Will The Oscars Freak It This Year or Nah?

Every year, around this time, cinephiles and film-lovers feel a giddy sense of excitement; will our favorite offbeat film, actor, score, set design be nominated for an Academy Award? More often than not the answer is no. The Academy rarely, if ever, throws a stray nomination to something or someone interesting. In recent years, the closest we’ve come to a cool choice from the Academy is multiple wins for Yorgos Lanthimos - but noticeably for his least twisted films - and a nomination for Lily Gladstone that unfortunately went to Emma Stone (of the previously mentioned untwisted Yorgos Lanthimos film).

This kind of thing is expected. The awards body that is the Academy has to nominate films that people want to see or have seen or that could potentially see a boost at the box office after viewers are made aware of the film by the Academy. The whole thing is an ouroboros of commerce that’s a microcosm of the film industry that’s unfortunately necessary as ticket sales continue to decrease and viewers prefer to watch 18 hours of a streaming show you’ve never heard of than sit down in a theater for three and half hours to watch The Brutalist.

Here’s where we get optimistic; could this year be different? If we look at the 82nd Golden Globes there could be some clues as to how the Academy will (or very likely won’t) lean. There’s a slew of cool and off-kilter films that could receive a nomination - The Brutalist, Challengers, The Substance, I Saw The TV Glow, Babygirl - but if we’re being honest with ourselves, they won’t. Even with Demi Moore’s much deserved Best Actress win, she still feels like an out of the box choice for a Best Actress Academy nomination. The same goes for Jesse Plemons in Kinds of Kindness - everyone knows that these performers absolutely ripped it up on screen, but their performances may be just a little too weird for an Oscar nomination.

There are too many interesting, weird, and out of the box films and performances this year to name (if we could literally send a list of stuff we like to the Academy and have them take us seriously we would), but when we look into our Academy crystal ball it looks like another year of puzzling choices with little fun to be had.