Sorted by number of nominations (most to least)

Mank
David Fincher's latest film is most certainly not what we expected from the director. It's a black and white, semi-autobiographical biopic of writer Herman J. Mankiewicz as he works on the screenplay for the acclaimed film Citizen Kane. It's been six years since Fincher made his last film, Gone Girl. This new feature could not be more different. I can't overstate how much it stands out as an odd entry in Fincher’s filmography. To be clear, odd does not mean bad. Just different. The praiseworthy aspects remain Fincher's devout commitment to creating precise visuals with near-perfect shot construction. One particular scene is when Gary Oldman's Mankiewicz, who prefers to go by the titular Mank, strolls onto a film set while nursing a hangover. Everything is meticulously crafted, and Fincher creates a unique feeling of being in a fantasy world that also happens to be sharply witty. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Netflix
Nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor (Musical/Comedy), Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score

Trial of the Chicago 7
Based on the conspiracy trial of the 1968 Democratic National Convention protest leaders, Aaron Sorkin's political thriller stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Jeremy Strong as the major players in this historic case.
Netflix
Nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Song

The Father
In Florian Zeller's drama, a man (Anthony Hopkins) struggling with dementia moves in with his daughter (Olivia Coleman) when he can no longer care for himself.
VOD
Starting Friday
Nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor (Drama), Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay

Nomadland
Watching director Chloé Zhao's gentle epic Nomadland is a transportive experience—quite literally, since much of the film is spent inside or around converted vans, zooming down interstates or sneakily parked on empty lots. It's dreamy, even spiritual, to see characters left behind by mainstream society unspool their lives against the American West's abundant beauty. Based on Jessica Bruder's 2017 non-fiction book of the same name and set against the backdrop of the 2008 recession, the film is a unique mixture of reality and fiction. The events that precede the film are real: In 2011, a US Gypsum plant shut down in Empire, Nevada, effectively killing the town around it. After caring for her late husband, a former Empire resident and widow, Fern (Frances McDormand), decides against permanent relocation and takes her life on the road. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Hulu and various theaters
Nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actress (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay

Promising Young Woman
With directorial reign over the second season of Killing Eve and a starring role as Duchess of Cornwall in The Crown under her belt, Emerald Fennell's new revenge thriller stars Carey Mulligan as a justice-seeker who traps would-be sexual assailants at clubs and teaches them a lesson about consent. Come for the thrill of watching smarmy men get what's coming for them, stay for the string-quartet rendition of Britney Spears' "Toxic."
Various platforms and theaters
Nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actress (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Sacha Baron Cohen returns as a Kazakhstanian reporter in the latest iteration of his mockumentary comedy film series Borat, this time tackling COVID, the presidential election, and a creepy, headline-making scene involving Rudy Giuliani and an underage girl. 
Amazon Prime
Nominations: Best Picture (Musical/Comedy), Best Actress (Musical/Comedy), Best Actor (Musical/Comedy)

One Night in Miami
A minimalist film that's vast in its ambition, One Night in Miami is a simply magnificent debut from director Regina King. King, an acclaimed actor, has directed television before, but with One Night in Miami she has tapped into something transfixing as she tells the story of four legends of history who find themselves together in a singular motel room. These legends are civil rights leader Malcolm X, boxer Cassius Clay, football player Jim Brown, and musician Sam Cooke played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. respectively. They all come together under the same roof as they discuss their individual and collective futures. The film's one night in question takes place after Cassius, who had yet to become Muhammad Ali, has defeated Sonny Liston. Well-directed boxing scenes are only the appetizer to the main course, which is scene after scene of crackling conversation. At the thirty-minute mark, the film settles in to become a canvas for reflective musings from the four friends.
Amazon Prime
Nominations: Best Actor, Best Director, Original Song

Hamilton
Filmed onstage by director Thomas Kail and cinematographer Declan Quinn at the Richard Rodgers Theater in June of 2016 (back when audiences could pack an auditorium shoulder-to-shoulder), Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton is coming to Disney+. If you still haven't seen the show because you're wary of musicals, take the cue from its consistently glowing reviews—its hip-hop, jazz, and rap numbers have made people all over the country rethink their rigid anti-musical stance, and offered them juicy, controversial history about one of their Founding Fathers.
Disney+
Nominations: Best Picture (Musical/Comedy), Best Actor (Musical/Comedy)

Judas and the Black Messiah
Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah, a favorite of this year's online Sundance Film Festival, stars Lakeith Stanfield as FBI informant William O' Neal and Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton.
AMC & Cinemark Bellevue and HBO Max
Nominations: Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Song

The Life Ahead
Sophia Loren plays an aging Holocaust survivor who forges an unlikely bond with a young immigrant from Senegal. 
Netflix
Nominations: Best Picture (Foreign Language), Best Original Song

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Viola Davis stars in this George C. Wolfe adaptation of the August Wilson play, which harks to the fiery appearance of a trailblazing blues singer, Ma Rainey, at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. It also sees the late, great Chadwick Boseman in his final role as the singer's band's ambitious trumpet player.
Netflix
Nominations: Best Actress (Drama), Best Actor (Drama)

The Mauritanian
A defense attorney, her associate, and a military prosecutor uncover a far-reaching conspiracy while investigating the case of a suspected 9/11 terrorist imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for six years.
AMC Pacific Place 11 & Cinemark Bellevue
Nominations: Best Actor (Drama), Best Actress

News of the World
Five years after the end of the Civil War, a veteran captain with a heart of gold (Tom Hanks) takes a traumatized orphan through hostile territory in Northern Texas in order to return her to her only living relatives.
Various theaters and VOD
Nominations: Best Actress, Best Original Score

Palm Springs
Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti star as a pair of wedding guests who get trapped in a single-day time loop together, à la Groundhog Day. There's a twist applied to this time-loop scenario that won't get spoiled here, but the application of that twist was so good that film studio NEON paid $17 million at Sundance for the rights, which is the highest purchase price in that festival's history. Not to make this movie sound all serious and thought-provoking—it's still a sun-drenched comedy starring Andy Samberg, after all. 
Hulu
Nominations: Best Picture (Musical/Comedy), Best Actor (Musical/Comedy)

Soul
Did Soul really tackle the issues of racism in the US? Was the black experience finally translated into computer-generated images? The answer is "no." But this "no" does not in any way mean it was a bad film. I love Sidney Lumet's The Wiz like nobody's business, but I would be crazy to say that it realistically represents the most pressing issues of the black American experience in the 1970s. After Soul screened, praises and criticisms flooded social media. Most of the praise has been directed at the visual beauty of the work. For example, the scene in the black barber shop—its colors, its rays of light, its textures on the walls, chairs, and clothes—is one of the most numinous scenes that Pixar has ever produced. Also much expressed has been an appreciation for its metaphysical themes: birth, death, afterlife, the essences of human morality. The bulk of the criticisms, on the other hand, have mostly been directed at the film's failure to abolish certain old and new racist tropes. CHARLES MUDEDE
Disney+
Nominations: Best Picture (Animated), Best Original Score

The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Lee Daniels (Precious) directs this dramatization of the FBI's harassment of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday following the release of her famous anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit." 
Hulu (Starting Friday)
Nominations: Best Actress (Drama), Best Original Song

Minari
There is so much to love about the sublime Minari, the reasons why could fill a film of its own. So, forgive me if I'm a little effusive. Taking place in 1980s Arkansas, it follows a Korean American family as they attempt to start a farm. It's alluded that they've previously worked somewhere in California and in Seattle, where they were making just enough of a living to get by. Now, the family has purchased land that no one else wants in a long shot at making their own Garden of Eden. Jacob (Steven Yeun), the family's somewhat naive but caring patriarch, initially gives the farm the biblical name. It soon becomes clear that he is driving the family to take the leap of faith with him. There is Monica (Yeri Han), the justifiably worried matriarch, who must balance out her husband's dreams with keeping the family whole. The film clearly comes from a personal place for writer and director Lee Isaac Chung, who delicately breathes life into every corner of the film. His down-to-earth story combines with visuals that are boldly full of wonder—from the rich reds, seen in the hat on actor Steven Yeun's head, to the tranquil greens of the natural world around them. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Cinemark Bellevue (IRL), Northwest Film Forum & Grand Cinema (streaming), and VOD (starting Friday)
Nominations: Best Picture (Foreign Language)