Oscars vs Razzies: The Thin Line Between Best and Worst Just Got Blurry

By Jim Slotek

They were the best of performances, they were the worst of performances.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced its nominees for this year’s Oscars Tuesday morning, just two days after Oscar’s evil twin, The Razzies announced their picks for worst.

And it almost seems like the yin-and-yang events have begun to cross pollinate, so weirdly did the nominations intertwine.

I’ll digress for a moment to say, “Yay, Canada!” after the Oscar noms for Sarah Polley’s Women Talking and Domee Shis Turning Red in Best Picture and Best Animated Feature respectively. Also, Ina Fichman and Daniel Roher for the nominated Best Feature Documentaries Fire of Love and Navalny.

Best Actor nom Austin Butler and Worst Actor nom Tom Hanks in Elvis

As for the Razzies/Oscar dance, you could see most of the Oscar nominations coming, including the multiples for The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Tár, All Quiet on the Western Front, Aftersun and Elvis.

But Elvis, which is up for several awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Baz Luhrmann) and Best Actor (Austin Butler), also contributed a Worst Actor nominee in Tom Hanks, who played The King’s infamous manager Col. Tom Parker under 20 pounds of latex and with a grating not-so-gouda Dutch accent.

Remarkably, Hanks would land another “worst” for his role of Geppetto in Robert Zemeckis’s Pinocchio, one of two Pinocchios released last year.

The one by Guillermo del Toro (an honourary Canadian, I say) was justifiably nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar. Zemeckis’s is up for Worst Picture and Worst Director.

So, choose your Pinocchios carefully.

And then there’s Ana de Armas, who was nominated for Best Actress for her role as Marilyn Monroe in the mostly-reviled Blonde. Her performance was, conversely, not among the eight Razzie nominations Blonde received.

The Oscars and The Razzies have been connected by circumstance before. Traditionally on Oscar Eve (March 11 this year, to the Oscars’ March 12), actors have been nominated for both at the same time, but for different movies. The year Halle Berry won her Oscar for Monster’s Ball, she also attended the Razzies to accept for Catwoman (and later burned the award). A similar good sport was Sandra Bullock, who won Best Actress for The Blind Side, the night after she’d attended the Razzies to accept her award for the comedy All About Steve with Bradley Cooper

But best and worst nominations for the same movie? And not one movie, but two?

Maybe the line between best and worst is akin to the line in Spinal Tap about, “the fine line between stupid and clever.” Not that I care much about the awards themselves, but awards season is the time of year people talk about movies that aren’t about superheroes. Although the push to make the Oscars more commercial continues, with Best Picture nominations for Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick (the latter of which is up for, um… Best Adapted Screenplay?).

But the ostensible “bests” represented in the Oscar list are not universally loved. Name a nominated movie and I’ve run across someone who hated it. In the case of Brendan Fraser playing a 600-pound recluse in The Whale, the objections are socio-political, having everything to do with the idea of wearing a “fat-suit” and little to do with an objective assessment of the film and its performances.

Thank God for aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, to which I’ve often directed people who object to my opinion. The beauty of this golden age is you can always find someone who shares your tastes or distastes.

2023 OSCAR NOMINATIONS

Best Picture

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking

Best Director

Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans)
Todd Field (Tár)
Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness)

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 Actor

Austin Butler (Elvis)
Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Brendan Fraser (The Whale)
Paul Mescal (Aftersun)
Bill Nighy (Living)

Best Supporting Actress

Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever)
Hong Chau (The Whale)
Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Jamie Lee Curtis (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Best Supporting Actor

Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway)
Judd Hirsch (The Fabelmans)
Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Best Animated Film

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red

Best International Film

All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany)
Argentina, 1985 (Argentina)
Close (Belgium)
EO (Poland)
The Quiet Girl (Ireland)

Best Adapted Screenplay

All Quiet on the Western Front - Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - Rian Johnson
Living - Kazuo Ishiguro
Top Gun: Maverick - Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie; Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks
Women Talking - Sarah Polley (based on the book by Miriam Toews)

Best Original Screenplay

The Banshees of Inisherin - Martin McDonagh
Everything Everywhere All at Once - Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
The Fabelmans - Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner
Tár - Todd Field
Triangle of Sadness - Ruben Östlund

Best Cinematography

All Quiet on the Western Front
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Elvis
Empire of Light
Tár

Best Film Editing

The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick

Best Original Score

All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans

Best Original Song

Applause fromTell It Like a Woman (Music and Lyric by Diane Warren)
Hold My Hand fromTop Gun: Maverick (Music and Lyric by Lady Gaga and BloodPop)
Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Music by Tems, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Goransson; Lyric by Tems and Ryan Coogler)
Naatu Naatu from RRR (Music by M.M. Keeravaani; Lyric by Chandrabose)
This is a Life from Everything Everywhere All at Once (Music by Ryan Lott, David Byrne and Mitski; Lyric by Ryan Lott and David Byrne)

Best Visual Effects

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Top Gun: Maverick

Best Sound

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Elvis
Top Gun: Maverick

Best Costume Design

Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
The Whale

Best Production Design

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
Elvis
The Fabelmans

Best Documentary Feature

All That Breathes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Fire of Love
A House Made of Splinters
Navalny

Best Documentary Short Subject

The Elephant Whisperers
Haulout
How Do You Measure a Year?
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Stranger at the Gate

Best Animated Short

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
The Flying Sailor
Ice Merchants
My Year of Dicks
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It

Best Live-Action Short

An Irish Goodbye
Ivalu
Le Pupille
Night Ride
The Red Suitcase