Nominations for the 2024 Academy Awards have been announced, and with them we now know which 10 films are competing for Hollywood’s vote in the race to the night’s top honor, Best Picture.
And the nominees are: “American Fiction,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Barbie,” “The Holdovers,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro,” “Oppenheimer,” “Past Lives,” “Poor Things” and “The Zone of Interest.”
Of course, the Academy Awards is first and foremost a way to promote the movie industry, and even in the age of streaming the fabled “Oscars bounce” is still a thing. Which means these 10 films are also now competing for the votes of moviegoers looking to get caught up before the Oscars ceremony, which by the way airs on March 10.
Maybe you’re one of those people, but you don’t know where to begin? We got you covered. Read on for easy access to TheWrap’s reviews of every single Oscars 2024 Best Picture nominees.
Nominee: “American Fiction”
Director: Cord Jefferson
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown
Based on the 2001 novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, “American Fiction” stars Wright as a professor and author whose writing career has stalled. As the official description goes, “fed up with the establishment profiting from ‘Black’ entertainment,” he “uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.”
Part family drama and part social commentary/satire, in his review TheWrap’s Steve Pond said the film “does pull off the remarkable feat of being a lovely, charming comedy that makes damn serious points about representation and racial politics.” Read the full review.
“American Fiction” is not currently streaming — Find showtimes.
Nominee: “Anatomy of a Fall”
Director: Justine Triet
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, Saadia Bentaieb, Camille Rutherford, Anne Rotger
This French legal thriller, which already won the Palm D’or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, stars Hüller as a writer who may or may not have murdered her husband.
“Part thorny family story, part whodunit, part courtroom drama and part meditation on the nature of truth and fiction,” TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote in his review, the “tense, unbearably so at times” film is also “subtle and satisfying.” Read the full review.
“Anatomy of a Fall” is currently available to rent on most digital platforms and is in limited theatrical release. Find showtimes.
Nominee: “Barbie”
Director: Greta Gerwig
Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, Ariana Greenblatt.
“Barbie” is 2023’s biggest pop culture phenomenon and highest grossing film. It also fueled the “Barbenheimer” craze. We know you saw it and we know you loved it. But for the curious, Tomris Laffly’s review for TheWrap called the film “disarming, astute and altogether bitingly brilliant,” noting that is is hilarious and touching, and also “boils down to all the ways we know how impossibly hard it is to be a woman.” Fully accurate, by the way.
“Barbie” is streaming on Max and is available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms. It’s also still in theaters; Find showtimes.
Nominee: “The Holdovers”
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa
Finally reuniting Payne with his “Sideways” star Giamatti after almost 20 years, “The Holdovers” follows a strict boarding school teacher stuck chaperoning students who couldn’t go home during the Christmas, 1970 break.
Tomris Laffly’s review for TheWrap says the film “feels like a warm and loving nod to an era in the ‘80s and ‘90s where inspirational academia-themed movies like “Dead Poets Society” and “With Honors” were numerous and most welcome.” and notes that it “doesn’t exactly feel like a new classic—it feels too familiar for that. Still, it does something tried-and-true so well and affectionally.”
In theaters — find showtimes — and streaming on Peacock, it’s available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms.
Nominee: “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone
“Killers of the Flower Moon” tells the horrifying true story of the Osage Indian murders of the 1910s and 20s, when an unknown number of Osage tribal members — possibly hundreds — in Oklahoma were killed in what turned out to be a series of interrelated conspiracies by white Oklahomans to seize control of their oil rights.
Reviewing for TheWrap, Tomris Laffly writes that “Gladstone delivers a silently towering performance” in a film that is “vast and vital in its scale, purpose and emotional scope, a Western-thriller and ensemble piece that is every bit a Scorsese crime picture as one can dare to imagine.”
The film is now streaming on Apple TV+ and is available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms.
Nominee: “Maestro”
Director: Bradley Cooper
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper
In his review for TheWrap, Ben Croll says the Leonard Bernstein biopic, directed by and starring Cooper, is a “masterful symphony” that proves Cooper “is no one hit wonder.” Co-star Mulligan gives a “breathtaking” performance, Croll writes, and “Like any good conductor, Cooper knows that the smallest of gestures elicits the most thunderous response.”
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Nominee: “Oppenheimer”
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh
In her review, Tomris Laffly calls Nolan’s examination of the father of nuclear weapons “majestic and morally complex.”
“How often do our cinema outings to major original works feel this big, this full of ideas, this much grounded on ambiguous morals and challengingly imperfect heroes these days?” Laffly writes. “How often do they make us wonder whether our contemporary leaders and decision-makers are as humbly self-questioning as they should be? With immense, cautionary queries about the past and into the future on its mind, ‘Oppenheimer’ has it all in that regard, detonating on countless visual and philosophical cylinders we come to the movies for.”
The film is streaming on Peacock and is available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms.
Nominee: “Past Lives”
Director: Celine Song
Starring: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
This quiet drama follows Childhood friends Nora Moon and Hae Sung, separated when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada, over 24 years as they grow apart, establish lives and finally meet again as adults.
In his review for TheWrap, Carlos Aguilar writes that “Song’s quiet drama asks evocative questions about how we are shaped by places and other people.” He adds that “As soul-crushing as it is life-affirming, by the time ‘Past Lives’ reaches its final destination, neither the characters nor us are the same.”
The film is not yet streaming but is available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms.
Nominee: “Poor Things”
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael
A feminist twist on “Frankenstein”-inspired tropes, Ben Croll writes in his review that it “remains witty and wise throughout its most lurid stretches,” and is “one of the year’s most unexpected heart-warmers. That the filmmakers lavish commensurate attention on all those bawdy embellishments also guarantees you a bloody good time along the way.”
It’s still in theaters — find showtimes. “Poor Things” is not yet streaming.
Nominee: “The Zone of Interest.”
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Starring: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller
This holocaust drama, based on the 2013 novel by Martin Amis, involves the rather disturbing subject of a Nazi officer who works to build his dream life with his wife in a house built next to Auschwitz.
Despite that horrific premise, the film is a powerful examination of mundane barbarity. As Ben Croll wrote for TheWrap, “neither provocation nor counter-point, ‘The Zone of Interest’ is instead a furtherance, a new take on an ungraspable madness we must never let ourselves forget.”
It’s still in limited theaters — find showtimes. It’s not yet available to buy or rent digitally, but it will eventually stream on Max.
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