Every year, after the nominations for the Academy Awards are announced, our brethren at Guardian US drop their roundup of Oscarbait failures, highlighting those poor films that didn’t earn any nominations despite trying the damnedest to do so. You know the type: big stars, lavish production values, a period setting, worthy subject matter, and a sense that they have been genetically engineered to win over Academy voters.
This year, per the list, there seem to be more Oscarbait failures than ever: take your pick from Dear Evan Hansen, George Clooney’s The Tender Bar, a Mark Wahlberg drama whose existence I wasn’t aware of until 38 seconds ago, and not one but two Ridley Scott films. There’s even that most dead cert of Oscarbait dead certs: a biopic, in the form of Jennifer Hudson-starring Aretha Franklin life story Respect. Strange days indeed.
