One of the early announcements, along with the Los Angeles, New York Film Critics and National Board of Review, will be the AFI top ten films of 2014. Through December, critics will be ringing in with their top ten films of the year, and eventually, a consensus will be born. How does the AFI stack up against the aggregate top ten? Movie City News compiled the Top Tens every year. I have compared the big top tens against it, with AFI and Producers Guild, along with Oscar’s Best Picture.
These top ten lists were compiled in January before the Oscars. Predicting the Oscar nominations off of these lists are not the easiest thing in the world to do for the simple reason that none of these groups tally their votes the same. With Movie City News, the AFI and the Producers Guild members who vote get ten slots. The Academy, since 2011, only has five nominee slots. As you can see, 2009 and 2010 were a lot easier to predict than Best Picture was, say, last year.
Even among these groups, though, there is a mix of what films they think are best. The Academy hovers somewhere between the producers and the critics, I’d say. While the AFI picks a small committee of judges to carefully select their nominees, the Producers Guild has a giant membership closer to the Academy’s, with 5000 members or thereabouts. Movie City News critics round out to roughly 200. The Producers Guild, like the Academy, uses a preferential ballot. They are the only voting body that does. But they get 10 nomination slots and not five, as I keep repeating because it doesn’t seem to sink in. Think five, not ten.
In Contention’s Kris Tapley does not participate with either Gurus of Gold or Gold Derby, thus we must click over to In Contention to find his predictions. His latest update is from the 17th — and he’s going with 8, not 9, assuming that this year there won’t be enough favorites to name the usual maximum of 9. Somewhere in the math universe that perhaps Christopher Nolan or Stephen Hawking can explain are how the new voting system arrives at 10. So far, they have never gotten there since reducing the nomination slots from 10 back to 5. It’s been only 9 for three years in a row. But, so the theory goes, this is a “Weak” year and thus, Tapley is betting one less than 9.
Here are Kris Tapley’s top 8 (not 9) for Best Picture:
“Birdman”
“Boyhood”
“The Imitation Game”
“Selma”
“Mr. Turner”
“The Theory of Everything”
“Unbroken”
“Whiplash”
I know our jobs as pundits is to anticipate what five films the Academy voters will choose but I look at Kris’ list and I think, what a bunch of wimpy picks. These are all good movies but the sum total of them, looking at them as a group? That’s a whole lot of soft sauce. And it isn’t the kind of lineup anyone producing that telecast is going to jump for joy over. Not a single hit in the lineup? Mmmm. It won’t do.
Right now, closing in on the end of November and heading into the critics awards (which could change everything), the Gurus of Gold’s latest looks like this:
And Gold Derby looks like this:
There are still so many questions unanswered so far in this year’s race that it’s tough to figure out how it might go. If you track back to last year at this time we were convinced of All is Lost and Inside Llewyn Davis getting in. Neither did. Dallas Buyers Club and Philomena, tracking kind of low and outside on the pundits’ charts, did get in. That is a really good example of the “think five” rule can push films that have deeper emotional impact over ones that don’t.
That is perhaps why Dave Karger, Scott Feinberg, Thelma Adams and Kris Tapley are all predicting Gone Girl will be shut out of the Best Picture race, never mind that it’s the highest grossing film of twice-nominated David Fincher’s career, and never mind that it will finish the year as the top earning adult drama, barreling towards $160 million, they are shaking their heads no because they don’t think “they” will go for it. Me, I’m looking at films like The Fighter and Black Swan and I’m thinking, there are going to be men with low hanging heavy balls who are going to want a film like Gone Girl in the race, despite it having the “chick flick” label.
So I disagree with my pundit pals, even Anne Thompson who has pushed Gone Girl way down to number 10, which would mean it would not get in. Here’s the scary part – they could turn out to be right. That would mean they really are going to spit in the face of the hordes of ticket buyers who came out to see one of the year’s most provocative and talked about films. A film so successful it seeing repeat viewings, driven by strong word of mouth. They’re going to say, nah, doesn’t matter because that isn’t the kind of movie we want representing us globally.
They said movies had to have pat endings to make money.They were wrong. They said a movie had to be touchy feely feel goody to make money. They were wrong. They said it’s better to have an established (code word for male) screenwriter adapt Flynn’s work and nope, they were wrong. It’s just been one long list of wrongs as far as estimating Gone Girl’s success.
One screening didn’t go well at the Academy on the film’s path to making, potentially, $180 million and that sinks its chances because the Academy members are resemble that small sampling of voters on that one day. That isn’t the industry I know and it isn’t the Academy I know. This isn’t the Spirit Awards and it isn’t the Gothams. It isn’t even the BAFTAS (yet). It’s the mother fucking Oscars, my friend. They know what a muscular hits means to their bread and butter.
But let’s look at how this thing could shape up from here, with no critics’ top tens to go off of yet, and with no one having seen Unbroken. Into the Woods was seen but it doesn’t look as though it has impacted any of the charts thus far, with the sole exception of Scott Feinberg, who has added it to his top Best Picture contenders.
I’m going to start with what I know about the AFI, even though their juries change. I don’t think anyone in their right mind working in Hollywood today, with the entire enterprise being turned over to tent poles and international super hero movies are going to look at Gone Girl’s success – a hard R movie made by a major studio that is that big of a success – and turn their nose up at it. They are just not that stupid. Best Picture of the Year means those films that achieved something exceptional and for Gone Girl, its box office is exceptional. The AFI named The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I suspect they will add Gone Girl to that list.
Wes Anderson has made the list a few times, including Moonrise Kingdom and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I’m going to bet The Grand Budapest Hotel gets in.
I suspect they might go:
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Foxcatcher
Selma
Whiplash
I feel most confident about these for AFI. Then, if you add in the two Brit films, which are US productions so they could qualify you would have:
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Foxcatcher
Selma
Whiplash
Imitation Game
Theory of Everything
And that leaves one. That last one could be and might be either Unbroken or Interstellar.
That is how things might go for AFI. I have no idea what is in store for Unbroken and I refuse to speculate until I see it. If it is good and worthwhile it will be chosen by the AFI no doubt, which will put two films by women on their list like there were in 2010, when Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone made the list.
Moving on to the Producers Guild, Gone Girl is assured a slot there, especially, as with AFI, with ten slots. So I’m still seeing the same list for PGA, with the same two stragglers, Interstellar and Unbroken fighting it out for the last slot. I think it’s possible the PGA goes:
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Foxcatcher
Selma
Whiplash
Imitation Game
Theory of Everything
Interstellar
That’s just a guess, of course. But looking over the list of films and the pundits’ predictions I can’t help but zero in on these movies. We’ll see where Gone Girl, Selma, Grand Budapest, Interstellar and Unbroken land once the lists start coming in. This lineup could easily change.
