The US on screen: the destinations behind the 2024 Oscar nominations

Whatever the various controversies that have hit the Oscars in recent years, most notably to do with representation of women and diversity, one thing still stands: this is an American awards show and it favours American films. The South Korean-made Parasite’s board-sweeping in 2020 remains an anomaly, with this year’s nominations for Best Picture a full 90 per cent US-made.

What’s more, the movies are almost all filmed in America, too. Globe-trotting, it seems, is off the agenda this year, with the only outlier, Poor Things, filmed not on location but in a studio in Budapest. Instead, what this year’s list gives us is the good ol’ US of A and a deep dive on landscapes from East to West coast and far south, both familiar and relatively unknown. So, as long as you’re not interested in the snowy north, let the 96th Academy Awards act as inspiration for your next visit Stateside.

Barbie

The neon world of the other half of 2023’s Barbenheimer phenomenon was, unsurprisingly, mostly created in a studio – in Hertfordshire in the UK, to be precise, at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden. When Barbie and Ken emerge in the real world, however, they’re in – of course – California. Once, all movies and most TV shows were filmed here and repeat exposure means LA remains as familiar as our own hometown, giving director Greta Gerwig the perfect shorthand for her reality-blurring tale.

We see Barbie and Ken rolling along Ocean Front Walk in Venice Beach, home of the city’s skaters, and driving in Long Beach after visiting Mattel’s HQ, filmed at Bank of America Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. Barbie’s moment of reflection on a bench at a bus-stop, meanwhile, is in Santa Monica’s Tongva Park. Extract the day-glo glare and Gerwig’s satirical intent, and California’s bright sunshine and laidback charm exercise the same attraction they always have.

Take off to LA

Killers of the Flower Moon

One of Martin Scorsese’s enduring preoccupations as a filmmaker has been location. From inner-city NYC in Taxi Driver to Massachusetts in The Departed and the small towns of New York state in The Irishman, his career-long study of America is as much about place as personality. His latest film is no exception, so this retelling of the true story of brutal killings among the native Osage Nation of Oklahoma was filmed in the same small towns of Pawhuska, Fairfax and Bartlesville, where the deeds were done a century ago.

Except for the Masonic Lodge in Fairfax, most of the buildings we see are highly disguised versions of the current towns, with 1920s-style wooden fronting placed over existing shops and the train station entirely constructed for the film. Some residents hoping for a Scorsese-led boost have kept elements of the production’s set-dressing, though it remains to be seen if this little-visited state, probably last represented at the Oscars by the fleeting appearance of a remote farmhouse in Rain Man, will become a tourist destination.

Discover Oklahoma

Oppenheimer

Led by a magnetic performance by Cillian Murphy in the title role, Christopher Nolan’s mid-century saga flits between periods and locations, but its heart is in New Mexico. This southern state’s vistas of desert and peaks, featured in Texan-set Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men as well as Independence Day and Terminator 2, was ideal for the man-vs-nature scale of the movie, and had the advantage of being the real-life location of J Robert Oppenheimer’s bomb-building base and test site. For interiors, Nolan used the actual buildings (Oppenheimer’s own home included) in Los Alamos, but also constructed a small town of 1940s-styled exteriors at Ghost Ranch, northwest of Santa Fe, formerly home to artist Georgia O’Keeffe and location for numerous Westerns, including City Slickers and 3:10 to Yuma. The climactic test sequence, meanwhile, was shot in Belen, north of the real site of Socorro. Go for the history, stay for the sunsets.

Take off to Texas

The Holdovers

Massachusetts is well-represented on film, setting for both the kind of Irish-heritage blue-collar struggle seen in Good Will Hunting and more British genteel period dramas, such as Barbie director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. The Holdovers sits firmly in the second camp, with its setting in a private boarding school where unloved teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) oversees a small group of students left behind for Christmas. Director Alexander Payne, who specialises in studies of the privileged and troubled (Sideways, The Descendants), shot the entire film on location, taking advantage of one of America’s sleepiest states for a story very firmly set in 1970. “Change comes slowly [here],” he told one interviewer. “You can still go have dinner in restaurants that have been there since 1760.”

Driven by perfection or spoilt for choice, Payne used five different schools for his Barton Academy, in Groton, Fairhaven, Deerfield, Southborough and Gill. While much of the action stays in these closed institutions, there’s also a “field trip” to Boston, which shows much of the city’s charm. We see cultural landmarks including the 1914-built Somerville Theatre, the Orpheum Theatre and Brattle Book Shop, as well as the manicured Boston Common and the heavy building of the city’s 19th-century downtown. For contrast, another Oscar Best Picture contender, American Fiction, offers a 21st-century view of Boston, where the friction between elite tradition and provocative modernity takes on a heightened role.

Explore Massachusetts

Past Lives

While Bradley Cooper’s nominated biopic of Leonard Bernstein, Maestro, takes us inside New York landmark Carnegie Hall, for the Big Apple it’s over to this year’s breakout director, Celine Song, and Past Lives. The Korean-Canadian’s debut film follows the reunion of childhood friends from Seoul, Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), with much of the screentime spent in Nora’s adopted home of New York.

Alongside the delicate to and fro of the dialogue is an elevated tourist guide to the city, conducted by one who lives there but still knows a proper tour needs the big hitters to be included. That means that we get the Statue of Liberty and Museum of Modern Art but also some lesser-known attractions. These include Madison Square Park and the hefty stone dais of the Admiral Farragut Monument, drinks at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St Mark’s Place (where they claim to have served Al Capone) and literary hangout McNally Jackson Books in Williamsburg. The star, though, is Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the 100-year-old fairground ride installed between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Expect to meet a few fellow moviegoers if you include it on your own visit.

Uncover New York

The 96th Academy Awards ceremony takes place on 10 March