Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 12, 2026
6. Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor’s Sundance darling about a lit professor recovering from trauma was the kind of film indie studios get into fisticuffs over. A24 won the bidding war, which is typically an easy pathway to an Oscar nom. It earned Gotham, Spirit, and Golden Globe nominations. Hell, Julia Roberts personally shouted it out from the Golden Globes stage the night before Oscar voting closed. It should’ve been enough, and God knows, Eva Victor deserved it. Alas, the Academy heard all of this, nodded politely, and nominated literally nothing about it. Victor’s original screenplay — one of the best of the year — was the most conspicuous absence. It’s a goddamn shame, but some films are too quiet and too good for Oscars.
Park Chan-wook has now directed Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave without receiving a single Oscar nomination. This was supposed to be the year. After No Other Choice received rave reviews from early screenings, and it was briefly considered a Best Picture frontrunner. There was cautious optimism that the Academy might finally correct this long-running absurdity. It did not. The film couldn’t even crack Best International Feature — the same category that similarly shortlisted and then snubbed Decision to Leave a few years prior. What is wrong with these people? At this point, it feels less like oversight and more like a grudge.
The premise alone should have been Oscar catnip: Luca Guadagnino, Julia Roberts’s best performance in two decades, a #MeToo-era moral thriller set at Yale with Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri. Variety said Roberts’s fifth Oscar nomination was “no question.” One critic called it her likely second win. Instead, the film arrived at Venice to a contentious press conference, a 37% Rotten Tomatoes score, a C- CinemaScore, and a domestic opening weekend of $3.2 million — on a $70-80 million budget, $20 million of which went to Roberts alone. Jason and I were among the few critics who loved it. Unfortunately, the film ended up being a conversation piece that nobody wanted to have. Roberts was terrific. The movie arrived with a thud. Oscar voters politely said, “I don’t know her.”
The idea of Benny Safdie doing to Dwayne Johnson what he did to Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems — finding the rawness underneath the brand and stripping away the franchise teflon was genuinely exciting in theory. And Johnson did work hard: he slimmed down, he committed, he got punched in the face. The film won the Silver Lion at Venice and received a 15-minute standing ovation. But a 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, a C- CinemaScore, and a $6 million opening weekend suggest that the gap between “best performance of The Rock’s career” and “Oscar-caliber performance” is wider than the hype machine wanted to admit. The Academy passed on Johnson, passed on Blunt, and handed the film one makeup nomination — which is, honestly, about right. Even a stripped-down Dwayne Johnson is still The Rock. Even after all the press about this being a turning point in his life, Johnson ran straight back to the safe confines of franchise films.
2. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Everything about this should have worked. Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) directing. The making of Nebraska, which is arguably the greatest album ever recorded by someone who wasn’t supposed to make it. The film was critically well-liked (although, not by me), made the Oscar shortlist for Sound, and then ultimately collected zero nominations. Deliver Me from Nowhere was a very good film in the way that a very good Wikipedia article is a very good Wikipedia article. And bless, but no one wants to watch a two-hour movie with Springsteen in the studio, standing over a mixing board, obsessing over the right sound. The Academy may have accidentally gotten this one right, too.
The most spectacular implosion of the season, and the one that most deserves the title of Oscar bait, because it was never really anything else. Critics had been holding a Best Picture slot open for this film for the better part of a year. Its predecessor received ten nominations. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were presumed inevitable. And then the reviews landed. The balloon didn’t pop so much as it leaked out slowly with a high-pitched squeal that annoyed all the voters away. Zero nominations. Not one. The franchise went from ten nominations to nothing in twelve months. Sometimes the Academy gets it wrong. Sometimes a movie dressed up like an Oscar film turns out to be a movie dressed up like an Oscar film, and everyone figures it out at the same time.
