by Oscar O’Sullivan

I’ve got the Oscar Fever – hope you’ve got it too! At least, I wish I could say I have the Oscar Fever this year. We were spoiled with the offerings of 2022 and 2023, where robust lists of nominees made for exciting and satisfying awards races. This may is just one man’s opinion, but the 2024 lineup leaves something to be desired, playing it safe and ignoring many of the brilliant but offbeat films that came out over the last year in favour of traditional dramas and token blockbusters. It’s hard to be excited over how tight the race is when none of the frontrunners are among my own favourites, and despite the production of the ceremony itself being top notch, I found myself apathetic to most of the wins. So I thought to myself, Oscar, why don’t you put together your own awards? Some kind of, lets say, Oscar’s Awards, if you will? And that’s exactly what I did. Based entirely on what I myself watched last year (a comparatively meagre pool of 47 feature films), entirely ignoring the Academy nominee list and trying to spread the love as much as I can to avoid this becoming the Dune Part 2 Awards, here are the winners of the inaugural Oscar Awards (trademark pending). I’ll also be briefly noting what I think of the Academy’s so-called “winners”, which are almost entirely divorced from the objective reality of my decisions.

Actor in a Leading Role

2024, like most years, had no shortage of deserving lead performances. It’s simply a fact that a majority of the most popular and prolific genres of film favour strong central leading roles for men, from dramas and biopics to action and thrillers. Outside of the official nominees, all of whom I’m happy to see on the podium, there are a handful of performances in other films I could highlight. Justice Smith gives a devastating turn in I Saw the TV Glow that was far more vulnerable and soft than a traditional male lead (for very good reason if you know the central conceit of the film). Paul Mescal’s maligned turn in Gladiator II was actually one of my favourite aspects of the film, though I wouldn’t call it the best of the year, while Cillian Murphy was predictably brilliant in Small Things Like These. Casting our net way outside the norm, I’ll give an honourable mention to Josh Hartnett in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, where his turn as a loving father/wanted murderer bluffing his way out of a sting operation is perfectly modulated to the film’s topsy-turvy tone. If not for the fact that it technically came out in 2023, I would easily award Josh O’Connor’s performance in La Chimera, a perfectly languid, soulful turn that emotionally carries a story that hinges entirely on our willingness to patiently sit and wait with a difficult character. Instead, I’ll hand it to the Academy and say that one of their nominees is the obvious choice – Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, one of the year’s most criminally underrated films. As the single Hollywood star in a cast of non-professionals, Domingo lifts the rest of the cast up to his level instead of outshining them. Rather than a traditionally affected “real-person” performance, he plays the part naturalistically, embodying a deeply complicated character who uses art and positivity to overcome his own righteous anger and depression. A performance that quietly showcases his incredible range, acting in its purest, most communicative form.

The Academy Says – I shouldn’t be surprised that they went with the most boring, unadventurous choice, but here we are. Any of the other four nominees would have meant something or sent a message, but instead Adrien Brody gets to double up on awards for a fairly rote performance, great but in no way transformative or surprising.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Supporting Actor is a category that is difficult to quantify, usually given to the second lead and inspiring debates over screentime and plot-importance. Ignoring all that, Kieran Culkin is a deserving nominee for A Real Pain, but not my choice. This year saw a handful of cinematic villains that I’d rate among the year’s best supporting performances – Denzel Washington stealing the show in Gladiator II, Chris Hemsworth cutting loose in Furiosa and the delicious two-hander of Stellan Skarsgard and Austin Butler in Dune Part 2. And there were two performances this year so surprisingly brilliant that I assumed they were professional actors when in fact they were playing themselves – Sing Sing‘s Clarence Maclin and Kneecap‘s DJ Próvaí. However, I’m going to focus in on a more obscure candidate from a film that actually missed out on qualifying for the Academy Awards. My Best Supporting Actor pick is Franz Rogowski for Bird, a performance unlike any other that entirely sells the ethereal unreality of the film’s title character. Some say an actor’s face is his greatest tool, and Rogowski’s unusual looks provide an excellent starting point for the subtly avian drifter. But I wouldn’t be singing his praises if he was relying on appearances alone – he imbues the role with a sly, impish earnestness that makes it impossible to look away from him. He takes a character that could easily come across as uncomfortably weird and instead makes him weird in a magical, compelling, heartbreaking way. Speaking like an alien learning human language for the first time, contorting himself physically like a house cat that can only relax in the most bizarre poses, Franz Rogowski delivers a performance I can only describe as magical.

The Academy Says – I can’t be mad at Culkin taking it home, a whirlwind performance in a role only he could have pulled off. Probably the best choice of those nominated, though I wouldn’t have been mad about Guy Pearce taking it either.

Actress in a Leading Role

Best Actress traditionally favours big, flashy, bawdy performances over subtlety – best exemplified by Emma Stone winning over Lily Gladstone last year. This year’s nominees follow that trend, with three of the five being for stories about sexism and oppression, and another being about a fantastical allegory for racism. Would it be too much to ask that a woman win the award for a film where she doesn’t have to be horribly abused and/or get her kit off? That said, the best performance of this type last year wasn’t even nominated – Lily Rose Depp for Nosferatu. In a film I was otherwise mixed on, she gave the standout performance, a traditional scream queen role elevated to something much more tragic, resonant and captivating. Kristen Stewart was exceptional in Love Lies Bleeding as an awkward, androgynous gym employee hiding from a tragic past, while Anya Taylor-Joy was transformative in Furiosa, a physically demanding, action-oriented role that she absolutely nailed. And then there’s Maika Monroe in Longlegs, perfectly performing the traditionally masculine archetype of the savant detective. And yet, at the end of the day, I have to give it up to Demi Moore for The Substance. Does it play into every stereotype I’ve lambasted the category for favouring? Oh most definitely. But it’s an undeniably brave performance that avoids getting lost in the overall insanity of the film. Moore finds moments in the madness to quietly express herself, while also throwing herself whole-heartedly into the absurdity. Please note that I still haven’t seen I’m Still Here, which I’m told has a lead performance from Fernanda Torres more in line with the type of subtle drama I advocated for earlier.

The Academy Says – Well this is a surprise. Academy voters will almost always go for the legacy win, as seen at this very show with Brody taking it over Chalamet, so young starlet Mikey Madison winning instead of Demi Moore is a headscratcher. Many have already pointed this out, but Moore being overlooked in favour of the “new hotness” only proves how cutting The Substance‘s script really was. For what it’s wort, Madison was great, the highlight of that film, but once again – can a woman win this award without being abused and/or sexing it up?

Actress in a Supporting Role

Supporting Actress can be an interesting category, as there’s usually more variety in the types of performance they recognise. This year’s regular nominees lack a clear front-runner, but none of them would be my pick anyway. Looking at films that the Academy neglected, Juror #2 features a strong turn from Toni Collette as a career-obsessed lawyer with a snarky attitude and a chilling lack of empathy. Lady Gaga’s performance as Harley Quinn was actually compelling in its guarded strangeness, with the real problem being the result of some wonky scripting and cut content. I think Margaret Qualley deserves to be recognised for all the same reasons as her The Substance co-star. But I’m going to take a different tack here and commit some mild category fraud by picking Zendaya for Dune Part 2. After her fleeting, perfume commercial-coded appearances in the first film, Zendaya’s full performance as Chani proved an unexpected highlight of an already brilliant film. There’s a calm, assured confidence that I wasn’t expecting from her, making the characters seem initially cold and unapproachable, before she opens up and reveals a deeply-felt warmth of spirit. And then there’s the final act, where she conveys betrayal, rage and heartbreak without saying a single word. A performance so good it instantly moved Zendaya from “She was OK in Spider-Man” to “one of the best young actors” on my personal rankings, a sentiment reinforced by Challengers, which I think she should also win for.

The Academy Says – Look, Zoe Saldana is a wonderful, hard-working actress who has been in some stinkers but keeps on plugging away, and has often been the highlight of the franchise films she’s involved in. She’s very deserving of an Academy Award – it’s just a damn shame it has to be for a film destined to be consigned to the garbage heap of history.

Animated Feature Film

For the first time in a few years, I haven’t actually seen a single new animated feature film. Nothing released this year really spoke to me, and also I am a grown man. I do plan on seeing Memoirs of a Snail so uh. That, I guess. Predictively speaking.

The Academy Says – I quite like this trend of the Academy voters picking whatever looks the most artistic instead of the auto-piloting to the latest Disney cartoon. I’m sure Flow is very good.

Animated Short Film

Cinematography

I’m not an expert on exactly what makes good cinematography. I know what I like, what looks good to my eye, but when it comes to judging my favourite cinematography, I try to think of how the image contributes to the story, rather than the abstract, purely technical qualities. For example, Maria was a beautiful piece of visual work, but I don’t feel like that beauty was fully conducive to the story being told. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom had a banner year with three similarly beautiful but stylistically distinct works – Challengers, Queer and Trap, making it completely baffling that none of the three were recognised by the Academy. Horizon: An American Saga – Part 1 was masterfully shot in the style of a classical western, while Dune Part 2 balanced images of epic scope and tactile intimacy. I was almost tempted to choose Sing Sing, which I admired very much for it’s use of geometry and physical space to communicate ideas of confinement and freedom. However, I have to hand it to I Saw the TV Glow, an ethereal fantasy that looks unlike anything else I saw last year. There’s a strange and surreal edge to the way the entire film is lit that is vital to the atmosphere of unease the film builds, and beautifully framed images and camera movements abound. Fittingly for a film about a hidden world behind the television screen, the cinematography makes you feel like you are seeing a real, tangible space you could step into.

The Academy Says – I’ll hand it to The Brutalist, no matter my problems with the direction the story takes, it’s a handsomely shot piece of work, especially impressive for the way it turned a minuscule budget into an enormous sense of scale.

Costume Design

Costume design is almost always going to favour period outfits and sci-fi/fantasy designs, for good reason. As someone who knows very little about clothing, tailoring or the intricacies of real historical drapery, I’m quite easily impressed by any sort film costuming. Rather than numbly list every single period and fantasy film of the year that I liked the outfits in, let’s just cut to the chase – my pick is Furiosa. For one thing, I admire the imagination on display, the anarchic interpretation of what people will wear after society collapses. And the designers brought an enormous variety to the table, with no two wasteland maniacs looking exactly alike, even more impressive when you take in the enormous quantity of uniquely outfitted characters and extras in certain crowd scenes. For all the talk of how the film overused digital elements and lost the tactile quality of Fury Road, the breadth and depth of costumes created for it keep the Wasteland feeling like a real place populated by all manner of ludicrous deviants.

The Academy Says – I guess Wicked has nice costumes. Sure.

Directing

It’s difficult to separate the concept of “Best Direction” from the overall quality of a picture, hence why the two prizes almost always go hand-in-hand. After all, what is the director if not the captain of the ship, the driving force that pulls together every other aspect of production to create the cohesive whole. So it only makes sense, from that perspective, that my picks for Best Director should match my picks for the overall best films of the year. Therefore, my five picks for Best Director – Yorgos Lanthimos for Kinds of Kindness, Andrea Arnold for Bird, Coralie Fargeat for The Substance, Alice Rohrwacher for La Chimera and the overall winner, Denis Villeneuve for Dune Part 2. The fact he isn’t even nominated for the titanic task of pulling together this enormous, unwieldy sci-fi adaptation into something not just comprehensible, but transformative, is insanity.

The Academy Says – Not sure I agree with this. Even if you love Anora, it’s hardly some towering directorial feat. Functionally a screwball comedy on a low budget with obviously loose direction of performances, I struggle to see how this was more impressive than directing something with the scale of The Brutalist or the manic energy of The Substance.

Documentary Feature Film

Didn’t see any of those. Not my problem.

Documentary Short Film

Film Editing

Best Editing is one of the most fundamentally misunderstood categories of filmmaking. More than just how much you can cut from a film, editing dictates the entire ebb and flow of what you see on screen. The editor has the last word on what form the film takes. The temptation is always there to simply follow what stands out and award the film with the Most Editing – Megalopolis, Gladiator II, The Substance and Furiosa all come to mind. Then we have the films that are largely invisible in their editing but have standout sequences of visual invention – Kneecap and its electric musical montages or the intercutting locations of Horizon: An American Saga – Part 1. I am a sucker for non-linear storytelling, a narrative cut to pieces and put back together in the “wrong” order by a skilled editor. That’s why I’m giving Best Editing to Challengers, a film that is fundamentally structured around a single tennis match with extensive, non-linear flashbacks filling gradually giving us the context of this electrically charged sporting duel. The overarching editing of the story, the minute editing within scenes and the incredible dynamism of the tennis scenes – there’s not a single false note to be found here.

The Academy Says – Lol. Lmao even. What is the thought process here? Some pretty montages and quick-cutting does not Best Editing make. Strong suspicion that Anora was specifically awarded in only these four categories specifically so Sean Baker could have the record for most Oscars in one night.

International Feature Film

I’ve only seen a handful of International films this year, with two clear winners. While I think Bird is the better film, it wouldn’t feel right for me to award anything other than Kneecap, a music “biopic” with more bite than I expected going on. Aggressively political, uproariously funny, energetically made, a buzzing blend of culture and style that is exactly the kind of scrappy, in-your-face art we need more of today. The country may be in shit but at least we’re able to scrounge together a little culture for ourselves.

The Academy Says – I’m Still Here seems like the right call, I’ll hopefully catch it soon.

Makeup and Hairstyling

Some great looks served up in the movies this year. Dune Part 2 is filled with wonderfully bald Harkonnens and weather-beaten Fremen faces, Challengers uses subtle hair and makeup changes to age the three leads in a way that’s noticeable without being obtrusive, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just has a hell of a lot of fun with the zany denizens of the underworld and often equally strange-looking living humans of the cast, the title character in Nosferatu is just an insane transformation for Skarsgard. But for sheer audacity, I have to give it up to The Substance, specifically for the practical effects used to hideously age Demi Moore as she loses control of the balance of selves and the magnificent creation that dominates the final act, a creature as delightfully disgusting as anything you’d find in a David Cronenberg body horror. Doing all that practically is tedious, uncomfortable, time-consuming work compared to the convenience of computers, which is why I believe it’s worth awarding.

The Academy Says – They got it right for once. Credit where credit’s due.

Music (Original Score)

I’m going to be real with you – it’s absolutely moronic to decide that Dune Part 2 isn’t allowed to qualify for Best Score just because it’s a sequel when John Williams spent the back end of his career slurping up nominations for Star Wars and Indiana Jones Greatest Hit Albums. Hans Zimmer may not always be the most original (or honest) composer, but the Dune scores are absolutely his late-career masterworks and deserve to be honoured as such. Aside from that, I’d give it to the pounding electronic beats of Challengers, which perfectly supplement and elevate the continuous tension of the plot.

The Academy Says – Of the nominees, The Brutalist absolutely has the most memorable music – the opening music alone goes a long way towards the film’s incredibly strong start and creating the goodwill that keeps you from checking out when the plot derails later on.

Music (Original Song)

This practice of putting a song over the credits so it can get an Academy Award nod drives me mental, because as far as I’m concerned, it’s not really part of the movie unless it is performed during or played over the narrative. For example, Like a Bird from Sing Sing is a fine piece of music, but it only plays over the credits. What impresses me more is something like Trap, with it’s catalogue of original songs that are performed in-universe, but I don’t think any of those songs are especially great, or at least not to my tastes. So this is an easy choice for me – Sick in the Head from Kneecap, an energetic, mood-boosting piece of bilingual wordplay at the centre of some of the film’s most ecstatic, explosive sequences. A song written for the film to tell part of the story, not just to roll the credits over, but also a standalone banger that you can listen to again and again outside of the original context.

The Academy Says – I’ve never watched a full clip for Emilia Perez because every time one crosses my timeline I get annoyed or bored after like twenty seconds. But sure, that’s the Best Song. Whatever.

Best Picture

This is an open and shut category as far as I’m confirmed – Dune Part 2 is by far the greatest film of the year and the second-best sci-fi film of the last decade (the Way of Water has no beginning and no end). A film so monumentally moving I saw it four times in the cinema and never got even slightly tired of what I was watching, incredibly dense but deeply satisfying once you give yourself over to it. I love a Big Movie, I love a complex story, I love me some ridiculous space fantasy action. Long live the fighters!

The Academy Says – I’m still trying to wrap my head around the adoration for Anora, a perfectly good and entertaining film that it no way screams Best Picture. Is it just a symptom of the recent shift towards recognising indie films, in that it happened to be in the right place at the right time to lap up all that aimless goodwill from voters trying to show they support an “issue”?

Production Design

Plenty of transformative fantasy worlds and historical recreations to choose from this year, with an obvious winner, but I’ll humour some honourable mentions. The Substance deserves a nod for the sterile, pastel-coloured environments, instantly recognisable without being overtly fantastical. Furiosa‘s Wasteland is a work of genius, Gladiator II goes big in the classic Hollywood style, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice recaptures that old Burton magic through it’s zany sets. But the brilliance of Dune Part 2 cannot be understated, a tactile vision of an imagined future brought fully to life on a grandiose scale. After complaints of a lack of visual variety in the first movie, we’ve expanded out into worlds so distinct in their design they almost look like different films, from the claustrophobic caves of the Fremen to the brutal geometry of the Harkonnen city-planet. A triumph.

The Academy Says – I can tell they worked hard on the designs for Wicked but it’s unfortunate that they way they’re shot in the actual film makes it all look kind of ugly and drab. A weird one.

Live Action Short Film

Sound

Like Editing, Sound Design is something of an invisible craft – if it’s being done at the highest level, you shouldn’t even notice it. Action movies can be a good place to look for excellence, with their reliance on sound to sell impacts and motion (Furiosa, Twisters, Dune Part 2). And then there’s horror, using sound to unnerve (The Substance, Longlegs). Thinking along those lines, my pick is I Saw the TV Glow for it’s inspired use of sound and silence to create atmosphere. Even the way the dialogue is mixed seems designed to convey that something is off about the world of the film. When the film goes full horror, it does so with the help of some truly sickening noises, inspiring a real nails-on-chalkboard visceral revulsion.

The Academy Says – A deserved win for Dune Part 2, which realistically should have been sweeping all of these below-the-line awards as it’s predecessor did. We can try to convince ourselves that the Academy is saving all it’s love for Part 3, but have you read the book? Even if it’s the best film ever made people are going to hate it.

Visual Effects

Best VFX really means Most VFX when you get down to it. The more VFX you have in your movie, the more impressive it is, with quality as a secondary concern – the average person won’t really differentiate between good and great VFX, only really noticing the bad stuff. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes combines incredible scale and verisimilitude, even if it can’t fully avoid feeling like a really good-looking video game cutscene. Furiosa is similarly impressive and artful, but draws a little too much attention to the artificiality of it all. What film last year combined scale and realism to craft completely seamless, jaw-dropping visual effects that contribute a – oh what the hell, it’s Dune Part 2. Contain your surprise.

The Academy Says – Again, they’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. Any other pick would have been farcical.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

There’s only one film this year that I can analyse as actual adaptation, having read the source material, and that is Dune Part 2. Dune is a dense, unwieldy book, especially in the back half that this film adapts, and an excellent job was done not only translating it to the screen, but expanding upon and refining it in various ways. I was especially impressed with the bulking up of Chani’s role, a character who exists in the book only as a demure love interest for the hero completely transformed into an independent, strong-willed character that adds a more personal perspective to Paul’s arc that the book failed to fully communicate on the page. I can’t wait to see what Villeneuve pulls off with Messiah.

The Academy Says – I can understand why Conclave was picked, but for my money, the plot felt a little half-baked, gesturing at big issues without saying much and running out of steam at what should have been the pinnacle of the tension.

Writing (Original Screenplay)

A great year for original stories all around, with even some of the messier ones deserving praise for their ambition and ingenuity. The Substance, Challengers and I Saw the TV Glow are all films I seriously considered naming in this category, truly original and gripping stories that serve as exceptional launching-off points for the films built up around them. Megalopolis deserves a nod for the sheer insanity on display in it’s disparate ideas and breakneck plotting, while M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap is a classic thriller with some delightful twists on the formula. But I decided I want to highlight a film that was completely frozen out of the awards conversation almost as soon as it released thanks to the confused, divisive reaction from audiences early in the year – Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos’ inscrutable three-part anthology film. While many people tied themselves up in knots trying to “solve” the film or were put off by the blunt nihilism, I was drawn in and thoroughly captivated by the trio of insane fables. There’s definitely a deeper connective tissue baked into the film, but not one that needs to be “solved” – just let the mystery take you away.

The Academy Says – Come on now. Get real. It might seem like I hate Anora but that’s not true, I enjoyed it a lot, but the script is it’s biggest failing. It hinges on a character who is introduced to us an independent, cynical hardass completely buying into a naive fantasy. I understand that that’s the point of the script, that it’s meant to be punishing her for letting her guard down so completely, but I didn’t find it believable. Also, very sloppy narrative structure.

Final Tallies

Dune Part 2 – 7 wins

Challengers – 3 wins

I Saw the TV Glow – 2 wins

Kneecap – 2 wins

The Substance – 2 wins

Bird – 1 win

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – 1 win

Kinds of Kindness – 1 win

Memoirs of a Snail – 1 win

Sing Sing – 1 win