94th Academy Awards Preview and Streaming Guide
Here we are again: it’s yet another year where we’ll be watching all of the major Oscar nominees! We want to know your opinions on everything, so send us a message on Instagram to tell us what you think!
As you might know if you’re a regular reader, the idea for this very blog started as a little project to watch all the Best Picture nominees back in 2014. We didn’t start writing until the pandemic, but we’ve been following the Oscar nominees for so long that it feels like tradition around this time of year. Unlike last year, we’ve seen most of the strong contenders so far, so we have a bit more insight into what happened. At the end, we’re also showing you where you can watch these movies on streaming, if at all, so read on ahead if you’re interested! We will be updating the list on Instagram as we find more movies available!
Best Picture
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Tom: Pour some out for my dear tick, tick…BOOM! While that one didn’t make the cut, I’m pleased to see that Nightmare Alley snuck its way in, and it’s always great to see a foreign language film (the Japanese Drive My Car) get a nod as well. I adored CODA, Belfast, and Dune, but I don’t think any of those are going to take the award home. I’ve yet to see Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, and West Side Story, but they're coming up soon for us as soon as they’re available to rent or otherwise stream. The winner…can’t be Don’t Look Up, can it? I feel like it fits all the checkmarks of a Green Book-style win. But simply based on the strength of its nominations, I’m going to go with the cold, surgical The Power of the Dog to come away with the win.
Erin: I look at this list with a smile because I only have three to watch before the ceremony! Boo to tick, tick…BOOM! being snubbed—that was one of my favorites this year. But overall I’m happy with this list. Except for Don’t Look Up…sorry Timothee Chalamaniacs. Oh, I have to pick a winner? Is this who I want to win, or who I think will win? I want Belfast because I cried almost the entire time. It was like every emotion seeping out of my eyeballs for 90 minutes. I do think Power of the 🐩 is going to win though.
Best Director
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)
Tom: Jane Campion is the first woman to be nominated for this award twice in the history of the Academy Awards, which is awesome but like……yeah, it’s 2022. (1993’s The Piano was her other honor). She’s the odds-on favorite here given the love for Power of the Dog all awards season, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they handed this one to Hamaguchi or Anderson. As noted above, we haven’t seen three of these, but I can’t help but feel that Denis Villeneuve was snubbed for Dune — he is a true master of his craft.
Erin: Lolz why are all three of the movies we haven’t seen on this list? Soooo I really DK here. Do you know who was snubbed? The director of the weirdest commercial I have seen in a long time—an ad about visiting Ft Lauderdale that is just thumping dance music droning on as hot people lounge on a yacht. NOMINATE THAT YOU COWARDS.
Best Actor
Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos as Desi Arnaz)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog as Phil Burbank)
Andrew Garfield (tick, tick…BOOM! as Jonathan Larson)
Will Smith (King Richard as Richard Williams)
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth as Lord Macbeth)
Tom: Bardem over Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley) and Nicolas Cage (Pig) hurts my soul. I’m a big Bardem fan, but Being the Ricardos was just…not it. This category is a bit muddled. I think Cumberbatch was the early favorite, but that quickly turned to Smith, who has held the frontrunner status for the bulk of the race. But can you ever really count out Denzel, who was most recently beaten in 2017 for his fantastic work in Fences? And Garfield absolutely crushed his role in one of the most likable and emotional movies of the year. My heart tells me it’s Garfield’s award to lose, but in reality, it’s probably going to go to Smith, who was also great.
Erin: Okay, no, obviously Javier Bardem should not have been nominated here, but his rendition of “Cuban Pete” slaps and it slaps hard. I want Andrew Garfield to win for his stirring performance as theater god Jonathan Larson, and you know what? I think he will!
Best Actress
Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye as Tammy Faye Bakker)
Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter as Leda Caruso)
Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers as Janis Martinez Moreno)
Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos as Lucille Ball)
Kristen Stewart (Spencer as Diana, Princess of Wales)
Tom: In last year’s post, I mentioned that despite having no number to back it up, I felt like typically the Best Actress nominees weren’t in the Best Picture movies. Well, here are the numbers: prior to this year, only 13 of the 25 Best Actress nominees were in Best Picture-nominated films, as compared to 18 of the 25 Best Actor nominees. This year? Only two Best Actor nominees….and zero Best Actress nominees are in the Best Picture movies. Weird stuff. Anyway, we’ve only seen three of these (Tammy Faye, The Lost Daughter, and Being the Ricardos) and for me it’s Colman all the way. But it’s going to be Kidman. Sigh.
Erin: So many people that I thought were going to be nominated were NOT nominated wowza. I still need to see two of these but I love any Olivia Colman acceptance speech and she allegedly was one of the only people not to actively campaign for a nom so I love her. Plus she always puts in WORK.
Best Supporting Actor
Ciarán Hinds (Belfast as “Pop”)
Troy Kotsur (CODA as Frank Rossi)
Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog as George Burbank)
J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos as William Frawley)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog as Peter Gordon)
Tom: Plemons and Simmons over Jamie Dornan (Belfast) is insanity to me. I’m never going to complain about Plemons because he’s so likable and he’s great in everything, but Dornan meant so much more to Belfast than either of these actors did to their respective films. But if there’s any of these that you have to watch, it’s Troy Kotsur’s performance in CODA as the deaf father to Emilia Jones’s character. He’s incredible. Smit-McPhee is going to win though.
Erin: Jamie Dornan not being nominated for Belfast is clearly dumb and stupid. Obsessed with my king Ciaran Hinds and I would be happy with him taking home the trophy, but my pick is gonna be Troy Kotsur in CODA. That scene in the bed of the truck near the end…sobs until the end of time.
Best Supporting Actress
Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter as young Leda Caruso)
Ariana DeBose (West Side Story as Anita)
Judi Dench (Belfast as “Granny”)
Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog as Rose Gordon)
Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard as Oracene “Brandy” Price)
Tom: Jessie Buckley was a surprise! So was Judi Dench (but in a bad way — this was Caitriona Balfe’s spot). I think DeBose has this in the bag just from reading what I’ve been reading all awards season, but haven’t seen that one yet. I’m happy to see Dunst and Ellis get some recognition too!
Erin: boycotting this category because Catriona Balfe wasn’t nominated. ✌🏻SHE WAS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE MOVIE. God. Ummm okay so I will probably pick Ariana DeBose because I loved Anita in the OG West Side Story and I know she’s going to turn it out.
Best Original Screenplay
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Adam McKay and David Sirota (Don’t Look Up)
Zach Baylin (King Richard)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World)
Tom: I watched the nomination reveal live and I yelled when I heard them reveal The Worst Person in the World. I’m so, so happy that that movie got the nomination. It’s not going to win because I think Belfast and Licorice Pizza are strong contenders. But I truly can’t count out Don’t Look Up in this awards cycle despite how much it makes me groan thinking about it. I’ll go with Licorice Pizza here even though I, again, haven’t seen it.
Erin: As stated before, Belfast made this pregnant lady blubber even more than she normally does (I had a bad day and have been crying all afternoon and night can you tell I’m emotional??)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Sian Heder (CODA)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe (Drive My Car)
Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth (Dune)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Tom: Dune was the one that I was happy to see make it here, as those guys made a notoriously hard-to-adapt text into a spectacle of a movie. The Lost Daughter also tackled a subject that could have been hard to make into a watchable movie, but I really enjoyed its exploration of complex themes about motherhood. Still, I think it’s going to be Campion’s takedown of toxic masculinity in The Power of the Dog that takes this.
Erin: The Power of the 🐕 is probably my guess for the win here although I must say, I wasn’t blown away by any of these screenplays that I’ve seen so far. I gotta see two of em though!
Best Cinematography
Greig Fraser (Dune)
Dan Laustsen (Nightmare Alley)
Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog)
Bruno Delbonnel (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
Janusz Kamiński (West Side Story)
Tom: C’mon. This is gonna be Dune, right? The movie is beautiful. From what I’ve seen, the other contenders are all top notch visually as well, but I don’t think Dune can be matched.
Erin: Okay sorry, but Dune has two of my three no-no settings: space AND sand. I’m going with The Power of the 🐶 because I’m a petty gurl that loves the drama with my husband.
Best Animated Feature
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon
Tom: Encanto will win, but I LOVED The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and I’m excited to watch Flee, the first film ever to be nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature, and Best International Feature all in the same year. That’s pretty cool.
Erin: We watched The Mitchells vs the Machines on a shady bus ride across the western United States for our honeymoon this summer and I was obsessed with it!! Plz win!!
Best Documentary Feature
Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Writing with Fire
Tom: Flee is notable for the reasons I mentioned in the Best Animated Feature category, but I would be PUMPED if Summer of Soul won. It’s a documentary by Questlove, one of my favorite musicians, who cut together restored footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured performances by the likes of Mahalia Jackson, Sly & the Family Stone, and Stevie Wonder. It’s a super cool documentary that I can’t recommend enough.
Erin: I have only seen Summer of Soul but I really loved it!! I’m sometimes wary of watching Oscar nominated documentaries because my empathy meter sometimes is like, at 107 degrees, which doesn’t work when you are watching something that really happened. I’ll probably ask Tom to tell me which ones he liked.
Best International Feature
Drive My Car (Japan)
Flee (Denmark)
The Hand of God (Italy)
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan)
The Worst Person in the World (Norway)
Tom: We’ve only seen The Worst Person in the World as part of our Sundance excursion, and I absolutely adored it. Please check that out once it’s available! And the fact that it also got an Adapted Screenplay nomination intrigues me. But Drive My Car is up for Best Picture, so it’s kind of impossible to pick against it here.
Erin: The Worst Person in the World was lovely—check out our Sundance reviews. I haven’t seen the others, but will obviously watch Drive My Car…it’s really longgggg though omg
Best Animated Short
Affairs of the Art
Bestia
Boxballet
Robin Robin
The Windshield Wiper
We haven’t watched any of the shorts, so we’re not going to talk about this one. For what it’s worth, Robin Robin, a 32-minute stop-motion film about a bird raised by mice questioning her place in the world, is the favorite on Variety’s predictions page.
Best Documentary Short Subject
Audible
Lead Me Home
The Queen of Basketball
Three Songs for Benazir
When We Were Bullies
See above. Variety’s favorite in this category is Audible, a 39-minute short on Netflix about kids at a Deaf school using football and relationships to help them deal with a tragedy.
Live Action Short
Ala Kachuu - Take and Run
The Dress
The Long Goodbye
On My Mind
Please Hold
See above. The favorite, according to Variety, is The Long Goodbye, a 12-minute short film starring and co-written by last year’s Best Actor nominee Riz Ahmed, about a man and his family encountering a far-right protest that comes to their door.
Best Original Score
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Encanto
Parallel Mothers
The Power of the Dog
Tom: I know we’ve had like, decades of Hans Zimmer now, but the dude is a god when it comes to setting music to blockbusters. We’ve yet to see Parallel Mothers, but to me Dune is far ahead of the field because of how it created the atmosphere and tension in the movie and it helped flesh out the world. The score is like a character in that movie. It’s Zimmer and Dune here. This is going to be a theme.
Erin: This isn’t my thing! Hans Zimmer probably will win.
Best Original Song
“Be Alive” (King Richard)
“Dos Oruguitas” (Encanto)
“Down to Joy” (Belfast)
“No Time to Die” (No Time to Die)
“Somehow You Do” (Four Good Days)
Tom: Unfortunately, Disney chose “Dos Oruguitas” for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s latest attempt at an EGOT before it realized that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” and “Surface Pressure” would blow up like they did. And, for a movie I’d legitimately never heard of before today, Four Good Days, Diane Warren picked up her thirteenth nomination in this category without a single victory. But I think they’re gonna roll with Billie Eilish for “No Time to Die” here.
Erin: Right so I was team Diane Warren last year because I felt bad she didn’t win after a million nominations but I vaguely remember that she was not a gracious loser last year so I’m thinking maybe Lin Manuel Miranda for his EGOT to make up for the tick, tick…BOOM! best picture snub?
Best Sound
Belfast
Dune
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Tom: I think Dune is going to dominate the technical awards. It’s something that hasn’t really been put on screen before in any comparable way in terms of scope, sound, and atmosphere. It’s a technical marvel. I wouldn’t be totally shocked if No Time to Die or Power of the Dog got this, but I’m picking Dune.
Erin: Literally don’t even know what this means 😘
Best Production Design
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Tom: I think that Dune might be the favorite here, but I actually think I’m going to pick Nightmare Alley. I’ve talked a lot about Dune’s immersion, but without Guillermo del Toro’s meticulous attention to detail regarding carnival culture in the 1940s, Nightmare Alley would have been an utter failure. I think its success in creating the sets for the movie elevated it to the next level.
Erin: NIGHTMARE ALLEY FOR THIS ONE I MEAN HAVE YOU SEEN CATE BLANCHETT’S OFFICE?! A total dream.
Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Coming 2 America
Cruella
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Tom: Cool to see Coming 2 America nominated…I think. I’m actually not going with Dune here either, despite how hot they made Stellan Skarsgard — it’s a toss-up between Tammy Faye and House of Gucci. Let’s go with Gucci because they made Jared Leto look absolutely hilarious.
Erin: I pick Tammy Faye because they managed to get Jim Bakker’s insane jaw line exactly right and that is a feat.
Best Costume Design
Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story
Tom: We haven’t seen Cruella, Cyrano, or West Side Story, but they all look beautiful in terms of costuming. And Nightmare Alley’s fashion is so perfectly carny noir. The attires of the characters are, like the score, almost like a character in Dune, but in this category, I think they might go with West Side Story. Maybe not. This is probably boring for you, but I’m picking Dune. Nope, I’m picking West Side Story.
Erin: West Side Story maybe? Just because when I see the previews I’m like “oooooh” so that’s a good sign!
Best Film Editing
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
The Power of the Dog
tick, tick…BOOM!
Tom: The editing in any Adam McKay movie gives me a headache, and Don’t Look Up is no different. Power of the Dog and the frenetic tick, tick…BOOM! are contenders here, but…you guessed it…my prediction is D U N E.
Erin: Please…anything but Don’t Look Up. I beg you.
Best Visual Effects
Dune
Free Guy
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Tom: Apologies to the Marvel contingent for only getting the two nominees here and nowhere else despite the campaign for No Way Home for Best Picture. More apologies because I’m going with Dune.
Erin: I pick Dune because those worms were crazy!
Where to Stream the Contenders
(with links to trailers)
Belfast (7 nominations): buy for $19.99 on Prime Video >:(
CODA (3 nominations): Apple TV+
Don’t Look Up (4 nominations): Netflix
Drive My Car (4 nominations): HBO Max on March 2
Dune (10 nominations): HBO Max
King Richard (6 nominations): buy for $24.99 on Prime Video >:(
Licorice Pizza (3 nominations): not yet available, still in some theaters
Nightmare Alley (4 nominations): HBO Max
The Power of the Dog (12 nominations): Netflix
West Side Story (7 nominations): HBO Max and Disney+ on March 2
Affairs of the Art (1 nomination): YouTube (full short linked)
Ala Kachuu - Take and Run (1 nomination): not yet available
Ascension (1 nomination): Paramount Plus
Attica (1 nomination): Showtime
Audible (1 nomination): Netflix
Being the Ricardos (3 nominations): Prime Video
Bestia (1 nomination): not yet available
Boxballet (1 nomination): not yet available
Coming 2 America (1 nomination): Prime Video
Cruella (2 nominations): Disney+
Cyrano (1 nomination): theaters February 25, 2022
The Dress (1 nomination): YouTube for a limited time (full short linked)
Encanto (3 nominations): Disney+
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2 nominations): HBO Max
Flee (3 nominations): Hulu
Free Guy (1 nomination): Disney+ on 2/23/22
Four Good Days (1 nomination): Hulu
The Hand of God (1 nomination): Netflix
House of Gucci (1 nomination): buy for $19.99 on Prime Video >:(
Lead Me Home (1 nomination): Netflix
The Long Goodbye (1 nomination) YouTube (full short linked)
The Lost Daughter (3 nominations): Netflix
Luca (1 nomination): Disney+
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (1 nomination): not yet available
The Mitchells vs. The Machines (1 nomination): Netflix
No Time to Die (3 nominations): rent for $5.99 on Prime Video or Apple TV
On My Mind (1 nomination): not yet available
Parallel Mothers (2 nominations): not yet available
Please Hold (1 nomination): not yet available
The Queen of Basketball (1 nomination): YouTube (full short linked)
Raya and the Last Dragon (1 nomination): Disney+
Robin Robin (1 nomination): Netflix
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (1 nomination): Disney+
Spencer (1 nomination): Hulu
Spider-Man: No Way Home (1 nomination): Starz “sometime in the next six months”
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (1 nomination): Hulu
Three Songs for Benazir (1 nomination): Netflix
tick, tick…BOOM! (2 nominations): Netflix
The Tragedy of Macbeth (3 nominations): Apple TV+
When We Were Bullies (1 nomination): not yet available
The Windshield Wiper (1 nomination): YouTube (full short linked)
The Worst Person in the World (2 nominations): not yet available
Writing with Fire (1 nomination): not yet available