The last chance Oscar guide 2022.

In the last decade, there has been more hate than love for the Oscars and the Academy are not only aware of it, they responded to it. 

The years when TV networks could just sell the hype around the awards, and never understand what the public were thinking have gone. With social media, the powers behind the throne can see what the public think often in real time, and bashing the Oscars at this time of year has become a thing to do online. But at least if they are getting bashed they are getting talked about, last year the viewing figures were down to an all time low of 10 million viewers, and the ceremony have responded, changing the format to have a more sympathetic ear to people complaining that they are too long and boring. 

It is clear that the Academy, getting ever closer to a hundredth year of the Oscars – this is the 94th award ceremony – are getting nervous that they will become irrelevant in the future, if they don’t try to grab the attention of a younger audience brought up on shorter, sharper content consumed on social media platforms. 

So rather than playing to the audience who have watched them for decades, they are now trying to entice audiences that might not really care in the first place about the films the Oscars favours.

They have done that by changing the format to a shorter, snappier style. If you watch clips for only a few minutes at a time, then how are you going to sit through a three hour show of Hollywood back-slapping and self-aggrandizing? This seems to be the production remit this year.

They are between a rock and a hard place though, as any move they make ends up annoying the film community both inside and outside the industry – who are the real audience where their stock lies, both now and in the future. 

The problem with making the awards shorter is that you get rid of the smaller categories, who rarely get a moment in the spotlight anyway, despite being the unsung lifeblood of the industry. The Oscars are the one chance where the people whose names you walk out on when the credits start to to roll, actually get to speak about their hard-work and craft – so if you feel that listening to what they say is boring, then buzz off to social media and your 180 characters restrictions.

They have already had to suffer the indignity of microphones disappearing as they thank their people, and now they have been removed from the live option altogether. If you are not engaged by what they have to say, well then perhaps you should work on your attention span. But actually people who don’t care about film are who the Academy are going for this time around. Therefore, categories like Editing, Hair and Make-Up, have been bumped off the bill to a pre-show recording, ironically in the case of editing, to be edited back in the highlights. 

In another bid to be down with the kids, they have introduced a twitter vote option, so whatever gets crowned Best Film will have the headlines stolen from it, by whichever comic book movie the internet votes as the People’s Best Picture option. 

I’m not knocking Spider-Man: No Way Home, but the Oscars are the one time of the year that smaller-budgeted, character-driven films, with an ability to create a connection of empathy with their audience, finally get back in the limelight.

And this year there is a fine and eclectic selection of films nominated. 

Best Picture 

Don’t Look Up

It is the satire of our times and hits the nail on the head of how the media and social media move important issues in the wrong direction, politicizing big problems that both sides of the political spectrum should be working in union to overcome. It has one helluva wake up call message, but is probably a little too sprawling in scope to win the best picture. Chances: Don’t Look Likely.

Dune

There was probably no film as epic as this last year, and the production and vision are formidable. Whether it overcame the problems of turning Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi opus into a film production that fully works though, are still up for debate as it is a brilliantly done first part of the narrative, but is jarringly obvious that it is not the complete story and therefore should not win the Best Picture Oscar. Perhaps the Academy will go The Lord of the Rings route and give a future installment the Best Picture. Chances: more likely to win in the technical categories such as visual effects and production design.

Belfast 

Kenneth Branagh used his time in lockdown to recall to mind recollections of a childhood growing up in Belfast. It is the vision of lives being intensified and threatened by the looming threat of war, through the eyes of a child. Little did he know that themes of conflict on the streets of Northern Ireland, would have eerie parallels with the actual news in 2022. As a result it is a sobering, poignant and empathy-inducing experience to watch a film reflecting on the lives of children being destroyed by war. The scene of the little boy as his innocence is shattered by senseless violence seems to directly transport you into the experience of a million children in Ukraine who are currently living through this. For this reason, I would like to see Belfast win Best Picture and Kenneth Branagh dedicate the film to the children in Ukraine. It might be too close to reality for Oscar voters though: Chances: an Irish dark horse.

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog is an interesting new take on the Western genre, with the motivations of unsavory, rugged and prickly characters being rather different to how we might have seen in this old genre before. The tension of the film making is all under the surface though – and I think the contrast between how the film looks and the setting it is in, plus the unorthodox politics for the era, will prove too divisive for Oscar voters, and even though it is the favourite to win Best Picture, I think an upset is on the cards. Chances: will the Power of the favourite prevail? For me, it will not be crowned top dog.

King Richard

The success of Venus and Serena Williams and how they conquered the world of tennis from humble beginnings, was always a story that cried out for Hollywood to make a movie about. Will Smith is now old enough to play their divisive Dad Richard Williams. On the one hand, he is a great motivator and understands what he has to do to make his daughters champions against the odds; on the other hand, he is an overbearing working class Dad. 

Chances: Unlikely to ace the Best Picture award, but there is a lot of love for Smith as Best Actor. A wild card entry.

Nightmare Alley

For my money, this film has the best and most emotionally engaging narrative of all the films and is also the most cinematic. However, it starts dark and gets progressively darker, to the point where you think it’s unsettling, unsavory, and focuses on outright unlikeable characters that may alienate traditional Oscar voters. Plus Del Toro has won for the Shape of Water in the recent past and Oscar voters might take this into consideration. He is a director who always loves to put a monster at the center of the story and in some ways, this is a departure from that, and in other ways, his use of monsters is more metaphorical for an artistic expression of the human soul. But hey, we are going through dark times, which is partly Del Toro’s thinking with Nightmare Alley, but for Academy voters, they might want to go for something a little more uplifting and a little less nightmarish. Chances: a distant, dark horse.

Drive My Car

Having had South Korean film Parasite rightfully sweep the Best Picture award two years back, the door was left open for another foreign film to gatecrash the Best Picture, but it was still a nice surprise that that film was the Japanese film Drive My Car. 

There are so many things seemingly off putting about this film for Oscar voters: it is 3 hours long, and mainly about the inner thoughts of a person who is driven around in his car to figure out all the emotions that are going through his inner mind. It is a film that makes quiet introspection powerfully cinematic – and signals, perhaps better than anything, the power of art and performance have in working out one’s life issues and unaddressed emotional inner workings. If you connect to the film as I did, it has quite a profound pay-off, but it is also possible to miss the level the film is working on and just think it is a film about a bloke being driven around a lot in a  car. A film acknowledging the worth of art in unlocking deep emotions though, may strike a chord with those connected to the process of story-telling. 

On that level then it might speak to Academy members, but it is very unlikely to win Best Picture, but near nailed on to take Best Foreign Language film. Chances – outside lane.

Coda

There has been a revelation in deaf story-telling as more and more filmmakers have figured out that cinema, being a primarily visual medium, can really convey the dilemmas of deaf characters struggling to be heard in a world set up to enable those who can hear. Following on from last year’s Sound of Metal is Coda, which tells the story of a family of deaf people connected to the fishing industry of Massachusetts, who are a little overly reliant on their 17-year-old hearing daughter for the survival of their fishing livelihood and place in the community. Ironically, she wants to follow her passion for singing. From a distance, the story template for Coda is the most conventional and therefore, Oscar-like erm, bait of all the films nominated, However, the script feels so lived in, so lively, outright funny at times, and so authentically bittersweet that it overcomes its narrative familiarity and becomes the film on this year’s Oscar list that is the most full of humanity, warmth and empathy. These are always big factors in defining the Oscars as there is something perennially good for the soul about seeing characters who are struggling  and in a desperate state work towards a better understanding. It might just steal the hearts and bring a little tear to the eyes of Oscar voters, as it did for me and really that is what the world needs right now.  

Chances: this movie, demonstrating the strength of signing, gets a double thumbs up from me in terms of its chances of winning. 

Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the few directors in the modern era who has not made a bad film and this his latest, partly drawn from memory growing up in the San Fernando Valley, aka the suburbs of Hollywood, and partly drawn from whispered stories of the fringes of the industry, was another Anderson delight.    

There was perhaps a note of controversy in the age difference on paper of a 25-year-old female at least flirting with a 15-year-old boy, but in the film itself that initial note of weirdness was overcome by the fact that there is a lot of restraint between them and their relationship is far more complex and textured than meets the eye. If it were the boy who was older though, it would have been as uncomfortable to watch now as say, Manhattan. 

The naturalistic, seventies, Robert Altman inspired direction, was charming for those who like films reflecting on inside the industry and character-driven storytelling. However, a free-wheeling story in which characters unrelated to the central story move in and out and are not integral to the plot itself, might have been a hard sell for a lot of people, but hey, those characters are loosely based on real Hollywood types, Sean Penn for instance has an old-school Hollywood twinkle to portray a character based on William Holden and Bradley Cooper practically steals the show playing a legendary Hollywood lunatic, Jon Peters. He is worth Googling if you don’t know him as he is the stuff of a future mesmerizing biopic.  

Chances: Hollywood loves a story that focuses on narratives close to home, but some voters will find it more pizza and others more licorice. An unlikely combo and an unlikely Best Picture winner. 

West Side Story

The dream of America has always been that people from all different creeds and cultures can come to a new land and make a new, harmonious start. The reality has always been that when things get tough and economically challenging, racial tensions flare up. Steven Spielberg has always been great at using stories to convey a political message to the world through that story. This is probably the reason he decided to remake West Side Story and as it is Spielberg, it is done with such passion, such flare and conviction. If you revisit the original now, the casting of white characters who bronzed up to play Puerto Ricans, sits uncomfortably – so there are many reasons to remake this classic, which Spielberg capitalizes on. For one, by having actual Latinos cast to portray the Sharks, you have actors who can really emphasize the passion and vibrancy of songs like America in such an authentic way. What counts against the film in the Best Picture category though is the emotional beats of the story are already known, so you go through the expected motions of this, with an awareness muting the impact. Still, its message designed to reflect on the dangers of racial tension is more relevant now than it has been in decades and the production is as epic as you would expect from cinema’s great modern master.

Chances: Will West Side Story make history and become the first film to win the Best Picture in two different forms? It’s a fighter, but an outsider for me. 

It is The Power of the Dog in the Netflix corner versus Coda in the Apple TV corner. This looks like the first year where the Best Picture will come from a streaming platform, so if Netflix don’t get that, they might well be annoyed, given they came up with this format. Coda and Belfast are similar films, I want Belfast to win, I think it will go to Coda which will be a nice upset.

What? Still here? Well congratulations, you have the attention span to get through even the old style Oscar format. Well done. Would you like to hear about the acting categories? Keep on reading then. Nice.

Best Actress:

Kristen Stewart was incredibly bold, taking on a role that has sunk other actresses: Lady Diana. Stewart captured the shyness and awkwardness Diana has both in front and of camera, but it is a little too abstract and speculative a film for Oscar voters. Jessica Chastain for me is the front runner, as she is the heart and soul of a film about the cynical dark side of TV-evangelical Christians. She manages to convey Tammy in The Eyes of Tammy Faye in every stage of her life, and is unrecognizable in each era. She also manages to capture the duality of a TV preacher, which is no small achievement.

Best Actor:

Having been nominated for a third time, surely Smith will win this time. Benedict Cumberbatch gave a performance bristling with tension and a sense of menace, but for me, Will Smith has that much awaited Oscar in that over-sized tennis bag.

Best Supporting Female:

I would like to see Kirsten Dunst win as she is the tortured heart and soul of The Power of the Dog. It will probably go to Adrian De Bose who is electric in West Side Story, but her predecessor also won for this role, so unusually Academy members have a basis for comparison for the role.

Best Supporting Male:

Belfast and Coda are similar films and Ciarán Hinds (“Belfast”), Troy Kotsur (“Coda”) play two similar funny, charming and rugged aging working class men. I think this will go to Kodi Smitt McPhee as the whole strength of The Power of the Dog hinges on his ambivalent and disarming performance.

Best Directing:

I think Jane Campion has got this for The Power of the Dog and will become the third female to win best director. Chloe Zhao won last year for Nomadland, so that could mean an unprecedented two women winning in consecutive years. The Power of the Dog lingers in the mind because of all the tension her direction helps create under the surface. Campion will be champion.

I think The Power of the Dog will win a lot, but not Best Picture – that will go to Coda as it is the most universally life-affirming film on the list and that counts for something in dark and troubling times.

Well, less the 24 hours to go now – the Oscars will air tonight. Enjoy.