Oscar shortlists are like exit polls released on Election Day before balloting has ended: they’re the best information yet available about how actual voters are feeling, but they don’t necessarily tell you the whole story.
In Tuesday’s announcement of this year’s 10 shortlists — which were, as always, chosen by different branches of the Academy, not the full membership — we saw a terrific show of strength from Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, with a field-leading six mentions; and very solid showings from Universal’s Wicked, with four; and Fox’s Alien: Romulus, Apple’s Blitz, Warners’ Dune: Part Two, Paramount’s Gladiator II and Universal’s The Wild Robot, with three each.
But the fact that, say, Neon’s Anora, Searchlight’s A Real Pain and Amazon/MGM’s Nickel Boys showed up on none of the shortlists is actually not an indication that they are failing to resonate with the Academy. After all, given the specific nature of those films, where would they have shown up? They feature no original songs, and their makeup/hairstyling, score, sound and visual effects are not really central to their appeal in the way that writing, directing and acting are.
The most interesting cases, to me, are films for which some of those areas of work are central to their appeal, but that had a mixed or poor showing.
Split verdicts came in for Focus’ Conclave (score but not sound or visual effects) and Nosferatu (shortlisted for makeup/hairstyling and score, but sound or visual effects), Mubi’s The Substance (makeup/hairstyling, but not visual effects) and Searchlight’s A Complete Unknown (sound, but not makeup/hairstyling or visual effects).
And then there was the outright rejection of sequels to two films that had fared much better for their prior installments: Warners’ Joker: Folie à Deux was shortlisted only for sound, whereas 2019’s Joker was shortlisted for makeup/hairstyling and score, was ultimately nominated for both and won for score; and Warners’ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga wasn’t shortlisted for anything, whereas 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was shortlisted and nominated for its visual effects and won for its sound and makeup/hairstyling. This seems rather unfair to me, given that the crafts work on the 2024 films, which is what voters were supposed to be evaluating, was no less impressive than on the earlier films. C’est la vie.
In terms of this year’s highest-profile shortlists?
The doc feature list of 15 includes all of the titles that have been widely regarded as top-tier contenders — Nat Geo’s Sugarcane, Kino Lorber’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Netflix’s Daughters and MTV’s Black Box Diaries — save for Warners’ Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. True, the doc branch has long had a weird aversion to docs about celebrities, but this year it did shortlist Netflix’s Will & Harper and the U.S.-distributor-less Eno.
This could have major implications for the rest of the doc feature race. After the branch winnows down the list to five nominees, the entire Academy gets to pick a winner, and they tend to watch and reward the most populist choice among them. With Super/Man out of the mix, all eyes will be on whether or not Will & Harper makes the list of five; if it does, it’s your likely winner.
In any event, Netflix claimed one-fifth of the spots on the doc shortlist, with Daughters and W&H joined by The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. One-third of the spots went to self-distributed social issue docs — Hollywoodgate, Porcelain War, Union and two about Israel, No Other Land, which has swept the critics groups’ awards, and The Bibi Files. Two shortlisted docs showed up on other shortlists too (Mubi’s Dahomey was also the Senegalese entry for best international feature and is a finalist in that category, while the W&H tune “Harper and Will Go West” is a finalist for best original song). And two films that failed to make the doc shortlist did make other shortlists (Disney’s Elton John: Never Too Late and Focus’ Piece by Piece both yielded original song finalists).
All of the usual suspects for international feature made the final 15, save for Netflix’s In Her Place, the Chilean entry from Maite Alberdi, whose 2020 film The Mole Agent was shortlisted in the category (and nominated for best doc feature) and has now been adapted into Netflix’s Ted Danson series A Man on the Inside.
Some may wonder why Sideshow/Janus’ Indian film All We Imagine as Light — which was chosen as 2024’s best non-English-language film by the New York and Los Angeles film critics and the Gotham Awards, and which has been nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards — isn’t on the shortlist. You can, yet again, blame India’s selection committee, which instead submitted the U.S.-distributor-less Lost Ladies, which did not make the shortlist.
The music branch had no major surprises among its 15 advancing songs, save for the exclusion of Miley Cyrus’ Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominated tune “Beautiful That Way” from Roadside’s The Last Showgirl. Emilia Pérez, as was expected, was the only film to nab multiple slots, specifically for “El Mal” and “Mi Camino.” The branch did, however, catch many off-guard by leaving off its list of 20 scores two past Oscar winners and perennial favorites, Jon Batiste, who composed the score for Sony’s Saturday Night in a most unusual and impressive way; and Alexandre Desplat, who was behind the scores for both Netflix’s The Piano Lesson and Amazon/MGM’s Unstoppable.
Other notable hits and misses? Both 2024 films in which Sebastian Stan undergoes a massive physical transition — A24’s A Different Man and Briarcliff/Rich Spirit’s The Apprentice — made the makeup/hairstyling shortlist of 10, as did the distrubutor-less Waltzing with Brando, in which Billy Zane is turned into Marlon Brando, beating out many higher-profile titles. Netflix’s Maria didn’t make the sound shortlist of 10, even though the folks on that team made her sound like Maria Callas. And Well Go USA’s insanely-titled Thai film How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies, is among the 15 subtitled pics that are moving on in the race for best international feature.
