Predictions Friday: We’re Still Missing a Big Piece

One of the things I have focused on for the past decade is the Academy’s date change. The Oscars pushed their ceremony up by one month, from late March to late February. This, I have always thought, put the race in the hands of the critics and the tastemakers rather than actual ticket buyers and industry voters. But I haven’t focused as much on the rise of Oscar coverage during that same time, and how that has managed to game the entire system so much that the fix is kind of in before what was used to be considered “Oscar season,” which was late December.

Many, probably most, believe this is for the good of the Academy. The idea being, and I know I felt this way when I first started back in 1999, is that “they” don’t pick good movies and “they” need to be guided towards the “right” choices. Others believe it has ruined film and the Oscars by making all of film about the Oscar race. Either way, it’s here to stay.

Last year and this year have upended the well-oiled machine that had become the Oscar race, for various reasons. COVID is one — that pushed the Oscars to late April last year, and will push them to late March this year. That puts them back in calendar zone of the old days when December really was the best bet for an Oscar movie. Last year’s trajectory didn’t really adjust to this at all. Nomadland was the frontrunner and that never changed. But the last-minute and unpredictable wins of Anthony Hopkins for The Father and Frances McDormand for Nomadland might have been the result of the frontrunners all dressed up with nowhere to go for four months. At some point, people started to notice. The game itself was starting to become more visible to the naked eye.

Another reason was that for the last four years or so there has been a massive fracture in this country as the Left pulling towards extremism and “cancel culture” (no Oscar host, for example, Weinstein, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, Armie Hammer, etc) has created a climate of fear. This isn’t something anyone would really admit out loud because they’d be dragged on Twitter up one side and down the other. But everyone knows its true. There is a modern day blacklist of sorts that demands compliance or else. Meanwhile, the Right began to see the Oscars, and all entertainment and media, as the opposition — a community of elites who spout “woke” doctrine and condescend to average ticket buyers. As such, they refuse to even watch the movies at all, let alone the Oscars.

And finally, the uprisings and protests from 2020 utterly and completely transformed Hollywood and the Oscars, implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates — this impacted the BAFTAs most of all as their entire membership was denied its nominating privileges while a small committee was brought in to “select” the “right” nominees to reflect their commitment to change. The Golden Globes were canceled by NBC and the HFPA too had to overhaul their entire organization, hire black members, and will still release their nominees and winners. And the Oscars have an inclusion mandate to affect films starting in 2024, but it’s clear they already have affected movies in the race now, just to make sure the bases are covered.

Ideally, the Oscars will not exist in vacuum, and neither will Hollywood. While it’s true that the Oscar ceremony has looked more like the Democratic National Convention than a show that honors achievements in film, they know they have a problem. They just don’t know how to get out of it. It can’t be named so it can’t be solved. What they care about above all, from top to bottom, is their image. They want and need to be seen as “good,” so they will not risk that status, even if it means bad ratings or low box office.

But this year, the date change will mean that the public might be involved once again in what films hold up, what films end up in the race by year’s end. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But we do know that there are films in the race right now that are universal crowd-pleasers, if only that message could get across.

Respect is a film written, directed, and starring black women. Yet some might find it surprisingly conciliatory in its treatment of race. That’s because Aretha Franklin opted to work with white musicians to record her early albums. Rather than dodge this issue, the film meets it headlong, with a confrontation between Franklin’s husband and a white band manager. I’m not sure any white filmmaker or writer could get away with that scene and I remember thinking it would not be exactly Film Twitter-friendly, but I thought it was honest and real in not trying to rewrite Franklin’s legacy and intent.

In King Richard, it’s true that race and racism aren’t exactly dodged. But the attitude of the film, and of its titular star, is to succeed anyway. In one scene, Richard Williams sits his two tennis wunderkind daughters down to watch Cinderella. I thought for sure it was going to be a message about white privilege and how Disney movies only made films with princesses … but that isn’t what the message was. They looked beyond that to the story itself. I won’t spoil that scene because it’s a good one, but it was one of the many scenes in that movie that, I thought, made it universally appealing — and not a movie audiences will feel like they’re being lectured to about politics.

The Last Duel is most definitely a “#MeToo” movie, but I don’t think that is a left/right thing, considering the sexual harassment and rape cases hit people on the Right too. It is grand Hollywood entertainment that anyone can sit down and watch (except those triggered by the sexual violence in it). It’s just too bad people don’t realize that. They probably think it will be a long, agonizing lecture. But it really isn’t.

CODA is another crowd-pleaser anyone can watch, but audiences might be shying away from thinking it’s going to be some kind of issue movie. It isn’t, really, beyond a deaf family trying to help their hearing daughter get to music school. It’s an appealing, involving story that makes you really care about the family involved.

And finally, our current frontrunner Belfast might look like a movie that would alienate large audiences being that it’s filmed in black-and-white, but it is most definitely not one. It’s a film you can pretty much sit anyone down in front of and they will get it if not love it. It’s a warm-hearted crowd-pleaser that tells a story about a place torn apart by tribal warfare, but remains beloved by those who left and those who stayed.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the rest of the year holds. Will the late-breaking films like West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up, House of Gucci, and Licorice Pizza make a big splash in the race? Can Eternals get in? Will general audiences like Dune?

Bloggers and tastemakers are holding places for the unseen films. Traditionally, maybe one or two at the most of these “late breakers” would get into the Best Picture race. That’s simply because it is too hard to build a consensus if voters are choosing between Christmas as New Year’s. But this year, there is an extra month of lag time (all of January) to build a consensus for any of them.

My instinct this whole year has been that I don’t think the Academy is going to become more narrow. Rather, I think they are going to expand. I’m not sure the critics, the bloggers, and the tastemakers will allow for that. There is more coverage now than there ever has been for an industry that is struggling to stay afloat. They tend to like the more critically acclaimed movies that play in art houses.

The question will be can the Academy defy their consensus, and do they even want to? Who knows.

The bottom line is that we can’t know what the year actually holds until we finish the year. The one thing we do know is that the Golden Globes aren’t giving up their spot, and that means they could boost some of the musicals where traditionally they would be out. That is why, for instance, I think In the Heights will have a second life come Globes time, if it does indeed make the cut.

Here are this week’s predictions.

Best Picture
Belfast
King Richard
The Power of the Dog
The Last Duel
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story
Licorice Pizza
House of Gucci
In the Heights
Alts: Cyrano, CODA

Best Director
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Reinado Marcus Green, King Richard
Denis Villenueve, Dune
Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley
Alt: Ridley Scott, The Last Duel or House of Gucci

Best Actress
Kristen Stewart, Spencer
Jennifer Hudson, Respect
Jodie Comer, The Last Duel
Jessica Chastain, Eyes of Tammy Faye
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Alts: Olivia Colman, The Last Daughter; Lady Gaga, House of Gucci

Best Actor
Will Smith, King Richard
Peter Dinklage, Cyrano
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Denzel Washington, Tragedy of Macbeth
Matt Damon, The Last Duel
Alts: Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos; Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Supporting Actress
Caitriona Balfe, Belfast
Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Ann Dowd, Mass
Marlee Matlin, CODA
Kirsten Dunst, Power of the Dog
Alts: Judi Dench, Belfast; Rooney Mara, Nightmare Alley

Supporting Actor
Ciaran Hinds, Belfast
Ben Affleck, The Last Duel
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog
Richard Jenkins, The Humans
Jared Leto, House of Gucci
Alt: Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Adapted Screenplay
The Power of the Dog
Nightmare Alley
Dune
The Last Duel
CODA
Alt: The Lost Daughter

Original Screenplay
Belfast
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Spencer
Mass
Alts: Parallel Mothers, Being the Ricardos

Cinematography
Dune
The Tragedy of Macbeth
The Power of the Dog
Belfast
Nightmare Alley
Alts: West Side Story, The Last Duel

Costumes
Cruella
House of Gucci
Spencer
Nightmare Alley
Dune

Editing 
Belfast
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Dune
The Last Duel

Production Design
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Last Duel
Cruella
House of Gucci

Sound
West Side Story
Dune
No Time to Die
The Last Duel
Eternals

Visual Effects
Dune
Eternals
Shang-Chi
Nightmare Alley
The Green Knight

Animated Feature
Luca
Flee
Encanto
Mitchells vs. The Machines
Spirit Untamed