Oscars guide 2022: The full list of nominees, our best picture reviews, and how to stream this year’s nominated films

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If you thought the 2021 Academy Awards were odd, buckle up: As Barry Hertz wrote last month, the 2022 Academy Awards are shaping up to be the weirdest Oscars ever, thanks to poorly promoted nominees, surprise snubs, and start-and-stop theatre re-openings. But, while the ceremony is due (if not overdue) for a re-jigging, Hollywood’s biggest night is still bound to be a worthy spectacle, of one shape or another. Here’s our complete guide to the 94th annual Academy Awards.

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The basics

When do the Oscars start?

This year, the Academy Awards start at 8 p.m. ET. They air on CTV in Canada, and ABC in the U.S.

What time is the Oscars red carpet?

The Oscars red carpet pre-show will air starting at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.

Who’s hosting the 2022 Oscars?

Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall are this year’s Academy Awards hosts. Presenters include Simu Liu, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Anthony Hopkins, Lily James and Lady Gaga.

Who is performing at this year’s Oscars?

Best original song nominees Beyonce (Be Alive from King Richard), Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (No Time to Die from the Bond film of the same name), Reba McIntyre (Somehow You Do from Four Good Days) and Sebastian Yatra (Dos Orugitas from Encanto) will all perform at this year’s ceremony. The only best original song nominee who will not perform is Van Morrison.

Which films are this year’s best bets to win?

If you’re looking for a leg up in your office betting pool, Barry Hertz has put together a guide to who ought to win this year’s big awards — and who will win. Have a look at his full list of predictions here.

Which Oscar-nominated movies can I watch in Canada, and where?

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As was the case last year, it’s most likely that, if you’ve seen any of this year’s nominees, you watched them from the comfort of home. Predictably, Netflix is leading the streaming service pack with 27 nominations this year, including two for best picture (Don’t Look Up and The Power of the Dog). Amazon Studios, meanwhile, landed four (three for Being The Ricardos and one for Coming 2 America), while Apple+ scored six (including best picture for CODA and best actor for Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth).

Oscar nominations 2022: The biggest Academy Award surprises, snubs and reality checks

If you’re looking to catch up before Sunday’s ceremony, here’s where to find this year’s Oscar nominees in Canada:

Oscar films on Netflix Canada

The Power of The Dog, Don’t Look Up, Audible, The Hand of God, Lead Me Home, The Lost Daughter, Mitchells vs. the Machines, Robin Robin, Three Songs for Benazir, Tick, Tick … Boom!

Oscar films on Amazon Prime Video Canada

Being The Ricardos, Coming 2 America

Oscar films on Disney+

Summer of Soul, Cruella, Encanto, Luca, Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings.

Oscar films on Apple TV+

CODA, The Tragedy of Macbeth.

Oscar films on Crave

Attica, Free Guy, Dune.

Oscar films available to purchase via VOD

• Spencer: $6.99 on Digital TIFF Lightbox, Apple.
• Writing with Fire: $6.99 on Digital TIFF Lightbox.
• Belfast: $24.99 on Amazon, Apple.
• King Richard: $24.99 on Amazon, Apple
• Flee: Streaming via Hot Docs; prices vary depending on membership.

Who are this year’s runaway stars?

The Oscar race this year has included some familiar faces (Will Smith, Jessica Chastain and Steven Spielberg, among others), and has introduced North American audiences to some lesser-known talent, such as Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve. Over the past year, the Globe has spoken to a number of this year’s nominees; take a look at our profiles below.

Steven Spielberg, best director, West Side Story

Told the Globe: “As you know, I’ve made movies in every genre imaginable, and the press has been asking me probably since E.T., ‘What haven’t you done?’ I’ve always maintained that I’ve never done a musical and have always wanted to.” Read the full profile here.

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Ryusuke Hamaguchi, best director, Drive My Car

Told The Globe: “At the end of the day, I won’t know how important [the Oscar nomination] is until after the awards. I’m getting a lot of calls from unexpected places, but I have no real idea how much of it will help my filmmaking. What’s important for me is to preserve my creative choices, so it would be important to find and build a relationship with someone else where that’s important for them, too.” Read the fill Q&A here.

Jamie Dornan, star of best picture nominee Belfast

Told The Globe: “What’s lovely about this film, it ends with me saying to Buddy, ‘Your friend [who is Catholic] can be anything, as long as you love and respect each other she’s welcome in our house every day of the week.’ I think that’s a strong and important message to get to people at home. It’s applicable to all parts of the world, particularly places that have experienced civil war or blatant tribalism within their communities. But it’s especially important at this time to remind people in Northern Ireland that it’s not worth all the fighting.” Read the full profile here.

Denis Villeneuve, director of best picture nominee Dune

Told The Globe: “I want to reach the kid I was when I first read the book. You’re 13 years old, struggling with your identity and you’re discovering a world that is new and frightening. Making this movie, I was in a relationship with that part of myself.” Read the full profile here.

Guillermo del Toro, director of best picture nominee Nightmare Alley

Told The Globe: “The tragedy with Bradley [Cooper]’s character is that his lies accumulate, but they never shield him. The truth shields him. It makes him bulletproof. This is an essential part of noir. The very Hamlet thing of seeing the character go, “To be or not to be?” To make the decision. This is not the gods against man like Greek tragedy. This is man’s decisions against man.” Read the full Q&A here.

Kristen Stewart, best actress, Spencer

Told The Globe: “I’m not somebody who dresses up a whole lot. But Diana was never not being dressed or done or set. The fact that I couldn’t run my hands through my hair, that I could never really breathe or move or eat – it definitely added to this feeling of my light being diminished. Yeah it’s ‘beautiful,’ but the restriction is palpable.” Read the full profile here.

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Renate Reinsve, star of best original screenplay nominee The Worst Person in the World

Told The Globe: “I thought about one of my ex-boyfriends seeing my face on the poster of a movie called The Worst Person in the World. He’s gonna be happy about that. But all of us will always be the worst for someone at some point. Dating is like trying to find the best person in the world, while feeling like the worst person in the world. It’s a layered title.” Read the full Q&A here.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen, director of best animated feature and best documentary feature nominee Flee

Told The Globe: “With animation, everything is possible. In a typical doc, you shoot something, then maybe you have archival footage, and go into the editing room to form the film. Here, you start editing before you start animating. You can’t animate 80 hours of raw material. So that gives you freedom to ask for anything from the animators. If you didn’t shoot a close-up shot of a specific character in a specific scene but need it later, then too bad. But here you can ask for the exact shots you wanted.” Read the full Q&A here.

What are this year’s picture nominees?

Nightmare Alley

• What it’s about: A remake of the 1947 film of the same name, the film tracks the ascent – and eventual downfall – of mentalist-turned-travelling carnival man Stanton Carlisle.
• Who’s in it: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Colette
• What The Globe thought of it: Director Benicio del Toro “has found the perfect vehicle to exorcize his many metaphorical demons,” wrote Barry Hertz. “While Nightmare Alley lacks the monsters that have defined del Toro’s career – it is the first of his films without a true supernatural element – it does pivot on a theme embedded in everything from Cronos to Hellboy to Pan’s Labyrinth: man’s violent struggle against the beast within.

Don’t Look Up

• What it’s about: Two astronomers try to warn the world of an apocalypse-heralding comet headed directly for Earth.
• Who’s in it: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep
• What The Globe thought of it: “As Don’t Look Up goes on and on,” Barry Hertz wrote, “it becomes increasingly hard to separate the solid comedy from the shrill sanctimony. Edited like an Oliver Stone movie on methamphetamines – here’s a quick shot of a polar bear on the melting ice caps, here’s a baby taking a bath, here’s a fiery protest, here’s more more more – and bizarrely unconcerned by its two main characters having exactly one personality trait apiece, the film dares you to side with the comet.” (Don’t Look Up was, it may go without saying, the rare Oscars 2022 best picture nominee to not earn a critic’s choice designation from the Globe.)

Belfast

• What it’s about: Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical account of a working-class family growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
• Who’s in it: Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe
• What The Globe thought of it: “A few things can happen when filmmakers make personal journeys into the past,” Barry Hertz wrote. “For its part, Belfast dips high and low through the semi-autobiographical cinema canon, with perhaps its largest debt owed to John Boorman’s Second World War-era coming-of-age film Hope and Glory. (And a heavy sprinkling of Jojo Rabbit whimsy, too.) Branagh’s film is made with a warmly fuzzy memory and generous spirit, if not the grandest of visions.”

Dune

• What it’s about: Denis Villeneuve’s take on the massively popular, influential, and complex sci-fi book series of the same name by author Frank Herbert. Dune takes place thousands of years in the future, and follows protagonist Paul Atreides as he and his family become stewards of the planet Arrakis.
• Who’s in it: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya
• What The Globe thought of it: “In Dune, as Villeneuve sweeps us from the lush greenery of the planet Caladan to the harsh desert environs of Arrakis – Hans Zimmer’s pounding, thudding, relentless score carrying us along – the filmmaker ensures that we feel the otherworldly weight and intensity of this universe,” Barry Hertz wrote.

King Richard

• What it’s about: A biopic focusing on Richard Williams, the father and coach of tennis players Venus and Serena Williams.
• Who’s in it: Will Smith, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton
• What The Globe thought of it: “The great trick of King Richard is that it doesn’t rely on our impossible ignorance of Venus and Serena’s eventual triumph,” Barry Hertz wrote. “You become invested in every step of the girls’ journeys, of every serve of every match, because you cannot wait to see what [star Will] Smith will do next. As the unorthodox and uncompromising Richard, Smith balances pride, shame, devotion, delusion and pure-grit determination with such a natural ease that you can’t help but become enamoured with this story of a father who, if we’re being honest, seems like a total nightmare.”

Licorice Pizza

• What it’s about: A coming-of-age drama focusing on the relationship between a high school student and his decade-older love interest.
• Who’s in it: Cooper Hoffman, Alana Haim, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper.
• What The Globe thought of it: “A comedy, a drama, a romance, a memory, Licorice Pizza is [director Paul Thomas Anderson’s] warmest and fuzziest creation,” Barry Hertz wrote, adding that “a half-careful look at any one of Anderson’s films, even the harder-edged likes of The Master and There Will Be Blood, reveals a man who has always been a giggly comedian, a sly observer of human foibles, a conjuror of worlds, a hopeless romantic. With its San Fernando Valley setting, its playful remixing of history and culture, its love of cosmic happenstance, its pursuit of all-deliberate-speed momentum, and its deeply flawed characters grasping onto one another with a desperate kind of manic glee, Licorice Pizza represents the uber-P.T.A. picture.”

CODA

• What it’s about: A teen girl navigates life as the only hearing member of a deaf family.
• Who’s in it: Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin,Troy Kotsur.
• What The Globe thought of it: “Writer-director Sian Heder’s film is a genuinely sweet thing: The type of drama that loves its characters, and is determined to find a satisfying outcome for them,” Barry Hertz wrote. “The downside, at least when a giant like Apple puts such heavyweight expectations behind the film, is that everything here is resolutely minor-key”

The Power of the Dog

• What it’s about: A mother and her son arrive on the ranch of brothers Phil and George Burbank, and upset their delicate familial dynamic.
• Who’s in it: Jesse Plemons, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit McPhee
• What The Globe thought of it: “This is gothic, no doubt about it – and that will be some viewers’ and some critics’ complaint,” Kate Taylor wrote. “The climax is less visually gruesome than that celebrated moment of gore in The Piano but The Power of the Dog, beautifully shot against the furrowed hills that surround the ranch, is less dependent on heavy symbolism and more psychologically penetrating. In the end [director Jane] Campion has done a magnificent job creating both inevitability and surprise; when the two-edged climax comes it’s powerfully unexpected”

West Side Story

• What it’s about: Steven Spielberg’s cinematic retelling of the iconic Leonard Bernstein musical, which tells the story of growing tensions between the Puerto Rican Sharks and the all-American Jets in 1950s New York City.
• Who’s in it: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Rita Moreno
• What The Globe thought of it: “This film is the reason that we go out to the movies – as in, physically trudge our butts to a seat in a room full of strangers – and should continue to do so for as long as the opportunity is afforded to us,” Barry Hertz wrote.

Drive My Car

• What it’s about: An adaptation of the Haruki Murakami story of the same name, the film follows a widowed actor as he finds a new chauffeur, and unexpected confidante, in a 20-year-old mechanic.
• Who’s in it: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada.
• What The Globe thought of it: “Formally inventive – the film’s prologue eats up 41 minutes, at which point the opening credits finally appear on-screen – but tinged with a classical sensibility, [director Ryusuke] Hamaguchi’s drama hits in both expected and surprising ways,” Barry Hertz wrote. “Take three hours out of your life, and enjoy one of the most fulfilling cinematic rides of the year.”

All other Oscar nominations by category

Best supporting actress

• Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
• Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
• Judi Dench (Belfast)
• Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog)
• Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

Best supporting actor

• Ciarán Hinds (Belfast)
• Troy Kotsur (Coda)
• Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog)
• JK Simmons (Being the Ricardos)
• Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

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Best costume design

• Cruella
• Cyrano
• Dune
• Nightmare Alley
• West Side Story

Best sound

• Belfast
• Dune
• No Time to Die
• The Power of the Dog
• West Side Story

Best original score

• Don’t Look Up
• Dune
• Encanto
• Parallel Mothers
• The Power of the Dog

Best adapted screenplay

• Coda (Sian Heder)
• Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe)
• Dune (Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve)
• The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
• The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)

Best original screenplay

• Belfast (Kenneth Branagh)
• Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay, David Sirota)
• Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• King Richard (Zach Baylin)
• The Worst Person in the World (Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier)

Best animated short

• Affairs of the Art
• Bestia
• Boxballet
• Robin Robin
• The Windshield Wiper

Best live action short

• Ala Kachuu – Take and Run
• The Dress
• The Long Goodbye
• On My Mind
• Please Hold

Best film editing

• Don’t Look Up
• Dune
• King Richard
• The Power of the Dog
• tick, tick… BOOM!

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Best makeup & hairstyling

• Coming 2 America
• Cruella
• Dune
• The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• House of Gucci

Best animated feature

• Encanto
• Flee
• Luca
• The Mitchells Vs the Machines
• Raya and the Last Dragon

Best documentary feature

• Ascension
• Attica
• Flee
• Summer of Soul
• Writing With Fire

Best documentary short

• Audible
• Lead Me Home
• The Queen of Basketball
• Three Songs for Benazir
• When We Were Bullies

Best original song

Be Alive (King Richard)

Dos Oruguitas (Encanto)

Why wasn’t We Don’t Talk About Bruno nominated for an Oscar?

Down to Joy (Belfast)

No Time to Die (No Time to Die)

Somehow You Do (Four Good Days)

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Best cinematography

• Dune
• Nightmare Alley
• The Power of the Dog
• The Tragedy of Macbeth
• West Side Story

Best international feature

• Drive My Car
• Flee
• The Hand of God
• Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
• The Worst Person in the World

Best production design

• Dune
• Nightmare Alley
• The Power of the Dog
• The Tragedy of Macbeth
• West Side Story

Best visual effects

• Dune
• Free Guy
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
• No Time to Die
• Spider-Man: No Way Home

Best actress

• Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
• Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)
• Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers)
• Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)
• Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

Best actor

• Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
• Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
• Andrew Garfield (tick, tick … BOOM!)
• Will Smith (King Richard)
• Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Best director

• Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
• Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
• Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
• Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
• Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)

Best picture

• Belfast
• Coda
• Don’t Look Up
• Drive My Car
• Dune
• King Richard
• Licorice Pizza
• Nightmare Alley
• The Power of the Dog
• West Side Story