Oscar firsts and rare nominations for 90th Academy Awards

After several seasons as one-half of the most culturally incisive sketch comedy show on television, nobody was underestimating Jordan Peele when he went off and made a horror movie. And yet it’s fair to say that nobody was expecting him to emerge as the second coming of George A. Romero. “Get Out” is probably the most savagely funny (and genuinely scary!) horror satire since 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” and was so undeniable that the Academy had to get over its genre snobbery and honor its considerable craft. Peele’s a first-time filmmaker and a first-time Oscar nominee (make that “three-time” for Picture, Director and Original Screenplay), and could very well be a first-time winner come March.

Though Greta Gerwig had significant creative input in the mumblecore films that launched her career, she was never the driving artistic force behind them; “Lady Bird” makes this abundantly clear by being substantially better than all of the films slouched under that genre’s banner. Gerwig’s effortless evocation of time and place reveals a born filmmaker who has a new take on growing up not-so-well-off in America. It’s a first-rate coming-of-age tale and a terrific mother-daughter drama that resonated deeply enough to earn Gerwig Best Director and Original Screenplay nominations her first time out.

“I, Tonya” is a divisive film given its tonally tricky depiction of child and spousal abuse, but it’s got a propulsive rhythm that keeps you drilled to your seat, and first-time Best Editor nominee Tatiana S. Riegel was integral to nailing this pace. Riegel learned from one of the very best to ever man an Avid in the late Sally Menke, and she’s turned in career-best work on this acerbic biopic of disgraced Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding.

Sam Rockwell is one of those actors who makes every film better just by showing up. Thanks to memorable performances in “Moon,” “Galaxy Quest” and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," he’s hugely admired by his peers and genuinely loved by movie buffs. Though it’s a little disappointing his consistently great work hasn’t been acknowledged by the Academy until now, it’s gratifying to see him finally taking home awards for his challenging portrayal of a racist deputy who locates something resembling a conscience after nearly burning to death.

This husband-and-wife comedy duo drew directly on their almost tragic history in writing their first produced screenplay, and the result was a Sundance phenom that’s surprised every step of the way – first as a box-office success, then as an Oscar nominees. It’s a richly well-deserved nomination for this uproarious romantic comedy about accepting and, ultimately, reveling in our cultural differences. 

Let’s get this out of the way: films based on graphic novels have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay before. “Ghost World,” “A History of Violence” and “American Splendor” all had 'comic book' pedigrees. “Logan,”  however, is the first superhero movie to receive this honor, and, all told, it’s more than worthy. Though older voters aren’t quite the monolithic guardians of prestige respectability anymore, it probably didn’t hurt that two of the three writers (Frank and Mangold) had Oscar pedigrees. Also helpful, it leaned more heavily into Western mythology (particularly “Shane”) than superhero lore.

There are a couple of Academy Award firsts here, and they both belong to Agnes Varda. It’s the first competitive Oscar nomination for the French New Wave icon (she received an honorary Oscar in 2017), and, more amazingly, she is now, at eighty-nine years old, the oldest person to ever be nominated for a non-honorary Oscar (out-olding her fellow 2018 nominee James Ivory by eight days). And while this is historically one of the most difficult awards to predict, Oscar experts currently seem to think she has an excellent shot at being the oldest winner.

The 1994 documentary “Hoop Dreams” is widely considered to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made, but due to clannishness and since-changed nominating rules, it was ignominiously shut out of the Best Documentary category in 1995. The movie’s director, Steve James, has made many critically acclaimed documentaries since then, but, twenty-three years after the snubbing of “Hoop Dreams," he’s only now receiving his first Best Documentary nomination. The film, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail," is about a family-owned Chinatown bank that, unlike the big banks, was hit with criminal charges in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.

The Radiohead guitarist and keyboardist made his film-scoring debut in 2009 with “There Will Be Blood,” and was widely considered a sure-fire Oscar nominee until the Academy’s music committee disqualified him for not having met the category’s standards for original material (there were evidently too many preexisting classical compositions on the soundtrack). Greenwood more than matched that standard with “Phantom Thread,” composing one of the greatest film scores in recent memory – one that, alas, is apparently doomed to lose to Alexandre Desplat’s lovely music for “The Shape of Water.”

Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens is currently welching on his promise to record an LP about each of the fifty U.S. states (the effort has stood at a paltry two since 2005), but Academy members, evidently more forgiving than indie rock fans, have nonetheless seen fit to nominate him for his very first Academy Award. Viewed outside the betrayal of the “Fifty States Project,” his song “Mystery of Love” is beautiful accompaniment for a young man’s heartbreak in “Call Me by Your Name.”

This is Christopher Nolan’s fifth Academy Award nomination, but, astonishingly, only his first for Best Director. Dubiously snubbed for “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Interstellar,” Nolan finally wised up, cast aside the comic book and science fiction material, and made a war movie in “Dunkirk.” The Academy loves those. Alas, he might’ve gotten non-genre serious at the wrong time, as he’s currently in danger of losing this Oscar to a director who made a horror movie, and a horror filmmaker who made a movie about a woman falling in love with a fish-man.

Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to win an Academy Award in 2010 when he took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Beginners.” Thanks to the awful behavior of Kevin Spacey (and astonishing filmmaking pluck of eighty-year-old Ridley Scott), he’s back at the age of eighty-eight to at least raise the bar for oldest Supporting Actor nominee. Can he set a new record for oldest winner? He’s going to have to upset frontrunner Sam Rockwell to do it, and no one seems to think that’s likely at the moment.

Artists in their late eighties are dominating the 2018 Oscars! Joining fellow soon-to-be nonagenarians Agnes Varda and Christopher Plummer is screenwriter James Ivory, who’s received his first Adapted Screenplay nomination for “Call Me by Your Name” (he previously earned Best Director nods for “A Room with a View,” “Howards End” and “Remains of the Day”). It would be an emotional moment to see the old Academy favorite win his first competitive Oscar on the cusp of ninety, and that appears to be where this is headed.

As with Christopher Nolan, you’re probably certain Guillermo del Toro has at least one Best Director nomination to his credit. But no, not even for “Pan’s Labyrinth." "The Shape of Water" might be del Toro’s most personal work to date, so perhaps it’s appropriate that the Academy held off until now – especially since he appears to be the frontrunner to win in this unpredictable year.

Dee Rees has been making noise on the indie film circuit since making her feature-directing debut with 2011’s “Pariah.” Virgil Williams is a veteran television writer and producer who’s enjoyed plenty of ratings success via shows like “24” and “Criminal Minds,” but he’s never been able to break through awards-wise. Together, they’re now first-time Academy Awards nominees thanks to their critically acclaimed adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s novel “Mudbound.”

The sunken heart and soul of “Get Out,” Daniel Kaluuya powerfully conveys the dread anguish of a man watching helplessly as his identity is appropriated and his body stolen. Peele has said that he cast Kaluuya in the room after he nailed his audition, and his instincts were spot-on as it’s impossible to conceive of anyone giving a better performance in this role. It appears to be Gary Oldman’s year. If so, Kaluuya’s got more than enough time and talent to get back to the Dolby Theatre and win it all.

It’s cause for both celebration and consternation that, in 2018, Rachel Morrison is the first woman to be nominated for Best Cinematographer in the eighty-nine-year history of the Academy Awards. That’s by far the longest stretch of all-male nominees in a non-gender-specific category. But let’s focus on the good, or shall we say “great” because there’s no denying the tactile authenticity of Morrison’s sweat-inducing Louisianan lensing. Only thirty-nine, Morrison’s got a long, brilliant career ahead of her (next up is “Black Panther”).

There’s nothing glamorous about pop star Mary J. Blige’s devastating portrayal of Florence in Dee Rees’s “Mudbound.” It’s no surprise that a woman this adept at communicating pain and heartbreak in song can vanish so completely into this character, but the sheer absence of affectation and ease of being is something altogether new for the performer. “Mudbound” gives Blige another Oscar first: a nomination for Best Original Song (which she shares with Raphael Saadiq and Taura Stinson).

This six-time Emmy winner for “The West Wing” and “Mom” is no stranger to big-screen brilliance, but Janney has somehow never made it to the final five in either Oscar acting category before. Ironically, her main competition, Laurie Metcalf, is also a multiple Emmy winner (three for “Roseanne”). Janney’s been the favorite throughout awards season, but Oscar experts sense that the tide might be turning in Metcalf’s favor. It’s gonna be a close one. Could we be heading toward the Oscars’ first acting-category tie since Barbara Streisand and Katharine Hepburn split the ticket in 1969?

Successful professional athletes aren’t exactly shy about getting into the movie business, but few of them do it well enough to earn an Academy Award nomination. So it makes sense on some level that one of the fiercest competitors to every play any sport would find his way to the Dolby Theatre. That’s right, Kobe Bryant (along with celebrated former Disney animator Glen Keane) is an Oscar nominee for producing “Dear Basketball,” a cartoon short that animates his 2015 retirement letter to The Players’ Tribune. It’s even got a score by John Williams. Kobe’s fans are no doubt thrilled.