I’ll let you in on a secret: I lose my play-along Oscar ballot every year. Hey, I’m a critic who can’t help voting her heart while championing what should have been nominated instead. This Sunday, I’ll be rooting for these contenders — and elbowing my watch party to catch up with one of these overlooked never-rans as soon as the teleprompters chase the last winners offstage.
Best picture “Anora” “The Brutalist” “A Complete Unknown” “Conclave” “Dune: Part Two” “Emilia Pérez” “I’m Still Here” “Nickel Boys” “The Substance” “Wicked” Should win: “Dune: Part Two.” Last March, it didn’t take a snort of spice to see visions of Denis Villeneuve clutching multiple Oscars for his follow-up to 2021’s “Dune: Part One.” The first “Dune” earned 10 nods and won six.
Shockingly, this superior sequel only snagged four nominations — best picture plus three technical categories — when it deserved to gobble them up like a Shai-Hulud. “Part Two” boasts every quality you’d want in a best picture. It’s an ambitious, intelligent, grand-scale masterpiece, an immaculately crafted crowd-pleaser that never backs down from making its audience squirm.
While Villeneuve clearly adores Frank Herbert’s original 1965 novel, his clever tweaks have rejiggered its 60-year-old themes to fit exactly this moment in time, dialing up the book’s female strength and the shivers we get as Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides convinces a.
