It is finally Oscar nomination morning, so we are officially 50% of the way through awards season (the Oscars aren’t until MARCH). The nominations this morning are largely as expected, featuring a lot of movies we’ve been talking about for months now. Everything Everywhere All At Once leads the pack with eleven nominations, including nominations for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Kuan, and Best Supporting Actress nominations for Jamie Lee Curtis AND Stephanie Hsu. 

 

The Banshees of Inisherin bagged nine nominations, with double Best Supporting Actor nominations for Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, and Top Gun: Maverick scored six nominations—more on Tom Cruise later—and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever got five. Along with Avatar: The Way of Water’s Best Picture nomination, this is not a year anyone can claim blockbuster bias.

But the surprise acting nominations are for late chargers Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and even more surprising, Andrea Riseborough for To Leslie. A lot of high profile actresses have been leading a grass roots campaign for Riseborough in recent weeks, including Cate Blanchett, who shouted out Riseborough during her Critics Choice win, and Kate Winslet calling Riseborough’s performance as a West Texas party girl “the greatest female performance I have seen on screen in my life”. Riseborough is a very good actor and she’s great in To Leslie, but…maybe watch more movies. I don’t think even think To Leslie is Riseborough’s best performance in 2022. She’s more interesting in Please Baby Please.

 

Also glad to see Judd Hirsch get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Fabelmans, he’s in the best scene in the film. And Bill Nighy scored his first nomination, for Living, which is a feel-good moment, for sure. But as expected, Best Actor is going to come down to Brendan Fraser and Austin Butler. There is a chance they split enough votes for Colin Farrell to slip through, but my money is on Fraser right now. Oscar night could be a double whammy of feel good, between Fraser and Ke Huy Quan, I’m not sure anyone has the ability to resist the comeback stories that dominated 2022 in film.

Overall, there is not a lot of surprise in these nominations, honestly. Riseborough is the biggest left-field shocker. And here at LG HQ, we’ve been calling Top Gun: Maverick for Best Picture since practically the day the film came out, so that is not surprising to us, at least. But I am stoked to see editor Eddie Hamilton got nominated, because assembling that film was a straight up nightmare, I'm sure, given the sheer volume of flight footage to sift through. Speaking of war movies, All Quiet on the Western Front scored ten nominations—I said! It would be a major player!—right behind EEAAO for most nominated film of the year. Given that it’s up against Top Gun: Maverick in several categories, either the Academy has a great sense of humor, or no sense of irony. You decide. 

See the full list of nominees here.

Attached - Andrea Riseborough at the the BAFTA tea party in LA.