The Oscar Noms Are Out (and Some are Surprisingly Clean)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its newest crop of Oscar nominees this morning, and it’s a pretty interesting list.

Academy voters could hardly help it, in a way. After all, the year being honored—2020—was one of the craziest years for new movies ever. Lots of films were canceled. Those that weren’t sometimes rolled out to empty theaters. And yet, oddly, people might have an easier time seeing Oscar-nominated movies than ever before.

Take a look at the Best Picture nominees: The Father; Judas and the Black Messiah; Mank; Minari; Nomadland; Promising Young Woman; Sound of Metal; and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Of those eight films, you can watch six of them on your TV right now: Mank and Chicago 7 are Netflix productions, Sound of Metal was made by Amazon (and thus is available with an Amazon Prime membership), while Nomadland is available now on Hulu. Minari and Promising Young Woman aren’t streaming free anywhere, but they are available via video on demand, each for $19.99.

And the other two? Well, Judas and the Black Messiah was available on HBO Max right up until yesterday, March 14. (It left the platform then, presumably to drive the curious back to theaters.) And The Father will be available on VOD beginning March 26.

But here’s the other thing: Should you decide to stream one of these films into your living room, several are comparatively navigable. And in a year when so many-family friendly films were delayed, that’s nice to see.

I’m not saying that any of the films nominated for an Oscar can be viewed uncritically or without some good ol’ research beforehand. You don’t necessarily want to plop the whole fam down without a spin through our reviews—and that includes even the mostly kid-friendly animated fare on tap. (I had something to say about that subject last month, in fact.)

But two of the eight films nominated for Best Picture also were nominated for Plugged In’s own prestigious awards, in our Best Movies for Adults category. While both The Father and Minari have some content issues, they also land snugly in PG-13 territory. In fact, Minari might be one of the cleanest Best Picture nominees in years. (By the way, we had a chance to talk with its Oscar-nominated director, Lee Isaac Chung, too.)

You could argue that both were family movies, in that they certainly tell resonant family-centric stories. Minari, the story of Korean immigrants trying to start a farm in rural Arkansas, is seen largely through the eyes of a 7-year-old boy. The Father drills into the inner workings of an older family: A man suffering from dementia and the daughter trying to care for him. Both, incidentally, were among the most nominated movies on the docket, each garnering six nods.

A third Best Picture nominee, Nomadland, landed in R-rated territory for one very brief (and very un-erotic) nude scene (which depicted star Frances McDormand floating nude in a mountain lake). Take out that scene, and Nomadland might’ve been even less problematic than Minari. Meanwhile, Netflix’s Mank earned its R rating due to a handful of harsh profanities and brief near nudity: Certainly deserving of the rating, but not as gratuitous as many.

These content issues matter, of course. I’m not suggesting that they don’t. But the four films in question don’t wallow in problematic content just to wallow, either. They seemed to put the story first.

For years, my Plugged In colleagues and I have often pounded on a predictable drum: You can tell powerful stories without shellacking them in problematic content. Often, bad language and sexual issues are more distracting than anything—pulling viewers out of a story rather than reeling them in.

In 2020—for all of its many issues—Hollywood might’ve started to listen.