The Oscars are upon us again. This year, one of the Best Picture contenders has been dogged by controversy, while in several other categories, the race feels a lot more wide open than in past years.

In order to get a better understanding of what to expect, and to gain some insight into how the Oscars work, I turned to two of Vox’s culture experts, Kyndall Cunningham and Alex Abad-Santos.

They pulled back the curtain on the Oscars for me, and also told me the movies that really should’ve gotten some love from the Academy this year. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity is below:

Sean: Say you’re coming in cold (like me, I’m ashamed to say). What’s the one thing you need to know about this weekend’s Oscars, and why?

Kyndall: It’s not surprising if you feel out of the loop, because it’s been a very odd, underwhelming year in Oscar movies, especially compared to last year, when you had Barbie and Oppenheimer. If you were a person living and breathing, you saw at least one of those movies that year, and maybe even one of the smaller movies that people were really enthusiastic about, like Poor Things or Anatomy of a Fall or The Zone of Interest.

Alex: I would totally agree with that. The biggest movie of the year, or at least at the Oscars this year is Wicked, probably. But — and now that I say this, watch Wicked win everything — Wicked isn’t considered a frontrunner, which is very different than what happened with Oppenheimer. That movie was the big favorite going in, and it was such a hugely popular movie for what it was. Wicked is probably the only “Oscars movie” this year with that kind of mainstream clout, and it’s not favored to win as much.

Kyndall: I would say one other monocultural movie of last year was Challengers, and that was shut out completely, even though it seemed like a throwback Oscars movie, in terms being artful, but also accessible.

Sean: What do you all think happened? Why aren’t those movies getting lots of Oscars love?

Alex: I feel like it’s just one of those years where nothing shook out for any one movie.

Kyndall: I would agree that there aren’t a lot of movies that came out this year that people would definitively declare masterpieces, whereas, last year, everyone was like, “The Zone........

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