On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 95th Academy Awards, an American institution that’s been in a state of flux over the past-half decade or so. But after a COVID-delayed ceremony, plummeting ratings, tape delay controversies, and some misguided fan awards, the Academy is on the road to what feels like a return to normalcy. Part of that return to normalcy is the well-rounded nature of the nominees, which include highly regarded indie films and populist blockbusters, as well as a whopping 16 first time acting nominees. While the statues will be handed out in March, I took a look at some of the films and figures who have already won or lost by virtue of being either recognized or ignored by the august body that is AMPAS.

Winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once

One of the only major precursor awards shows to take place thus far has been the Golden Globes, who awarded their Drama and Comedy/Musical film prizes to The Fabelmans and The Banshees of Inisherin, respectively. This wasn’t a total shock – both films are highly regarded and were expected to be major players – but it did leave Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24’s zany, multiversal upstart that also figured to be a contender, as the odd-film out, and gave doubters a reason to believe it may not close out award season as strongly as it started out. 

Well, most of those (ill-advised) doubts were (probably) put to rest Tuesday morning, when Everything Everywhere All at Once notched an impressive 11 nominations, only three below the record 14 held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. The film was already expected to be competitive in high-profile categories like Best Director (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), and Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), but broke through in categories like Best Original Song and Best Original Score, where its chances of scoring a nomination had been much less clear. And while Jamie Lee Curtis had already racked up nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards, both she and Stephanie Hsu, who was somehow ignored by those very same bodies, were recognized by the Academy.

Receiving the most nominations doesn’t necessarily make a film a frontrunner for Best Picture – in fact, the nominations leader hasn’t won the top prize since The Shape of Water did so in 2017. But while The Fabelmans and The Banshees of Inisherin are stout competition, the buzz around Everything Everywhere All at Once feels like too much to overcome, and a (thus far) controversy campaign should only bolster its chances. The precursor awards could end up telling a different story, but for now, Everything Everywhere All at Once is the film to beat.

Loser: Babylon

In theory, Damian Chazelle’s big budget epic about Hollywood’s transition into sound should be the kind of movie that the Academy celebrates. But in reality, Babylon proved to be a polarizing box office bomb, thus far making back roughly $19 million of its reported $78 million dollar budget and turning off some viewers with its bitter, jaundiced view of Tinseltown. Despite receiving Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Diego Calva), Best Actress (Margot Robbie), and Best Supporting Actor (Brad Pitt) and winning for Best Original Score, Babylon failed to swipe any above the line nominations, getting shut out of Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and the acting categories. Instead, it settled for Best Original Score (where it’s currently, and deservedly, the frontrunner), Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design. This wasn’t completely unexpected, but it’s a disappointing result for a film that, despite its issues, contains some remarkable performances and scenes. Hopefully it inspires Chazelle to make a follow up that’s somehow even more unhinged.

Winner: Ireland

Despite giving us stars like Pierce Brosnan, Saorise Ronan, and Liam Neeson, Irish cinema hasn’t necessarily received the level of renown that its Italian, Swedish, or French counterparts have. But the Emerald Isle is showing up in a big way at the 95th Academy Awards, highlighted by The Banshees of Inisherin, which received nine nominations, tied with All Quiet on the Western Front for the second-most this year. Banshees stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan, and Kerry Condon all scored noms in their respective acting categories and together with fellow Irishman Paul Mescal (Aftersun) make up 25% of all acting nominees this year. Banshees director Martin McDonagh, a UK-born Irishman, was also nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and, as one of the film’s producers, Best Picture. 

If all of that weren’t enough, The Quiet Girl, an Irish language film, was nominated for Best International Feature, the first ever Irish film to receive such an honor. And considering that this award is given to the submitting country, not individual filmmakers, that means technically the entire country of Ireland has been nominated for an Oscar. The competition will be stiff in all of these categories, and it’s certainly possible that Banshees and its fellow Irish films will be shut out entirely, but for at least the time being, Ireland can take some pride knowing that they’ll have an outside presence at Hollywood’s biggest night.

Loser: Non-European world cinema

The Oscars have always been very American and Eurocentric, but the recent success of films like South Korea’s Parasite (the upset Best Picture winner in 2019) and Japan’s Drive My Car (a Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay nominee in 2021), as well as that of Mexican directors like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, seemed to indicate that the Academy was taking a more careful look at films made south and east of Hollywood. But this year, only one International Feature nominee (Argentina’s Argentina, 1985) comes from somewhere other than Europe, while Ruben Ostlund (Triangle of Sadness), the only non-American Best Director nominee, hails from Sweden. 

At the risk of sounding naive, these oversights are probably a blip – the Academy is as diverse as it’s ever been, and, as I’ve already pointed out, has never been more open to awarding non-American or European filmmakers. But the scant recognition for films like Bardot (Mexico) and RRR (India), each of which only received one nomination, as well as the complete shut out of Park Chan-wook’s critically lauded Decision to Leave, still feels like a bit of a “one step forward, two steps back” situation when it comes to making what Bong Joon-ho called a “very local” ceremony more diverse. 

Winner: Asian representation

But whatever ground Asian creators lost in the international and below the line categories, Asian actors made up for with a historic amount of nominations in their respective categories. Hong Kong action legend Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to be nominated for Best Actress for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once while Ke Huy Quan, her on-screen husband, is the heavy favorite to win Best Supporting Actor. Meanwhile, Best Supporting Actress includes two Asian-American nominees – Stephanie Hsu of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Hong Chau of The Whale. Obviously, four nominations doesn’t cure decades worth of Asian actors being stereotyped and passed up for big roles – but it is heartening to see a group that has often struggled in Hollywood receive the film industry’s highest form of recognition, and as serious contenders, as well.

Loser: Female Directors

The past five years have been something of a golden age for female directors at the Oscars – at least relatively speaking. Of the eight Best Director nominations given to women in the entire history of the Academy Awards, four of them were doled out between 2017 and 2021 (Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird, Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, Chloe Zhao for Nomadland, Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog), with two nominees (Zhao and Campion) going on to win the award in back to back years. Unfortunately, there will be no chance for a three-peat as women were completely shut out of Best Director and we’re stuck with all-male slate this year. 

The masculine nature of the Best Director category is always a source of controversy, and it hasn’t helped that Sarah Polley’s Women Talking received a Best Picture nomination only for her direction to be passed up, and that other female directors thought to be in contention such as Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King), Charlotte Wells (Aftersun), and Maria Schrader (She Said) saw their films overlooked to an ever larger degree. Sure, one year does not equal a trend, and it’s entirely possible that 2022 will be considered a mere blip in what’s been an otherwise improving situation for female directors at the Oscars, but the lack of recognition at this year’s ceremony will feel at least a little deflating for them and their advocates.

Winner: Some blockbusters

Much of last year’s Oscars discussion concerned ABC’s increasingly flailing attempts to juice the show’s viewership numbers by introducing two fan-voted awards, hoping to give popular blockbusters at least a cursory mention at a ceremony that’s in recent years been dominated by prestige fair (it didn’t work out, at least not the way ABC hoped it iwould). While relatively smaller, artier films still received the bulk of the nominations this year, ABC’s brass are no doubt pleased that Top Gun: Maverick, the highest grossing film of the year, as well as Avatar: The Way of Water (4th highest grossing) and Elvis (12th) each received Best Picture nominations, as well as a considerable amount of below the line recognition. Not all of these films performed quite as well as they expected to – Maverick missed out on a Best Actor nod for Tom Cruise and a spot in Best Cinematography, while The Way of Water’s James Cameron is absent from the Best Director field – but a possible, if not likely, win for Austin Butler’s portrayal of the King of Rock and Roll could help bridge some of the blockbuster/Oscars divide and bring more casual cinema fans back to the show. At least ABC hopes it will.

Loser: Most blockbusters

The Producers Guild of America sent some minor shockwaves across the Awards landscape when it revealed its nominees for Best Picture, which included a whopping four sequels. Joining Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick were Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the second highest grossing movie of the year, and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a massive Netflix streaming hit. These nominations, together with the underwhelming box office numbers of projected Oscar contenders Tár and The Fabelmans, seemed to suggest that sequels, and specifically sequels to star-studded, franchise-based blockbusters, could experience an unprecedented level of success at the Oscars. Instead, most non-Avatar, non-Top Gun blockbusters underperformed in terms of nominations. Wakanda Forever, whose predecessor was the first and so far only superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture, had to settle for nominations in Original Score, Costume Design, Visual Effects, and Best Supporting Actress (where Angela Bassett has emerged as the early favorite), while Glass Onion’s sole nomination came for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Outside of Elvis, even original blockbusters struggled to make an impression with Academy voters. The Woman King, which was also nominated for Best Picture by the PGA, didn’t receive any nominations, while Nope, the latest film from past Best Original Screenplay winner Jordan Peele, also went nom-less, even in deserving categories like Visual Effects and Original Score. Speaking of deserving scores, Michael Giacchino failed to pick up a nomination for his thunderous theme for The Batman, and Greig Fraser went unrecognized for his exciting cinematography (Matthew Reeves’ The Batman did receive nominations for Best Sound, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Visual Effects, however). Maverick, The Way of Water, and Elvis are obviously popular movies – but Black Panther and The Batman represent the most popular movie genre of the current era, and ABC would’ve probably loved to see both films get more love from the Academy. 

Winner: The dark horse campaign to end all dark horse campaigns

If you follow a lot of film journalists on Twitter, you were probably confused a couple of weeks ago as to why a bunch of them were suddenly talking about To Leslie, a little-seen addiction drama, and the Oscar chances of its star, Andrea Riseborough. Save for two nominations from the Chicago Film Critics’ Association and the Independent Spirit Awards, Riseborough didn’t receive any recognition from major precursors, and hasn’t been considered a serious contender for Best Actress. But then Howard Stern praised To Leslie on his radio show. And then Charlize Theron hosted a special screening. And then Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Demi Moore hosted even more screenings. And then Kate Winslet and Amy Adams hosted a virtual Q&A panel with Riseborough. And then Cate Blanchett shouted Riseborough out at the Critics’ Choice Awards. And then all of a sudden people like Jane Fonda, Mira Sorvino, Geena Davis, Liam Neeson, and Laura Dern couldn’t shut up about To Leslie on social media. And then, on Tuesday morning, Andrea Riseborough, to the shock of many, received her first career Oscar nomination.
So what happened? Did all of Hollywood telepathically link with each other and decide to hype up this tiny movie out of their sheer enthusiasm for Riseborough’s performance? Not really. The seemingly spontaneous campaign to get Riseborough nominated was actually hatched by To Leslie director Michael Morris and his wife Mary McCormack, who treated Stern to a private screening, and then personally emailed their contacts asking them to post about the film until January 17th, the last day of Oscar voting. Is this form of campaigning a little underhanded? Sure. Should it make some PR agencies and studios worried about what the future of Oscar campaigning looks like? Probably. But the worst thing that an awards show can be is boring, and if nothing else the Andrea Riseborough episode adds a fun wrinkle to what has thus far been a perfectly copacetic, but somewhat straightforward, awards season. And if she manages to upset frontrunners Cate Blanchett (Tár) and Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once), it’ll be a bigger upset than Moonlight, Parasite, and CODA winning combined.