'Knives Out', 'The Lighthouse': Films that were snubbed for best picture at Oscars this year

The 2020 Academy Awards ceremony is happening this weeked (early Monday in India) and all eyes are on the nine best picture nominees. Between 1917, Parasite and Joker, the list is stacked with high performers. There are some films, however, which could have been on the list for the biggest honour but were not.

DH lists three such films that should have been nominated for best picture.

Knives Out

Rian Johnson's murder mystery whodunit was, though not particularly surprising, a great maze of twists and turns. It had amazing characters in Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, Chris Evans' Ransom Drysdale and Ana de Armas' Marta Cabrera, the innocent nurse who has to navigate an investigation of the death of the head of the Drysdale family.

The film not being nominated for best picture is a shame, though there is consolation in the best original screenplay nod that it got.

The Lighthouse

From the twisted mind of Robert Eggers, who brought the world a nightmarish horror in The Witch in 2015, came this surrealist, claustrophobic tale of two drunk men spending their days in an isolated lighthouse.

The film was noted for its use of black-and-white and the movietone ratio, not seen since the early 30s. The film featured masterful cinematography for its use of the closed aspect ratio and the performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. They play a merciless dog-eat-dog game with stark imagery and isolation enough to actually make madmen.

Not getting the best picture nomination is a travesty for The Lighthouse, but the best cinematography nod is a small consolation at best.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Céline Sciamma's historical drama, set in France, set critics on fire when it premiered at Cannes, and its subsequent release only bolstered its popularity. Much praise was heaped on the film's acting and romance, set in the backdrop of a painting.

The film received no nominations at the 2020 Academy Awards, with Les Misérables, though in itself a great film, being the ultimate submission from France for Best International Feature.