Oscar Predictions: Introduction and Best Documentary Feature

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics 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.

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Before I get to that though, I want to explain my methodology a bit. There are many, many awards given out before the Oscars. I don't use them all for my predictions. Some precursors are better than others. I don't bother with the ones that aren't very indicative of where the Oscars will go. 

Some the awards I don't use:

Critics Awards - Critics are essentially useless for this. There are too many different critics groups giving out awards. They vary wildly in winners and nominees, if they even bother to announce nominees. The Critics’ Choice Awards tries to combine all the critics groups into a single event. That ceremony has been far too inconsistent over the years. Categories change, split, or disappear far often. Bigger picture though, critical consensus doesn't match the industry consensus very often. A movie (say, Boyhood) gobbling up critical awards gives the false impression that it's an Oscar favorite, when it often can be something else (Birdman, in this example), that takes home the Oscar.

The National Board of Review - This group only hands out wins, not nominations, which also isn't very helpful for how I do my examinations.

Satellite Awards - I spent a lot of time in the past trying to determine if I could pull any useful information from the Satellite Awards. Ultimately, they weren't consistent enough as predictors nor popular enough to be considered influencers.

Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards - While the profile of these awards has gone up, they only look at a subset of the eligible films (independent or low-budget films). The only value to them is in the negative (i.e. if a movie is nominated for but doesn't win the Gotham award, it has no hope at the Oscar). That information can be inferred from other sources though, making the indie awards redundant.

What awards do I trust then? I'm glad you asked. For each category, I'll be including a glossary of all the precursor awards that matter to it, but it's basically the Golden Globes, the BAFTA Awards, and the assorted guild awards. The Golden Globes are too visible to ignore. They aren't greatly predictive, but their influence is hard to ignore (For example, many would argue that Meryl Streep's speech at the Globes for the 2016 awards powered her to an Oscar nomination a few weeks later for Florence Foster Jenkins). The BAFTA Awards are about as thorough as the Oscars in terms of matching categories and have, especially in recent years, taken steps that match the Oscar results more often. The guilds are a great reflection of how the branches will vote. For example, who knows Sound Mixing better than the Sound Mixers guild? Many voters belong to both the guilds and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, so that's helpful. Also, all these awards list their nominees, not just the winners. That's useful, because you know what a movie won against. If a film wins the BAFTA for Costume Design but none of the other BAFTA nominees are nominated for the Oscar, it doesn't tell me very much about what will win the Oscar. None of these awards are perfect. Nothing could’ve predicted the Ex Machina win for Visual Effects for 2015. However, you'll get more right than wrong by reading the award tea leaves beforehand.

I only look back 20 years for most awards. So much change happens in the Oscar voting and membership over time that the returns diminish the further back you go. 20 seems like a good place to stop.

You should be able to figure this out on your own, but when I refer to a year, I am speaking of the year being awarded, not necessarily when the ceremony took place. The films being awarded this year are films released in 2019. In my book, that makes this the 2019 Oscars despite it currently being 2020 right now. I find it easier to talk like this because it's the films that matter the most.

Finally, this year’s Oscar season is crazy abbreviated. I love going into an unreasonable amount of detail with my picks, but I just can’t do it this year. I really can’t even begin this process until I know the BAFTA winners. Most years, that’s two weeks before the Oscars. This year, it’s one week. I can’t do that. I even thought about asking off work so I could devote a day to it. That would be insane though for some blog posts that will max out at 50 views (and I thank all 50 of you from the bottom of my heart). That said, I’m still making picks for every category. I’m just not going into my preferred level of detail. Anyway, I hope you still enjoy*.

*Fun fact: For unrelated reasons, I actually did take a couple days off work this week, so my picks will be closer to their normal level of robust.

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Glossary:

Eddie - American Cinema Editors Award

PGA - Producers Guild of America Award

BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards

DGA - Director's Guild of America

Best Documentary Feature

(In Order of Likelihood)

1. American Factory

Eddie - Edited Documentary Feature - Nominee

DGA - Directed Documentary – Winner

PGA -Documentary Feature - Nominee

BAFTA - Documentary Feature – Nominee

2. For Sama

BAFTA - Documentary Feature – Winner

3. Honeyland

DGA - Directed Documentary – Nominee

PGA -Documentary Feature – Nominee

4. The Cave

DGA - Directed Documentary – Nominee

PGA -Documentary Feature - Nominee

5. The Edge of Democracy

Since Apollo 11 did so well in the precursors while missing out on an Oscar nomination, there isn’t a lot to read into with this year’s assorted winners. American Factory has a DGA win. For Sama has a BAFTA win. Going back 20 years (when possible), the BAFTA winner is a more reliable indicator, calling 4 of the last 8 Oscar winners, although that award hasn’t been around as long as some others, and all of these precursors have gotten more reliable as indicators in recent years.

The Edge of Democracy and The Cave clearly don’t have enough overall support. Honeyland is a bit of a wildcard as the first movie to ever get both an International Film and Documentary Feature nomination. That suggests deeper support than it at first appears. I still like the more emotional For Sama over it. Voters respond well to stories about bringing truth to life.

Ultimately, I like American Factory the best. No movie has ever bee nominated by all the major precursor groups and failed to win the Oscar*. American Factory is the only documentary to pull off that feat this year. Topically, it’s also in a sweet spot. It’s got foreign encroachment to appeal to jingoistic viewers, and it has the anti-capitalist/pro-union angle to appease those voters. It’s the easiest documentary for everyone to agree on. Oh, and it was produced by the Obamas. You better believe that will sway some voters. My only concern is that For Sama leaves voters in a more emotional place.

*Except RBG. That and Free Solo were both nominated everywhere last year, so obviously, one had to lose.

Delayed Reaction: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Premise: A scientist researching cures for Alzheimer's creates a drug that is toxic to humans but exponentially increases the intelligence of apes.

No one was asking for this movie. The original Planet of the Apes was a sensation. It spawn four sequels with diminishing returns. After sitting dormant for nearly three decades, Tim Burton attempted a remake in 2001 starring Mark Wahlberg that is the rarest of box office unicorns: a box office success that was so thoroughly rejected that it killed franchise plans immediately. We forget that the 2001 movie did good business ($180m domestic, $182m international, on a $100m budget). There were plans to have this launch a new series, but people were so turned off by the movie when they saw it that Fox didn't even bother making a sequel; not even at a reduced budget.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes showed up only a decade later with one of the clunkier titles you'll find. I certainly needed some convincing to see it. The selling point for me was the promise of Andy Serkis' motion-capture performance as Caesar: patient zero of the ape takeover. 9 years later, it's striking how much that performance and the CGI hold up. It's a crime that none of the movies in this trilogy earned Visual Effects Oscars. And I say that as a big fan of Hugo, Interstellar, and Blade Runner 2049 (the movies that won instead).

What's notable about this movie is how much it is just a prequel. Dawn of and War for the Planet of the Apes are the real blockbuster movies. Rise is a pretty small movie, all things considered. Even the climactic battle on the bridge is pretty reeled in. The movie ends up foregrounding things incredibly though. The relationship between Caesar and James Franco's character is perfectly tragic. I didn't appreciate how well this was done until I saw Dawn in 2014, and the most moving scene was when Caesar visits Franco's old house and remembers his past.

Even though none of the movies in this trilogy are strictly tied to one another by more than Caesar, Rise really does work best when followed closely by Dawn and War. It's not a movie that earned a sequel. It's part 1 of a trilogy.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Natural

Premise: A former baseball prodigy gets a second chance at the big leagues when he goes on an impossible run.

I'm sorry, but I just have to talk about the thing that everyone brings up about this movie. How old does this movie think Robert Redford is? By my math, he was 52 when this movie was released. He'd playing a 19 year old and a 35 year old at different points...What?! I'm all for some cognitive dissonance, and I get that they didn't have de-aging technology like they do now. I need a reason for casting the actor in the first place though. The movie never catches up to Redford's actual age. It's not something where they wanted a narrative consistency as he aged into something closer to his actual age. Nope. Someone just thought that was a good idea. This distracted me throughout the movie. I had trouble appreciating anything else about it, because I was too fixated on that.

It's a fine sports movie though. Had the role been played by Tom Hanks or someone like that, I'm sure I'd appreciate even more about it. Swap Redford and Costner in their mid-80s baseball movies and that would probably work better.

I did appreciate how hopelessly sentimental the movie is. I love how mythical it makes the creation of the bat, and the whole thing is soaked in nostalgia.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend