Before we dig into the Oscar nominations, let’s first welcome the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—aka the Oscars themselves—to Letterboxd! They have their own HQ now, where you can find lists for all of this year’s nominees, so that you can easily “fade watched” and figure out what you have yet to see before the March 12 ceremony.

To celebrate their arrival we’ll be doing a series of fun things including several Oscars-related Showdowns over the next month. Right now it’s a showdown over the best of 94 years of best picture nominees, get amongst!

And, this week on Best in Show, Rotten Tomatoes awards editor Jacqueline Coley chats with us about the Oscars host who first sparked her passion for awards season, and provides an in-depth explainer on what happens next for the nominated films. You can listen to the full interview in our latest Best in Show episode, but I found this one of the most telling quotes in terms of what we saw land nominations this past week:

“The Oscars do not decide the best movie in the year,” Coley tells me and my co-host Brian Formo. “The Oscars just decide what a group of, still, statistically, mostly white, 65-year-old men think about this year’s films that can afford a multi-million-dollar award campaign and rise to the attention of then garnering a segment of the voting population to nominate them in a category. That is literally what it takes to actually get an Oscar nomination; that is literally millions of dollars—and most films cannot afford to do that.”

Bearing this crucial context in mind, we can now safely dive head-first into the Oscar snubs and surprises this year.

Oscar Nominations Everywhere All at Once

On January 24, Paul-Louis and Marnie Michaels from HBO’s Girls—I mean, Riz Ahmed and Alison Williams—announced several history-making moments, perhaps most significant being Michelle Yeoh’s best actress nomination for Everything Everywhere All at Once. This marks the first time ever that an openly Asian woman has been nominated in this category. I say “openly” because in 1936, Merle Oberon was nominated for her performance in The Dark Angel. Merle was mixed-Indian, but she sadly had to conceal her Eurasian heritage and lived her life as white-passing.

Even so, this is the first best lead actress nomination for an Asian woman in almost 90 years, and—what with Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Hong Chau of The Whale snagging nods for their supporting roles—the first time that Asian actors were nominated in multiple categories. This is both amazing and profoundly depressing. We have such a long way to go.

But the eleven nominations for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the most of any nominated film this year, is a step in the right direction! The Banshees of Inisherin and All Quiet on the Western Front follow with nine each, with Banshees dominating the acting and “Big Five” categories (Colin Farrell is officially an Oscar nominee!) while All Quiet spreads across technical. Elvis is next up with eight noms, trailed by The Fabelmans’ seven and a tie between Top Gun: Maverick and TÁR for six.

At first glance, TÁR’s inclusion may appear a bit baffling—weren’t the main takeaways of that film the narrative and performances rather than the cinematography?—but my co-host Gemma Gracewood brings up a good point about the sneaky brilliance of Hoffmeister’s lens. There’s that one-er shot at Juilliard, those dream sequences, the gorgeous use of space and the concert hall scenes that focus on who is glancing at whom with an entire orchestra of non-actors in play. Gemma is not the only one to notice, with Letterboxd members praising the Johnny English Strikes Again cinematographer’s TÁR work as “masterful”, “amazing”, “minimalist” and “meticulous”.

Another shake-up was the fact that this year sixteen of the twenty acting nominations were first time nominees. Aftersunners all over the world will be pleased at Paul Mescal’s inclusion—even his former driving instructor is shouting him out. It’s also gratifying to see Women Talking in the best picture and adapted screenplay line-ups, the latter of which Sarah Polley has a decent shot at winning. Good thing too, as no women were nominated in the directing category this year. However, our friend Jack’s Facts points out that there are films by women directors in many other categories: Aftersun, Turning Red, Causeway, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Fire of Love and Tell it Like a Woman, not to mention six of the shorts.

But perhaps the most perplexing surprise is Andrea Riseborough’s lead actress nomination for To Leslie, a small, independent drama logged by only about four thousand Letterboxd members at the time of announcements. The number has since risen to 5,500 at the time of writing, a spike absolutely connected to the Oscar nomination, after an earlier spike in Letterboxd watchlist-adds immediately following Cate Blanchett’s Critics’ Choice Awards acceptance speech, in which she shouted out Riseborough.

Blanchett’s shout was all part of a grassroots social media campaign for Riseborough from famous pals such as Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, Amy Adams, Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Paulson. It’s a pyrrhic victory: a win for indie film, but a loss for Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler, who were both considered likely contenders for their outstanding work on The Woman King and Till, respectively.

It must be noted that only two films by Black directors are featured anywhere in the nominations: Wakanda Forever and Tell It Like a Woman, where Taraji P. Henson is one of the six credited directors. The only Black-directed feature film to receive any nominations outside of original song was Wakanda Forever with five, including Angela Bassett’s supporting actress nom, the first for her since What’s Love Got to Do with It in 1993. Nope and The Woman King were completely shut out, even though both should’ve placed somewhere in the design and technical categories, at the very least.

Thank goodness for the BAFTAs then, where Gina Prince-Bythewood did receive a directing nomination for The Woman King.

British Excellence and Tender Men in the BAFTA Nominations

BAFTA are also on Letterboxd, and their nomination list is when we all realized that All Quiet was headed for a sweep—it led with fourteen nominations, followed by Banshees with ten. (The latter is the only film to be nominated in the best film and outstanding British film categories.) This year, the event will be hosted by the prolific and endlessly charming Richard E. Grant, whom you may recognize from Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Withnail & I and of course, Spice World.

Something the American Academy does not (yet) have that the BAFTAs do is a feature film debut category, illuminating a helpful spotlight on up and coming filmmakers. This year, the outstanding debut of a British writer, director or producer is an all-women line-up. It’s a sign that the industry may actually be allowing entry into their notorious boys’ club, but also serves to highlight just how hard it is for women to get their sophomore features made.

To cap off all this nomination chatter, jump on over to the Oscars HQ page and play around with their lists to create watchlists of everything you haven’t yet seen. If you are a Pro or Patron member, you can clone and sort the lists according to your own ranked preferences.

Finally, our official Letterboxd ballots have arrived for your Oscar watch party sweeps! Grab them as a PDF, jpeg or png file and share your picks with us on socials. Coming soon: the verdict from the Sundance Film Festival juries.