9 of the 2022 Academy Award nominations’ biggest snubs and best surprises

Films about “messy women” are having a moment. (See: Best International Feature nominee The Worst Person In The World.) But it’s unexpected of the Academy to extend that grace to Jessie Buckley in The Lost Daughter, however, for two reasons: First, because Buckley’s character expresses the film’s theme of ambivalence about motherhood at its most challenging. Second, , this is a classic supporting performance, one that is more about creating context for Olivia Colman’s lead performance than it is about stealing scenes—a technique that, traditionally, is more likely to get you an Oscar than Buckley’s enigmatic work here.

Asghar Farhadi is a major international director. He’s been nominated for an Oscar before, garnering a Best Original Screenplay nod for his 2011 masterpiece A Separation. And A Hero, like all of Farhadi’s films, is a major work that’s been hailed by critics and feted at festivals around the world. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes, for goodness’ sake! So perhaps the Academy could have cleared one of the spots reserved for Drive My Car and Flee—no disrespect to those films, but they’re well represented in other categories—for this subtly devastating, brilliantly written and performed character study?

Although The Power Of The Dog was all but guaranteed to get some Academy Awards nominations this year, seeing it lead the race with 12 nods is a pleasant surprise. Of those 12, the most unexpected is Jesse Plemons’ nomination for Best Supporting Actor, given his subdued straight-man performance in the film—and the fact that most of the buzz thus far has focused on his co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s sweet that Plemons’ real-life partner and fellow nominee Kirsten Dunst , though.

Absolutely nothing for Wes Anderson, huh? Not even a nomination for Best Production Design, a category that was basically made for him and his meticulously, lovingly designed films? Or how about Best Original Screenplay? The anthology format Anderson uses in his loving tribute to midcentury magazine journalism suits his storytelling style especially well. Ah, well—the cast and crew of The French Dispatch Of The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sunwill just have to settle for being .

A flurry of crafts nominations was a given for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s sumptuously detailed adaptation of the inconclusive first half of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic. And it got them, picking up nods for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup And Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and Best Visual Effects. With those types of numbers, a Best Picture nomination may have been inevitable—at least, in a post-Black Panther world where sci-fi blockbusters are considered serious awards fare. But Best Adapted Screenplay came as a surprise, given that the film’s abrupt ending annoyed many critics and viewers. But hey, at least this guarantees that they’ll resolve that nagging cliffhanger in part two.

This was never going to happen, but wouldn’t it have been fun if it did? At least France got the message, awarding Julia Ducournau’s visionary second feature the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and selecting it as the country’s official entry for Best International Feature. The weirdo, gender-bending, feminist body-horror future is coming whether you like it or not, Academy—resist at your own peril.