And the winner is…
What’s in store at the Oscars this Sunday
The fun side-effect of the ongoing Oscars diversity push is that the awards themselves have become a lot harder to predict. The Academy’s two most recent membership intakes might not have shifted the needle very far in statistical terms: voters are now 28per cent female, up from 27per cent, and 13per cent non-white, up from 12per cent.
But if this year’s nominations themselves are anything to go by, the injection of new talent seems to have triggered a root-and-branch change of attitude as to what an Oscar film can be.
Stirring period dramas like Dunkirk, Darkest Hour and The Post obviously qualify: they always have done, and likely always will. But nestled alongside them are films as differently distinctive as The Shape of Water, Get Out and Lady Bird – and also
Call Me by Your Name and Phantom Thread, two riddling, intricate, critical favourites that could have easily been given a tokenistic nod or drowned out altogether, but instead have 10 nominations between them.
The 2018 Best Picture category isn’t just a list of great films: it’s a balanced diet. And beyond the four acting categories, which the present state of the race suggests are all but locked, it feels trickier than usual to secondguess the Academy’s picks.
If Moonlight’s glorious surprise triumph last year taught us anything, it’s that nothing should be considered off the menu.
BEST PICTURE
Will win: Get Out
Should win: Dunkirk Shoulda been a contender:
The Lost City of Z
The obvious guess would be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing , Missouri:
Martin Mcdonagh’s black comedy has been cleaning up everywhere else, and its morally knobbly, darkly ambiguous tale of a woman’s crusade against her police department feels of the moment.
But Get Out is the wild card: if Jordan Peele’s brilliantly acted and crafted satirical thriller can go this far a year after release, why not the whole hog?
Until the Baftas, Dunkirk still felt like it could deliver that kind of upset too, but since it couldn’t rally enough British Academy members to vote it to Best Film, its chances on the other side of the Atlantic feel suddenly remote.
BEST DIRECTOR
Will win: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water Should win: Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk Shoulda been a contender: Darren Aronofsky, Mother!
I find it hard to work out what more Christopher Nolan could have possibly done in order to deserve every Best Director award going this year, but awards voters apparently aren’t quite as juiced up on Dunkirk as this critic. Even so, there’s no possible bad result in this category: from two wildly promising newcomers to three strapping prime-of-lifers, all fully deserve the kudos. But the momentum is all with Guillermo del Toro, a first-time nominee but a directing veteran of
25 years, whose appearance in this category is long overdue.
BEST ACTOR
Will win: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour Should win: Daniel Day-lewis, Phantom Thread
Shoulda been a contender: Michael
Fassbender, Alien: Covenant
Even with so many of the precursor awards marching in lockstep – the Baftas, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors’ Guild awards, more – an upset in the acting categories isn’t out of the question. Timothée Chalamet or Daniel Kaluuya pipping Gary Oldman to the post still seems possible, somehow – though Oldman’s performance is one that ticks every traditional Oscar box. It’s physically transformative, rhetorically barnstorming, and is given by an actor whose “time has come” – though if you ask me, it actually came six years ago when he was nominated for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and lost to Jean Dujardin from The Artist.
BEST ACTRESS
Will win: Frances Mcdormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Should win: Frances Mcdormand, Three Billboards
Shoulda been a contender: Kristen Stewart, Personal Shopper
And it may be time again for Frances Mcdormand – horrifyingly, her Best Actress win for Fargo was 21 years ago, and her work in Three Billboards is unquestionably her most widely acclaimed and unignorable since. Besotted as I am with Sally Hawkins’s mute cleaning lady in The Shape of Water, it can be hard to unpick from the gauzy fabric of the film itself, whereas Mcdormand’s mother on the warpath is a standalone, self-contained delight.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Will win: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Should win: Willem Dafoe,
The Florida Project Shoulda been a contender:
John Boyega, Detroit
Her co-stars, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson, probably deserve their nominations just for keeping up. Though I’m personally fonder of Harrelson’s sardonic police chief, Rockwell’s grotesquely racist and vindictive deputy steals his thunder. A stewing critical controversy over whether or not the film ends up redeeming this revolting character hasn’t proven a stumbling block.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Will win: Allison Janney, I, Tonya Should win: Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Shoulda been a contender: Sienna
Miller, The Lost City of Z
Monstrousness reigns supreme – this time in the form of Allison Janney’s chain-smoking sport-mum-fromhell, a fun if limited performance that seems to have drowned out the richer work of some rivals. Foremost among them is Lesley Manville, who’s stealthily hilarious, delivering each line like she’s dropping an ice cube down the back of your shirt.