The Oscars Ballot: Who I'd Pick
'Anora' is not the best we can do.
Thanks for reading Alienated Young Woman! Subscribe for free to keep up with my awards predictions and receive bimonthly reading recommendations, monthly reviews, and more. Check out my actual Oscars predictions here.
I’ve said a thousand times now that 2024 was an okay, but not fantastic year for film, but nowhere is that more obvious than the actual Oscar nominees. After last year, when career-bests like Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Past Lives, and The Zone of Interest dominated the nominations, there’s something strangely heartbreaking about seeing a lineup so devastatingly… mid. With the exception of a few year-defining standouts, like Nickel Boys, Conclave, and I’m Still Here, this year’s Oscar nominees are mostly mediocre—if not actively offensive to watch.
But here’s what makes that all the more frustrating: it wasn’t a bad year for film, either. Luca Guadagnino released Challengers! Robert Eggers returned with Nosferatu! Sebastian Stan made two good movies! The Academy voters (who proudly don’t watch movies) may not have noticed, but there actually were at least ten really good films this year. We didn’t need to give into the illusion of Anora being the best we could do.
So, as someone dedicated to monitoring awards season who did try to watch all the contenders, I’m writing the historical wrongs. My Oscars lineup is a blend of the (few) nominations I got really right and a remedy for the many, many nominations they got very wrong. From much-discussed snubs to stunning performances that flew under the radar, these are the films I’d actually like to celebrate from 2024:
Best Picture
Bold font indicates winner, asterisk indicates actual Oscar nominees.
A Different Man (A24, dir. Aaron Schimberg)
Conclave* (Focus, dir. Edward Berger)
Challengers (Amazon MGM, dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Fancy Dance (AppleTV, dir. Erica Tremblay)
Hard Truths (StudioCanal, dir. Mike Leigh)
I’m Still Here* (Sony, dir. Walter Salles)
Nickel Boys* (Amazon MGM, dir. RaMell Ross)
Nosferatu (Focus, dir. Robert Eggers)
Problemista (A24, dir. Julio Torres)
Sing Sing (A24, dir. Greg Kwedar)
Alternates: The Substance* (Mubi, dir. Coralie Fargeat), Better Man (Paramount, dir. Michael Gracey)
Best Director
If the Best Picture lineup was heartbreakingly mid, the Oscars’ Best Director lineup is actively depressing. James Mangold over Edward Berger or RaMell Ross? Jacques Audiard???? Not on my watch. Not when Nosferatu exists.
Edward Berger, Conclave
Robert Eggers, Nosferatu
Luca Guadagnino, Challengers
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance*
Alternate: Aaron Schimberg, A Different Man
Best Actress
We could have had a near-perfect lineup. For a while, it seemed like we would—impeccable performances from veterans like Angelina Jolie in Maria, Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here, Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths, and of course, Demi Moore in The Substance seemed like shoo-ins. Then came the actual nominations, where a meager two made the final cut. While this isn’t the worst-ever Best Actress lineup (three nominees were even good in their movies, after all), we can certainly do better. A lot better.
One performance that gained early buzz, but was eventually left out of the conversation entirely: Lily Gladstone in the family crime drama Fancy Dance. Gladstone’s work as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon may have been career-defining, introducing her to a new level of stardom, but her work in Fancy Dance as Jax, a Seneca-Cayuga drifter left to care for her 13-year-old niece after her sister’s sudden disappearance, feels like a career-best. Luckily, Gladstone is not only prolific, but one of our greatest working actors, so it’s only a matter of time before they’re back in the lineup.
Lily Gladstone, Fancy Dance
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
Angelina Jolie, Maria
Demi Moore, The Substance*
Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here*
Alternates: Cynthia Erivo, Wicked,* Lily-Rose Depp, Nosferatu1
Best Actor
This may be the one category where the Academy and I actually agree. It’s rare that the Best Actor lineup is full of actually wonderful—or even good—performances (last year pit career-defining work from Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti against Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein, after all), but for the most part, the nominated performances this year truly do feel like the best this year’s male actors had to offer. If I could make a few minor changes, I’d have carried Golden Globe nominee Hugh Grant through to the end, and voted for Sebastian Stan’s work in A Different Man—easily his career-best performance and an all-around better movie—over his (still incredible) work in The Apprentice.2 It is cool to give a near-perfect performance of a sitting president descending into madness. It is even cooler to crash out in a literal mask of your former self.
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown*
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing*
Hugh Grant, Heretic
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave*
Sebastian Stan, A Different Man
Alternates: Daniel Craig, Queer
Best Supporting Actress
This was probably as solid of a Best Supporting Actress lineup as we were ever going to get, considering Zoe Saldaña is on an inexplicable sweep for her (just okay) work in the (actively bad) film Emilia Pérez. I’m not mad at any of this year’s other nominations, but, as with most categories, we can do better. For one, I would have loved to see Carol Kane (an early favorite among indie awards and critics circles) pick up her second nomination 48 years after her first for her funny, nuanced work in the dramedy Between the Temples. And while Tilda Swinton campaigned hard to be recognized for Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut The Room Next Door, I’d argue her best work of the year was her comedic turn as Julio Torres’ neurotic boss in Problemista.
Above all, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (who, like Lily Gladstone, seems to deliver an Oscar-or-Emmy-contending performance every year) deserved recognition for her heartbreaking work in Nickel Boys as Hattie, the emotional heart of the film.
Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown*
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys
Carol Kane, Between the Temples
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave*
Tilda Swinton, Problemista
Alternates: Michele Austin, Hard Truths, Alicia Witt, Longlegs
Best Supporting Actor
Finally, a category where the frontrunner is deserving of the acclaim! It only took us a mere five categories to get here. As adrift loner Benji in A Real Pain, Kieran Culkin is heartbreakingly delicate, endlessly nuanced, and no, nothing at all like Roman Roy. I will cheer watching him accept the well-earned award. It’s the rest of his category where I’d made some changes.
Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn as a transparently evil, almost cartoonish Victor Frankenstein to Stan’s burgeoning monster in The Apprentice, can also stay. The same goes for Guy Pearce, who saves The Brutalist with what might be the performance of the year. Like Culkin, every choice these two made was absolutely correct.
But on the topic of transformative, over-the-top performances, I’d shed the rest of this year’s lineup in a heartbeat to recognize Bill Skarsgård, whose chameleonic turn as Count Orlok in Nosferatu cemented him as a Doug Jones-esque icon of horror.3 I’ll use my last vote to remedy one of the several egregious snubs in this category, namely Clarence Maclin for his work in Sing Sing (though I am glad he picked up a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay). That said, Adam Pearson is a close runner-up for his work in A Different Man (as brilliant as Stan is in the leading role, the film doesn’t work if Pearson doesn’t match his self-pity with obnoxious charm).
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain*
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist*
Bill Skarsgård, Nosferatu
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice*
Alternate: Adam Pearson, A Different Man
Best Original Screenplay
What a good year for absolutely beautiful writing. What an absolutely tragic year for recognizing it. While Academy voters flocked to supposedly “powerful” (but actually incredibly hollow, empty, embarrassing) message-y scripts like Anora and September 5, they left quite a bit of mesmerizing, deeply original storytelling on the floor. Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man and Julio Torres’ Problemista both felt so fresh that I spent most of my time in the theatre thinking, “I’ve never seen anything like this,” and also “We should be commissioning a thousand more scripts from these writers forever.” Meanwhile, though one beautifully written naturalistic family drama, A Real Pain, did manage to pick up a nod in this category, I would have loved to see this year’s other major contender, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truth, get equal recognition. Finally, what is a screenplay category without Justin Kuritzkes, whose films dominated the culture this year? In a just world, Challengers, Kuritzkes’ fiercely original homage to the erotic drama (that also serves as a spiritual response to Past Lives), would have been a shoo-in.
A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
A Real Pain* (Jesse Eisenberg)
Challengers (Justin Kuritzkes)
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
Problemista (Julio Torres)
Alternate: The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Finally, though Best Adapted Screenplay was a relatively thin category this year, I still would have made a few minor changes to the lineup, swapping out some early contenders for the nominees that replaced them. Emilia Pérez would be nowhere near my final lineup, nor would A Complete Unknown, replaced by Robert Eggers’ brilliant reimagining of Nosferatu and the harrowing, exquisite screenplay from I’m Still Here. However, there’s still cause for celebration: for the first time, my winner of choice might actually be the winner of choice at the actual ceremony.
Conclave* (Peter Straughan, based on the novel Conclave by Robert Harris)
I’m Still Here (Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega, based on the memoir Ainda Estou Aqui by Marcelo Rubens Paiva)
Nickel Boys* (RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, based on the novel Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead)
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, based on the film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror by Henrik Galeen and the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker)
Sing Sing* (Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield, based on the book The Sing Sing Follies by John H. Richardson and the play Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code by Brent Buell)
Bonus: Best Original Song
As a non-music critic, I famously don’t go here, but the snubs are glaring and the nominees are bad.
“Compress/Repress” from Challengers
“Forbidden Road” from Better Man4
“I Always Wanted a Brother” from Mufasa: The Lion King5
“Leash” from Babygirl
“Never Too Late” from Elton John: Never Too Late*
Lastly, since I do not singlehandedly control the Oscars in real life, I’m also predicting the real winners here.
Thanks for reading Alienated Young Woman! If you’ve enjoyed this post, consider sharing it on your socials. Subscribers receive two free reading guides per month and one long-form review.
Collage by the author.
Other notable snubs: Zendaya in Challengers and Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl, who were roughly my 9th and 10th favorite performances from a leading actress in 2024, respectively, but who I would have accepted over Mikey Madison (who was bad in Anora) or Karla Sofia Gascón (bad in Emilia Pérez and in real life) in a heartbeat.
Addressing the elephant in the room: Adrien Brody is absent from this list only because his performance in The Brutalist was bad.
“Cemented him” in the public consciousness, that is, but it’s been true for his last decade of work. Nosferatu fans, please watch Castle Rock on Hulu.
I know the Academy disqualified this entry for interpolating from Williams’ previous songs. I, however, would have been cool about it.
One day, we’ll talk about why Disney does not want Lin-Manuel Miranda to EGOT.