Oscar Predictions: 28 Years Later

28 Days Later from Danny Boyle reinvigorated its genre 22 years ago with 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later also generating solid reviews. Now Boyle is back in the director’s seat this Friday with 28 Years Later and word-of-mouth is encouraging once again. It’s not often you see soulful and rich used to describe this type of feature and that’s the case here. The post-apocalyptic threequel stars Jodie Comer, Aaron-Taylor Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, and Ralph Fiennes.

Some critics are praising this as a zombie flick classic with 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78 Metacritic. That is currently the best RT score of the trilogy. Boyle, an Oscar winner for 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, reunites with screenwriter Alex Garland (now a successful filmmaker who penned Academy nominated Ex Machina).

Since both gentlemen have been in the awards mix since their 28 Days collaboration over two decades ago, could Academy voters take a look at this? I doubt they will for Best Picture or other top of the line races. It’s not an impossibility, but one hindrance could be Ryan Coogler’s vampiric Sinners from earlier this year. That horror title seems destined for BP and directorial nods.

I do wonder if 28 Years could make a play in Makeup & Hairstyling. That might be its best shot for the franchise entering the Academy’s consciousness. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

Oscar Predictions: The Life of Chuck (Take 2)

In September of last year, Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck was a surprise winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. Yet it’s the Cannes Film Festival that may dash Chuck‘s hopes for awards love at the 98th Academy Awards.

Allow me to explain. The People’s Choice Award at TIFF has, for nearly two decades, been one of the more reliable indicators of an eventual Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. How much so? 15 of the last 16 Choice recipients achieved a BP mention including winners Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and Nomadland. The current streak of PCA’s to BP nominees stands at 12 in a row. In 2023, American Fiction instantly became an Academy player after the People’s prize and it resulted in five nominations.

However, distributor Neon did an unexpected thing after Chuck took the Toronto prize. They chose not to release the picture in calendar year 2024 and dated it for 2025. The sci-fi drama based on a 2020 Stephen King novella arrives in limited release on June 6th with a nationwide expansion the following week. Tom Hiddleston leads a cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, and Mark Hamill.

Leaving a nine month gap between the TIFF publicity and its release date was a gamble. At Cannes, which concluded just days ago, Neon went on a spending spree. The distributor bought up the rights to Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi as well as Grand Prix taker Sentimental Value from Joachim Trier and acclaimed Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent. Conventional wisdom is that Value has already reserved a slot among the ten Oscar BP contenders. Accident and Agent could also factor into the competition.

Needless to say, that leaves Neon in the mode of picking and choosing their favorites. Unless Chuck becomes a sizable sleeper hit at the box office (which seems questionable), Neon may opt to put their full weight behind their international films. Last year when they delayed Chuck, they went all in on Sean Baker’s Anora and that obviously paid off with victories in Picture, Director, Actress (Mikey Madison), and Original Screenplay.

I’ve had Chuck in my 10 predicted BP nominees for the last several weeks, including my latest update from seven days ago. When I publish my updated predictions next weekend, I suspect it will drop out. I do think it stands a solid shot at Adapted Screenplay and maybe Mark Hamill in Supporting Actor. However, Neon’s fortunes at Cannes seem to have diminished Chuck‘s exposure a few months down the line. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

Oscars: The Case of American Fiction

As we do every year on this here 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.

I will begin with the ten BP contenders and then alternate alphabetically between the hopefuls in the other five big races. Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction kicks it off!

The Case for American Fiction:

The awards buzz for Hustle went into high gear when it won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. That prize has also been bestowed to BP victors American Beauty, Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and Nomadland. The satire has been nominated for BP at Critics Choice and the Golden Globes and it exceeded expectations with 5 totals noms: Jeffrey Wright in Actor, Sterling K. Brown for Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score being the others.

The Case Against American Fiction:

It hasn’t won any of the previous BP derbies. Despite the five mentions, it missed out in key BP winning races like Director and Film Editing.

The Verdict:

American Beauty should still be the most recent BP recipient beginning the word American. Fiction‘s best hope for a statue is in the seemingly wide open Adapted Screenplay category where it emerged victorious at Critics Choice.

My Case Of posts will continue with Anatomy of a Fall…

NBR Shoots for the Moon

Just as the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) honored Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon as their best of 2023, the National Board of Review followed suit today. Like the Big Apple’s group, it’s not one of the more predictive precursors for Oscar glory. However, there are plenty of nominees solidifying themselves for at least making the cut with each victory.

That logic definitely applies to Killers, which took Best Film, Director, and Actress (Lily Gladstone). It’s pretty much of a lock for inclusion in the Academy’s Best Picture 10. Yet a win is far from guaranteed. I currently have it behind Oppenheimer. The last NBR Film recipient that took BP at the Oscars is 2018’s Green Book. Before that it was 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire.

The other big winner at NBR is The Holdovers. It’s the pick for Actor (Paul Giamatti), Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and Original Screenplay. I’m really beginning to think Randolph is a serious threat to be the gold statue Supporting Actress selection (even though I’ve had her ranked second behind Danielle Brooks from The Color Purple).

Mark Ruffalo is your Supporting Actor for Poor Things while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse took the Animated prize, Anatomy of a Fall (ineligible for International Feature Film at the Oscars) is the International Film here, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie won Documentary.

It’s actually rare that all four acting recipients from NBR make the Oscar quintet in their respective races. I will say that Gladstone, Giamatti, Randolph, and Ruffalo all stand excellent chances.

Lastly, this Board selects other Top Films beyond their #1. This year the others are (alphabetically) Barbie, The Boy and the Heron, Ferrari, The Holdovers, The Iron Claw, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, and Poor Things. There’s recently been about a 6-7 match correlation with Oscar. Killers is almost certainly in. The same can be said (with some of these more certain that others) for Barbie, The Holdovers, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, and Poor Things. Heron and Ferrari are, at best, long shots. The Iron Claw is worth keeping an eye on for a late push.

And please continue to keep an eye on the blog for all speculation as Oscar nominations approach!

Toronto Gets Real About American Fiction

The Toronto Film Festival has wrapped and our friends up north have bestowed their People Choice’s Award along with the first and second runner-ups. Just how important is this prize in correlating to a Best Picture spot at the Oscars? Let’s go to the numbers and they’re telling.

Of the last 15 People’s Choice winners from TIFF, 14 received a BP nomination and 5 of them ultimately took the big prize: 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, 2010’s The King’s Speech, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, 2018’s Green Book, and 2020’s Nomadland.

When it comes to the 1st and 2nd runners-up, 10 of them in the past 15 cycles have received BP attention. That includes three winners in 2012’s Argo, 2015’s Spotlight, and 2019’s Parasite.

So… it’s a key harbinger to Academy attention. And that’s why it’s a tad surprising that Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut American Fiction is the pick. That’s not because it didn’t get great reviews (it’s at 96% via 24 write-ups on RT). It just snuck up on prognosticators like myself with the TIFF love (there’s not even a trailer yet). The dramedy focused on race relations is now undeniably a factor in awards discussions as it moves towards its November 3rd debut. Jeffrey Wright’s lead performance and the Adapted Screenplay are also in the mix for attention.

The first runner-up, unsurprisingly, is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (which many were picking to receive People’s Choice). For Payne, it’s looked at as a return to form after his underwhelming predecessor Downsizing in 2017. This 1970s set Christmas tale appears poised for possible nods in BP (joining earlier Payne efforts Sideways, The Descendants, and Nebraska) and Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and certainly Original Screenplay.

The Boy and the Heron is Hayao Miyazaki’s latest acclaimed animated feature which opened TIFF. It’s pretty much a given that this will contend in Best Animated Feature though it could be a tall order to overcome frontrunner Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Here are the facts: TIFF has boosted Fiction in a serious way. Keep an eye on the blog for further Oscar Predictions updates!

Best Picture 2008: The Expanded Ten

Earlier this summer, I completed a blog series on a particular piece of speculative Oscar history. From 2009 to the present, there has been anywhere from 8-10 Best Pictures nominees at the Academy Awards. The number has been set at 10 for the past couple of years and fluctuated previously. Before 2009, it was a quintet of films competing for the prize. I penned 14 posts making predictions on which five pics would have made the cut if it had stayed at that smaller number. **Click on that Oscar History tab on the blog to access all of them!

Beginning today… my speculation turns to the reverse. What if the Academy had always honored 10 motion pictures? From 1944-2008, there were always five vying for attention. For a completist view, there were five for the first two Oscars (1929 and 1930). We had eight in 1931. From 1932 to 1943, it was ten.

This series will project the other five that I believe would’ve gotten in beginning in 2008. In fact, it’s because of that year’s biggest grosser not being included that may have prompted the Academy to expand again in the first place. We’ll get there in just a minute.

We do, of course, know five of the ten and that would be the ones that were nominated. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire dominated the ceremony with ten nods and an impressive eight victories in Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Original Song, and Sound Mixing.

David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button received the most overall mentions with 13 and took home 3 (Art Direction, Makeup, Visual Effects).

Our other trio of contenders were Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (o for 5 in nominations), Gus Van Sant’s Milk (8 nods with Sean Penn winning Actor as well as an Original Screenplay statue), and Stephen Daldry’s The Reader (5 nominations with Kate Winslet taking Actress).

The 81st Academy Awards were a rare year when the five Picture hopefuls matched the five filmmakers nominated in Best Director. In other words, there are no clues there for additional BP pics for the purposes of this post.

Yet for the ones that could’ve made the dance in an expanded lineup, we do begin with 2008’s largest moneymaker and that’s Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. It did manage to score 8 mentions with Heath Ledger winning a posthumous Supporting Actor prize (in addition to Sound Editing gold). The fact that it didn’t break into BP was heavily criticized online and elsewhere. If there had been 10 pics up, that almost certainly wouldn’t have been the case.

I would say the same for Pixar’s Wall-E. When it went to 10 movies in 2009 and 2010, the studio’s Up and Toy Story 3 were in. The robotic adventure was the victor in Animated Feature and was nominated in five more races in Original Screenplay, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing. Like Knight, Wall-E is an easy pick.

For the 8th spot, I’m fairly confident in Doubt. John Patrick Shanley’s drama (based on his Pulitzer Prize winning play) saw four of its actors nominated and was up for Adapted Screenplay. That combo is enough to assume inclusion.

Then it gets complicated for the 9th and 10th slots and there’s a few possibilities to ponder. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler saw Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei up, but a screenplay miss makes me skeptical. Clint Eastwood’s Changeling had three noms (including Angelina Jolie in Actress), but drew mixed reviews. Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, despite taking the Golden Globe in Musical/Comedy, was only nominated for Penelope Cruz’s supporting turn (for which she won). Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges and Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky were both up for Original Screenplay and that race alone. There’s usually one or two screenplay nominees that are only up for that category. Iron Man was a gigantic hit which kicked off the MCU. I doubt the Academy would have honored two comic book adaptations. The Duchess won Costume Design and was nominated for its Art Direction. It also was greeted with a mixed critical response.

All of those titles, to one degree or another, are worthy of consideration for the last two spots. I’m going with an indie selection in Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River which was nominated for Actress (Melissa Leo) and Original Screenplay. Let’s call it 2008’s Winter’s Bone (which would make the 2010 BP ten).

Lastly, I’m naming Revolutionary Road from Sam Mendes. Despite it missing noms for stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, it received a Golden Globe nod in Drama and three Academy mentions for Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon), Art Direction, and Costume Design. That might have been just enough for #10.

So there you have it! That means my 2008 Best Picture expanded to ten is:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Doubt

Frost/Nixon

Frozen River

Milk

The Reader

Revolutionary Road

Slumdog Millionaire

Wall-E

I’ll have 2007 up for your reading pleasure soon!

AFI Top Ten Predictions 2022

The American Film Institute announces their top ten pictures of the year tomorrow and it’s usually a good indication of half or more of the eventual BP contenders at the Oscars.

Keep in mind that American product only is eligible for this particular group. Since this list began in 2000, the Academy’s BP recipient has only missed here five times. Four of those occasions were due to the whole country of origin thing – 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, 2010’s The King Speech, The Artist in 2011, and Parasite from 2019. The Departed in 2006 also didn’t make the cut. This means you shouldn’t expect Aftersun, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Banshees of Inisherin, Decision to Leave, or RRR to surface here.

So what will? The AFI ten and the Oscar ten had a solid match last year at 8. Tick, Tick… Boom! and The Tragedy of Macbeth were the AFI inclusions that didn’t make it with the Academy. They went with two features from outside the U.S. in Belfast and Drive My Car. In recent years, the match number is usually 6 or 7.

It’s not uncommon for AFI to pick blockbusters or animated fare that the Academy does not. Recent examples include Soul, Knives Out, Mary Poppins Returns, A Quiet Place, Wonder Woman, Zootopia, Inside Out, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Straight Outta Compton.

Let’s talk of the pics I have just missing the cut. It was hard to leave off Tár. If it fails to be named tomorrow, that would be two disappointing days in a row after it surprisingly missed the National Board of Review (NBR) list today. Same goes for She Said and The Whale while Till did make NBR. More popcorn flavored flicks like The Batman, Nope, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are all viable contenders.

We shall see if any of them get in. Avatar, Babylon, Elvis, Glass Onion, Pinocchio, and The Woman King all feel like pics that should make it here if they have any hope of making the Academy’s cut. It is rare for the Oscars to nominate a more mainstream title that AFI doesn’t.

I’ll have a recap up tomorrow with commentary and how I did!

AFI Top Predictions

Avatar: The Way of Water

Babylon

Elvis

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Fabelmans

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Top Gun: Maverick

The Woman King

Women Talking

Toronto Crowns The Fabelmans

Just how indicative is nabbing the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival of eventually receiving a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars? Let’s go the numbers: 13 out of the last 14 have and that includes the past 10 in a row. 2011’s Where Do We Go Now? is the only outlier since 2008. Of those 13 films, five would go on to win the Academy’s top prize (Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, Nomadland).

So it was with anticipation that awards prognosticators like yours truly awaited the bestowment of the Canadian fest’s biggest award. True to form, it went to a movie widely anticipated to be in the BP mix: Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. The legendary director’s most personal work to date was his first journey up north and he was rewarded handsomely for it. When I did my latest round of predictions on Friday, I had The Fabelmans listed in first place and this helps solidify that decision. Don’t get me wrong – this doesn’t mean the BP race is over (far from it). Yet there’s no doubt that The Fabelmans has positioned itself as a major threat to take the top prize.

That’s not all because TIFF also names a first and second runner-up. And those picks are frequent indicators of what will play down the road. Over the previous decade, nine of the 20 runner-ups have gotten BP nods. This includes victorious ones like Argo, Spotlight, and Parasite and nominees such as Call Me by Your Name, Roma, and The Power of the Dog.

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is first runner-up for 2022. It played to mostly raves at TIFF and I have it ranked 4th currently in the BP derby. Second runner-up was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The top 3 placement is something predecessor Knives Out didn’t manage 3 years ago. My estimates two days back put Onion on the outside looking in at 14th (though I did project for it for an Adapted Screenplay nod). My hesitation to put it in is this: just how many sequels could that Academy include in their group of 10? I’ve got Top Gun: Maverick already there (at 6th) and we still need to see Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (whose predecessors were both BP hopefuls). However, at this point, Netflix may choose to go all in on Onion being their most likely contender.

There are a couple films in particular that could’ve benefited from a top 3 showing today. I think immediately of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. I still anticipate both to be in the hunt (I’ve got them ranked 5th and 7th respectively).

Bottom line: The Fabelmans had itself a meaningful premiere in Toronto that currently puts Spielberg’s latest in the Oscar driver’s seat.

Best Picture 2010: The Final Five

After the 2008 Oscars, the Academy decided to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. This rule would hold for 2009 and 2010 and then it shifted from anywhere between 5 and 10 (where it was typically 8 or 9). As of 2021, we’re back to a set 10.

Yet what if that had never happened? What if only five nominees from the last decade plus made the cut? My initial writeup where I predicted which five from 2009 would have done so can be found here:

Best Picture 2009: The Final Five

Now we move to 2010. It was a year in which Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech led the evening with 11 nominations. It would win four – Director, Colin Firth for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, and the big prize Picture. So there’s 20% of our theoretical lineup.

As for the others, let’s take them one by one and I’ll give my thoughts on whether each would’ve made that other 80% of the quintet.

127 Hours

In 2010, Danny Boyle was coming off 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire. That little film that could cleaned up on Oscar night with 8 trophies including Picture. This survival drama with James Franco landed six nods. It won zero, but earned recognition in the Best Pic prerequisites that count like screenplay and editing.