Many entered, but only five were allowed to stay. The Academy announced their nominations for this year’s Oscar awards this morning and to our complete surprise, Boss Baby: Family Business was completely shut out. The remaining pictures are as follows. Only one will get to take home a heavy statue of a bald hairless man. Each will be now examined for their chances at it…
RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON
Raya screwed up when she let the artifact that keeps her entire continent safe fall into the hands of a total jerk. Now 90% of her kingdom’s people are granite and she has understandable trust issues.
ITS CHANCES: TEN TO ONE
It’s been a long year and some of you may be surprised that Raya isn’t over a year old. Excitement over it has died down and that could influence the voting. This was a good film, but the best one of the year? We wouldn’t go that far.
THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES
The Mitchells’ daughter is going off to college, but the robot apocalypse hits while her parents are driving her there. Not only is this bad luck, it amplifies the family squabble they were having that morning — but they’ll have to learn to get along to survive.
ITS CHANCES: THREE TO ONE
Disney owns three-fifths of the movies in the nomination list, but Sony has Lord Miller, the creators of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, which took a no-contest Oscar win. Mitchells is another superb film from ’em with a great story, super humor and innovative animation tricks. It has a good shot.
LUCA
The heartwarming tale of two fish-boys who just want to have some fun on land, and the oppressive land-dwellers who would kill and eat them if they saw their true forms.
ITS CHANCES: SEVEN TO ONE
A lot of people felt underwhelmed by Luca because they went into it expecting the usual Pixar tropes of big laughs and big tears. Luca, despite its monstrous leads, is a slice-of-life movie with realistic kids and a down-to-earth plot. It’s a good film, but perhaps not loud enough to beat its competition.
ENCANTO
Mirabel lives in a magic house that gave her entire family superpowers — except for her! What to do about it? Sing a ton of catchy earworms that won’t leave your head for months.
ITS CHANCES: TWO TO ONE
Remember when Titanic won Best Picture in 1998? At the time, it was the hugest movie in the world. As much as the Academy hates to admit it, popularity does have some influence over their choices, and with all the voters’ kids singing “Bruno, no, no, no, no” every single day, Encanto is getting better “For Your Consideration” advertising than the rest (and for free).
FLEE
What’s Flee? It’s the obligatory indie pick made to keep the Oscars from feeling like a complete corporate-controlled farce. But it’s also a half-documentary about a gay man living in Afghanistan during the 90s and whose life is in obvious danger from the Taliban, so he drops everything and makes a run for Denmark.
ITS CHANCES: FIVE TO ONE
It’s not unprecedented for the Oscar voters to go for an outlier, even when they have multiple Disney flicks to choose from.
