, which is a lovely movie but did not get nominated.
Glazer’s Holocaust horror story, on the other hand, did make it into the International Feature category, a rarity for a UK production, though the film’s spoken language is German. In addition to Director, Glazer was nominated for Adapted Screenplay, and the film was recognized in the Sound category for its stunning soundscapes. Also nominated for International Feature are Io Capitano from Italy, Perfect Days from Japan, Society of the Snow from Spain, and The Teacher’s Lounge from Germany. It’s a heavily Euro-centric lineup, as even the Japanese entrant is from German master Wim Wenders.
Joining Hüller, Gladstone, and Stone in Actress are Annette Bening for Nyad and Carey Mulligan for Maestro. This is Mulligan’s third Best Actress nomination and Bening’s fifth overall (four lead, one supporting). Stone, who of course previously won this category for La La Land, has four total acting nominations (two lead, two supporting) and five overall.
Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster will join her Nyad co-star in celebrating after earning a Supporting Actress nomination. She is joined by Emily Blunt for Oppenheimer, Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple, America Ferrera for Barbie, and presumptive frontrunner Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers. All except Foster are first-time nominees.
Also among The Holdovers’ five nominations is Paul Giamatti in Best Actor. He is joined by Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer, Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Colman Domingo for Rustin, and Jeffrey Wright for American Fiction. Murphy, Domingo, and Wright are all first-timers, while this is Giamatti’s first leading nomination. His only previous nomination came in Supporting Actor for 2005’s Cinderella Man.
Cooper, meanwhile, can’t stop getting nominated and for the second time in his career pulled off the hat trick of a triple-nomination year. He is nominated in Picture, Actor, and Original Screenplay, the same trifecta he pulled off in 2018 for A Star Is Born, though that was in the Adapted Screenplay category. Overall, this brings Cooper’s nomination total to 12.
Over in Supporting Actor, Sterling K. Brown earned his first career nomination for American Fiction and will be joined by frontrunner Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer, Rober De Niro for Killers of the Flower Moon, Ryan Gosling for Barbie, and Mark Ruffalo for Poor Things. This is De Niro’s ninth overall nomination, moving him into a tie for sixth-most all time.
We will dig deeper into all of these categories, as well as the below-the-line races, in the coming weeks. For now, here are a few things that stick out:
Oppenheimer is one of the strongest frontrunners we’ve had at this point in the race in a long time. It was nominated in every category where it was eligible, it has broad support across every branch of the Academy, and it keeps winning prizes everywhere it goes.
The Gerwig miss in Director stings. It’s a bad look for the Directors Branch. While they did nominate Triet, one wonders what the visionary director of one of the highest-grossing films of all time has to do. She also was snubbed for Little Women in 2019, to me an equally egregious omission. And with the ridiculous decision to place Barbie in Adapted Screenplay, where Oppenheimer is likely to triumph, Gerwig is nearly certain to be a bridesmaid yet again.
Beyond just Gerwig, Barbie came up soft in general, despite eight total nods. Not only did it miss Director, Actress, and Editing, as mentioned, it converted just two of its three expected song nominations, with Dua Lipa missing out for “Dance the Night.” We could psychoanalyze this all day – and I’m sure that analysis is coming – but it sure feels like something was going on in voters’ minds regarding Barbie.
The Cinematography nomination for independent legend Ed Lachman for El Conde is really cool. This is Lachman’s third career nod.
Whatever heat May December might have had early on sure died a quiet death. With just one nomination for Samy Burch’s Original Screenplay and no acting nods for what is absolutely an actors’ showcase, something clearly did not click for Academy members. I am bummed most of all for Charles Melton.
The lack of any nominations for Origin, All of Us Strangers, or The Iron Claw suggests a late-in-the-year release is not an ideal strategy. Oscar nominees need time to build buzz before voting begins, and late December just doesn’t cut it.
Okay, that’s all for now. As always, we’ll have more on all of this in the coming days and weeks. Until then, click here to head over to the Academy website for the full nominations list, and happy movie watching.
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