GOLD STANDARD
The animated feature, documentary and foreign-language film categories all sport heavy favorites. Will they win? A look at the front-runners in those races and what could catch them.
Animated, foreign-language and doc features.
“Anomalisa” “Boy and the World” “Inside Out” “Shaun the Sheep Movie” “When Marnie Was There”
And the winner is: “Inside Out” stands as Pixar’s most celebrated movie since “Toy Story 3,” a return to form for a studio that has won this Oscar seven times, most recently for 2012’s “Brave.” To put that into perspective: If “Inside Out” wins this year as expected, Pixar will have as many Oscars in this category as every other animation studio combined.
With a 94 score on movie review aggregator Metacritc, Pixar’s inventive, deeply moving look at the evolving emotions inside an 11-year-old girl rated as the second-best-reviewed movie of 2015, trailing only “Carol.” Early on, I thought it might have a shot at a best picture nomination too. But academy voters are largely disinclined to vote for an animated movie here, believing the genre has its own category and that should be sufficient. That feels patronizing — and limiting.
Unless: This is the strongest group of nominees since 2009’s all-star slate, led by “Up.” The two GKIDS movies — Brazil’s chaotic, colorful treatise about (among other things) economic injustice “Boy and the World” and the lavish “Marnie,” from the celebrated Studio Ghibli — are well worth finding. And the warm, funny “Shaun the Sheep” seems ripe for discovery too as it managed only $19 million at the box office.
“Anomalisa,” Charlie Kaufman’s latest tale of existential angst, managed to wrest a few critics group prizes away from “Inside Out.” Had Kaufman snagged a screenplay nomination, it might have posed a challenge. But the only way “Inside Out” will lose is if too many grown men resent being seen crying in public.