Oscars 2023: Everything Everywhere All at Once maxes out with 11 nominations

Surprise packages and blockbusters claimed centre stage at the 2023 Oscar nominations, announced today from Los Angeles. In the wake of global box office success, both Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water were among Best Picture nominees. For Tom Cruise’s high-altitude sequel, that came among six nominations; James Cameron’s aquatic epic secured four.

But early triumphs were also claimed by films originally released with much less fanfare — and unexpected individual performances. The most nominations in total went to cult favourite Everything Everywhere All at Once, the tale of an ordinary Asian-American family travelling through multiverses, released by New York independent studio A24. It is up for 11 Oscars in total, including Best Picture, as well as Best Director for co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

The Best Picture nominations for Cameron and Cruise suggest an Academy mood-change. At one point, Oscar nods for big-ticket sequels and effects-heavy spectaculars would have been confined to technical categories. Now, in tough economic times, gatekeepers are seemingly more open to the wider artistic merits of crowd-pullers.

Another action sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is shortlisted for five awards. Again, new ground was broken with a nod to Angela Bassett for Best Supporting Actress: the first time a performer in a Marvel film has been nominated.

But Netflix — and Germany — provided another breakthrough. In recent years, the company has sought Oscar recognition with big-name directors such as Martin Scorsese and David Fincher. This year, however, a more grassroots success story has been All Quiet on the Western Front, the streamer’s German adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s first world war novel. First given a relatively low-key release, it has now been nominated for nine awards. A favourite for Best International Feature Film, it will also compete for the wider Best Picture.

But the biggest shock of all came among the nominations for Best Actress. The clear favourite remains Cate Blanchett for cultural talking point Tár. But a last-minute, social-media-driven campaign among fellow performers including Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Blanchett herself saw Andrea Riseborough nominated for the under-the-radar drama To Leslie. Another nod, meanwhile, went to Ana de Armas’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, despite the film itself being widely derided.

There was success in acting categories too for Everything Everywhere All at Once and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin: each saw four cast members shortlisted. Among the latter film’s nine nominations, McDonagh is up for Best Director, where his rivals include Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans. While the presence of moneymakers such as Top Gun: Maverick is one story of this year’s awards season, another has been the struggle of “prestige pictures” such as Spielberg’s autobiographical yarn to connect at the box office. Still, today the film secured seven nominations, Best Picture among them.

Rounding out the Best Director nominations are Todd Field (Tár) and Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness). An all-male shortlist may increase concern that the film industry is slipping back into old habits after the victories of #MeToo, although Sarah Polley’s Women Talking has been nominated as Best Picture.

Among Best Actor nominees, the bookies’ favourite is Brendan Fraser, star of The Whale. He will face competition, however, from Austin Butler, whose performance in Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy Elvis has been the subject of an equally energetic awards campaign. The film secured eight nominations in total.

For the awards as a media event, last year brought a degree of attention organisers could not have foreseen when Best Actor contender Will Smith slapped co-host Chris Rock onstage. This year, Smith was not nominated for his performance in the slavery drama Emancipation. The Academy will be hoping for a similar level of audience engagement without the violence when the Oscar ceremony takes place in Los Angeles on March 12.

The nominees in the four main awards categories are as follows:

Best Picture

All Quiet on the Western Front

German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s first-world-war novel

Avatar: The Way of Water

Two-billion-dollar-grossing sci-fi sequel directed by James Cameron

The Banshees of Inisherin

Irish story of faltering friendship starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson

Elvis

Maximalist pop biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Multiverse-set mix of martial arts, family drama and existential panic

The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical tale of marital break-up and self-discovery

Top Gun: Maverick

Box-office-conquering sequel starring Tom Cruise

Tár

Cate Blanchett stars as a world-famous conductor faced with losing it all

Triangle of Sadness

Blackly comic satire of the super-rich and the modelling industry

Women Talking

Story of rape survivors in a religious American community

Best Actor

Austin Butler (Elvis)

Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)

Brendan Fraser (The Whale)

Paul Mescal (Aftersun)

Bill Nighy (Living)

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett (Tár)

Ana de Armas (Blonde)

Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie)

Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans)

Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Best Director

Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin)

Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness)

Todd Field (Tár)

Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans)

The Academy Awards will take place on March 12, oscars.org