It's never been easier to catch up on all the potential movie award nominees, and it's never been more expensive.
The 2021 Oscars will be as strange as everything else these days — starting with it being the first year they will be given to movies that almost nobody saw in movie theaters.
Studios postponed many big-budget titles that need butts in seats to be profitable ("Black Widow") and shifted others to streaming platforms ("Soul"). That has altered the field of contenders for the nominations coming Monday morning — although not as much as you might think — and made it possible for Jane Moviegoer to watch potential honorees exactly the way Oscar voters have for years: in the privacy of their own BarcaLoungers.
One big difference: Oscar voters get DVDs or screening links sent for free, but you might have to hock that recliner to get caught up on everything that's streaming before the awards ceremony on April 25.
You'd need to subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, HBO Max and the new A24 Screening Room. On top of all those are titles such as "Promising Young Woman" and "The Mauritanian" that are available on-demand on a few platforms for 20 bucks or so.
The reopening of theaters in January in Minnesota has helped — that's where you can see "The Father," and let's face it, where movies were meant to be seen. Even then, some theaters may be unwilling to show titles that have been available online for months. There are no announcements yet about the annual Oscar best picture marathons that some theaters host, but they'll be tricky.
'Nomadland' or bust
What about the movies themselves? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pushed back its calendar two months, hoping to allow time for the pandemic to subside and blockbusters to sneak into theaters. A few titles took advantage of the extended window — "Judas and the Black Messiah," notably, and "French Exit," which has not yet opened in theaters here and seems likely to be skipped over for awards — but the pandemic hasn't changed the field of contenders all that much.
Take a look at the delayed movies. A bunch are the sort of blockbuster titles that only score sound and visual effects nominations, anyway. The oft-postponed 007 movie, "No Time to Die," might have snagged a best song nom for Billie Eilish but that's about it. Only Steven Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story," Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights," Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel" and Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch" stand out as titles that would have been in the conversation for major nominations.