The Oscars are happening tonight, so once again, I’ve assembled a post with some loose predictions, my own picks for each award, and, most importantly, links to every one of these films I’ve reviewed. I’ve seen all of the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography nominees, and all of the films in the four acting categories. I still have one or two films left in the Animated Feature, Documentary Feature, and International Feature categories, and didn’t see any of the short films this year, although I’ll seek out the winners afterwards.
To be completely clear, I have zero inside information to inform these predictions. I read the same stuff you do, and don’t claim to know anything more than the average moviegoer. This is all just for fun – but I do have certain films I’d like to see honored, because I think when good films win important awards, it encourages studios to finance more good films.
Best Picture
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
What will win: Drive My Car
What should win: Drive My Car
What was snubbed: The Lost Daughter, Passing
So my real prediction is that The Power of the Dog doesn’t win – in essence, I’d bet the field instead. I know CODA is now the popular favorite, and it might win. It’s not that great a film, and the idea of a film about deaf people that centers the experience of a hearing person winning BP is not that great, Bob, but in a year without a clear front-runner, a fractured vote could give us a surprising result. I have argued with friends who care about this stuff for a few weeks that Drive My Car is at least undervalued by oddsmakers; the more international Academy electorate gives it a real chance, even though it’s probably no more than third most likely to win and maybe fourth. But I could also see it being first on a minority of ballots, and in a year where no single film runs away with it, it might sneak in there. I might be wishcasting, but I’d rather argue for a scenario that is unlikely but not improbable than just tell you something you already know.
I’d also like to point out that the two films I thought most deserved BP nods but didn’t get them were Netflix movies, and seriously, fuck you to whatever Netflix exec decided to put time and money into promoting Don’t Look Up for this award when they had two far superior and more deserving films right there. Passing didn’t get a single Oscar nod, and I put that squarely on Netflix’s shoulders.
Apropos of nothing, there is a small chance that CODA wins this and nothing else – it was only nominated for two other honors. No film has won Best Picture and no other Oscars since Mutiny on the Bounty in 1936.
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Stephen Spielberg, West Side Story
Who will win: Campion
Who should win: Hamaguchi
Who was snubbed: Denis Villeneuve, Dune
Villeneve shouldn’t just have been nominated over Branagh; he should be taking home this Oscar. I don’t think it would be remotely close, and I say that as someone who thought Drive My Car was the best movie of 2021. I didn’t think West Side Story was anything special, but Spielberg’s direction was not among its flaws.
Best Actress
Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart, Spencer
Who will win: Chastain
Who should win: Colman
Who was snubbed: Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World
If nothing else, I am glad that awards discourse has coalesced around the idea that nominating actors for doing impersonations is at least not in the true spirit of these awards. Three of these nominees are portraying real people; four of the nominees for Best Actor are too, if you count King Macbeth, although in that case, they didn’t try to make Denzel Washington look like his real-life counterpart. In this category, Chastain and Kidman just aren’t very good – they’re imitating, but hardly acting, although in both cases the scripts are the main problem. I’d be fine with any of the other three winning. Reinsve’s performance absolutely sustained that movie, though, and she would have been my pick. Ben Zauzmer noted that this is the first time in the ten-nominee era that no film has gotten a Best Picture nomination and had its lead actress get a Best Actress nomination, and the tenth time in Oscar history. By the way, Cruz’s odds have been soaring in the last few days, and I’d be thrilled if she won, too.
Best Actor
Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield, tick, tick…BOOM!
Will Smith, King Richard
Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth
Who will win: Smith
Who should win: Smith
Who was snubbed: Simon Rex, Red Rocket
My hypothesis on Red Rocket is that because director/co-writer Sean Baker non-professional actors for the vast majority of roles in his movies, the professional actors who vote on the nominees for acting categories might be disinclined to vote for his movies or anyone associated with them. The Florida Project was my #1 movie of 2018 but only got one supporting nod for Willem Dafoe, who was already a highly acclaimed actor and played a small role in the film. Rex had acting experience before Red Rocket but was never in anything good, and nearly everyone else in the film is a non-professional.
Anyway, Smith is almost certainly going to win, but Cumberbatch was great, too, and wasn’t doing an impersonation, which Smith definitely was (especially in imitating Richard Williams’ manner of speech).
Best Supporting Actress
Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
Judi Dench, Belfast
Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog
Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Who will win: DeBose
Who shold win: DeBose
Who was snubbed: Caitrona Balfe, Belfast; Ruth Negga, Passing
I’ve ranted about Balfe/Dench already, in the Belfast review. This category is considered by pretty much everyone to be the strongest lock of the night. I won’t even pretend to know any better.
Best Supporting Actor
Ciarán Hinds, Belfast
Troy Kotsur, CODA
Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog
J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog
Who will win: Kotsur
Who should win: Smit-McPhee*
Who was snubbed: Daniel Durant, CODA
I put an asterisk next to Smit-McPhee’s name because I think he gave the best performance of the year … but I am rooting for Kotsur here. He was great, and fun, and improvised a fair bit of his dialogue. I think having him win that award, and give his speech in American Sign Language for hundreds of thousands of people to see, will be powerful and important. He is the third actor with a physical disability to be nominated for an Oscar; the previous two were his CODA co-star Marlee Matlin, for Children of a Lesser God, and Harold Russell, for The Best Years of Our Lives.
Best Cinematography
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
What will win: Dune
What should win: Dune
What was snubbed: Drive My Car
I could see a case for West Side Story here, but not one to beat Dune, which was just breathtaking in almost every way.
Best International Feature Film
Drive My Car (Japan)
Flee (Denmark)
The Hand of God (Italy)
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan)
The Worst Person in the World (Norway)
I still haven’t seen Lunana, but I assume Drive My Car is winning this and have no objection. I’ve seen a few films from the shortlist that didn’t make the final cut, including Hive and A Hero, but wouldn’t argue for either’s inclusion.
Best Original Screenplay
Belfast
Don’t Look Up
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Worst Person in the World
What will win: Belfast
What should win: Licorice Pizza
What was snubbed: Parallel Mothers
My prediction is this is where the voters give one to Branagh, now that it seems to be an also-ran in every other category where it’s nominated – although a shutout is on the table. I know there’s some popular sentiment for The Worst Person in the World, but I can’t get past the way it reduces Julie’s story to whether or not she wants kids.
Best Adapted Screenplay
CODA
Drive My Car
Dune
The Lost Daughter
The Power of the Dog
What will win: The Lost Daughter
What should win: Drive My Car
What was snubbed: The Dig
A hunch here that the Academy will honor Maggie Gyllenhaal here after snubbing her for Director and snubbing the film for Best Picture. If it doesn’t win, then this one probably goes to CODA regardless of the Best Picture voting. I never wrote up The Dig, a lovely, small movie starring Carrie Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, available on Netflix. We liked it quite a bit, but Netflix didn’t do anything to promote it, and the plot – a young English widow hires a local archeologist to excavate the ancient burial mounds on her property – isn’t exactly white-knuckles stuff, although it is based on a true story.
Best Documentary Feature
Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul
Writing with Fire
What will win: Summer of Soul
What should win: Summer of Soul
I still haven’t seen Ascension or Writing with Fire, but I loved Summer of Soul and it seems to be a lock to win. Flee made history by getting nominations in this category, Best International Feature Film, and Best Animated Feature Film (which Encanto seems like a dead lock to win), but will almost certainly go 0 for 3. I don’t have a real snub here, but if you have Amazon Prime, My Name Is Pauli Murray is a very straightforward documentary about an extremely important civil rights lawyer who also struggled with her gender identity and sexual orientation in a time when the topics were completely taboo.