Oscars 2026: Two Queers Discuss the Very Straight But Apparently Very Good Academy Awards

Every year since 2020, Riese and Drew have watched every film nominated for Best Picture and then chatted about those movies right here for you. The first year of this project was, as all previous years had been, a very straight year for award-garnering cinema, but we witnessed a slow and steady shift towards queerness, with more of our stories and our characters centered and celebrated. This progress peaked in 2024, a year that brought us nominees like Barbie, Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things. Last year marked a significant rollback — despite last year being the year of very terrible but bold trans movie Emilia Perez, which Drew described as “the most unique cis nonsense you’ll ever see.”

Sometimes, we considered, no representation is better than bad representation. And this year, the Academy has delivered with essentially no representation at all, with just a few very minor queer characters. What a thrill! Furthermore, after four straight years of queer women nominated for Acting awards, there are zero (0) queer women nominated this year —and zero queer men as well. However, Ethan Hawke was nominated for playing queer songwriter Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon.

And another thing! This is the most male-centric awards slate we’ve discussed yet, with only Hamnet and Sentimental Value standing out as films where the primary protagonist and POV were women. In 2025 and 2024, that was true of over half of the nominated films. This slowdown in representation and celebration of female and LGBTQ+ voices comes at a specific political moment, obviously.

But, on the bright side, especially when it comes to stories created by and centering Black voices —Sinners has set an all-time record with 16 nominations, the most ever for a single film, as well as the most nominations for Black artists from a single film (10). It was a box office hit and is favored to win Best Picture.

There are tons of spoilers in this conversation! If there’s a film you wanna see but haven’t yet, every section has been labeled with a picture at the top to give you the opportunity to skip it.

Riese: Okay — do cinema people feel like this is a good slate of Oscar contenders? Like… what’s the vibe in the cinephile community?

Drew: I think people are really excited about this year. And even if my very favorites may not win Best Picture — I do include myself in the category of “people.”

There’s something really heartening about this many good movies being made and finding success at a time of turmoil for the industry. Even if a lot of the films are international or made by a Warner Bros that may not exist much longer.

Riese: Drew, I am sadly not amongst this category of people. I think overall this was my least favorite slate of nominees since we started doing this!

Drew: Omg! I have been following along on your Letterboxd and did note some lower than expected ratings for a few films.

Riese: I had a realization about myself as I was about 50% of the way through Sentimental Value and found myself tempted to pick up the crossword puzzle on my coffee table — I want movies to entertain me. Period. I’ve always been able to enjoy books or television for artistry or for entertainment, but when it comes to movies… I’m just very middle-brow and easily bored.

Drew: That’s so interesting. Do you feel that’s the case every year or is it slightly heightened right now due to taking care of a child as the world falls apart?

Riese: It’s absolutely currently heightened. But also in past years, Gretchen and I would do this thing called Winter Film Festival where for a few weekends in January and February, we’d hole up and watch like 2-4 movies each weekend, slowly working through the Oscar nominees.

Now on weekends, [my one-year-old child] Jude is here and we can’t watch things. So our sole window to watch things is 20-60 minutes after his bedtime, after I’ve made dinner, before our bedtime. We’re both tired, and just wanna zone out on Love is Blind or Traitors. So this year I’ve had to watch a lot of these movies on my own time, often in 20 minute intervals.

Drew: That’s terrible!

Riese: I know! It’s the worst way to watch movies. So basically what I’m saying is that this is going to be a chat between a cinephile and a rock.

Drew: Well you are my favorite rock.

Riese: You’re my favorite cinephile! Which was your favorite movie?

Drew: My favorite was Sentimental Value!

Riese: You know, I liked it much better at the ending then in the middle, although I was deeply disturbed by the extreme home makeover at the end.

Drew: But the interior decorating horrors allowed him to make the movie the right way!!

It was a big surprise for me because I wasn’t as crazy on his previous film, The Worst Person in the World, as most people.

Riese: I didn’t like The Worst Person in the World very much, but that may have been ‘cause I’d just had a miscarriage. But I think I found it more engaging than Sentimental Value.

Drew: Probably the best excuse I’ve heard for not liking a movie.

I watched Sentimental Value with Elise and our friend Laura and afterward we just had so much to talk about and it felt like an emotional experience that was enriched even further the more we discussed and thought about it.

Riese: Yes it is a movie-maker’s movie a movie about movies for people who love to movie!

Drew: I’d go a step further and say it’s a directors movie and/or an actors movie. It captured so much of why I love actors as people — I think I’ve always been someone who intellectualizes emotion and a lot of actors emotionalize the intellectual? And that contrast excites me and I’m so moved by the ability to share yourself through make believe. I also love art about parents trying to connect with children and vice versa and the ways there are often gaps. I like watching the trying.

Riese: I thought, “it’s interesting how this man’s so confidently deciding to prioritize his artistic journey over his family (dead and alive).” So much of parenting is guilt over prioritizing anything over your family but he seemed pretty unbothered by it!

Drew: I think a lot of straight men do not feel that guilt. Or at least not as strongly.

Riese: That does seem to be the case, yes.

Drew: Also the only way he knew how to connect was through his art. So I do think there was some trying despite his selfishness. Not to excuse his bad parenting but he just felt very real and three-dimensional to me in all his failings.

Riese: For sure. I certainly can relate with not knowing how to relate to others, particularly friends, besides through an artistic or creative endeavor! But I think the buck has to stop there with your children. Also, shout-out to our gay sister Edith Irgens!

Drew: Which film was your favorite?

Riese: Sinners!!!

Drew: I love Sinners! That’s up there for me too. I hope it wins Best Picture.

Riese: I hope so too. I wish I could’ve seen it in theaters. That dancing scene where we had all of this Black musical history and future converging at once was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen on a screen. So much joy, pain, loss — so much trying and hope against cruel, inescapable odds.

Honestly — Sinners and One Battle After Another are the only two nominees where I did not at any point feel a little bit bored.

Drew: Yeah it is definitely not boring. And it feels like something out of a different Hollywood era when big genre fare could be smart and formally bold. Also in a very heterosexual year I do appreciate that its hetero sex centered cunnilingus.

Riese: It is such a heterosexual year!!!

Drew: It is but at least Sinners was SEXY — and so well-cast. I’m really glad the casting Oscar was introduced. There were a lot of good contenders for it this year but Sinners would be a very worthy inaugural winner. I did see it in theatres in IMAX and there were several sequences where I was just like — wow yes this is the movies.

Riese: Did you like One Battle After Another?

Drew: The short answer is yes. The long answer is………… oh god. I did not love it as much as most people.

Totally engaging and another really accomplished work of big budget genre filmmaking (albeit of a different type). But over the years I’ve become hit or miss on Paul Thomas Anderson. I always love his craft but we’re not always interested in the same things and we don’t always share a sense of humor. There is so much I loved about the film and also it did not focus on the parts I loved most. And that’s fine! It’s his movie and it’s clearly connected with a lot of people.

Riese: I adored Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Both were huge for me.

Drew: Ultimately I wanted a politically radical action movie and instead I got a movie that used radical politics as a backdrop and that is FINE — if a bit disappointing.

Riese: That’s true. the politics felt more like set dressing than an attempt to actually say anything of great consequence or anything new about the world. But it was gripping as fuck, amusing. Great performances.

Drew: Most of the opening, everything with Benicio Del Toro, and the little we got of the nuns were the parts I adored. And I didn’t even mind Leo as this sort of clueless white guy bumbling through the whole thing. I just wish it had more on its mind.

Riese: I was unexpectedly charmed by Leo in a way I haven’t been since the 90s. I didn’t recognize Sean Penn at first. I love Regina Hall doing anything, ever.

Drew: Since we’re among queers reading this can I say one of my complaints that makes me feel like someone who can’t take a joke but I just can’t let it go? It’s NOT the pronoun joke. That was fine to me. It’s in line with the character Bob that his brain would be broken by considering people’s pronouns the way it seems to have broken half the world. What bothered me is they had that nonbinary character be the rat. Especially in the context of having Perfidia rat. Who this movie thinks is truly radical and who rats frustrated me so much. Because it’s just not a reflection of our world! A nonbinary transfemme talking to the cops before some cis straight white girl?? It makes the pronoun joke no longer feel like a reflection of Bob and more a reflection of the film because it makes this minor trans character into a rat deserving of contempt.

Riese: Yes, totally. It was such a bizarre choice.

Riese: Oh actually — I think I wasn’t bored during Bugonia.

Drew: Another movie I found very frustrating!! But certainly not boring no.

Riese: I kept waffling on if they were gonna do the “she’s an alien” twist at the end. Surely not, I thought, this isn’t a one hour sci-fi anthology series on a decaying genre TV network or a 14-year-old’s first finished screenplay — but then that is how it ended. So I was like……ok….. what

Drew: It’s a choice that makes everything that came before ring hollow! A good twist deepens the work! It can’t just be a twist!

Riese: Everything abut it felt obvious and pointless!

Drew: I love the idea that this CEO is so cruel that she appears to not even be human.

Riese: Yes.

Drew: If she actually isn’t human then… okay? And this conspiracy theorist who is going around killing people is… right? …okay? Incredible acting, very good filmmaking, but to what end? I’m so tired of people confusing cynicism for intelligence.

Riese: I can’t think of anything to say about it

Drew: It’s a very empty movie

Riese: Besides that I appreciate it was shorter than Kinds of Kindness

Drew: Kinds of Kindness remains my favorite of his films which I know is a crazy opinion. A wrong opinion — perhaps. But it’s my truth.

Riese: Perhaps yes — well, I am always here to support your truth

Drew: Thank you.

Riese: Speaking of supporting someone’s truth, I found Marty Supreme annoying. How many movies must I endure about an overconfident white man over-confidencing himself into the right rooms? Maybe I like it if it’s the right person and not this boy who I think is not very caring towards other people!

Drew: Which is the point. But yeah, I understand not caring.

Riese: I like it when Kermit the Frog is confident about his show in Muppets Take Manhattan. Did you like Marty Supreme?

Drew: I felt torn on this one. I do think it’s quite good. I just don’t find Chalamet charming enough to really keep me there. He’s no Kermit.

Riese: Exactly! He’s no Kermit. It seemed good at first but he grated on me and slowly I lost my affection.

Drew: Did you see Uncut Gems?

Riese: No.

Drew: Adam Sandler is also playing someone chaotic and selfish but god you cant take your eyes off him! It has a similar rhythm to it but I think its final moments are much stronger than Marty‘s.

Riese: Well, maybe one day I will watch it.

Drew: Marty Supreme is a movie where I agree with most of the praise it’s received even if I just don’t feel that excited about it.

Riese: Maybe one day I’ll see a whole film in one setting, as the filmmakers intended.

Drew: Yeah that would help some of these films a lot. Like my other favorite — The Secret Agent.

Riese: My eyeballs enjoyed The Secret Agent but my brain did not. Top-notch visual experience except when those guys got shot and bits of their faces blew open.

Drew: A different kind of well shot

Riese: Nice. The Secret Agent was quite long…

Drew: Like a good novel! It’s definitely one I can imagine would be very hard to absorb in multiple sittings.

Riese: It didn’t feel well-plotted or paced to me. Charming protagonist, interesting history, so many well-drawn characters (even minor players) — but I wasn’t sure where we were going and why we were going there.

Drew: I like how it’s playing with the action genre and sort of undermining the excitement of its plot to focus on the reality. The title feels revealing to me as if it’s a response to the often fascistic romanticizing of state operatives. Here the secret identity isn’t sexy, it’s for survival. The disembodied arm sequence is a key of sorts to me. A real action movie isn’t action, it’s horror. So getting all of that rich theme AND very lived in, compelling characters? I loved.

Riese: Do you just have deep thoughts about films naturally or do you have specific questions you ask yourself or try to answer when you watch a movie?

Drew: I try not to think too much before or during. This was another one I watched with a group of people and afterward the more we talked it was like oh OH OHHH and so many of its pieces got even more interesting.

Riese: What did you talk about afterwards?

Drew: A lot about the playing with genre. And puzzling over the ending and framing device. I also love a movie about an archive.

Riese: I think the only cinemas I watched with another person (gretchen) were Marty Supreme, Sinners, One Battle After Another and… oh! F1.

Drew: I did not see that one.

Riese: I just feel like people have deep thoughts about movies and I want to know how to have deep thoughts about movies (this is a recurring theme in our chats), aside from comments on representation and whether or not I found it politically appealing

Drew: You have deep thoughts about TV and books so I know you have it in you! For a lot of years your job was to look at film exclusively through those lenses which probably shaped you.

Riese: Actually I think I would have deep thoughts on genres or topics I’ve got expertise on — a romantic comedy, ‘90s girl movies, Chernobyl. If only they’d make a solid high-quality rom-com for the masses like they used to!

Drew: If only !!

Riese: Speaking of movies for the masses…

Riese: I expected F1 to at the very least entertain me.

Drew: Was F1 not a romantic comedy?

Riese: Maybe it was, I honestly zoned out a lot.

Drew: I know I’m inconsistent since I watch plenty of other movies with abusive men but I just find Brad Pitt unwatchable now. Not that there weren’t other reasons I skipped it, too. Did the cars go fast at least??

Riese: Listen… I can go along with a little formulaic movie, I can get on the dark ride and follow it through its familiar tunnel to the other side with a half-smile on my face. But this was a movie for Dads, and not like how I am a Dad — because I am literally a Dad now — but like how white men in their fifties are Dads. I was astounded to see it had been a massive global blockbuster? I thought it was a Brad Pitt Apple TV vanity project. I had not heard a single peep about this film!!

Drew: When it got the Best Picture nom I was like… Oh, I live on a different planet. This is the planet where Taylor Sheridan has 12 TV shows and I live on the planet where I’m gay.

Riese: Exactly! It felt constructed for white men who worry they’re no longer the best at a thing they used to be good at who want to be reassured that not only are they still the best at that thing, they’re smarter than everyone else in the room and all those young whippersnappers out there. In fact, their antiquity is exactly what makes them so relevant and so devilishly clever!

I don’t need that validation in my life. I mean actually—I do need that specific validation in my life, but not from Brad Pitt. I don’t even understand why people like to watch cars race?

Drew: You need F1 for forty-something white women instead.

Riese: Yes, set on a looped walkway around a park on a weekday afternoon instead of a racetrack. Of all the sports in the world, car racing might be dead last for me. Maybe tied with golf. But I do like mini golf.

Drew: Mini golf is so much better than golf. That I agree with strongly.

Drew: None of the nine movies I watched this year I hated as much as the sport golf but Train Dreams came close. I still haven’t quite figured out why.

Riese: Train Dreams was… well, it was.

Drew: It seemed to suggest depth and suggest beauty without actually being deep or beautiful. I did not care about this man. And I have political complaints about the movie but ultimately my issue is more that it feels so nothing.

Riese: I thought it was sad that his house burned down with his child inside it — but also I didn’t understand why his story was being told lol. I’m not particularly enchanted by a stoic man watching the world go by.

Drew: It was a big year for movies about white men grappling with a world they feel is leaving them behind. Which is insane since white men are still running and ruining our world.

Riese: They certainly have not been left behind in 2026.

Drew: The only one that seemed to really get this was The Mastermind — a movie that is not nominated but does that story sooo well. When you’re able to watch movies without pause again you should watch The Mastermind.

Riese: I definitely watched Frankenstein in 20 minute bits while meal-prepping on a Sunday afternoon.

Drew: But to be fair Frankenstein could probably have lost a 20 minute bit and been a better movie I love Guillermo Del Toro but…

Riese: To be fair it probably did lose a 20 minute bit to me.

Drew: I’m always rooting for Del Toro. I love his vision and when he’s great he’s GREAT. I found this to be… imperfect. Jacob Elordi was really good though!

Riese: Jacob Elordi is very tall. I wish I could remember more of the film but it was very dark. I had to turn off the little counter light in the kitchen so I could see it on my laptop while I was chopping vegetables, and then I forgot that I’d turned it off until yesterday, actually. So I had been chopping in the dark ever since, much like Viktor Frankenstein.

Drew: Despite its Netflix release, its really one that’s helped by a theatre. This year I watched most of the films at home because I was recovering from surgery, but I did see Frankenstein at TIFF so I got to see it in theatres.

Riese: Did it not have a theatrical release?

Drew: It did! Limited I think but it did. I also saw Hamnet at TIFF and was baffled by the near universal acclaim. But since it came out in theatres I feel like some people have been aligned with me.

Drew: I wish I felt what a lot of people felt. I found it such a frustrating portrait of Shakespeare and theatre. I guess because it’s not really interested in those things at all. Which is fine I suppose. The emotions just felt so easy to me. Like yeah of course it’s sad! I do think Jessie Buckley was great though.

Riese: Gretchen watched Hamnet — I think in pieces while Jude was napping and I was cooking — and she cried a lot. She said that the baby died and that i shouldn’t watch it.

[Note: even though our tradition is to both watch every single nominee, sometimes we give each other passes — this year Drew was exempt from F1 and I forwent Hamnet]

Drew: Yeah good call.

Riese: But still I tried to, and I kept rewinding cuz I kept drifting off, and by the fourth time I was rewinding, my screener stopped working and I thought, well, oh well. I’ve already seen Shakespeare in Love, so what more is there to see?

Drew: Not meant to be.

Drew: If you’re going to watch a nominated movie about being a mom you should watch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. The child doesn’t die and the mom is very stressed and going crazy.

Riese: We saw If I Had Legs I’d Kicked You! All in one sitting, even! God I was so stressed out!!!

Drew: Oh! Did you like it?

Riese: Yes. I was like — this is very good but I could never watch it again. Once was plenty.

Drew: The writer/director of that is married to the co-writer/producer of Marty Supreme.

Riese: Wow do you think they have smartie convos like this one?

Drew: I think they have a bathtub through their ceiling

Riese: Big motif this year. When I had my house in Michigan, the bathtub was sinking into the floor and making the kitchen ceiling crack. So I can attest that living that reality — it’s hard for it not to feel symbolic. Maybe that’s how we’re all feeling in 2026.

Drew: We’ve covered all the Best Picture nominees but there are also two lesbian movies worth highlighting!

Riese: Ok, please highlight them.

Drew: Come See Me in the Good Light, the documentary about Andrea Gibson, and Two People Exchanging Saliva, which is the favorite to win live action short.

Riese: I haven’t seen Come See Me In The Good Light because Gretchen doesn’t want to be sad.

Drew: Yeah I cried a lot during that. It was my Hamnet. I also cried a lot during K-Pop Demon Hunters but that may have had more to do with the day I was having.

Riese: Is it sad? Are the demons not successfully hunted

Drew: Turns out the real demons are… their personal demons! A worthy favorite for Best Animated for sure. For doc I think my pick would be The Alabama Solution which is on HBO Max.

Riese: Oh wow what’s that about?

Drew: The Alabama state prison system. It is not an easy watch!

Riese: Oh I will see that then — I try to watch everything I can about the prison system. See, like we were talking about earlier — I’m drawn to films on topics I already know a lot about — like I imagine Sinners was also especially engaging ‘cause I’d read a book a few months earlier that gave me a lot of historical context for the 1930s Jim Crow-era Deep South.

Drew: Yes absolutely!

My favorite film across all the nominees is It Was Just an Accident. The foreign language film category is so strong this year. Like maybe the strongest ever??

Riese: What’s It Was Just An Accident about?

Drew: A man who kidnaps his former captor and is trying to get confirmation it’s the right person before enacting revenge. And, see, I’m sure my experience of it was enhanced by having seen the writer/director Jafar Panahi’s doc he made on house arrest after his own imprisonment. Context adds a lot to a work!

Riese: Gosh I miss watching things!!! When Jude was a teeny babe we could watch things all the time, but that changed around… September? Not being able to watch things has been one of the most radical changes to my life! I can’t wait for when he’s old enough that I can actually show him movies intentionally.

Drew: What’s the first movie you’re going to intentionally show him?

Riese: You know, I do adore The Lion King.

Drew: A classic for a reason.

Riese: I still haven’t seen Finding Nemo, so we will watch that for the first time together.

Drew: Wow! You can introduce him to lesbian icon Ellen Degeneres.

Riese: It will be so moving to him.

Drew: First Dory, then The Puppy Episode.

Riese: We’ll skip Mr. Wrong .