Now that Telluride and Venice have concluded, some things have changed, others have stayed the same. The biggest shake-up is Poor Things, which launched Emma Stone into frontrunner status in the Best Actress category.
This is a cautionary tale from last year when Cate Blanchett took the early lead and was widely expected to win her second Best Actress Oscar. The film festival phase isn’t over yet, as each new festival rewrites the narrative. Several upcoming titles might shift things again significantly — but at the moment, the most-buzzed film so far has been Poor Things without a doubt. Oscar season now seems to be kind of like watching a reality show: which favorite captures the heart of the hive mind and which one doesn’t is usually how things seem to be playing out now. Which film does the hive mind identify with? Which film do they feel connects with them?
It’s kind of a game of Goldilocks — the porridge is too hot, the porridge is too cold, the porridge is just right. I can sense already just from Twitter’s reaction to Poor Things that they have likely chosen their mojo movie. The film played like gangbusters at the Academy apparently, but more importantly, it could be that Everything Everywhere All at Once-kind of movie that reawakens a generation to movies. Yorgos Lanthimos has made a must-see film on the basis of the sexual content alone, but it’s more than that. Visually, it’s wild, surreal, and beautiful.
The last three Best Picture winners have all been driven by female leads: 2020’s Nomadland, 2021’s CODA, and last year’s winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Two out of the three won both Best Actress and Best Picture, which does seem like a reemerging trend that not been seen in a very long time. Let’s take a quick look at movies that won both Picture and Actress — just 13 times in all Oscar history. Last year was the fourth time it happened in such close proximity, after 1934 & 1936, 1975 &1977, and 1989 & 1991.
1934 — Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night
1936 — Luise Rainer, The Great Ziegfeld
1939 — Vivien Leigh, Gone With the Wind
1942 — Greer Garson, Mrs. Miniver
1975 — Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1977 — Diane Keaton, Annie Hall
1983 — Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment
1989 — Jessica Tandy, Driving Miss Daisy
1991 — Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
1998 — Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love
2004 — Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby
2020 — Frances McDormand, Nomadland
2022 — Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Meanwhile, Best Actor has matched with Best Picture 26 times, consecutive years in bold:
1934 — Clark Gable, It Happened One Night
1944 — Bing Crosby, Going My Way
1945 — Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend
1946 — Frederic March, The Best Years of Our Lives
1948 — Laurence Olivier, Hamlet
1949 — Broderick Crawford, All the King’s Men
1954 — Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront
1955 — Ernest Borgnine, Marty
1957 — Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai
1959 — Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur
1964 — Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady
1966 — Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons
1967 — Rod Steiger, In the Heat of the Night
1970 — George C. Scott, Patton
1971 — Gene Hackman, The French Connection
1972 — Marlon Brando, The Godfather
1975 — Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1979 — Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer
1982 — Ben Kingsley, Gandhi
1984 — F. Murray Abraham, Amadeus
1988 — Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man
1991 — Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs
1994 — Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks
1999 — Kevin Spacey, American Beauty
2000 — Russell Crowe, Gladiator
2010 — Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
2011 — Jean DuJardin, The Artist
You’ll notice that since the expanded ballot era, Best Actor and Picture have gone to the same film only twice.
To me, the shift feels political. It feels like it’s related to what has happened to the industry over the past seven years or so, where identity politics has swallowed up nearly every aspect of American culture. Poor Things is absolutely in keeping with this ideology, as it centers on female empowerment, feminism, and more or less portrays a protagonist who doesn’t really need a man at all except as either emotional support or sexual satisfaction.
Poor Things and Barbie are the two films with female leads that seem headed for Best Picture. Both are kind of about the same thing, more or less. One is completely absent sexuality (until the very end) and one is defined by it. But ultimately, their messages are exactly the same thing: an awakening that educates them of the trappings of a repressive patriarchy that they then must escape in order to forge their own paths.
The two films are great fodder for exhaustive essays on feminism, coming soon to a media outlet near you. But that also pits them against each other — and when that happens, Poor Things runs the table in nearly every area except one. Greta Gerwig directed Barbie, which shattered box office records and has become a cultural phenom. But Poor Things, directed by a man, is the better film. So that’s gonna be a fun one to wade through.
By contrast, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon are American sagas about our complicated, often ugly past. They are told from two different perspectives at different times in history. Interestingly, one is about the first case of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI (Killers of the Flower Moon) and the other is about what that FBI eventually became, how invasive it was in the ongoing fear of Communist infiltrators (of which Oppenheimer was suspected). Both films are true stories and both are expertly directed by two of the best filmmakers working today.
The two “female empowerment” films, Barbie and Poor Things, join the other “white men committing acts of genocide and mass murder” of the two frontrunners, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon. They, too, happen to be expansive, epic masterpieces — but in this era where movies are political movements, how does that go? Would they ever do the daring thing and just pick the best film? I don’t think so. They never really have. They’ve always gone with the film that makes them FEEL something. Every so often a film squeezes through that’s great, like No Country for Old Men or The Departed, but in those cases the feel good part went with giving the Coens or Marty an Oscar for the first time. The Hurt Locker was giving the Best Director Oscar to a woman for the first time.
Other films that launched at Venice and Telluride might hover more on the fringe, waiting in the wings. That would include David Fincher’s The Killer, which might be too much of a crime genre film to land in the Best Picture race — unless they were voting on pure mastery of filmmaking, which they very rarely do now. The reviews (many of them by people who aren’t even critics — like literally anyone can be a critic now and it doesn’t even matter who you are, what you know, what you don’t know) are mildly annoying but indicative of the hive mind overall.
In general, they’re chasing the rapture. It is never a somber, thought-through process because the Academy is not dominated by cerebral types — it’s dominated by actors. And actors FEEL. All of this to say, we have four strong frontrunners right now:
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
We can add another to the list with Alexander Payne’s sublime The Holdovers, which doesn’t have a whiff of any kind of politics or identity politics or anything like that. It is really just a film designed for catharsis, one that tells a great story that anyone can watch and love. It is not alienating or divisive. It’s about flawed human beings. It’s exactly the kind of movie we’ve all been missing as activism has almost completely choked the life out of art.
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
The Holdovers
That’s five. What might be the next five?
The Killer is the kind of movie — like Se7en and Fight Club and Zodiac — that often goes ignored by the Oscars and then ten years from now people will look back at much of the offerings and ask “How was that not nominated?” Because the Oscars are about Miss Right Now, not about Miss Right (to paraphrase the late, great Robin Williams).
Rustin has the backing of the Obamas and is an “important” film, not to mention it is one of Netflix’s offerings. If The Killer is out, Rustin might be in. There is also Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, though the reception for that film right now is also hard to gauge. Carey Mulligan has gotten rave reviews, as has the film. Is that enough to drive through to Best Pic?
I went ahead over to Gold Derby to see what they were thinking. Joyce Eng, who updated her predictions on September 7th, has the following:
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
The Holdovers
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro
Past Lives
The Color Purple
The Zone of Interest
I know better than to argue with the hive mind consensus by now. But my doubt hovers around Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, and Past Lives. All seem to be driven by Film Twitter and film critics, but I’m just not sure they will survive through the awards gauntlet with all of the films upcoming.
Kevin Polowy has bravely predicted Ava DuVernay’s Origin to land in the top ten, and even has it at number one above Oppenheimer. American Fiction he also has at number four. He then has Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse at number six, then a film called Dream Scenario at number seven, Dumb Money at number nine, and Cassandro at number 10. You have to hand it to the dude: he’s not just stepping outside the box, it’s exploding outwardly and decimating the box. Just any old thing will do.
The thing about Best Picture is this: all you need is a fair amount of number one votes to land in the race. You just have to find your tribe for each movie. Are there enough international voters now to push through Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest? Are there enough daring hipster types to push through Saltburn as their number one film? Rustin is a film that will need a whole movement behind it, which it could get with one screening by Barack and Michelle Obama to, say, SAG voters. That will be all she wrote. Whether that happens or not is hard to say but probably the big pitch from Netflix will be Maestro.
We’re looking for that magic number, which varies (according to Marshall Flores) but more or less lands around 300 or so number one votes to land a spot in the race. To predict a movie like Anatomy of a Fall or Past Lives, you have to find roughly 300 people who will say that this movie is their number one choice — the very best film they saw in the entire year. If you can envision those 300, you’re halfway there.
That is super easy with our frontrunners now, the top five:
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
The Holdovers
If the Oscars were still about five films, that would likely be our lineup. But we have ten now. We need five more.
If you want to laugh, here were my ten predictions one year ago today:
Best Picture (in alpha order)
Armageddon Time
Avatar: Way of Water
Babylon
Elvis
Empire of Light
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
TÁR
Women Talking
Alts: Top Gun: Maverick, The Banshees of Inershirin, She Said, The Woman King, Wakanda Forever
Okay, so I had 8/10, including the alts. That’s not too bad.
Then:
Best Director
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Jim Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water
Todd Field, TÁR
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Damien Chazelle, Babylon
Alts: Sam Mendes, Empire of Light; Baz Luhrmann, Elvis; The Daniels, Everything Everywhere
Missing was Martin McDonagh for Banshees and Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness, which is probably the Zone of Interest or Anatomy of a Fall of this year.
Okay, let’s do this:
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
The Holdovers
Maestro
The Color Purple
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
The Killer
Alts: Zone of Interest, All of Us Strangers, Air, Saltburn, Rustin, The Boys in the Boat
Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Alexander Payne, The Holdovers
Alts: David Fincher, The Killer; Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Jonathan Glazer, Zone of Interest
Best Actress
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple
Annette Bening, Nyad
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Alts: Margot Robbie, Barbie; Jodie Comer, The Bikeriders; Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
Best Actor
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Alts: Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers; Nicolas Cage, Dream Scenario; Michael Fassbender, The Killer
Supporting Actor
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Alts: Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Matt Damon, Oppenheimer; Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers; Tom Hardy, The Bikeriders
Supporting Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
America Ferrera, Barbie
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Alts: Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Julianne Moore, May December
Adapted Screenplay
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
Barbie
All of Us Strangers
Alts: The Killer, The Color Purple, The Zone of Interest, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Original Screenplay
The Holdovers
Past Lives
Rustin
Maestro
Anatomy of a Fall
Editing
Oppenheimer
The Killer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
Ferrari
Cinematography
Poor Things
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Saltburn
Costumes
Poor Things
Barbie
The Color Purple
Napoleon
Asteroid City
Production Design
Poor Things
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Napoleon
Asteroid City
That’s all I have for you today, which is already too much.
