The Films and Actors We Hope Get Oscar Nominations, From ‘Dune’ and Denzel to Kristen Stewart

With voting for the 2022 Academy Award nominations ending Feb. 1, we’d be remiss to not share our dream nominees (these are not predictions, thoughts you, however wishful pondering).

Opposite to what the theatrical field workplace might need you consider—the place the highest 10 motion pictures of the 12 months had been all reboots, sequels, or superhero movies, and no unbiased (and even indiewood) movie managed to crack the highest 40—it was an excellent 12 months for cinema. It simply so occurs that almost all of the 12 months’s finest movies, on this author’s humble opinion, flew beneath the radar attributable to their being from a distinct nation or of the documentary selection.

As of now, the Academy Awards are set to happen on March 27, 2022, on the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. Whether or not or not COVID will derail that plan stays to be seen. However regardless, the “Oscar season from hell” (LA Occasions’ phrases) is nearing its finish, and it’s time to acknowledge the 12 months’s standouts.

And the nominees are…

Greatest Image

Licorice Pizza

Dune

Petite Maman

The Worst Individual within the World

Drive My Automobile

Titane

The Inexperienced Knight

Summer time of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution May Not Be Televised)

Flee

Annette

Oscar pundits have pegged Kenneth Branagh’s Troubles-era bildungsroman Belfast because the Greatest Image frontrunner; in any case, it took house the Folks’s Selection Award on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant, which was awarded to 2 of the final three winners (Nomadland and Inexperienced E-book). However the movie struck me as a cloying, clumsily-shot Jojo Rabbit knock-off transformed to black-and-white in an effort to feign gravitas. I additionally wasn’t as excessive as others on The Energy of the Canine, a ponderous movie whose closeted cowboy antics made the Montgomery Clift-John Wayne sequences in Crimson River appear refined by comparability. Once more, it was a beautiful 12 months for worldwide cinema and documentaries, from Joachim Trier’s riveting relationship drama The Worst Individual within the World to Questlove’s exceptional found-footage live performance movie Summer time of Soul, and it’s excessive time the Academy started recognizing some of these movies for the night time’s largest prize.

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Greatest Director

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Joachim Trier, The Worst Individual within the World

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Automobile

David Lowery, The Inexperienced Knight

Julia Ducournau, Titane

Whereas the previous few winners have been deserving, I don’t have a complete lot of hope for this class, provided that pundits are predicting the likes of Kenneth Branagh (for Belfast), Aaron Sorkin (for Being the Ricardos) and Adam McKay (for Don’t Look Up) to be nominated, thus proving they’re not fairly certain what a director truly does. The digicam work and staging of David Lowery’s The Inexperienced Knight was nothing in need of transcendent, whereas Paul Thomas Anderson—who let’s face it, is overdue—managed to make his characters’ youthful exuberance burst by means of the display screen in Licorice Pizza.

Greatest Actor

Adam Driver, Annette

Andrew Garfield, tick…tick…growth!

Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Hidetoshi Nishijima, Drive My Automobile

Simon Rex, Crimson Rocket

It was a giant 12 months for music in movie, as three of the nominees right here carried out flashy musical numbers—should you take into account Simon Rex’s dick-swinging scamper to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” a musical efficiency, which I do. Most see this as a three-horse race between Will Smith (for King Richard), Andrew Garfield and Denzel Washington, although it might be all the way down to the latter two given Smith’s seeming incapacity to marketing campaign and the film’s cliched, watered-down strategy to race relations. If it had been my alternative I’d select Washington for his towering flip as Macbeth, however charming ol’ Garfield, who is electrical because the late playwright and composer Jonathan Larson in tick…tick…BOOM!, seems to be pulling out all of the stops.

Greatest Actress

Alana Haim, Licorice Pizza

Renate Reinsve, The Worst Individual within the World

Agathe Rousselle, Titane

Olivia Colman, The Misplaced Daughter

Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Sure, I noticed that Kristen Stewart wasn’t nominated for a SAG Award, and sure, I used to be simply as shocked and disillusioned as a few of you in all probability had been. Hopefully the Academy will proper this incorrect and acknowledge one of many most interesting performances of the 12 months. I imply, simply watch this sequence. Her largest competitors might be Olivia Colman, essentially the most persistently nice actress proper now. The scene in The Misplaced Daughter the place her frustrations bubble to the floor in a movie show is a grasp class. And as a lot as I really like Nicole Kidman—all my pals are absolutely sick of me complaining about how she ought to’ve received for To Die For—Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos seems like a Lifetime film that she’s barely holding collectively.

Greatest Supporting Actor

Andre Holland, Passing

Troy Kotsur, CODA

Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Anders Danielsen Lie, The Worst Individual within the World

Jeffrey Wright, The French Dispatch

Look, I’m conscious that none of those folks—save Troy Kotsur because the cussed, deaf fisherman-father of CODA—will possible be nominated, however let me have my enjoyable, OK? Tony Leung Chiu-wai gave us essentially the most charismatic and sympathetic superhero villain since Killmonger, and Anders Danielsen Lie’s hospital monologue about love and forgiveness in The Worst Individual within the World will break you into 1,000,000 little items.

Greatest Supporting Actress

Rebecca Ferguson, Dune

Riley Keough, Zola

Ariana DeBose, West Facet Story

Ruth Negga, Passing

Kirsten Dunst, The Energy of the Canine

With all due respect to Kirsten Dunst, who ought to have received for Melancholia (how was she not even nominated?!), that is trying like Ariana DeBose’s Oscar to lose for her dazzling flip as Anita in Spielberg’s West Facet Story remake. But when it had been my alternative, I’d give it to Ruth Negga, who exudes old-Hollywood glamour, poise, and fragility as a girl torn between two worlds within the underpraised Passing. Additionally, let’s give some like to Rebecca Ferguson, who acts everybody off the display screen in Dune, and Riley Keough’s hilarious Zola hell-raiser. I can nonetheless hear her character’s voice in my head. It might by no means go away.

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