My Oscar Ballot – 2018

The Oscars remain the least important thing to happen each year, and not only in the movie calendar. Oscar night is like a depression in significance, except for the cultural and aesthetic value of the fashion exhibited and meme fodder generated on the evening. The results are worthless except in practical ways to the winners: If you win an Oscar, the advancement of your career becomes easier in Hollywood. Okay, maybe there’s another important effect: If a movie wins an Oscar, the industry and its aspirants are likely to try make more just like it. But Academy Awards and actual artistic importance only ever align coincidentally.

My Oscar ballot is the selection of films that I think are most likely to win, not necessarily my favourites — in fact, hardly ever my favourites. I haven’t seen most of the nominated films yet, anyway; the only ones I have seen are Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, The Post, The Shape of Water, and Strong Island. Read my own selection of what I found to be the greatest films of 2017.

Update: Read The Back Row’s reviews of Lady Bird and Phantom Thread.

Nowadays awards shows are tiresomely homogeneous: They all pick the same winners, give the same commentary on the state of the industry and the world, and even copy jokes from one another. It’s becoming easier and easier to do the predictions in the major categories (of Best Picture, Best Director, and the acting categories). It also means that those who delivered the actual best work of each year are left out of more and more ceremonies, and their names are mentioned even fewer times than they would have been in previous years. Cynthia Nixon — who, in my view, deserves the award for Best Actress this year, for her performance as the poet Emily Dickinson in Terence Davies’ magnificent biopic — did not appear at a single major award even this season, though she was loved inordinately by all who saw the film.

My participation in this annual activity is a little different from overseas pundits’ guesses, since I’ve seen so few of the nominated films; I simply work from winners of precursor awards and the buzz I can follow on social media. Leave your comments with what you think are the more likely and the more deserving winners, and anything else you’d like or would wish to see at the ceremony on Sunday evening.

Best Picture:

It used to be that the best indicator among precursors for this award was the Producers’ Guild Award, many of whose voters are supposedly in the Academy as well. But it hit a snag four years ago when, for the first time, the outcome was a tie between the two frontrunners, 12 Years a Slave and Gravity (Gravity ended up losing the Oscar). Following that, two more films have won at the Producers’ Guild but lost at the Oscars: The Big Short and La La Land. Earlier this month, The Shape of Water won the Producers’ Guild Award; it had also previously won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Picture. What I tried to convey in my review — but don’t think I got it quite right — was my idea behind the base appeal of The Shape of Water: it pays overt respect to the Hollywood of the past, in a suitably humanistic and sentimental way, as past winners The Artist and Argo did (and the black-and-white scene near the end resembles much of The Artist and what industry partisans loved about it), but it brings itself more closely into the context of the current day — as well as flattering the liberal perception Hollywood has of itself — by squarely facing up the problems of the time in which it’s set: men’s abuse of their power over women, a hegemony’s abuse of those who are different, and global exploitation through unfettered capitalism and the greed that underlies it. For these reasons, it stands an excellent chance of winning. I haven’t seen Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, but its success at the precursor awards (the Golden Globes, the Baftas, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards) would suggest that it has just as good a chance; as I understand it, it also has something to say about racism, sexual violence, and a corrupt and/or inefficient bureaucracy, and does so in ways that are perhaps very funny and somewhat moving. I know better than to judge a movie by its trailer, which is all I’ve seen of Three Billboards, so I can’t comment on it at all, but it does appear to have a slight edge, if only because of the current buzz online, and I believe it will win. The best of the nominees that I’ve seen was Get Out, and I sincerely hope that it wins, and Moonlight’s win last year fuels hope for both that film and Lady Bird, which won the Golden Globe, but I think that that had more to do with Hollywood’s fresh outrage against a newly appointed administration. There are those who feel that Dunkirk has a chance as well, and I’ll feel a fool if it does win and I hadn’t mentioned it in this paragraph, but that seems unlikely to me (though I haven’t seen that one, either).

Best Director:

In the last 15 years, the only winner of the Directors Guild award that did not go on to win the Oscar was Ben Affleck, and of course he would have won if he’d been nominated. This year, the winner at the DGA was Guillermo del Toro (as well as at the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Baftas), and it would only be a surprise to me if the director of The Shape of Water did not win the Oscar.

Best Actress:

Winners of Best Actress seem to fall on either side of a divide, and that divide is marked by age: the young new royalty being triumphantly crowned by the industry (such as Emma Stone, Brie Larson, Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Swank, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, and Jodie Foster) and the venerated Great Ladies, who are awarded for an enduring career of sustained inspiration and stateliness (such as Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, and Jessica Tandy). This year, the race seems split along the same lines, the frontrunners being the two Golden Globe winners — Frances McDormand, for Three Billboards, and Saoirse Ronan, for Lady Bird. McDormand has received just about every award available to her this season, and her rousing, fiery and impressively articulate speeches at the ceremonies have proven very popular (I admire them, too), and almost certainly increase her momentum towards the final prize. They may, in fact, be the final push towards Three Billboards’s Best Picture trophy, over The Shape of Water, whose cast has been given no opportunity at all to show off stirring acceptance speeches. (Remember that the largest branch by far in the Academy is the Actors’).

Best Actor:

The two Golden Globe winners were Gary Oldman, for The Darkest Hour, and James Franco, for The Disaster Artist. But Franco has run into trouble with the #TimesUp movement for nearly inevitable accusations of sexual misconduct, and, in any case, this category is far more consistent than the Actress’s in honouring older, more accomplished, and often previously overlooked performers. In addition, many moviegoers, pundits, and voters pine for the days when the dependably Conservative statesman of a western power could be relied upon to be dignified, articulate, and justifiably sane. A vote for Gary Oldman is a vote against a Klown.

Best Supporting Actress:

I’ve heard wonderful things about Laurie Metcalfe (and am off to see Lady Bird as soon as I publish this post), but Allison Janney has won just about everything she could. The Oscar will not be an exception.

Best Supporting Actor:

I’m not familiar with the work of Sam Rockwell outside of Gentlemen Broncos (for which I wouldn’t have minded him winning a few awards). Somehow, playing a sadistic, unruly racist bureaucrat works for him, and his chances of winning look bright.

Best Original Screenplay:

It may just be my optimism that clouds my vision and prompts me to predict that Jordan Peele will win for his astounding screenwriting début. I trust that Greta Gerwig turned in wonderful work as well (and will be able to confirm or deny later this evening). I’ve seen Martin McDonagh’s previous films, and hope that Three Billboards’s script is an improvement, otherwise it’s good chances are an insult to Get Out.

Best Adapted Screenplay:

James Ivory never won an Oscar, but his films were mightily praised, in Hollywood and elsewhere, during his heyday. The film from his new screenplay (the only screenplay he wrote without directing it as well), Call Me By Your Name, is inordinately loved by viewers, and it cashes in on its drama and allure (rather cheap, in my opinion) with Michael Stuhlbarg’s teary-eyed speech near the end. Don’t doubt that he will win.

Best Original Score:

Alexandre Desplat has certainly deserved an Oscar before now. The Shape of Water is very far from his best work, but will have to do for this year.

Best Original Song:

I’ve seen none of the nominated films in this category. I listened to the songs, and didn’t love any of them, either, which isn’t unusual for me. (I believe that some of my friends liked the song from Call Me By Your Name.) “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman is a verified hit, which usually would help it win awards. But Disney and Pixar have a habit of grabbing whatever they can get within their reach; I’ll bet on “Remember Me” from Coco.

Best Animated Film:

Coco. (To quote Richard Brody, on more than one occassion, don’t bet against Pixar.)

Best Foreign Language Film:

I know next to nothing about any of these movies. Loveless is what people are tweeting about.

Best Documentary Feature:

Agnès Varda is the oldest competitive nominee ever, and her documentary Faces Places is adored by all who see it.

Best Documentary Short Subject:

No idea. I’ll pick one at random: Knife Skills.

Best Live Action Short Film:

Same here. But DeKalb Elementary is about a school shooting, which is sickeningly apt for the immediate moment.

Best Animated Short Film:

Once again. Let’s go with Dear Basketball.

Best Sound Editing:

Any of these could win, except Baby Driver. Let’s choose Dunkirk.

Best Sound Mixing:

The Shape of Water could sweep the technical awards. But I’ll pick Dunkirk again.

Best Production Design:

The Shape of Water.

Best Cinematography:

Blade Runner 2049.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

Darkest Hour (which helps to demonstrate the technical, rather than artistic, achievement for which Gary Oldman will win).

Best Costume Design:

Phantom Thread, going from the trailers.

Best Film Editing:

Baby Driver or Dunkirk. Christopher Nolan is the slightly more revered Brit than Edgar Wright.

Best Visual Effects:

This category becomes less sure as advanced CGI technology becomes more and more ubiquitous. Will it be Blade Runner 2049 or War for the Planet of the Apes? Here’s the one category where I’ll abdicate from choosing.

Comment below with your own predictions and preferences!