Best Movies Shut Out Include ‘Challengers,’ ‘Furiosa’

It was a tough Oscar nominations morning for Luca Guadagnino, as both of his acclaimed 2024 directorial efforts (“Queer” and “Challengers”) got completely shut out of the race. “Challengers” was a surprise if only because many film pundits considered Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsating music a no-brainer for a best original score nomination. The duo won the category at the Golden Globes. Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman named “Challengers” the best movie of 2024 and wrote in a column: “Can a movie as high-wire skillful — and as crowd-pleasing — as Luca Guadagnino’s sporty love-triangle drama make the best picture race? If not, the Oscars have a problem.” Looks like there’s a problem then.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won six prizes: best costume design, editing, makeup and hairstyling, production design, sound editing and sound mixing. That George Miller’s long-awaited follow-up “Furiosa” couldn’t even break into this year’s Oscars craft categories is rather shocking. “Furiosa” may have been more divisive than “Fury Road” among critics and moviegoers, but its design elements were still on par with its predecessor. How the mighty have fallen.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste was named the best actress of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for her unforgettable turn in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” which also scored her a BAFTA nomination. Alas, no Oscar nomination. Jean-Baptiste stars in the film as Patsy, a bruised and biting curmudgeon whose tough exterior masks grief and emotional trauma. Watching “Hard Truths,” it’s impossible not to marvel at Jean-Baptiste’s brilliant ability to make audiences care for the most challenging and deeply-flawed character.

Payal Kapadia’s extraordinary drama “All We Imagine as Light” won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival but was shockingly not selected as India’s nominee for best international film, nor did Kapadia break into the Oscar race for best director despite landing a nomination at the Golden Globes. The movie is a delicate portrait of three female friends in Mumbai. From Variety’s review: “Kapadia has established her rare talent for finding passages of exquisite poetry within the banal blank verse of everyday Indian life.”

Daniel Craig earned career-best reviews and won best actor from the National Board of Review for his wounded performance in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” but he missed out on one of the five nominations for best actor. From Variety’s review: “Daniel Craig, shifting about a dozen gears from James Bond, doesn’t make the mistake of impersonating the older William Burroughs who became a punk icon in the ’80s: the dry voice, the beady-eyed stare of hostility. Craig gives us a pinch of that glowering Burroughs DNA, but the trick of his performance, which is bold and funny and alive, is that he’s playing the younger Burroughs before he’d passed through the looking glass of cultivated insanity.”

Nicole Kidman won best actress honors at the Venice Film Festival and the National Board of Review for her fearless turn in the erotic drama “Babygirl,” which also earned her a Golden Globe nomination. But a disappointing snub at the SAG Awards meant Kidman was not a surefire lock for an Oscar nom, and now “Babygirl” has been shut out of the race. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman named “Babygirl” the eighth best movie of 2024, writing: “Kidman’s indelible performance earns comparison to Diane Lane’s in ‘Unfaithful.’ She plays this sick recklessness as something fully human: the expression of a woman too compartmentalized to put the different parts of herself together.”

The Academy rarely gives horror movies their due at the Oscars, so it’s not surprising A24’s “Heretic” missed out on nominations for original screenplay or best actor for Hugh Grant. The latter did gain some momentum this season, however, by picking up nominations at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs. Grant is terrifying as a demented religious scholar so extreme that he traps two Mormon missionaries in his house and torments them into rejecting their faith. From Variety’s review: “Grant’s radically against-type turn to keep audiences on their toes works. The likable English actor has never gone anywhere near as dark as ‘Heretic’ demands.”

Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” recreates the intense 90 minutes before the first NBC broadcast of “Saturday Night Live.” There was a brief moment last fall when the movie had major Oscar buzz for best picture and best original screenplay, but “Saturday Night” never had its moment in the sun and faded quickly with just $9.8 million at the box office. Variety’s Peter Debruge named “Saturday Night” a Critic’s Pick, writing: “The film is a love letter to an American television institution, but Reitman also includes the drugs, egos and opening-night setbacks that nearly killed ‘SNL.’”

Fede Álvarez’s “Alien: Romulus” was an effective entry in the long-running space franchise that should’ve been a contender at least for the visual effects Oscar. From Variety’s review: “‘Alien: Romulus’ is one of the best ‘Alien’ sequels in that it delivers the slimy creep-out goods in a way that none of the last three ‘Alien’ films have. This is closer to a grandly efficient greatest-hits thrill ride, packaged like a video game. Yet on that level it’s a confidently spooky, ingeniously shot, at times nerve-jangling piece of entertainment.”

Ireland’s entry for the best international feature was “Kneecap,” a deliriously entertaining comedy about the rise of the Irish hip-hop trio of the same name. Writer and director Rich Peppiatt makes the ingenious choice to cast the real band members as themselves in their own story. Despite 14 nominations at the British Independent Film Awards (and a win for best film), “Kneecap” found itself totally shut out at the Oscars. It’s unfortunate as the film bursts with unruly energy and manages to smartly bridge political substance with crowd-pleasing entertainment.  

Agnieszka Holland‘s powerful refugee drama “Green Border” is a heart-in-mouth thriller set on the Polish-Belarusian border. Different characters converge here, including a family of refugees from Syria and an English teacher from Afghanistan, and their stories bring to light the recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus. The movie wraps its social critique in the razor wire of punchy, intelligent cinematic craft. If we can feel the horror, perhaps there is hope.

Radu Jude’s brilliantly bizarre workplace satire “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” was included on dozens of top 10 critics list and should’ve at least been a screenplay contender at the Oscars. With scabrous wit and deep seriousness, the Romanian director tells the story of an overworked and underpaid production assistant in Bucharest with an unexpected online life. From Variety’s review: “Funny and furious, crude and subtle, unkempt and thoroughly disciplined, this deranged movie is also maybe the sanest film of the year: a multifaceted manifesto exposing the absurd internalized fallacy that one must work in order to live.”

Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut “The Room Next Door” won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and earned Tilda Swinton a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. The director is an Oscars favorite, but not for this effort. Variety’s Peter Debruge named “The Room Next Door” the ninth best movie of 2024, writing: “Almodóvar casts monster talents Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as old pals bonded by a pact the former makes to accompany her cancer-diminished friend through the end. At times, it feels as if the atheist filmmaker has ripped open his ribcage and shown us his innermost anxieties about death, legacy and the fate of our planet.”

Netflix scored big at the Oscars with its crime musical “Emilia Perez,” but the streamer’s fellow contender “The Piano Lesson” was left behind by voters despite critical acclaim and a SAG Award nomination for supporting actress contender Danielle Deadwyler. Malcolm Washington directs Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington in the August Wilson adaptation, which follows the lives of the Charles family in 1936 during the aftermath of the Great Depression. The family’s heirloom piano is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor. One brother plans to build a family fortune by selling the instrument and buying the land his family toiled, while his sister tries to keep it to preserve the family history.

Sean Wang’s “Didi” won the U.S. dramatic audience award at Sundance last year but never had enough Oscar buzz despite critical acclaim and Spirit Award nominations for Joan Chen and more. The film follows a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy in the throes of an awkward adolescence in 2008, as he enjoys the last month of summer before high school begins. From Variety’s review: “Wang does a nice job of balancing his naturally comedic sensibility with serious insights into how he triangulated his own identity as a teenager. Still relatively original in the overcrowded teen-movie genre, ‘Dìdi’ proves an effective calling card.”

Nathan Silver’s comedy “Between the Temples” won Carol Kane the best supporting actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle this year. Variety called the film a “winningly off-kilter comedy” in its rave review, adding: “Buoyed by the unlikely chemistry between its two stars, this alternately raucous and tender ‘Harold and Maude’ riff is the warmest work to date from microbudget auteur Silver…Collapsing divides between old age, middle age and adolescence into a universally relatable paean to doing whatever the hell feels right for you in your own weird situation, this scruffy shoestring indie won’t be seen by the internet’s most hawkish age-gap monitors, though it has much to gently teach them.”

Azazel Jacobs’s acclaimed family drama “His Three Daughters” featured one of the best acting ensembles of the year, courtesy of Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne as three sisters who converge in a New York City apartment to care for their ailing father and smooth over their rocky family history. From Variety’s review: “It’s a drama that’s funny, moving and true…The film is a finely observed, winningly unsentimental memory play about three adult sisters who have come together to take care of their father, who is dying of cancer and approaching his final days. It’s like ‘Cries and Whispers’ recast as a fast-talking tale of sibling rivalry.”

Glen Powell’s charismatic performance in “Hit Man” made the Richard Linklater comedy a streaming hit on Netflix and earned the actor a Golden Globe nomination, but Netflix put its weight behind far more dramatic Oscar contenders this year. Powell also co-wrote the script for the film. Inspired by a true story, the actor plays an undercover New Orleans police officer who pretends to be a contract killer in order to arrest his clients. However, his latest case goes awry when he falls for the woman who hired him, played by Adria Arjona.

Alex Garland’s “Civil War” should’ve at least been an Oscar contender for best sound, if not for Kirsten Dunst’s bruising performance as a jaded war photographer journeying through war-torn America in order to get one of the last interviews with the U.S. president. The supporting cast includes Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Nick Offerman. From Variety’s review: “The press are the good guys, but also kind of the bad guys, in Alex Garland’s virtuosic ‘Civil War,’ a jarring ground-level account of what a near-future disunification of the United States might look like.”

Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker” earned nominations from the Gotham Awards and the Spirit Awards, but if only the Oscars paid attention to such daringly bracing indie movies. The film was named the seventh best of 2024 by Variety’s Owen Gleiberman, who wrote: “Drew, in her underground/midnight/guerrilla-cinema sensation, plays the maniacal Joker of DC legend, who is also an outlaw parody of the Joker, who is also a discordantly sincere trans heroine who is using the Joker’s persona to present who she is to the world. The movie, made outside the system (without clearance rights), is an act of pure fan obsession set in a diabolically playful mutating media zone, one that toys with the notion that those who are driven to extremes of cosplay are truer to the spirit of comic books than anyone else.”

Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone dominated the Oscar nominations with “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” the latter of which won Stone the best actress prize. But their third collaboration, “Kinds of Kindness,” was perhaps too dark and twisted for Academy voters despite Jesse Plemons winning best actor honors at Cannes and earning a Golden Globe nomination. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman named “Kinds of Kindness” the tenth best movie of 2024, writing: “It wears its avant imagination lightly, yet it’s a puckishly unsettling vision of our brave new world of dominance and deception.”

Variety’s Peter Debruge named Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” the third best movie of 2024, writing: “Nichols watches this social microcosm slowly implode upon itself, the way the gangster world did across the ‘Godfather’ saga. If that comparison sounds lofty, think again: ‘The Bikeriders’ resonates on multiple layers, interrogating American masculinity.” Inspired by the 1968 photo book of the same name by Danny Lyon, Jeff Nichols “The Bikeriders” follows a Chicago motorcycle gang and the tension that forms between a young member (Austin Butler) and the gang’s leader (Tom Hardy). 

Lily Gladstone was Oscar nominated for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and is just as good in “Fancy Dance,” director Erica Tremblay’s poignant coming-of-age story about Jax (Lily Gladstone) and her niece, Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson), as they search for the latter’s mother. The movie is set on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in northeast Oklahoma. From Variety’s review: “This engaging indie drama bills itself as a crime thriller, but winds up dedicating most of its energy to the resilient connection between a Seneca-Cayuga teenager and her guardian.”

“Juror #2” was perhaps Clint Eastwood’s last chance at Oscars glory, as the film is reportedly his final directorial effort. From Variety’s review: “Nicholas Hoult plays a guilty man tapped to judge someone else for his own mistake in Eastwood’s unlikely yet engaging courtroom drama…it’s a slightly preposterous but thoroughly engaging extension of the 94-year-old filmmaker’s career-long fascination with guilt, justice and the limitations of the law.”

Playwright Annie Baker won best first feature at the New York Film Critics Circle for “Janet Planet.” From Variety’s review: “Once again, A24 gambles on an unproven filmmaker, and once again, the indie studio comes away with an incredibly specific and personal glimpse into the mysteries of childhood… Baker has made an honest and endearing portrait of how an 11-year-old girl’s clingy relationship to her single mom evolves over the course of the summer between fifth and sixth grades. Watching it feels eerily akin to running one’s fingers along a scar sustained in childhood and being magically projected back to the moment that injury was sustained.”

A critical favorite with major nominations from the Gotham Awards and Spirit Awards, Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” was perhaps too surreal and ambitious for the traditional Academy. Justice Smith and Jack Haven play two troubled high school students who bond over their mutual love over a cult television series. But the show and mysterious events in their real lives lead them to question their identities. From Variety’s review: “The character-centered setup is where ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is most affecting, grounded by the tense, tacit bond between two highly guarded people — and given an electric jolt by Lundy-Paine’s fragile, volatile performance as someone certain there’s no accepting place for them outside the rectangular confines of the TV set.”

Megan Park earned a nomination at the DGA Awards for “My Old Ass,” one of the year’s great crowd-pleasers that should’ve at least been a screenplay contender. Maisy Stella plays an 18-year-old whose coming-of-age journey gets complicated when she gains the ability to see and communicate with her older self (Aubrey Plaza). From Variety’s review: “Megan Park’s amusing and emotional second feature presents an original riff on the fantasy of going back in time to advise your younger self.”

June Squibb could’ve become the oldest Oscar nominee ever at 94 years old had Academy voters shown some love to her Sundance favorite “Thelma,” in which she plays an elderly woman who breaks out of her old-age home on a mission to find the scammer who tricked her over the phone. From Variety’s review: “She’s been stealing scenes from the sidelines for decades, and now the ‘Nebraska’ favorite finally gets top billing as a headstrong woman who takes her scammers to task…she’s an unlikely yet satisfying action star.”

Alice Rohrwacher’s enchanting “La Chimera” is led by “Challengers” favorite Josh O’Connor and tells the beguiling tale of a group of grave robbers in Italy who must evade authorities and navigate interpersonal drama if they want to pull off their biggest score yet. Variety critic Guy Lodge named “La Chimera” a Critic’s Pick and called it “a marvelously supple and sinuous film,” adding praise for O’Connor: “Raffish and boyish at the same time — or switching between either mode as a cover for the other — O’Connor’s deft, droll performance implies such possibilities without sentimentalizing them.”

Rose Glass’s pulpy crime thriller “Love Lies Bleeding” was always going to be too violent and too unabashedly queer for Academy voters. Kristen Stewart plays the owner of a local gym in middle America who quickly falls for a bodybuilder who’s new to town. Their steamy romance is upended by murder. Variety critic Owen Gleiberman named “Love Lies Bleeding” a critic’s pick, writing: “The film tarts off lean and mean, then grows slowly and steadily more delirious… As the movie goes on, it generates enough ultra-violence and gonzo twists to be a midnight movie.”

Justin Kurzel’s “The Order” is a riveting and explosive docudrama about the modern American white-supremacist movement in the 1980s. Despite Jude Law giving what might be the best performance of his career, the film remained under the radar this Oscar season. Law plays an FBI agent investigating a series of crimes who stumbles onto the terrain of the Order, the scruffy band of right-wing racist terrorists in the Pacific Northwest who are funding an “army” to rise up against the U.S. government. “The film’s cutting topicality is that it fills in how believing that the U.S. government is the enemy is inextricably linked, in its emotional and historical legacy, to the ideology of white supremacy,” writes Owen Gleiberman in his review.

Saoirse Ronan landed a BAFTA nomination for best actress thanks to “The Outrun,” but she was never seen as anything but a dark horse in the Oscar race. She gives a riveting performance as Rona, a woman rediscovering herself after wrestling with alcoholism. Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, the film employs an innovative narrative structure that weaves three timelines together as Rona circles the drain during her decade in London, then claws her way toward recovery after returning home to the Orkney Islands in Scotland.

Winner of three British Independent Film Awards, the provocative queer thriller and Gotham Award nominee “Femme” centers on the relationship between a celebrated drag artist in London (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) and the closeted gay man who brutally attacked him (George MacKay). The two meet months later at a sauna and begin an affair. From Variety’s review: “A pair of sensational performances by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay, locked in a nervy duet as two men with virtually nothing in common but their sexuality, represents the chief selling point for this stylish, commendably uncompromising fusion of genre fireworks and measured, thoughtful character study.”

Gotham nominee “Good One” is a drama that follows Sam, a teenager on a backpacking trip with her dad and his friend. It’s a breezy dramedy about three people hiking — until, suddenly, it isn’t, and a subtle transgression paints a world-shattering revelation all over Sam’s face. From Variety’s review: “India Donaldson’s debut feature is unassuming but perceptive regarding the shifting power dynamics as parents reckon with their nearly-adult children.”

Gotham and Spirit Award nominee “Ghostlight” tells the story of a construction worker who unexpectedly joins a local theater’s production of “Romeo and Juliet,” which has major ramifications on his relationship with his family. From Variety’s review: “The film celebrates the healing power of art, as a family shaken by its eldest son’s suicide uses a community theater production to work through emotions they haven’t been able to discuss openly at home… screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan has a natural storytelling gift, coupled with a knack for comedy. Here, she takes elements like grieving families, difficult teens and small-town communities and rearranges them into a surprising and moving narrative.”

“Unstoppable” tells the true story of Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome), who was born with one leg but fought through adversity to earn a spot on the Arizona State Wrestling team. Robles’ dreams were fulfilled with help from the unwavering love and support of his devoted mother Judy (Jennifer Lopez) and the encouragement of his coaches. Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña and Don Cheadle also star. Variety’s review hailed the movie as “the rare sports crowd-pleaser you can believe in” and praised Jerome’s “quietly compelling” lead performance.

Rachel Morrison’s feature directorial debut “The Fire Inside” boasts a script from Oscar winner Barry Jenkins and nominations from the Gotham Awards and Spirit Awards. The drama tells the true story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, a fighter from Flint, Mich., who competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman praised Ryan Destiny’s “mesmerizing performance” in the lead role and called the movie “gripping” in his review, adding: “The film is a real rouser, but it’s also rooted in a sobering grasp of the trauma that can be the flip side of triumph.”