Oscar nominations are out Thursday, and with a few exceptions, there have been enough predictors out there to know pretty much where the chips will fall when those names are read aloud.

It's going to be a big morning for "Emilia Pérez," "The Brutalist" and Timothée Chalamet, and "Wicked" will have plenty to sing about.

All deserved, and good for them. But Oscars aren't the only way to herald great performances, and some of the year's best performances won't be getting any awards love at all.

These aren't even snubs, these are performances that were never in the awards conversation to begin with. These are deeply committed performances or just plain weird, wild and wacky scene stealers that made you perk up, or made you look up "Who's that person?" as soon as the movie was finished.

Here are 10 performances from 2024 that won't make the Oscar cut but which still stood out as some of the year's most memorable, for one reason or another.

Naomi Scott, 'Smile 2'

Fame — or pop music superstardom, in particular — is a horror movie in this follow-up to the 2022 smash, and as troubled pop singer Skye Riley, Naomi Scott is put through a two-hour endurance test that she navigates, somehow, with a smile on her face. At the end of the movie, you feel like you've gone through the wringer with her.

Nicolas Cage, 'Longlegs'

It seemed like the Nicolas Cage comeback tour might make a stop at the Oscars, but his performance as a glam rock-inspired serial killer loner never generated any awards heat. It's unclear why. Still, Cage is nearly unrecognizable and utterly terrifying in the role and it qualifies as one of the craziest performances of his career — which, given that we're talking about Nicolas Cage here, is saying a lot.

David Witts, 'The Beekeeper'

Playing a smarmy scammer who bilks the elderly in online phishing scams, David Witts is slick, oily and totally believable, and it's his performance that kicks this Jason Statham thriller off with a bang. Witts is so memorable that he looms over the whole movie; he should have had the role of the lead villain, a part that went to Josh Hutcherson instead.

Scott Mescudi, 'Trap'

Kid Cudi doesn't have much screen time in M. Night Shyamalan's silly thriller, but he makes the most of what he has. He plays the Thinker, a sort-of mystic who performs with the movie's lead pop singer, Lady Raven (Shyamalan's daughter, Saleka), and he's got such an aura about him — especially when he makes eyes at Cooper (Josh Hartnett), the movie's serial killer in disguise — that you think there has to be more to this guy. How about a "Trap" spinoff that focuses only on the Thinker?

Aubrey Plaza, 'Megalopolis'

Everybody in "Megalopolis" is seemingly in a different movie, and whatever movie Aubrey Plaza is in is the most interesting of the bunch. She plays Wow Platinum, probably the best name given to any character in any movie this century, and she's playing her scenes like she's in a sudsy soap opera or a daffy erotic thriller. Her high camp, oddly, is where "Megalopolis" feels the most at home.

Ed Harris, 'Love Lies Bleeding'

Ed Harris is pushing 75, and he plays maybe the meanest, baddest son-of-a-gun he's ever played in Rose Glass' lovers-on-the-run thriller. Harris is Lou Langston Sr., a bald-headed, long-haired gun range owner with a sordid criminal past, and the last guy you want on your trail. It's a menacing role, the kind of dazzling character work that Harris has managed to turn in for decades.

Jesse Plemons, 'Civil War'

"What kind of American are you?" It's Jesse Plemons' haunting delivery of this line, and those red tinted glasses he wears, that hang over Alex Garland's dystopian thriller long after the credits roll. He's scary good.

John Cena, 'Ricky Stanicky'

If there was an Oscar for Trying the Hardest, John Cena would win hands down. He tries so hard to make Peter Farrelly's bro comedy work that you have to give him points for the effort. Sadly it doesn't work at all, but it's not for Cena's lack of effort and his willingness to do whatever it takes to get a laugh. One of these days Cena is going to land in a project that goes his way, and he'll be a marvel. Until then, he gets this consolation prize for giving it his all to this stinker.

Adam Pearson, 'A Different Man'

You think "A Different Man" is going to be one thing, but it turns out to be the total opposite of that thing, and that is due in large part to the gregarious, charming performance by Adam Pearson, who plays a man whose facial disfigurement is central to the story of a man who learns that it's not what's outside that counts, but what's inside.

Dave Bautista, 'The Last Showgirl'

"The Last Showgirl" is Pamela Anderson's show, but as the producer of a Vegas revue that is in its final days, Bautista is the quiet, reserved, wounded soul who adds context to Anderson's world. It's a 180 from Bautista's brute force performance in "Dune: Part Two," and shows the extent of the range of the ex-professional wrestler.

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