The Academy Awards are right around the corner, which means the Academy can finally rest for a moment and take a breather from its sprint towards irrelevance and pandering. This year’s event – which will sport an unwieldy three hosts, only one of whom is funny – promises to be an absolute disaster, with a mind-boggling eight (eight!) categories to be presented off-air, making way for a performance of a song that’s not even nominated and the results of a Twitter poll dominated by bitter Marvel lunatics. But the show must go on – this show, I mean, the one where I (somewhat baselessly) speculate about Sunday’s big winners. Taking all bets!
Best Picture
The Nominees: Don’t Look Up; King Richard; Belfast; CODA; Nightmare Alley; West Side Story; Drive My Car; Dune; Licorice Pizza; The Power of the Dog
For a while Belfast was the front-runner here, which is insane to think about once you’ve seen the movie. It’s aggressively fine. Only two of these movies are flat-out bad, Don’t Look Up and King Richard. CODA‘s recent win at the PGAs make it an unlikely contender, but the worst thing that could happen to that movie would be it winning best picture. It’s a fine movie, but winning would relegate it to the status of Crash or Green Book, which it doesn’t deserve. West Side Story, despite being one of the best movies made by arguably the best director to ever live, has gone strangely unrewarded this year. The problem with ten nominees is that only two or three movies have an actual shot. This year it’s only two.
Will Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Drive My Car
Best Director
The Nominees: Steven Spielberg, West Side Story; Kenneth Branagh, Belfast; Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car; Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Branagh’s inclusion here is absolutely insane, especially compared to what Denis Villenueve did with Dune, or Joel Coen with The Tragedy of Macbeth. Spielberg’s also-ran status this year continues to baffle me. Hamaguchi could make for a surprise win, a la Bong Joon-Ho winning for Parasite, and that possibility is as rad as it is unlikely. Realistically this is a one-person race: no one is beating Campion this year.
Will Win: Jane Campion
Should Win: Jane Campion
Best Actor
The Nominees: Will Smith, King Richard; Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog; Andrew Garfield, tick, tick…BOOM!; Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos; Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth
For starters, it’s insane that Nicolas Cage wasn’t nominated for Pig. I can’t get over that, especially because his performance was likely excluded to make way for Bardem’s truly baffling take on Desi Arnaz. Common wisdom has this as a two-person race between Smith and Cumberbatch, and of those two I would prefer Cumberbatch, because at least his movie knows how deeply unlikable his character is (King Richard is woefully unaware that its title character is a relentlessly manipulative bully). They could split the vote, leaving room for Garfield to take the trophy. That wouldn’t be a terrible thing; tick, tick…BOOM! is as obnoxious as its title, but the only reason it works is because of Garfield’s live-wire performance. The most deserving winner would be Washington, whose take on Macbeth shows what a generational talent he is.
Will Win: Will Smith
Should Win: Denzel Washington
Best Actress
The Nominees: Kristen Stewart, Spencer; Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos; Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter; Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye; Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
This year’s only truly insane category. The craziest nominations here are Kidman and Chastain, one nominated for a movie no one liked and another for a movie that no one saw. In no world should Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim and West Side Story‘s Rachel Zegler not be listed here. But these are the nominees we got, not the ones we want. 3/5 of these women are playing real people, which is catnip to the Academy. This is a category that has never shied away from rewarding or nominating ingenues (Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Quvenzhane Wallis, Catalina Sandino Moreno, etc), which could make this a huge night for Kristen Stewart. I think it comes down to her and Colman, who is on her third nomination in four years. You do the math.
Will Win: Olivia Colman
Should Win: Kristen Stewart
Best Supporting Actor
The Nominees: J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos; Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog; Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog; Troy Kotsur, CODA; Ciaran Hinds, Belfast
Simmons is nominated because everyone loves J.K. Simmons (I’d swap him out for West Side Story‘s Mike Faist, who stole the entire show). Plemons is terrific in Dog, but this nomination seems like a vote of confidence in his future work. Hinds does so much with so little in Belfast. He’s that movie’s beating heart, and it’s always nice to see a lifelong character actor get recognition on this level. Smit-McPhee had this in the bag at one point, but Kotsur’s recent surge of wins doesn’t look like it’s going to stop on Sunday. Which is fine: he’s terrific in CODA, and his would be a history-making win.
Will Win: Troy Kotsur
Should Win: Troy Kotsur
Best Supporting Actress
The Nominees: Ariana DeBose, West Side Story; Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter; Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog; Judi Dench, Belfast; Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Ellis has a completely thankless role in King Richard; she spends so much time telling Richard that he’s right and she’s wrong that you could swear the movie was written by Aaron Sorkin. The rest of the nominees here are all pretty spectacular – even Dench, whose nomination came as a surprise but makes perfect sense after watching Belfast, in which the best scenes involve her and Ciaran Hinds. Any of these would make a fine, deserving winner, but the Oscar is going to DeBose. She gets one of her movie’s meatiest roles and runs away with it, and she gets to be the centerpiece of the best piece of filmmaking in 2021, WSS‘s “America” number.
Will Win: Ariana DeBose
Should Win: Ariana DeBose
And now some predictions for the rest of the categories:
Best Original Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Best Adapted Screenplay: Sian Heder, CODA
Best Original Song: “Be Alive,” from King Richard
Best Animated Feature: Encanto
Best International Feature Film: Drive My Car
Best Documentary Feature: Flee
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Best Visual Effects: Dune
Best Original Score: Jonny Greenwood, The Power of the Dog
Best Cinematography: Dune
Best Costume Design: Nightmare Alley
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