2026 Oscar Nominee Hot-Takes From Someone Who Likes Movies A Lot
by D.S. Foster
Sr. Director of Digital Distribution, Invincible
Glad to see The Secret Agent make it into Best Picture. I sincerely hope it wins that best casting award. Every extra looks like they’ve never seen the internet.
F1 receiving a Best Picture nomination over It Was Just An Accident and Weapons speaks to the sheer strength of Apple’s campaigning. I love me some Brad Pitt and any film that pushes both production technology and the mainstream viewing experience forward… but F1 was not, and very far from being Days of Thunder.
The fact that Avatar: Fire and Ash couldn’t make the cut as this year’s spectacle pick, despite recency bias, underlines the rather cold reception to James Cameron’s latest chapter in his “too big to fail” but mindful sci-fi saga.
Big and joyful admiration for Sentimental Value. The mumblecore crowd wishes they had films that could feel like European art-house cinema. Very glad Joachim Trier made the cut over Guillermo del Toro this year. Shame that Jafar Panahi or Kleber Mendonça Filho couldn’t join him in the accolades.
Speaking of del Toro, I do not understand the love for his vanity-project-adaptation of Frankenstein beyond its wholly embodied performance from Jacob Elordi. To wash technical nominations over Weapons (urban legend 101 and a masterclass in screen geography), The Secret Agent, It Was Just An Accident, Sirat, and No Other Choice is objectively bizarre. In its scope and scale and versicolor palette, Frankenstein lacks the visceral photographic texture that has made del Toro’s visual aesthetics one of Mexican cinemas most immediately identifiable.
What can this cinephile say about Train Dreams other than Joel Edgerton is one of the most underrated and under celebrated actor/filmmakers in contemporary cinema and Train Dreams was a solid meditation on a time and life I have no interest in. As far as I could tell, for boilerplate dramas about laying tracks and railroad construction, this was a movie.
With Frankenstein and Train Dreams, distributing both weakest Best Picture nominees is certainly a feat for NETFLIX. One imagines what they might have been able to accomplish this year had they traded slates with NEON (or as I refer to as, “the superior A24“).
Wicked: For Good justifiably shutout of competition entirely, is… incredibly welcomed. If that’s the price for snubbing The Testament of Ann Lee I’ll take it.
The absence of Marty Supreme in the Original Score category might be the most baffling snub of the season, however, receiving attention in technical categories, unlike Josh Safdie’s almost perfect slice of anxiety, Uncut Gems, is righteous.
Delroy Lindo’s acknowledgement in the Supporting Actor category is long overdue. He should’ve been bestowed the laurels of his profession back in the 90’s, consistently since then… and The Academy seems to adore Sinners far more than its precursors (From Dusk Till Dawn and Ganja & Hess). The sheer number of nominations it received is likely to cause talking heads to spin and none will spin faster than those whose reading of the film was a superficial take-away on critical race theory, rather than an arguably flawed American masterpiece; a musical-survival-horror about fellowship, culture, and community, with vampires in it. For a film like Sinners, that it was even made is what matters and that it was made as well as it was is the cherry on top.
A lot more Bugonia than I was expecting. I love Yorgos Lanthimos, but I’m not Greek and to be fair, you have to have a very Greek I.Q. to fluently comprehend his narrative voice.
Amy Madigan better win in Supporting Actress!!! One of the joys of the awards season is watching an absolute wild card make their way into consensus territory, and for a genre-flick… its even sweeter.
This is only a start and there’s still a long way to go, of course, but for a genre where once its audience had accepted that it could not have nice things, Horror is finally making genuine inroads in terms of recognition in prestige filmmaking. The (expected) snubs of Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love and Sally Hawkins for Bring Her Back aptly highlight this.
Exposure for The Voice of Hind Rajab and its recognition in International Film is important beyond words.