Oscars Nominations 2022: 8 Ups & 9 Downs

8. Javier Bardem Is The Weak Link In Best Actor

The Best Actor field was almost a very, very strong category across the board, yet there's just one outlier bringing things down - Javier Bardem's nomination for playing Desi Arnaz in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos.

This is nothing against Bardem at all - he's a phenomenal actor who does about as much as any actor could with a relatively mediocre biopic script.

Hollywood of course loves rewarding movies about itself, so it shouldn't be surprising that he made the cut, even if at the expanse of so many effortlessly superior performances.

To name just a few of the performances that should've made the final five over Bardem: Nicolas Cage (Pig), Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley), Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), Joaquin Phoenix (C'mon C'mon), and Simon Rex (Red Rocket).

The Academy really indulged their laziest, most navel-gazing tendencies here, and so Bardem sticks out like a sore thumb among the vastly superior performances of Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick … Boom!), Will Smith (King Richard), and Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth).