11 Huge Screw-Ups From The 94th Oscar Film Nominations
5. Snub: Denis Villeneuve For Best Director
Nominees: Kenneth Branagh (Belfast), Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Rysuke Hamaguichi (Drive My Car), Steven Spielberg (West Side Story) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza).
The Best Director line-up this year is absolutely terrific and all five of these nominees did a fantastic job with their movies, but there is someone else who really should've been nominated: Denis Villeneuve for his phenomenal direction of Dune, which allowed it to be probably the most visually stunning film of the year.
Dune is one of the best-directed movies of the year and Villeneuve was easily a top-five nominee, so him being left out - especially when Dune has done so well at this year's Oscars - is pretty inexplicable. It's no surprise that this has become perhaps the single most criticized snub of the Oscars.
There was room for him in this field too. Ryusuke Hamaguichi and especially Kenneth Branagh both did an absolutely superb job with their films, but to be brutally honest Villeneuve's work on Dune was better than either of them, so he should've replaced one of them.