And the nominees are ...

The 95th Academy Awards take place on March 12, and, as is customary, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is preparing to honor a slate of films most Americans haven’t even heard of. Many of the nominees feel like more of the same, but there are a few surprises to be found in this year’s list.

Most categories feature five nominees, but more than a decade ago, the academy expanded Best Picture to potentially 10 nominees. This expansion allows the academy to keep nominating films made for filmmakers, while also honoring a few popular movies to pique the interest of the average moviegoer.

This year, 10 films received best picture nominations: All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness, and Women Talking.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the academy’s darling with 11 nominations. The movie was a surprise hit with both critics and audiences, and it made more than $100 million on its production ­budget of less than $25 million.

The movie is about a frustrated laundromat owner, played by Michelle Yeoh, who gets sucked into an interdimensional conflict with the fate of the multiverse at stake, all the while getting audited by the IRS. It’s a kung-fu sci-fi action comedy interwoven with a tragic family drama. The script is equal parts smart and silly.

Everything Everywhere All at Once might showcase top-notch moviemaking, but viewers will want to do their homework before watching. This R-rated movie contains a couple of exceedingly crude scenes, and it offers a nihilistic view of life. But it’s a happy nihilism, and what could epitomize Hollywood more than happy nihilism?

Besides Everything Everywhere All at Once being nominated for best picture, its directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (professionally known as “the Daniels”) are up for best director and best screenplay. The film’s principal actors all received Oscar nods: Michelle Yeoh for best lead actress, Ke Huy Quan (who’s best known for playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) for best supporting actor, and both Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu for best supporting actress.

All Quiet on the Western Front, a German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel, and The Banshees of Inisherin, a movie about a difficult friendship set during the Irish Civil War, came in second this year, each receiving nine nominations. Both movies are beautiful and bleak, designed to appeal to academy voters. Historical war epics like All Quiet on the Western Front tend to attract ­nominations, and The Banshees of Inisherin combines very dark comedy with powerful performances from Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan. Again, while the moviemaking is of the highest quality, these R-rated films won’t be for everyone.

This year’s list of nominees boasted many fresh faces, and some interesting firsts. Out of the 20 nominees in the acting categories, 16 had never before received an Oscar nod. It was a good year for Asian actors, with four receiving nominations, including Michelle Yeoh, who is the first Asian to be considered for best lead actress. In another first, Angela Bassett became the first nominee for a role in a Marvel movie for her work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

One nomination for best lead actress caused quite a stir. Andrea Riseborough is up for her role in To Leslie, despite almost no one having seen the film. The director’s wife, Mary McCormack, started a campaign to nominate Riseborough, enlisting A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet to stump for her. These heavy-handed tactics garnered much criticism after Riseborough beat out Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler for their respective performances in The Woman King and Till.

But the biggest scandal should be that Brendan Fraser received a nomination for playing a 600-pound man in The Whale, which is the worst movie I’ve seen in years. Avoid at all costs.