There are 38 feature films nominated for the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony.  We here at Swampflix have reviewed exactly half of the films nominated (so far!), which isn’t nearly a high enough ratio to comment on the quality of the overall selection with any authority.  We’re still happy to see movies we enjoyed listed among the nominees, though, including two major titles from our own Top 10 Films of 2023 list. The Academy rarely gets these things right when actually choosing the winners, but from what we’ve seen this year’s list is a decent sample of what 2023 cinema had to offer.

Listed below are the 18 Oscar-Nominated films from 2023 that we covered for the site, ranked from best to . . . least-best, based on our star ratings and internal voting. Each entry is accompanied by a blurb, a link to our corresponding review, and a mention of the awards the films were nominated for.

Barbie, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ryan Gosling), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (America Ferrera), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Original Song (“What Was I Made For?”), and Best Original Song (“I’m Just Ken”)

“Greta Gerwig’s hot-pink meta daydream combines the bubbly pop feminism of Legally Blonde with the movie-magic artifice of The Wizard of Oz to craft the modern ideal of wide-appeal Hollywood filmmaking. It’s fantastic, an instant classic.”

Poor Things, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Emma Stone), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Mark Ruffalo), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score

“Yorgos Lanthimos has always poked at assumed social norms as if they were a corpse he found in the woods.  That naive interrogation has never been as scientifically thorough nor as wickedly fun as it is here, though, to the point where he’s articulated the entire human experience through repurposed dead flesh. We love everything about this perverse Frankenstein story: every outrageous set & costume design, every grotesque CG creature that toddles in the background, every one of Mark Ruffalo’s man-baby tantrums and, of course, every moment of Emma Stone’s central performance as an unhinged goblin child.”

Past Lives, nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay

“Past Lives is truly a perfect title. Each time that the two meet, so much about themselves has changed, to the point that they don’t perceive themselves as the same people. This is textual; at one point, Nora draws a distinction between her adult self and the child Na Young that Hae Sung used to know. Hae Sung, however, still sees Na Young inside of Nora, and she does the same for him; they may not be literally reincarnated, but they are different people with something innate and unchanging inside that they recognize in one another. This cycle is reinforced in the way that Nora and Hae Sung see each other only every twelve years, like clockwork. Even the location choices reiterate the cyclical nature of the two’s relationship: on the day that they reunite in their thirties, the two are framed against Jane’s Carousel, and they later also take the ferry tour around the Statue of Liberty. Both are rides that ultimately end in the same place that they begin and then cycle again, in a lovely metaphor.”

Anatomy of a Fall, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Justine Triet), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sandra Hüller), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing

“Sandra Hüller is captivating in Anatomie d’une chute (Anatomy of a Fall) as a woman who must stand trial for the murder of her husband, all while we in the audience never learn whether his death was an accident, suicide, or murder. That absence of information is a shadowy void in the center of this film, a known unknown whose invisibility means that, just as in life, all we have to go on are people’s imperfect memories, their self-serving rationalizations, and the presumption of honesty. One of the most mature movies for adults of recent years and the one with the most enduring appeal of 2023.”

The Holdovers, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Roll (Paul Giamatti), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing

“Is there a way to describe something that’s almost the platonic ideal of an indie darling? Like, something that could accurately be said to be simply a rebundling of cliches but which is also somehow entirely new? That’s what Christmas sleeper hit The Holdovers is—to be honest, there may not be an entirely original idea anywhere in here, but that doesn’t make it any less affecting, emotional, or funny. Alexander Payne masterfully molds together a film that made me ache for every person on screen, a story I’d seen before but nonetheless brand new.”

Godzilla Minus One, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“It was a great year for nostalgic throwbacks to vintage tokusatsu (see also: Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider, Smoking Causes Coughing), but this is the only title in that crop to hit the notes of deep communal hurt from the original 1954 Godzilla film that started it all. That sincerity is incredibly rewarding, if not only because it’s the only Godzilla movie I can remember making me cry.”

The Boy and the Heron, nominated for Best Animated Feature

“A coming-of-age story that incorporates many of the best parts of children’s fantasy that came before it, from The Chronicles of Narnia to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and more, The Boy and the Heron sees these familiar narrative devices through the lens of a childhood haunted by grief and as imagined by the most talented living animation director, Hayao Miyazaki. A movie that can be frustrating to an audience that is unwilling to float along with its dream logic or to those viewers who are uncomfortable with ambiguity, it’s hard to imagine that something this stuffed with the fantastic could be said to leave a lot to the imagination, but it does. Most recommended movie of the year for bird people.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“There were moments that made me think of Basket Case 2, of all things, which is a strange thing to say about a movie in this larger franchise, owned and operated by a monopolistic media empire.”

May December, nominated for Best Original Screenplay

“Netflix is kind of the perfect home for this, since it’s playing with TV Movie aesthetics anyway. Usually when great directors’ work gets sidelined there it’s disappointing; this time it’s darkly funny.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, nominated for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects

“By some miracle nearly matches both the absurdly convoluted humanity-vs-AI combat of Mrs. Davis and the absurdly over-the-top espionage action spectacle of Pathaan, making it one of the most entertaining American blockbusters of the year by default. Unfortunately, like a lot of other American blockbusters this year, it’s also only half a movie.”

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, nominated for Best Animated Feature

“A weird thing happens to me when I watch these movies where I’m not especially invested in the story but I still well up with emotion because of how beautiful everything is visually. The art of the moving image and such.”

The Zone of Interest, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Glazer), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature (United Kingdom), Best Sound

“I don’t know that further into ice-cold Haneke cruelty was the direction I wanted Glazer’s career to go, but he at least makes the misery worthwhile. The rare war atrocity movie that doesn’t let you off the hook for not being as bad as a literal Nazi, but instead prompts you to dwell on the ways all modern life & labor parallels that specific moment in normalized Evil.”

Killers of the Flower Moon, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Lily Gladstone), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert De Niro), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song (“Wahzhazhe – A Song for My People”)

“Feels more like Scorsese in Boardwalk Empire mode than Scorsese in Goodfellas mode (more dramatic than cinematic), save for a few stylistic jolts in the final hour. Still, it’s a quintessentially American story told by a quintessential American storyteller, and there are far less noble things he could be doing with $treaming $ervice money than turbocharging Lily Gladstone’s career.”

American Fiction, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jeffrey Wright), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Sterling K. Brown), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score

“A delightfully cynical skewering of NPR liberalism, even if it often feels like the call is coming from inside the house.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, nominated for Best Original Score

“If there are any complaints, it’s that the film runs a little long. Every chase scene is, frankly, excellent, with the only real set-piece that felt like ‘too much’ being the swarm of eels that Indie must face while diving for a map on the floor of the Aegean Sea, and even that is, at the very least, visually distinctive from any other action sequence seen before in this franchise. It feels true to the spirit of the franchise and the character in a way that Crystal Skull barely attempts; one would expect there to be more fanservice-y elements present, but all the nostalgia factor was largely used up in the last movie, meaning that this one had to do some real lifting, and it does. The CGI on Ford’s face is apparent, but all of the other sequences feel real and practical (other than the horse chase through the subway, admittedly). The sins of Crystal Skull may never be fully painted over, but this one does a pretty good job, and even has a truly ludicrous final action sequence that strides up to the line of cartoonish but falls back at the perfect second, which is a lot of fun.”

Robot Dreams, nominated for Best Animated Feature

“The jokes are more cute than hilarious. The animation is more tidy than expressive. It’s like reading the Sunday funnies on a week when the cartoonists are feeling especially sentimental.”

Oppenheimer, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor in a Leading Role (Cillian Murphy), Best Actor in a Sup. Role (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Emily Blunt), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, and Best Sound

“Strives to overcome its limitations as a legal testimony drama by drawing immense energy from a three-hour crosscutting montage and relentless repetition of its own title at a Gabbo! Gabbo! Gabbo! rhythm. It mostly succeeds, but at what cost??”

Flamin’ Hot, nominated for Best Original Song (“The Fire Inside”)

“Maybe the most egregious of the infinite PR movies in this Year of the Brands; corporate bullshit of the lowest order.” 

-The Swampflix Crew