This year’s Oscar nominees feature very few openly queer actors or creatives, with “KPop Demon Hunters,” “Come See Me in the Good Light,” and “Elio” bringing some much-needed representation to the field.

“KPop Demon Hunters,” which quickly became a worldwide sensation after releasing on Netflix last June, was nominated for best animated feature film and best original song for “Golden,” the chart-topping hit co-written by openly queer songwriter Mark Sonnenblick. “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a film following the late Andrea Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, was nominated in the best documentary feature category. Finally, Pixar’s “Elio” (co-directed by openly queer filmmaker Adrian Molina) was nominated for best animated feature film alongside “Zootopia 2,” “Arco,” and “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain.”

Ethan Hawke did manage to land a best actor nomination for his work in Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” a biopic that follows a fatal night in Lorenz Hart’s life as he reckons with losing his creative partner, Richard Rodgers. Robert Kaplow was also nominated for best original screenplay for penning the script. Amy Madigan, as expected, was recognized in the best supporting actress category for her work in “Weapons,” bringing celebrated gay icon Aunt Gladys to the Oscar stage.

While “Wicked: For Good” was significantly underperforming throughout the season, with Cynthia Erivo missing key nominations and the film falling squarely out of the best picture race early on, most pundits expected the film to still receive some recognition in craft categories. But in perhaps the biggest shock of Oscar nomination morning, “For Good” received zero nominations — not even for costume design or production design, the two categories in which the first film won just last year. Clearly, there was “Wicked” fatigue across the board.

There was also reasonable hope that Eva Victor’s acclaimed directorial debut, “Sorry, Baby,” would land a best original screenplay nod, especially after Julia Roberts shouted out Victor during the recent Golden Globes (which aired the day before Oscar voting started). A24, the studio that distributed “Sorry, Baby” in the U.S., clearly prioritized campaigns for “Marty Supreme” (to much success) and Rose Byrne in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” leaving “Sorry, Baby” the indie darling that couldn’t quite crack the Oscar race.

However, with the Film Independent Spirit Awards taking place on Feb. 15, queer films like “Sorry, Baby,” “Peter Hujar’s Day,” and “Twinless” will finally get their time to shine. Maybe these films were just underseen, or not given a big enough PR push, but regardless, it’s unfortunate that the Academy couldn’t make room for just one of these when “Emilia Pérez” managed 13 nominations last year.

Casting is everything when it comes to making a movie. There’s a certain alchemy that happens when an actor and character are perfectly matched, blurring the lines of identity so that they seem to become one and the same. In some cases, the movie itself feels to us as if it could not exist without that person, that performance.

“Marty Supreme” is just such a movie. Whatever else can be said about Josh Safdie’s wild ride of a sports comedy – now in theaters and already racking up awards – it has accomplished exactly that rare magic, because the title character might very well be the role that Timothée Chalamet was born to play.

Loosely based on real-life table tennis pro Marty Reisman, who published his memoir “The Money Player” in 1974, this Marty (whose real surname is Mauser) is a first-generation American, a son of Jewish immigrant parents in post-WWII New York who works as a shoe salesman at his uncle’s store on the Lower East Side while building his reputation as a competitive table tennis player in his time off. Cocky, charismatic, and driven by dreams of championship, everything else in his life  – including his childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion), who is pregnant with his baby despite being married to someone else – takes a back seat as he attempts to make them come true, hustling every step of the way.

Inevitably, his determination to win leads him to cross a few ethical lines as he goes – such as stealing money for travel expenses, seducing a retired movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow), wooing her CEO husband (Kevin O’Leary) to sponsor him, and running afoul of the neighborhood mob boss (veteran filmmaker Abel Ferrara) – and a chain of consequences piles at his heels, threatening to undermine his success before it even has a chance to happen.

Filmed in 35mm and drenched in the visual style of the gritty-but-gorgeous “New Hollywood” cinema that Safdie – making his solo directorial debut without the collaboration of his brother Benny – so clearly seeks to evoke, “Marty Supreme” calls up unavoidable connections to the films of that era with its focus on an anti-hero protagonist trying to beat the system at its own game, as well as a kind of cynical amorality that somehow comes across more like a countercultural call-to-arms than a nihilistic social commentary. It’s a movie that feels much more challenging in the mid-2020s than it might have four or so decades ago, building its narrative around an ego-driven character who triggers all our contemporary progressive disdain; self-centered, reckless, and single-mindedly committed to attaining his own goals without regard for the collateral damage he inflicts on others in the process, he might easily – and perhaps  justifiably – be branded as a classic example of the toxic male narcissist.

Yet to see him this way feels simplistic and reductive, a snap value judgment that ignores the context of time and place while invoking the kind of ethical purity that can easily blind us to the nuances of human behavior. After all, a flawed character is always much more authentic than a perfect one, and Marty Mauser is definitely flawed.

Yet in Chalamet’s hands, those flaws become the heart of a story that emphasizes a will to transcend the boundaries imposed by the circumstantial influences of class, ethnicity, and socially mandated hierarchy. His Marty is a person forging an escape path in a world that expects him to “know his place,” who is keenly aware of the anti-semitism and cultural conventions that keep him locked into a life of limited possibilities and who is willing to do whatever it takes to break free of them; and though he might draw our disapproval for the choices he makes, particularly with regard to his relationship with Rachel, he grows as he goes, navigating a character arc that is less interested in redemption for past sins than it is in finding the integrity to do better the next time – and frankly, that’s something that very few toxic male narcissists ever do.

In truth, it’s not surprising that Chalamet nails the part, considering that it’s the culmination of a project that began in 2018, when Safdie gave him Reisman’s book and suggested collaborating on a movie based on the story of his rise to success. The actor began training in table tennis, and continued to master it over the years, even bringing the necessary equipment to location shoots for movies like “Dune” so that he could perfect his skills – but physical skill aside, he always had what he needed to embody Marty. This is a character who knows what he’s got and is not ashamed to use it, who has the drive to succeed, the will to excel, and the confidence to be unapologetically himself while finding joy in the exercise of his talents, despite how he might be judged by those who see only ego. If any actor could be said to reflect those qualities, it’s Timothée Chalamet.

Other members of the cast also score deep impressions, especially A’zion, whose Rachel avoids tropes of victimhood to achieve her own unconventional character arc. Paltrow gives a remarkably vulnerable turn as the aging starlet who willingly allows Marty into her orbit despite the worldliness that tells her exactly what she’s getting into, while O’Leary embodies the kind of smug corporate venality that instantly positions him as the avatar for everything Marty is trying to escape. Queer fan-fave icons Fran Drescher and Sandra Bernhard also make small-but-memorable appearances, and real-life deaf table tennis player Koto Kawaguchi strikes a noble chord as the Japanese champion who becomes Marty’s de facto rival.

As for Safdie’s direction, it’s hard to find anything to criticize in his film’s visually stylish, sumptuously photographed (by Darius Khondji), and tightly paced delivery, which makes its two-and-a-half hour runtime fly by without a moment of drag.

It must be said that the screenplay – co-written by Safdie with Ronald Bronstein – leans heavily into an approach in which much of the plot hinges on implausible coincidences, ironic twists, and a general sense of orchestrated chaos that makes things occasionally feel a little too neat in the service of creating an outlandish “tall tale” narrative ; but let’s face it, life is like that sometimes, so it’s easy to overlook.

What might be more problematic, for some audiences, is Marty’s often insufferable – and occasionally downright ugly behavior. Yes, Chalamet infuses it all with humanizing authenticity, and the story is ultimately more about the character’s emotional evolution than it is about his winning at ping-pong, but it’s impossible not to read a subtext of American Exceptionalism into his winner-takes-all climb to victory – which is why “Marty Supreme,” for all its critical acclaim, is the subject of heated debate and outrage on social media right now.

As for us, we’re not condoning anything Marty does or says as he hustles his way to the winner’s circle. All we’re saying is that Timothée Chalamet has become an even better actor since he captured our attention (and a lot of gay hearts) in “Call Me By Your Name.”

And that’s saying a lot, because he was pretty great, even then.

For every person who adores Shakespeare, there are probably a dozen more who wonder why.

We get it; his plays and poems, composed in a past when the predominant worldview was built around beliefs and ideologies that now feel as antiquated as the blend of poetry and prose in which he wrote them, can easily feel tied to social mores that are in direct opposition to our own, often reflecting the classist, sexist, and racist patriarchal dogma that continues to plague our world today. Why, then, should we still be so enthralled with him?

The answer to that question might be more eloquently expressed by Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” – now in wide release and already a winner in this year’s barely begun awards season – than through any explanation we could offer.

Adapted from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell (who co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao), it focuses its narrative on the relationship between Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), who meet when the future playwright – working to pay off a debt for his abusive father – is still just a tutor helping the children of well-to-do families learn Latin. Enamored from afar at first sight, he woos his way into her life, and, convincing both of their families to approve the match (after she becomes pregnant with their first child), becomes her husband. More children follow – including Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), a “surprise” twin boy to their second daughter – but, recognizing Will’s passion for writing and his frustration at being unable to follow it, Agnes encourages him to travel to London in order to immerse himself in his ambitions.

As the years go by, Agnes – aided by her mother-in-law (Emily Watson) and guided by the nature-centric pagan wisdom of her own deceased mother – raises the children while her husband, miles away, builds a successful career as the city’s most popular playwright. But when an outbreak of bubonic plague results in the death of 11-year-old Hamnet in Will’s absence, an emotional wedge is driven between them – especially when Agnes receives word that her husband’s latest play, titled “Hamlet,” an interchangeable equivalent to the name of their dead son, is about to debut on the London stage.

There is nothing, save the bare details of circumstance around the Shakespeare family, that can be called factual about the narrative told in “Hamnet.” Records of Shakespeare’s private life are sparse and short on context, largely limited to civic notations of fact – birth, marriage, and death announcements, legal documents, and other general records – that leave plenty of space in which to speculate about the personal nuance such mundane details might imply. What is known is that the Shakespeares lost their son, probably to plague, and that “Hamlet” – a play dominated by expressions of grief and existential musings about life and death – was written over the course of the next five years. Shakespearean scholars have filled in the blanks, and it’s hard to argue with their assumptions about the influence young Hamnet’s tragic death likely had over the creation of his father’s masterwork. What human being would not be haunted by such an event, and how could any artist could avoid channeling its impact into their work, not just for a time but for forever after?

In their screenplay, O’Farrell and Zhao imagine an Agnes Shakespeare (most records refer to her as “Anne” but her father’s will uses the name “Agnes”) who stands apart from the conventions of her town, born of a “wild woman” in the woods and raised in ancient traditions of mysticism and nature magic before being adopted into her well-off family, who presents a worthy match and an intellectual equal for the brilliantly passionate creator responsible for some of Western Civilization’s most enduring tales. They imagine a courtship that would have defied the customs of the time and a relationship that feels almost modern, grounded in a love and mutual respect that’s a far cry from most popular notions of what a 16th-century marriage might look like. More than that, they imagine that the devastating loss of a child – even in a time when the mortality rate for children was high – might create a rift between two parents who can only process their grief alone. And despite the fact that almost none of what O’Farrell and Zhao present to us can be seen, at best, as anything other than informed speculation, it all feels devastatingly true.

That’s the quality that “Hamnet” shares with the ever-popular Will Shakespeare; though it takes us into a past that feels as alien to us as if it took place upon a different planet, it evokes a connection to the simple experience of being human, which cuts through the differences in context. Just as the kings, heroes, and fools of Shakespeare’s plays express and embody the same emotional experiences that shape our own mundane modern lives, the film’s portrayal of these two real-life people torn apart by personal tragedy speaks directly to our own shared sense of loss – and it does so with an eloquence that, like Shakespeare’s, emerges from the story to make it feel as palpable as if their grief was our own.

Yes, the writing and direction – each bringing a powerfully feminine “voice” to the story – are key to the emotional impact of “Hamnet,” but it’s the performances of its stars that carry it to us. Mescal, once more proving himself a master at embodying the kind of vulnerable masculine tenderness that’s capable of melting our hearts, gives us an accessible Shakespeare, driven perhaps by a spark of genius yet deeply grounded in the tangible humanity that underscores the “everyman” sensibility that informs the man’s plays. But it’s Buckley’s movie, by a wide margin, and her bold, fierce, and deeply affecting performance gives voice to a powerful grief, a cry against the injustice and cruelty of what we fumblingly call “fate” that resonates deep within us and carries our own grief, over losses we’ve had and losses we know are yet to come, along with her on the journey to catharsis.

That’s the word – “catharsis” – that defines why Shakespeare (and by extension, “Hamnet”) still holds such power over the imagination of our human race all these centuries later. The circumstantial details of his stories, wrapped up in ancient ideologies that still haunt our cultural imagination, fall away in the face of the raw expression of humanity to which his characters give voice. When Hamlet asks “to be or not to be?,” he is not an old-world Danish Prince contemplating revenge against a traitor who murdered his father; he is Shakespeare himself, pondering the essential mystery of life and death, and he is us, too.

Likewise, the Agnes Shakespeare of “Hamnet” (masterfully enacted by Buckley) embodies all our own sorrows – past and future, real and imagined – and connects them to the well of human emotion from which we all must drink; it’s more powerful than we expect, and more cleansing than we imagine, and it makes Zhao’s exquisitely devastating movie into a touchstone for the ages.

We can’t presume to speak for Shakespeare, but we are pretty sure he would be pleased.