As the 2023 Academy Awards have come and gone, we all reflect on the wins and losses of the season. Overall, I’m incredibly satisfied with the outcomes of the show (especially Brendan Fraser’s win for Best Actor), but there are some movies that I wish had gotten proper recognition this year.

“The Banshees of Inisherin”

“Banshees” was one of my most highly anticipated films of 2022 and it completely blew me away. My expectations were incredibly high, as Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Martin McDonagh’s previous collaboration “In Bruges” is one of my favorite movies and they were able to capture their spectacular dynamic once again.

The film is about a broken friendship between Pádric (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson), as Colm tries to do everything in his power to selfishly separate himself from Pádric. The dark comedy is more depressing than humorous, but that makes the jokes land harder and the sadness hurt deeper. No one can write a conversation between two people like McDonagh so I was a bit disappointed when this didn’t at least take home Best Original Screenplay. McDonagh will get his well-deserved Oscar one day.

“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”

Though the winner of Best Animated Feature, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” was a fan favorite for many this past year, the movie in this category that I saw and loved most was “Marcel the Shell.” The film gives us background on the internet’s favorite stop motion shell whose first video premiered in 2010 as a collaboration between Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp (who both star in the film). 

The story takes place before Marcel’s fame, after he and his grandmother (Isabella Rossellini) have been trying to figure out what happened to their entire family of shells after their home’s previous owners move out. The home turns into an Airbnb and filmmaker Fleischer-Camp finds Marcel and wants to share his story. It’s a happy tear-jerker, great for families and overall a phenomenal film.

“Aftersun”

A movie that I thought was entirely overlooked (besides Paul Mescal’s well deserved Best Actor nomination) by the Academy was “Aftersun.” The film is a reserved and thoughtful portrait of a young father (Mescal) and daughter’s (Frankie Corio) vacation to Turkey. 

The movie is a loosely autobiographical representation of filmmaker Charlotte Wells’ relationship with her own father. It was what I would consider to be a perfect representation of parental depression, as Mescal has become the master of mental illnesses in the media. 

It’s avant garde, but still an accessible enough story where any father or daughter might be able to see themselves in their relationship. If I were on the Academy and nominated films, this would have easily been up for Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay as well.

Every year I come out of the Oscars with some sense of disappointment, but I’d say the awards turned out decent if these were my few complaints. At the end of the day, the media that you love doesn’t need to receive these flashy awards to matter.