Now that you know this year’s Academy Award nominations, there is probably some catch-up you need to do before the Oscars are handed out in March. I want to highlight three of my favorite nominees that you might not have seen yet.

Poor Things

Where to Watch: In Theaters

Distribution Studio: Searchlight Pictures Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

What might have been the most outrageous wide release of 2023 was also one of the year’s very best films. Honored with 11 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, Poor Things is an imaginative and poignant tale of a woman’s self-discovery and liberation. It’s beautiful, hilarious, and bizarre, and yet never strays from its goal. Not enough can be said about Emma Stone’s dazzling performance, a performance in which she is nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Academy Awards. Stone gives us something incredibly impressive and fearless without coming off as pretentious or vain. She’s never begging us to look at her act, but her incredible physicality and timing make it impossible to look away. If it wasn’t already obvious that Emma Stone is one of the funniest and most talented actors we have today, then her performance as Bella in Poor Things is certainly her shouting that notion louder. If it were up to me, she would be taking home that Oscar this year.

Although Stone runs the show, she is surrounded by an incredible cast of Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Ramy Youseff, all of whom are up for the task of balancing the absurdity of the script with the very realness of the film’s underlying themes. They all elegantly fit into the bonkers world Yorgos Lanthimos’ has built, all doing it with confidence and charisma. Nobody ever feels out of place. Even though the film tells the story of Bella’s journey through real-world locations, the buildings, clothing, and landscapes feel like they are straight out of a steampunk fairytale. The set design and costuming are a marvel to behold. In a strong year for movies and as part of an impressive batch of Oscar nominees, Poor Things will undoubtedly be one of the few to stand the test of time because of its sheer uniqueness and undeniable charm. It’s one of my absolute favorites of the last few years and maybe Lanthimos’ and Stone’s best work yet.

9.6/10

The Zone of Interest

Where to Watch: In Theaters

Distribution Studio: A24 Director: Jonathan Glazer

After taking seemingly an eternity to reach smaller movie markets in the US, I was finally able to catch up with the much-talked-about The Zone of Interest. The chatter came from both camps, those who had already seen it and had been singing its praise for weeks and months, and those who hadn’t seen it, yet felt like the film’s Academy Award nominations were undeserved. The main complaint seemed to surround Greta Gerwig missing out on a Best Director nominee for “surprise” nominee Jonathan Glazer. After watching The Zone of Interest, the only thing that surprises me is not seeing it nominated for even more, especially Sandra Hüller for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (on top of her already being nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Anatomy of a Fall).

The premise is simple: The Zone of Interest zeroes in on a snapshot of an Auschwitz commandant and his family living in a house right outside the fence of the camp. While the intense cruelty is implied, nothing is shown to the viewer directly, making it an incredibly tense and eerie thing to witness. We know of the atrocities that are occurring because of what we already know about this time in history, by the conversations being had, the obvious Nazi costuming, and most importantly, by the horrific sounds coming from the camp just over the fence. Glazer and team create a hellish soundscape that won’t soon leave your ears, and as upsetting as it all is, the sound design of the entire film is some of the most impressive you’ll ever hear. The master craftsmanship doesn’t stop there. The framing, filming, and editing are all equally impressive. The Zone of Interest wasn’t created to enjoy as entertainment, but it’s a film that you will enjoy because of the impressiveness of the filmmaking and the magnitude of the story it’s telling. I also want to give props to the Academy Awards voters for including a foreign language, avant-garde film in the Best Picture category.

9.4/10

Four Daughters

Where to Watch: Video On Demand

Distribution Studio: Jour2Fête Director: Kaouther Ben Hania

One of the most criminally under-explored Oscar categories is Best Documentary Feature Film. The Academy not only uses this category to honor the very best in documentary filmmaking, but it’s also an opportunity to highlight underheard stories and filmmakers. In one of the most unique documentaries I’ve ever seen, Four Daughters tells the story of a Tunisian woman, Olfa Hamrouni, and her four daughters, two of whom went missing in their late teens because of Islamic radicalization. What makes the storytelling so special is that writer and director Kaouther Ben Hania enlisted two actresses to play the parts of the missing daughters. Kaouther Ben Hania even steps in to play the role of the mother when it’s necessary.

It’s a powerful story of oppression, rebellion, motherhood, and so much more. Whether it’s Olfa talking to her real daughters or the actresses, everything you see is honest and heartfelt. The lines begin to blur, yet the power of the message remains true throughout. It doesn’t matter who is playing who and who is an actor and who isn’t, what matters is that everybody involved is learning and growing throughout the process of making the documentary. There’s so much of our world we don’t know about, and seeing the hardship this family has lived through in Tunisia makes us question what we consider to be hardships in our own society. What I found most impressive about Four Daughters is the immense bravery of everybody involved, whether it be the daughters and mom reliving past trauma on camera, or the filmmaker and actors trying to do this true story justice in the presence of those who lived it.

8.9/10

Written by: Stefano Todaro