Like clockwork, the Academy rides into the year on a tide of self-gratification, and, with a few exceptions, the results are unlovely. For outstanding achievement in nominations, at least the industry’s body found ten ways to praise “The Irishman” for its wide-ranging artistry. At the same time, in a year when the best movies (including Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” Jordan Peele’s “Us,” and the Safdie brothers’ “Uncut Gems”) take a leap from the specific to the comprehensive, opening visions of society that reveal machinery of breathtakingly menacing vastness, the Academy dinosaurically exhorts the cinema to buck up. With its nostalgia for the stiff upper lips of the First World War (“1917”: ten nominations), the verities of the Second World War (“Jojo Rabbit”: six nominations, including Best Picture), the glories of pre-modern Hollywood (“Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood”: ten nominations), and the something-for-everyone pseudo-politics of “Joker” (which leads all films with eleven nominations), the Academy has also excluded other movies—and their participants—and, in the process, largely turned its back on the future of the art and the confrontational power of the best filmmakers.

This is no reflection on the age of the Academy’s voters (as reviews prove, there’s no shortage of young aesthetic conservatives, either) but, rather, on the industry’s over-all protectionism—stylistic as well as substantive. The complete repudiation of “Uncut Gems,” for instance, represents the industry closing ranks against the one prominent movie that doesn’t merely push the art ahead but does so derisively, with a gleeful and exuberant defiance of familiar modes of movie composition. The most surprising omissions are of Adam Sandler from a Best Actor nomination, for a performance that alters the very notion of cinematic performance, and of the mind-bending score by Daniel Lopatin, which departs definitively from the orchestral blare-and-tinkle of other scores.

Why did Peele’s “Get Out,” two years ago, get four nominations (all in major categories—Best Picture, director, actor, original screenplay) and his movie “Us” get none this year? Because, unlike his first movie, which was centered on what was widely perceived as a clear line on the politics of race, “Us” includes the experience of a black American family in a shuddering story that pulls out the struts of societal comforts and certainties over all—including of the media business itself. The Academy has a disturbingly specific idea of what black filmmakers should do—namely, to stay in their lane. The rejection of “Us” is a disgrace.

The recognition of Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” in several major categories (including Best Picture) is welcome and notable—and the failure to nominate Gerwig for directing is scandalous. I don’t think that her direction of the movie is literally among the year’s five best achievements in the field—but it’s pretty close, and it’s far superior to that of all the nominees except Scorsese. The other nominations in that category reward showy vanity (“Joker” and “1917”) and grandiose screenplay protection (“Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” and “Parasite”). Two of the Best Picture nominees excluded from the directors’ five are “Little Women” and Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story,” two movies in which the directors’ inventive power is neither vain nor bombastic. Yes, an international film, “Parasite,” received a Best Picture nomination, and its director, Bong Joon-ho, was nominated for his work, but it’s above all a spectacular movie, in the range of his earlier “Snowpiercer,” filmed in a conventionally illustrative style.

It’s noteworthy that “Little Women” and “Marriage Story,” which have scooped up nominations for five performances (three lead, two supporting), as well as for their screenplays, should be disregarded for their direction. Yet what’s also noteworthy, particularly about Baumbach’s film, is that the actors’ approach to the text is recognizable, and familiarly dramatic. (Adam Driver, for instance, is altogether more provocative in Jarmusch’s film, “The Dead Don’t Die,” than he is in “Marriage Story,” for which he was nominated.) The most original performances in “Marriage Story” are the supporting roles of the three lawyers (Laura Dern, who was rightly nominated for supporting actress, plus Alan Alda and Ray Liotta, who weren’t nominated)—roles that have little backstory and derive their identities from idiosyncratic inflections and gestures and sheer force of presence. That’s also why it’s good to see Tom Hanks nominated, for his performance as Fred Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”—and all the more outrageous that the film’s director, Marielle Heller, wasn’t nominated for her work. Hanks’s performance, which seemingly etches Rogers’s wise and weighty words onto the screen, is strikingly original, and is conspicuously the work of Heller’s directorial imagination.

The recognizable and the familiar take their revenge at a time of crisis. “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story” are produced by Netflix; though released in theatres, their box-office numbers aren’t publicized. Meanwhile, “Uncut Gems,” though playing in more than two thousand theatres nationwide, is also being released internationally by Netflix and, in other countries, will be on the site as of January 31st. The industry’s crisis is reflected in the prominence of streaming in addition to the commercial shift toward franchise films as the most reliable and largest source of income—compounded by the fear that competition among streaming services will cut further into theatrical revenue. It’s no paradox but, rather, a natural state of affairs that, in times of turmoil, political as well as industrial, filmmakers make movies of a bold originality and a confrontational fury. The problem, for Hollywood, is that these elements are precisely the ones that are outside the bounds of studio executives to command, control, and predict. The story of the art is the story of brilliant exceptions. That’s why the Academy, feeling the sands shifting beneath its feet and wondering whether it is standing in an hourglass, is clinging to existing structures and styles with a backward-looking desperation. And, as usual, the nostalgic embrace of bygone ways entails welcoming the exclusions of earlier eras. Not a female directorial nominee, not a black American directorial nominee, only one actor of color: the Academy is fossilizing itself.

Below are my picks for the films and performances that should have been nominated. In each category, I’ve put my choice for winner first, in italics, and then my other picks in alphabetical order. Here is the official list of nominations.

Best Picture

The year’s best movies offer comprehensive visions of American society—which doesn’t mean that they show everything but, rather, that they show the machinery underlying everything—four underworld films, literally or figuratively. Few years offer as many audacious movies, as many wild movies; it’s all the more remarkable that many of the best have been made with substantial budgets and celebrity actors (most of whom just happen to be brilliant in them).

“The Irishman”

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”

“Atlantics”

“The Dead Don’t Die”

“An Elephant Sitting Still”

“Frankie”

“Her Smell”

“Little Women”

“Uncut Gems”

“Us”

Achievement in Directing

Either of two rules would make sense: require that best director go to the director of the best picture, or ban the category from doing so. In the interest of spreading the love, I’m following the latter one.