The ‘Barbie’ Oscar snubs aren’t about genre bias — unless you’re misspelling the word ‘gender’

Last year was an unusually strong year for the movies, and the Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday reflect a lot of that strong, vital work. It happens now and then, and it happened in this last film year: Two of the three biggest popular successes were actually really good, and deserving of the multiple nominations they received. I speak of “Oppenheimer” (13 nods) and “Barbie” (with eight). “Poor Things,” which is terrific, by the way, came in with 11; “Killers of the Flower Moon,” 10. Look for an “Oppenheimer” top prize win at the ceremony March 10. Unfortunately, the Oscar nominatio...