This annual wrap up becomes a bit more challenging each year, not only because movies have become so predictable (as well as so brutally violant and so damn long–and I’m not just looking at you, Wicked for Mediocre, I’m hard pressed to find a film under an excrutiating 2 hours and 45 minutes running time), but because the Academy has moved the date to coincide with my own Marco Awards, which are timed around the day the world shut down during Covid and we were relegated to our TVs for everything 24/7.
Plus the big Awards post-Covid and with the events of the world seem to mean less and less each passing year as our national mood continues to decline. But I do have my faithful readers who enjoy these discussions. If that’s you, enjoy.
BEST PICTURE
Should Win: Sinners
Will Win:One Battle After Another
Spoiler: Hamnet
Sinners is a slow burn, captivating episode in story telling that switches genre midway from African American mob story to African American horror story, both underserved genres. But it opened so long ago it’s been lost to the hype of the big year-end releases and One Battle is taking the lead there. Voters have a short memory in the big category. But don’t count out Hamnet which could very likely reignite the infamous Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love when another actors movie, ironically about Shakespeaere again, could woo the actors contingency who love nothing more than movies about actors.
BEST ACTOR
Should Win: Michael B. Jordan
Will Win: Michael B. Jordan
Spoilers: Leonardo Di Caprio, Timothee Chalamet
Jordan is amazing playing twins who have different body language and different sensiblilties in a tour de force double feature, but DiCaprio is riding the One Battle juggernaut and did give one of the best performances of his career. But don’t count out (former) media darling Chalamet whose notorious opera/ballet slam may have come after enough votes were cast by the once adoring masses he has since alienated.
BEST ACTRESS
Should Win: Jessie Buckley
Will Win : Jessie Buckley
Spoiler: Rose Byrne, Kate Hudson
Buckley seems to be lock as Shakespeare’s distraught wife with a moving character arch from grief to redemption and inner peace. It’s a male heavy year and she’s superb.But Byrne does some unusually heavy lifting in If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You in her first serious Oscar contention. And Hudson is a high performing legacy who could just scramble up enough voters between her friends, Goldie’s friends, and Kurt’s friends to pull out an upset.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Should Win: Delroy Lindo
Will Win: Delroy Lindo
Spoiler: Jacob Elordi, Sean Penn
Lindo deserves this and, with an acclaimed career only only one former nomination, deserves career recognition. And he was fascinating in Sinners. But Elordi shocked everyone with a different and believable take on Frankenstein’s Monster, and Penn was a scream chewing the scenery til he got TMJ as the over the top villain of One Battle.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Should Win: Teyana Taylor
Will Win: Amy Madigan
Got Robbed: Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another), Jamie Leigh Curtis (Freakier Friday)
Taylor has a showy role that guides and steals the fist quarter of the movie, but Madigan is over the top in the showstopping role of her career—the entire movie takes a left turn when Madigan arrives. But Infiniti was sadly overlooked and was one of the best things in One Battle, and in significantly more of the movie and more of the plot. And yes, I know she’s making a big second act comeback, but Curtis elevated a fun Disney sequel with her razor sharp comic timing, and sometimes Oscar needs to look a little out of the box.
DIRECTOR:
Should Win: Ryan Coogler
Will Win: Paul Thomas Anderson
Spoiler: Chloe Zhao
Got Robbed: Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein)
Coogler’s taut direction in Sinners may get overlooked for Andersons, who blew a lot of shit up. Zhao turns in a solid actor’s movie with Hamnet. And delToro’s omission for a completely original and beautifully stylized take on the classic horror tale is unforgivable.
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Should: Hamnet
Will: One Battle After Another
It’s Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love again. This time, I think the blockbuster wins.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Should Win: Sinners
Will Win: Sinners
If the rest of the evening goes to hell, like that one fateful night in the film, for the horror film, this one seems to be a lock.
EDITING
Should Win: One Battle After Another
Will Win: One Battle After Another
Got Robbed: Frankenstein
While I can make a case that for an industry that can’t seem to make a film with less than a 2 hour 45 minute running time, how is this even a category anymore? But with the long, long, long movies in contention, One Battle is the most obvious editing, with Frankenstein a close second.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Should Win: One Battle After Another
Will Win: One Battle After Another
Spoiler: Frankenstein
One Battle seems to be all they want in this category, unless they go for the more stylized vision of DelToro’s film
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Should Win: Frankenstein
Will Win: Frankenstein
Spoiler: One Battle After Another
Del Torro movies are always artistic triumphs and here is where the efforts will be rewarded. Unless One Battle becomes a sweep train.
SOUND DESIGN
Should Win: F1
Will Win: F1
Spoiler: One Battle After Another
Much like previous winner Ford vs Ferari, it’s a movie set against car racing, the loudest background sound possible, and balanced it. Like the former it should be a lock, but there were battle sequences, as expected, in Anderson’s film that may upset if there’s a sweep. It would be wrong, but is possible by Hollywood standards.
COSTUME DESIGN
Should Win: Frankenstein
Will Win: Frankenstein
Got Robbed (sort of): Wicked: For Good
Del Toro’s vision should own the artistic categories. And as For the perceived snub of Wicked, as I stated in my review of the movie, they shot themselves in the foot by the greedy decision to make it two movies over two years. The Academy gave Paul Tazewell a much deserved win last year. This movie is really just a continuation of the same sets and the same costume plot, so, while spectacular, I understand the decision and don’t consider it a snub
HAIR & MAKEUP DESIGN
Should Win: Frankenstein
Will Win: Frankenstein
Spoiler: Sinners
Got Robbed: Weapons
The made Jacob Elordi monstrously ugly. Next.
But those Michael B. Jordan vampires were pretty hideous too……and that Amy Madigan look alone should have at least warrented a nomination.
VISUAL EFFECTS
Should Win: Sinners
Will Win: Avatar: Fire & Ash
The horror sequences of Sinners were fantastic, but Avatar is basically a CGI movie plugging Disney World’s Pandora. Even if the entire franchise is lame
DOCUMENTARY
Should Win: The Perfect Neighbor
Will Win: The Perfect Neighbor
Got Robbed: Chaos: The Manson Murders
This was the only nominee I’ve had a chance to see, so I don’t have much more to go on. But, if the Academy had done its job and checked out this superlative well-documented expose on how, back in the mid-60s, when a younger Charlie Manson was hanging around Haight-Ashbury with the seed girls of his future family in San Francisco, they were down the street of a clinic where they were regulars to get their free-love STDs treated. Turns out the doctor who ran the clinic was a CIA op heavily involved with the shady MKUltra program, which is well-know to have experimented in mind control, particularly with LSD use (as well as be the basis of numerous period government cover-ups, a la The Manchurian Candidate). The hypothesis, with a string of not so coincidental facts to back it, is that our effing government was using the Manson Family nucleus to further their research and may have gotten more than they bargained for in return. More lies from our effing, effing government.
INTERNATIONAL FILM
Should Win: Sentimental Value (Norway)
Will Win: Sentimental Value
Spoiler: The Secret Agent (Brazil)
Sentimental Value had received mainstream consideration for tip awards, but Secret Agent seems to be a possible sleeper.
ANIMATED FEATURE
Should Win: KPOP Demon Hunters
Will Win: KPOP Demon Hunters
The unexpected runaway sleeper hit of the year (and the first animated movie to get radio play of the movie tracks since Idina Menzel’s version replaced Demi Lovato’s) is the movie that Disney wishes they’ve been making for the last decade. Disney, who once dominated to locked the field down has been turning out repetitive, uninspired versions of old standards instead of visionary new material. In addition to fellow nominee Zootopia 2, Disney has also given or will give us an unnecessary Toy Story 5, Avatar 3, and a baffling Tron 3, a franchise that has never tracked the way Disney wants it to (translation: Stop trying to make Tron happen). How Disney totally missed the KPOP trend is as in explicable as their dreadful redo on Splash Mountain. (The Princess & the Frog is a beautiful movie, just a crappy vision for a ride.) Disney rant over.
SCORE
Should Win: Sinners
Will Win: Sinners
Got Robbed: KPOP Demon Hunters
Music is such an integral part of the movie that any other choice just seems wrong. And the best musical of the year got no recognition. So much for looking outside the standard boxes….
SONG
Should Win: “Golden” (KPOP Demon Hunters)
Will Win: “Golden” (KPOP Demon Hunters)
I haven’t been this sure about a song since Idina Menzel Let It Go in 2013. The song is still dominating airplay, as Disney used to, and who isn’t singing it? It’s pop (make that KPOP) culture at this point, hand it the well-deserved award.