The 97th Academy Awards in a weekend’s time will offer one more red-carpet push for the films that dominated both the critical discourse and the box office for the past 12 months. But there are a Dolby Theatre’s worth of eligible movies that didn’t get any love from the Academy at all. Which is why The Globe and Mail presents its annual Alterna-Oscars: a quick guide to the should’ve-been-contenders – and how you can watch them from the comfort of your own home this weekend.
Nightbitch (Disney+)
Amy Adams in a scene from Nightbitch.The Associated Press
Should’ve Been Nominated for: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor
There is something profoundly sad about Marielle Heller’s compelling new black comedy Nightbitch. And it’s not just the story, which follows an unnamed woman (Amy Adams) as she struggles in her journey from successful cosmopolitan visual artist to stay-at-home mother stuck in cookie-cutter suburbia, left to care for her young son as her well-meaning but doltish husband (Scoot McNairy) frequently travels for business. The real tragedy of Nightbitch is how the film was dumped by its distributor Searchlight Pictures, bypassing Canadian theatres entirely (it received a very limited theatrical run in the United States in December), and only quietly shuffled its way onto Disney+ with so little fanfare you’d think the red-carpet world premiere it received at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September was a doggone daydream. All of which have, of course, squandered any awards talk for the film’s two very deserving leads: Adams delivers one of her most fearless performances in a career absolutely stacked with them. And if you aren’t already a McNairy fan, then Nightbitch will send you deep down into the rabbit hole that is the actor’s IMDb profile.
Between the Temples (Hoopla, on-demand via Apple TV)
Jason Schwartzman in Between the Temples.Supplied
Should’ve Been Nominated for: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Editing
Directed by Nathan Silver, Between the Temples is a deliberately unbalanced affair about confused souls trying and often failing to navigate the fine line between tragedy and comedy. Yet you wouldn’t expect such genuine power from a straight-from-Sundance film whose logline screams indie-cinema quirk. Following an upstate New York cantor named Ben (Jason Schwartzman, excellent) who is facing an existential crisis after the accidental death of his wife, the story starts off cute before adding on a layer of c’mon-now-unbelievability when Ben reconnects with his old grade-school music teacher, Carla (Carol Kane, just as good as Schwartzman). Turns out that the off-kilter woman in her 60s now wishes to be bat-mitzvahed – and the kind but depressed cantor is the only one who can teach the long-lapsed Jew some lessons on the Torah. Although sometimes dizzying and disorienting, the visual language of Between the Temples is relentlessly alive, with the camera never considering-slash-allowing for the possibility that its audiences’ eyes might wander. Consider Silver’s throwback aesthetic both a cure for contemporary boredom and a not-so-veiled threat against the temptation to become distracted by whatever is happening on your phone.
Hit Man (Netflix)
Glen Powell and Adria Arjona in Hit Man.Netflix
Should’ve Been Nominated for: Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay
A compact, perfectly sculpted force of drawling charisma and bottomless machismo, Glen Powell grabs every inch of the screen in Richard Linklater’s dark romantic comedy. The actor is not so much chewing scenery as rolling his tongue around it. He seduces and destroys as if it was pure instinct. Which is what makes his performance in Hit Man so irresistible: Linklater knows exactly the power that his leading man commands, but instead of lazily exploiting it off the top, the director reverse-engineers a charm offensive so earth-shaking that it registers on the Richter scale. It’s anyone’s guess as to why Academy members decided to turn their heads on this star-making performance, anchored by an intensely funny and clever script by both Linklater and Powell.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Crave)
A scene from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/The Associated Press
Should’ve Been Nominated for: Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography
Once asked to describe his love for director George Miller’s action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road, fellow filmmaker Steven Soderbergh summed up his admiration neatly: “I don’t understand how they’re still not shooting that film, and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.” While Miller’s 2015 epic didn’t actually kill anyone during its production – even if it might have momentarily stopped a few million moviegoers’ hearts along the way – you get the same sense of shock-and-awe wonder while watching Fury Road’s follow-up, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Every single human instinct nudges you toward accepting the cruel reality that Miller and his collaborators surely must have murdered scores of innocent extras and stunt professionals while barrelling toward the production’s wrap, so brutally outlandish is the on-screen mayhem. There are deaths by bullets, fire, harpoons and, in one particularly gnarly sequence, a doohickey that combines medieval mace balls with an aircraft piston engine to create the stuff of steam-punk nightmares. It is all then soundtracked to the guttural grunts of an eternally revving V8, loud enough to shake your bones and steal your soul.
Didi (Prime Video)
Joan Chen, left, and Izaac Wang in Didi.Courtesy of Focus Features / Talking Fish Pictures/The Associated Press
Should’ve Been Nominated for: Best Supporting Actress
A wonderfully uncomfortable, deeply hilarious coming-of-age movie, Sean Wang’s Didi plays like an extended and surprisingly welcome visit to the filmmaker’s childhood bedroom, if it happened to be preserved in the amber-ooze of Mountain Dew Code Red circa 2008. That is the year – the summer, specifically – in which 13-year-old Chris, a.k.a. Didi (Izaac Wang), is trying to figure out so much of himself and his ever-changing surroundings. Living with his Taiwanese single mother Chungsing (Joan Chen), college-bound sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) and nai nai/grandmother (Chang Li Hua) in the suburbs of Fremont, Calif., Didi doesn’t seem to be interested in much other than arguing with his family, skateboarding and trying to get closer to his crush. Obviously mining his own youth for the material, Wang does a remarkable job of digging deep into the uglier, more cringeworthy corners of his memory, a courageous route given that so many other storytellers might instead choose to sit in the comfortable corners of sun-dappled nostalgia. And none of it would work as well as it does without the grounding presence of Chen, who deserves a spotlight that this film’s awards campaign has failed to deliver.