Numlock Awards: Pouring one out for the Best Picture nominees with only two nods
It's happened eight times since 2009, and some of those movies are absolute bangers.
Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter. Every week, join Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico as they break down the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night. Today’s edition comes from Michael.
I’d like to take a moment before final predictions to pour one out for the Best Picture nominees who only nab one other nomination. In the expanded Best Picture era (since 2009), this has happened eight times, including this year.
Here are our honorees:
2024: Nickel Boys
2023: Past Lives
2022: Women Talking
2017: The Post
2014: Selma
2011: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
2009: The Blind Side and A Serious Man
Grand Hotel, from 1932, has all of these beat, with its single nomination for Best Picture (which it also happened to win).
Still, the expanded era of Best Picture promised us more nominations for a broader array of films, and these eight have arguably been the biggest beneficiaries as movies that were clearly on the bubble without broad-based support from a lot of other branches.
You have three categories these films fall into.
In the biggest bucket, you have the arthouse movies that also got recognized for their scripts (Nickel Boys, Past Lives, Women Talking, and A Serious Man). Next, you have big star performances that landed an acting nomination alongside their movie (Meryl Streep in The Post, Max von Sydow in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side). And then you have Selma, doing its own thing with a Best Original Song win.
Two of these movies might be all-timers (Nickel Boys and Past Lives), two are better forgotten (The Blind Side and Extremely Loud), and the other four are all solid movies from generationally significant directors (Sarah Polley, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, and the Coen Brothers).
It’s honestly not a bad hit rate! I’m glad they also shifted from the sliding scale of 5-10 nominees to a solid 10, since Nickel Boys and Past Lives were probably pretty cusp.
We’ll send out a final ballot later this week, but before that, which is your favorite of our eight honorees?
Of these films I've only seem The Post, Selma, and The Blinde Side. I'd probably put Selma first of them.
By the way, "And then you have GLORY, doing its own thing with a Best Original Song win" that should be Selma right?
Past Lives was my favorite movie of 2023, and easily my favorite of this list. Gorgeous movie that deserved more accolades, but was always going to be too small for the Academy. A perfect example of the 10-nominee system's merits.