It’s good to be back. I scaled things back last year, but I’m ready to resume my tradition of overly in-depth Oscar predictions for each category. The guilds, BAFTAs, critics, and supposedly Golden Globes have all made their picks. Now it’s my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part-Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.
Previously:
Introduction & International Feature
Costume Design & Makeup and Hairstyling
Glossary
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
SAG - Screen Actors Guild Award
(In Order of Likelihood)
Will Smith (King Richard)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Winner
SAG - Lead Actor – Winner
BAFTA - Lead Actor - Winner
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor – Nominee
Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick…Boom!)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Comedy - Winner
SAG - Lead Actor – Nominee
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor – Nominee
Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor – Nominee
In the last 20 years, all three precursors have agreed on a winner 12 times. 11 of those times the actor also won the Oscar. The one exception was 2001, when Russel Crowe won everything for Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind before losing the Oscar to Denzel in Training Day. That was a very special circumstance though. Crowe had just won a surprise Oscar the year before for Gladiator. This was only a few years after Tom Hanks’ back-to-back, so the Academy was in no hurry to do it again. In addition to that, Denzel was long overdue a second Oscar. The narrative was all in place for an upset. That’s not happening this year. Will Smith is a beloved movie star who is hungry for this. There is no sense of momentum moving away from him. And don’t point to the Chadwick Boseman loss last year. He lost the BAFTA. There was an indication that there was dissent. A Will Smith loss would be a level of magnitude more surprising than Boseman.
I’m ranking and not just picking a winner, so I have to keep going, even though I feel confident about Smith. I think the upset pick is neck-and-neck between Cumberbatch and Garfield. Garfield has major “theater kid” energy that he’s bringing it to this campaign trail. It hurts both Cumberbatch and Garfield that the Brits couldn’t land BAFTA nominations. I’m leaning Cumberbatch off the power of, er, The Power of the Dog. Denzel was part of the last Lead Actor upset. He's getting a third win eventually. The narrative just never built for The Tragedy of Macbeth though. And Being the Ricardos was only embraced by the actors branch in the nomination phase. That doesn’t bode well for Bardem.
(In Order of Likelihood)
Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actress - Winner
Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actress - Nominee
Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Winner
SAG - Lead Actress - Nominee
Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers)
Kristen Stewart (Spencer)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Nominee
Good god. If I could skip a pick, it would be Lead Actress. This is an insane spread of wins, snubs, and narratives. The BAFTAs snubbed every single Oscar nominee. I went back to 1994 and that hadn’t happened before. Not even in those 90s years when the BAFTA were less of an Oscar precursor. The most they’ve disagreed in that time was 2003, when only one Oscar nominee was in the BAFTA field. And that’s only because the Oscar winner, Charlize Theron (Monster), wasn’t eligible for the BAFTA until the next year. So, no BAFTA data is a real kick in the nuts. Somewhat surprisingly, the Golden Globes are a better predictor of the Oscar in the last 20 years than the SAG award. Globes have matched 18 times and SAG have match just 15 times*. Two important things working against the Globes though. 1) They disagreed with last year’s winner. 2) No one is paying attention to the Globes this year. Oh, and a third thing: Being the Ricardos is a very Golden Globes movie.
*Both the SAG and Globe count includes Kate Winslet for The Reader. She won the Supporting Actress awards for those bodies before winning the Lead Actress Oscar.
So, I’m giving each nominee at least a 10% chance to win, which is pretty high. Penelope Cruz is more of a critical favorite that snuck through. The Academy has gotten more international in the last few years, but I have yet to see evidence that they could push a nominee not predicted elsewhere to a win. And please don’t point to Marion Cotillard winning for La Vie en Rose. She had all sorts of wins and nominations that year. She was way more in the discussion than Cruz. Kristen Stewart would’ve been the favorite had Spencer been received better. She’s hit the awards circuit hard, but this is more of a “Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman” nomination in my book.
Really, I’m down to those last three, and the margins are very thin. The support for Nicole Kidman is very strange. She’s a favorite of Oscar obsessives but not for this movie. I don’t mean this is harsh as it sounds, but this would be a The Iron Lady win for Nicole Kidman. She’d be winning for her work the last 20 years, not for Being the Ricardos. And that’s a real possibility. The Globe win means less than most years, but it isn’t meaningless. Weirdly, I think that AMC ad may even help her. I really think the fading on Being the Ricardos will hurt her too much. Olivia Colman is dangerous. Lead Actress winners really don’t have to be in Best Picture favorites. The Lost Daughter is dominated by her. She’s clearly liked by the voters. I don’t like people pointing to her win for The Favourite as a reason to expect a win here. People remember that as more of a surprise win than it was. Sure, the narrative was surrounding Glen Close finally getting her Oscar for The Wife. No one saw The Wife though, and Close and Colman actually split the precursor awards. Close got the Drama Globe and SAG. Colman got the Comedy Globe and BAFTA. Meanwhile, Colman didn’t even get a BAFTA nomination for The Lost Daughter this year. Examples are a little hard to come by, but if you are a Brit who loses the BAFTA, you probably aren’t winning the Oscar. No nomination is especially damning for her. And it’s not an eligibility window issue, because Jessie Buckley did get a BAFTA nod for The Lost Daughter.
That leaves Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. She got the SAG award which feels like this year’s strongest precursor. I feel like everyone is rooting for Chastain. This is only her third Oscar nomination but it feels like her 6th. She dominates that movie, and it fits with the trend of Lead Actress winners in character studies (Renee Zelwegger in Judy, Brie Larson in Room, Julianne Moore in Still Alice, Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine). No one has momentum in the Best Actress race this year, so I’ll lean on the person who makes the most sense in a vacuum. The popular veteran who works the circuit, is waiting on that first Oscar, and is in a movie that she dominates.
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