Now that we know the contenders for this year’s Academy Awards, here are the overlooked films, actors, writers, directors, and composers, who deserved more attention.
Alice Mongkongllite for BuzzFeed
We have finally reached the homestretch of awards season! The Oscar nominations have been announced, giving us an actual list to focus on and argue over until the Academy Awards ceremony airs on ABC on Feb. 22.
And yet, we cannot help but wonder what could have been. For well over a decade now, awards season has become restricted to a narrow list of films that dominate online speculation and industry conversation. Most of these films are great, some are amazing, but rarely do they hold a monopoly on being the best films of the year.
Sometimes, certain movies are deemed too commercial for awards season. Other times, they're deemed too small, or strange, or bleak. Occasionally, a worthy nominee is dismissed because others from the same film are considered more likely to win the Academy's votes. These appraisals are tailored to the perceived tastes of the voting body, and reinforced by distributors whose business models (and marketing budgets) are dedicated to getting their movies onto that awards season shortlist.
The result is a narrow band of "awards movies," when awards season should assess the entire year in cinema, big, small, and everything in between. Why not a superhero movie, or a contemporary comedy, or an animated feature?
Below are some daring, inventive, and moving films and performances that we wish had earned recognition from the Academy, but instead were not even given a fighting chance at consideration for an Oscar nomination this year.
1. Best Picture: The LEGO Movie
Inexplicably passed over for a nomination for Best Animated Feature, this movie is also a winning, emotionally complex, and involving movie. Period. The LEGO Movie blissfully satirizes cultural homogenization and takes one of most satisfying storytelling risks of any movie in recent memory. If I were describing a live-action movie instead of an animated film, it would seem much less absurd to suggest it be considered among the best films of the year. And yet, it is! —Adam B. Vary
Warner Bros.
2. Best Picture: Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer takes place almost entirely within the walls of a perpetually moving train whose passengers live in monstrous social stratification 17 years after industrialization froze the earth. A rebellion of the unwashed masses in the train's rear section, led by a reluctant white man named Curtis (Chris Evans), moves up toward the front section, itching for a coup. In Bong Joon-ho's exquisite masterpiece, the tough, capable, masculine Curtis is the obvious revolutionary leader until, all at once, change is beyond his ideological limits. Ultimately hopeful, the film contends that to effect real change, you can't swap one white man leading everyone in a circle for another: You have to blow up the train. With that in mind, it makes sense that this film might not appeal to the disproportionately white, male, and old Academy members! But that doesn't mean it's not beautiful, arresting, and worthy of attention. —Ariane Lange
RADIUS-TWC
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