This morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the 91st Academy Awards, which airs on ABC on February 24.
If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t seen many of these movies, but now that they’ve been nominated for an Oscar, you might want to check some of them out.
While all of the attention will be on the top few movies, 53 different titles received Oscar nominations today across the 24 major categories. Of those, 15 are short films–5 documentary shorts, 5 live-action shorts, and 5 animated shorts.
None of those films are generally readily available to be seen, but if you’re interested in them, keep an eye on Fandango or wherever you get showtimes, as theaters will often have screenings of them between now and the ceremony in late February. So that gives us 38 other movies to check out.
Methodology
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes rather helpfully lets you know local showtimes for movies in theaters, and for those movies out of theaters, it provides a list of which of the major streaming services a title is on. For movies out of theaters, I also checked Amazon.com to see if the movie was available on Blu-ray or DVD and their Prime Video service, which oddly is often not listed on Rotten Tomatoes.
Note that all of this information is current as of this writing, and is subject to change. The Best Picture nominees, in particular, may be returning to theaters for limited runs.
Best Picture
As has become common, the Academy nominated nine films for Best Picture this year.
Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, and Vice are all still playing in theaters, likely with expanded showtimes.
Black Panther is currently available on Netflix. It can be purchased on disc or rented from Amazon Prime, iTunes, FandangoNow and Vudu.
BlacKKKlansman can be purchased on disc or rented on iTunes, FandangoNow, and Vudu.
Roma is available on Netflix.
A Star is Born is due to be released on disc on February 19, a few days before the ceremony. Until then, it can be rented on FandangoNow and Vudu.
Acting and Directing
There are four categories of acting nominations, but I’m going to lump them together here, mostly because of the 20 acting nominees, only 4 are from movies that weren’t nominated for Best Picture.
If Beale Street Could Talk (Regina King) is still in theaters.
The Wife (Glenn Close) are each available for purchase on disc or rental from Vudu.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Melissa McCarthy and Richard Grant) is listed as “coming soon” on Amazon Prime, but does not appear to be available anywhere yet.
At Eternity’s Gate (Willem Dafoe) does not appear to be available on disc or any streaming service. Hopefully, Dafoe’s nomination will change that.
Four of the five movies nominated for Best Director are also Best Picture nominees, but the one odd man out–Cold War–is available on disc or via rental from Vudu.
Writing
Six of the ten movies in the two writing categories (adapted and original screenplay) are Best Picture nominees: BlacKKKlansman, The Favourite, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice. Two of the others–Can You Ever Forgive Me? and If Beale Street Could Talk–are listed above in the acting section.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is available on Netflix.
First Reformed is on disc and can be rented from iTunes, FandangoNow and Vudu. It can also be watched for free with an Amazon Prime membership.
Animated Feature
Only one of the five Best Animated Feature titles is nominated for anything else.
Ralph Breaks the Internet and Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse are both still in theaters.
Incredibles 2 and Isle of Dogs (which was also nominated for Best Original Score) are each on disc and can be rented from iTunes, FandangoNow, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.
Mirai appears to be only available for rent on Vudu.
Documentary Feature
As is not uncommon, there’s not a lot of overlap between the Documentary Feature and other categories.
Free Solo can be rented from Vudu or Amazon Prime.
RBG is on disc and can be rented from Vudu, iTunes, FandangoNow, and Amazon Prime.
The other three nominees–Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Minding the Gap, and Fathers and Sons–do not appear to be available anywhere.
Foreign Language Film
Three of the Foreign Language nominees–Roma, Cold War, and Never Look Back–are nominated in other categories and are listed above.
The two remaining nominees are Capernaum and Shoplifters. Neither are available now, but Amazon lists both as “coming soon” to Prime Video.
Technical Categories
The “big” categories cover most of the titles receiving nominations, but here are the rest–the movies that were only nominated in the so-called “technical” categories.
Mary Poppins Returns (Costume Design, Original Score, Original Song, and Production Design) and Mary, Queen of Scots (Costume Design, Makeup) are both still in theaters.
First Man (Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects) is on disc and can be rented on Vudu, iTunes, FandangoNow and Amazon Prime.
A Quiet Place, which somewhat surprisingly only picked up a single nomination for Sound Editing, is also on disc and can be rented on Vudu, iTunes, FandangoNow and Amazon Prime.
Avengers: Infinity War and Solo: A Star Wars Story, both of which were nominated for Visual Effects, are both on Netflix and disc.
Ready Player One (Visual Effects) is on disc and Vudu. It’s also on HBO.
Christopher Robin (Visual Effects) is on disc and can be rented from iTunes, FandagoNow, Vudu and Amazon Prime.
Changes
As I mentioned above, all of this is subject to change. Movies may return to theaters, or be released on disc and added (or removed) from streaming services between now and the Oscar ceremony. If you see that something has changed, please let us know in the comments.
Note: GeekDad does not endorse or condone digital piracy. Comments suggesting that any of these movies can be illegally downloaded will be removed.
