As we do every year on the blog, Oscar nominations lead to my Case Of series. What are they? Glad you asked. These are 35 posts covering the nominees for Picture, Director, and the four acting contests. For each one, I give you the case for the movie/director/actor winning and the case against it with a verdict tidying it up. It’s like a trial, but no one goes to prison.
It begins with the ten BP contenders and then alternates alphabetically between the hopefuls in the other five races. We have arrived at the seventh movie in the big dance and that’s The Secret Agent from Kleber Mendonça Filho. If you missed my posts covering the previous nominees, you can find them here:
The Case for The Secret Agent:
Filho’s Brazilian political thriller has become a late bloomer in awards season even though it picked up traction last summer at Cannes where it won Actor (Wagner Moura) and director prizes. Agent was still seen as behind Sentimental Value and It Was Just An Accident in International Feature Film, but then it took the foreign prizes at Critics Choice and the Globes. In addition to BP and the International race, Moura is in for lead Actor and it is up for Casting.
The Case Against The Secret Agent:
Note that in the Case for, I never spoke of it being in serious contention for Best Picture. The four nominations are tied for the lowest of the BP hopefuls with three others. It missed key nods in director and screenplay and other tech categories that usually correlate to a victory. Agent underperformed at BAFTA with only two nominations.
The Verdict:
With Value having an impressive Oscar morning, Agent could fall short in IFF and come up empty-handed at the ceremony. It is not a threat for BP.
My Case Of posts will continue with Sentimental Value…
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