The 93rd Academy Awards aired on April 25, 2021, and mostly lived up to the hype with a refreshingly diverse slate of winners (the somewhat strange and anticlimactic ending notwithstanding).
Amid Covid-19 and the mass closure of movie theatres worldwide, 2020 was a particularly strong year for streaming movies, and that was reflected in 2021’s Oscar winners and nominees. Hulu’s Nomadland was the biggest winner, taking the prizes for Best Picture, Best Actress (Frances McDormand’s third trophy), and Best Director (where Chloé Zhao was the first woman of color to be so honored, and only the second female winner ever).
The Father’s Anthony Hopkins upset the late Chadwick Boseman in the Best Actor category, which seemed to even take the show’s producers by surprise, given they made the unorthodox move of pushing the category to the end of the night. Meanwhile Daniel Kaluuya and Yuh-Jung Youn lived up to their favorites status for their performances in Judas and the Black Messiah and Minari, respectively. Youn made history as the first Korean actor to win an Academy Award.
Whether your tastes run to animated films, documentaries, or prestige Best Picture fare, there are plenty of Oscar movies to stream right now.
Netflix Movies
Hulu Movies
Amazon Prime Video Movies
Disney Plus Movies
Apple TV+ Movies
Oscar-winning movies and nominees on Netflix
My Octopus Teacher
Winner: Best Documentary Feature
Featuring stunning underwater photography, this doc chronicles a filmmaker’s unusual year-long friendship with an octopus living in a South African kelp forest. It’s a surprisingly moving meditation on life and nature.
Mank
Winner: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design
Other key nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Score
Film buffs surely know all about Orson Welles and his masterpiece Citizen Kane, but Mank gives the backstory of the colorful gadfly and soused writer who developed the original screenplay with Welles. (If you really want to nerd out, read this fascinating New Yorker deep dive that examines the movie’s historical accuracy.) Nominated for 10 Oscars in total, Mank has a stellar cast headlined by former Oscar winner Gary Oldman. Director David Fincher took his noir bonafides a step further by shooting the movie about Hollywood’s supposed golden age in black and white.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Winner: Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Makeup Styling
Other key nominations: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Production Design
Based on the 1982 play by legendary African-American playwright August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom confronts issues of race, art, exploitation, and American identity and culture in 1920s Chicago. Viola Davis stars in the title role, and both she and her late co-star Chadwick Boseman garnered multiple awards for their performances. The film’s music and costumes are also particularly noteworthy; costume designer Ann Roth became the oldest woman to ever win an Oscar, at age 89!
Two Distant Strangers
Winner: Best Live-Action Short
At once timely and unsettling, this film follows a Black man trying to get home to his dog who gets stuck in a deadly time loop with a police officer. Like a dark Groundhog Day, it packs an emotional wallop into its brief 29 minutes.
Crip Camp
Key nomination: Best Documentary Feature
Executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, Crip Camp traces 1970s footage from a summer camp for teens with disabilities to the movement for equal rights in the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond.
Da 5 Bloods
Key nomination: Best Original Screenplay
To the surprise of many, this Spike Lee joint didn’t receive any acting, directing, or writing nods, but it’s earned plenty of plaudits elsewhere for its stellar cast, including Chadwick Boseman in one of his final performances before his death last August. It’s all the more haunting as he plays the deceased squad leader who lives on in the memories of four African-American vets returning to Vietnam decades later.
Hillbilly Elegy
Key nominations: Best Supporting Actress, Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Glenn Close pulled off the impressive feat of earning nominations for both the Oscars and the Razzies, which honors the year’s worst in cinema, for her (unrecognizable) turn as a tough Appalachian matriarch in this much-maligned movie. Based off a somewhat controversial memoir, it’s been criticized as “poverty porn.”
Over the Moon
Key nomination: Best Animated Feature
This delightful family musical follows a clever girl named Fei Fei who, inspired by the legend of a moon goddess, builds a rocket to the moon. It’s a heartwarming celebration of Chinese culture and family featuring the voices of talented actors including Sandra Oh, Ken Jeong, Phillippa Soo, and others.
Pieces of a Woman
Key nomination: Best Actress
Vanessa Kirby (late of The Crown) has drawn raves for her gripping performance as a woman dealing with trauma, loss, grief, and complex relationships in this emotionally devastating film based on a play of the same name. Note that the subject matter of traumatic birth and child loss may be triggering for some.
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Key nomination: Best Animated Feature
The latest installment in this beloved and singular British stop-motion series is actually almost dialogue-free, making it perfect for young and old alike. Don’t be fooled, though: There’s plenty of slapstick comedy and a clever, charming plot about an alien invasion in the English countryside.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Key nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Song
Featuring yet another star-studded ensemble cast (which just took top honors at the Screen Actors Guild Awards), this is a timely look at justice, protest, and freedom of speech in the United States. Although it chronicles a notorious trial from over 50 years ago, the issues it confronts—particularly in our current era of polarization—feel particularly relevant.
The White Tiger
Key nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay
This adaptation of a Booker Prize-winning Indian novel is narrated by Balram, a striver from an impoverished village who recounts the highs and lows of his career, and considers the immense wealth and opportunity gap in modern India. Despite its heavy subject matter, the movie is by turns funny and taut, and moves along quite rapidly. The young actor Adarsh Gourav is magnetic in the lead role, and global audiences will recognize Priyanka Chopra, who was also a producer on the film.
Oscar-winning movies and nominees on Hulu
Nomadland
Winner: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress
Other key nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay
This quiet, spectacularly shot mediation on the American landscape, shifting identity, and economic uncertainty was the big winner at the 2021 Oscars, a pitch-perfect film to match the moment. Best Actress winner Frances McDormand won her third statue with her powerhouse performance as a suddenly rootless widow, and Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win Best Director.
Another Round
Winner: Best International Feature Film
Other key nominations: Best Director
Who hasn’t fantasized about going through life ever so slightly…drunk? This Danish film sets international superstar Mads Mikkelsen (he’s played everyone from a Bond villain to Hannibal Lecter) in a slightly more cuddly and relatable role as a bored teacher, husband, and parent. He and a few friends decide to spice things up with dedicated day drinking, leading to a thought-provoking journey that still manages to pack in plenty of bittersweet fun.
The Mole Agent
Key nomination: Best Documentary Feature
This documentary-drama hybrid from Chile combines a strange brew of spy intrigue, elder abuse, and even humor as it follows an 83-year-old man gone undercover in a nursing home. Given that he wore glasses with a hidden camera, some critics have questioned the movie’s regard for the elderly residents’ privacy.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Key nomination: Best Actress
In what is essentially her acting debut, Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day scored a Best Actress nod for her portrayal of legendary songstress Billie Holiday, who was targeted for drug use by the U.S. government in a veiled attempt to quell racial outrage.
Oscar-winning movies and nominees on Amazon Prime Video
Sound of Metal
Winner: Best Editing, Best Sound
Other key nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay
This film depicts a rock drummer and recovering addict who starts to lose his hearing, then finds himself reckoning with his identity as he gets caught between two worlds. In addition to a brilliant performance from British actor Riz Ahmed (along with one of those feel-good Supporting Actor nominations for journeyman Paul Raci), the film—unsurprisingly—drew plaudits for its Sound Editing.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Key nominations: Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay
Who ever would have imagined when the original Borat film came out in 2006 that it would a) inspire a sequel and b) earn two major Oscar nominations? Surely the absurdity of 2020 had something to do with it, as Sacha Baron Cohen returns and manages to pull off close encounters with all sorts of key players in the presidential election and the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Actress Maria Bakalova is particularly fantastic as Borat’s supposed teenage daughter.
One Night in Miami
Key nominations: Best Supporting Actor, Best Song
It’s cool to imagine what might have transpired if four African-American icons—Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X—had gathered in a Miami hotel room to discuss civil rights and social upheaval in 1964, as this film envisions. Leslie Odom, as the crooner Cooke, headlines a slew of strong performances.
Time
Key nomination: Best Documentary Feature
Time follows the decades-long love story of a couple—and family—suffering the consequences of tough justice, brutal sentences, and the struggle to survive life inside Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison.
Oscar-winning movies and nominees on Disney Plus
Soul
Winner: Best Animated Feature, Best Score
Other key nominations: Best Sound
Soul is an offbeat and unusual kids’ film that ponders the big questions—What happens after death? What does it mean to be alive?—in moving and relatable ways. Both contemplative and celebratory (your mileage may vary, depending on age), it also features a killer jazz score (from Trent Reznor, of all people) and the voice talents of Jamie Foxx.
Onward
Key nomination: Best Animated Feature
This Disney-Pixar film has all the key ingredients you’d expect: Rich, vibrant colors; fun voice acting from comedic talents like Chris Pratt and Julia Louis-Dreyfus; and just the right touch of magic. It’s also a road-buddy comedy that tugs at the heartstrings as two elf brothers get the chance to spend a magical day with their late father. Rated PG-13, Onward is better for slightly older kids.
Oscar-nominated movies on Apple TV+
Wolfwalkers
Key nomination: Best Animated Feature
This enchanting adventure tale set in 17th-century Ireland feels (and looks) like a storybook come to life. The main plot follows a young girl who befriends magical humans that can take the form of wolves. They’re different from werewolves, but the simple-minded villagers are frightened all the same…
Want to watch other Oscar Best Picture Nominees?
Judas and the Black Messiah
Minari
Promising Young Woman
and
The Father
Are all in theatres and available for VOD streaming.
Read more: How to watch the 2021 Oscars