Oscar nominations try to make sense of a movie year that wasn’t even a year
Ann Hornaday
The weirdness continues.
Nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards were announced Monday morning, marking the beginning of the end of what will surely be remembered as the strangest and most chronologically challenged movie year in history.
The year wasn’t even a year. Because of shuttered theaters, scrambled release schedules and radically upended viewing habits — all brought on by the coronavirus pandemic — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allowed films released in early 2021 to qualify for Oscars, resulting in a film such as “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which made its debut at an all-virtual Sundance Film Festival just last month, competing for best picture alongside “Minari,”“The Father” and “Promising Young Woman,” all of which premiered at Sundance in January 2020.