The Oscar nominations for 2023 were announced this morning, and to the surprise of nobody paying attention, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer dominated with a whopping 13 nominations in all. Again, that's hardly a shock, given that Nolan's film is a high profile, important historical biopic about big ideas that was a big box office hit. Add to that the fact that the highly respected Nolan has never won a Best Director award or had any of his other films win Best Picture despite multiple nominations in both categories, and it looks like Oppenheimer will win big. Among the other Best Picture Nominees, I was very happy to see that Cord Jefferson's excellent satire American Fiction is in there, and that Jeffrey Wright is also nominated for Best Actor for his great work on that film. And, as always, I was happy to see Best Picture nominations for lower budgeted, non star driven films like Celine Song's Past Lives and Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall; to me, bringing the attention of the public to less well known films like these is what the Oscars do best.
As for surprises, perhaps the biggest one is that Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie, while nominated for Best Picture and 7 other categories, didn't get a nomination for director Gerwig or star Margot Robbie. But before you cry sexism for Gerwig being snubbed, it should be pointed out that for the first time ever, 3 of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture were directed by women (Anatomy of a Fall by Triet, Past Lives by Song and Barbie by Gerwig). Also, Gerwig has been nominated for Best Director in the past, for 2018's Ladybird (which I thought was better than Barbie). That said I do think that Gerwig should have been nominated for Best Director for Barbie given that the film was such a big production that became a massive hit (the biggest box office for a movie directed by a woman ever), and I would choose her over director Jonathan Glazer's nomination for the overrated (in my opinion) Zone of Interest. But there's no doubt that Gerwig's entrance into the A list of directors will mean that she will be nominated in that category again sometime in the future.
Overall, there's nothing in the list of nominees that I think is unworthy or bothersome; I've seen 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, and I enjoyed all of them. (I plan to see Maestro, the one I haven't seen yet, sometime soon, and I'm pretty sure that I will like it). I certainly won't complain if Oppenheimer wins Best Picture although I also wouldn't mind if American Fiction were to were to make an upset win there. (Picking between those two pictures is tough for me, because I loved both of them and they're so different). Meanwhile, Barbie will almost definitely win numerous well deserved technical awards for things like production design and costumes, and Gerwig might win for Best Adapted Screenplay to make up for not getting nominated for Best Director. So even though she won't get her Best Director award yet, she could still go home happy.
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