The Oscar 2024 nominations have been announced, and as ever it's a mix of well-deserved wins and some surprising snubs. Like every year, the most coveted of all the awards is the Best Picture award, and this year's selections include some of our very favorite new movies of the year.
The front-runners this year, according to the trade press at least, are Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon – just as they were for the Golden Globes. But Barbie is in with a shout too, although in the face of Oppenheimer's incredible 13 Oscar nominations, we're not sure we'd be putting our money on Greta Gerwig's movie even though it's one of our very favorites.
Below we've rounded up the 2024 Best Picture Oscar nominees and where you can watch them. In most cases, the movies are available for purchase or rental even if they haven't made their way to one of the best streaming services in the US just yet, but things are slightly different in the UK where many of these films are still in cinemas.
American Fiction
- US: Now available to buy on Prime Video
- UK: Not available for streaming or to rent/buy
- Australia: Will stream on Prime Video from February 27
This is right at the top of my must-see list: it's about a frustrated novelist and professor who writes a savage satire of stereotypically "Black" fiction, only for his stereotypes to be taken seriously and praised to the heavens as an important new work of Black literature. It's been nominated in five categories including Best Actor for Jeffrey Wright and Best Supporting Actor for Sterling K Brown.
Anatomy of a Fall
- US: Rental/purchase on Prime Video / Apple TV Plus
- UK: Rental/purchase on Prime Video / Apple TV Plus
- Australia: Premiered in cinemas on January 25
Winner of the Palme d'Or, this psychological thriller follows a celebrated writer whose life and career are turned upside down when her husband falls to his death from their chalet high in the French Alps. Her blind son is the only witness, and what begins as an apparently straightforward murder investigation soon becomes much deeper and darker.
Barbie
- US: Streaming now on Max
- UK: Available to rent/buy on Prime Video / Sky
- Australia: Available to rent/buy on Apple TV Plus / Prime Video
"Do you guys ever think about dying?". Sadly snubbed by the Golden Globes –although the furore over that overshadowed nominations for Latina, Native American and queer women – Barbie was a bubblegum blast that also sneaked some cutting observations about patriarchal culture into its highly entertaining adventure.
The Holdovers
- US: Now streaming on Peacock
- UK: Premiered in cinemas on January 19
- Australia: Premiered in cinemas on January 11
Paul Giamatti is a grumpy history teacher in a remote prep school. Forced to stay there over the holidays with a troubled student and a grieving cook, the 70s-set movie has been described as a "masterclass in melancholy" and another great film by Sideways director Alexander Payne. It's first and foremost a comedy but it's often as wise as it's witty.
Killers of the Flower Moon
- US: Now streaming on Apple TV Plus
- UK: Now streaming on Apple TV Plus
- Australia: Now streaming on Apple TV Plus
Scorsese's epic follows the horrific murders of Osage Nation members and the subsequent cover-up in a bleak, brutal and brilliant film that's part western, part crime drama, part howl of rage. A strong ensemble cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone; Gladstone won the Golden Globe for best female actor, the first actress of Blackfeet and Nimiipuu heritage to win the prestigious award.
Maestro
- US: Streaming now on Netflix
- UK: Streaming now on Netflix
- Australia: Streaming now on Netflix
Based on the real-life relationship between composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Monetealegre, Maestro was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute.
Oppenheimer
- US: Will stream on Peacock from February 16
- UK: Available to rent/buy on Prime Video / Apple TV Plus
- Australia: Not yet confirmed
Bomb go boom! Man go sad! Christopher Nolan's atomic age epic is a bit more nuanced than that, of course, and it tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's creation of the atomic bomb at the Manhattan Project during World War II. It's a Christopher Nolan film with all the spectacle and hard to hear dialog that entails.
Past Lives
- US: Streaming now on Paramount Plus
- UK: Will stream on Netflix from February 15
- Australia: Available to rent/buy from Prime Video / Apple TV Plus
Past Lives follows former childhood sweethearts Nora and Hae Sung as they're reunited in New York for one fateful week, and it's had the critics sobbing into their handkerchiefs. It's a film about longing and regret and that whole being human thing, and according to the London Review of Books it's "lucid and precise, intimately devoted to its strange lyrical sorrow".
Poor Things
- US: not available for streaming
- UK: not available for streaming
- Australia: not available for streaming
Adapted from the book by Alasdair Gray, Poor Things stars Emma Stone in a bizarre, funny and very, very strange take on the Frankenstein story that jumps genres and timelines to deliver one of the most unique and unusual movies in this year's shortlist.
The Zone of Interest
- US: not available for streaming
- UK: not available for streaming
- Australia: not available for streaming
Based on the novel by Martin Amis, this deeply disturbing film shows the family life of Rudolf Höss, a mid-ranking SS officer who works on the other side of his garden wall. His workplace is the Auschwitz death camp but we never see inside it; instead, the camera remains on the family home side of the wall, where children play and gunshots ring out in the distance.
