‘Sinners’ dominated, and other takeaways : NPR

Oscar nominations are out, kicking off seven weeks of conversations about what the Academy got right (and wrong) today and predictions about what voters might still get wrong during the awards on March 15.

Here’s what struck me when the lists were announced this morning.

Sinners dominated, followed by One Battle After Another

Before this year, no movie had ever gotten more than 14 Oscar nominations. Three films — All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land — shared the top spot. This year, Ryan Coogler’s brilliant vampire story Sinners bested that by two, landing 16 nominations. If it had been 15, you could argue that the new category honoring best casting (in which Sinners, yes, was nominated) was the difference. But with 16, that’s a straight-up record-breaker. Of course, nomination numbers do not always equal wins, let alone wins for a big category like best picture.

One Battle After Another, with 13 nominations, is also formidable on numbers alone. But Sinners was nominated in every category in which it was competing, which is a stunning accomplishment. Since each branch of the Academy votes on its own nominees (and everyone votes for best picture nominees), that suggests that the film has strong support across every single group of Oscars voters. And it’s fair to ask: If every element of a movie is top-notch, from its design to its performances to its script to its music, how does it not deserve to be best picture?

Non-English language features continued their strong showing

Four non-English language acting performances were nominated this year, three from Norway’s drama Sentimental Value (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård) and one from the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent (Wagner Moura). That’s a record. Both of those films were nominated for best picture as well, which continues the pattern from recent years of non-English-language films like Parasite, I’m Still Here, Emilia Pérez, Drive My Car and others earning nominations in the top category. Consider this: 10 such best picture nominations happened between 1938 and 2017; 12 have now happened between 2018 and 2026. (On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the highly-regarded Korean movie No Other Choice from filmmaker Park Chan-wook was shut out, disappointing its many supporters.)

F1 overperformed

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