Watch the best movies of the last year from the comfort of your own home…

The 2024 Academy Awards featured some modern cinematic greats competing for the industry’s most coveted gongs. We’ve rounded up some of the biggest winners and shared where you can watch them right now, from your UAE-based smart TVs, devices and set-top boxes. Plus one extra, that’s just come out at screens here in the UAE.

Where to watch Oppenheimer in the UAE

Platform: Rent it through Apple TV Dhs17.99

What did it win?: Best Picture (among seven others)

Why should I watch it? It certainly feels like a masterpiece. Every shot, each line of dialogue, all the seemingly inconsequential interactions, disparate conflicting elements, the score, and the philosophical toiling that explodes on the screen in a skin-melting cinematic mushroom cloud might have come together in a 57 day shoot (according to an article in The Washington Post) but their individual atomic signatures suggest a journey that spans an entire career.

Where to watch Barbie in the UAE

Platform: Rent it through Apple TV Dhs21.99

What did it win?: Best Original Song

Why should I watch it?: With Greta Gerwig at the helm it was never going to be a simple homage to a children’s toy, and whilst the satirical swipe at the Kentriarchy wasn’t everyone’s Dream House of a movie – those who got it, adored it. And if you need further cause, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are absolutely fantastic as celluloidal plastic.

Where to watch American Fiction in the UAE

Platform: OSN+. Free with OSN+ subscription (Dhs35 per month)

What did it win?: Best Adapted Screenplay

Why should I watch it?: Directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, based on a book by Percival Everett, and currently sitting at 94 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes – American Fiction is a farce masterwork, exquisitely delivered. A novelist (Wright) who writes a deliberately satirical ‘black’ book – that gets mistaken for a serious one, and is heaped with praise.

Where to watch Poor Things in the UAE

Platform: Disney+. Free with Disney+ subscription (Dhs39.99 per month)

What did it win?: Best Actress (among others)

Why should I watch it?: a gloriously bizarre ride through the mind of post-modern director Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s a Frankenstein’s Monster meets Sophie’s World story of a girl (Emma Stone) with a transplanted brain, who in her exploration of this brightly painted, visually epic world is confronted with the churning eddies of its philosophies, extremities and manipulating influences.

Where to watch The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in the UAE

Platform: Netflix. Free with Netflix subscription (from Dhs29 per month)

What did it win?: Live Action Short Film

Why should I watch it?: Wes Anderson, directing Benedict Cumberbatch in an adaptation of a little known Roald Dahl belter. That’s all you need to know.

Where to watch Anatomy of a Fall in the UAE

Platform: Rent it through Apple TV Dhs19.99

What did it win?: Best Original Screenplay

Why should I watch it?: One of my favourite films of the last 12 months, this French thriller skipped right over International Feature Film and earned its place in the Best Picture category (as well as picking up nominations in four other categories). Directed by Justine Triet – the bulk of the film’s drama is tied up in a courtroom battle, where a woman desperately tries to prove her innocence in the crime of her husband’s murder. A perfect movie for a generation irrevocably hooked on true crime.

Where to watch The Holdovers in the UAE

Platform: At the cinema now. Book here

What did it win?: Best Supporting Actress

Why should I watch it?:  Directed by Alexander (Sideways, The Descendents) Payne, starring Paul Giamatti – it’s a (loosely) festive, tragic comedy that tells the tale of a tyrant teacher forced to look after children over a school Christmas break. All is very much not well.

Images: Movie stills