Achievement in Directing
“The Big Short” Adam McKay
“Mad Max: Fury Road” George Miller
“The Revenant” Alejandro G. Iñárritu
“Room” Lenny Abrahamson
“Spotlight” Tom McCarthy
Up until about a month ago, Best Director seemed like it was heading right toward George Miller for his outstanding direction of Mad Max: Fury Road, especially since he was the most popular choice by far during the critics’ awards.
However, the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and the Directors Guild of America’s award for Feature Film all went to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for his brilliant work on The Revenant, making him the frontrunner to take the Oscar (the DGA award alone gives him an approximate 90% chance of winning). If this should happen, he would make history by being the first director in over 60 years to win the Best Director Oscar back to back. It would be an amazing moment to celebrate, and with the DGA in his corner, it looks like we can look forward to it happening on the big night.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
“The Big Short” Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers
“Bridge of Spies” Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers
“Brooklyn” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
“Mad Max: Fury Road” Doug Mitchell and George Miller, Producers
“The Martian” Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer and Mark Huffam, Producers
“The Revenant” Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mary Parent and Keith Redmon, Producers
“Room” Ed Guiney, Producer
“Spotlight” Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Pagon Faust, Producers
This year’s Best Picture race has been an epic tale of films rising and falling, and a longshot contender lurking in the background all along. From the onset, it looked very much like Spotlight was just going to sweep right through the critics’ awards and then conquer most of the major guilds. However, while it did grab the majority of Best Picture prizes during the critics’ awards, it ended up losing at the Golden Globes and then, more importantly, at the Producers Guild awards.
It did manage to nab SAG’s top honor (Best Cast in a Motion Picture), but rarely has that helped a film enough to win Best Picture, and during a three-way split between the PGA, DGA, and SAG, never before has the film that won SAG’s Best Cast gone on to claim Best Picture. So at this point, Spotlight’s chances are slim at best.
Then there’s The Big Short, a film that didn’t manage to win a single Best Picture prize during the critics’ awards, but somehow went on to win the PGA’s top honor. This made a lot of people automatically think that it was going to go on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and they’d be forgiven for doing so, what with the PGA and the Academy having matched for the last eight years in a row.
[zergpaid]However, to put it simply, The Big Short is not the kind of film that wins Best Picture. It’s a complicated film that confounded many people, which makes it really hard to get a consensus vote. It’s still a mystery as to how it won the PGA over more popular films like Spotlight, The Revenant, and others, but the PGA is one thing, while the Academy is another.
Producers may have gone for it, but trying to get the 6,000 members of the Academy to go for it seems like an extreme longshot that just won’t happen. It felt wrong ever since the PGA chose it, and it only continued to feel wrong as the film lost SAG’s Best Cast to Spotlight and the DGA’s top honor to The Revenant. Like Spotlight, it appears to have lost all of its steam before reaching the finish line, leaving it with only a screenplay Oscar for consolation.
Then there’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s masterful epic, The Revenant, a film that wasn’t particularly popular during the critics’ awards. It was nominated in several place, and even won a few awards for Best Picture and Best Director (in addition to the plethora of awards for Best Actor), but it was clearly overshadowed by Spotlight, and even by Mad Max: Fury Road.
However, starting in January, we saw an amazing turnaround where the film won top honors at the Golden Globes, followed by several BAFTAs (including Best Film and Best Director) and the DGA’s top honor in February. The Golden Globes aren’t necessarily the best prognosticator, but they do match a good chunk of the time. The BAFTA awards are in a somewhat similar boat, except that they match more often, and they do help us see what a large voting body of industry professionals would choose.
What’s most important here, however, is the fact that Inarritu won the DGA’s award for Feature Film. In the two instances where there has been a three-way split between the PGA, DGA, and SAG, and the DGA winner has been popular enough to win the Oscar, Best Picture has ended up going to the same film (2001-02: Moulin Rouge!, A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, 2004-05: The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Sideways).
It’s true that the film’s win would be breaking a few long-standing rules, including not having a SAG nomination for Best Cast (how could it when most of the film is DiCaprio trying to survive in the wilderness?) or an Oscar nod for its screenplay (which admittedly wasn’t its strongest element), but there are precedents for each (Braveheart and Titanic).
It’s also true that these have never happened together since the inception of the Best Cast award, but the stats seem to be pointing to its victory nonetheless. Should it pull it off, it too would be making history, for it would be the first time in Academy history that a director’s films win back to back Oscars for Best Picture, making it an even more special occasion.
In conclusion, you may be asking: “Is The Revenant really the best film of 2015?” I’d be forced to answer “No” (again that’s Inside Out, a film which somehow didn’t even get a nomination for Best Picture), but it is ONE of the best films of 2015, and easily the best of the eight that the Academy nominated, so it would be a great choice to represent the year.
The Academy rarely chooses the very best film of the year anymore, though they did manage to get it last year when they gave top honors to Birdman. Most of the time, they try to do their best by selecting something that they find the most agreeable, which tends to lead to a good, or even great, movie most of the time. This is one of the years where it’s looking like we’ll end up with the latter, so, with all things considered, we’ll find ourselves at a fantastic conclusion to what’s been a long and incredibly crazy awards season. This is, of course, assuming everything goes well…
So, there you have my choices for all 24 Oscar categories, and the reasoning behind each choice. Now we want to hear what you think. Do you agree with these choices? What do you think will/should win? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to join us on the evening of Sunday, February 28th for the annual live-blogging of the Oscar winners!