2024 Oscar Predictions – Killers of the Flower Moon Landing

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon hits movie theaters and by all accounts, the excitement level is high. Younger movie fans are elated at the chance of seeing their first Martin Scorsese movie in a theater. Imagine the thrill of that. The reviews have been some of the best of his career, and its Rotten Tomatoes score is around 96% at the moment.

From Manohla Dargis:

Scorsese himself has filmed an intro to screen before the movie, which I have not seen, and due to studios failure to resolve the SAG/AFTRA strike, he will have to serve as the sole voice in publicizing his epic. Imagine having Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro in a Scorsese movie and the strike keeps them off the publicity train. To say Apple faces a gnarly situation is an understatement.

Still, the film should generate plenty of interest on its pedigree alone, as it features big stars and is based on a true story of a very popular book. Scorsese is out and about, offering all sorts of pearls of wisdom:

Here is quite a nice review by Jake Bishop:

And here is our very own Clarence Moye and Joey Moser discussing it in their new series Oh, So You Liked That:

The question is where this movie will land in regard to the Best Picture race. This question led me into a broader look at the bigger picture — where the Oscars are now in terms of their history and the history of the film industry in general. There is no question that there are two distinct kinds of movies in the race this year. There are films where identity is the central theme — race, gender, etc. — and films that tell universal stories that aren’t specific to the point of view of a marginalized person.

I guess you could divide them more simply by saying “woke” vs. “non-woke.” I’m not sure I agree entirely with that. I define “woke” as films that push a doctrine on viewers, not so much as movies that are told from a specific point of view. “Woke” movies feel free to change history to suit the ideology of the mindset of the film industry. Movies that aren’t “woke” attempt to see things outside that world view of evaluating people based on their marginalized status.

Take, for instance, Alexander Payne’s sublime film The Holdovers. Some might be tempted to see that as a “woke” movie. They see the casting of Da’Vine Joy Randolph alongside Paul Giamatti and they probably think, oh that’s a film about racism. But it isn’t, strangely enough. Hers is the rare Black character afforded the full spectrum of the human experience. She’s flawed even. I know, what a shock. That’s why she is among the most memorable of all of the characters — we know her because she is a fully fleshed out individual.

By contrast, many of the Barbies in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie are put in their own boxes as types. Plus-sized Barbie, trans Barbie, disabled Barbie. And because of that, there can’t ever be more to them than that one thing. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach play with this idea, I think, in a clever way by showing how Mattel wants to put Original Barbie in a box too. That’s the great thing about Barbie if you watch it enough times. You start to see the hidden messages that might not be apparent on first viewing.

Both Barbie and Poor Things are about a similar thing — female empowerment. After first it seems as though the films are both focused on sexuality as the path to freedom, since Barbie ends with a visit to the gynecologist. But if you watch Barbie closely you’ll see that what she wants is motherhood, the experience of being human with all that it entails — relationships, babies, death. To do that, she has to escape the world of a culture that puts everyone in a box based on their “identity.”

Poor Things, meanwhile, is more of a traditional story of empowerment, where Barbie isn’t exactly that. Here we have someone who realizes by the end that she doesn’t need men for anything. I think that Barbie might have the exact opposite message. But it’s clear that both films are rooted in “identity” as their main driver of plot and story.

Being rooted in identity doesn’t make the movie bad. It just means that the focus is on which category a person falls into and where they fit in the power hierarchy. American Fiction, which I haven’t seen, plays with this idea too by examining the expectation or need of some in the white community to see Black individuals as downtrodden or living in poverty, but may have a hard time seeing them as equal members of society.

Since I haven’t seen it, commenting on that idea is somewhat risky, but I will say that things have changed in the years since the novel Erasure was written because Hollywood has upended itself to capitulate to DEI mandates, which makes it even harder to escape the idea that Black people can’t make it on their own but will always need rules and power structures to give them a leg up in a “white supremacist” country riddled with “systemic racism.”

This idea cycled through after a similar thing happened in the 1970s with the rise of the Black Power movement. At some point, Hollywood began to be accused of “tokenism” in their casting. The end result of that would be that by the 1980s, most mainstream movies reverted to primarily white casting policies, which also drove profits at the box office. That isn’t necessarily because of “racism,” although that is the default thinking now, but rather because people like to see themselves and their “culture” portrayed on screen. Since white people are the majority, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure that one out.

On the other hand, the New Left, the “antiracism” Left, the “land acknowledgement Left” prefers to see movies that shame them and their history, to “atone” for their sins of whiteness. That’s what’s driving so much of the “woke” stuff we’re seeing throughout all of American culture (which is ruled by the Left).

It is important to understand this as we head into the thick of Oscar predicting. Not all movies will be measured the same way by awards voters. Non-woke, or non-“identity-driven” movies will be given lesser priority than those that have their finger on the right button. Make us feel absolved of our sins and we will reward you for it.

For the purposes of this piece, let’s refer to Scott Feinberg’s recent “Frontrunners” list, keeping in mind that he doesn’t predict films he has not yet seen. These are the movies he believes are the strongest ten right now, and I assume, in this order.

I have “bolded” the films that are rooted in identity, more or less. The films that aren’t bolded are films that, I think, tell universal stories that aren’t focused on identity as a driver.

Frontrunners
American Fiction (Amazon/MGM)
Oppenheimer (Universal)
Barbie (Warner Bros.)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Paramount)
Poor Things (Searchlight)
Past Lives (A24)
Maestro (Netflix)
The Holdovers (Focus)
The Zone of Interest (A24)
All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)

And other potential titles:

Anatomy of a Fall
The Boys in the Boat
The Color Purple
Napoleon

You might say, “Past Lives isn’t about identity, it’s just a coming of age story.” Ah, but it isn’t just any coming of age story. It’s the story of a Korean-American. It’s a film written and directed by an Asian woman about the tug of war between cultures. Does it deal overtly with “racism,” I don’t think it does but it’s still as acclaimed as it is because of identity.

Maestro — a closeted composer and his long-suffering wife.
All of us Strangers — a gay man coming out to the ghostly manifestation of his dead parents.
The Color Purple — requires no explanation.

And Killers of the Flower Moon is the crème de la crème of tragic culture-clash when it comes to what our country did to the Native Americans when we colonized the “New World” and expanded out West. Probably no subject lives more deeply inside the minds and hearts of those who dominate the industry than this one. It is right up there with “systemic racism” against the Black Community.

So now we see debates brewing up hither and thither that the movie focuses — still — too much on white men and not enough on the main character of Mollie, played by Lily Gladstone. This is ironic, since Scorsese and company went to great lengths to be as respectful as possible to the Osage experience, reworking the entire concept to show not just bad men doing bad things but showing the story from the tribe’s perspective, fleshing out the Osage people as individuals and not as unspoken symbols in the background.

It’s funny, though, isn’t it? Mississippi Burning was accused of being a film that showed the Black community then as oppressed, silent background characters. But it was also a film that worked really well for most audiences. Back then, there wasn’t the same ideology about categories and hierarchy — that would come later. Now it’s known as both a great movie and a “white savior movie.” It would be a shame if Killers of the Flower Moon was hit with that label since they went out of their way to make it not like that.

And speaking of which, such a brilliant moment in Barbie when the kid says “yay White Savior Barbie” and Barbie denies it. Wonderful meta commentary on the “woke.”

At any rate, films like Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, The Boys in the Boat, and Napoleon are universal stories and by that I mean the story takes precedence over identity. For instance, Oppenheimer could have been told a different way. It could have been told as a “bad white men doing bad white men things” movie — which, thank the Lord Jesus Christ himself, they did not do. But it could have gone that way and been told entirely from the perspective of the Japanese, throwing Oppenheimer under the bus, and not be faithful to the biography or honest about the story.

In that alternative movie, we would see the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making it much more like Killers of the Flower Moon. And one can see, if they wanted to, both of these films as “white man’s burden” movies.

The Boys in the Boat and Napoleon are movies about things that happened throughout history, good stories to be told and remembered that weren’t really about any marginalized group being subjugated. We can add The Zone of Interest and perhaps Anatomy of a Fall (which I have not seen) as movies that live more or less outside the “identity” realm, although Anatomy it must be said is being praised because it was directed by a woman and also because some feminism does come into play in the story. You can take it or leave it.

This piece is way too long already, so let’s get down to the business of predicting.

We still don’t have Best Picture and Best Director predictions for October from Erik Anderson, which must mean nothing has changed. He has updated many of the other categories, including Best Actress , Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon at the top, and Best Actor (Bradley Cooper in Maestro at the top).

Feinberg’s soft prediction (for now) that American Fiction is the film to beat after winning in Toronto might be right, who knows, but he’s breaking with the consensus which usually means he is perhaps attempting to pull the race in a slightly different direction.

I have not yet seen American Fiction — but I can’ t help but see Barbie as the one to beat, which Feinberg has winning in Best Director. I personally don’t see a split if Gerwig is in play. If she’s going to win Best Director, why would she not also win Best Picture? This would not be a Jane Campion type of situation, considering Barbie’s blowout at the box office. Best Picture makes more sense, even on a preferential ballot.

I think it could go the other way with Christopher Nolan winning Director and Barbie winning Picture, having your Barbenheimer cake and eating it too.

Here are my tentative fluid  predictions:

Best Picture
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Holdovers
American Fiction
Zone of Interest
Maestro
Past Lives
The Boys in the Boat
The Color Purple
Alt: The Killer, Anatomy of a Fall, Rustin, Napoleon

Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Alexander Payne, The Holdovers
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Alt: Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall; Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest; George Clooney, The Boys in the Boat; Celine Song, Past Lives; Cord Jefferson, American Fiction

Best Actor
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Alt: Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers; Michael Fassbender, The Killer; Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon

Best Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Margot Robbie, Barbie
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall

Alt: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Origin; Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple; Natalie Portman, May December; Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla

Supporting Actor
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Alt: Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers; Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Matt Damon, Oppenheimer

Supporting Actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Jodie Foster, Nyad
America Ferrera, Barbie
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Juliet Binoche, The Taste of Things (my bias)

Alt: Julianne Moore, May December; Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Sandra Huller, The Zone of Interest; Taraji P. Henson, The Color Purple; Vanessa Kirby, Napoleon

Adapted Screenplay
American Fiction
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
All of Us Strangers
Alt: The Killer, The Color Purple, The Zone of Interest

Original Screenplay
Barbie
The Holdovers
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro

Editing
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Poor Things
The Holdovers

Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Maestro

Costumes
Poor Things
Barbie
Napoleon
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon

Production Design
Poor Things
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon

Animated Feature
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Boy and the Heron
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Elemental
Wish

Score
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Asteroid City
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse