Oscar Nominations: 10 

The second most nominated film of the year, after The Power of the Dog, which scored 12 nominations.

Picture

Adapted screenplay

Score

Costume design

Sound

Film editing

Makeup and hairstyling

Cinematography

Production design

Visual effects

Where to Stream: HBO Max, beginning March 10

Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation has he majestic vastness of an epic, a grand-scale sci-fi with ecological overtones, assisted by clan wars, brute armies,  autocrat villain, and a Messiah-like hero.

Timothee Chalamet, arguably the most talented and versatile actor of his generation, again proves that he can carry a whole movie on his (slim) figure.

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Oscar Nominations: Picture, actor (Will Smith), supporting actress (Aunjanue Ellis), original screenplay, film editing and original song

Where to Stream: HBO Max beginning April 7. Available for purchase on Apple and Amazon.

Variety’s Review: “Featuring a grizzled and nearly unrecognizable Will Smith in the title role, ‘Monsters and Men’ director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s ‘King Richard’ is a good old-fashioned Horatio Alger story for our time, detailing how a Black kid who grew up ‘running from the Klan’ in Shreveport, La., set his mind to a goal and made it happen.”

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Oscar Nominations: Picture, director and original screenplay

Where to Stream: Not available yet. Playing in theaters.

Variety’s Review: “A pair of terrific first-time performances — from Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman — propel the Paul Thomas Anderson’s most endearing movie yet, a throwback to early-’70s Southern California… Ostensibly Anderson’s own ‘Once Upon a Time in North Hollywood (or a few blocks west thereof)’ — ‘Licorice Pizza’ delivers a piping-hot, jumbo slice-of-life look at how it felt to grow up on the fringes of the film industry circa 1973, as seen through the eyes of an ambitious former child actor plotting how to follow up his early screen career.”

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Oscar Nominations: Picture, cinematography, costume design and production design

Where to Stream: HBO Max and Hulu

Variety’s Review: “A perfect match of material to auteur, William Lindsay Gresham’s pulpy 1946 novel and the shockingly dark studio picture it inspired give the helmer, hot off his Oscar win for ‘The Shape of Water,’ a chance to go full film noir, resulting in a gorgeous, fantastically sinister moral fable about the cruel predictability of human nature and the way entire systems are engineered to exploit it — from carnies and con men to shrinks and Sunday preachers.”

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Oscar Nominations: Picture, director, actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), supporting actor (Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee), supporting actress (Kirsten Dunst), adapted screenplay, cinematography, film editing, original score, production design and sound

Where to Stream: Netflix

Variety’s Review: “Campion’s eighth feature in 30 years, is a frontier Western made with a stately and austere poker-faced modernist classicism, and roiling undercurrents, that sometimes bring the earlier film to mind. It’s a movie in which Campion, who shot it in her native New Zealand, works with a full-scale, at times painterly precision and control. It’s also a socially conscious psychodrama that builds, over time, to a full boil.”

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Oscar Nominations: Picture, director, supporting actress (Ariana DeBose), cinematography, costume design, production design and sound

Where to Stream: Disney Plus beginning March 2

Variety’s Review: “Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ has a brash effervescence. You can feel the joy he got out of making it, and the kick is infectious. Directing his first musical, Spielberg moves into the big roomy space of a Broadway-meets-Hollywood classic, rearranges the furniture (the film’s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, has spiced up the dialogue and tossed out the most cringe-worthy knickknacks), and gives it all a fresh coat of desaturated, bombed-out-city-block, gritty-as-reality paint. He makes it his own.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actor (Javier Bardem), actress (Nicole Kidman) and supporting actor (J.K. Simmons)

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Variety’s Review: “It packs several famous events into one high-wire week, but that’s all part of its Sorkinese punch… ‘Being the Ricardos,’ Aaron Sorkin’s movie about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (played to wry perfection by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem), is very much a heady helping of Sorkinese — and a beautiful illustration of what can be intoxicating about it.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actor (Andrew Garfield) and film editing

Where to Stream: Netflix

Variety’s Review: “What’s refreshing about debut director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s approach is that it feels relatively egoless. His style is playful and energetic, often intercutting between multiple threads within a given song or scene, but it doesn’t feel as if Miranda is calling attention to himself so much as trying to open up the show — to give it the wings Jonathan Larson sings about in the final number.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actor (Denzel Washington), cinematography and production design

Where to Stream: Apple TV Plus

Variety’s Review: “It’s no surprise that in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that is Joel Coen’s first solo outing as a filmmaker, Coen very much approaches the material as the visual obsessive he is. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc — it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare. The surprise, at least to me (and I say this as a true believer in the Coen brothers’ aesthetic, even though I only like about half their films), is how sensual and ingenious and expressive and enveloping the film’s images are.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actress (Jessica Chastain) and makeup and hairstyling

Where to Stream: HBO Max

Variety’s Review: “Why watch ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ instead of the original documentary, which is superb? Because this version, in heightening our connection to the characters, sheds new light on who they were and why they did what they did. It’s Tammy Faye who comes to occupy the spiritual center of the movie, and Chastain, tapping a bombs-away flamboyance she has never before approached, makes her a mesmerizing diva-victim who keeps evolving.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actress (Olivia Colman), supporting actress (Jessie Buckley) and adapted screenplay

Where to Stream: Netflix

Variety’s Review: “In this remarkable directorial debut, Maggie Gyllenhaal challenges conventional thinking about motherhood, delivering her most subversive ideas as subtext…Gyllenhaal assumes an unfussy, practically invisible non-style that conveys the essential while privileging the performances. Working with French DP Hélène Louvart, she trusts in her ensemble, giving them rich reams of subtext to play, rather than putting words in their mouths.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actress (Penelope Cruz) and score

Where to Stream: Not available to stream yet

Variety’s Review: “It’s a movie of high comedy— a giddy and ironic Pedro Almodóvarian stew of maternal diva melodrama. But ‘Parallel Mothers,’ while it keeps us hooked on what’s happening with a showman’s finesse, is not a comedy. It’s not an over-the-top Pedro party. It’s an unabashedly serious movie, one so straightforwardly sculpted and emotionally down-to-earth that there’s no distance between the audience and what’s happening onscreen.”

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Oscar Nominations: Actress (Kristen Stewart)

Where to Stream: Hulu

Variety’s Review: “Kristen Stewart, transforming herself, does a tremulously acerbic and precise recreation of the Di personality (the halting elegance, the shyness jostling with the coquettishness of fame). But that’s just the ground floor of her performance. She takes the audience on a flesh-and-blood journey in a movie that’s at once a diary, a soap opera, a horror film, and a rigorously speculative drawing-room biopic.”

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Oscar Nominations: International feature and original screenplay

Where to Stream: Not currently streaming, but will be available on Hulu at a later date

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Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, score and song

Where to Stream: Disney Plus

Variety’s Review: “‘Encanto’ is a lively, lovely, lushly enveloping digitally animated musical fairy tale. It’s the 60th animated feature produced by the Walt Disney company, and to borrow a phrase from the old Disney TV series, it’s set in a wonderful world of color — a rapturously imagined, rainbow-gorgeous village tucked inside the misty green mountains of Colombia, where the members of the Madrigal family lead a magical existence.”

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Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, documentary and international feature

Where to Stream: Hulu

Variety’s Review: “Animation proves an ideal medium by which to both mask and reveal the identity of a gay man who escaped Afghanistan and reinvented himself… ‘Flee’ is an original artistic exploration of the way that trauma impacts one’s sense of self. Its shifting and somewhat unreliable form intuitively reflects how its subject has hidden the truth of his past from others over the years, including his partner, Kasper, and his longtime friend, the director.”

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Oscar Nominations: Animated feature

Where to Stream: Disney Plus

Variety’s Review: “‘Luca,’ set in Italy in the ’50s, is modest to a fault, and at times it feels generic enough to be an animated feature from almost any studio. But it’s a visually beguiling small-town nostalgia trip, as well as a perfectly pleasant fish-out-of-water fable — literally, since it’s about a boy sea monster who longs to go ashore.”

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Oscar Nominations: Animated feature

Where to Stream: Netflix

Variety’s Review: “Director Michael Rianda and writing partner Jeff Rowe are children of that pre-iPhone era, and together they’ve hatched a subversive delight that should appeal to Gen Y adults and tech-savvy kiddos alike. That’s because the tongue-in-cheek, ‘Terminator’-esque machine uprising isn’t really the hook here. Rianda and Rowe (also credited as co-director) based the characters on their own families, so the oh-so-relatable Mitchells are simultaneously universal and ultra-specific, but definitely not just some generic sitcom clan besieged by robots.”

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Oscar Nominations: Animated feature

Where to Stream: Disney Plus

Variety’s Review: “The first major animated feature for a post-Trump era, ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ is as leftie a toon as Disney has ever made, though its core message of unity and come-togetherness should hardly seem political at all. Notably, it’s a movie with no villain, no love interest, no musical numbers and no talking animals — unless you count Awkwafina’s loquacious (and potentially world-saving) water dragon Sisu. Progressive as this formula-bending family movie may be, ‘Raya’ still feels every bit a Disney offering — one whose proactive princess ought to entertain and inspire kids to do more than passively await true love’s kiss.”

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Oscar Nominations: Costume and makeup and hairstyling

Where to Stream: Disney Plus

Variety’s Review: “What ‘Cruella’ is not — to the immense relief of many, I’m sure — is another ‘Maleficent.’ (Although who could top the casting of Angelina Jolie as Sleeping Beauty’s misunderstood nemesis?) Whereas that live-action Disney spinoff was an obnoxious eyesore that risked tarnishing the appeal of the original, director Craig Gillespie’s ‘Cruella’ proves ingeniously creative in its reimagining of the underlying IP.”

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Oscar Nominations: Costumed design

Where to Stream: Not available to stream. Opening in theaters Feb. 25

Variety’s Review: “On those occasions when ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ is performed in English, it’s often stripped of its verse or played for laughter and farce, whereas Joe Wright’s splendid new adaptation presents ‘Cyrano’ as 21st-century MGM musical. By enlisting Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National to compose the songs — lovely, wistful pop ballads for which Matt Berninger and Carin Besser supplied the lyrics — ‘Cyrano’ restores the show’s sense of poetry. At the same time, Wright, back on form and evidently reinvigorated by the pandemic, once again displays the kind of radical creativity that made early-career stunners ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Atonement’ so electrifying in their time.”

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Oscar Nominations: Song

Where to Stream: Hulu

Variety’s Review: “‘Four Good Days’ is based on a true story, and the way it plays out is both watchable and plausible. Yet the movie doesn’t shake us to our souls. When it comes to serious addiction, we’ve grown, as a society, far more sophisticated about the patterns of craving, narcissism, and deception that define the addict’s life.”

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Oscar Nominations: Song, sound and visual effects

Where to Stream: Rent on Amazon or Apple

Variety’s Review: “‘No Time to Die” is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neoclassical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.”

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Oscar Nominations: Documentary

Where to Stream: Paramount Plus (or Prime Video with Paramount Plus)

Variety’s Review: “‘Ascension’ is Jessica Kingdon’s observational portrait of the economic growth of China, as well as the class divides that this expansion has exposed. The film debuted at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, where ‘Ascension’ debuted to rave reviews and awards for both best documentary and best new documentary filmmaker.

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Oscar Nominations: Documentary

Where to Stream: Showtime Anytime (or Hulu with Showtime)

Variety’s Review: “‘Attica,’ Stanley Nelson’s stirring, scalding documentary about the 1971 Attica prison uprising, is an essential film that can now stand as a definitive vision of that epochal event. Drawing from a staggering array of footage that has never been seen before, Nelson puts the event together, moment by moment, day by day, with a clarifying view of its place in history and an empathy that extends to every person onscreen: prisoners and guards, officials and relatives, politicians and observers, the reporters who came and recorded it all. We see every point-of-view; the presentation isn’t so much ‘incendiary’ as novelistic.”

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Oscar Nominations: Documentary

Where to Stream: Hulu

Variety’s Review: “Buried for 50 years, the spectacular filmed footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival reveals a musical moment — and a Black revolution — in full flower…It’s a music documentary like no other, because while it’s a joyful, cataclysmic, and soulfully seductive concert movie, what it’s really about is a key turning point in Black life in America.”

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Oscar Nominations: Documentary

Where to Stream: Not streaming yet. Available to view on PBS beginning March 28

Variety’s Review: “In some months’ time, cub reporter Shyamkali will solo pilot a story that brings an accused rapist to justice. But right now she is sitting in the shade of a tree with her boss Meera, who has spiked a story of hers because she didn’t like ‘the angle.’ The steep learning curve she will nimbly ascend is one of three tales of personal and professional persistence that directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh tell in their accessible, engaging debut doc ‘Writing With Fire,’ through which they’ll also tell the story of the Khabar Lahariya newspaper, and of India, in a time of seismic change. Thomas and Ghosh have found their angle, and it’s a powerful one.”

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Oscar Nominations: International feature

Where to Stream: Netflix

Variety’s Review: “As you watch ‘The Hand of God,’ it’s easy to vibrate sympathetically with Fabietto, because he’s got a sly, pensive curiosity that you can tell will take him places. For most of the movie, however, the places he goes tend to involve his extended family, as well as the occasional scoundrel he hooks up with in town. And while it’s easy to feel that Sorrentino is pulling what you see directly out of his diary (the action is loose, quirky, anecdotal), you wish that he’d portrayed the other characters as he does his surrogate hero.”

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Oscar Nominations: Documentary

Where to Stream: Rent on Amazon or Apple

Variety’s Review: “The trusty old tale of a city slicker teacher being posted to a school in the sticks is given a fresh coat of paint in the delightful Bhutanese comic drama ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.’ Gloriously filmed on staggeringly beautiful locations around the most remote school on Earth and wonderfully performed by a cast comprised almost exclusively of first-time actors, this big-hearted crowd-pleaser marks a bright debut for writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji.”

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Oscar Nominations: Makeup and hairstyling

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Variety’s Review: “While fans may appreciate that director Craig Brewer (‘Dolemite Is My Name’) hasn’t messed with the formula, the movie feels downright lazy on the heels of, say, the take-no-prisoners satire of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ which Amazon released in 2020.”

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Oscar Nominations: Makeup and hairstyling

Where to Stream: Buy on Amazon or Apple

Variety’s Review: “‘House of Gucci’ has a transfixing backstabbing allure. It may be a drama about a crazy rich Euro chic Old World fashion dynasty, with a cast dominated by American actors scheming and emoting in gaudy Italian accents, but that doesn’t mean it’s some operatic piece of high camp.”

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Oscar Nominations: Visual effects

Where to Stream: Disney Plus beginning Feb. 23

Variety’s Review: “In ‘Free Guy’ — an inventive, much-better-than-you’d-expect 2020 summer tentpole that’s finally being released post-pandemic — Ryan Reynolds plays a video game character who doesn’t realize that his world isn’t real.”

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Oscar Nominations: Visual effects

Where to Stream: Disney Plus

Variety’s Review: “The most obscure Marvel Cinematic Universe character to get his own stand-alone movie to date, the comic book mega-company’s ‘Master of Kung Fu’ may not be a household name (not yet, at least), but you wouldn’t know that from ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ a flashy, Asian-led visual effects extravaganza that gives the second-tier hero the same over-the-top treatment that big-timers like Hulk and Thor typically get.”