This is a bit of an odd/exciting year, because while we almost definitely know who three of the acting Oscars are going to, Best Picture and Best Director are complete mysteries. Plus, how will you win your Oscar pool if you don't know who to pick for Best Animated Short Film? I think I hear my entrance music...
Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
We know precisely three
things about this year’s Best Picture race: Bridge
of Spies isn’t winning, Brooklyn isn’t
winning, and Room isn’t winning. As
far as what could win, and the other five films really could do so, there are
basically two sides of the aisle. On one side are the traditional and modest
prestige dramas, Spotlight and The Big Short. On the other side are
three huge budget hits with exotic locations, epic scope, and exquisite
technical accomplishments in The Martian,
The Revenant, and Mad Max: Fury Road. All five films have
their loud fans and detractors.
Different theories abound.
Some people think Mad Max or The Martian won’t win because they’re
genre films, others think they could win by getting the most second place
votes. The Revenant won the Golden
Globe and the BAFTA, Spotlight won
the Best Ensemble Award from SAG, and The
Big Short won Best Picture from the Producers Guild, which, by the way, has
correctly predicted the last nine Best Picture winners (but got three in a row
wrong just before that).
Here’s a refresher on how the
preferred balloting system works for Best Picture, because this will matter.
Voters rank the eight films in order of preference, one through eight. If any
film receives more than 50% of the first place votes, it wins Best Picture. But
that won’t happen this year, so that’s when second (and probably third and
fourth) place votes will start to really matter. When no film has an initial
majority, the film that finishes last is eliminated, and all of the second
place votes on those ballots become first place votes. If still no film has a
majority, then the seventh place film is eliminated, those second place votes
are reallocated, and so on and so on, until a film has over 50% of the vote.
So here’s my theory, based on
the three things we know: When no film initially receives over 50% of the vote,
the preferential system will start, and Bridge
of Spies, Brooklyn, and Room (in some order) will be the first
three films eliminated from contention. When that happens, whatever film from
the remaining five ranks the highest on those three ballots will suddenly
receive a lot more first place votes. So, what do we know about the taste of
the people who would rank Bridge of Spies,
Brooklyn, and Room as the best film of the year? That they like quiet, measured,
art house dramas, and that means the majority of those votes will likely be
reallocated to Spotlight.
In a year like this one,
where second, third, and fourth place votes will matter just as much as first
place votes, we’re ultimately looking for what film is well-liked by the most
people, not what’s passionately loved by some. That’s why I don’t think The Revenant or The Big Short will win—they’re far too likely to appear towards the
bottom of a lot of ballots. The films with the best chance at staying in the
top half of the most ballots are probably Spotlight
and The Martian, and that’s why I
see them as the most likely winners. I first saw Spotlight at its Toronto
premiere back in September, and immediately said I thought it would win Best
Picture. While it’s certainly taken its momentum lumps along the way, it’s
still my pick.
Best Director
Lenny Abrahamson – Room
Alejandro G. Iñárritu – The
Revenant
Tom McCarthy – Spotlight
Adam McKay – The Big Short
George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road
Before the nominations
actually came out, we thought we knew who was winning here: Ridley Scott, for The Martian. But a funny/weird/inexplicable
thing happened on the way to the red carpet—Scott wasn’t even nominated, and he
left a bit of a free-for-all in his wake.
Literally no one thought Abrahamson
would even be nominated, and he’s definitely not winning. McKay and McCarthy
will have a hard time breaking through here, on the one hand because their jobs
(unfairly) look comparatively easy next to what Miller and Iñárritu did, but also because they’re both likely to
receive screenwriting Oscars earlier in the night, and many voters prefer to
spread the love.
Iñárritu is the frontrunner, because he won the Golden
Globe, the BAFTA, and the Director’s Guild Award. The latter feels particularly
significant, as the DGA has awarded the eventual Oscar winner in 11 of the last
12 years (missing only in 2012, when Ben Affleck won for Argo and didn’t even receive an Oscar nomination). But let me play
devil’s advocate for a moment.
The DGA is filled with people
who all desperately want to make a film as prestigious and zeitgeist-y as The Revenant, so of course that’s what
they’d award. The Academy, on the other hand, is filled with a great many more
people than just directors. It’s also filled with sound guys and effects
people, costume designers and editors, production designers and makeup artists,
and all kinds of craft people that hope one day to work on a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road, and work with a guy
that lets them go nuts with their art like George Miller does.
Iñárritu won last year (for Birdman), which both helps and hurts him. Some voters will like the
narrative and prestige of a director winning twice in a row (only John Ford and
Joseph L. Mankiewicz have done so, in ‘40/’41 and ‘49/’50, respectively); other
voters will use that as motivation to choose someone else. Because of that, and
because I expect Mad Max to have more
breadth of support across the Academy, I’m calling George Miller for the upset.
Best Actor
Bryan Cranston – Trumbo
Matt Damon – The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Revenant
Michael Fassbender – Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne – The Danish Girl
As recently as six weeks ago,
there was a semi-popular theory that maybe Leo wouldn’t win the Oscar because
“people don’t like his lifestyle.” (Translation: perhaps voters won’t want to
further reward a guy that’s already been fellated by every supermodel in the
western hemisphere.) That almost seemed believable until the Golden Globes and the
SAG Awards happened, and Leo received a rousing standing ovation upon winning
both. That’s when we knew for sure that his peers (and Academy voters) see Leonardo DiCaprio as one of the best
working actors in the world, and nothing was keeping him from winning the Oscar
this year.
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett – Carol
Brie Larson – Room
Jennifer Lawrence – Joy
Charlotte Rampling – 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan – Brooklyn
Cate Blanchett’s already won
two Oscars, Jennifer Lawrence is nominated for a bad movie, and Charlotte
Rampling just won’t get enough broad support (though her film, 45 Years, is excellent). This race is
clearly between Brie Larson and Saoirse Ronan. In both cases, they’re immensely
talented young actresses who have been in the industry since they were
children, and have now become breakout stars in their first major leading roles
as adults.
You might think Ronan would
have a slight edge, having been nominated before (Best Supporting Actress for
2007’s Atonement), but it’s Larson
who’s in the more emotionally devastating film, and her performance carries it.
Larson also played Amy Schumer’s sister in Trainwreck,
so it feels like her breakout year. Combine that with her incredible
performance, a personality that everyone loves, and the fact that she’s won
every major precursor award (Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA, and Critic’s Choice),
and Brie Larson will be the winner.
Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale – The Big Short
Tom Hardy – The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo – Spotlight
Mark Rylance – Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone – Creed
Of the acting categories, I
think this is secretly our best chance for an upset. Stallone is undoubtedly the
front-runner, and Creed is a
fantastic film that deserved a hell of a lot more Oscar love than it got (Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Adapted Screenplay all should have been possibilities). But
Stallone is hurt by two things: 1) he forgot to thank his director (Ryan
Coogler) in his Golden Globes speech, which is a major faux pas, and 2) he’s
Sylvester Stallone. Not exactly a pinnacle of method acting.
If there’s an upset, it could
come from anywhere. The other four films are all Best Picture nominees, Ruffalo
and Hardy are hugely respected A-Listers that have never won anything, Bale is
considered one of the best actors of his generation, and Rylance (who gives the
most deserving performance) is one of the best stage actors in the world,
making a rare film appearance. In Spotlight,
Ruffalo probably has the best “Oscar scene” of anyone, while Bale disappears
into his role and Hardy went through the most physically grueling ordeal. All
of them could win.
But I still think it’ll
ultimately be Sylvester Stallone.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary for the Rocky franchise, and that’s the kind of Hollywood institution that
voters love awarding, like John Wayne winning for True Grit. And like Wayne then, Stallone abandons his vanity
and traditional on-screen persona and just allows himself to be an old man. It's the male equivalent of when gorgeous women win Oscars while wearing ugly prosthetic faces (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard). I just really hope
he thanks Ryan Coogler first.
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh – The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara – Carol
Rachel McAdams – Spotlight
Alicia Vikander – The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet – Steve Jobs
This is the year’s only
acting race where we don’t pretty much know what’s going to happen, so let’s
break it down. Rachel McAdams probably has the lowest chance. She doesn’t give
a performance that you come away from the film talking about, and, more
crucially, it’s the only film in this race that is pretty sure to get awarded
elsewhere. The other four nominees all have a decent chance, and they’ll all be
the beneficiary of voters who think this race is their best chance to award a
film they loved.
Jennifer Jason Leigh has been
well-regarded in Hollywood for over thirty years, and this is somehow her first
nomination, so that alone will give her a certain amount of votes. But The Hateful Eight is probably the
least-loved film of the bunch, and seeing her spend nearly three hours dropping
the N-word and getting punched in the face on screen isn’t likely to garner
much love. She probably finishes fourth.
Rooney Mara is stunning in Carol, and she has the screen-time
benefit of being the film’s lead character (her role isn’t “supporting” by any
stretch of the imagination). But, and here’s where unfair/irrelevant voter
agendas come into play, Mara can’t play into the “great thespian” label that
will help Winslet, nor the “young and beautiful It Girl” narrative being
applied to Vikander. Mara would have to win on performance merit alone, and
sometimes that just isn’t enough.
Winslet is absolutely at the stage of her career where voters will see her as a two-Oscar kind of performer, she
won both the Golden Globe and the BAFTA, and there’s even a sect of voters that
will pick her because they like the idea of awarding her and Leo in the same
year.
But I still don’t think that
will be enough to beat Alicia Vikander. First of all, and because it might
matter the least, Vikander gives the best performance in the field. Like Mara,
she’s also a lead in her film, and she emotionally carries The Danish Girl. Vikander has been poised and radiant on red
carpets all season, and fair or not (it’s not), that matters to some voters.
Astonishingly, Vikander was in seven (!) films released in 2015, from
(attempted) franchise movies, to art house indies, to prestige dramas, and that
range and ubiquity will gain her a lot of support. One of those other films, Ex Machina, even earned a few Oscar
nominations itself, and appeared on many critics’ top ten lists. A lot of
Academy members think she deserved a nomination for that as well (or instead).
But most importantly, Alicia Vikander is 2015’s “It Girl,”
and the Oscars will be her coronation.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short –
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
Brooklyn –
Nick Hornby
Carol –
Phyllis Nagy
The Martian –
Drew Goddard
Room – Emma
Donoghue
In a year with no Best
Picture front-runner to easily check off in this category, voters are likely to
go with what they perceive as the greatest degree of difficulty. Brooklyn and Carol display a lovely amount of subtlety in letting their
characters internalize their emotional arcs. On the opposite end of the
spectrum, The Martian and The Big Short required their writers to
convey a huge amount of technical data and exposition to the audience without
boring them along the way. Neither task is greater or harder than the other,
but I expect voters to gravitate towards the latter set.
I would go with The Martian, because it not only had to
deal with the data dump problem, but also the cinematic dilemma of having one
character largely speak to the camera in solitude. Making that work, and making
it really funny and engaging, is, I believe, the best achievement of the bunch.
But The
Big Short is seen as a more
timely and necessary film, a more difficult subject to deal with on screen,
and the innovation of the “Now here’s Margot Robbie in a bathtub to explain it
to you” exposition breaks is probably enough of a memorable writing quirk to
push it over the top in a close race.
Best Original Screenplay
Bridge of Spies – Matt Charman and Ethan Coen &
Joel
Coen
Ex Machina –
Alex Garland
Inside Out –
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley,
and
Ronnie del Carmen
Spotlight –
Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy
Straight Outta Compton – Jonathan Herman and Andrea
Berloff,
S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus
Spotlight is the heavy, heavy frontrunner here, and it should
be—it was the year’s best screenplay. The way Singer and McCarthy figured out
how to tell this story cinematically, and without source material, is an
incredible achievement. It’s possible to imagine a scenario where Ex Machina pulls out a surprise victory
here, but you’d be doing just that: imagining.
Best Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa
Boy & the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There
No top-tier Pixar movie has
ever lost this category, and the utterly delightful Inside Out isn’t likely to be the first. But
having said that, don’t count out Anomalisa.
It’s a creative, quirky, touching, and beautiful love story that represents
everything people love about Charlie Kauffman. It’s still a long shot, but one
that will get a lot of support.
Best Documentary Feature Film
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
Nearly every year, the Best
Documentary nominees tend to be a deeply heavy and depressing lot. That’s why,
in years when voters are presented with an option that doesn’t remind them that
the world’s going to hell, that film always wins. It’s the “Hey, that one
didn’t make me want to drive off a cliff” phenomena, and 20 Feet From Stardom, Searching
for Sugarman, Undefeated, Man on Wire, and March of the Penguins are the most recent beneficiaries. Amy and What Happened, Miss Simone? are the two musical crowd-pleasers this
year, and though Amy is the sadder of
the two, it’s also the more powerful, successful, and widely seen.
Best Foreign Language Film
Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul
Theeb
A War
Some years this award is a
complete tossup, while other years see one foreign film dominate the
conversation. This is the latter. Son of
Saul, a harrowing and unforgettable point-of-view look at life in
Auschwitz, has won every precursor award, topped many critics’ lists, and was
widely considered a contender for a Best Picture nomination. Like 12 Years a Slave, it’s the rare type of
film that people will vote for even if they haven’t seen it, just because they believe they should. Mustang is also an
incredible film, and I think it has a very miniscule chance here, but Son
of Saul is one of the night’s true sure things.
Best Original Score
Bridge
of Spies (Thomas Newman)
Carol
(Carter Burwell)
The
Hateful Eight (Ennio Morricone)
Sicario
(Jóhan
Jóhannsson)
Star
Wars: The Force Awakens (John
Williams)
Thomas Newman has now been
nominated 13 times and hasn’t won yet, but that won’t change this year. Bridge of Spies isn’t a particularly memorable
score, and Newman isn’t even the sentimental favorite of this bunch. That would
be Ennio Morricone, who many regard as the greatest living film composer. He’s
87 years old, has composed over 500 film scores, and has been nominated five
previous times without a win (though he did receive an honorary Oscar in 2007).
Plus, The Hateful Eight’s score is really fantastic. Carol’s score is truly lovely, and it might be the best one of the year.
But it’s not beating Ennio.
Best Original Song
“Earned It,”
from Fifty Shades of Grey – The
Weeknd, Ahmad Balshe, Jason Quenneville,
and Stephan Moccio
“Manta Ray,”
from Racing Extinction – J. Ralph and
Anohni
“Simple Song #3,”
from Youth – David Lang
“Til It Happens to
You,” from The Hunting Ground –
Diane Warren and Lady Gaga
“Writing’s on the
Wall,” from Spectre – Jimmy Napes
and Sam Smith
Not
a great batch of songs this year. “Manta Ray” is completely forgettable, and
“Writing’s on the Wall” wasn’t even the best possible title song from its own
movie (check out the
Radiohead candidate). “Simple Song #3” won’t be affecting to anyone that
didn’t see its use in the film, and judging by how many other nominations Youth got, voters didn’t see the film.
“Earned It,” by The Weeknd, is definitely the best song of the bunch, but it
doesn’t have the gravitas of Lady Gaga’s “Til
it Happens to You.” It’s also been well publicized that co-songwriter Diane
Warren has never won before, on seven previous nominations.
Best Cinematography
Carol (Ed
Lachman)
The Hateful Eight (Robert Richardson)
Mad Max: Fury Road (John Seale)
The Revenant (Emmanuel
Lubezki)
Sicario (Roger
Deakins)
There’s a possibility this
will go to Mad Max: Fury Road if
voters get on a rhythm of just checking it off for every single technical
category (and don’t rule that out). There’s also a chance Roger Deakins could
win purely out of sympathy; this is his 13th nomination in 21 years,
and he still hasn’t won yet. But Deakins’ name won’t appear on the ballot
(voters only see the film title), so that hurts any small chance he even had.
The likeliest outcome is for Emmanuel Lubezki to
win his third Oscar in a row for his truly stunning imagery in The Revenant. Lubezki has won the last
two years for Gravity and Birdman, respectively, and a win on
Sunday would mark only the
fifth time in Oscar history that the same person (or set of persons) has
won a category three years in a row. It’s previously only happened in the
Visual Effects, Costume Design, and Animated Short categories. For the latter,
Walt Disney won eight Oscars in a row at one
point. So remember that next time you’re proud of something you’ve done.
Best Costume Design
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
The winner of this award is
almost purely dependent on how long voters spend thinking about it. The longer
they mull, the more likely they are to go with the opulence of Cinderella, which is really the type of
film you think of with Best Costume Design. But if voters spend the thirty-seconds-or-less
I expect them to, this category is likely to get caught up in a Mad
Max: Fury Road technical sweep.
Best Editing
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
This is the toughest
technical category to call. On the one hand, it could be part of a Mad Max: Fury Road sweep in the craft
races. On the other, it could go to Spotlight
or The Big Short for creating the
best puzzle. There’s precedent either way: The
Bourne Ultimatum and Whiplash both
won this category in the last ten years, and they have the kinetic style of
editing that Mad Max perfects. But
this award has also recently gone to The
Social Network and The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo, which are the dialogue-heavy pieces of artful pacing reminiscent
of Spotlight and The Big Short. The prevailing theory is that those two will split the vote and
lead to a Mad Max win here, but I’ll be
daring and go against the grain. I think Spotlight will win because it deserves to. Making a journalism movie
suspenseful and propulsive ain’t easy.
Also: If either Spotlight or The Big Short win Best Editing, that probably means they’ll win
Best Picture, too. Historically, this award only goes to the Best Picture
winner about half of the time, but if either of these talkie dramas can beat Mad Max here, it means they have a lot
more support in the Academy than people think.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max: Fury Road
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and
Disappeared
The Revenant
Leo’s bear attack wounds in The Revenant were horrific to look at,
but those few moments (that voters might have even looked away or covered their
eyes for) won’t be able to overcome the two hours of makeup insanity on display
in Mad
Max: Fury Road.
Best Production Design
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Mad Max: Fury Road has some of the best production design in the history
of cinema. Seriously.
Best Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
This is a tough category,
because voters could see it as their best chance to award Ex Machina, The Martian,
or Star Wars—all highly regarded
films that aren’t expected to win anywhere else. But once that sentiment plays
out a few times for each of those films, they’ll cancel out and clear the path
for Mad
Max: Fury Road.
(Side note: How did The Walk not get a nomination here??)
Best Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
For the two sound categories,
it’s virtually inconceivable that anything besides Mad Max: Fury Road will win.
Best Sound Mixing
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
See above. (Hint—it’ll be Mad
Max: Fury Road)
Best Animated Short Film
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live Without the Cosmos
World of Tomorrow
Sanjay’s Super Team is the Pixar entry, which means it won’t win. Pixar has shockingly lost
this category the last six times they were nominated, probably because voters
think they’re playing with house money. Prologue
and We Can’t Live Without the Cosmos
just aren’t that great, so don’t bet on them either. From there, it’s a bit of
a toss-up. World of Tomorrow is a
film that people absolutely love, but it uses stick figures. Bear Story is pretty simple, but the
actual animation is stunning. Because this award tends to most often go to the
film with the most dazzling animation, Bear Story is the pick.
Best Documentary Short Film
Body Team 12
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom
This is the one category
where I don’t see the films, but there are two major tidbits I can impart—Claude
Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
is a Holocaust film, and it’s about the director of the monumentally important Shoah, which the Oscars couldn’t award
thirty years ago because it debuted on television. It’s the safest bet.
Best Live Action Short Film
Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay
Shok
Stutterer
Shok is the
most forgettable here, and Day One was
too heavy for its own good. Everything
Will Be Okay is affecting and has the best acting, but this is a category
where voters tend to go with funny. That leaves Ave Maria and The Stutterer. I thought the latter
was the best film of the bunch, and in a category devoid of politics or agendas,
that’s as good a reason as any.
