So, the Academy Award nominations have been announced. It’s a fair field, well, save a few glaring omissions and surprising additions. Oscar Watch takes a look at the field and determines who should have made the cut and who made the cut that shocked us.
SNUB: COOPER
Not to go negative first, but we have to start with the elephant in the room and that is Bradley Cooper failing to get an Oscar nod for director for his stunning work on A Star is Born. He scored a Directors Guild nomination, which is almost a sure-fire way to hear your name called when Academy Award nominations are revealed. One can easily compare this omission to the one that saw Ben Affleck not get an Oscar nod for Best Director while his film, Argo, scored a slew of nominations. Will A Star is Born go on to win Best Picture like Argo did? Hardly. But still, it is an enormous omission.
Does anyone really think that Cooper’s directorial debut would have had the emotional resonance, critical and commercial success without his even hand and beautiful eye for capturing a tragic love story? Nope. Yet, in the end… the votes were not there.
SURPRISE: PAWEL
One person’s snub is another’s surprise and that would mean that Cooper’s space was given to Cold War director Pawel Pawlikowski. What’s fascinating about his honor is that means two of the five nominees for Best Director are for foreign films. Just to note: Roma and Alfonso Cuaron scored a nod for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film.
SNUB: BEALE STREET’S SILENCE
Oscar loved Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, but his If Beale Street Could Talk, well… not so much. Sure, Regina King got a (deserved) Best Supporting Actress nomination (and will likely win). But love for Jenkins latest flawless film was hard to find. We thought it would get one of those ninth or tenth spots, but yet again the Academy chose to go with eight.
SURPRISE: ROMA SUPPORTING
Roma supporting actress Marina De Tavira captured our hearts as the ignored wife in Cuaron’s instant classic and it could not be more exciting that she joined Yalitza Aparico’s Best Actress nod (which we predicted in our Oscar prediction piece) in the acting category for Roma. They both deserved it, but not many had De Tavira on the list of actresses who would be honored this morning.
SNUB: DON’T BE MY NEIGHBOR
Won’t You Be My Neighbor was a commercial, critical and cultural smash hit documentary that chronicled the unbelievably gifted life that was Fred Rogers and his effort to give children meaning on his iconic show. Guess the Academy felt success was enough of an honor for the documentary. I disagree. I put it on the top films of 2018 list, regardless of genre. This is one huge snub. HUGE!
SURPRISE: VAN GOGH GIVES US HOPE
Willem Dafoe scored a Best Acting nod for At Eternity’s Gate. The beloved thespian was on everyone’s list of deserving a nod, but when all was said and done, he didn’t make the cut on many of our lists. Leave it to the Academy to ignore the predictors and give the actor his due with his stunning turn as Vincent Van Gogh. Good for you, Willem.
SNUB: OH, THE HORROR!
This snub is a double dose of “let’s ignore the horror genre (again).” Both Toni Collette for Hereditary and Emily Blunt for A Quiet Place deserved some Academy attention for their stunning turns as mothers going through the most horrific of times with their respective families. Both gave two of the best performances of the year in any category and their absence from the nominations this morning is a travesty.
NOT SURPRISES: BLACK PANTHER AND SPIKE LEE
Although many are surprised that Black Panther scored a Best Picture nomination, I am not. Earlier last year, the Academy announced a Most Popular Movie category, then quickly retracted it. Why? Because if there was a year where a “popcorn” movie would score Best Picture, it was 2018 and that movie was Black Panther. Why degrade from the honor of a comic book movie scoring a Best Picture nod? Exactly! That’s why they took the category away. I knew that the Ryan Coogler movie would score the highest honor in Hollywood.
The other surprise that wasn’t was that Spike Lee scored his first Best Director nomination. Lee earned his nomination for BlacKkKlansman and this is in no way a career award nod for his body of work. His latest film is timely, and one of his best and most explosive. Now, if he could just win.
SNUB: NO LOVE FOR WASHINGTON
Despite getting nods from the Golden Globes and the all-important Screen Actors Guild, BlacKkKlansman star John David Washington will have to wait for another day to get his first Oscar nomination. This one is truly baffling for me. How does the movie get Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Director but its star is omitted? There are snubs and there’s Washington’s absence from this category.
SURPRISE: PAUL SCHRADER GETS A FIRST
A longtime collaborator of Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader finally got his first Oscar nomination for his work penning the screenplay for First Reformed. Now, some have said that that movie contained a snub—what with Ethan Hawke failing to get a Best Actor nod. But, I disagree. He was great, but not Oscar great. The film should still be thrilled with the Oscar love for Schrader, a nomination long overdue.
SNUB: OSCAR FAILS EIGHTH GRADE
Bo Burnham’s film debut was a stunner and somehow the comedian/writer/actor managed to capture exactly what it is like to be a 13-year-old girl in Eighth Grade. It is a mesmerizing picture that should give hope to every teenage girl in the world and give solace to all those who were once a 13-year-old girl… and boy for that matter. It is the most awkward of ages, and Burnham manages to give every single one of our past selves a giant hug with his feature film debut. He and star Elsie Fisher were a titanic talent tandem that Oscar chose to skip. Sad!