On March 12th, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be having their 95th annual Academy Awards. And after looking through all the nominations for various genres from Best Picture to Best Supporting Actor, there are a couple of films that were selected multiple times. 

After viewing these films, do they deserve multiple awards? What made them so great that they were nominated multiple times? And are there any short films that should be recognized? 

With six nominations, “Tár” is a film based on Lydia Tár, a world renowned German conductor, who is also the first woman chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. And the story actually follows the downfall of her career. 

The first half of the film is mostly dialogue about this woman and her life. She is a bully, insulting a student to the point that he has to leave the lecture room, within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. She does not hold anything back and is not liked by many. 

Because it is reliant upon even a basic knowledge of classical music and dialogue, the movie is incredibly boring if you don’t have that knowledge. And it is not until after the first half that the movie gets interesting. Who waits until well over an hour into a movie to give you the plot of the story? You just wait and wait and wait and there is only more talking. 

 For the majority of the movie, it sounded as if it was based on a true story, but it’s only fiction. Cate Blanchett (who plays Lydia Tár) is a great actress, but did this film deserve six nominations? Definitely not. 

The next film with seven nominations is “The Fabelmans”. This story is based on the unique and unconventional childhood of Director Steven Spielberg, who also directed this movie about his life. He directed movies such as Jaws (1975), Indiana Jones (1984-2008), The Color Purple (1985), and many others. 

This movie is about Sammy Fabelman, who after watching his first big motion picture, becomes fascinated with the idea of making movies and for years he directs and edits his own with his friends and family.

This story was phenomenal. From the interesting ways in which Sammy made his movies look real, to the family drama, to the girl with the strange obsession with Jesus. It gave a lot of insight to Spielberg and how he became the person he is today. And the film deserved its seven nominations for its detail, humor, and the eccentricity of the characters. 

“All Quiet on the Western Front”is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. With nine Oscar nominations, this story goes into the reality of World War I from the German perspective. It follows a young man, Paul, as he goes marching into war with hope to quickly fearing for his life as he watches many men he cares about die. 

This 2022 version of the story held nothing back. There was an astounding amount of gore as you watched men ruthlessly kill each other and feel their desperation to do anything to survive. And this is definitely not a movie to watch if you get squeamish over blood and violence because there is a lot of it. 

It was a very well done movie. There were a lot of added details that helped you feel the hopelessness of the movie. It did get a little confusing at times since there was not a whole lot of dialogue, but it does convey the tone of WWI through its imagery. It deserved to have some nominations for the authenticity and intensity of the film, but nine nominations was surprising. 

And the winner for a total of eleven nominations was “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. There was a lot that went into this film as it is about a Chinese-American woman who learns how to tap into all of her parallel selves to fight this evil entity. It goes back and forth between the woman and her different selves and there is a lot of whiplash as it switches, most of the time without warning. And it can get really confusing and complicated whether you’re paying attention or not

All of the fighting, the randomness, and the confusion is to tell this story about this woman, Evelyn, who has to learn how to accept that her daughter is a lesbian or risk losing her altogether. And while it may have a powerful storyline, some of the scenes felt unnecessary and uncomfortably weird. I will give the story some credit because it must have been very difficult to make this kind of movie, but eleven nominations is overkill. Even five nominations would have been too many.

As far as the live action short films, they were all fantastic. The nominees are “The Red Suitcase”, “An Irish Goodbye”, “Le Pupille (The Pupils)”, “Ivalu”, and “Night Ride.” They all invoked some kind of deep emotion from viewers and wished the stories were longer than they were. However, the shortness of the films really added to them because what happens to these people after is up to viewers interpretation. 

Did the Iranian girl manage to remain hidden even after losing everything she had in her red suitcase? Did the Irish brothers continue adding to their bucket list? How was the little orphan girl after she chose to remain a “bad girl” in “Le Pupille”? How did that affect how the nuns treated her and her time in the orphanage? Did anything happen to Pippaluk’s father after the sad truth of what happened to her sister, Ivalu? And did the woman ever get caught after she stole the night tram? 

All questions that will never be answered but do not take away from the movies. They all have the potential to win the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. It is curious as to which movies will win what awards as it’s clear that all of the ones mentioned have great potential for multiple wins. 

Article by Maddy Bohman