2022 Oscar Nominees Revealed (Full List)

The full list of nominations for the 94th Annual Academy Awards.

​Well, the 2022 Oscar Nominations are here and boy oh boy, is there a…decent amount to talk about. There certainly were some snubs and surprises, which we’ll get to in a second, but first let’s talk about the bulk of nominations which were largely expected and predicted. Does being expected make a nominations list boring? Not to me, but to some, it certainly may seem that way. After all, it’s not as if anyone thought Belfast was going to miss a Best Picture nomination, but think of what would’ve happened if it did, and something like The Worst Person in the World showed up in the category. In any case, this year’s crop of nominees, while certainly largely deserving and unsurprising, seems to be one of the less compelling entries in the history of the Academy. Some of this may be due to this year’s crop of films being fairly spread out and left over from 2020 (some 2020 releases still haven’t come out), but another reason may be that the Academy is sticking to tradition where innovation must abound. That’s not to say that innovation isn’t present here – well, okay, visual effects has like one nominee that’s actually all that innovative but whatever – it’s simply that the majority of selections in categories that need to embrace change…haven’t. Almost all of the Best Picture nominees received a theatrical release in a year where many people still aren’t going back to movie theaters, and there’s very little experimentation present in a number of major categories (looking at you, Animated Feature). If the Academy wants to be relevant to the cultural conversation again – apart from when your drunk uncle complains about them being “too political” – they need to embrace change and find a way to both nominate great films and embrace the direction that movies are heading in, for better or worse. Let’s talk the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good/Surprises
Hey, look at that, Kristen Stewart made it into Best Actress after all! In fact, the whole category is a huge shakeup from the expected five. Gone is Lady Gaga, with Penélope Cruz scoring a nomination for her brilliant work in Parallel Mothers, with the rest of the expected five also absent of Alana Haim, whose momentum has been building in recent weeks. Also, hello Academy Award Nominees Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons, finally recognized for their work in The Lost Daughter and The Power of the Dog respectively, after both turning in career-bests in Charlie Kaufman’s i’m thinking of ending things in 2020.

​In other categories, Flee managed to score all 3 of its best-chance nominations in International, Documentary, and Animated Feature, a first for any production, let alone an international film, and that makes Riz Ahmed – a producer on the movie – a now four-time Oscar nominee in the span of two years. The Worst Person in the World also managed a surprise nomination in the Original Screenplay category, besting longtime Oscar veteran Aaron Sorkin’s script for Being the Ricardos in a huge upset. The Worst Person in the World is a brilliant movie with a brilliant script, so naturally, I’m very happy about that. And, like a chump, I ignored my instincts about the Academy and took Nightmare Alley out of Best Picture at the last minute, instead of believing as I originally did that filmmakers and craftspeople loved Del Toro enough to nominated his work and not have to give Netflix three Best Picture slots (R.I.P. Tick, Tick…Boom!). There are some smaller surprises, like The French Dispatch going nomination-less and A Hero being left out of International Feature, but the rest of the nominations are mostly good…now let’s get into the other stuff.

The Bad/Surprises
Not that his performance isn’t good in the movie or that he doesn’t deserve the world otherwise, but why is J.K. Simmons here? Why not Jason Isaacs or Anders Danielsen Lie or Bradley Cooper or Mike Faist? Simmons’ nod is not a bad nomination on its face, it’s just an inherently boring one in a year chock-full of spectacular supporting male performances that could have otherwise filled that spot.
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In other negative news, National Geographic’s The Rescue was snubbed in Documentary Feature, though the nomination for Attica is certainly not offensive by any stretch (it’s a fantastic documentary). It’s simply that The Rescue was able to re-create an event so vividly that planned sequences became indistinguishable from raw footage, a feat few documentaries manage to actually achieve to the trained eye. Plus Free Guy made a visual effects nomination with little-to-no actual innovation in the effects-making, and C’mon C’mon and Mass went nomination-less. Not unexpected for any of these candidates, but it still sucks.

​The Ugly (The SNUB)
And of course, there is one snub everyone is talking about that will go down in history as one of the worst trades in Best Director history. Denis Villeneuve, a visionary with a control over Dune that you cannot watch that movie without feeling, was passed over for Best Director in favor of Kenneth Branagh for his largely respectable but off-hand approach to the pretty good Belfast. This is a mistake on par with not nominating Amy Adams for Best Actress in Arrival (ironically, a Denis Villeneuve movie), and now the Academy has done both. There was bound to be a shake-up in this category, but that was meant to be Ryûsuke Hamaguchi knocking out Branagh, not one of the expected top 3 contenders. Of course, it doesn’t get under my skin the way it did when they outright ignored Bradley Cooper in 2018 for A Star Is Born – Branagh was still a dark horse candidate in this category – but it is easily the worst snub of the year for the Oscars to have made.

​Best Picture:

• Belfast
• CODA
• Don’t Look Up
• Drive My Car
• Dune
• King Richard
• Licorice Pizza
• Nightmare Alley
• The Power of the Dog
• West Side Story

Best Director:

• Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
• Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
• Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
• Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
• Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Best Actress:

• Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
• Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
• Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos
• Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Best Actor:

• Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
• Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
• Andrew Garfield, tick, tick…Boom!
• Will Smith, King Richard
• Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Supporting Actress:

• Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
• Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
• Judi Dench, Belfast
• Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog
• Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

Best Supporting Actor:

• Ciarán Hinds, Belfast
• Troy Kotsur, CODA
• Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog
• J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos
• Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog

Best Animated Feature:

• Encanto
• Flee
• Luca
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines
• Raya and the Last Dragon

Best International Feature Film:

• Drive My Car (Japan)
• Flee (Denmark)
• The Hand of God (Italy)
• Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan)
• The Worst Person in the World (Norway)

Best Documentary Feature:

• Ascension
• Attica
• Flee
• Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
• Writing With Fire

Best Cinematography:

• Greig Fraser, Dune
• Dan Laustsen, Nightmare Alley
• Ari Wegner, The Power of the Dog
• Bruno Delbonnel, The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Janusz Kaminski, West Side Story

Best Film Editing:

• Hank Corwin, Don’t Look Up
• Joe Walker, Dune
• Pamela Martin, King Richard
• Peter Sciberras, The Power of the Dog
• Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum, tick, tick...Boom!

Best Production Design:

• Patrice Vermette, Dune
• Tamara Deverell, Nightmare Alley
• Stefan Dechant, The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Grant Major, The Power of the Dog
• Adam Stockhausen, West Side Story

Best Costume Design:

• Jenny Beavan, Cruella
• Massimo Cantini Parrini, Cyrano
• Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan, Dune
• Luis Sequeira, Nightmare Alley
• Paul Tazewell, West Side Story

Best Makeup & Hairstyling:

• Coming 2 America
• Cruella
• Dune
• The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• House of Gucci

Best Original Score:

• Nicholas Britell, Don’t Look Up
• Hans Zimmer, Dune
• Germaine Franco, Encanto
• Alberto Iglesias, Parallel Mothers
• Jonny Greenwood, The Power of the Dog

Best Original Song:

• “Be Alive,” King Richard
• “Dos Orguitas,” Encanto
• “Down to Joy,” Belfast
• “No Time to Die,” No Time to Die
• “Somehow You Do,” Four Good Days

Best Adapted Screenplay:

• Siân Heder, CODA
• Denis Villeneuve, Dune
• Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
• Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
• Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Best Original Screenplay:

• Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
• Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up
• Zach Baylin, King Richard
• Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
• Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World

Best Visual Effects:

• Dune
• Free Guy
• No Time to Die
• Spider-Man: No Way Home
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Best Sound:

• Belfast
• Dune
• No Time to Die
• The Power of the Dog
• West Side Story

Best Live-Action Short:

• Ala Kachuu – Take and Run
• The Dress
• The Long Goodbye
• On My Mind
• Please Hold

Best Animated Short:

• Affairs of the Art
• Beast
• Boxballet
• Robin Robin
• The Windshield Wiper

Best Documentary Short:

• Audible
• Lead Me Home
• The Queen of Basketball
• Three Songs for Benazir
• When We Were Bullies

Obviously there were some unexpected surprises and definite snubs, but overall, this list of nominees is about what I expected, and I’m largely in favor of it. Regardless of what happens in the winners circle, it’s always fun to see what gets close enough to taste victory. What do you think of these nominations? Are there some surprises you’re ecstatic about? Snubs that pissed you off? Let me know in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!
 
The Oscars will take place on Sunday, March 27th.
 
- The Friendly Film Fan