The 2021 Oscars Nominees Honor More Movies You Haven’t Seen Than Ever

Normally the Oscars are packed full of nominations for films no one saw because they’re all Holocaust or AIDS dramas that released the last week of December to six theaters in West Covina and spent three times the films’ budgets on “For Your Consideration” campaigns.

This year, however, movie theaters were closed all year because if you designed the ideal place to spread COVID-19 to large groups of people as efficiently as possible from the ground up, you’d probably just get a movie theater. The Oscars had to do something they have been loathe to do before now and allow films that debuted on streaming services to be eligible for awards. This includes Netflix’s prestige film Mank, a black and white period piece about the making of Citizen Kane. You can hear the Academy voters having an orgasm just reading that sentence.

The late Chadwick Boseman was nominated for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and he’s almost certain to win. This probably wasn’t the best performance of the year, and it probably wasn’t Chadwick Boseman’s best performance, but clearly voters are going to want to show how much he’s missed, and I don’t blame them.

But I also feel that you could accomplish everything worthwhile that this year’s Oscars will accomplish by just having a tribute show for Chadwick Boseman.

Here’s a list of all the major-category nominations (the full list of nominations is here). Take out a piece of paper and make a mark on it every time you see the name of a movie you’ve actually seen. Then when you’re done, do whatever you want with your blank piece of paper.