It’s two weeks and a day before Christmas and the year-end precursor awards to the Oscars are in full swing.

Traditionally, we would be planning spending part of the Christmas holiday season going to the movies to catch some of the big year-end releases. This year, we may have already seen everything we wanted to see in a theatre and are eagerly anticipating the ones we missed to begin streaming on TV and/or making their home video debuts.

This week, Peacock will begin streaming one of the year’s biggest critical hits and a major contender for Best Picture and numerous other Oscars.

Edward Berger, the director of 2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front, is back with Conclave, a thriller about the election of the next pope after the sudden death of the last one, makes its streaming debut this Friday, December 13.

The film closely follows the 2015 best-selling novel by Robert Harris in all its twists and turns leading to a highly unexpected climax. Ralph Fiennes, who shockingly has not received an Oscar nomination since 1996’s The English Patient is a top contender for this year’s Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the Cardinal tasked with managing the election. Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow are the best-known actors playing two of the rival Cardinals vying to become the next pope. Both are contenders for Best Supporting Actor.

Isabella Rossellini playing a nun who sees everything but says nothing until her big moment is a leading contender for Best Supporting Actress fifty years after her mother, Ingrid Bergman, won her third Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for a similarly small but scene-stealing role in Murder on the Orient Express. Unlike her mother, Rossellini has never been nominated for an Oscar before.

Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, which was named one of the year’s ten best films by the National Board of Review, makes its screening debut on Max on Friday, December 20. Nicholas Hoult plays the title role opposite Toni Collette as the prosecuting attorney twenty-two years after playing Hoult’s mother in 2002’s About a Boy.

Currently available on Max is Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to Burton’s 1988’s film, Beetlejuice which also starred Michael Keaton. Winona Ryder co-stars along with Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara who was also in the original. The film is a major Oscar contender for Best Visual Effects and in the running for one or two other awards.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is also available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray.

Pablo Larrain’s Maria makes its streaming debut on Netflix tomorrow.

Maria is Larraín’s third film about a world-famous late 20th Century woman in emotional straits. The first two, 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer about Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, respectively, earned Oscar nominations for Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart. Can Angelina Jolie make it three for three?

Currently available on Netflix, Jacques Audiard’s critically acclaimed Emilia Pérez has been underperforming despite its ecstatic reviews.

A major Best Picture contender with three possible acting nominees, Karla Sofía Gascón for Best Actress and both Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez for Best Supporting Actress, the film which is about a Mexican drug czar who undergoes a sex change to fool his enemies has surprisingly not taken the steaming public by storm. Both the pre-operation drug czar and his post-operation female counterpart are played by Gascón who, if she is nominatied, will become the first trans actress to be so honored.

Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance for which Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are major contenders for Best Actress and Best supporting Actress, respectively, is currently streaming on MUBI and is available for rental or purchase through Amazon Prime.

The popular horror film will be released on 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray on January 21, 2025.

Currently streaming on Prime Video is Malcolm Washington’s film of August Wilson’s acclaimed play, The Piano Lesson for which Danielle Deadwyler is a major contender for Best Supporting Actress. John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts, and Samuel L. Jackson co-star.

Aso currently streaming on Prime is Ellen Kuras’ Lee for which Kate Winslet is a possible nominee for Best Actress for her portrayal of fashion model turned World War II photographer Lee Miller.

Aaron Shimberg’s A Different Man, for which Sebastian Stan is a contender for Best Actor, is available for purchase on Prime Video.

Anora, which is a contender for Best Picture, Best Directing (Sean Baker), Best Actress Mikey Madison, and a slew of other nominations, is available for pre-order streaming purchase on Prime.

DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot, a frontrunner for Best Animated Feature, is available for downloading from Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms and is also available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray.

Universal’s Wicked is available for pre-order on 4K UHD Blu-ray, regular Blu-ray, and DVD with a projected release date of June 30, 2025. A current box-office champion is expected to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Cynthia Erivo), Best Supporting Actress (Ariana Grande), and many more, could be delayed a home video release until this time next year when its sequel, Wicked 2 is released.

Other year-end releases with strong awards potential such as The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, and Babygirl have not been scheduled for release on either home video or streaming at this time.

Happy viewing.