2021
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films of 2021
Best Picture
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-coda.jpg)
CODA (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-belfast.jpg)
Belfast (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-dontlookup.jpg)
Don't Look Up (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-drivemycar.jpg)
Drive My Car (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-dune.jpg)
Dune (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-kingrichard.jpg)
King Richard (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-licoricepizza.jpg)
Licorice Pizza (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/picts/titles-nightmarealley.jpg)
Nightmare Alley (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-powerofthedog.jpg)
The Power of the Dog (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-westsidestory2021.jpg)
West Side Story (2021)
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Best Animated Feature Film
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/photographs/titles-encanto.jpg)
ENCANTO (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/picts/titles-flee.jpg)
Flee (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/dramas/titles-luca.jpg)
Luca (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/morepics/titles-mitchells.jpg)
The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/dramas/titles-rayaandlastdragon.jpg)
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
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Actor:
WILL SMITH in "King Richard," Javier Bardem in "Being the
Ricardos,"
Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Power of the Dog," Andrew Garfield
in "tick,
tick … BOOM!,"
Denzel Washington in "The Tragedy of Macbeth"
Actress:
JESSICA CHASTAIN in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," Olivia
Colman in "The Lost Daughter," Penélope Cruz in
"Parallel Mothers," Nicole Kidman in "Being the Ricardos," Kristen
Stewart in "Spencer"
Supporting Actor:
TROY KOTSUR
in "CODA," Ciarán Hinds in "Belfast," Jesse
Plemons in "The Power of the Dog," JK Simmons in
"Being the Ricardos," Kodi Smit-McPhee in "The Power
of the Dog"
Supporting Actress:
ARIANA DEBOSE in "West Side Story," Jessie Buckley in "The
Lost Daughter,"
Judi Dench in "Belfast," Kirsten
Dunst in "The Power of the Dog," Aunjanue Ellis in "King
Richard"
Director:
JANE CAMPION for "The Power of the Dog," Kenneth Branagh
for "Belfast," Ryûsuke
Hamaguchi for "Drive My Car," Paul Thomas Anderson for "Licorice
Pizza," Steven
Spielberg for "West Side Story"
The
94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 27, 2022.
This year's ceremony honored the best films released between
March 1 and December 31, 2021. Due to the on-going COVID pandemic,
actual theatre-moving-going was still on the decline, prompting
the domineering streaming services (i.e., Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO
Max and Amazon, etc.) to step in to fill the void.
This year, it marked the first time since
2010 that 10 films made the cut for Best Picture. The
10 films nominated for Best Picture represented a wide range of films
from varying genres - a mix of box office hits and specialty fare.
Four of the films were box-office failures (Belfast, West Side Story,
Licorice Pizza, and Nightmare Alley), and the Japanese film Drive
My Car was little seen.
When the nominees were announced in February,
nine of the 10 had made less than $40 million in domestic box office.
The only exception was Dune that had earned just over $100
million (domestic). All 10 of the Best Picture nominees earned
barely 1/4th as much as Spider-Man:
No Way Home (with only one nomination that it lost to Dune).
The winner of the Best Picture category was
a come-from-behind victor, since The Power of the Dog was
the front-runner for the majority of the awards season:
- CODA (with 3 nominations and 3 wins), from
Apple Original Films and writer/director Sian Heder; the title
meant
"Child of Deaf Adults" - the coming-of-age film was set
in a New England fishing village, and two of the characters were
portrayed by real-life deaf performers (off-screen couple Troy
Kotsur and Marlee Matlin)
[Note: It was a clean sweep, winning 3 for 3 - it
was only the
seventh Best Picture winner that won every award for
which it was nominated. It was one of the very few Best Picture
winning films without a nominated Best Director, although the director
won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also the first
film from a streaming company (Apple Original Films and Apple TV+)
to win Best Picture, and the first movie to debut at Sundance
that went on to win Best Picture. Troy Kotsur became the first
deaf male actor to win an Oscar.]
The other Best Picture-nominated films (in
descending order of wins) were:
- Dune (with 10 nominations and six wins),
directed by un-nominated Denis Villeneuve, from Warner Bros. and
released by HBO Max, Part One - an adaptation of the first half
of Frank Herbert's adaptation of the legendary and popular sci-fi
novel about the Atreides family ruling of the desert planet Arrakis;
it was devoid of nominations in acting categories, but won many
technical awards, including Best Original Score, Best Cinematography,
Best Editing, Best Production Design,
Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects
- The Power of the Dog (with 12 nominations
and only one win), directed by Oscar-winning New Zealander Jane
Campion, and shot mostly on location in New Zealand; it was a revisionist
psychological western based on Thomas Savage's 1967 novel, and
set in 1920s Montana amongst the members of the wealthy ranch-owning
Burbank family; it was the first female-directed film to receive
more than 10 nominations; its many nominations included Best Picture,
Best Director for Jane Campion, and 4 acting nominations for star
Benedict Cumberbatch and supporting players Kirsten Dunst, Jesse
Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee
[Note: It was the first film since American
Hustle (2013) to receive four acting noms, and was the 16th
film in all of Academy history to achieve this feat. It became the
first film since The Graduate (1967) to win Best Director
as its only Oscar.]
- West Side Story (with 7 nominations and only
one win), from Disney, the remake of the 1961 classic musical film
(from the 1957 Broadway musical) by producer/director Steven Spielberg,
about teenaged gang rivalry in NYC between the Puerto-Rican Sharks
and the Jets (a white-youth gang) over control of San Juan Hill
on Manhattan's West Side; star-crossed lovers Tony (Ansel Elgort)
and Maria (Rachel Zegler) from the different opposing groups were
caught in the middle of the conflict; its sole Oscar win was for
the character of Anita (Ariana DeBose) - played by Rita
Moreno in the original film
[Note: Director Spielberg's nomination as producer was
record-setting. Spielberg has now produced 11
films nominated for Best Picture. West Side Story was also
the first remake of a Best Picture Oscar-winning film that was also
nominated for Best Picture.]
- Belfast (with 7 nominations and only one
win), from Focus Features and Oscar-winning writer/director Kenneth
Branagh, a semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age drama set in working-class
Belfast in the late 1960s, mostly centering on 9 year-old Buddy's
(Jude Hill) struggles in the neighborhood
- King Richard (with 6 nominations and only
one win), a sports-themed biopic about the determined father Richard
(Oscar-winning Will Smith) of the famed Williams' family of tennis
stars (Venus and Serena), from Warner Bros., but also released
by HBO Max; it was the only Best Picture nominee made by a black
director (Reinaldo Marcus Green)
- Drive My Car (Jp.) (aka Doraibu mai kâ),
(with 4 nominations and one win), directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi;
a contemplative, three-hour drama (at a record-setting length of
179 minutes) about grief - and the first Japanese film to earn
a Best Picture nomination; its tale was about of a young female
car-driver chauffeuring Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima)
- a widowed, reknowned theater actor-director to Hiroshima for
rehearsals for a production of Uncle Vanya after his screenwriter
wife Oto Kafuku (Reika Kirishima) had died two years earlier; its
four nominations included Best Picture, Best Director, Best International
Feature (win), and Best Adapted Screenplay
- Don't Look Up (with
4 nominations and no wins), a star-powered satirical comedy from
Netflix and co-writer/director Adam McKay, about the approach of a
life-destroying comet approaching toward Earth in about six months'
time - announced by two astronomers, grad student Kate Dibiasky
(Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo
DiCaprio), who found that people were mostly apathetic
- Nightmare Alley (with 4 nominations and no
wins), a stylistic noir picture (based upon the 1947 original
film starring Tyrone Power) from Searchlight and directed by Guillermo
del Toro; with three additional nominations for Best Production
Design, Best Costume Design and Best Cinematography; in the plot,
ambitious Stan Carlisle (actor/producer Bradley Cooper) joined
a traveling carnival and then reinvented himself as a high-society
psychic, but his plans went awry when he attempted to con equally-dangerous
female psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett)
- Licorice Pizza (with 3 nominations and no
wins), a nostalgic, coming of age story of first love set in the
early 1970s in the San Fernando Valley, between 15 year-old ex-child
actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and twenty-something photographer's
assistant Alana Kane (Alana Haim), directed and written by Paul
Thomas Anderson, from MGM/UAR
In regards to the distribution of nominations:
- Netflix accounted for 27 of the almost 40 Oscar
nominations, including Best Picture nominees The Power of the
Dog (12) and Don't Look Up (4), and others including The
Lost Daughter (3) and tick, tick… BOOM! (2).
For the third year in a row, Netflix received the top number of
nominations
- Warner Bros. scored a total of 16 nominations, with Dune (10)
and King Richard (6)
- Apple Original Film's 6 nominations came from CODA (3)
and The Tragedy of Macbeth (3)
- Amazon Prime Video's main nominee was Being
the Ricardos (3) - with two lead nominations and one supporting
acting nomination
- Disney+ was successful with 9 nominations overall;
it represented three of the five Best Animated Feature Film nominees
(Encanto (3), Luca (1), and Raya and the Last
Dragon (1)) - combining for a total of 5 nominations); other
Disney nominees included Cruella (2), Shang-Chi and The
Legend of the Ten Rings (1), and Spider-Man: No Way Home (1)
[Note: With Encanto's Best Animated Feature Film Oscar win,
it became the 4th non-Pixar Disney film to win in this category,
following Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), and Zootopia
(2016).]
The winner of Best Director was:
- 67 year-old New Zealander Jane Campion (with her
second nomination as Best Director, and first Oscar win), for The
Power of the Dog
[Note: Campion's nomination made her the first woman to be
nominated more than once for Best Director. She was previously
nominated in the Best Director category for The Piano (1993) (and
coincidentally lost to her present contender Steven Spielberg's
film Schindler's List (1993) but
won the Oscar for its Best Original Screenplay). Only seven women
have ever been nominated for Best Director, and only two have won,
including last year's victor Chloé Zhao for Nomadland
(2020). Campion became the third woman to win Best Director,
and also was the oldest woman ever nominated in this
category at age 67.]
The other nominees included:
- 75 year-old Steven Spielberg (with his 8th nomination
as Best Director, and record-breaking 11th nomination as a Producer),
for West Side Story
[Note: Spielberg became the first person to be nominated as Best Director
in six different decades. His previous Best Director nominations included two
wins: for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving
Private Ryan (1998), and five nominations
for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981),
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Munich
(2005), and Lincoln (2012). Spielberg's nominated Best Picture film
was his 12th Best Picture nominee, an Academy record. His streak began 46 years
ago with Jaws
(1975).
Only Spielberg and William Wyler (with 13) have ever directed double-digit Best
Picture nominees. The closest living contender under Spielberg was Martin Scorsese
with eight Best Picture nominees. With nominations for Best Picture and Best
Director this year, Spielberg now has a total of 19 Oscar
nominations.]
- 51 year-old Paul Thomas Anderson (with his 3rd nomination
as Best Director, and no wins), for Licorice Pizza
[Note: Anderson was previously nominated in the category for There Will Be
Blood (2007) and Phantom
Thread (2017).]
- 61 year-old Britisher Kenneth Branagh (with his
2nd nomination as Best Director), for Belfast
[Note: Branagh also received two other nominations
for Belfast: Best Picture Producer, and Best Original Screenplay.
With these nominations, Branagh became the first person to earn
7 Oscar nominations in seven different categories (Picture, Directing,
Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Live-Action Short, Lead
Actor, and Supporting Actor), with no wins to date, except for
this year, when Branagh won Best Original Screenplay. He was previously
nominated as Best Director for Henry
V (1989).]
- 43 year-old Japanese Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (with
his first nomination as Best Director), for Drive My Car
[Note: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi was the third
Japanese director to be Oscar-nominated for Best Director, following
Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in
the Dunes (1964), with a win for Best Foreign Language Film)
and Akira Kurosawa (Ran (1985)). Hamaguchi also received
a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for the film.]
[Note: For the first time, two real-life (off-screen)
couples received performance nominations covering all four acting
categories. See details below.]
The winner in the Best Actor category was:
- 53 year-old Will Smith (with his 3rd Best Actor
nomination and first Oscar win), for his role as Richard Williams,
the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, in King
Richard
[Note: Smith was previously nominated as Best
Actor for Ali (2001) and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).
His supporting co-star Aunjanue Ellis portrayed his wife Oracene
'Brandy' Williams.]
The other nominees included:
- 67 year-old Denzel Washington (with his 10th Oscar
nomination overall, and 9th acting nomination, including two previous
Oscar wins), for his role as the titular character - aspiring Scottish
king Macbeth in the Shakespeare adaptation, The
Tragedy of Macbeth
[Note: Washington became the most-nominated black actor in Oscar history
with his nomination. He had two Best Supporting Actor nominations,
and seven Best Actor nominations, plus a producer nomination for Fences
(2016). He previously won Best Actor for Training
Day (2001), and Best Supporting Actor for Glory (1989).]
- 52 year-old Spanish actor Javier Bardem (with his
4th Oscar nominations, with one win), for his role as Lucille Ball's
husband Desi Arnaz, in Being the Ricardos
[Note: Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor
for No Country For Old Men (2007), and was nominated two
other times for Best Actor: Before Night Falls (2000) and Biutiful
(2010). Bardem and Penélope Cruz became the 6th married
couple to be nominated for acting in the same year.]
- 38 year-old Andrew Garfield (with his 2nd Best
Actor nomination), for his role as gifted,
1990s composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson, in Tick,
Tick … Boom!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda (in his
directorial debut); Larson was noted for his Tony Award-winning
'Rent'; the title of the film was based on the name of Larson's
own autobiographical musical
[Note: Garfield was previously nominated as Best
Actor for the WWII drama Hacksaw
Ridge (2016).]
- 45 year-old British actor Benedict Cumberbatch (with
his 2nd Best Actor nomination), for his role as mid-1920s
wealthy Montana ranch owner Phil Burbank, in The
Power of the Dog
[Note: Cumberbatch was previously nominated for Best Actor for The
Imitation Game (2014).]
The Best Actress category nominees
produced a strange anomaly. It featured an all-white performer line-up
with two previous Best Actress Oscar winners, and only one first-timer.
However, all five Best Actress nominees were not in
the top 10 of Best Picture-contending films! The last time this
happened was 16 years ago amongst 2005 films, when the main category
was still limited to five nominees.
[Note: Kristen Stewart and Afro-Latina Ariana De
Bose made Oscar history this year for being the first two openly
LGBT+ female performers who were nominated in acting categories.
The first gay actor who received an Oscar nomination was Ian McKellen
for The
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).]
The winner in the Best Actress category was:
- 44 year-old Jessica Chastain (with her 3rd Oscar
nomination and first Oscar win), for her role in the biographical
drama about two controversial televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim
Bakker in the 1970s and 1980s, in The Eyes of Tammy Faye
[Note: Chastain's two previous nominations were
Best Supporting Actress for The Help (2011), and Best Actress
for Zero Dark Thirty (2012).]
The other nominees in the category included:
- 54 year-old American-born Australian actress Nicole
Kidman (with her 5th Oscar nomination, and one previous Best Actress
win), for her role as TV-film star Lucille Ball, in Being the
Ricardos
[Note: Kidman was previously nominated as Best
Actress for Moulin Rouge! (2001), The Hours (2002) (win),
and Rabbit Hole (2010), and as Best Supporting Actress
for Lion (2016). Being the Ricardos received only three acting
nominations and nothing else.]
- 47 year-old Spanish actress Penélope Cruz
(with her 4th Oscar nomination, her second Best Actress nomination,
and with one previous win), for her role as Janis Martínez
Moreno, in director Pedro Almodóvar's
drama Parallel Mothers (Sp.) (aka Madres Paralelas)
[Note: Cruz's three previous nominations were
Best Actress for Volver (2006), and Best Supporting Actress
for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) (win) and Nine
(2009).]
- 48 year-old English actress Olivia Colman (with
her 3rd Oscar nomination, and one previous Best Actress win), for
her role as the older Leda Caruso, in co-writer/director Maggie
Gyllenhaal's directorial debut film - the psychological drama The
Lost Daughter
[Note: Colman was previously nominated for Best Actress (win)
for The Favourite (2018), and for Best Supporting Actress for
The Father (2020).]
- 31 year-old Kristen Stewart (with her first Oscar
nomination), for her role as Princess Diana, in director Pablo
Larraín's British
biopic Spencer (with only one nomination)
The winner in the Best Supporting Actor category (four
out of five nominees were first-timers) was:
- 53 year-old Troy Kotsur (with his first nomination),
for his role as Frank Rossi, a gruff and deaf Gloucester, MA fisherman
struggling within his mostly-deaf family with the aid of 17 year-old
teenaged daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) - the only non-deaf family
member, who was about to embark on an independent life of her own,
in CODA
[Note: Deaf actor Kotsur became the first male deaf
actor to receive an Oscar nomination and to win the Oscar. With his
co-star Marlee Matlin, the two became the only two deaf actors
ever recognized by the Academy. Matlin was the first deaf performer
to be Oscar-nominated - and she won the Oscar for Children of
a Lesser God (1986).
He was only the second deaf person to win, after his CODA co-star
Marlee Matlin won Best Actress for her role in Children
of a Lesser God (1986).]
The other nominees included:
- 67 year-old JK Simmons (with his 2nd nomination
in the category), for his role as I Love Lucy star William
Frawley, in Being the Ricardos
[Note: Simmons was previously nominated (and won) as Best Supporting
Actor in Whiplash (2014).]
- 68 year-old Irish actor Ciarán Hinds (with
his first Oscar nomination), for the role of "Pop", in writer/director
Kenneth Branagh's Belfast
- 33 year-old Jesse Plemons (with his first nomination),
for his role as dapper and mild-mannered George Burbank, a wealthy
mid-1920s Montana ranch owner - the husband of Rose Gordon (his
co-star and real-life wife Kirsten Dunst), in Jane Campion's The
Power of the Dog
- 26 year-old Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (with
his first Oscar nomination), for his role as lisping Peter Gordon,
the son of widow and inn owner Rose Gordon, in The
Power of the Dog
The
winner in the Best Supporting Actress category (with
four first-time nominees and one previous winner, and two performers
of color) was:
- 31 year-old Afro-Latina Ariana DeBose (with her
first nomination), for her role as star-crossed lover Anita,
in Spielberg's remake West Side Story
With her win, DeBose became the first openly
LGBT+ female performer to win an acting Oscar, in addition to being
the first female of color.
[Note: Rita Moreno won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the
same role in the original 1961 film, and
also starred in a different role in the remake. In terms of Oscar
history, DeBose and Moreno became the first actors of color and
the first women to be nominated (and win) for the same character
in different films. They were the 3rd pair of performers
thus honored, following Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro as Vito
Corleone (in The
Godfather (1972) and The Godfather
Part II (1974))
and Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker (in The
Dark Knight (2008) and Joker (2019).].
The other nominees were:
- 87 year-old English actress Judi Dench (with her
8th nomination, and only one previous win), for her role as Granny,
in Belfast
[Note: Dench's two previous Best Supporting Actress
nominations included Shakespeare in Love (1998) (win) and Chocolat
(2000); her many Best Actress nominations included Mrs Brown
(1997), Iris (2001), Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), Notes
on a Scandal (2006), and Philomena (2013). At her age,
Dench became the third oldest acting nominee of all time. She also
became the most-nominated British actress of all time, surpassing Greer
Garson (with 7 career nominations).]
- 39 year-old Kirsten Dunst (with her first nomination),
for her role as alcoholic mother Rose Gordon Burbank (co-starring
with her real-life Oscar-nominated husband Jesse Plemons), in The
Power of the Dog
- 32 year-old Irish actress Jessie Buckley (with her
first nomination), for her role as the younger version of Leda
Caruso (Oscar-nominated Olivia Colman portrayed the older version),
in The
Lost Daughter
[Note: It was a rare Oscar accomplishment - The Lost Daughter's two
performers received Oscar nominations for playing the same character
in the same film. This has only happened with two other films,
involving Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, and Gloria Stuart. (1) In Titanic
(1996), Winslet was nominated for Best Actress for her role as Rose DeWitt
Bukater, while Stuart also received a Best Supporting Actress nomination
for playing the older version of Rose in the same film. (2) In Iris (2001), Kate Winslet was
nominated as Best Supporting Actress for playing Iris Murdoch, while
Judi Dench earned a Best Actress nomination for playing the elder Iris.]
- 53 year-old Aunjanue Ellis (with her first nomination),
for her role as Oracene 'Brandy' Price/Williams, the mother of
the super-star tennis Venus sisters, in King
Richard
[Note: Best Actor-winner Will Smith played the
father Richard Williams, Brandy's husband.]
Snubs or Overlooked Films or Nominees:
- two major omissions: Lady Gaga as outsider Italian
female Patrizia Reggiani (a Best Actress role) who married into
the Gucci family, and Jared Leto as unintelligent and untalented
aspiring designer Paolo Gucci, both starring in House
of Gucci
- Jennifer Hudson as Best Actress for her role as
singer Aretha Franklin, in Respect
- Caitríona Balfe - overlooked for her sensitive
portrayal of a working class mother ("Ma"), in Belfast
- Spider-Man: No Way Home, the blockbuster
superhero film, and the largest grossing-film (domestic) of the
year - it received only one nomination: Best Visual Effects (it
lost to Dune)
- MGM/UAR's James Bond pic No Time to Die received
three total nominations: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound and Best
Original Song (Billie Eilish's "No Time to Die") (its sole win)
- the sci-fi epic film Dune received 10 nominations,
including a nod for Best Picture, but its director Denis Villeneuve
was snubbed; it eventually
led the awards night with six Oscar wins
- Tick, Tick … Boom!, directed by Lin-Manuel
Miranda, failed to be considered for Best Picture
- in the Best Supporting category, Ruth Negga's portrayal
of Clare Bellew (a mixed-raced black woman passing as white in
Harlem), was passed over in director Rebecca Hall’s Passing -
a B/W adaptation of Nella Larsen's 1929 novel
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