Films that should be nominated for Oscars in 2024, but won’t be

If there was an Oscar category for stunts or fight choreography (and there really should be), might not have made it on this list. As it is, this crossover Bollywood-influenced action rom-com with a witty script and fantastic cast will most likely go unrecognized by the Academy. This may not be writer-director Nida Manzoor’s year for an Oscar nomination, but she’s got a promising career ahead of her and we’ll be on the lookout for whatever she comes up with next (besides a new season of We Are Lady Parts, obviously).

In another year, with less robust competition in the animation category, we might have seen a film like make the cut. Unfortunately, there were quite a few excellent animated features in 2023. Which means this whimsical, dialogue-free, surprisingly emotional story about a dog and his robot may very well get overlooked. We still think there should be room for something as original and intricate as this creation from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger among the more prominent studio releases.

If classic rom-coms are poised to make a comeback, would be a solid model to emulate. It balances the romance and the comedy with a fun hook and a pair of charming leads in David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah, whose energy leaps off the screen. It’s nice to see that the film has been getting some love from organizations like the British Independent Film Awards, and the Toronto Film Critics Association, but an Oscar nod seems like a longshot at this point.

Perhaps it’s unfair to to compare it to this year’s other big anime release, The Boy And The Heron, but it was bound to happen. If there’s only room for one Japanese title in the best animated feature category (not that it’s a rule or anything), the nomination will probably go to Hayao Miyazaki’s maybe-final masterpiece. That shouldn’t overshadow this ethereal and gorgeously animated adventure about a girl and her chair (sort of) from Makoto Shinkai, the director of the equally brilliant and mind-bending Your Name and Weathering With You.

This year it seemed like A24 was starting to move away from “elevated horror” and getting into a wider variety of projects. was one of the few exceptions. An impressive debut from directing team Danny and Michael Philippou, it’s perfectly aligned with the indie studio’s artsy, thoughtful approach to the genre. The Academy still has some catching up to do, though. There’s still only been a handful of Best Picture nominees that could be considered horror films (the most recent being Get Out in 2017), and only one, The Silence Of The Lambs, has ever won the category.

There’s a category for Best Documentary at the Oscars, so why can’t there be one for Best Mockumentary too? After all, they require the skill sets of both fictional and non-fictional productions to achieve the effect of a narrative feature that looks and feels unscripted. If the category did exist, would be a lock for at least a nomination. The film, from longtime pals Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin, Nick Lieberman, and Ben Platt, gleefully approaches that tricky task with the same energy a theater kid brings to a starring role in their high school production of Bye Bye Birdie. Sadly, no such award exists at this time, and we don’t need a tear stick to cry over that.

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s most recent film, , is about creative self-doubt and the little white lies we tell ourselves and each other, just to get by. So, in the spirit of the film, we’d like to say that it’s absolutely worthy of an Oscar nomination in at least one major category—Julia Louis-Dreyfus for her performance in the lead role of Beth, for starters—and that if it doesn’t get one, it’s only because the Academy doesn’t recognize greatness when it sees it. The nice thing is, we wouldn’t be completely lying about that.