How to watch all of the 2024 Oscar nominees

Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on PBS.org

What The A.V. Club said: 

Despots count on the fact that the grim realities of war understandably grind most of us down. But 20 Days In Mariupol, a World Cinema Audience Award winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is a work that punches beyond the news cycle, a sobering piece of frontline docu-journalism that achieves its own special transcendence. Director Mstyslav Chernov’s film is a gripping historical record, yes, but it’s shot through with moments of extraordinary bravery that counterbalance its bleakness. It gives one hope even as it breaks your heart. Watch it in tandem with 2022’s Navalny for a fuller understanding of the stakes of the war in Ukraine. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score

How to watch: 

• Available only in theaters. Click here to see if it’s playing near you.

What The A.V. Club said:

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is a serious writer. He’s an academic, disdains “airport books” and best-selling colleagues, confronts his students, and is advised by his agent not to “insult anyone important.” In just a few scenes at the beginning of American Fiction, writer-director Cord Jefferson and actor Jeffrey Wright give the audience a complete understanding of their film’s protagonist. Cord with economical, pointed writing, and Wright with a deadpan face that is both hilarious and solemn. ... Jefferson, previously a writer for shows like Watchmen and The Good Place, pens dialogue that crackles and flows out easily in inherently funny ways. The characters he lampoons—publishing editors, Hollywood producers, writers, and media types—are both the butt of the joke and its instigators. When American Fiction functions as a satire of the commercialization of art and the public’s stereotypical perception of Black people, it’s firing on all cylinders. It’s sharp, it’s smart, and it hits most of its targets. Best of all, it reveals the inherent biases and cruel assumptions about “others” that most people carry with them at all times. [Murtada Elfadl]

Nominations: Best Original Song

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix 

What The A.V. Club said: 

A special music documentary that affectingly doubles as a story about the fuller dimensions and depths of love, Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony begins as a portrait of Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Jon Batiste, tackling the challenge of composing an original symphony that reimagines the classical traditions of the form. This effort is upended when Batiste’s life partner, author Suleika Jaouad, learns that her cancer has returned. A uniquely gifted hybrid filmmaker, Heineman has deep experience in conflict zones, but here captures roiling inner landscapes, delivering an incredibly intimate and lived-in film that lingers on questions of the human heart as much as art and the creative process. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing

How to watch: 

• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Neon, Prime Video, Redbox, Spectrum, Verizon, Vudu, Xfinity

What The A.V. Club said:

There’s a gruesome, bloody death in the elongated opening of director/co-writer Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall that leads to the murder case at the center of the film. However, the French filmmaker and her co-writer Arthur Harari start setting the scene long before the titular tumble, ratcheting up the tension within the first few minutes when an awkward interview at the home of author Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is interrupted by a steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” played at an abrasive volume. This brilliantly puts the audience on edge and that perfectly calibrated suspense is sustained throughout the picture, even in the courtroom setting that dominates the film—an impressive feat given that procedurals can be staid and aesthetically dull. [Courtney Howard]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song (x2), Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Max
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Cox, DirecTV, MyDISH, Google Play, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Prime Video, Redbox, ROW8, Vudu, Verizon, Xfinity, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said: 

By lovingly lampooning corporate missteps along with celebrating the successes, Barbie’s self-effacing humor, out-of-the-box smarts, and emotional potency strike the right tone. Greta Gerwig and her creative collaborators—including co-writer Noah Baumbach—not only give the formerly inanimate figure a sparkling personality and a pastel-shellacked pop-art playground, they also deliver genuinely meaningful sentiments surrounding the complexities of gender politics. It’s the year’s best tear-jerking, thought-provoking comedy. [Courtney Howard]

Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Disney+

What The A.V. Club said: 

Last year Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny, named for the leading Russian political opposition leader, presented an incredible tale of personal sacrifice in an autocratic state. Bobi Wine is no less engaging as a portrait of resilience and unfathomable courage. The top prize winner at the International Documentary Awards, Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s film follows the titular 41-year-old music star, activist, and opposition leader during Uganda’s 2021 presidential election. Beautifully and intuitively balancing the intimate and the dynamic, Bobi Wine is a well-crafted movie that sweeps you up in both the personal and broader arcs of its stories. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Animated Feature

How to watch: 

• Available only in theaters. Click here to see where it’s playing near you.

What The A.V. Club said:

Watching Hayao Miyazaki’s un-retirement animated feature The Boy And The Heron is a little like watching Bob Dylan play the hits live: you have some idea of what you’ll get, even if it’s all jumbled up into a wholly new combination and style. Released in Japan under the title of How Do You Live, after a 1937 novel it’s mostly not based on, The Boy And The Heron neither had nor needed trailers there, or much promotion save a single poster design. Miyazaki-savvy audiences came with a degree of confidence in what they would get, as can American aficionados of Studio Ghibli. [Luke Y. Thompson]

Nominations: Best Supporting Actress

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Max
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Cox, DirecTV, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, MyDISH, Prime Video, Verizon, Vudu, Xfinity

What The A.V. Club said:

About 70 minutes into The Color Purple, there’s a scene that doesn’t appear in many Hollywood studio musicals. A big number set on a gorgeous soundstage with a full brass band showing two characters singing about love to each other. The novelty here is that the characters are both Black women, falling in love and sealing their bond with a kiss in this fantasy number. Then the fantasy becomes a reality as the scene cuts into another of them waking up intertwined in bed together. However, for most of its running time, this adaptation of the Broadway musical, itself adapted from Alice Walker’s novel, does something far more conventional. Hewing close to material seen before and loved by generations, it’s a clear nostalgia play hoping to lure in audiences familiar with the IP. [Murtada Elfadl]

Nominations: Best Sound, Best Visual Effects

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Hulu or Disney+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Prime Video, Xfinity

What The A.V. Club said: 

With the recent proliferation of artificial intelligence software like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi epic The Creator arrives at a significant technological and cultural inflection point. And while current concerns about A.I. aren’t likely to lead to the global conflict depicted in Edwards’ thrilling film, which pits artificially enhanced intelligent robots against humanity, its reframing of often-dystopian depictions of machine intelligence reveals a more expansive and inclusive perspective. With few other comparable releases in play, The Creator is likely to stand as the most impressive and immersive sci-fi movie of the year. [Justin Lowe]

Nominations: Best Cinematography

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said: 

Somewhere along the line, vampires got sexy. But the original myth places its emphasis far more on the blood than the sucking. In early European folklore, vampires were bloated and decidedly gross. By the turn of the 20th century, starting in earnest with Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, they were being talked about in a political context as blood-sucking creatures moving from host to host, killing in order to maintain their own tenuous grasp on life. This is the kind of vampire that Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled Chile for 17 years, is—at least in Pablo Larraín’s new satire El Conde (in English, The Count). [Drew Gillis]

Nominations: Best Animated Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Disney+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

At its core, Elemental is a story about the challenges that come with being burdened with outsized expectations. Pixar’s latest follows Ember, a fiery young woman who finds herself veering away from the life her immigrant father dreamed up for her after she meets and falls for the affable and tear-prone Wade. Equal parts sprightly rom-com and moving second-generation tale, the story is set in Element City, where fire, earth, wind, and water beings live (mostly) in harmony. But the film only intermittently shines with the originality and emotion that characterize Pixar’s most beloved properties. [Manuel Betancourt]

Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Paramount+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Roku, Vudu, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said:

The tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and more broadly the fragility of life, are affectingly unpacked in this singular documentary, which traces eight years of romance and heartrending cognitive decline as Chilean journalist and television presenter Augusto Góngora is cared for by his wife Paulina Urrutia, both before and through COVID. While not short on direct emotionalism, director Maite Alberdi’s skillfully edited The Eternal Memory eschews cheap sentimentality, connecting eroded memory on an individual level to the broader issue of a country’s identity. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Original Song

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Hulu or Disney+

What The A.V. Club said:

Flamin’ Hot is about—you guessed it—the hugely popular Cheetos snacks that currently comes in a range of flavors, including Flamin’ Hot Limón, Flamin’ Hot Asteroids, and Flamin’ Hot Chipotle Ranch, which are all nestled within the Frito-Lay/PepsiCo corporate multiverse. But Flamin’ Hot is not exactly an IP cash grab. The basis of Flamin’ Hot is Richard Montañez’s A Boy, A Burrito And A Cookie: From Janitor To Executive, a too-good-to-be-true, rags-to-riches tale. [Martin Tsai]

Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Prime Video
• Available to own on DVD disc, exclusively from Kino Lorber
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

Winner of both the Cannes L’Oeil D’or and Gotham Award documentary prizes, director Kaouther Ben Hania’s film is a profoundly introspective work of inventive and layered storytelling, staged with a deceptive simplicity. A piece of cinematic therapy, Four Daughters reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman whose two eldest children have been lost to the radicalization of Islamic extremists. By casting professional actresses as the missing daughters, along with acclaimed Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabari as Olfa, the movie explores trauma and taps into a deep wellspring of the human spirit, while honoring the complexities of motherhood, loss, grief, and resilience. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Visual Effects

How to watch: 

• Available only in theaters. Click here to see where it’s playing near you.

What The A.V. Club said:

Godzilla Minus One, the latest in Toho Studio’s “Reiwa” era, returns Godzilla to his origins and provides a fresh take on a kaiju assaulting Tokyo. Amid a host of American “Monsterverse” films and streaming shows and the three anime Godzilla features preceding it, the quadragenarian King of the Monsters stands tall in his latest, a postwar melodrama punctuated by the series’ most thrilling monster attacks yet. [Matt Schimkowitz]

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Disney+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 is finally here, and it carries with it the weight not just of the six years it took to get it made, but of a certain sense of finality in a fictional universe that’s seriously lacking in endings lately. Longtime MCU viewers know by now that nothing in that world ever really ends. Characters die sometimes, villains are defeated, and storylines wrap up, but they’re all cogs in a larger machine, threads in an ever-growing tapestry designed to link to the next thing. Yet here’s Gunn and his cast, doing their best to create some kind of satisfying conclusion to a story they started nearly a decade ago, back when a lot of people thought a movie co-starring a talking raccoon and a sentient tree had no chance at the box office. [Matthew Jackson]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Peacock
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Prime Video

What The A.V. Club said:

Don’t let the wintry backdrop of Alexander Payne’s latest fool you, for The Holdovers is a warm honeyed cider of a film. That’s no mean feat considering the holiday-set comedy-drama is anchored by a crotchety instructor at a New England prep school with a habit of calling his students “rancid philistines” and who is tasked with looking over the students who have nowhere to go during the winter break of 1970. But beneath the prickly exterior of its central character (played by Sideways’ Paul Giamatti) is an unwaveringly gentle film about the very need for that gentleness—with others and, perhaps more importantly, with ourselves. [Manuel Betancourt]

Nominations: Best Original Score

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Disney+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

Forty-two years after he first donned his signature hat, whip, and khakis, Harrison Ford has finally returned to the big screen for yet another swan song as everyone’s favorite archeologist/adventurer in Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny. But while Dial may have all the right pieces on the board to make for another classic entry in the saga, Indy’s latest adventure is a lackluster attempt at reconciling the old with the new. Its lack of emotional stakes and perpetual struggle with pacing means Ford’s last ride as Dr. Jones is more of a whimper than a bang. [Lauren Coates]

Nominations: Best International Feature

How to watch: 

• Available only in theaters. Click here to see where it’s playing near you.

Logline:

Two Senegalese teenagers, Seydou and Moussa, travel from Dakar to Europe in the hope of becoming pop stars in Europe, finding danger, heartbreak, and unexpected joy along the way.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Apple TV+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs beginning January 25, 2024
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

In a pivotal scene late in Killers Of The Flower Moon, a wife asks her husband a straightforward yes or no question. His hesitancy and inability to give her the answer she so clearly desires and deserves is at the heart of this complex character study from master filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Killers Of The Flower Moon derives its story from a very dark chapter in early 20th-century American history, the murder of the Osage indigenous people by white men for their oil wealth. What makes it fascinating is the specific angle the film takes to tackle this vast story; the film is a portrait of an ineffectual man who still manages to inflict a lot of harm. Someone who, against his better judgment and despite knowing all the facts, chooses to do the wrong thing time and again. It’s an epic tale told through the lens of an intimate, elusive, and ultimately tragic love story. [Murtada Elfadl]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound, Best Cinematography

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is an inspired ode to the late, great Leonard Bernstein. It’s also a thorny deconstruction of the man-as-tortured-genius trope, replete with a compassionate focus on his put-upon wife and the bond the two shared for close to three decades. Ambitious in scope and featuring two powerhouse performances at its center, the Netflix release makes good on the promise shown in Cooper’s debut, A Star Is Born, another behind-the-scenes musical romance two-hander that explored the promise and price of ambition. [Manuel Betancourt]

Nominations: Best Original Screenplay

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

From its very first shot Todd Haynes’ May December announces itself as a wildly intoxicating, intentionally strident provocation. Close-up images of Monarch butterflies and their surrounding manicured flower gardens are scored by the theme from Joseph Losey’s 1971 film The Go-Between. The archly dramatic music lends a discomfiting feeling to the scenes of domesticity (a cookout for friends and family in Savannah, Georgia) that soon follow. Such a jarring juxtaposition, best encapsulated by said music leading into a character complaining about not having enough hot dogs, sets up a film that wants to suture the lurid and the mundane, creating in the process a masterful meditation on performance and predation. [Manuel Betancourt]

Nominations: Best Sound, Best Visual Effects

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Paramount+
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One delivers on expectations. It is, after all, the seventh film in this popular franchise that started way back in 1996. The audience knows exactly what they’re getting with one of these films. There will be lots of action with huge set pieces in many international locations. There will be someone in peril or perhaps the fate of the world will hang in the balance. There will be characters taking off latex masks to reveal a completely different character underneath. And of course, there will be Tom Cruise, as spy extraordinaire Ethan Hunt, running as fast as he can, jumping off cliffs and ultimately saving the day after surviving many close calls. [Murtada Elfadl]

Nominations: Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Apple TV+
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Vudu, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said:

Outside of military colleges, where his strategic acumen is still lauded, many present-day folks might only have a loose sense of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a bicorne hat and hand tucked in his jacket, as a man of short stature and shorter temper. Director Ridley Scott’s Napoleon sweeps aside this caricature, craftily sidestepping the pitfalls of many conventional biopics and delivering a highly involving work of psychological portraiture. It is a film that thrillingly covers the French military commander’s ascension—from Corsican outsider to exalted emperor and, eventually, defeated exile—but also uses his domestic life to expand the viewer’s aperture of understanding of him as a man, and in turn ask them to reflect upon some of the broader frailties of humankind. [Brent Simon]

Nominations: Best Animated Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

Set in a world that creatively combines medieval and futuristic aesthetics, Nimona tells the story of Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a former knight-in-training who is framed for murder and vilified throughout the kingdom. His bad reputation attracts the attention of a mischievous shapeshifter named Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), and she attaches herself to him as an aspiring sidekick. Together, they set out to unravel the mystery of who set him up, and in the process uncover even deeper and more dangerous secrets at the heart of the kingdom. The film enhances the graphic novel’s themes of acceptance and inclusion, especially in the representation of queer identity in its lead characters. [Cindy White]

Nominations: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

The beating heart of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s fiction feature debut, Nyad, lies in a Mary Oliver quote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” As well-worn and almost pat as Oliver’s poetry risks being in its simplicity and ubiquity, the query nags at Diana Nyad after stumbling on the famed poem that houses it. “The Summer Day” is an ode to the beauty of nature and the quiet power it can harness within us; in the words, Nyad finds a question she’s left unanswered for much too long. At 60, she’s not content to rest on her laurels: she wants adventure. She wants risk. She wants to attempt again the marathon swim from Cuba all the way to Key West, a feat she failed back when she was 28. That’s what Nyad (a weary yet steely Annette Bening) wants to do with her one wild and precious life—even if it costs her that very same. [ Manuel Betancourt]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Peacock
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Prime Video, Microsoft, Verizon, Vudu, Xfinity, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said: 

It’s fitting that Christopher Nolan uses the opening minutes of Oppenheimer to evoke the myth of Prometheus, the legendary titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity, only to suffer terrible consequences. Nolan’s film is, after all, adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer-winning biography American Prometheus. But there’s more to the allusion than a nod in the direction of the source material. For the filmmaker himself, the comparison to Prometheus is a warning of what we’re about to see, the announcement of a uniquely American tragedy that’s rooted in reality yet also mythic in scope and ambition. In other words, it’s Nolan calling his shot, swinging for the fences in ways that even he never has before. What follows is perhaps his most self-assured and passionate cinematic effort so far, a film so thunderous and heavy that it just might knock you through the back wall of the theater. [Matthew Jackson]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay

How to watch: 

• Stream it now on Paramount+ with Showtime
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via A24 app, Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft, Prime Video, YouTube, Vudu

What The A.V. Club said:

When two childhood friends reunite as adults in A24’s Past Lives, there’s a lingering shot of the two of them staring and smiling, as if drinking each other in. Are they seeing a ghost or meeting a new person? Or some melancholy thing in between? Writer-director Celine Song’s camera drifts between them, in no rush to characterize or simplify this moment. You don’t have to have emigrated from Korea to New York for such a scene to resonate; Song, in transposing her real-life immigrant experience onto the screen, has made a film (her first!) that speaks to anyone who’s ever left home, caught up with an old lover, or contemplated the versions of themselves they’ve left behind in time or space. [Jack Smart]

Nominations: Best International Feature

How to watch: 

• Available exclusively in theaters. Click here for ticket information.

What The A.V. Club said:

Only filmmaker Wim Wenders could’ve made the invisible, thankless job of servicing public toilets in Japan look romantic, refined, and respectable. Yet that’s exactly what he does in Perfect Days, a heartrending story centered on a janitor (Kôji Yakusho, who won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival) whose mundane life pivots once his niece (Arisa Nakano) visits. There’s a quiet comfort and profundity to this thematically rich, architecturally layered mood piece, which is further enhanced by Franz Lustig’s gorgeous, observational cinematography and unobtrusive soundtrack selections from Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones and Otis Redding. [Courtney Howard]

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

How to watch: 

• Available to watch on Hulu beginning March 7.

What The A.V. Club said:

Poor Things is such a rare combination of talented collaborators working in perfect concert that it’s hard to consider the film anything short of masterful. Witty, heartbreaking, horny, aesthetically rapturous, feminist, and humorous. [Yorgos] Lanthimos, [Tony] McNamara, and [Emma] Stone bring to life a career-defining character that forces us to laugh at the absurd machinations of a world that makes finding meaning in womanhood at all necessary.

It’s a story about constructed identity and questioned authority, asking who we are when cut free from the conditioning that tells us who we should be in “polite society.” As much as it’s a hilariously absurdist fantasia, it’s a meditation on how we define ourselves, how we create ourselves in a roiling mix of adolescent emotion and the forces that try to shape us into compliance. It’s a viscerally entertaining film that encourages further examination beyond the superficial beauty and endearing humor to find questions worth pondering. In cinema, as in life, what more can you ask for? [Leigh Monson]

Nominations: Best Animated Feature

How to watch: 

• Opening exclusively in theaters on May 31

Logline:

DOG lives in Manhattan and he’s tired of being alone. One day he decides to build himself a robot, a companion. Their friendship blossoms, until they become inseparable, to the rhythm of 80's NYC. One summer night, DOG, with great sadness, is forced to abandon ROBOT at the beach. Will they ever meet again?

Nominations: Best Actor

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

Bayard Rustin is not a household name in the same way that Martin Luther King, Jr. or John Lewis are in regards to the civil rights movement, though given the man’s contributions, he certainly should be. Credited with introducing Dr. King to the concept of non-violent resistance and for orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin was a force within a movement that was nevertheless wary of him for his past Communist ties and unapologetic homosexuality, which made him a pariah among Black leaders seeking respectability for their movement. It’s no wonder, then, that writers Julian Breece (When They See Us) and Dustin Lance Black (Milk), and director George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), would wish to bring a story like Rustin to life. But as much as they succeed, there’s also a lingering sense that their examination better serves the man’s accomplishments than the man himself. [Leigh Monson]

Nominations: Best International Feature, Best Makeup and Hairstyling

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix

What The A.V. Club said:

It’s shocking that the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 has inspired such lackluster adaptations of the harrowing affair, in which a rugby team and their friends and family are stranded in the snow-covered Andes mountains for 71 days. Survive!, a low-budget Mexican production from 1976, played up the exploitative schlock value which was popular in disaster flicks of the era. 1993’s formidable yet faulty Alive, from director Frank Marshall, used an American-heartthrob-cast and leaned heavily into melodrama and sensationalism. The latest take on the tragedy, Spanish director/co-writer J.A. Bayona’s Society Of The Snow, seeks to restore honor to those brave men and women who battled insurmountable odds. [Courtney Howard]

Nominations: Best Animated Feature

How to watch: 

• Stream it on Netflix
• Available to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD discs
• Rent or buy on demand via Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft, Prime Video, Vudu, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said:

For a long while, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, strikes the same uncanny balance between eye-popping innovation and recognizable humanity [as its predecessor Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse]. Following a prologue set in Gwen’s dimension in which circumstances force her to reckon with revealing her Spider-Woman alter ego to her cop father (Shea Whigham), we see that Miles is similarly struggling with compartmentalizing his superheroics alongside his ground-level relationships and obligations. Much like how the first Spider-Verse mirrored Peter’s origin story, this second outing initially parallels Sam Raimi’s operatic, moving Spider-Man 2 in its focus on the difficulty of shouldering the burden and making the sacrifices inherent in being Spider-Man—essentially learning what “with great power comes great responsibility” truly means. [Brett Buckalew]

Nominations: Best International Feature

How to watch: 

• Available only in theaters. Click here to see if it’s playing near you.

Logline:

Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a dedicated, idealistic young teacher in her first job at a German middle school. Her relaxed rapport with her seventh-grade students is put under stress when a series of thefts occur at the school, and a staff investigation leads to accusations and mistrust among outraged parents, opinionated colleagues, and angry students. Caught in the middle of these complex dynamics, Carla tries to mediate—but the more she tries to do everything right, the more desperate her position becomes.

Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

How to watch:

• Available on Netflix beginning March 8

Logline: In To Kill a Tiger, Ranjit, a farmer in Jharkhand, India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the survivor of sexual assault. In India, where a rape is reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30 percent, Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature, Best Sound

How to watch: 

• Coming to Max later this year, but no date has been announced yet
• Rent or buy on demand via A24, Apple TV, Dish, Google Play, Kaleidescape, Microsoft, Prime Video, Verizon, Vudu, Xfinity, YouTube

What The A.V. Club said:

The opening shot of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest is a pitch-black frame into which the film’s title slowly dissipates. Depriving its audience of a visual anchor, the first few minutes of the film force you instead to listen closely to Mica Levi’s chilling score and Johnnie Burn’s eerie sound design. It asks you to sink into a world where your senses will be enveloped with a fog of a tale that’s equal parts banal and insidious. Glazer puts out a call to pay close attention, to focus on details one may otherwise miss. It’s a powerful gambit that rightly sets the tone for one of 2023’s greatest achievements, a film discomfiting in its approach to the Holocaust, and a horrifyingly mundane portrait of a man, a household, and a country. [Manuel Betancourt]