Oscar Nominations 2019: 6 Ups & 9 Downs

Downs...

9. Too Much Love For Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book & Vice

Though it wasn't remotely surprising, it was disappointing to see the Academy spring so enthusiastically for some of the year's more middling, mainstream-skewing awards contenders, namely Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and Vice.

Bohemian Rhapsody scooped four nominations, and though its Sound Editing and Sound Mixing nods were expected and Rami Malek's Best Actor nomination is acceptable, the workmanlike biopic scoring a Best Picture nomination is completely absurd. This also makes it one of the worst-reviewed movies to receive a Best Picture nomination in recent years.

Green Book meanwhile overcame controversy to land five nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen), Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

You can make decent enough cases for the strong performances, but does the movie's facile examination of systemic racism really feel remotely awards-worthy?

And finally, there's Adam McKay's Vice, which is easily the best of these three over-achieving awards prospects but still hardly a great film.

A mighty eight nominations feels pretty out-there, for as brilliant as Christian Bale and Amy Adams' performances are along with the fantastic makeup work, the nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Film Editing are pretty damn suspect.

It's a bizarre, depressing reality that, after the diverse progress the Academy appeared to make in recent years, 2019 has seen voters en masse take a regressive step back to throwing nominations at movies this generic and unsophisticated.

Is this our punishment for spitting on the planned Best Popular Film award?