Every­thing Every­where All At Once leads the pack of nom­i­na­tions for an unpre­dictable Oscars

2022 was an excep­tion­al­ly tricky year for Oscar prog­nos­ti­ca­tion, with a larg­er-than-usu­al num­ber of maybes and only a scant hand­ful of locks jock­ey­ing for the ten spots in the Best Pic­ture race. And even as this morning’s announce­ment of the nom­i­nees for the 95^th Acad­e­my Awards nar­rowed the field to a final line­up, the final out­comes remain anyone’s guess in an unpre­dictable mix of pop­ulist favorites and well-regard­ed prestige.

Not so sur­pris­ing was the dom­i­na­tion of Every­thing Every­where All At Once, which led the pack with a hefty eleven nom­i­na­tions, clinch­ing key place­ments in Best Pic­ture, Direc­tor, and Orig­i­nal Screen­play, along with a quar­tet of act­ing nom­i­na­tions for Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Cur­tis, and Ke Huy Quan. Close behind with nine nods apiece are The Ban­shees of Inish­erin, which also got indi­vid­ual cita­tions for its four main actors, and Netflix’s remake of All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, com­bin­ing an Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film nod with across-the-board appear­ances in the tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories. In a spread con­cen­trat­ed across few­er movies than seen in most cer­e­monies, Elvis took eight and The Fabel­mans sev­en, with TÁR and Top Gun: Mav­er­ick at six.

The act­ing races host a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tion of unex­pect­ed first-timers, includ­ing Andrea Rise­bor­ough (of overnight word-of-mouth sen­sa­tion To Leslie), Bren­dan Fras­er (a fron­trun­ner for his trans­for­ma­tive per­for­mance in The Whale, which also got Hong Chau into Sup­port­ing Actress), Paul Mescal (a heart­en­ing under­dog in from After­sun, the for­mal­ly exper­i­men­tal indie that could), Ana de Armas (her turn as Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe in Blonde pro­pelled by Netflix’s awards-team might), and Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (a dark horse for Apple’s sen­si­tive, stripped-down dra­ma Cause­way). But these picks must leave some out in the cold, the unfor­tu­nate out­come for The Fabel­mans’ Paul Dano, The Woman King​‘s Vio­la Davis, Till​‘s Danielle Dead­wyler, Causeway’s Jen­nifer Lawrence, and all of Women Talk­ing​‘s talk­ing women.

Those in search of some­thing to be out­raged about would do well to look to the Inter­na­tion­al Film cat­e­go­ry, sure to ruf­fle some feath­ers for the vot­ers’ deci­sion to leave Deci­sion to Leave on the short­list. Though these same peo­ple can take some solace in its ​“beloved Cannes import” slot being occu­pied instead by EO, as well as the exclu­sion of Ale­jan­dro Gonaza­lez Iñár­ritu​‘s polar­iz­ing (most­ly not in the good way) Bar­do.

But the real stumper is Best Pic­ture, in which the only cer­tain­ty is who won’t win; with only four nom­i­na­tions, Avatar: The Way of Water is far from the jug­ger­naut its pre­de­ces­sor was, and Women Talk­ing won’t get far with­out direct­ing or act­ing nods. TÁR is too cere­bral for a good chunk of the vot­ers, Top Gun: Mav­er­ick holds the Black Pan­ther ​“just hap­py to be here” pop­corn spot, and mere­ly mak­ing the cut means Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness has done enough to val­i­date Neon’s pro­mo spend­ing. All Qui­et on the West­ern Front’s hefty nom­i­na­tion total could make it a poten­tial spoil­er, but the real toss-up seems to be between the feel-bad crit­i­cal dar­lings (The Fabel­mans and The Ban­shees of Inish­erin) and the styl­is­ti­cal­ly dis­tin­guished block­busters (Elvis and Every­thing Every­where All At Once).

Now, a month and a half of cease­less spec­u­la­tion much like that in the para­graphs above awaits us, nar­ra­tives ris­ing and falling with each pass­ing week. Will Steven Spiel­berg be made an Oscar vil­lain? What shape will the anti-EEAAO smear cam­paign take? And who’s going to get the bot­tom of the nag­ging ques­tion of what Dear Leslie is?