2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Five

After a write up consisting of four different parts, it is time to talk about the one category that is always fun to debate about: Best Picture! 

So who do I think is going to win the big prize? Let's not start with a long paragraph this time. Let's just get right to it! 

BEST PICTURE

American Sniper 

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 

Boyhood

The Grand Budapest Hotel 

The Imitation Game

Selma 

The Theory of Everything

Whiplash 

The thing that jumps out for me on this list is that frankly, this really is a really great list of films this year. There is no one film that is in here that makes everyone groan. I could make an argument for Foxcatcher being included on this list but other than that. I have no problems with the nominees listed here. 

So to start, who has no chance of winning? I think that honor has to go to The Theory of Everything. It's a fine movie no doubt. Well acted with a great subject matter. But it's the kind of biographic film you see at the Oscars every year and the film just doesn't really scream "BEST PICTURE!" Maybe Best Actor, but not Best Picture. The same I think goes for the other British film on this list, The Imitation Game. It is really odd with this movie because on paper, you think this would be an easy win for Best Picture. It's a prestige British Film. It is on the subject of World War II. You have two big name actors in Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It is also about a gay man being persecuted which is a big hot topic issue going on right now. But it seems that many people think that it is one of those movies that is really good, just not best of the year good.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a movie that a lot of people really do love though. It's hard to find someone that hated it. However it has been put in what I call "the Moulin Rouge spot." It is going to win a good number of technical awards and be a film that many people admire for years, it is just not going to win Best Picture. The same thing can be said for Selma. This film will be remembered for years to come. It is an important historical film. Many people are upset that it will not win Best Picture and they have every right to be that way. But it is also going to join a list of amazing films that have also not won Best Picture. Seriously, go to Google and look up the list of nomintated movies that have lost Best Picture. It's not a bad list to be on. 

Now if I had my pick, Whiplash would win Best Picture no questions asked. It is the first movie that I can think of in years that I had a visceral reaction to. The movie moves you with the story, the acting, and especially the music. But the fact that the movie is such a gut punch at times I think is what's going to scare off the voters. It happens a lot. Why else could you explain why similar gut punch films like Raging Bull and Brokeback Mountain lost out on Best Picture to the more accessible to watch films like Ordinary People and Crash? 

Oddly enough, I think this also will apply to American Sniper. True it is a dark horse pick. It is the most popular film nominated. As of this writing, the film has made $308 Million Dollars at the U.S. box office. That is not a number to sneeze at. Also, it is directed by past Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood. But I have a feeling that even though it is raking in piles of money, the Academy is not going to give it Best Picture. You have a lot of liberal members in the voting branch and they really will not respond to the right leaning ways of the main character of the film. Also, you know they have to worry about a Crash-like backlash happening again if they let the movie win Best picture. 

So that leaves two films. The first one being Boyhood. For awhile, it was the presumed front runner. It has popped up on a slew of best of the year lists. Richard Linklater is a very popular director. It was filmed over a 12 year period, which definitely an interesting story to voters watching the film. It's also well acted which had to be a hard thing to continue to do over the years of filming. But the one thing that I think it is a determent to the movie is that it came out in the summer. Thus, people have had a long time to watch in theaters, watch it on DVD or on their computers. That is enough time for one movie to be picked apart and talked about by many people. So much so, that complaints about the film being gimmicky have started to surface. 

Because of that, I believe that Birdman is going to be the film that wins Best Picture. That is not a bad thing in the least. I love the movie. It's well acted with a career defining performance by Michael Keaton. It is well directed. It also has great camera work by Emmanuel Lubezki, who is hot at the moment coming off of a win for the similar one-take film, Gravity. Also if there is one type of film that the Academy in recent years have loved to honor, it is films that celebrate the world of cinema and the theater and the power they have over people. The Artist and Argo are two recent examples that come to mind. Expect Birdman to soar up into the air and join the list of Best Picture winners. 

Should Win: 

Whiplash 

Will Win: 

 

Enjoy the show this Sunday!

- Hash

2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Four

Best Director. A controversial category due to who is not nominated.


The fact that Ava Duvernay is not nominated for Best Director is criminal. Selma is an amazing film that was snubbed in many categories but this is where the snubbing of the film hurt the most. The Academy had a chance to make history by giving a directing nomination to a black woman for the first time. Instead, it played it safe with a couple of the choices here.

At least there are other people in this category who deserved to be here for films that are great. Also there is some curve balls being thrown in over who is going to win.

So with that, let's look at the category:

BEST DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel

 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 

Richard Linklater - Boyhood

Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher 

Morten Tyldum - The Imitation Game 

Odd thing about this category is that you get the feeling of deja vu creeping up this year. In 2010, it was assumed that David Fincher was going to win Best Director for The Social Network. He won all the early critics awards. The movie was popular with critics and audiences. But slowly but surely, The King's Speech started winning major awards. Come Oscar night, it beat Social Network for best picture and director. In 2015, that same thing is going to happen again. This time, it is Richard Linklater who is going to end up losing. For most of the year, he has been the frontrunner to win best director. Boyhood and the way the film was shot over a 12 year period has been discussed at length since the film came out this summer. It is impressive for sure, especially since Linklater was able to keep the performances that good for that length of time. But lately, complaints about the story have popped up. Is it involving enough? Is the movie too slow? Is the movie too gimmicky? The film has been out for so long that people have begun to look for a better, sexier option and that option appears to be Birdman and it's director. Inarritu has been a favorite of the Academy for years. 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful have all gotten acclaim over the years but he has yet to win any awards for his work. That ends this Sunday. The competition otherwise doesn't look like it could knock either one of these two gentlemen out. Wes Anderson is finally getting some long overdue acclaim from the Academy for Grand Budapest, but the film seems to be more likely to win the technical awards than any of the major awards. Morten Tyldum is the newcomer in this group but his work on Imitation Game was good but nothing outstanding. (I would have switched his spot out with DuVernay and let her get the nomination over him.) And Bennett Miller continues to impress with his third directing nomination in a row for Foxcatcher but the coldness of the story seems to have turned people off. When it comes down to it, Academy members will give Innarritu the Oscar for the way he guided Birdman and got the great performances out of the film. It doesn't speak bad to Linklater, he is just losing to the sexier option at the moment. As it showed before in 2010, it happens sometimes. 

Should Win and Will Win: 

2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Three

For part three of my look at the Academy Awards, I am looking the at the races for Best Actor and Actress. One of these races has become very predictable while the other one seemed predictable for awhile but has now become a two person race.

It's funny with both of these categories you kinda get a microcosm of how the Oscars categories go most years. It's either a fun, unpredictable race that could go either way or it becomes a race where the winner is predictable and we get to watch as they act super surprise that they won the award.

But both the races this year feature actors that audiences have loved and respected over the years. You get the sense from both of these categories that whoever wins their respective awards that it is going to be long overdue for them.

So with that in mind, let's look at the categories:

BEST ACTRESS

Marion Cotillard - Two Days, One Night

Felicity Jones - The Theory of Everything

Julianne Moore - Still Alice 

Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl 

Reese Witherspoon - Wild 

For awhile, this category looked like it could be one of the most unpredictable ones to pick in a long while. Then Julianne Moore started winning every major acting award this season and slowly it has started to feel like it is Moore's to lose. To be honest, it would not be a bad thing at all. Moore is a very respected actor. The list of classic film's she has been in is endless. She also has been nominated four times and has not won yet. This very much is in her favor. Marion Cotillard's nomination was a nice surprise for her work in Two Days, One Night but she is the film's only nomination. Felicity Jones really did great work in The Theory of Everything. It is the kind of performance that announces that someone has arrived on the scene. But her co-star Eddie Redmayne is getting most of the awards  attention, so she will have to settle for the nomination. Early in the year, it seemed like Rosamund Pike would be a contender for her stellar work in Gone Girl. But she is the film's only nomination and as noted before, some members of the academy really hated the movie. Reese Witherspoon on the other hand gave her best performance in years in Wild. Any other year, she would win this easily. It is just a subtle, brilliant performance. But two things stop her. One, the movie has not really caught on with the public in the way a lot of people thought it would. And she has won an Oscar before in 2005 for Walk the Line. Take that into account, and becomes clear that Julianne Moore is going to be walking up to the podium for her first Oscar trophy.

Should Win and Will Win: 

BEST ACTOR

Steve Carell - Foxcatcher

Bradley Cooper - American Sniper 

Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game 

Michael Keaton - Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything 

This is the fun category of the night. Everyone in this category is very much liked by audiences and critics alike. With that being said, I am going to admit to a personal preference here: I want Michael Keaton to win this. I have been a big fan of Keaton's for years. Not just Batman, but with his work in Beetlejuice, Clean and Sober, Pacific Heights, Night Shift, The Nice Guys, etc. He has been an actor who for years as been able to go between comedy and drama very easily. That is not an easy thing to do at all and to see him get noticed finally is a great thing. Is it enough to win though? Well the competition is stiff. Bradley Cooper has the advantage of being in the most popular film in the category, American Sniper. His portrayal of military sniper Chris Kyle is a heartfelt and emotional performance. It is also impressive that this is Cooper's third year in a row of getting an Oscar nomination. But for as huge as the film as been, so has been the controversy over the facts and the politics of the film. Academy voters will probably be too scared of giving Cooper an Oscar here. Steve Carell was also impressive in Foxcatcher as John Du Pont. But the character is very unlikable and considering who Carell is up against in this category, that hurts. Benedict Cumberbatch is the superstar of this category for sure. Ladies love him and he has been in several popular movies and television shows over the past couple of years. His work in The Imitation Game as the gay mathematician Alan Turning is usually the type of part that wins Oscars easily. But for some reason, the film has not caught on in a way that one would think that it would. And then there is Eddie Redmayne. The performance he gives in The Theory of Everything is an extraordinarily physical one. He really makes you feel the effects that ALS has on Professor Stephen Hawking. It is not cheesy in the slightest bit. Redmayne has a good chance to win, but there is also a feeling that his performance is the type that we have seen from past winners before. Keaton has the benefit of being in a movie that lived or died on his performance. Birdman was a unique film in that it went from comedy to drama and back in the blink of an eye. Keaton handled all of this with ease at times. Because he has the harder part to play, Keaton will win Best Actor. Let's just hope we can get a Beettlejuice sequel because of this now! 

Should Win and Will Win: 

That is it for the post. Tomorrow, I will have a look at Best Director and then Friday, a look at the Best Picture race. 

- Hash