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Oscar Noms Are Out, and the Winner is … Families?

The headline above is a wee bit misleading. It’s rare that Oscar embraces truly family-friendly fare, and this year’s crop of Academy Award nominees (which were released earlier this morning) don’t really buck that trend. We’d never recommend that you plop your 6-year-old in front of the telly and watch The Power of the Dog.

But many of the nominated films are about families, built around some surprisingly positive messages. And a few may indeed be navigable for yours.

Take this year’s 10 Best Picture Nominees: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story. Half of them are rated PG-13, and all five of those are rooted in family dynamics.

Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white Belfast is based on the director’s own life growing up in that titular war-torn Irish city. It focuses on a kid named Buddy as his Ma and Pa struggle with whether to stay or go. Both clearly love the other (and both care deeply for their little boy), but they fight over this serious question. And sometimes, Buddy’s grandparents, Pop and Granny, step into the breach to give Buddy grand advice or a safe harbor. (The actors who played Pop and Granny, Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench respectively, both earned Oscar noms themselves.) Plugged In’s Bob Hoose warns us about the movie’s foul language in his review, but he also says that the film “has a way of surprising with its almost unexpected beauty.”

The same could be said of CODA, a film released on Apple TV+ way back in August. Emilia Jones stars as Ruby Rossi, the only member of a mostly deaf family who can hear. For years, she’s served as her family’s ears in her hardscrabble community of fishers. But she loves music and has discovered she has a talent for singing—a passion for which her parents inherently can’t understand. The film sports loads of swearing and some really awkward sexual scenes. But the heart behind CODA is a great one.

Dune, director Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping take on Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi saga, gives us a very different sort of family. Paul Atreides is heir to his family’s powerful galactic fiefdom: His father, Duke Leto, is a cagey statesman; his mother, Lady Jessica, is a member of the mysterious Bene Gesserit. And when the family is sent to rule the hostile desert planet Arrakis, all of them will be challenged in ways unimaginable. We should note the film is saturated in sci-fi spirituality and soaked in a bit of blood. And while you’re not going to find a lot of clear-cut moral takeaways here, you will find some admirable, even heroic traits in House Atreides.

King Richard relates the early upbringing of Venus and Serena Williams, the tennis superstars guided by their loving, exasperating father. If there’s one film on the list that seems to embody strong family messages, this might be it: The Williams family is as close as it can be, with the girls entertaining themselves (and each other) through talent contests and movie nights. Their parents taught them to work hard in school, to focus on the tasks at hand and, most especially, to love one another. Again, the film hits the net a few times. But—produced by Venus and Serena themselves—King Richard serves as a complex love letter to family.

The musical West Side Story doesn’t focus on traditional family values as some of the other films on our list. And yet it’s still all about family. On one side, you have Tony—a young dreamer trying to turn his life around—and his estranged street family, the Jets. They’re juvenile delinquents all, but still more than happy to lay down their lives for their brothers. Those Jet-ruled streets, though, are beginning to fill with immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. For those new Americans, family is all-important, and brash boxer Bernardo sure isn’t gonna let his little sister, Maria, date a Jet. This new take on a classic musical (which itself takes inspiration from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) nails most of its high notes and just might be one of the most navigable films on this list. Well, minus some swearing and all the people who die and stuff.

Again, family-friendly movies don’t always get a lot of love from the glitteratzi come awards season. But this year, Oscar did look kindly at a few family-centric flicks. Check out our reviews to see if one might be suitable for yours.

paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

One Response

  1. -Have to say i agree that at least compared with times past and what award shows were starting to look like there are at least more surprisingly family fare then i was expecting. Now guaranteed i wouldnt recommend power of the dog or licrorize pizza or the nightmare alley one and coda although sweet story and family dynamics is definitely a little too awkward and crude at times. Have to say would be interested in belfast though and okay with westside story, duane, or king richard. Mainly am glad that these latter ones are focusing more on sweet family, life lessons worth learning and not so much agenda…heck i might even be more inclined to watch awards after this that is if continue more actually worth watching movies etc….