When you've been covering movies and TV shows as long as I have, you can easily tell when streaming services are making the rare foray into award-contender videos, and Netflix has picked today to add not one, not two but three such movies.
By "today" I mean Friday, November 22, if you're reading this afterward! These three movies are all ones that we'll probably see get nods at the Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, or other similar awards, and now is the time of year in which we often see these kind of movies, as eligibility cut-off for them is usually towards the end of the year.
The first of these movies is Spellbound, an animated movie featuring the voices of Rachel Zegler, Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, and directed by one of the two directors of Shrek. It's about a young princess who has to go on a quest to save her kingdom and her parents.
Netflix has a long legacy in the animated movie awards categories, having won an Oscar in the category for Pinocchio in 2022 and also netting nominations recently for The Sea Beast, The Mitchells vs The Machines and Over the Moon in 2022, 2021 and 2020 respectively. It was also quick to buy the rights to the 2023 winner The Boy and the Heron.
Spellbound could be up against some tough competitors in the 2024 animated movie sector, including The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2. However, having the director of Shrek (the winner of the first-ever animated Oscar is a big blessing that could help it provide some tough competition.
The next is Joy, a British drama movie based on a true story starring Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton. It tells the story of a nurse, a scientist and a surgeon who teamed up to develop the first IVF test tube baby in the 1970s.
A heartwarming story that's based on a true story; already Oscar bells are ringing here. It's a film that gives its three leads plenty of opportunity to show off their acting chops, and the script was written by the writer of The Swimmers and Wonder so it could be up for some awards too.
It's not Britain's submission for Best International Feature Film for the Oscars, an honor which goes to the Indian movie Santosh, but it could still do well in the creative and craft categories. At the time of writing it has 87% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Finally, we've got The Piano Lesson, another drama, however this one is based on an August Wilson play (an important thing to note for later). It was directed by Malcolm Washington starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher and Erykah Badu.
The Piano Lesson is set during the Great Depression, and it's about a young man who wants to sell the family piano to help build a family fortune, against the wishes of his sister who insists they keep the family piano. Their disagreements touch on the family's past and future.
There's a lot going for The Piano Lesson. Its actors have all been adorned with awards before, its screenwriter Virgil Williams has already been nominated for an Oscar for Mudbound, and two other August Wilson adaptations Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom both earned multiple Oscar nominations too. Its 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes positions this as the favorite over Joy, but it's a very close call.
So Netflix's three new movies all have major pluses, although The Piano Lesson and Joy will compete closely, especially with some tipping recently other original Emilia Perez as another potential Oscar movie. And that's before other streaming services put their movies out, so it's hard to say right now.
