Some of the films that stand out as the year’s best, which we’ll be digging into soon, might not even get into the Best Picture race. Cary Fukunaga’s uncompromising masterpiece, Beasts of No Nation sits atop that list. Perhaps too “difficult” for a consensus group that really needs to feel good about what it’s voting for, Beasts will perhaps be set adrift in the collective consciousness, destined to appear in film discussions for years to come. All the same, it gets down to the horrors of war without imposing morality or bowing to sentimentality – refusing to ever let up on the viewer. Right up there are other less accessible films. Like Black Mass, which dares to paint the mob as it really is, in all of its ugliness. The Big Short might be too wonky and weird for some Oscar voters but it gets to something about the American psyche that no other film has touched this year.
Before the overall landscape of the race can be assessed, however, there are still three big films by three big directors as year draws to a close, and that’s not even counting the last minute entries Creed and In the Heart of the Sea. Our attention is instead drawn to Alejandro G. Inarritu’s eagerly anticipated wintry survival epic, The Revenant; Quentin Tarantino’s wintry western, The Hateful Eight; and David O. Russell’s first film centered entirely around a woman, Joy. All three films have passionate support heading into their debuts and the heat is on. The heat is not only on, the pressure could not be more intense.
Now that the majority of the films have been seen, the Oscar race appears to be down to a handful of movies liked by audiences and expected to be liked by the industry voters as well – if not always by all the critics. That doesn’t mean the best films of the year will be rewarded with a nomination. It just means we’re circling the films that most people like best among the pile of films that have been anointed “Oscar movies.” It’s getting easier to tell them apart from Hollywood’s usual fare, as those movies evenly divide into their own genres and therefore can largely be written off for major awards, as a whole group. Slasher movies, for instance, or buddy comedies. Or even most romantic comedies. The Oscars are about films that get great reviews, are well liked and generally inhabit the straight up “drama” category, with a few exceptions.
We’re heading into the last two weeks of November which means the people who will vote for the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics and the AFI Ten Movies of the Year will have to be making their decisions within these next two weeks. Once December rolls around, it will be one city’s critics award after the next, until either a consensus emerges, or it splatters all over itself. What we know is that those films favored by the critics are only sometimes favored by the industry. We won’t know what Best Picture is likely to be until the Producers Guild announce their winner.
The early awards groups that will be voting soon include the Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globes), and the Screen Actors Guild. The reason films do better if they’re shown earlier in the fall is that tit allows time to built momentum and consensus. One nomination from the Golden Globes can beget another. It can build hype and publicity and most important “buzz” around a contender. Does that mean everything? No, it certainly doesn’t. But it helps.
So, to recap – here’s what’s coming up:
National Board of Review – Dec. 1
New York Film Critics – Dec. 2
SAG ballot deadline – Dec. 7 / SAG nominations announced Dec. 9
Golden Globes nominations due – Dec. 7 / Golden Globe nominations – Dec. 10
AFI Top Ten Announced — Dec. 7
When the Oscars were held in March, these awards often seemed too early to matter. Even now they sometimes can seem off track from the path the eventual Oscar contenders will follow. Award fatigue sets in at some point and people just start getting bored seeing the same winners. Ever since the Oscar dates were pushed up a month, however, the Globes and the SAGs have tended to matter more because they are the first big voice in the race.
Of the three more important prospects still upcoming, only one filmmaker has won Best Director and Best Picture before. That’s Alejandro G. Inarritu. To win this year, Inarritu would have to become only the third Best Director in Oscar history to win back-to-back Oscars. It first happened in 1940 and 1941 when John Ford won back-to-back for The Grapes of Wrath (the year Rebecca won Best Picture) and then again for How Green was my Valley, which also won Best Picture (beating Citizen Kane). Two consecutive Best Director wins happened again in 1949, when Joseph L. Mankiewicz won for Letter to Three Wives (Best Picture went to All the King’s Men), and then Mank won again in 1950 for All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. In both of those cases, the director won but the picture didn’t, and the following year both the director and picture won. It would be as though Alfonso Cuaron had won for directing Gravity then came back the next year with a Best Picture winner. He might then be seen as “overdue” for a second chance since his movie had failed to win Best Picture. Such is not the case with Inarritu. Does that mean it’s impossible? No, it just means it’s a different situation and could pose a potential obstacle.
Quentin Tarantino has had much luck getting his films into the Oscar race. He’s already overdue for a Best Director/Best Picture win. He came closest with Inglourious Basterds, which had the added benefit of being about World War II. Like Tarantino, David O. Russell is also a director favored by the Academy and is overdue for a big win. Unlike Tarantino, Russell has never won an Oscar at all. Both directors bring a universe with them – audiences know what they’re going to get, or thereabouts. They know it will be a film full of surprises but also encased in each director’s recognizable style.
Still, it’s hard to push through at the last minute, even with a well-known, Academy-favored director. In the past ten years, I’ve seen one or two at the most sneak in at the end for a nomination. Always by a well known director – David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino have both done it, as has Martin Scorsese. I’ve never seen one come in at the last minute and win the whole thing. That would be something to see. Surprises can happen in the Oscar race. You can’t plan for them but they have been known to happen.
Thus, if you are predicting The Revenant, Joy or The Hateful Eight to win Best Picture you are betting on an extreme long shot. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen; just that it’s by no means a safe bet. Long shot predictions pay off better than the safe ones, however. Go big or go home.
Kris Tapley and I were shooting the shit the other day over email and we were spitballing which films might get in for PGA, DGA and SAG. It’s too soon to say, of course, because those Big Three have yet to be seen.
Predicting the New York Critics or National Board of Review throws the whole thing into flux because of Second Level Chaos theory. Once you predict what the critics will do, half the time they seem to do the opposite out of spite.
I’ll divide the contenders into two groups – films that have been seen and films that haven’t.
DGA – ballot deadline January 4, 2016, nominations January 7, 2016
The DGA has roughly 14,500 members, as opposed to the Academy’s 400. You can see how consensus building early can help in this regard. For the past 3 years, the Directors Guild has been announcing their nominees after the Academy’s nomination ballots have been turned in, so their influence has been diminished. Therefore the consensus must be relied upon if there is to be any match-ups. And even then it can be unpredictable, as it was in 2012 when Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck got DGA nods but were left off the Academy’s list.
The notoriously macho group will be the perfect place to test the “female driven” films that might figure into the Best Picture race. It’s entirely possible all four films – Joy, Carol, Brooklyn and Room – might get into the Oscar race but their directors might not. If any of the four wind up on the DGA’s list, however, you know it’s a very strong film with the industry consensus in evidence. Thing is, by the time the deadline has come around for the big guilds, the late breaking films will have saturated the voting communities.
A rough guess as to how they would go without the big three coming up:
1. Ridley Scott, The Martian
2. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
3. George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies
5. Lenny Abrahamson, Room
If we then predict the DGA with the Big Three factored in:
1. Ridley Scott, The Martian
2. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
3. Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant
4. Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies or Lenny Abrahamson, Room
5. David O. Russell, Joy or Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight
As for the Academy, things might be a bit different. There could be some big surprises there, like Cary Fukunaga for Beasts of No Nation or Lazlo Nemes for Son of Saul – but for the DGA you are looking for the most popular films of the season within the context of the Oscar race.
The Producers Guild announces January 5
The PGA members are roughly 6,500, nearly equal in numbers to the Academy. They use the same preferential ballot system as the Academy. Unlike the Academy, however, they give their members ten nomination slots to fill, as opposed to five. that usually means the PGA have slightly more diverse choices than the Oscar voters will settle upon.
A rough guess before the big three show up:
The Martian
Spotlight
Room
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
Steve Jobs
Carol
Black Mass
Brooklyn
Inside Out
Maybe: Beasts of No Nation
After the Big Three show up
The Martian
The Revenant
Spotlight
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
Steve Jobs
Joy
Room
Brooklyn
Carol or The Hateful Eight
Finally, SAG ensemble is the earliest bellwether – voting happens the first week of December and the nominating committee has to rely on screeners. If enough screeners for a late-breaking film don’t make it into the hands of voters, SAG members will not see the movie.
Of all three of these groups, I find the SAG ensemble nominations the most difficult to predict. That’s because it’s hard to tell where the consensus is going when there is no visible consensus yet.
Traditionally, the SAG has shown a preference for the kind of movies Tarantino and David O. Russell make. But it’s still a crapshoot at the moment. I would think it could go something like:
Spotlight
Suffragette
Steve Jobs
The Martian
The Hateful Eight or Joy or Carol
SAG feels like a crap-shoot at the moment.
But let’s do a few polls, shall we?
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