The 97th Academy Awards are just around the corner, but there’s still enough time for you to get acquainted with the films contending for a coveted golden statue.
The 16 Nominated Movies You Must Watch Before the Oscars
The 97th Academy Awards are just around the corner, but there’s still enough time for you to get acquainted with the films contending for a coveted golden statue.
The 97th Academy Awards are just around the corner, but there’s still enough time for you to get acquainted with the films contending for a coveted golden statue.
From the thrilling yet poignant Anora to the real and raw prison drama, Sing Sing, here are the 16 nominated movies you must see before Hollywood’s night of nights.
1. Anora
Directed by Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket), Anora’s ‘romantic comedy’ genre tag reveals itself in unexpected ways. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, and Editing, the film follows Ani, a sex worker who meets Ivan, the young and wealthy son of a Russian Oligarch. After a whirlwind romance, the party happy pair tie the knot, but Ivan’s parents are anything but happy about it. An incredible cast brings this story of love, lust, and betrayal to life, unveiling a profound reflection on intimacy and class structures along the way.
2. The Brutalist
Nominated for a staggering ten Academy Awards, The Brutalist is three-and-a-half-hour epic following a Holocaust survivor and architect as he attempts to rebuild his life in the United States post WWII. Adrien Brody stars as Hungarian immigrant László Tóth, whom we meet in 1947, lonely and separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy. He’s offered a fresh start by a commission from Harrison Lee van Buren (Guy Pearce), a wealthy industrialist with a large plot of land in rural Pennsylvania. Tackling themes of everything from the exploitative mirage of the American Dream to the trauma of displacement and the intensity of the ego, The Brutalist is as hard-hitting as its name suggests.
3. A Complete Unknown
How does it feel? To get eight nominations at the 97th Academy Awards, including best picture, director, actor, supporting actor, and best supporting actress? Timothée Chalamet brings 60s Bob Dylan to life in this much buzzed about biopic, adapted from Elijah Wald's book, Dylan Goes Electric! Documenting his meteoric rise to fame after entering the NY folk scene in the early 60s, Chalamet nails his portrayal of a fresh-faced Bobby D as he croons his way across stages and up the charts. And the character seems to have stuck, with Timmy C still rocking that scruffy scarf and hair combo all award season.
4. Conclave
Baptised the favourite to win Best Picture, this provocative, sometimes funny film starring Stanley Tucci has been blessed with no less than eight Oscar nominations. Based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name, Conclave lifts the lid on one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events: the selection of a new pope. But some candidates come with serious baggage that could be problematic for an already embattled Catholic church, delivering many twists throughout the selection process – but none bigger than the final bombshell.
5. Dune: Part Two
When he’s not Bob, he’s Paul. Timothée Chalamet strikes again in Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve’s highly acclaimed sequel to his 2021 film, Dune. Despite outrage from fantasy fans who believe the sci-fi epic deserved many more, the second act of the Dune trilogy received five Oscar nods, including Production Design, Cinematography, Sound, and Visual Effects. With a star-studded cast that also includes Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Javier Bardem, these nominations just go to show how incredible the production value is here.
6. Emilia Pérez
Leading with a groundbreaking 13 Oscar nominations is this surprise musical sweeping the award season. Emilia Pérez is a French-produced, Spanish-language musical thriller about a Mexican cartel boss who undergoes gender affirming surgery, and is up for just about every award, including Best Picture, International Picture, Lead Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña) and Directing (Jacques Audiard). Not only is its star, Sofía Gascón, the first out trans woman to be nominated for Best Actress, this genre hopping film also breaks the record for the most nominations ever earned by an international film.
7. Gladiator II
Despite its $210 million budget and star-studded cast including Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, and Pedro Pascal, this Gladiator sequel only managed to snag a single Oscar nomination – and for wardrobe, of all things. Still, it’s well worth the watch for the impassioned performances by the stellar cast listed above. 24 years ago, the OG Gladiator scored twelve noms and won five, including Best Picture. Some say don’t fix what isn’t broken – and with this classic so fondly revered by action aficionados, it was always a risk – but at the end of the day, 2 hours and 28 minutes of Paul Mescal doesn’t sound like that bad of an idea at all.
8. I'm Still Here
Not to be confused with Joaquin Phoenix’s 2010 parody film of the same name, I’m Still Here tells the gut-wrenching true story of a family torn apart amidst political violence. Directed by Walter Salles, the film picked up nominations for best international feature, best actress, and best picture, marking the first time a Brazilian film in which actors only speak Portuguese is nominated for Best Picture. The gripping and compelling Brazilian drama focuses on the real-life quest of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) to find justice for the government-related disappearance of her congressman husband, Rubens Paiva, during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s.
9. Nickel Boys
Nominated in the Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, Nickel Boys is an intimately shot historical drama based on Colson Whitehead’s book of the same name.
Set in the 1960s, the film explores the unbreakable bond between two teenagers (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson) who are forced to overcome shocking brutality and racial injustice at a heinous Florida reform school in the Jim Crow South. Adapted by documentarian filmmaker RaMell Ross – who was also nominated for an Oscar in 2018 for his documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening – Ross shot the film entirely in POV, giving it a raw and authentic cinematic look that feels less like a movie and more like real life.
10. Nosferatu
Horror gothic film Nosferatu was a longtime passion project for director Robert Eggers, who began developing the script in 2015. Today, his patience has well and truly paid off, with the huge success of the film starring Lily-Rose Depp reflected in its four Oscar nominations, including Cinematography, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Production Design. A remake of the 1922 silent German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which is based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, it’s a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
11. A Real Pain
Directed and written by Jesse Eisenberg (up for Best Screenplay), A Real Pain takes you on an emotionally moving journey with two misfit cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), as they take a trip across Poland to honour their Jewish grandmother. Part comedy, part drama, and full heart, the film unpacks some heavy baggage on one tumultuous train ride, with Culkin’s incredible performance as the deeply sensitive but emotionally immature Benji earning him a much-deserved Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actor.
12. September 5
A gripping tale of the Munich hostage crisis from the perspective of the ABC sports desk, September 5 raises thoughtful questions about the role media should play in human tragedies. In 1972, a TV sports crew unexpectedly found itself live screening the now infamous Olympics attack, with this film exploring the moral and logistical challenges that would go on to change news coverage forever. Starring Peter Sarsgaard as Roone Arledge, the president of ABC Sports, this captivating true story is nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
13. Sing Sing
Wow, just wow. A beautiful and heart aching portrait of rehabilitation, Sing Sing is based on the real-life program, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), with the entire cast (excluding Colman Domingo) made up of formerly incarcerated alumni of the program. It follows a group of inmates at New York’s maximum security prison, Sing Sing, as they work to stage a comedic historical time travel musical. Colman Domingo gives an Oscar-nominated performance as “Divine G” serving a sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, while the film is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song. Though somehow snubbed from the Best Picture category, this moving and memorable film is as deserving as any other.
14. The Substance
Once on the receiving end of one of the most diabolically grotesque tabloid smear campaigns based on her kneecaps (sadly, not a joke), Demi Moore knows what it’s like to age in Hollywood. In five-time Oscar nominated body horror thriller, The Substance, she plays Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood starlet and aerobics show host who is fired on her 50th birthday by a sexist and ageist TV executive aptly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid). She discovers a black-market youth serum called ‘the substance’ which is supposed to generate a more beautiful version of herself (whom she names Sue (played by Margaret Qualley), but when Elizabeth and Sue don’t use The Substance as directed, a monstrous transformation begins.
15. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
After Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s 2022 arrest for voicing his opinion on his government’s handling of affairs, they tried to stop the release of this film – making it all the more important it’s seen. When Rasoulof refused to pull The Seed of the Sacred Fig from the Cannes Film Festival, he was sentenced to eight years in prison, flogging, and the seizing of his property. He managed to escape Iran, now living in exile in Europe. Nominated for Best international feature, this slow burning political thriller centres around a tense family unit representing life under Iran’s authoritarian regime. A true example of life imitating art.
16. Wicked
Holding space for 10 Oscar noms including Best picture, Jon M. Chu's long-awaited film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked and the prequel to The Wizard of Oz has grossed over $700 million USD worldwide. With leading co-stars Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda) nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the film is set in the Land of Oz, before Dorothy Gale's arrival from Kansas. Following Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and her unlikely but profound friendship with Glinda, the film has already entered cult-classic status, with the second and final instalment of the Wicked story to be released in November of this year.
