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There are plenty of people in the business of predicting Oscar winners. But unless you’ve got money in the game—and no judgment if you do—isn’t it more fun just to root for your favorites? That’s what I do every year. I generally view the Oscars with a healthy dose of skepticism: As far as I’m concerned, Academy voters don’t always choose the best films or performances. Sometimes they’re influenced by campaigns, the thinking of their friends, the general mood in the air. And sometimes—sorry—their choices just boil down to bad taste. In the runup to the Oscars, I sternly decree that it’s only my taste that matters, and you should feel the same about yours. To that end, here’s a handful of my favorite nominees this year—as well as one performance I still can’t believe the Academy overlooked.
Timothée Chalamet, nominated for Best Actor in A Complete Unknown
Chalamet is an extraordinarily gifted actor. But none of us has to love everything an actor does, and in the past few years, in movies like Dune, parts 1 and 2, and Bones and All, I’d found my appreciation for Chalamet wearing thin. That feeling didn’t last: for me, he came back with a roar in his portrayal of early-1960s-era Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s terrific A Complete Unknown. Chalamet captures both the brattiness and the brashness of the young Dylan; his portrait suggests how callous and hurtful, particularly toward women, this emerging genius must have been. That’s what makes this performance, which goes beyond mere mimicry, so beautiful and so compelling.
Yura Borisov, nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for Anora
Borisov’s character, Igor, enters Sean Baker’s Anora as a thug charged with controlling the movie’s heroine, the feisty dancer and sex worker Ani, played by Mikey Madison. And he does look a little tough: you can see why he’d be brought in to keep the peace. But Borisov gradually builds a tender, radiant performance out of stolen glances and subtle gestures. By the end, we see that he’s got the purest heart of any of the film’s male characters. First impressions can be deceiving, and Borisov proves us wrong in the most delightful way.
Flow, nominated for Best Animated Film
We all need a little hope right now, and Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis gives us a gentle but healthy dose of it with the wordless environmental parable Flow. Escaping a sudden, massive flood, a smart, mischievous black cat clambers aboard a boat shared by a dog, a capybara, and a lemur, as well as a long-legged secretary bird. In spite of their differences, they make it work. This elegant, spare picture doesn’t hammer away at its message. Instead, it opens us to a world of beauty, and of teamwork—our only chance at survival is to stick together.
Arianne Phillips, nominated in the Best Costume category for A Complete Unknown, and Lisy Christl, nominated in the same category for Conclave
Yes, it’s cheating to root for two nominees in the same category. But I truly can’t choose between these two. Phillips’ costumes for A Complete Unknown, an array of slouchy suede jackets, battered fisherman’s caps, and smart-hippie-girl sundresses, reflect the shaggy energy of early 1960s New York. They’re also a nod to Bob Dylan’s personal taste: to this day, he still loves his groovy threads. As for Conclave—I never met a regal papal vestment I didn’t like. Give me all the cloaks embroidered with golden threads, the neat-o Cardinal’s beanies, the soft suede of those little red slippers! Christl serves up the best sartorial Catholic lewks.
Porcelain War, nominated for Best Documentary
Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s gorgeous, cautiously hopeful documentary shows an angle of war we’re not used to seeing, following three Ukrainian artists as they steadfastly commit to their vision even in the face of Russian aggression. Leontyev and his wife, Anya Stasenko, create small, exquisite porcelain creatures that reflect the natural beauty of the Ukrainian countryside, even as Leontyev also trains ordinary citizens in how to use weapons to defend their nation. Andrey Stefanov is a painter who learned, quickly, how to use a movie camera—he’s the film’s cinematographer. Porcelain War shows us how the vision of artists is never extraneous, least of all in wartime. Rather, it represents everything that’s worth fighting for.
Read more: In Oscar-Nominated Ukrainian Documentary Porcelain War, Three Artists Cut Through the Noise of War
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, nominated for Best International Feature
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof made this stark, powerful film in the aftermath of the 2022 death, in police custody, of Mahsa Amini, who’d been arrested for failing to wear her hijab in the proper manner. In the film, a loyal government servant accepts a promotion, a move that will be beneficial to him, his wife, and their two teenage daughters. But these two young women—and, gradually, their mother—come to see the insidiousness of the comfortable lives their father’s job has accorded them. What happens when a country becomes desperate to control women, believing it has every right to do so? Rasoulof, seeking to answer that question, was forced to leave his home country last spring, after Iranian authorities condemned this film and sentenced him to eight years in prison. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is constructed like a thriller. But the injustices it addresses are the stuff of real life.
Anora, nominated for Best Picture
Sean Baker’s fractured fairytale, about a dancer and sex worker (played by the marvelous Mikey Madison) who finds that her prince isn’t as regal as she thought, is a great movie about dashed expectations—and about how seeing the truth of a person, and rejecting it, is sometimes the only way to carve a path to happiness. Anora reminds us that crushed illusions don’t have to be a tragedy; only when the rubble has been cleared away can we see our way forward with clarity.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, not nominated for Best Actress in Hard Truths
There’s no such thing as an Oscars “snub.” The Academy is not a single person who excludes certain performers or films merely out of spite; it’s a body of people who determine the winners by voting. But let’s acknowledge that voters sometimes just get it wrong. In Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a Caribbean-British woman who inches through life in a sour-spirited cloud. She makes life miserable for her son and husband; her sister puts up with her, though even she loses patience now and then. And as viewers, we too are worn down by her persistent negativity. And yet—all of us know a Pansy, a person who’s more a trial to herself than to anyone. The story offers plausible explanations for Pansy’s anger. She’s probably suffering from severe depression. Her mother has been dead for five years, but she’s still feeling extreme grief. Still, Jean-Baptiste’s performance recognizes the limits of our comfortable armchair diagnoses. Pansy is a person, not a condition: that’s what Jean-Baptiste conveys, with heart-rending specificity. If only the Academy had picked up on it.
