The Oscars are always a little frustrating. At every step of the process — from shortlisting to nominating to handing out the awards themselves — the Academy makes a few good choices but counterbalances them with others that are so infuriatingly bad it tanks much of the goodwill those good picks first generated.
The Academy Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Take 2023 for example, when Anatomy of a Fall — which would go on to be nominated for Best Picture and win Best Original Screenplay — missed out on even being shortlisted for Best International Feature because that list is determined by what the country of origin decides to submit, and France snubbed it. That’s an inane rule, as is the rule that the International Feature Oscar is awarded to the country, not the filmmakers.
Or take the 2022 ceremony, when the extremely okay CODA beat out fantasticfilmslike West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, Drive My Car, and presumed frontrunner The Power of the Dog for Best Picture.
Or think back to a year before that when the ceremony contorted its schedule so that it could end with Chadwick Boseman winning a posthumous Best Actor statue for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom… only for Anthony Hopkins to win the award while not even being there to accept it.
Anthony Hopkins deserved the recognition, to be fair, he’s fantastic in The Father.
Emilia Perez Scores 13 Nominations
Those examples are all from the past few years, but if you’ve made an effort to develop a sense of taste — beyond simply liking whatever the Oscars nominate — the Academy will always frustrate you. That trend continued this year as Emilia Pérez — the 58th best film I saw this year — nabbed 13 nominations, the most ever for an international feature and tied for second most in Oscar history.
The musical about a Mexican cartel leader transitioning to live as a woman in Europe, before returning to her home country to start a non-profit, is not a good movie, let alone a great one, and its momentum has been the most puzzling thing about this awards season.
And yet, as much as Emilia Pérez’s nomination domination is a step back, one particular nod the film earned is a step forward. For her portrayal of the titular reformed drug lord, Karla Sofía Gascón earned a nod for Best Actress. It marks the first time an openly transgender person has ever been nominated for an acting Oscar. I wish it was in a better movie but,at a moment when the United States government is attempting to define trans people out of existence, the representation feels more meaningful than it might have even one or two years ago.
Plus, it’s easy to imagine a worse version of Emilia Pérez in which the character isn’t played by a trans actor at all. Jared Leto earned his Oscar playing a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club, and Eddie Redmayne scored a nomination for The Danish Girl in the same way.
Challengers Scores Love And Oscars' Horror Love
But back to the frustrations: Challengers, my favorite film of 2024 andTheGamer’s official runner-up for movie of the year, received no nominations. Luca Guadagnino’s romantic tennis drama has always been bizarrely absent from the awards conversation — maybe because it came out so early in the year? — but some pundits had expected it to at least pick up a Best Original Screenplay nod for Justin Kuritzkes and/or a Best Score nom for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' dance music-inspired soundtrack. Nope, it was completely blanked, and it’s pretty infuriating to see such an electrifying movie get no recognition at all.
On the other hand, the Academy seems to have finally turned a corner on its horror snobbery. In the past decade, some of the best performances have gone unrecognized, largely due to genre bias. Lupita Nyong’o in Us, Toni Collette in Hereditary, Florence Pugh in Midsommar, and Mia Goth in Pearl have all missed out. That isn’t the case this year, as Demi Moore scored her first nomination for her role in The Substance, a wonderfully gross body horror movie, which also scored nods for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. This is a movie that I wouldn’t have expected to even be seriously considered in major categories, and now it seems like it could win at least one.
So, as always, the Oscars are up and down. Your favorites get snubbed and movies you hate win big. But, every year there are silver linings, and this year was no different.
