The Baftas have some funny ideas about celebrating cinema. Their list of nominations this year gives you the impression that almost no one who voted has actually stepped inside one lately. They surely watched Don’t Look Up and The Power of the Dog on Netflix; got screener DVDs for Belfast and Licorice Pizza. At a push, they might have masked up at the local multiplex to catch Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, which would explain how it topped the pack with 11 nominations, standing out for its sheer scale in every craft category possible.

Conspicuous by their absence in Best Film, though, are two other titles that could have kept the flame alive for the big-screen experience, and made the Baftas look a lot cannier for their inclusion. The year’s only true box-office phenomenon, give or take Spidey, was No Time to Die, which raked in enough money to represent a huge sigh of relief for the industry at large. Even though it satisfied just about everyone, bar a few picky critics, it has been relegated to Best British Film.

It’s five times better than Kenneth Branagh’s meagre, ingratiating Belfast, which will probably beat it to that prize. Steven Spielberg’s cracking remake of West Side Story is maybe twice as good again. It did get five nominations, including for Ariana DeBose and the brilliant Mike Faist, but missed out in both the Film and Director categories. 

Is Spielberg being punished, somehow, for his film’s relative underperformance commercially? It has made $62.6m worldwide from a $100m budget. But clearly the ker-ching factor doesn’t hold that much sway with this voting body, or No Time to Die ($774.2m) would have been a shoo-in. You can’t win.

The Baftas have certainly embraced all things boutique, alternative and grungy this year, Dune aside. (And even that happens to be about the grungiest $400m-grossing blockbuster imaginable.) There aren’t too many high-energy musical numbers or dizzying shootouts in cocktail attire, that I can recall. Save for the comic set-pieces in Licorice Pizza, the major nominees here are gloomy, introspective, and in the particular case of Don’t Look Up, so botched as would-be satire as to be more depressing than it even intends.

The Baftas are under no obligation to make us all feel good, of course. Still, the positioning of these British awards in the pre-Oscars run-up is meant to grab them a share of the red-carpet glamour, while also providing a chance to wave the flag for UK film production, putting our own industry in the spotlight. Some years, resisting that urge might in fact look commendable, for fear of looking too parochial or boosterish. This year, it feels an awful lot like self-sabotage.

Amid acting nominations that range from the terrific and surprising to the dreary and obvious, two big British stars have also been left out  – Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter and (the half-British) Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick…BOOM! Both snubs tend to reinforce the impression that voters have missed what’s right in front of their faces this year. Inadvertently perhaps, they’ve proved that there’s no firm consensus at all on what the year’s greatest achievements in cinema have actually been. Critics’ lists everywhere have put Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir: Part II at the very top – quite rightly, I think. Here it got zilch. 

Many would argue the great achievement – the only achievement – has been to stop cinema going under. The Baftas could at least have acknowledged the homegrown triumph in this department by showing No Time to Die a bit more respect. Bond’s return was event cinema at its most make-or-break, after all. From the comfort of their sofas, these voters have plumped for an awful lot of non-events instead.

Baftas 2022: the nominations

Best Film

Belfast
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Licorice Pizza
The Power Of The Dog

Best Director

After Love, Aleem Khan
Drive My Car, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Happening, Audrey Diwan
Licorice Pizza , Paul Thomas Anderson
The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion
Titane, Julia Ducournau

Leading Actor

Adeel Akhtar, Ali & Ava
Mahershala Ali, Swan Song
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Leonardo Dicaprio, Don’t Look Up
Stephen Graham, Boiling Point
Will Smith, King Richard