Awards Season
Oscar contenders, major performances, awards conversations and the films that define each season.
Explore 174 articles in the original Oscar Contenders collection, from individual film criticism to nominations, predictions and post-ceremony analysis.
From the Awards Archive
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The Banshees of Inisherin: The charm of simple storytelling
So often movies must have big, grandiose stakes in order to appease a wide audience. They have global, if not universal consequences to the world filmmakers…
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Tár: Measures of time
Time is a very precious and valuable thing. What we do with our time, how quickly or slowly life seems to go all feels set at…
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Blonde: Cracks below the surface
The human mind is a fragile thing. For as much as we want to believe that we are capable of handling anything that life throws our…
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Don’t Worry Darling: Down the rabbit hole
There’s a fantastic film hiding somewhere deep within Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to her surprise hit directorial debut in 2019 with “Booksmart.” In an…
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Elvis: All shook up
When a film is titled after one of its characters, 99 times out of 100, that movie is almost entirely about that person. (Save for Private…
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Cha Cha Real Smooth: All the right moves
The best movie characters, ones audiences take to and see themselves in, aren’t always idyllic. Filmmakers find genuine beauty in flaws and imperfections in their personalities…
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Top Gun Maverick: Cruising at higher altitudes
There’s a moment early in Tom Cruise’s first film in four years where his character must lay everything on the line and push himself beyond all…
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Everything Everywhere All At Once: Cinematic beauty in weirdness
The directing duo of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, have created a brand of cinema flavored with creative ingenuity blended with the…
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CODA: Winning with heart
Fourteen months ago, a small independent film with a largely unknown cast and an Oscar winner in a smaller supporting role debuted to critical acclaim at…
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Nightmare Alley: Beautiful noir for small crowd
Acclaimed auteur Guillermo del Toro hasn’t made a new film since winning both best director and best picture in 2018 for his eccentric feature The Shape…
The original Oscar Contenders category archive remains available at its longstanding URL.
