Leading the race Phoenix, Zellweger frontrunners for Academy Awards
This year the top actor and actress Oscar races are a virtual foregone conclusion. In the actor race, Joaquin Phoenix of “Joker,” a film with the highest number of nominations (11), is set to bring home the gold almost without doubt after previous wins at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. A four-time nominee (“The Master,” “Walk the Line,” “Gladiator”), fan-favorite Phoenix delivers a riveting performance in Todd Phillips’ totally offbeat superhero origin film set in a modernday Gotham, where young men such as Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, who has as much in common with Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” as with any DC Comics, face a future that is at best bleak.
Antonio Banderas delivers the performance of his career as the stand-in for writer-director and screen alter ego Pedro Almodovar in the semi-autobiographical drama “Pain and Glory.” First-time nominee Banderas will have to be content with last spring’s Cannes best actor prize. Previous best actor winner Leonardo
Di Caprio (“The Revenant”), a seven-time nominee, got the nod for his comic turn as semi-washed-up actor Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Two-time Oscar nominee Adam Driver (“BlacKkKlansman” and the big-screen’s Kylo Ren) secured his first best actor nomination for his superlative turn as an unhappily divorcing film and theater director trying to make it as a bi-coastal father in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.” The film received a total of six nominations.
Multiple award winner and first-time Academy Award nominee Jonathan Pryce, best known to most filmgoers for his work with the great Terry Gilliam, including “Brazil,” was nominated for his witty and amusing turn as Pope Francis in the otherwise entirely overrated “The Two Popes.”
Golden Globe, SAG winner and the screen’s immortal Bridget Jones Renee Zellweger, who spent several years in movie jail after cosmetic surgery, is a previous winner for supporting actress for “Cold Mountain” and a four-time nominee. She is back with a vengeance with her almost universally praised performance in the title role in “Judy.” Judy Garland is a beloved figure in the film industry, and Zellweger’s uncanny balance of imitation and inspiration, along with her own singing, is utterly compelling.
First-time nominee Cynthia Erivo is also nominated for best song. With her powerful breakout turn as Harriet Tubman in the biopic “Harriet,” Erivo, a vocalist from London, England, is at the very start of her screen acting career. Scarlett Johansson, who is also nominated for supporting actress for “Jojo Rabbit,” has not received the credit she is due for her collaboration with the aforementioned and similarly nominated Adam Driver as the equally distraught actress wife in “Marriage Story.”
A four-time nominee at age 25, Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement,” “Brooklyn,” “Lady Bird,” currently “Little Women”) is the emotional anchor of Greta Gerwig’s masterful and moving adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s never more relevant “Little Women.” Previous winner (“Monster”) and three-time nominee (“North Country”) Charlize Theron was nominated for her chilling portrayal of real-life Fox news superstar Megyn Kelly in the Jay Roach-directed expose “Bombshell.”
I don’t think we’re going to see any upsets in these races. But place your bets.
The Academy Awards airs Feb. 9 on ABC.