Oscar longshots we’d like to see nominated in 2024

We’re just a day away from this year’s Academy Awards nominations announcement and a few names are dominating the race. We can predict with reasonable certainty multiple nominations for the likes of Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers Of The Flower Moon, and Poor Things. In fact, we already have. We also expect strong showings for The Holdovers and Anatomy Of A Fall. But the Academy always likes to throw in a few surprises to make things interesting. Last year’s Best Picture nominations for All Quiet On The Western Front and Women Talking were unexpected but not unwelcome. We wouldn’t have put money on Paul Mescal or Andrea Riseborough to receive nominations either, before they were recognized for their lead performances in Aftersun and To Leslie.

So who might sneak into the nominations this year? That’s a tough call, but we can make the case for some of our favorite longshot candidates. Even if their odds aren’t great, they’re still worth talking about in the leadup to the Oscars ceremony on March 10.

For more of The A.V. Club’s Oscar coverage, be sure to check out our predictions for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Song.

A lot of people slept on Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret when it came out last year, and they’re still doing it this awards season. The thoughtful adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved coming-of-age novel wasn’t as showy or ambitious as the films getting all the attention, but it’s a solid throwback to the kinds of mid-budget movies that don’t get made as much anymore, overflowing with charm and sentimentality. A big part of that is Rachel McAdams, who quietly gives one of the most emotional and well-rounded supporting performances of the year as a mom trying to hold it together as she guides her daughter through difficult changes, while also dealing with her own personal trials. She deserves to be part of the awards conversation, at the very least.

If you’ve watched American Fiction, the only surprising thing about seeing Sterling K. Brown’s name on a list of Oscar contenders for Best Supporting Actor should be the fact that he’s not a lock. But in a tight race that also includes A-listers like Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Ryan Gosling, and Robert De Niro as well as critically acclaimed favorites like Paul Mescal and Charles Melton, he may get lost in the crowd. In the film, Brown plays Cliff, the estranged brother of Jeffrey Wright’s character Monk. He’s kind of a beautiful disaster, damaged but able to see things more clearly than his closed-off brother. It’s an outstanding and fearless performance that sticks with you, and we hope with Oscar voters too.

When the Academy Award nominations come out on Tuesday it will be almost exactly a year since Sundance attendees became the first audiences to see Past Lives in a theater. Between Hollywood’s short memory and everything that’s happened in the past 12 months, it’s a testament to the quality of the film that we’re still talking about it now. And yet it was perhaps inevitable that this intimate story would get a little overwhelmed by the big historical biopics and blockbusters in contention for awards. That shouldn’t take anything away from Greta Lee’s performance in the film. She’s the center of gravity in the story, torn between the country and the friend she left behind as a child and the new life and love she’s established as an adult. Without the care and emotion she puts into every scene, the film wouldn’t work as well as it does.

Andrew Scott is one of the most fascinating actors working today, and it’s about time the world recognized him for it. In All Of Us Strangers, he gives a performance of open wounds and raw nerves that’s also incredibly charismatic. As his character processes layers of trauma in a dreamlike state, visiting the ghosts of his dead parents in his childhood home and dallying with his neighbor, he lets the audience see him at his most vulnerable. To secure his rightful place in the Best Actor category, though, Scott would have to overcome the groundswell currently carrying more populist picks like Paul Giamatti, Cillian Murphy, Jeffrey Wright, Colman Domingo, and Leonardo DiCaprio through this awards season. His work in the film certainly stacks up against the competition, but it’s a tough race this year.

It’s always gratifying to see a new director arrive on the scene with a strong, clear voice, knowing exactly what they want to say with it. Celine Song honed that voice as a writer before she became a director, and Past Lives proves she’s as talented with visual storytelling as she is with narrative elements. With a helpful assist from the central trio of perfectly cast actors, she weaves us into the world of the film through an understated command of atmosphere and tone. Is there room for a rookie director in a category that could also include veterans like Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, and Christopher Nolan? There should be.

In the glut of films about products and entrepreneurs in 2023, it was easy to overlook a film like BlackBerry. While Air was getting attention because of its big-name stars and connection to one of the most recognizable brands in the world, BlackBerry was just sitting there with a nearly flawless execution of the subgenre, and one of the tightest screenplays of the year. It’s hilarious, tragic, keenly observed, and illustrative of the current state of technology and how we got here. Based on a book with the unwieldy title of Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind The Extraordinary Rise And Spectacular Fall Of BlackBerry, it will have to go up against heavy hitters like Oppenheimer, Killers Of The Flower Moon, and, yes, Barbie in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. In a just world, BlackBerry would easily make the cut, but we have to live in this one, so we’re hopeful but not optimistic.

The Original Screenplay category isn’t quite as stacked as Adapted this year. Anatomy Of A Fall and The Holdovers have to be considered the frontrunners, but it’s still anyone’s guess as to what else will be deemed original enough to be voted in. This is the most likely chance for Past Lives to get some recognition. We also can’t count out May December or Maestro (it’s based on a true story, but not any specific existing work). And then there’s Asteroid City, probably the most ambitious and complex of all of them, yet it still seems to linger in the mid-tier on many predictions lists. Wes Anderson has been nominated three times in the writing category, for The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He’s never won, and we still don’t think it’s his year, but the post-modern, multilayered, and sophisticated structure of Asteroid City’s story within a story is certainly worthy of a nod.

Considering the likelier nominations of two Barbie songs (we don’t know which two, but two is the limit according to the rules), a couple of catchy John Carney tunes, new originals from The Color Purple, and perennial Oscar nominee Diane Warren, we may not see Jon Batiste make it from the shortlist to a nomination. That would be a shame. Batiste wrote “It Never Went Away” for American Symphony, a documentary that chronicles a year of incredible highs and lows in his life. All of the feelings he went through while making the film are captured in the song. Hey, Academy, if you want shots of celebrities in the audience fighting back tears, give this man a nomination and let him perform it at the ceremony.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron will receive a nomination for Best Animated Feature, and it might even win. Whether the film might show up anywhere else is less of a foregone conclusion. One person we’d like to see acknowledged is composer Joe Hisaishi. A frequent collaborator with Miyazaki-san, Hisaishi is responsible for many of the soaring musical themes you remember from the director’s most beloved animated films. His lyrical piano melodies combined with lush orchestrations are key to the nostalgic and dreamy tones Miyazaki sets out to achieve with his detailed visuals. Yet Hisaishi has never been nominated for an Oscar before. The Boy And The Heron is the latest, and possibly final, collaboration between the two masterful artists, so it could be the Academy’s last chance to recognize their work together.

This is typically a category where genre films like Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and The Creator tend to get the Oscar love they’re denied elsewhere by snooty Academy members. It’s a perfect place to honor a film like Godzilla Minus One, which has been receiving worldwide critical acclaim since its release last fall. The Godzilla franchise has not historically been known for delivering realistic visual effects—the cheesiness was always part of the charm—but that’s been changing in the last decade or so. Now filmmakers are using technology and advanced digital effects to make the King of the Monsters scarier, more impressive, and more believable than ever. And Godzilla Minus One did it on an estimated budget of around $10 million (no, really, there’s no zero missing there). If there was an award for doing the most with the least, this film would be the undisputed champion.

Whether it’s nominated for Best Animated Feature or not, we’ll be beating the drum for Nimona until our arms are sore. The very existence of this film is somewhat miraculous, and to see it receive industrywide respect would be the perfect storybook ending. With edgy, stylized 2D animation that combines fantasy and sci-fi elements and a story that leans into queer themes, it’s a good representation of where the medium is headed. There are a few titles with guaranteed spots in this category, like Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and The Boy And The Heron, and we can’t ever count out films from Disney and Pixar to notch a nomination just based on the legacy of those studios, but it would be really great to see this scrappy little animated-engine-that-could included among their ranks.