Oscar Sunday is nearly upon us. If you’re like us here at The Beacon, you’ve been waiting for the next Academy Awards ever since the curtains closed on last year’s unforgettable finale. The waiting is finally over. Whether you’re an award show junkie or not, we have everything you need to know when it comes to the 90th Academy Awards.

 

The Ceremony

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This year’s ceremony will once again be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. He is the first entertainer to host the Oscars in back-to-back ceremonies since Billy Crystal in 1997 and 1998.

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Kimmel’s comedy tends to be hit or miss with most people, but he has shown a more personal  and political side to himself on his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which has garnered him quite the favorable reputation in the past year. As far as Kimmel’s monologue, you can expect Kimmel to not pull many punches. This year’s movie-themed puns and gags may involve fish sex, peaches, and three billboards outside the Dolby Theatre. However, Kimmel is not expected to mention the #MeToo or #TimesUp movements during his monologue, which means Seth Meyers-esque jokes at the expense of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and other accused abusers may be off the table.

 

The Awards

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BEST PICTURE

 

Nominees: Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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The race for Best Picture is suspiciously a two-horse race between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

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Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is certainly a worthy Best Picture frontrunner, and it has been nominated as such with 13 nominations for its dazzling picture and sound design. Set during the Cold War, this fantasy film combines a spy thriller plot with a romance story between a mute woman (played by Sally Hawkins) and a creature. As far as content goes, it is without a doubt unlike any film the Oscars has ever considered for Best Picture. But we wonder if the film’s strangeness or recent plagiarism accusations could derail this frontrunner.

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, on the other hand, has been a very polarizing film. Three Billboards involves a fierce and angry mother (played by the always outstanding Frances McDormand) who demands justice for her daughter’s unsolved murder and rape case, by displaying three billboards that call out and antagonize Ebbing’s police chief. It is a darkly comedic, violent crime film that deals with police brutality, racism, humanity, and redemption. On the surface, Three Billboards would appear to be a very relevant film, and one that is certainly worthy of being a Best Picture contender. The film’s critics, however, see the film as “hokey” and “underdeveloped”. Many critics have found film’s British-Irish director Martin McDonagh guilty of superficially addressing the topic of racism in the movie, as well as minimalizing the film’s black characters to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scenes. One critic even went as far to compare Three Billboards to the 2005 Best Picture-winner Crash, which is widely considered as one of the worst films to ever win the Academy’s top prize.

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Outside of the frontrunners, Dunkirk, Get Out, and Lady Bird are all considered to be dark horse candidates with slightly better odds of winning than the rest of the field. Christopher Nolan’s stunning Dunkirk is the highest grossing Best Picture nominee and was an Oscar favorite heading into the fall, but its awards race prominence has steadily dwindled since its summer release.

 

Lady Bird’s early 2000s mother-daughter saga seems to be the indie-darling of the Best Picture race. Lady Bird is one of the best reviewed films of all the Oscar nominees, and along with Call Me by Your Name, they are easily the two most sentimental films of the bunch.

 

Meanwhile, Jordan Peele’s Get Out has without a doubt been the Best Picture nominee that has most dominated the social and cultural conversation for well over a year since its February 2017 release.

 

PREDICTION: The Shape of Water

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WHAT WE’RE PULLING FOR: Get Out

 

BEST DIRECTOR

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Nominees: Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread)

 

The nominees for Best Director include two criminally overlooked directors, two incredibly deserving newcomers, and one surprising frontrunner.

 

Before nominees were released, almost everyone was hoping for Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig to be nominated for Get Out and Lady Bird, respectively. With Peele’s nomination, he became just the fifth black director and fourth African American to ever be nominated in the category. He has a chance to make history as the first black director to ever win the award. Gerwig also made history as only the fifth female ever nominated for the male-dominated award. She could follow in Kathryn Bigelow’s footsteps as the second female winner. Now that they’re in the running for Best Director, the two first-time directors still have an outsider’s shot of making history.

 

Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan have been overlooked by the Academy almost every year they have made a film. Despite bringing us The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar, this is surprisingly Nolan’s first ever directing nomination. Meanwhile, Anderson’s only other directing nominee was for the legendary There Will Be Blood; he was remarkably snubbed in the directing category for Magnolia in 2000 and The Master in 2013. As far as this year goes, Nolan is considered an underdog to win, while Anderson will likely have to wait even longer for his directing Oscar.

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Guillermo del Toro has earned Best Director honors from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and the Director’s Guild. He is definitely the frontrunner for the Best Director. If he were to win, he would become the third Mexican director to win the award in the last five years. Still, Guillermo del Toro’s competition is pretty stiff.

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PREDICTION: Guillermo del Toro

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WHO WE’RE PULLING FOR: Jordan Peele

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BEST ACTOR

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Nominees: Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by your Name), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.)

 

The Best Actor nominees include two star-making performances from Timothée Chalamet and Daniel Kaluuya, one performance few people watched (sorry, Denzel), one Churchill impersonator, and maybe the last ever appearance by the world’s favorite method actor. Nonetheless, this year’s Best Actor race seems to be a foregone conclusion.

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Gary Oldman is the heavy, heavy favorite for Best Actor, and yes, that was a pun at his Winston Churchill fat suit. Oldman has swept nearly every awards show with wins for his transformative role as Churchill in Darkest Hour, which is a World War II Churchill-biopic and a complementary film to Dunkirk.

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Critics have absolutely loved Oldman’s Darkest Hour performance and he’s been the Best Actor favorite for so many months now that the award is basically his. However, plenty of media outlets have been ignoring his abusive and Mel Gibson-sympathizing past, which was brought to light all the way back in November. Despite the very concerning information about Oldman’s past, he has surprisingly suffered relatively no backlash for these findings compared to say James Franco, who faces sexual misconduct allegations that arguably obliterated his chances of receiving an Oscar nomination. It begs the question are Oscar voters unaware of Oldman’s past or are they simply ignoring it?

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PREDICTION: Gary Oldman

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WHO WE’RE PULLING FOR: Literally anyone else 

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BEST ACTRESS

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Nominees: Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Meryl Streep (The Post)

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People can’t get enough of Frances McDormand’s coveralls, no seriously.

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The Best Actress race seems to be another category that is locked up. McDormand has won all of the major awards this circuit and deservingly so. Despite the polarizing takes on Three Billboards, everyone is seemingly in agreement that her performance as the vengeful Mildred Hayes is deserving of being a Best Actress frontrunner.

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The Best Actress pool of nominees includes a little bit of everything. Sally Hawkins gave an awe-worthy performance as a mute cleaning lady who falls in love with a creature and who sometimes sings and dances. Saoirse Ronan played Lady Bird, a role that she makes entirely her own as the hilariously familiar 2000s suburban teenager with a romantic connection to the music of Dave Matthews Band. Margot Robbie received a rare Oscar nomination for playing a female athlete; Robbie’s first ever Oscar nomination is for playing the always loveable Tonya Harding. Lastly, the legendary Meryl Streep collected her record-breaking 21st nomination, and unlike her 2015 nomination for Into the Woods, Streep actually earned this one for an empowering turn as 1970s Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

 

PREDICTION: Frances McDormand

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WHO WE’RE PULLING FOR: Saoirse Ronan

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BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

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Nominees: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project), Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water), Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World), Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

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Sam Rockwell’s redeemed racist cop in Three Billboards is the favorite to win on Sunday, but not without competition. Willem Dafoe appears to be Rockwell’s only competition in the category for his role as the empathetic motel manager in The Florida Project.

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Rockwell is the favorite. He has deservingly won at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, for his antagonist role as Officer Dixon, an unintelligent, violent, and racist policeman who finds a little bit of redemption in Ebbing, Missouri. However, he is nominated alongside costar Woody Harrelson who plays Chief Willoughby in the film. If voters who loved Three Billboards split votes between the two Missourian policemen, a door could open for someone like Dafoe.

 

Contrastingly, Dafoe is the underdog. Despite his heartfelt performance as the Magic Castle motel manager outside of Disney World, Dafoe has been primarily shutout in the awards circuits, but for a few critics’ awards. For those that have seen The Florida Project, it is hard not to root for Dafoe, who is up for Best Supporting Actor for the third time in his distinguished career. Perhaps, the problem is that not enough people went out to see The Florida Project on the big screen.

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PREDICTION: Sam Rockwell

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WHO WE’RE PULLING FOR: Willem Dafoe

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BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

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Nominees: Mary J. Blige (Mudbound), Allison Janney (I, Tonya), Leslie Manville (Phantom Thread), Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird), Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water)

 

Unfortunately for our competition interests, the Best Supporting Actress category looks to be going to Allison Janney. She has won at the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, and the Critics’ Choice Awards. Janney plays Tonya Harding’s mother in I, Tonya. The comedic role was written specifically for Janney. She absolutely nails the rough and tough abusive mother, and the esteemed television actress is more than capable of getting laughs.

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Of all the nominees, Laurie Metcalf has the best chance at nabbing this away from Janney, but it’s likely a longshot. Metcalf plays the scarily relatable mother of Lady Bird, who made many viewers feel like we were watching a version of our own mom on screen. Like Dafoe in the other category, she has collected several critics’ awards, but everything seems to be pointing in favor of Janney going home with the Oscar.

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PREDICTION: Allison Janney

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WHO WE’RE PULLING FOR: Laurie Metcalf

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Summary

 

In a year where movies like Get Out, Lady Bird, A Girls Trip, Wonder Woman, and The Big Sick were critical, cultural, and box office successes, it will be a letdown for many moviegoers to see most of these films receive little or no recognition on the biggest stage of the year. Perhaps, this is why the Oscars ratings have been falling considerably over the last decade. While the Academy has attempted to combat the lack of interest in their awards by mixing things up, it seems that this Oscars is likely to live down to expectations yet again this year.

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When all is said and done, it also won’t be a great look for the Oscars if Gary Oldman is winning an Oscar and Casey Affleck is awarding an Oscar in the era of #TimesUp.