Let the Pre-Oscar Bingeing Begin

Performers of color received recognition in two of the four acting categories, and for the fifth time a woman received a best director nod. And the relatively strong showing for “Mudbound” — four nominations — a picture that Netflix subscribers have been able to watch free since November, shows that the academy is feeling friendlier to movies produced by streaming platforms.

Some of the nominated films can be watched now on streaming or video-on-demand services, and they’ve been pointed out on The New York Times’s Watching website. But the talent up for Oscar honors this year is rich enough that once you’ve exhausted those streamable films, you can program mini film festivals around every category. Here are some recommendations in the major performing categories. Call it good acting in good movies.

The best actor and actress nominees both include performers under age 25 — Timothée Chalamet, for “Call Me by Your Name,” and Saoirse Ronan, for “Lady Bird.” Both have racked up nearly as many film credits as they have years on Earth. But this is Chalamet’s first Oscar nomination, while “Lady Bird” represents Ronan’s third. She received a best supporting actress nomination in 2007 for “Atonement,” which is on Netflix; that film and “Brooklyn” (2015), which earned her a spot in the best actress category, are available to rent or buy on Amazon Instant Video and several video-on-demand services. The most noteworthy item on Chalamet’s filmography is “Miss Stevens,” in which he plays a volatile high school drama prodigy. That’s on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Besides Chalamet, there are two other first-time Oscar nominees: Margot Robbie for best actress in “I, Tonya,” and Daniel Kaluuya in “Get Out.” Netflix offers only one of Robbie’s films, “Suite Française,” a well-received historical drama that was barely released by the Weinstein Co. For this Australian-born actress’ best-known American performance, as a deceptively wily trophy wife in Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” you’ll have to rent it via Amazon, iTunes and other services. What’s that you say? Her best-known performance is actually as Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad”? I guess you’re right, alas. That’s on the HBO Channel, now offered as an Amazon Prime video add-on.

It’s probably unfair to say that “Get Out” is the first really good motion picture in which Kaluuya has appeared, but the films he is in that you can watch on Netflix are “Johnny English Reborn” (2011), a generic eccentric British comedy and “Welcome to the Punch,” a generic British tough-cop 2013 film (starring James McAvoy, imagine that). So I’m going to recommend that you check out his first-season “Black Mirror” episode, “Fifteen Million Merits,” instead. “Sicario,” a tense if somewhat self-important war-on-drugs thriller from 2015 in which Kaluuya plays a supporting role, is free for Amazon Prime members.

Sally Hawkins, nominated for best actress for her work in “The Shape of Water,” and Gary Oldman, for best actor for “Darkest Hour,” are film-acting demigods who have been nominated for Oscars but never won. Hawkins is represented on Netflix by “Never Let Me Go” (2010), a strong turn as a compassionate teacher, and “Paddington” (2014). Amazon offers a wider selection of her work including Woody Allen’s 2013 drama “Blue Jasmine,” which earned her a supporting actress nomination and is a not very good movie featuring a lot of acting. I would rather revisit Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” (2008), the first film to bring this British actress much attention in the United States (rentable at $3.99), or her extraordinary work in another 2017 U.S. release, “Maudie,” in which she plays the Canadian artist Maud Lewis. Amazon has that for sale at $14.99.

As for Oldman, he has made a lot of movies, not all of them winners. But if you have Netflix, run, do not walk, to watch him as the spy novelist John le Carré's splendidly tormented intelligence officer, George Smiley, in the 2011 film “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” (The next Oldman title in the Netflix library is “Lost in Space,” the 1998 adaptation of a sci-fi TV series that paired him with Matt LeBlanc.) Over at Amazon, “True Romance,” the sensationalistic action picture penned by Quentin Tarantino, in which Oldman memorably cameos as a racially confused pimp, is available for rental at the bargain price of 99 cents. In even better news, “The Firm,” the 1989 Alan Clarke drama about football hooliganism featuring Oldman at his most vivid, is free for Prime members.

Which leaves us with veterans Frances McDormand, Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep. Multiple nominees all, they have received nods this year for their lead performances: McDormand for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Day-Lewis for “Phantom Thread” and Streep for “The Post.”

McDormand has one Oscar for “Fargo” (1996), which can be rented on Amazon. “Fargo,” like many pictures she appears in, is a Coen Brothers movie; “Blood Simple,” her first picture with the brothers (she is married to one, Joel Coen), can be seen free by FilmStruck subscribers. Day-Lewis has three Oscars, for “Lincoln” (2012), “There Will Be Blood” (2007), and “My Left Foot” (1989), all on Amazon. (“My Left Foot” is also available on Netflix.) Amazon has a lot more of his films, and FilmStruck subscribers can enjoy him free in the 1986 Merchant-Ivory film “A Room With a View.” A lot of movie lovers, this one included, think Day-Lewis should have won an Oscar (he did get a nomination) for his ferocious work as Bill the Butcher in Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” (2002); it’s on Netflix and can be rented on Amazon.

It’s amazing, the number of Oscar nominations Meryl Streep has — 21, with three wins. It’s also amazing, considering, that right now Netflix has only one Meryl Streep movie, a 2014 item called “Giver,” for which she was not nominated for an Oscar. The pickings are better on Amazon, with several of her most notable movies, including “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981), “Sophie’s Choice” (1982, which earned her a best actress Oscar) and “Ironweed” (1987), available free to Prime Members. The first film for which Streep won an Oscar — best supporting actress — “Kramer vs. Kramer,” a marital drama from 1979 with a lot of nuance in both its performances and visual language, is also available to rent or buy on the site or app.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.