The memorably turbulent 94th Academy Awards on Sunday ended with the Sundance favorite “CODA” winning best picture, capping a triumphant night in which it collected awards in all three of its nominated categories. It’s also the first time a streaming platform has won the top prize at the Oscars, representing a history-making victory for Apple, which is offering the film exclusively on Apple TV+. Other winners are available on subscription services, too, like Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog”; and “Dune,” which can only be streamed on HBO Max, though it can be bought on other sites. The rest of the films are a browser window away from this list.
‘CODA’
Won for: Best Picture, supporting actor and adapted screenplay
How to watch: Stream it on Apple TV+.
Titled after a term to describe the hearing children of deaf adults, “CODA” catches just such a child at a major inflection point in her life, when her ambitions come into conflict with her loyalty and obligation to her family. In the seaside town of Gloucester, Mass., the 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) runs a fishing boat with her deaf parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and older brother (Daniel Durant), but she also bears the more significant burden of connecting them with the hearing world. Ruby’s passion for singing has the potential to take her to new places as a young adult, but leaving the nest isn’t easy.
‘The Power of the Dog’
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‘The Power of the Dog’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The screenwriter and director Jane Campion narrates an intimate sequence between Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Hello. I’m Jane Campion. I’m the screenwriter and director of ‘The Power of the Dog.’ This is the scene I call the love scene. It’s a scene that happens in the barn at night with Phil, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and Peter, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s really a scene I love very much, because it’s a culmination of their relationship. And so many different parts of the film that really have been seeded right from the very beginning coming together, like the completion of the rope with all its freighted meanings, the change of the relationship between Peter and Phil towards intimacy, and then the surprising power shift from Phil to Peter as Peter boldly holds out the cigarette to Phil’s lips, then to his own, and the laying out of the murder scene. The aim for me in directing the scene was to find a way to really build tension as Peter watches Phil finishing the rope. And this is something Phil has actually asked him to do. Will you watch me finish the rope? It’s a kind of vulnerability that, actually, Phil shows towards him. Here, we’re seeing the moment where the actual murder scene has been hinted at, when Phil’s wound pinks the water. And it’s also a scene where I added a lot, a lot of details during the filming of it and later. But this shot here was the one that made me really excited, like, just doing this move of focus pulls between Peter, the rope, Phil’s hands played in it at his crotch. And pulling back to Peter as he’s watching it. And then, he goes over to Bronco Henry’s saddle and begins to fiddle with that, which is actually a way of Peter subversively flirting with Phil, because anybody touching Bronco’s saddle, especially Peter, is probably eroticizing for Phil. And you know, it’s interesting that these saddles, they have so many— all the spurs actually, kind of little romantic aspects inside the little silver heart and the actual spurs themselves. You know? “How old were you when you met Bronco Henry?” “About the age you are now.” Phil and Peter are really sensing each other out here. Phil’s not really sure, I don’t think, whether Peter is aware of the atmosphere, because Peter’s really hard to read. And he starts a story about Bronco Henry and himself when they got caught out in a storm to illustrate how their friendship actually was not only the most important friendship in his life, but the one that saved his life. And he talks about lying body to body in a body roll together. And you know, meanwhile, fingering the rope and all the other erotic objects in this scene. And Peter asks— “Naked?” Which is the really important moment for me and especially the way these great actors work with the lines and with what’s happening. Here, we just see the rope that Peter has made being inserted into the main rope. And so it becomes a rope that they both made together. And initially, the scene didn’t have dialogue in it. In fact, it wasn’t even in the book. But Benedict really resisted the idea of the dialogue. And actually, initially, I had thought it shouldn’t have dialogue too. I thought it should just have Jonny Greenwood’s beautiful music and it would kind of be a moment where it would be really strong. However, Benedict and I came to a kind of compromise, where we just used the most innocent of the dialogue. You know, nothing really suggestive, but just something simple, like innocent questions. And the scene is setting out a lot of complicated things. But the most important, I think, is that it’s erotic and tense. And this moment, when they are actually sharing the cigarette, Peter gives him this little smile, where we know that he knows he has Phil. And we move on here to the horses, with the horns still playing. And these are raw animals. I think they’re very sexy in a way, because of just how natural they are and seeing them in these details and their strength and beauty and the intimacy that they have with each other is, I think, incredibly important as well.
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The screenwriter and director Jane Campion narrates an intimate sequence between Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee.CreditCredit...Kirsty Griffin/Netflix
Won for: Best director
How to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
Returning to the themes of masculinity and civilization that defined her Palme d’Or-winning film “The Piano,” the director Jane Campion sets her sights on the Western expanse of 1925 Montana, where changes at a ranch meet stiff resistance. With a surprisingly persuasive swagger, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil, a volatile rancher who reacts hostilely to his brother (Jesse Plemons) bringing his new wife (Kirsten Dunst) into the house and takes out much of his aggression on her wan son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who makes for a seemingly easy target. When Phil decides to teach his nephew how to be a man, surprising revelations about both of them start to surface.
‘King Richard’
Won for: Best actor
How to watch: Stream it on HBO Max.
The ascendence of the Williams sisters Venus and Serena from the courts of Compton to the top of the tennis world is one of the great, improbable stories in modern sports, but it was always the plan for their father, Richard, who charted a 78-page path for them when they were children. “King Richard” covers the years when Venus and Serena were still unknown, with Will Smith playing Richard as a passionate, occasionally overbearing figure who trains the two relentlessly and refuses to conform to the established systems that have burned out other teenage prodigies.
‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’
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‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The director Michael Showalter narrates a scene from his film featuring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.
“My name is Michael Showalter, and I’m the director of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” So in this scene, our two main characters— Tammy Faye Bakker and Jim Bakker, played by Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield— are attending a barbecue hosted by Pat Robertson, which is also being attended by a who’s who of the big names in the evangelical community. In this scene, Jim Bakker is excited to be sitting at a table with all of these BMOCs and wanting to make a good impression. And Tammy Faye is going to crash the party. I wanted to show the extent to which Tammy is trying to operate and be seen and heard in a man’s world.” “As you were saying, Jerry. [LAUGHS] A lot of it, in terms of just setting the scene, is to try to throw as many looks around the table as possible of how uncomfortable it makes them feel just to have a woman wanting to sit down at the table with them. Meanwhile, Tammy is really behaving like a bull in a china shop, kind of overcompensating for the awkwardness by grabbing a chair, and the sound of the chair is very loud. Everything that she’s doing is disrupting this kind of insular boys club thing that they’re all having with each other.” “Now, God has a voice in this fight.” “Amen.” “Mm-hmm.” “Mm? What’s he fighting?” “Liberal agenda. Feminist agenda. Homosexual agenda. It’s time for a reversal of these trends and the only hopes in saving America.” “Get back to the good old days.” [LAUGHTER] “Well, I love our country, but America is for them too.” “Well—” “One of the things in this scene that’s creating a lot of tension is that Jerry Falwell, Vincent D’Onofrio, is sort of the alpha dog in this group of people. And so we are focusing in on this brewing rivalry of ideologies between these two characters.” “God is my witness. I made a pledge to continue to expose the sins in this country.” “I think Tammy doesn’t pick up on some of the tension that she’s creating. And if she is, she’s certainly not letting on.” “You know, I don’t think of them as homosexuals. I just think of them as other human beings that I love. You know, we’re all—” “That central conflict that is sort of ignited in this scene between her and Jerry Falwell ends up being the central theme of Tammy Faye’s arc throughout the entire film.”
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The director Michael Showalter narrates a scene from his film featuring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.CreditCredit...Searchlight Pictures
Won for: Best actress, and makeup and hairstyling
How to watch: Stream it on HBO Max.
In the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were a ubiquitous force in Christian broadcasting, turning their PTL (Praise the Lord) network into a moneymaking juggernaut that ended in scandal. Yet Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) continued to be a fascinating figure, ridiculed for her gaudy appearance, but increasingly willing to buck up against the political conservatism of other televangelists. Adopting a tone similar to the campy 2000 documentary of the same name, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” revels in its lead’s contradictions while making hiss-worthy villains out of Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds).
‘Belfast’
Won for: Best original screenplay
How to watch: Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu.
More than 30 years into a career that has spanned from Shakespeare to Marvel, the director Kenneth Branagh gets personal with this black-and-white memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. Much like John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory,” which set a little boy’s coming-of-age against a war-ravaged backdrop, “Belfast” juxtaposes childhood nostalgia with the encroachment of the Troubles, which rips apart a neighborhood Branagh remembers fondly. Still, even conflict doesn’t suppress the warmth that suffuses the film, much of it directed toward the parents (Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan) who insulated their boy from harm.
‘Drive My Car’
Won for: Best international feature
How to watch: Stream it on HBO Max.
In Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s prismatic drama about grief, friendship, and the process and meaning of performance art, Hidetoshi Nishijima stars as Yusuke, a renowned theater director who gets commissioned to stage an experimental version of “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima. As a condition of his residency, Yusuke must allow a driver (Toko Miura) to chauffeur him from the theater to his apartment and back again, and the two develop an unexpected bond. Still reeling from his wife’s death — and her affair with a young actor (Masaki Okada) that preceded it — Yusuke embarks on an emotional journey with many profound detours.
‘West Side Story’
Won for: Best supporting actress
How to watch: Stream it on Disney + and HBO Max.
After four decades in Hollywood, the director Steven Spielberg finally attempts his first movie musical, taking on the formidable challenge of reimagining a 1961 stage adaptation that had already won 10 Oscars, including best picture. But Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, subtly tweak this gangland “Romeo & Juliet” by introducing richer historical context, adding more dimension to the Puerto Rican characters and bringing new life to classic numbers like “America” and “I Feel Pretty.” This “West Side Story” also brings back Rita Moreno for a touching role as the proprietor of a neighborhood hangout.
‘Dune’
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‘Dune’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The director Denis Villeneuve narrates a combat training sequence from his film, featuring Timothée Chalamet and Josh Brolin.
My name is Denis Villeneuve and I’m the director of Dune. “Don’t stand with your back to the door!” This scene needed to serve four purposes. First, to establish the nature of the relationship between Paul Atreides and Gurney Halleck. Two, to give more insight about the context in which the Atreides will move to a new planet named Arrakis. Three, to induce the idea that Paul Atreides has been training for combat, but has never really experienced real violence. And four, to introduce the concept of the Holtzman Shields, and how they change the essence of combat. An Holtzman Shield is a technology that protects individuals or vehicles from any fast objects. Therefore, bullets or rockets are obsolete. So it means that man to man combat came back to sword fighting. The choreography between Timothée Chalamet, who plays Paul, and Josh Brolin, who plays Gurney Halleck, illustrate that each opponent is trying to distract his adversary by doing very fast moves in order to create an opportunity to insert slowly a blade inside the opponent’s shield. “Guess I’m not in the mood today.” “Mood?” “Mm.” “What’s mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises, no matter the mood. Now fight!” That choreography was designed by Roger Yuan. He developed the Atreides fighting style borrowing from a martial art technique developed in the ‘50s. This technique was called balintawak eskrima. It’s a style that involves blocking the opponent’s attack with both a weapon and the free hand. “I have you.” “Aye. But look down, my Lord. You’d have joined me in death. I see you found the mood.” Cinematographer Greig Fraser and I shot the fight like we will shoot a dance performance. The goal was to embrace the complexity of the movements with objective camera angles. We tried to make sure that the audience will understand the nature of this new way of fighting. “You don’t really understand the grave nature of what’s happening to us.” But more importantly, I wanted to feel that Josh Brolin’s character was caring about Paul like if he was his own son. “Can you imagine the wealth? In your eyes— I need to see it in your eyes. You never met Harkonnens before. I have. They’re not human. They’re brutal! You have to be ready.”
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The director Denis Villeneuve narrates a combat training sequence from his film, featuring Timothée Chalamet and Josh Brolin.CreditCredit...Warner Bros
Won for: Best cinematography, production design, editing, original score, sound and visual effects
How to watch: Stream it on HBO Max.
Frank Herbert’s hallucinatory space adventure has allured and stymied Hollywood for decades, but the first part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation finally cracks the code, streamlining Herbert’s dense galactic intrigue without sacrificing its scale or spirit. Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, ducal heir to House Atreides, which has been assigned to manage the planet of Arrakis, a barely inhabitable desert planet that has a precious resource called “the spice” that’s essential for space travel — along with other, much trippier qualities. When the rival House Harkonnen springs a trap to wrest control over Arrakis, young Paul has to harness his unique prescience and power.
‘Encanto’
Won for: Best animated feature
How to watch: Stream it on Disney +.
Each member of the Madrigal family has been blessed by a special power that he or she uses to protect and enrich their idyllic enclave in the Colombian mountains, but one family member, Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz), has no evident gifts. In Disney’s sweet, lively animated feature, Mirabel and other Madrigals square off against an unknown force that threatens to destroy their home and community. The hit soundtrack, with music by the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, supports the action with catchy numbers like “Surface Pressure” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” as well as the bittersweet, Oscar-nominated “Dos Oruguitas.”
‘Summer of Soul’
Won for: Best documentary
How to watch: Stream it on Disney + and Hulu.
As Woodstock drew 400,000 people in the summer of 1969 — as well as generational significance and a feature film — the Harlem Cultural Festival, over six weekends that same summer, unfolded to huge crowds but little media fanfare, despite a lineup of exceptional performers and its own stake in the country’s turbulent racial history. The director Ahmir Thompson, better known as the Roots drummer Questlove, revives stirring footage of Stevie Wonder (on drums!), Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, and Sly and the Family Stone while offering context from a range of voices, including those who witnessed the event on the ground.
‘Cruella’
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‘Cruella’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The director Craig Gillespie narrates a sequence from his film featuring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson.
“Hi, my name is Craig Gillespie and I’m the director of Cruella.” “Who are you? You look vaguely familiar.” “I look stunning. I don’t know about familiar, darling.” “At this point in the film, we’re pretty much halfway through the film. And it’s the first time the audience is going to meet Cruella. It’s the first time the characters in the film meet Cruella. And it’s born out of a necessity for a certain revenge. And we get to see this group pulling off a heist. And it’s something that they’ve grown up doing and they’re very good at it. But this has sort of escalated to a whole other level for them. So we have Emma Stone playing Cruella. And we have Emma Thompson playing the Baroness. The Baroness is a fashion icon and she’s hosting a party here, which is a black and white ball. And as you can see, Emma Stone has turned up in a red dress. This scene has sort of everything— every juggling act going on in the film, which is tonally, there’s a lot of humor. But there’s also a lot of emotional stakes.” “Yes. Aren’t they gorgeous and vicious? It’s my favorite combination.” “Within this scene, we’re going to actually see the transformation of Cruella from an external character, because she’s putting on a character here and having to do that dance as an actor, to having a profound, emotional reaction to some news that she discovers throughout. But in the midst of it all, there’s a heist going on.” “You’re a very powerful woman.” “First and foremost was the dynamic between the Baroness and Cruella. But to complicate that, we have Cruella, who has gotten trapped in this situation of having a conversation with the Baroness. And she’s having to put on a character that she’s not familiar with, which is Cruella. So she’s improvising in that situation. It was kind of nerve wracking to figure out that character with Emma, because it’s its own character. It’s like separate from the other Cruellas that she plays. And it’s like a heightened version, where she’s not supposed to be good at it. So you start to get into this dangerous idea of like, bad acting and overcompensating. And so you always feel a little bit like you’re hanging out on the line a little bit as an actor, I think, when you’re going for that. But she’s very gracious with that work. And then, within all of that, you’ve got her two cohorts, Horace and Jasper, that are trying to improvise with the situation. We have Paul Walter Hauser, who is playing Horace. And then we have Joel Fry playing Jasper. Part of that improvisation for Jasper is using rats, which walks a very fine line of becoming too grotesque or too much for the audience. It was something Disney was concerned about. But I felt like we could walk that line. And there was many conversations about how many rats could we have in this scene. And then you just start to get how these characters can work together so well and improvise. It was almost like a jazz situation.” “Someone’s stolen my necklace.” “So I loved that we were going through all of these dances. And every character brings a different humor to it.” “Now it’s a party.”
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The director Craig Gillespie narrates a sequence from his film featuring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson.CreditCredit...Laurie Sparham/Disney
Won for: Best costume design
A straight-up live-action translation of Disney’s 1961 animated film “101 Dalmatians” wouldn’t make any sense, which gives “Cruella,” the origin story of its dognapping villain, the freedom to play around in the punk and haute couture fashion movements of 1970s London. Emma Stone gives young Cruella de Vil a sinister-chic twist as a rebellious street urchin who befriends a band of thieves and seeks revenge for her mother’s death. Her Cruella evokes the Anna Wintour-type played by Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” but with an avant-garde edge underscored by the film’s wall-to-wall pop soundtrack.
‘No Time to Die’
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‘No Time to Die’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The director Cary Joji Fukunaga narrates an action sequence from his film featuring Daniel Craig.
“Hi. I’m Cary Fukunaga, and I am the director of No Time to Die. In this scene, we have Daniel Craig, playing James Bond, narrowly surviving a deadly attack by Specter at the Tomb of Vesper Lynd. This was one of those interesting situations where the locations drove the inspiration for story. So I went on a scout trip with Mark Tildesley, our production designer, and Linus Sandgren, cinematographer. And I really loved this bridge in Gravina. It seemed like the perfect place to run a stunt. We had a drone, and we were flying the drone around the bridge to see, what could we do with it? Could he jump off, potentially? It could be an ambush site. So we just literally designed the action sequence to the locations that we were finding. This sequence was shot on IMAX, which also meant that the movements of the cameras, the ease with which we could cover multiple angles, was hindered by the number of cameras we actually had. The IMAX cameras are massive. I mean, the kind of cameras when you pick them up, it makes you want to swear. But sometimes we just had to do the stunt over and over again and just move the camera around, because you only had two, maybe three, working IMAX cameras at the time. Which is not a lot, normally, when you’re covering a big stunt. Normally, you would have five cameras placed all over the place. So we had to be very, I would say, surgical about how the camera moved, how many takes we could do before we were running out of time. We see him try to outsmart them and outrun them, but they get a sense of where he’s headed. We do a Texas switch. And basically, you see Bond on camera. And as we pan over, it’s actually a stunt double running in, not Bond, to tackle Primo on the motorcycle. And then, when we cut up closer, we do that in one take. So all the punches have to land perfectly so that it looks like each one is actually connecting when, in reality, there was safety and space between them.” “Blofeld sends his regards.”
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The director Cary Joji Fukunaga narrates an action sequence from his film featuring Daniel Craig.CreditCredit...Nicola Dove/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios
Won for: Best song
Starting with the moody lamentations of Billie Eilish’s Oscar-winning title track, “No Tie to Die” ends Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond where it began — as an atypically serious and grounded take on the globe-trotting spy. After settling into retirement in sun-kissed Jamaica, Bond is whisked away by his old friend Felix (Jeffrey Wright), who tracks him down for an urgent mission to save the world from a nihilistic villain (Rami Malek). The Bond girls are more complex than usual, too, with Léa Seydoux as a psychotherapist with a traumatic past and Lashana Lynch as a secret agent who has taken over his “007” designation.
The actor and musician Riz Ahmed in “The Long Goodbye,” Aneil Karia’s visceral film accompaniment to Ahmed’s 2020 concept album of the same name.
The actor and musician Riz Ahmed in “The Long Goodbye,” Aneil Karia’s visceral film accompaniment to Ahmed’s 2020 concept album of the same name.Credit...ShortsTV
Won for: Best live action short
An extension of the actor-rapper Riz Ahmed’s 2020 concept album of the same name, “The Long Goodbye” imagines a near-future in which the anti-immigrant rhetoric of post-Brexit Britain is manifested as far-right violence. Ahmed stars as a member of an extended South Asian family in suburban London, where they are preparing for an upcoming wedding. Their joy quickly turns to horror and anguish when men sweep through their home and march them to the streets at gunpoint. The closing minutes of this powerful 12-minute short, which Ahmed delivers in musical monologue, are not easily shaken.
A scene from “The Windshield Wiper,” directed by Alberto Mielgo.
A scene from “The Windshield Wiper,” directed by Alberto Mielgo.Credit...ShortsTV
Won for: Best animated short
The Spanish artist and animator Alberto Mielgo worked as a production designer and art director on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and made the animated short “The Witness” for the Netflix anthology “Love, Death & Robots.” His photorealistic 3-D technique is only part of the cutting-edge quality of “The Windshield Wiper.” Starting with a simple prompt — “What is love?” — Mielgo proceeds to answer the question through a world-spanning assemblage of interwoven vignettes. Each piece has its own distinct tone, ranging from the comedy of a bored couple separately swiping away at a dating app in the grocery store to an older pair looking off quietly and contentedly from a park bench.
Lusia “Lucy” Harris, the subject of the documentary short “The Queen of Basketball.”
Lusia “Lucy” Harris, the subject of the documentary short “The Queen of Basketball.”Credit...Ben Proudfoot
Won for: Best documentary short subject
Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry were among the executive producers of Ben Proudfoot’s documentary portrait of Lusia “Lucy” Harris, a trailblazing basketball player in the 1970s who combined a Shaq-like physical presence with a Curry-esque feel for the sport to dominate an emerging women’s game. With Harris (who died in January) serving as the sole talking head, “The Queen of Basketball” follows the Mississippi-born center from tiny Delta State University, where she was the only Black player on a three-time championship team, to the Olympic Games in 1976, the first to feature a women’s basketball tournament. She was a media and fan phenomenon at the time, and this short makes a persuasive case for her legacy.
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