At the highest platform in American film awards, the elusive Oscar nomination is the top honor bestowed upon Hollywood as filmmakers, actors, and craft contributors compete for months in critics groups and industry awards with the hope of gaining enough momentum to have their name announced in a list of five at 5:30 AM California local time. On January 24^th, Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams finally turned those dreams into reality for many films and filmmakers whose legacy will now always have an Oscar nomination attached to their IMDb profile. With this celebration for a select few, however, there also comes the harsh reality for even more who are surprised (or snubbed) and who become locked into leaving the Dolby Theatre empty-handed without a nomination to their name. Every year, we encounter this reality of winners, losers, and surprises that either match our hopes or elude predictability to the point of frustrating every prognosticator enough to rack their brain at how they missed those predictions but not enough to keep them from repeating history with the same passion and intensity the very next year.

Here are the five biggest winners, losers, and surprises of the 95^th Academy Award nominations.

Winners

1. A24

Back in August, I wrote “Why A24 Needs to Show Up at the 2023 Oscars,” reflecting on the ten-year anniversary of the boutique independent film distribution company and its varied history with the Academy Awards. With 18 nominations spanning 14 categories, A24 answered the call that I set forth justifying the marketing and campaign approaches the company has taken in addition to the large equity investment that ultimately produced the strongest slate of films in a calendar year in their history. Leading the pack was, of course Everything Everywhere All at Once, the maximalist sensation that has continued to take awards season by storm through the Oscar nominations claiming the title of nomination leader with 11 recognitions in Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress x2, Lead Actress, Supporting Actor, Score, Song, Film Editing, and Costume Design.

2. The Nation State of Ireland

In a surprise nomination, The Quiet Girl managed to swipe a nomination in the crowded Best International Feature race, becoming the first Irish-language film to be nominated in the category. But the Irish success didn’t stop there, withThe Banshees of Inisherin collecting nine total nominations in addition to An Irish Goodbye for Best Live Action short and Irishman Paul Mescal for his role in Aftersun. All around, a feckin’ great day for the nation state of Ireland and its talent.

3. The Three Amigos

The Mexican filmmaking trifecta of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro, commonly known as “The Three Amigos,” did not individually overperform in particularly “winning” fashion, but collectively, the three gathered a significant presence with historical significance. Iñárritu’s Mexican submission to the 95th Academy Awards, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, was not nominated in the Best International Feature category, but it did make an appearance for cinematographer Darius Khondji, a small win for the film, which has not gained the expected momentum throughout this awards season. Guillermo del Toro joined him by only receiving one nomination for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, with many expecting potential success in other categories outside of Animated Feature, but del Toro remains the heavy frontrunner to win in its one category. Lastly, Alfonso Cuarón did not have a feature film in 2022, but he was nominated as a producer for Le Pupille in the Best Live Action Short category putting him into the Academy Awards history books by tying for the most categories ever nominated in with seven (Live Action Short Film, Directing, Cinematography, Picture, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, and Editing). Although each director is accustomed to more above the line success, the collective nomination haul amongst The Three Amigos this year is an Oscar’s win.

4. Representation for Asian Acting nominees (and first-time nominees overall)

Asian representation in major categories is very gradually beginning to increase, but acting categories are still lagging in recognizing deserving Asian actors and actresses. Even Parasite, a film that broke barriers and records, was unable to land a single acting nomination. This year, three Asian members of the Everything Everywhere All at Once cast, including breakthrough actress Stephanie Hsu, were able to land in their respective categories. Michelle Yeoh’s nomination in Best Lead Actress marks only the second Asian woman to be nominated for the award, the first who openly identifies as Asian (Merle Oberon in 1935 hid her ancestry). On top of the EEAAO cast, Hong Chau added to the list for her role in The Whale. All four of these first-time nominees join a list of 16/20 in the acting categories showing up for the first time at the Oscars, another record.

5. Best Picture Box Office

For the first time since 1982, the top two grossing films of the year were nominated for Best Picture. That statistic is difficult to believe, but traditionally the Academy does not often get behind box office hits in a way that supports an alignment between award recognition and commercial success. With theaters still at a major financial crossroads in a post-pandemic landscape, however, the Oscars may have had no choice but to promote mainstream hits for the role they’ve had in keeping the theater experience alive. This year’s class of ten Best Picture nominees cumulatively adds up to the highest grossing total in Oscar’s history with Avatar: The Way of Water currently at over 2.2 billion and Top Gun: Maverick topping out at around 1.5 billion. Box office successes were celebrated in 2022, and the Academy is surely hoping this will translate into improved ratings down the road.

Losers

1. Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis

The most talked about category of the morning certainly fell to Best Lead Actress, a category that has been fluid all season long but culminated in multiple shocking surprises outside of the assumed Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett frontrunners. While Yeoh’s nomination should certainly be celebrated for its representational history, as noted above, it is nearly impossible to overlook what transpired at the bottom end of the category where Frances Fisher’s presumed “locks” and the two black women competing for a spot this year were both left off the final ballot. In a year where representation appeared to take two steps forward, the omission of Deadwyler and Davis is also one giant step back.

2. Nope for Nope

Jordan Peele burst onto the Academy Award scene with his debut 2017 film Get Out, which took home Best Original Screenplay, but even with that early support in his career, Nope proved too much of a genre film to appeal to voters in his third directorial effort. Despite displaying Peele’s most well-rounded and ambitious work as a director, with huge production value increases in everything from sound to cinematography below the line, no element of the sci-fi spectacle below or above the line drew significant attention.

3. Korean Cinema…again

The Academy deciding to leave on Park Chan-wook is a baffling one for fans of the Korean auteur’s latest neo-noir romance thriller, but not one that should come as a surprise when you look at the track record of Korean films at the Oscars. Despite being a massive outlier with its four wins including Best Picture, Parasite is still the only Korean film to receive a nomination in any category in the history of the Academy Awards. Many, including myself, feel that Park Chan-wook is long overdue for international awards recognition, especially after he was also blanked for what I consider to be a modern masterpiece in The Handmaiden, and this year was a chance for the Academy to rectify its perplexing relationship with Korean cinema at the very least in the International Feature category, although Decision to Leave was among the year’s best in many other departments.

4. Female Directors

In the wake of two straight years with women taking home the Best Director prize (Chloe Zhao for Nomadland and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog), it was ultimately disappointing to witness a return to male-centric form for the Oscar’s in the words of Natalie Portman, “Here are the all-male nominees.” Although the scenario this year is less an indictment on the male-centric Academy voting body and more an indictment on the industry not greenlighting and promoting enough female stories told by female voices, it is still unfortunate to see efforts from Sarah Polley (Women Talking), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King), and others be consistently overlooked throughout the season.

5. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, and maybe that brand of prestige filmmaking

Chazelle, who was on the path toward becoming a new Academy favorite with his two screenplay nominations for Whiplash and La La Land, and the youngest Best Director win in history for the latter, was (to put it kindly) a bit of a bomb commercially, critically, and at the nomination announcements. Although three craft nominations are nothing to scoff at, it was expected earlier in the year for the 1920’s set simultaneous critique and celebration of Hollywood debauchery to challenge for the nomination leader given the magnitude of the cast and crew and ambition of the film’s relentless scope. Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Diego Calva, all once considered in their respective acting categories, were talked out for various reasons, and Chazelle was blanked for the second time in a row above the line going back toFirst Man. It will be interesting to see if this brand of luxurious prestige filmmaking will continue to have a place in cinemas as studios are forced to continue finding places to manage their bottom line.

Surprises

1. The Rise of Riseborough

“HOLY FUCK, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, IT WORKED.” If you had the pleasure of listening in to our live reaction podcast, you would have heard these words uttered by me immediately as Andrea Riseborough’s name was announced as a nominee for Best Lead Actress. In completely unprecedented fashion, Riseborough ultimately landed an earth-shattering nomination at the end of a last-minute campaign that pioneered a new method of how to get Oscar recognized: the social media networks of famous friends en masse. Despite a virtually zero marketing budget for the microbudget indie To Leslie and almost no precursor recognition outside of the Indie Spirit Awards, Riseborough proved that anything is possible with the right publicist and the right strategy at the right time.

2. The Supporting Actor Runners-Up

Ke Huy Quan is set to sweep the awards season in the category with potentially the biggest lock of the night come March 12^th, but his fellow nominees in Supporting Actor still broke predictions lists with Judd Hirsch and his eight minutes of screen time taking over fellow The Fabelmans actor Paul Dano, and Brian Tyree Henry sneaking in as the sole nomination for Lila Neugebauer and Apple TV’s Causeway. Henry was tracking toward a potential nomination in his career with blockbuster Bullet Train also bolstering his 2022 resume, while veteran Hirsch receives his second nomination and first since 1981. Both of their appearances are surprises but will end a moot point as they sit and watch Ke Huy Quan’s tear-jerking speech with the rest of us.

3. Top Gun: Maverick in Cinematog…I mean, Adapted Screenplay?

Tom Cruise’s legacy sequel came with two major surprises: first crash landing out of the Best Cinematography five, a category it was expected to compete as a frontrunner in, and then reappearing in Best Adapted Screenplay over potential competitors with better precursor track records such as The Whale and She Said. It’s a difficult case to make that Top Gun’s screenplay would be more Oscar-worthy than its slew of aircraft-rigged camera setups, but it could also be more of an insight into the relative strength of each category.

4. The Strength of Triangle of Sadness, but without Dolly De Leon

Despite not showing significant strength in precursors since its Palme d’Or winning announcement at Cannes, director/writer Ruben Östlund made it into Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and the film also landed in Best Picture to round out its three nominations. It was not anticipated that the film would perform at this capacity, especially without the recognition of Dolly De Leon in the Supporting Actress category. Yet the Academy proved its newest contingent appeals to Östlund’s satirical sensibility, and even without Dolly breaking through for her third act desert island power trip, the film still landed three above the line nods.

5. Everything Everywhere in the music categories All at Once

The A24 hit from directing duo The Daniels was poised to have a big morning, but early in the announcements, when it landed in both Original Song for “This Is A Life” and Original Score by Son Lux, it was clear the Academy was behind the butt plug multiverse jumping indie hit more than we could have even imagined. These early signs of strength continued thr