Tomorrow, the American Film Institute will announce their 10 AFI Movies of the Year. They can often be a good certification of which films we already know are popular, though they do sometimes reflect what can or might be seen as the earlier stage of the race, and one that might not reflect last-minute changes in perception. For instance, Saving Mr. Banks hit a speed bump in 2013 when charges of sanitizing and hagiography took aim at the depiction, thus eliminating the film from the race and Emma Thompson along with it. These AFI lists look sort of like what the Academy’s lists might look like if they had ten nomination slots and not five. Bear in mind that the AFI will not name prominent films in English if they are primarily UK productions.
They are selected by a small-ish jury of journalists, industry professionals, and Academy crossover members.
Let’s look at their history, noting Oscar BP nominees in bold:
2015
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Carol
Inside Out
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
Room
Spotlight
The Force Awakens
Straight Outta Compton
2014
American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood
Foxcatcher
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Nightcrawler
Selma
Unbroken
Whiplash
2013
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Fruitvale Station
Gravity
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Saving Mr. Banks
The Wolf of Wall Street
2012
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Dark Knight Rises
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
2011
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
J. Edgar
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse
2010
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The Social Network
The Town
The Kids Are All Right
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
2009
A Serious Man
A Single Man
Coraline
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker
The Messenger
Precious
Sugar
Up
Up in the Air
Weirdly enough, 2009, which was the first year Oscar changed from five to ten was their worst year in terms of matching the Oscar race. The AFI is missing Avatar but if there had been only five BP nominees in 2009, they would probably have gone like:
The Hurt Locker
Avatar
Precious
Up in the Air
Inglourious Basterds (not on AFI’s list)
But the following year, they only missed one, The Town. Since then, they have averaged around 6 or 7 out of 8 or 9. Never matching more than 7.
So how do we think it will go? They like animated movies so there might be one that turns up.
The locks:
Moonlight
Manchester by the Sea
La La Land
The probablys:
Fences
Arrival
Loving
Sully
Hell or High Water
Lion
Then the maybes:
Zootopia or Kubo or Moana
The possibles
Silence (did they all get to see it in time?)
Hacksaw Ridge
Hidden Figures (just seems like they might go for it)
Jackie
Hail, Caesar!
Patriots Day
Anyway, that’s how I see it going down. But how about you?
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