The first film from French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller is, unfortunately, one of two Best Picture nominees you can’t stream just yet—but the drama about an elderly man (Anthony Hopkins) struggling with dementia who moves into with his daughter (Olivia Coleman) will be available for digital rental on all the usual platforms on March 26.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Supporting Actress (Olivia Coleman), Best Adapted Screenplay (Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton), Best Production Design, Best Film Editing

Where to stream: Rent it digitally

Well this is unfortunate timing: As part of Warner Bros. plans to manage its pandemic film slate and boost HBO Max viewership, subscribers to that streaming service had a 31-day window to watch Judas and the Black Messiah, a tense drama about a government conspiracy against the Black Panther party in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, that window closed on March 14—the day before the Oscar nominees were to be announced.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), Best Supporting Actor (Lakeith Stanfield), Best Original Screenplay (Will Berson and Shaka King), Best Original Song (“Fight for You” by H.E.R.), Best Cinematography

Where to stream: Rent it digitally

Was there ever any question Mank wouldn’t be this year’s top Oscar contender? David Fincher’s glossy black-and-white throwback to the drama surrounding the production of Citizen Kane is a period piece about the one thing the Academy truly knows and loves: making movies. Never mind that it debuted on Netflix.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Gary Oldman), Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried), Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, Best Production Design

Where to stream: Netflix

There has been widespread acclaim for this Sundance Film Festival award-winning drama based on writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s experiences growing up the child of South Korean immigrant parents living in rural Arkansas during the 1980s. The Walking Dead’s Steven Yuen is the first Asian-American to be nominated for Best Actor.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Lee Isaac Chung), Best Actor (Steven Yeun), Best Supporting Actress (Yuh-jung Youn), Best Original Screenplay (Lee Isaac Chung), Best Original Score

Where to stream: For now, this one is also a digital rental only.

If you watched last month’s Golden Globes ceremony, you probably recognize this one. Director Chloé Zhao became only the second woman ever to win a Golden Globe for Best Director for the small-scale story of a woman who drops out of her life to live a rootless existence in an economically ravaged America; the film also won Best Picture—Drama honors, among other accolades.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Adapted Screenplay (Chloé Zhao), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing

Where to stream: Hulu

Carey Mulligan is heavily favored to win Best Actress for her unforgettable turn as a woman who has never allowed herself to move beyond the terrible fate that befell her best friend from graduate school. Emerald Fennell’s debut feature (which she also wrote) turns grim subject matter into a disturbingly compelling, candy-colored revenge drama for the post-#MeToo era.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Emerald Fennell), Best Actress (Carey Mulligan), Best Original Screenplay (Emerald Fennell), Best Film Editing

Where to stream: Another digital rental only for now, but at least it’s just $6 instead of $20.

Star Wars: Rogue One veteran Riz Ahmed has earned too many critical notices to list for his turn as a hard rock drummer who loses his hearing and must change the way he connects with the world. Director Darius Marder co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Abraham, who also composed the score.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Riz Ahmed), Best Supporting Actor (Paul Raci), Best Original Screenplay (Darius Marder, Abraham Marder), Best Sound, Best Film Editing

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video

All of the snarky commentary about writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s penchant from writing infantilized women characters didn’t much dull the Academy’s enthusiasm for his new feature about the fallout from the unrest surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (though he failed to earn a nomination for directing). Certainly in 2021 a film about violent policing in response to political protest feels, uh, relevant.

Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Sacha Baron Cohen), Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song (“Hear My Voice,” Daniel Pemberton), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing

Where to stream: Netflix

I admit I haven’t been following the Oscar scuttlebutt quite as closely this year, but I don’t think I am alone in being surprised by Thomas Vinterberg’s nomination for Best Director. The filmmaking buddy of Danish provocateur Lars Von Trier is so-honored for his film about a group of old high school buddies in Denmark who, burned out and bored with life, decide to see what happens if they try to keep their blood alcohol levels above the legal limit at all times. The directing nod marks this one as a clear favorite in the Best International Feature category too, I’d wager.

Nominations: Best Director (Thomas Vinterberg), Best International Feature Film

Where to stream: Available on Hulu, or for rent digitally

Regina King didn’t score a nomination for direction, but her debut feature, an adaptation of Kemp Powers’ play about a fictional one-night meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke, is still a major awards contender, earning recognition for Hamilton veteran Leslie Odom Jr.’s turn as Cooke as well as his original song, “Speak Now.”

Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Leslie Odom Jr.), Best Adapted Screenplay (Kemp Powers), Best Original Song (“Speak Now,” Leslie Odom Jr.)

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video

In a year defined by death, Chadwick Boseman’s hit particularly hard: The Black Panther actor, who inspired so many, died at just 43 after a years-long silent struggle with cancer. His posthumous Oscar nomination—his first—for his turn in this adaptation of August Wilson’s biographical play about the titular 1920s jazz singer feels like a fitting tribute to a career cut tragically short.

Nominations: Best Actor (Chadwick Boseman), Best Actress (Viola Davis), Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design

Where to stream: Netflix

This recently released biopic of the legendary sultry singer was met with a shrug from critics, who nevertheless praised Andra Day for her powerful work portraying a woman as defined by her demons as her undeniable talents. The actress seems poised to join Renee Zellweger and Jamie Foxx in the ranks of actors who have won their industry’s highest honor for playing a troubled musician.

Nominations: Best Actress (Andra Day)

Where to stream: Hulu

Vanessa Kirby is a Best Actress nominee for her turn as a woman who suffers a devastating loss when her child dies during a home birth gone terribly wrong.

Nominations: Best Actress (Vanessa Kirby)

Where to stream: Netflix

Impossibly, 15 years later, there is a sequel to Borat, and it has been acclaimed as one of the best films of the year. Maria Bakalova is a favorite to win Best Supporting Actress for her surprisingly moving portrayal of Tutar, daughter of buffoonish Kazakh news reporter Borat, whom he brings to America to be given as a gift to American Strongman President Donald Trump. Hey, stranger wins have happened.

Nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Maria Bakalova), Best Adapted Screenplay (Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, Lee Kern)

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video

If you’re looking to land a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, you could do worse than start with a novel that won the Booker Prize—and writer/director Ramin Bahrani did just that with his adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s acclaimed 2008 book about a poor Indian man attempting to escape from poverty using only his wits.

Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay (Ramin Bahrani)

Where to stream: Netflix

The cultural conversation around Ron Howard’s critically lambasted, audience-tolerated adaptation of J.D. Vance’s controversial memoir has been even less fun than watching the movie, but the fact that it only grabbed one high-profile nomination—Glenn Close, for her transformative turn as Vance’s grandmother—should help quiet things down a bit. (No comment on the fact that Close joins the storied ranks of actors nominated for an Oscar and a Razzie for the same role.)

Nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Glenn Close), Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Where to stream: Netflix

Pixar is always a favorite in the Best Animated Feature category, and the widespread acclaim for this year’s Soul suggests that its premiere being shunted to Disney+ will do little to hurt its chances of taking home the award. Still, consider this my bid to encourage you to catch Wolfwalkers on Apple TV+, a gorgeous traditionally animated feature from the same studio that created Song of the Sea, as well as the stop-motion Shaun the Sheep sequel on Netflix; there’s more to the medium than computer animation.

• Onward (Disney/Pixar): In a contemporary fantasy world, a pair of elf brothers search for a magical object that can resurrect their dead father.
  Where to stream: Disney+, or rent digitally
  
  

• Over the Moon (Netflix): Grieving her dead mother, a young girl builds a rocket to travel to the moon in search of a pair of legendary lovers.
  Where to stream: Netflix
  
  

• A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Netflix/Aardman): A young sheep befriends an alien; hijinks ensue.
  Where to stream: Netflix
  
  

• Soul (Disney/Pixar): A struggling jazz musician gets his big break—then dies, and must fight his way back to the land of the living with the help of a reluctant unborn spirit.
  Where to stream: Disney+
  
  

• Wolfwalkers: The daughter of a wolf hunter living in a 17th century Irish village meets a very unusual girl in the woods surrounding her home.
  Where to stream: Apple TV+

The streaming landscape has made it much easier to access internationally made features in general, but that hasn’t quite extended to this year’s nominees for the newly rechristened category for Best International Feature Film—two of the five of them still can’t be easily viewed in the U.S.

• Another Round (Denmark): Four old high school friends decide to drink daily to see if it makes their dull, middle-age lives more interesting.
  Where to stream: Hulu, or for rent digitally
  
  

• Better Days (Hong Kong): A severely bullied high school girl and the class misfit form an unusual bond.
  Where to stream: Hulu
  
  

• Collective (Romania): A harrowing documentary about corruption within the Romanian healthcare system.
  Where to stream: Hulu
  
  

• The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia): A Syrian civil war refugee allows a famed tattoo artist to use his body as a canvas, a decision that will cost him more than he imagined.
  Where to stream: Hulu
  
  

• Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina): A UN translator tries to save her family as they are caught up in war in Bosnia.
  Where to stream: Hulu

The proliferation of streaming platforms has also been a boon to non-fiction filmmaking; certainly I will be checking out as many of this year’s nominees as I can—something I can’t say would’ve happened if four of the five of them weren’t available on streaming services I already pay for.

• Collective: See above; Collective is nominated in both the Best Documentary and Best International Feature Film categories.
  Where to stream: Hulu
  
  

• Crip Camp: From Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, this documentary charts the history of a summer camp for children with disabilities.
  Where to stream: Netflix
  
  

• The Mole Agent: A private investigator is hired by a recently widowed woman to investigate the living conditions within a Chilean nursing home.
  Where to stream: Hulu, or rent digitally
  
  

• My Octopus Teacher: A filmmaker befriends an octopus and decides to visit and film it every day.
  Where to stream: Netflix
  
  

• Time: An ex-convict fights for the release of her husband, who has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for a bank robbery for which she also served time.
  Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video