Predicting the Oscars

The Oscars haven’t always been the best forecaster for a film’s longevity. Some Best Picture winners, like “Casablanca,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Godfather” and “Schindler’s List,” have truly cemented their classic status, while others—“Gandhi,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The English Patient”—simply don’t hold up as well as the movies they beat (can you believe that “Dances with Wolves” won over “GoodFellas,” or that “In the Heat of the Night” took the award when its fellow nominees were “The Graduate,” “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”).

But the reason critics spend so much time blabbering about the Academy Awards (and later recanting their enthusiasm) is because it’s the single biggest movie event of the year, and because it’s fun to calculate and predict what films will emerge victorious; it’s like Fantasy Football for the athletically disinclined. There can be an exact science to determining Oscar wins: For example, films with serious messages usually overshadow the more frivolous ones, dramatic acting tends to trump comic acting and subtlety is rarely awarded (which explains how the shallow, sermonizing “Crash” beat the quiet, thoughtful likes of “Brokeback Mountain,” “Good Night and Good Luck” and “Capote”).

That doesn’t mean, though, that the Oscars aren’t prone to surprise, and it’s the unexpected wins that make the ceremony worth watching (not the red carpet, not the overlong acceptance speeches, not the self-congratulatory tone of the entire proceedings). Following is a look at the nominees in the eight major categories and a brief commentary on them, as well as my predictions and preferences for those categories. At the end of the entry, I’ll post my predictions for the remaining categories (these are not necessarily my preferences, but they come pretty close).

BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

For me, this is the most underwhelming batch of Best Picture nominees since 2004, when the only nominated picture that really blew me away was “Sideways,” which was the underdog in its category. Only two of this year’s nominees made my top ten list—“Milk” and “Slumdog Millionaire”—although I found admirable qualities in all five films: “Benjamin Button” was a visual masterpiece with cold characters; “Frost/Nixon” was an interesting, if exaggerated, historical drama; “The Reader,” which has been receiving the most vitriol from critics, was two-thirds of a great film. “Slumdog” seems to be the front-runner here—it’s the most universally lauded nominee, as well as the most honored (it’s already won top honors at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes). But “Milk” is, I think, the best film of the five: It is a moving evocation of a radical period in American history, it is told with passion and purpose, and it is anchored by Sean Penn in a breathtaking performance.

And speaking of “Slumdog Millionaire,” which I adored, there seems to be a backlash regarding the film now that it has garnered so many awards and nominations. What is it about a small film receiving mainstream success that so despises some people? Of the five nominated films, “Slumdog” is the only one that I would not consider Oscar bait—it is not a major Hollywood production, it was a festival favorite, it features no big-name stars and its characters speak multiple languages. What a refreshing change. I found it completely winning, and my suspicion is that if you didn’t like it, you’re trying too hard not to.

My Prediction: Slumdog Millionaire
My Preference: Milk

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry – The Reader
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant – Milk

This year, the Academy only gave nominations to the directors responsible for the five nominated Pictures. Usually there’s an outlier, a filmmaker who has been nominated when their film has not (David Lynch for “Mulholland Dr.,” Pedro Almodóvar for “Talk to Her,” Mike Leigh for “Vera Drake,” all of whom were the most deserving in their years), and I can’t rightly recall a time when such a director has ever won the award. The Oscars for Picture and Director usually go hand in hand, so if “Slumdog” wins Best Picture, Danny Boyle will likely get Best Director (he also won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and DGA awards, the latter of which ensures he has about a 90% chance of snagging the Oscar). He’s my personal pick, as well—although I preferred Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” as an overall picture, I admired Boyle’s direction more. It breathed life into the movie, and it brought everything together—the high drama, the light comedy, the romance, the Bollywood dance number—just perfectly.

My Prediction: Danny Boyle
My Preference: Danny Boyle

BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn – Milk
Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler

What the Academy got right: Handing out nominations to the veteran character actors—Richard Jenkins (for his rich, textured, subtle work in “The Visitor”) and Frank Langella (snubbed last year for “Starting Out in the Evening,” reimbursed for his fascinating, complex interpretation of Richard Nixon). What they got wrong: Giving Brad Pitt a nomination for his languid performance in “Benjamin Button” rather than for his wonderful comic turn in the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading.” Still, a good batch of nominees, with Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke clearly the favorites. I’m going out on a limb, though, in favor of Rourke (who gave, I thought, the single best performance of the year). Penn’s work is amazing because it is so immersive, while the success of Rourke’s performance is directly related to his own personal anguish, and it is a simple yet deeply effective, honest and heartbreaking turn, as well as amazingly physical.

My Prediction: Mickey Rourke
My Preference: Mickey Rourke

BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie – Changeling
Melissa Leo – Frozen River
Meryl Streep – Doubt
Kate Winslet – The Reader

Everyone seems to be in agreement that Kate Winslet (who was, strangely, nominated for Supporting Actress everywhere else) will take home the Oscar for “The Reader.” She’s a brilliant actress, but she will not be rewarded because this is her best work. No, she’ll win because she has been nominated five times prior without ever taking home a statue, and the Academy likes to compensate the long-time losers. As for my personal pick (although I’m still upset that Sally Hawkins’ turn in “Happy-Go-Lucky” was wrongly overlooked), I’m debating between Melissa Leo and Anne Hathaway, both of whom are underdogs and both of whom created characters who felt so real. And am I the only person that liked Angelina Jolie in “Changeling?” I’m sure she’s being nominated purely for her scenes of high drama, but I thought she approached the role with much more nuance than she gets credit for.

My Prediction: Kate Winslet
My Preference: Anne Hathaway or Melissa Leo

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin – Milk
Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road

The supporting categories are the ones most susceptible to surprises, but a victory for Heath Ledger seems to be a sure thing. He was revelatory in “The Dark Knight,” creating a villain so terrifying, so calculating, so vile that every other superhero movie seems like child’s play in comparison. Whether or not his death will weigh on his Oscar success is debatable (he will be the second posthumous winner, the first being Peter Finch for “Network” in 1976), but it’s impossible to deny the maniacal invention of his interpretation of the Joker. It would be a shock if anyone else wins tonight, but stranger things have been known to happen. Let it also be said that Robert Downey Jr. and Michael Shannon are inspired choices, and they were the best parts of the films for which they’re nominated.

My Prediction: Heath Ledger
My Preference: Heath Ledger

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams – Doubt
Penélope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis – Doubt
Taraji P. Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler

There doesn’t really seem to be a front-runner in this category, although Penélope Cruz has been labeled by some as the favorite. Although she was great, and although Marisa Tomei broke my heart in “The Wrestler,” the single best female performance of the year, supporting or otherwise, came from Viola Davis in “Doubt.” She shows up nearly an hour into the film and is on-screen for only ten minutes, but she is absolutely stunning. This is a risky prediction (Roger Ebert made the same one), but I think Davis could (and should) take home the award, mainly because the span of her performance is concentrated: In the course of one scene, she lays it all out on the table, and never before have I seen such a minor character so richly defined. Anyone, though, could win in this category, and I think it’s the only category that’s entirely up in the air.

My Prediction: Viola Davis
My Preference: Viola Davis

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
WALL-E

A good, creative batch of nominees, and all (save for “WALL-E”—could its script have been more than forty pages long?) from under-the-radar pictures. “Frozen River” was a painfully realistic look at a poor woman’s desperation to help her family; “In Bruges” was a quirky thriller that expertly blended violence, comedy and pathos; and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” written using Mike Leigh’s signature free-form style, focused on a bubbly British woman with a lust for life. But I predict that “Milk” scribe Dustin Lance Black, who has never before penned a feature-length screenplay, is going to take the Oscar. Although I’d love to see Leigh finally win (he’s been nominated five times prior), Black will be awarded for his virtuoso writing, his intriguing characters and the sense of immediacy and importance he brought to the film.

My Prediction: Milk
My Preference: Happy-Go-Lucky

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

What I love about “Slumdog Millionaire”—more than Danny Boyle’s effervescent direction, more than the colorful Indian locations, more than the charming young actors—is Simon Beaufoy’s script. I love the game show framing device, the jumbled timeline, the old-fashioned story; some find it contrived, but I found it invigorating. Quoting my original review: “Just reading the synopsis makes you want to see the movie, doesn’t it?” We have seen countless underdog stories brought to the screen before, but never one that has been told like this: I admire pictures that make old themes relevant again, that entertain and affect us even though they travel on well-trodden paths. “Slumdog Millionaire” does just that.

My Prediction: Slumdog Millionaire
My Preference: Slumdog Millionaire

Further Predictions:

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

EDITING
Slumdog Millionaire

ART DIRECTION
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

COSTUME DESIGN
The Duchess

MAKE-UP
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

ORIGINAL SCORE
Slumdog Millionaire

ORIGINAL SONG
Jai Ho - Slumdog Millionaire

SOUND
The Dark Knight

SOUND EDITING
The Dark Knight

VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

ANIMATED FEATURE
WALL-E

FOREIGN FILM
Waltz with Bashir

DOCUMENTARY

Man on Wire

Performances that should be nominated...but won’t be

The Academy announces the 2009 Oscar nominations tomorrow morning, and I’ve decided to help them out a little bit by throwing out some names they may have not considered.

While Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Heath Ledger will be locks in their respective categories (and have better chances of winning than almost anyone else), it’s important that the underdogs—either lesser-known actors, performances in small productions or terrific work that just got overlooked—get at least a little recognition.

I have picked one underappreciated performance for each of the four major acting categories, and I have carefully considered every movie I saw this year (two of the performances I picked were from films I didn’t even like).

These actors likely won’t have their names announced during the nomination telecast tomorrow, and although I don’t believe these performances would deserve to win even if they were nominated, hopefully this entry will steer you in the direction of some terrific work.

Best Actor
Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”
Of my four picks, Jenkins has the highest chance of getting a nomination. In Thomas McCarthy’s wonderful “The Visitor,” he plays a stick-in-the-mud college professor whose life is changed when he finds two illegal aliens staying in his vacation home. The picture could have easily resorted to manipulative histrionics, especially after one of the immigrants is arrested and threatened with deportation, but McCarthy’s script (which should, if there is any justice, also get a nomination) and Jenkins’ quiet, humble performance elevate this from cheap melodrama to intriguing character study. He finds a warmth and timidity beneath his character’s somber exterior, and he is completely believable at every moment. It is a testament to him that the movie works so well.

The runner-up in this category is Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” who used his trademark sardonic wit and self-debasing humor to great effect (he could easily get a Supporting Actor nom for his race-defying work in “Tropic Thunder”). I also admired Sasson Gabai in “The Band’s Visit,” Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in “In Bruges,” Andrew Garfield in “Boy A,” Ricky Gervais in “Ghost Town,” Dev Patel in “Slumdog Millionaire,” Sam Rockwell in “Snow Angels” and Michael Sheen in “Frost/Nixon.”

Best Actress
Dakota Fanning, “The Secret Life of Bees”
Although “The Secret Life of Bees” was a minor fall hit and female audiences seemed to adore it, I didn’t find much to like about it other than the strong performances (without a cast that includes Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo and Alicia Keys, this movie would have premiered on the Lifetime Channel). Despite that star wattage, the movie’s best work came from young Dakota Fanning, who was only thirteen when the film was shot. She conveys more maturity than any actor her age, but her performance is not impressive because of her age—it is impressive because she is a tremendous actress. Fanning has the most difficult role in the picture, one that requires a number of emotional scenes, and she pulls it off so convincingly and so honestly, you’ll forget your watching a teenager. If she continues this caliber of work, she’ll have an Oscar by the time she’s twenty.

This was a harder category to fill, mainly because the best actresses are the ones that are the more obvious choices (Meryl Streep in “Doubt,” Kate Winslet in “Revolutionary Road,” Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”—all astounding turns). So the runner-up here is Melissa Leo in “Frozen River,” who would have been my first choice had she already been the subject of Oscar talk—don’t be shocked if she gets a nomination, but the fact that her superb performance was in such a small film decreases her odds. Other terrific performances in this category include Kate Beckinsale in “Snow Angels,” the severely underrated Téa Leoni in “Ghost Town” (get this lady a star vehicle, stat!) and Anamaria Marinca in “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”

Best Supporting Actor
Eddie Marsan, “Happy-Go-Lucky”
Most of the accolades for Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” go straight to its star, Sally Hawkins, and rightfully so. But Eddie Marsan’s portrayal of a short-tempered, bigoted driving instructor is stupendous, mainly because his character becomes crucial to our understanding of the film’s heroine. In one of the movie’s final scenes, Marsan has a meltdown and unleashes a verbal assault on Hawkins that, although painfully honest, gives us a shocking bit of insight into the character—is she really as happy and selfless as we thought she was at the beginning of the picture? Leigh is one of my favorite directors, and I especially love how he pulls out the rug out from under an audience and completely alters our perception of a person in a matter of minutes: Marsan’s character begins as a cute, curmudgeonly counterpoint to Hawkins’ effervescent Poppy, but his performance evolves into something much more profound.

The runner-up this time is also likely to get an Oscar nomination this Thursday, but for a different film. Brad Pitt is a favorite in the Best Actor category for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (curious, indeed, because he’s the least interesting character in a very interesting movie), but he was brilliant in the Coen brothers’ goofball espionage comedy “Burn After Reading.” Since comic performances are so often overlooked, I’d also like to mention Russell Brand, the eccentric British comedian who ran off with the best lines in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Also of note were Jason Butler Harner in “Changeling,” Bill Irwin in “Rachel Getting Married,” David Kross in “The Reader,” Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” and Ben Whishaw in “Brideshead Revisited.”

Best Supporting Actress
Anjelica Huston, “Choke”
Why Anjelica Huston hasn’t received more accolades for this performance is beyond me. I imagine it has to do with the fact that “Choke” was not a very good movie that hardly anybody saw. Still, her turn as Sam Rockwell’s elderly mother, a former con artist slipping away with dementia, was heartbreaking, a welcome source of tenderness in a movie that desperately needed it. Her scenes with Rockwell—she doesn’t recognize him, thinking he is a lover from her past, and he plays along with her delusions—have a poignancy that you may not expect from a sleazy movie about sex addiction, and their interaction was an island of humanity amidst a sea of jumbled plot strands and labored comedy.

Marisa Tomei is likely to get a nomination for her wonderful work in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” but likely to be overlooked is her co-star Evan Rachel Wood, who appears in the film for about ten minutes and makes a tremendous impact. Also of merit were Rosemarie DeWitt in “Rachel Getting Married” (if anybody from the terrific supporting cast will get a nod, it’ll be Debra Winger), Beyoncé Knowles as Etta James in the middling musical biopic “Cadillac Records” and Hanna Schygulla as a grieving mother in the Turkish film “The Edge of Heaven.”