Here’s my annual disclaimer: I am sometimes not very accurate in my Oscar predictions. Nonetheless, here are my choices for a few of the larger awards to be handed out during tomorrow’s show.

Actor in a Leading Role: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

I think Murphy, whose wins include a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a SAG, takes this one, although Paul Giamatti, the Golden Globe winner for comedy/musical, is also a leading candidate.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer

Sorry, Ken, but I think an Oppenheimer actor wins this one as well. Downey Jr.’s performance has earned quite a few accolades already–plus, everyone appreciates a good redemption story.

Actress in a Leading Role: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

This category might be even tighter than Actor in a Leading Role this year. It seems that the leading candidates are Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone (who already has an Oscar for 2016’s La La Land). Gladstone is the first Native American woman to be nominated in this category (and thus, to win the award if she does so)–and I think the Academy will give it to her.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

I really enjoyed Randolph’s performance in Only Murders in the Building, which has little relevance to this Oscar race. But, there has been a slew of awards for Randolph’s work in The Holdovers at earlier awards shows this year, and my guess is that she’ll add one more to her collection tomorrow.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

This was a tough choice since all five nominees in this category are also vying for Best Picture, which hypothetically makes them all really well written films. I’m going with Oppenheimer because of its complexity of structure and ideas (especially scientifically). I appreciate how the film challenges its viewers to know their history–and to do their research if they don’t–and I think this feeling is due in large part to the film’s writing.

Writing (Original Screenplay): Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)

As mentioned in an earlier post, Anatomy of a Fall should win this award for a couple reasons. First, it has been winning other such writing awards, so the pattern of victory is likely to continue tomorrow. Second, the way this film weaves together several different languages while commenting on the power of language and the influence of each word is pretty clever.

Directing: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan has given us such memorable (and at least in some cases, fantastic) films like 2008’s The Dark Knight, 2010’s Inception, and 2017’s Dunkirk; but he has never won an Oscar. I think it’s likely that whoever wins for directing tomorrow night will also win for Best Picture. Since Oppenheimer seems to have an edge on the BP race, I think Nolan will win his first Oscar this year.

Best Picture: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer comes into this year’s Academy Awards with 13 nominations. Only three films (1950’s All About Eve, 1997’s Titanic, and 2016’s La La Land) have received more (14 nominations each). Potentially, then, Oppenheimer could become the winningest film in Oscar history tomorrow, which I personally feel would be a shame since it is nowhere near the quality of 1959’s Ben-Hur, 1997’s Titanic, or 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the trio that hold the record for most Oscar wins (11 each).

That being said, Oppenheimer does have some strong qualities (acting, writing, directing, score, cinematography) that will make it difficult for other films to beat for the main award of the evening. I think Barbie may be too bubbly and Poor Things too odd/grotesque; Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, and The Zone of Interest too “foreign”; American Fiction and Killers of the Flower Moon too overtly focused on race. Then again, Hollywood is all about the drama; and La La Land, despite its 14 nominations, might most be remembered in years to come for not winning Best Picture once the correct envelope was opened. Could this end up being Oppenheimer‘s fate as well?

Enjoy the show, Everyone!

What if…?

Undoubtedly, we all have moments in our lives that we look back on and wonder “What if I had done this and not this, chosen this way and not that one, etc.?” As it traces the relationship of Nora and Hae Sung from their adolescence in South Korea to 12 years later to 12 additional years later, Past Lives is basically a giant “what if.” The main characters Nora and Hae Sung obviously have a special relationship; but when Nora’s family immigrates to the U.S. (and when she adopts her American name Nora), their lives take different paths–only to reunite virtually when the two are 24 and then in person when they are 36.

In a way, this story is about immigration and how it changes the lives of all involved. But it’s also about connections, how sometimes we just feel something for someone and can’t really put a finger on the nature of the connection or why it even exists. For Nora in particular (spoiler alert!), her relationship with Hae Sung ties her to her country of origin, to her past, to what she left behind. She tells her husband–who is not Korean–that when she’s with Hae Sung she both feels more Korean and less Korean. In other words, this relationship leads Nora to ponder her identity.

Why This Film Might Win Best Picture:

Past Lives is a simple story about normal people. Because this film is about some pretty common issues such as personal relationships/connections, identity, and questioning one’s choices in life, many people–including Academy voters–likely find they can relate to the storyline. Sometimes a quiet story is a welcome one.

Why This Film Might Not Win Best Picture:

Well, to be honest, this movie is a bit slow; and while I appreciated the quiet of the story as a break from something louder and flashier like Oppenheimer, it didn’t seem like much happened in Past Lives. The latest Oscar polls seem to indicate this film is currently in last place in the BP hunt. But one never knows. Perhaps enough Academy voters have personally wrestled with the “what if” question enough to throw a few votes toward Past Lives.

Ah, ambiguity. It sometimes works–as it does in 2010’s Inception–but it was a little unsatisfying for me in Anatomy of a Fall, a story in which a woman named Sandra is accused of killing her husband. Sandra is also the mother of an adolescent son (Daniel) who is visually impaired–and potentially holding onto some information regarding his father’s death. Although Daniel’s disability is important to the film’s plot, it is unfortunately not given the priority that would heighten the conflict’s tension. I wanted the Hitchcockian feel of a Rear Window, but I didn’t get that. Furthermore, since this movie is a whodunit of sorts, I was mostly interested in finding out who done it. Spoiler alert: I didn’t find out.

Why This Film Might Win Best Picture:

First, I think Anatomy of a Fall will win an Oscar for Writing (Original Screenplay). Winning the Writing Oscar doesn’t guarantee a film will also win BP–in fact, it sometimes seems as if the Writing awards are almost consolation prizes for movies that don’t win BP. However, we rarely see a film only win BP, so competing for/winning other (and bigger) awards definitely helps propel a film into the forefront of Academy voters’ minds.

On the one hand, Anatomy of a Fall is interesting from a writing standpoint because, technically, this is a French film that is only partly in French and also partly in German and English. It uses these various languages very smoothly and believably, and it has some thought-provoking things to say about language itself and its power to convey ideas, connect/disconnect people, etc.

On the other hand, this film’s script–pieced together in its small multitude of languages– comments on the universal topic of women and how they are treated differently than men (i.e., stereotyped) and held to different standards. In this respect, it shares some similar points with another of this year’s BP nominees, Barbie, although the two films approach this hot-button Hollywood topic quite differently.

Why This Film Might Not Win Best Picture

In a whodunnit, people want closure. Maybe we don’t fully understand all the details and motivations involved in a crime, but we want to know who committed the crime and why. Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t give us either of those pieces of info. And while I appreciate the use of various languages in the film, the extra effort I put in to read the subtitles while paying attention to the film’s visual elements didn’t seem to be rewarded because of the lack of clarity at the end of the movie.

One last item to consider is that Anatomy of a Fall is this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Palme d’Or winners don’t usually win BP. However, 2019’s Parasite, the last Palme d’Or winner to also win BP, reminds us (Americans) that a film can tell a great story in a non-English language and still be great. The problem for Anatomy of a Fall is that it fails to replicate Parasite‘s thoughtful and satisfying ambiguity.

My first takeaway from Oppenheimer is that history is usually more complicated than we realize. Secondly, history is personal. How many private conflicts are at the core of major historical events? We’ll probably never be able to completely answer that question, but Oppenheimer gives us a glimpse into one incident in history, the building of the atomic bomb, and one personal conflict, J. Robert Oppenheimer vs. Lewis Strauss.

To be honest, as someone unfamiliar with the personal stories of Oppenheimer and Strauss, I found their conflict quite confusing until the end of the movie. But after 2.5ish hours of science-y jargon I didn’t understand, philandering/sexuality I didn’t need to see, and some actually interesting historical elements such as the construction of Los Alamos and the testing of the atomic bomb, I did manage to grasp that at some point Oppenheimer had embarrassed Strauss so Strauss wanted some kind of vengeance. And since McCarthyism and the Red Scare followed closely on the heels of the end of the World War II, the environment was pretty conducive for all sorts of people to find themselves under suspicion for all sorts of things they may or may not have actually done. I understood that much at least.

Why This Film Might Win Best Picture:

With its historical focus, Oppenheimer is more traditionally appealing to Academy voters than a film such as Barbie. It is detailed, complex, and cinematographically interesting–and it contains some rather stellar performances from Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. Furthermore, I think it is good to wrestle with the reality and morality of events of the past, events that we may previously (and consistently) have been taught to view in a certain light. Again, the complexity of reality is often overlooked, misunderstood, and/or lost to time; and Oppenheimer offers us a chance to re-look, re-think, and re-discover an event most of us do not fully comprehend. I think that people in addition to myself may value another chance to consider the ethics of a nuclear world (and hence, might reward a movie that invites us to do so).

Why This Film Might Not Win Best Picture:

By the time I got to the end of this movie (and boy, was it a long time before I got to the end of this movie), its focus on the Oppenheimer/Strauss conflict started reminding me of Amadeus, 1985’s Best Picture winner, which tells the story of the rivalry between composers Mozart and Salieri. However, where Amadeus establishes its genius rivalry from the beginning, Oppenheimer dawdles a bit with its physicist conflict, distracting us viewers from this rivalry with long sections of Oppenheimer without Strauss. This made an already smart film that much more confusing.

That being said, despite the choppiness of this film (most of the scenes are short and jump around chronologically), it does seem to be the frontrunner at most award shows this year; and it has already collected a decent amount of hardware. I think this weekend’s SAG Awards will give us more clarity about whether Oppenheimer is the film to beat at this year’s Academy Awards or if its past success is just a loud flash before movie oblivion.

After a long absence, hello again! Since my film students are creating their own movie blogs this semester, I decided to come back to Flickschick.com–a place I have definitely missed–and document some of my own film thoughts. Oh yes, and it’s awards season. The Oscars are a mere two-plus weeks away; and while I may not be able to view all this year’s nominees before the big show, I hope to at least get to a few.

First up, Greta Gerwig’s very, very pink film about one of the most famous toys to ever be invented: the Barbie doll. As we are reminded by the film’s opening scene in which we watch little pioneer-looking girls having lame tea parties with their 1950s-esque baby dolls in a God-forsaken wilderness, prior to the advent of Matel’s Barbie, girls could only “mother” their dolls (who eternally remained babies). Barbie allowed girls to dream about what else they could achieve. They could be doctors, scientists, astronauts, and more–all while displaying the highest level of fashion, of course.

Although “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie’s very blonde character) sees herself in this exclusively positive role, she is shocked to find out that in the “real world,” many people–women included–view her as a negative representation of women, an unattainable standard promoted by Matel’s very out-of-touch (and all-male) executives. Barbie starts to wrestle with concepts of death, patriarchy, and even cellulite, while her pal Ken is seduced by the appeal of a male-dominated Barbie Land.

Why This Film Might Win Best Picture:

For all its over-the-top pinkness, Barbie does ask some interesting questions about what it means to be human and whether human life is worth living even though it ends in death. It also makes some rather powerful points about women and the inconsistent standards our society tries to hold them to. Hollywood has been calling for more prominent roles for women for years now, and this film delivers that for sure. Female Academy voters could choose Barbie–if not for their first choice, at least as their second. And as we’ve seen in the past, while voters bicker about the best movie of the year, the second-best movie can very easily steal the show.

Why This Film Might Not Win Best Picture:

Despite America Ferrera’s powerful monologue about women, the nostalgia of the costumes and sets, and the likeability of the characters and actors, Barbie never ultimately answers the question about where the Kens sleep at night. This bothers me (and it might also not sit well with male Academy voters). As a woman, I appreciate the movie’s portrayal of the pressures women feel, but the answer to the problem of oppressed women does not lie in oppressing or ostracizing men.

Furthermore, the film is slow at parts and has not been doing very well at some of the bigger awards shows (Golden Globes, BAFTAs), despite having hauled in an impressive amount of nominations. It looks rather doubtful that Barbie will be able to out-smile her release date mate, Oppenheimer, when it comes to the biggest award of the year.

Although life has kept me from blogging for another year now, there’s just something about the Academy Awards that cries out to me for comment every year, however brief those comments might be. Welcome to Oscar day, everyone!

On a side note of sorts, film–like our current world–is deteriorating. Not to be depressing, but it seems to be getting more difficult every year to find a movie that is well made and which portrays (or advocates, for that matter) what I’ll term morality. We either get heaps of profanity or gratuitous violence or graphic sexual content–regardless of what story the film is attempting to tell. And for me, the inclusion of those unnecessary, oftentimes unrealistic, and offensive elements degrades the film and often totally negates any worthwhile meaning it might have.

As the Academy tries to please everyone, in recent years it has become out of touch with the reality of what people want to watch. In its quest to honor “art,” it taps for recognition films that shock with what they think is creativity, but what is in actuality a coloring outside of the lines of normality and morality. Sometimes the past gets it right. Sometimes change is a bad thing.

So, stepping off my soapbox now, a brief discussion and some possibly erroneous thoughts about this year’s Academy Award nominees and tonight’s winners.

Best Picture Nominees

I do think the Academy did a better job this year of choosing a variety of films, several of which were actually widely viewed and enjoyed by average people in real movie theaters. I myself was able to see a good number of these movies, a couple of which I even found worth watching. Here’s how I would rank the BP nominees:

1. CODA
2. Belfast
3. The Power of the Dog
4. King Richard
5. Nightmare Alley
6. Don’t Look Up
7. Drive My Car

Of the three nominees that I didn’t watch (West Side Story, Dune, Licorice Pizza), I think West Side Story would potentially crack my top three here–even though I’m not super fond of remakes of former Best Picture winners.

A bit of explanation of my rankings. What CODA offers, despite some language/sexual content, is a beautiful story of family. It is authentic, convincing, and beautiful. It is very funny while at the same time heartbreaking and emotionally moving. Yes, I cried just a little bit at the end. Why might it win BP tonight? For all the above reasons. Why might it not win? Because Academy voters might opt for something less white (such as King Richard), more LGTBQ friendly (like The Power of the Dog), or more “out there”/different from the norm (such as Don’t Look Up).

Belfast is also a movie worth watching. Jude Hill, who plays young Buddy, is fantastic (and adorable!); the story is interesting and meaningful as well. However, not being Irish myself, it can be difficult to decipher what the characters are saying at times, and the film seems almost too short to fully build its conflict and satisfactorily resolve it.

The Power of the Dog has some lovely cinematography and strong production design, but its plot is tough to follow in places (as are the mumbling words of some characters). It has a good plot twist at the end; but even there at the film’s most crucial part, it isn’t completely clear (or believable) how we got from A to B, if that makes sense.

West Side Story presents a very old tale (think Shakespeare and even earlier) with which we are all familiar. It might be a beautiful film, but it is also a predictable one. We’ve seen this story and already honored it with BP in 1962. Nightmare Alley is also a remake, albeit of a film with less accolades. The last 30 minutes or so of the Bradley Cooper flick were a bit twisty and interesting; but the earlier parts were very dark, disconnected, and un-beautiful.

I will never get back the hours I spent watching Don’t Look Up and Drive My Car, two of the stupidest films I’ve ever seen. I don’t understand the draw of credible actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence purposely acting like they can’t act, nor can I comprehend how some people can compare Drive My Car to 2020’s BP winner Parasite. Basically, the only thing those two films have in common is the fact that they are non-English-speaking movies.

Who’s Going to Win

So, that brings us to some predictions. Again, disclaimer: I typically get BP wrong as I over-analyze the Academy’s thought processes and second-guess my own. But here are some thoughts anyway.

Actor in a Leading Role: Will Smith (King Richard): Smith has won quite a bit of hardware this awards season. He gives a good performance in King Richard, but a big factor in his nomination and his winning (if he does so) is the big stink he put up a few years ago when he wasn’t nominated when he thought he should have been. The Academy likes to appease its actors.

Actress in a Leading Role: Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye): This is a tougher field than the leading men have, in my opinion. Olivia Colman could win again, as could Nicole Kidman; but I’m going with Chastain, who won the SAG award this year.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Troy Kotsur (CODA): Kotsur would become the first deaf man to ever win an Oscar for acting, and he is very good in this film–hilarious and still able to tug on viewers’ heartstrings.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Ariana DeBose (West Side Story): DeBose has been accumulating a lot of awards this season as well. One critic noted her performance was the biggest positive in Steven Spielberg’s remake. Her win tonight might be the most expected one out of the four acting categories.

Directing: Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog): Campion comes into tonight’s show having already picked up a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her film. Only two women have ever won in this category, including last year’s Chloe Zhao (for Nomadland). Could we see back-to-back wins for women in Directing? I think this is likely, even if The Power of the Dog doesn’t win Best Picture.

Best Picture: CODA: Okay, so maybe I’m leaning a bit too much on personal preference here, but I feel that CODA is the most complete movie in the BP field this year. I could see The Power of the Dog taking this award, but it was very slow at parts and not nearly as compelling and memorable as CODA. The idea that Drive My Car is perhaps a dark horse for BP seems absolutely ludicrous to me–but the unpredictability of the Academy Awards is one reason to love them, I suppose.

Enjoy the show, Everyone!

Well, hello there, Everyone! It’s been a while. Actually, it’s been over a year since anything of substance was posted to the site, and I’ve missed you all–and our explorations of Best Picture-winning films. Just as all of you have undoubtedly experienced in the last year or so, it’s been a royal mess in just about every area of life and society. For me personally, it’s been a rather stressful year with teaching being more complicated and challenging than it’s ever been before–still rewarding, but so demanding on my time that poor FlicksChick got put on the back burner for a sad, long while. So in honor of tonight’s Academy Awards (which, like all the other awards shows of the past year, are sure to be rather bizarre), I’m posting some thoughts and predictions about a few of the main categories–with the hope that, once school wraps up shortly, I’ll be able to devote more time to continuing FlickChick’s quest to examine each Best Picture winner.

The big thing in tonight’s show is going to be social issues. The Academy has been losing its relevance and ability to connect with younger audiences over the past few years, and it desperately wants to portray itself as diverse and forward-thinking. Last year, we got Parasite as BP, a film with an entirely Asian cast and a non-English script (and an awfully good winner, in my opinion). This year, we won’t get an international film as BP, but we probably will see folks from many groups that have historically not been ultra-successful in major Oscar categories (namely, African Americans and women) take home awards in those categories.

For instance, in the acting categories, it is quite possible that all four awards will go to people from racial minorities. Daniel Kaluuya should win Best Supporting Actor, and Yuh-Jung Youn is a very possible winner for Best Supporting Actress. Best Actress is one of the closest races of the night in that it really wouldn’t be a surprise if any of the nominees (except perhaps for Vanessa Kirby from Pieces of a Woman) took home the award. I’m going with Viola Davis as my pick, but I think Carey Mulligan could quite possibly take home the Oscar here. The award for Best Actor is sure to be one of the more moving moments of tonight’s show as the Academy will undoubtedly posthumously present Chadwick Boseman with the award. Boseman died of cancer this past August, but his role as the titular character in Black Panther (2018) made him a hero of African-American culture–and of those who love to see good triumph over evil–and his win tonight will be a nod of respect to the socio-cultural legacy he leaves behind him, as much as it will be for his strong performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

As far as the awards for writing and directing go, like last year these awards will likely prove good predictors of which film we’ll be adding to our BP list. I think Promising Young Woman will certainly win Original Screenplay, and Nomadland is likely to win Adapted Screenplay (though it could lose to The Father), setting up a show-down between those two for Best Picture. Promising Young Woman has been called this year’s Parasite by some, but I think Chloe Zhao will win for Directing for Nomadland–which will also elevate Nomadland to the show’s top award of BP. If Zhao wins for her directing, she will only be the second woman to prove victorious in this category (the only other being Kathryn Bigelow, whose war flick The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture in 2008). Then again, if last year’s results showed us anything, it’s that a film can pick up a lot of momentum right before the Oscars and snatch BP right from under the “favorite’s” nose, which is rather exciting. So, I’m not totally counting out Promising Young Woman.

Thanks for reading, Everyone, and enjoy tonight’s show!

Hello, Everyone!

Just wanted to give an update to allay any fears that I had abandoned FlicksChick.com! In addition to the general chaos and stress we’ve all endured over the past few months, I also undertook a housing move, which on its own rather hijacked my BP watching.

So, despite the fact that the rather sudden advent of summer now brings us gloriously long days and (oftentimes, though not always) sunshine and the longing to be outdoors, I intend to pick up with the BPs soon. Our next featured film will be A Beautiful Mind (2001), an excellent movie that I look forward to sharing with you all.

I hope that you and your families are safe and well, and thank you again for your support of FlicksChick.com!

Sarah

Here we are again, ready to celebrate film and award (what are supposed to be) the year’s best motion pictures! Like last year, we have an interesting group of films this year–no one movie has dominated the awards shows leading up to tonight’s Academy Awards, so we are probably in for a nice divvying up of the little golden statuettes–with perhaps a few surprises thrown in here and there. Let me make my usual disclaimer first: Typically, I’m pretty bad at Oscar predictions. And now here are a few guesses as to who I think will take home some of the prizes at tonight’s Academy Awards.

Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

This one is a no-brainer. Phoenix has won all the awards so far this year, he’s a brilliant actor yet to win an Oscar, he should have won for 2000’s Gladiator (maybe that’s beside the point now…), and he steals the show in Joker. Expect an awkward speech, though.

Best Actress: Renee Zellweger, Judy

I think we’ll get another awkward moment from Zellweger if her Oscar acceptance speech is anything like the one she made at the Golden Globes a few weeks back. Like Phoenix, Zellweger has been cleaning up at the awards shows so far, and there doesn’t seem to be any inclination that the Academy will vote differently. That being said, it’s hard to forget that shocking incident in last year’s show when Olivia Colman upset shoo-in Glenn Close for this award, but Zellweger’s competition this year doesn’t seem to be as strong.

Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Pitt is very popular with fans and peers. Although he already has an Oscar for producing 12 Years a Slave (2013), Pitt doesn’t yet have a golden man for acting. In the Academy’s long tradition of awarding popular actors with Oscars, Pitt will fill this void in his life tonight.

Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

I love Laura Dern–in Jurassic Park. I didn’t like her so much in Marriage Story. But everyone else does, and she will continue her winning streak tonight–beating out her Marriage Story co-star Scarlett Johansson, whose first two Oscar nominations came in the same year: one for Best Actress for Marriage Story, and the other for Best Supporting Actress for Jojo Rabbit, neither of which she will probably win.

Animated Feature Film: Toy Story 4

This is a hard one this year. It was a bit of a shocker to not see Frozen II or The Lion King in this category, so we’re left with sorting out the nominees we did get. The movies in this category have divided up several awards among themselves so far; and although the Academy isn’t always kind to sequels (especially of an animated sort), there aren’t too many people who don’t love Pixar or have warm feelings for its first original film, Toy Story (1995).

International Feature Film: Parasite

Another no-brainer. If something crazy happens and Parasite does not win in this category, 1917 will almost certainly be this year’s Best Picture winner.

Music (Original Score): Joker, Hildur Guonadottir

A relative unknown, Guonadottir gave us one of the most hauntingly beautiful scores of the year in Joker. The music isn’t as memorable as past epic scores like that of 1939’s Gone with the Wind or 1997’s Titanic, but it manages to mirror what goes on within the mind of Arthur Fleck, as well as capture the chaos of a disintegrating world.

Music (Original Song): “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman

Who (among Academy members) would not want to see Elton John win an Oscar? This is not a strong category this year, but I think poor Diane Warren will lose yet again.

Cinematography: 1917

Those long battlefield shots–especially the one at the end–will be hard to overcome in this category.

Production Design: 1917

I think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could snatch this one as well, but 1917‘s set pieces and background locations are stunningly realistic. At times the characters are dwarfed by their surroundings, and not for no reason.

Film Editing: Ford v Ferrari

Here we have a BP nominee who will not win BP taking home one of the awards that usually goes to the film that wins BP. But, Ford v Ferrari is a popular pick among critics to win this category due to the speed of the shots the editors had to work with. Parasite could also win here; and if it does, its odds of winning BP will multiply tremendously.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Little Women, Greta Gerwig

Jojo Rabbit is perhaps the frontrunner for this category; but since so many people are miffed about Gerwig’s exclusion from the Best Directing category, I’m thinking she may garner more than enough votes to take home an Oscar for her lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel.

Writing (Original Screenplay): Parasite, Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might win here as well, but Parasite is more deserving of this award. Plus, if Bong Joon Ho does not win for Best Director or Best Picture, an Oscar in this category would be a nice consolation prize.

Directing: Sam Mendes, 1917

Whoever wins for directing will almost certainly also tell us who will win BP. However, there is a slim chance that Mendes will win for directing 1917 and Parasite will steal BP. Quentin Tarantino is also a player in this category. But I feel that Mendes has the momentum from his wins at the year’s other awards shows, and 1917‘s continuous shots and sweeping cinematography put Mendes ahead of his competitors for this award.

Best Picture: 1917

In the words of Heath Ledger’s Joker, “And…here…we…go.” I’ve been agonizing about my choice for BP since seeing Parasite this past Friday night. I had become nearly absolutely certain that 1917 has BP in the bag. But, oh man, Parasite‘s complexity, its brilliant storytelling, and its ambiguous ending keep swirling in my mind. Out of every BP nominee I’ve watched this year, Parasite is the one I want to watch again as soon as possible. 1917 is a beautiful movie with a gripping and inspiring story. Parasite is not a beautiful movie, but it is downright ingenious. The question of which will win really comes down to whether Academy voters will choose a foreign film to receive their highest honor or if they will stick with a genre more familiar to them and opt for 1917‘s classic war story. I honestly could see it going either way. And we can’t totally count out Once Upon a Time in Hollywood due to Hollywood’s love affair with itself. But I think, ultimately, 1917 takes this one home. Parasite‘s popularity is late-blooming, and the Academy may not yet be as diverse or “forward-thinking” as it believes it is.

Enjoy the show, everyone!

This was actually the first BP-nominated film I watched this awards season, but I’ve been putting off writing about it (for a while now…) because I just didn’t like it at all. Basically, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is revisionist history–or, to be even more accurate, it’s a fairy tale based on actual events that took place in Los Angeles in 1969.

The film mostly follows two main characters: Rick Dalton, a formerly successful TV actor who’s a bit down on his luck, and Dalton’s stunt double, Cliff Booth, whose physical abilities are nearly super-human but who’s struggling financially (especially due to Dalton’s inability to land major roles). Oh, yes–and Dalton lives next door to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, which leads any student of modern history and/or Hollywood history to assume the ending of this film is going to be gruesome and disturbing.

If gruesome and disturbing are what you’re looking for, you won’t be disappointed with this movie. What with the foul language and the filth of the characters (physically and morally), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is never a feel-good, warm film. It has some suspense, and the combination of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt provides an interesting dynamic (especially as Leo is cast against type). Still, the ending of the movie–wishful thinking, though it seems to be–leaves much to be desired. I think it’s supposed to be creative, but it was so gruesome that I ducked under my blanket for a good long while.

Why This Film Might Win BP:

Hollywood always loves movies about itself, and some people have gone as far as calling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood an ode to the end of Hollywood’s golden age. Leo and Brad play their roles well and are supported by a good cast. I suppose one could call the writing creative; but again, I’m not a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work, so I’m definitely not in this camp. This film is odd, and Hollywood loves oddity nearly as much as it loves itself, so this movie could definitely win BP tonight.

Why This Film Might Not Win BP:

In my mind, as we approach tonight’s ceremony, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is running third in the race for BP after 1917 and Parasite. Tarantino’s film glorifies old Hollywood, features two of the most popular actors of our time, and transforms what we would expect to be the ending of the story in a way that is supposed to make us feel good (I didn’t feel good…). However, this is not a beautiful movie in any sense, whereas 1917 is. And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘s bizarre ending is still not as shocking or thought-provoking as Parasite‘s twists and turns. Plus, there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding Tarantino’s portrayal of film legend Bruce Lee and more than a little discomfort with how the movie messes with a historical moment that Hollywood would not like to revisit too often.