Tomorrow sees the Directors Guild of America announce their five nominees for their top award: Best Director for Feature Film. So, once again it’s time to predict who’s going to be making the final cut for this important award. As you are probably aware, the winner of this award almost always goes on to win the corresponding Oscar, so let’s see who has the best chance to be in the running.
As far as locks go, I’d say there’s probably only two this year (as opposed to three last year), as the best thing that we can say about the other three slots are that there are names that are likely to show up, but certainly not a high enough percentage to say that it’s a certainty.
However, the first name on my list is one that is pretty much guaranteed to be there, and that’s George Miller for his astounding direction for Mad Max: Fury Road. He has been a powerhouse throughout awards season, winning a majority of the Best Director awards and getting nominated nearly everywhere else. As I’ve previously mentioned, it’s not hard to see why he’s been winning everywhere. Anyone who is able to direct the insane levels of action that he was able to get on screen deserves whatever accolades they get. While he didn’t get the Golden Globe last night, it’s merely a bump in the road and will certainly not effect him easily nabbing a nomination with the DGA.
The other lock would have to go to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for his outstanding direction for The Revenant. If there’s one thing that anyone is going to take away from his compelling survival epic, it’s that it is easily one of the most beautiful films of the year, mainly thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki’s gorgeous cinematography and Inarritu’s brilliant direction.
Miller did indeed do an amazing job of bringing together all of the elements of his action sequences to create breathtaking scenes, but what Inarritu does is bring together all of the elements of nature to create scenes that are equally breathtaking in their beauty and their ability to draw you into the dark tale.
Like Miller, Inarritu has been nominated everywhere, and though he had only won three Best Director awards prior to last night, the HFPA unexpectedly named him their winner at the Golden Globes, giving him an even firmer position than before, and making him an easy choice for one of the five DGA finalists.
Now is when we get into some guessing territory, with names that have a very good chance of making it, but could very well be left off the list if the DGA feels like going in a different direction.
The third name on my list is Tom McCarthy for the journalist drama Spotlight. His is not a name I would put on a list of Best Directors of 2015, mainly because his direction of the overrated film is not particularly noteworthy, but his name has shown up quite a lot throughout the season, and has even resulted in him winning in a few spots, so it seems a fair bet that he’ll show up here as well.
Add on to that the fact that the film has been rather popular with some of the guilds already, nabbing nominations from the PGA, WGA, and SAG, and it seems logical that the DGA would follow suit. For no other reason than these, he grabs a spot on my predictions list.