Despite the backlash directed toward the Academy Awards in recent years, there are still those who both watch and believe they have some merit. It is a good platform to promote films that may not have been on the public’s radar and boost the careers of many actors who are nominated and go on to win these awards. For some reason, however, the nominations this year are simply baffling.

Starting with some positives, “Green Book” and “Roma” got Best Picture nominations, along with the immensely popular and financial darling “Black Panther,” which happens to be the first comic book film nominated for Best Picture, finally achieving what “The Dark Knight” failed to do 10 years prior. There were many surprise nominations as well, such as Paul Schrader’s Best Original Screenplay nod for “First Reformed,” Marina de Tavira’s Supporting Actress nomination for “Roma” and three nominations for the Coen Bros.’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.”

Some omissions, specifically in the Acting and Documentary categories, were sorely felt. These include the likes of Ethan Hawke in “First Reformed,” Toni Collette in “Hereditary” and Timothée Chalamet in “Beautiful Boy.” For the Documentary and Foreign Film categories, the snubs included “Burning,” “Three Identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” the last of which feels like the biggest snub in the past few years. But why were these artists left out of the running, and more specifically, why do these snubs feel more aggravating than some of the ones for the bigger, more popular categories?

As per the Academy’s usual methods, every snub has its own reasoning behind it. Chalamet was left out due to Annapurna’s push for Sam Rockwell in Best Supporting Actor for “Vice.” With eight nominations and only a 66 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, “Vice” is clearly a film that had a lot of good campaigning behind it, but should Rockwell’s impression of Bush have been nominated over Chalamet’s harrowing portrayal of drug addiction?

As for “Hereditary,” that case seems to be a mix of genre and timing. Although 2017’s “Get Out” was released in February and was considered to be of the horror genre, immense commercial success kept it in the conversation. As good as it is, “Hereditary” unfortunately fell victim to not quite having these elements and fell out of awards talk. Because of this, it is a head-scratcher that Ethan Hawke was not recognized for his performance when Schrader’s script secured a nomination. “First Reformed” came out in May 2018 and clearly had longevity until awards season. As good as Willem Dafoe is in “At Eternity’s Gate,” it was not quite as good as the other performances nominated, all of which did not impress as much as Hawke’s performance of a tortured reverend.

None of these snubs hurt as much as Morgan Neville’s documentary about Fred Rogers not getting a nomination in the Documentary category. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is a film that is easily better than 95 percent of those nominated for any category this year. Did the documentary branch collectively think it was a shoe-in to be nominated and spread the love elsewhere, or are they really that incompetent? “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and “Three Identical Strangers” were two documentaries that many people saw and seem to be the two that have stirred up a considerable amount of conversation. Other films besides these and “Burning” that could have been recognized include “Paddington 2,” “Blindspotting,” “Eighth Grade,” “Annihilation,” “Mission Impossible: Fallout,” “Vox Lux,” “Boy Erased,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Suspiria” and “Searching,” to name a few.

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