My 2022 Oscar Nomination Picks

🎶 It's the most wonderful tiiiiiime of the yeaaaaaaarrrrrr! 🎶 

It's Oscar season, y'all. The nominations come out tomorrow and I have conflicted feelings about this year. 

I couldn't figure out what this conflicted feeling was at first, but watching Last Night in Soho (which isn't getting near the buzz it ought to) yesterday made some things fall into place. 

Most of the films getting all the buzz this year are about men. To be fair I haven't yet watched some big ones like Belfast, Licorice Pizza, C'Mon C'mon and Red Rocket, but 3/4 of those are 100% about penis owners, so I don't know that I'm missing much for my argument. 

It just seems like such a disappointment versus last year where there were a lot of women-focused stories. Even more exciting to me was having these women-focused stories MADE BY WOMEN. 

This year we have "The Lost Daughter" which was excellent and while I loved Olivia Coleman, I really thought Dakota Johnson was the shining star of this one. 

And CODA was was better than I expected, but the person getting all the buzz? The dood. Not the nuanced performance by the star of the movie, the daughter. Another woman director too, but she's way way down in the buzz. 

And don't even get me started on how Zola is being completely ignored in the buzz. PUH. 

Big puh. 

I dunno, I might change my mind after I see the whole field, but this year just seems like a ten-year setback. It just doesn't seem as packed full of variety as previous years. It seems stale, like all of this has happened before. 

'Drive My Car' will be in front of my eyes the INSTANT it is available to stream, though. I am so hype for this movie. Murakami is one of my favorite writers and this adaptation should not disappoint. 

Okay, so without further ado, here are my personal picks for the Oscar nominations, which are officially released tomorrow, February 8 at 8:18am. 

Best Picture

• Annette - Amazon Prime
• CODA -  Apple TV+
• Don't Look Up - Netflix
• The Eyes of Tammy Faye - HBOMax
• The Last Duel - HBOMax
• Last Night in Soho - Rental
• Mass - Rental
• Nightmare Alley - Hulu
• The Tragedy of Macbeth - Apple TV+
• Zola - Showtime

Best Director

• Guillermo Del Toro - Nightmare Alley
• Joel Coen - The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Janicza Bravo - Zola
• Edgar Wright - Last Night in Soho
• Maggie Gyllenhaal - The Lost Daughter - Netflix
• Sian Heder - CODA

Best Supporting Actress

• Nina Arianda - Being the Ricardos - Amazon Prime
• Ann Dowd - Mass
• Kathryn Hunter - The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Dakota Johnson - The Lost Daughter
• Riley Keough - Zola

Best Supporting Actor

• Coleman Domingo - Zola
• Ben Affleck - The Tender Bar - Amazon Prime
• Kodi Smit-McPhee - The Power of the Dog - Netflix
• Richard Jenkins - The Humans - Rental
• Ben Affleck - The Last Duel 

Look I can't believe I double-nom-ed Ben Affleck either. He had a year, okay! Also, I have a blog post planned about The Tender Bar, which is a book I've read upwards of 50 times and I did not hate the movie, which surprised me. But I still have thoughts. 

Best Actress

• Jessica Chastain - The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• Jodie Comer - The Last Duel
• Emilia Jones - CODA
• Frances McDormand - The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Taylour Paige - Zola

Best Actor

• Nicolas Cage - Pig - Hulu
• Bradley Cooper - Nightmare Alley
• Adam Driver - Annette
• Anthony Ramos - In the Heights - Netflix
• Denzel Washington - The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Cinematography

• Last Night in Soho
• The Power of the Dog
• Nightmare Alley
• The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Zola

Best Original Song

• "So May We Start" - Annette
• "Beyond the Shore" - CODA

Best Original Score

• Don't Look Up - Nicholas Britell
• The Tragedy of Macbeth - Carter Burwell
• Zola - Micah Levi

Best Original Screenplay

• Don't Look Up - Adam McKay, David Sirota
• Mass - Fran Kranz
• Last Night in Soho - Edgar Wright
• Together Together - Nikole Beckwith - Hulu

Best Adapted Screenplay

• The Last Duel - Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon
• The Lost Daughter - Maggie Gyllenhaal
• The Tender Bar - William Monahan
• The Tragedy of Macbeth - Joel Coen
• Zola - Janicza Bravo, Jeremy O. Harris

Yeah, there are more categories, but theres are the ones I really care about.

I get all het up about editing always, but don't really know anything about what's good or bad and I don't feel that passionately about it after finding out the scene that I was enamored with in Last Night in Soho was done with practical choreography and NOT editing magic. (The dancing scene... if you've seen it)

Obviously, there wasn't enough love for Zola or Last Night in Soho. And Annette is completely out of the picture it seems... but I can see it, cause it was a weird one. 

Also, through making these selects I realized that I enjoyed The Last Duel more than I initially thought. 

So I know I'm gonna be way off of the actual nominations, because there are still a lot of things I need to see. Hopefully some of my selects slip into some categories!