Nominated for Nothing: The Oscars did Nicolas Cage's Pig dirty

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They're destined to score zero Academy Awards, but they won our attention throughout a year (and awards season) like no other. Ahead of the 94th Oscars ceremony on March 27, EW is breaking down the year's best movies, performances, and directorial achievements that were nominated for nothing.

The film: True, Nicolas Cage's face is covered in blood for a significant amount of Pig's time, but the ever-surprising actor's latest star turn isn't just another one of his blood-bucket action grungefests. (Not that there's anything wrong with his blood-bucket action grungefests; love you forever, Mandy!) In the stunning debut film from director Michael Sarnoski, Cage plays a mysterious loner named Rob, who lives remotely in the Oregon woods. His only companion is a pig, who forages for truffles which Rob sells to brash restaurant supplier Amir (Alex Wolff). When shadowy assailants beat up Rob and steal his pig, he teams up with Amir to track down his kidnapped porcine companion.

Right about now is when the average trailer watcher assumed this was John Wick with, well, a pig. And Sarnoski feints in that absurdist-vengeance direction — before taking a hard left turn into something much more somber, and oddly sweet. Rob, we discover, was once a well-regarded chef, before a tragedy cut him off from the world. Cage is styled for high mania — long hair, huge beard — but the film marks his most tightly controlled performance in decades.

Pig
Pig

David Reamer/Neon Nicolas Cage in 'Pig'

The search leads Rob and Amir deep into the semi-seedy underbelly of Portland cuisine. Amir's imperious father, Darius (Adam Arkin), is also in the business, and the brisk 92-minute runtime fits a complex family drama into its search. Mix a bit of foodie noir with a sensitive portrait of loss, and sprinkle in some rueful pre-apocalyptic futility: That's some Pig.

Why it wasn't nominated: It's been 20 years since the Academy deigned to recognize Cage's unique talents. Even in these funky post-Parasite days, Oscar voters don't seem to bother much with downmarket genre experiments. And Pig's droll approach feels purposefully low-key. It's a revenge thriller where the revenge and the thrills gradually melt into an emotionally rich character study — the polar opposite of something like Don't Look Up or Nightmare Alley, which boil familiar genre tropes into big-budget hysterics. Pig earned modest box office numbers (though what even is box office anymore?) and is already an object of cult adoration, so any awards love was probably a long shot. Still, the script by Sarnoski and Vanessa Block did just win Best First Screenplay at the Spirit Awards, and if you think it didn't deserve a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nod then I have a bridge in Belfast to sell you.

Why history will remember it better than the Academy did: The future looks bright for Sarnoski, who has already lined up a Quiet Place spin-off as his next film. With Pig, the director proves his deft hand with unconventional material. He's made a movie-star movie with an ensemble spirit — and the attention paid to Amir's emotional journey proves a quiet showcase for Wolff, who has to start off playing an egotistical know-it-all before turning into Rob's naïve, innocent partner.

The internet runs on irony-baiting montages of Cage's cinematic freakouts, but Pig offers brilliant evidence of the actor's eccentric talent. A couple scenes are essentially just Cage monologues: He muses about the earthquake that will someday sink Portland; he tears an acclaimed chef to pieces by revealing the emptiness behind his trendy food. So Pig will be a crucial talking point as long as people talk about Nicolas Cage, and people will talk about Nicolas Cage until the end of the world.

EW's countdown to the 2022 Oscars has everything you're looking for, from our expert predictions and in-depth Awardist interviews with this year's nominees to nostalgia and our takes on the movies and actors we wish had gotten more Oscars love. You can check it all out at The Awardist.

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