16 nominations for Sinners? Smoke and Stack about to throw another killer party.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscars Quest! The game is simple but time-consuming: after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announces their latest nominations for the Academy Awards, I make plans to watch as many nominees as I can in every category — not just Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. They have the Super Bowl; I have the Oscars.

With the nagging exception of the 2024 Documentary Short nominee Death by Numbers — whose makers have taken it on an extended in-person U.S. tour instead of streaming it — I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short released between 2020 and 2024, running the full gamut from the highest-priority Best Picture contenders down to the mediocre flicks with negative Tomatometer scores that show up only for Best Original Song. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Anora, and every Best Picture nominee from 1984 to the present. I remember some better than others, and found many of them worth the hunt. I’ve enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets.

Sometimes I have to wait for smaller films to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re available on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes my only option is a streaming rental for a few dollars more. I go wherever the Quest takes me, while my wife Anne the Oscar Widow waits patiently at home or in another room, like Penelope looking forlornly at her calendar and wondering why that pigheaded Odysseus insists on stopping at every single time-wasting Mediterranean island in his way.

Last year 50 features and shorts were nominated in all, and I fell short with 94% completion by deadline, a disappointment after nailing 100% the two previous years. I can be rather tenacious about this, and have to be especially patient with the same holdout category every year, the Best International Feature nominees. They’re traditionally the final works to open in our market because their distributors are typically the smallest and the most surprised whenever AMPAS deems them worthy of the spotlight. And there’s no guarantee Indy will rank highly enough in their hastily assembled limited-release rollout to hook me up in time.

Can I complete my scorecard on time this year? Of this year’s 50 nominated works, I’ve already watched the following twelve in theaters and written about them in previous entries:

I caught the following three nominees on home video in 2025 and wrote about them as part of a single 3900-word marathon:

“I feel the need for SPEED! And for more corporate sponsors!”

Since January 1st I’ve streamed two more films that tested Oscar-positive after the fact. Doing my homework early yielded mixed results, but wasn’t all for naught. Those value-added results:

* F1: The Movie (Apple+): The Indy 500 was the only sporting event I ever cared about as a kid, or really at any point in my life. Based on my limited experience and my complete ignorance of Formula 1 racing, it’s absolute balderdash that Brad Pitt’s jaunty, unflappable nomad could return to that circuit after a thirty-year hiatus and miraculously teach the Racing Kids These Days a thing or two about “real racing”, to say nothing of the film’s depiction of these races as basically Eastern Hemisphere demolition derbies where drivers routinely, intentionally crash their extremely expensive vehicles, which they don’t even own, just so their teammates can win? I expected better from Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Top Gun: Maverick), who sometimes conveys the thrill of driving triple-digit speeds. At other times, as each hapless character takes turns being steamrolled by Chunky-Jawed Steve McQueen, I’m reminded of George Carlin’s old argument that auto racing isn’t a sport: “Driving 500 miles in a circle does not impress me!”

* Perfectly a Strangeness (Pleins Écrans, but reportedly available January 22nd only): My first sighting this year of a Documentary Short Subject nominee explores the inner and outer desolation of an abandoned observatory in Chile (not mentioned in the film) where a trio of donkeys wander around outside, uncomprehending and aimless as the beauteous starlit skies invite our imaginations to meditate upon the earthbound stillness…which I couldn’t quite manage because I had questions. What exactly did the film crew plan to document? Did they approach this empty outpost with the intent to explore a stabilized ruin, but then donkeys showed up unannounced? is there some well-to-do donkey owner who uses the observatory property as a playground for his herds, and the crew thought that sounded like a wild subject to shoot? Or did they rent the donkeys and dump them onsite just so they could watch what happens, which sounds like more of a Jackass stunt or a scripted construct that’d better belong in the Live-Action Short Film category? I was distracted till the end credits confirm the donkeys have names, which narrowed down the possible premises. On the bright side: nature = pretty!

…

Per MCC annual tradition, I plan to catch all the Animated Shorts and the Live-Action Shorts in their annual Shorts.TV theatrical runs in mid-February:

That leaves me 23 more nominees to go before I sleep. Some are still in theaters, some proprietary to specific services, some available for rental, and some in unwatchable limbo as of this writing, which is not cool and hopefully temporary. Those other nominees on my to-do list (including the two documentary categories) are:

So: Oscar Quest has begun! Updates as they occur, only here on MCC! And maybe on social media if I’m in the mood! And in our living room if you’re my wife and keep putting up with me!