For every Oppenheimer, there is a Crash. For every No Country for Old Men, there is an Everything, Everywhere All At Once. The Academy is an ever-changing demographic that ushers in one generation after another. What generation you happen to get in the time you’re living through will decide the best and the worst Oscar eras. The good movies, I feel it’s safe to say, are few and far between. The Oscar winners, or award winners in general, are only as good as their voters. It isn’t that Oscar movies are terrible. They never are. Or they rarely are. It’s that the standards have been set during a time when Hollywood and the Oscars were at their best, the 1970s.
When you had movies like The Godfather I and II, The French Connection, even Rocky, topping the box office chart and winning Best Picture, you know you were living through one of the best eras for movies. What probably can’t happen, however, is to live through an era like that with the expanded ballot. There is no real competition here for best. Things are simply too split up all over the place for any decent results to emerge. We’ve seen this play out since 2009. The winners aren’t really winners. They are negotiated compromises.
According to the pendulum theory, as written about in Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Inform Our Future, we’re headed out of our collectivist era now (and not a moment too soon) and heading back into the individualist era. Others call the time we’re living through a “Fourth Turning,” which occurs every 80 years. Pendulum divides those years up into two 40-year cycles, the “we” cycle and the “me” cycle. It is astonishing how both of these theories get so much right. In case you’ve wondered how I have been able to predict or forsee what is coming next, that’s how. I read these books and I looked at the patterns of history.
The “we” era ends with “witch hunts,” according to the pendulum theory. The last time one of these occurred was in the extreme – World War II, the ensuring Cold War and the Red Scare. The last Fourth Turning occurred right around the time the Oscars shrank their Best Picture nominees down to five from ten. I am hoping the Academy does exactly that as we head out of the collectivist era and into the individualist era. If I am not longer covering the Oscars, which I may or may not, depending, I hope some of you pay attention to this and track how things go from here on out.
During the collectivist era, and the expanded ballots, Best Picture winners do not go along with Best Director. That matches the era we’re living through now since most directors also write their own scripts. That means they’re less likely to win Picture, Director + Screenplay. They can split things up, which is exactly what many are predicting for this year.
There was a Film Twitter person who once theorized that this was a replay of 2002, when Chicago and The Pianist split. Chicago was a Weinstein Co. musical, with a Supporting Actress frontrunner (Chicago was not an International Feature, however, and made nearly $100 mil), with a movie about a Jew escaping the Holocaust starring Adrien Brody. The Weinstein Co’s main publicist, Lisa Taback, is also pushing Emilia Perez to become Netflix’s first winner, thus making history for the streamer and for the transgender activists.
I was covering the Oscars back then and so I remember how it all went down. It’s an interesting idea and maybe this shit is unstoppable, but it’s worth remembering that The Pianist did well because of a last minute push. It didn’t, say, win the Golden Globe, like The Brutalist. Emilia Perez is not Chicago, not even close, It’s not well-liked, it’s not well-seen and it made no money at the box office. Chicago was a popular film, which justified its win. It wasn’t pushing a social justice agenda. But the point is well taken.
I also like the comparison with 1977, when all five of the Best Actress contenders are in Best Picture nominees. The movie that won that year was Annie Hall, with Diane Keaton winning Best Actress. That movie, this year, is Anora. It is a movie where we fell in love with the female lead who learns something and evolves. It’s also a comedy, like Annie Hall. The biggest difference between 1977, 2002 and now? The stupid preferential ballot which means any movie can win by how the math shakes out.
The bottom line is that five Best Picture nominees produce better winners. Want me to prove it? I will. Let’s do it. All 97 years of Oscar history, LFG!
Since 2009, the general public has probably only heard about three of these movies: The King’s Speech, Argo and Oppenheimer. And that’s it. That shows you how off the beaten path the Oscars have become. Throughout this entire period, however, Hollywood was making BIG BIG bucks on their IPs and their superhero movies, which really began right around the same time as the Oscars pushed back their date, roughly 2003/2004. However, both The Departed and No Country for Old Men are films that have stayed with us, stood the test of the time and remain in the pantheon of great American movies.
Here is the annual box office numbers from Box Office Mojo:
As you’ll notice, 2009-2019, as the Oscar voters were enjoying their rarified air of the First Class section of the airplane, the studios were raking in the big bucks — bigger than they’ve ever seen. And 2020 brought the whole thing down. It was like the Titanic sinking, where all of the debris rises to the surface, and we have no idea what goes where. It collapsed in every way imaginable. It wasn’t just COVID that emptied out theaters, it was the “Great Awokening” that ushered in the “inclusivity mandate” at the Oscars, the jury debacle at the BAFTAs, the canceling of the Golden Globes, even Amazon Studios put out its DEI requirements for storytelling and production.
When we crawled out of that mess, everyone thought people would return to the theaters and maybe watch the Oscars again, Hollywood had gone “woke” up one side and down the other. Big movies and niche movies are reflected the new zealotry of the post-Awokenened Left. The naval gazing. The self-obsession. The “therapy culture.” It was all too much for ordinary Americans just trying to pay the mortgage and see their children graduate from college, maybe take a vacation once in a while. Movies — and movie theaters — and the Oscars, in their own way, have always served the purpose of offering the hopeless and the despairing an escape from the MADNESS of daily life. And now, they were thrust into a group therapy session where the richest and most powerful people in the world tried to make their utopian diorama into a paradise for the super-wealthy and the super-marginalized. Who got left behind? The majority.
The separation between the niche industry of the Oscars and the local film industry began before 2020. It really began right around the same time Critical Race and Gender Theory was hitting public schools and universities. It was right after Barack Obama’s second term, just after 2012. Race became the most important thing anyone cared about or would talk about. The low-frequency hum that there were “racists, racists” everywhere hit around 2014. By the time Trump won in 2016, that is when a closely connected community was sent into cascades of mass hysteria. La La Land, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Green Book would bring the industry, the bloggers and critics, and the Oscars to the brink.
So now, as we prepare to move out of this horrible era of cancel culture, cowardice, and fear, we do not know what the narratives might be that drive this year’s winners. Do they default to sticking it to Trump? Do they opt out and decide to feel good with a comedy? Do they choose movie theaters over Netflix? Do they abandon the American studio system and award an International Feature for the first time because, screw it, we hate America and its people? Do they pick the blockbuster? It’s hard to say.
What I do know is that I can only do what I’ve done for 25 years: predict the movies I think are the best and the movies that will win because of it. But you shouldn’t listen to me. I am a dissident here, an outsider. If you want to know how the new Academy thinks, look no further than the Golden Globes. Where they once offered us a look at the international tastes, now, there is no difference between them and the Oscars. At least the Producers Guild appreciated A Real Pain and September 5.
Here is how I see it going and will keep updating every Friday until the end.
Best Picture
1. Anora
2. Emilia Pérez
3. The Brutalist
4. A Complete Unknown
5. Conclave
6. Wicked
7. Dune: Part Two
8. Nickel Boys
9. The Substance
10. I’m Still Here
Directing
1. Anora, Sean Baker
2. The Brutalist, Brady Corbet
3. Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard
4. The Substance, Coralie Fargeat
5. A Complete Unknown, James Mangold
Actress In A Leading Role
1. Demi Moore, The Substance
2. Mikey Madison, Anora
3. Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
4. Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
5. Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Actor In A Leading Role
1. Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
2. Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
3. Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
4. Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
5. Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice
Actress In A Supporting Role
1. Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
2. Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
3. Ariana Grande, Wicked
4. Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
5. Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
Actor In A Supporting Role
1. Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
2. Yura Borisov, Anora
3. Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
4. Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
5. Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
Writing (Original Screenplay)
1. The Brutalist
2. September 5
3. The Substance
4. A Real Pain
5. Anora
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
1. Conclave
2. Nickel Boys
3. A Complete Unknown
4. Emilia Pérez
5. Sing Sing
International Feature Film
Brazil, I’m Still Here
Denmark, The Girl With The Needle
France, Emilia Pérez
Germany, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig
Latvia, Flow
Animated Feature Film
1. Flow
2. The Wild Robot
3. Inside Out 2
4. Memoir Of A Snail
5. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Documentary Feature Film
1. Sugarcane
2. Black Box Diaries
3. No Other Land
4. Porcelain War
5. Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat
Cinematography
1. The Brutalist
2. Nosferatu
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Emilia Pérez
5. Maria
Film Editing
1. Anora
2. Emilia Pérez
3. The Brutalist
4. Conclave
5. Wicked
Music (Original Score)
1. The Brutalist, Daniel Blumberg
2. Conclave, Volker Bertelmann
3. Emilia Pérez, Clément Ducol And Camille,
4. Wicked, John Powell And Stephen Schwartz
5. The Wild Robot, Kris Bowers
Production Design
1. The Brutalist
2. Nosferatu
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Conclave
5. Wicked
Costume Design
1. Wicked
2. A Complete Unknown
3. Conclave
4. Gladiator Ii
5. Nosferatu
Sound
1. Wicked, Simon Hayes
2. A Complete Unknown
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Emilia Pérez
5. The Wild Robot
Makeup And Hairstyling
1. The Substance
2. A Different Man
3. Emilia Pérez
4. Nosferatu
5. Wicked
Visual Effects
1. Dune: Part Two
2. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
3. Alien: Romulus
4. Better Man
5. Wicked
Live Action Short Film
1. I’m Not A Robot
2. Anuja
3. A Lien
4. The Last Ranger
5. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
Animated Short Film
1. Wander To Wonder
2. Beautiful Men
3. In The Shadow Of The Cypress
4. Magic Candies
5. Yuck!
Documentary Short Film
1. Incident
2. Death By Numbers
3. I Am Ready, Warden
4. Instruments Of A Beating Heart
5. The Only Girl In The Orchestra
Music (Original Song)
1. El Mal, From Emilia Pérez
2. The Journey, From The Six Triple Eight
3. Like A Bird, From Sing Sing
4. Mi Camino, From Emilia Pérez
5. Never Too Late, From Elton John: Never Too Late