Now we come to the section of our Oscar ballots where we start to get into some of the more “prestigious” nominees – and the nominees with a bit more glitz and glamor. With music nominees, we have both your classical film composers and your more recent pop and rock musicians who have taken to scoring film. And of course, in the original song category, we have popular musicians, movie songwriters, and even occasionally musical composers trying their hands at composing catchy ballads and dance numbers for the big screen. In both cases, I’m interested in seeing how the composers and songwriters use their medium to help support the narrative and mood of the film – rather than just swooning over the song or score that I find the most pleasant.
The writing awards encompass both original and adapted screenplay, and they can often be seen as the consolation prize for films that the Academy wants to recognize but aren’t going to award with Best Picture. With original screenplay, I’m looking for a film that has depth and substance, that has well-rounded characters and rich thematic resonance. With adapted screenplay, I’m looking for all of those elements, but I’m also looking to see how well it takes its source material and translates it to a new medium, a sequel, or a remake of the original work.
Finally, with the acting categories, we have the movie stars that often draw people to watching the Oscars in the first place – especially since they’re decked out in all of their awards season finery. While I know that the bigger and the more histrionic the performance, the more likely they are to win the award, I tend to gravitate to smaller and more intimate performances, performances with more subtlety and nuance.
As far as predictions go, we’ve had a number of precursors lean heavily in favor of some of the nominees, so there are some nominees who are very likely to win, but there are others who are tossups and we will have to make our best educated guesses based on how Oscar voters have behaved in the past.
Best Music (Original Score)
Volker Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front is harsh and unnerving, keeping the audience on edge and uncomfortable throughout the horrific scenes of war and violence. The haunting, slightly out-of-tune melody that anchors the Manny and Nellie theme in Babylon provides a melancholy contrast to the blaring jazz-infused energy of Justin Hurwitz’s score, capturing the energy and excitement of early Hollywood, as well as the film industry’s rotten and exploitive foundations. Carter Burwell’s melancholy, dark and foreboding strains serve as the musical foundation of The Banshees of Inisherin’s bittersweet black comedy, never overpowering the film and giving it a universality that extends beyond its Irish setting. Capturing the epic scope of a multiverse adventure, while remaining grounded in the family drama at the film’s center, Son Lux’s score for Everything Everywhere All at Once is a masterful blending of the grandiose and the intimate and is just as playful and moving and as the film which contains it. John Williams is one of the titans of movie music, and his score for The Fabelmans is lovely and captures the emotions of growing up and watching your parents divorce, as well as the joy of discovering what it is you’re called to do with your life.
Prediction: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Babylon
Preference: Babylon (though I’ll be very happy if Banshees or Everything Everywhere wins)
Best Music (Original Song)
“Lift Me Up,” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, is definitely an earworm of a song – catchy, pleasing to listen to, and it musically captures the right emotion for the end of the film, but the lyrics are too generic to fully match everything that came before. Everything Everywhere All at Once’s “This Is a Life” perfectly encapsulates the film’s themes and ideas about family and possibility, its whimsical and adventurous mood and tone, and yet it works as a song that can stand on its own as well. In film that is filled with wonderful musical numbers, RRR’s “Naatu Naatu” is an absolute treat that serves as a potent (and delightful) showdown between our heroes and colonial arrogance – not to mention the fact that the song’s rhythm becomes an integral way for the two protagonists to communicate with one another. Tell It like a Woman is the worst film I’ve seen this Oscar season (maybe the worst film I’ve seen in the last few years), and the song that’s been nominated from it, “Applause,” is a milquetoast anthem filled with bland self-affirmations that don’t connect to any of the themes in the film – plus we have to listen to the song a full three times over the course of 20 minutes. Finally, “Hold My Hand” is a perfectly fine power ballad, but once again, there’s nothing about the song or its lyrics that connect to the themes or narrative in Top Gun: Maverick.
Prediction: “Naatu Naatu”
Spoiler: “Lift Me Up”
Preference: “This Is a Life” (though I’ll be very happy if “Naatu Naatu” wins)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, and Ian Stokell’s adapation of All Quiet on the Western Front is the first German adaptation of the novel, and most of the changes to the source material drive home the disparity between the ruling classes starting the wars and the lower classes sent off to die. Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Knives Out, Glass Onion, is a delightful murder mystery that once again skewers wealth and those with power in society, taking Benoit Blanc and playing with this character audiences grew to love in the first film, only to reveal that nothing happens in this film series without a good reason. In Living, Kazuo Ishiguro’s adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Ishiguro transplants the original from post-war Japan to post-war Britain and crafts a sweet and faithful narrative, though it misses much of emotional heft by trying to condense it by 45 minutes – and there aren’t enough new ideas brought to the adaptation to justify merely changing the cultural context. The writing team behind Top Gun: Maverick has engineered a taut, effective blockbuster working off of the DNA of the original film, but every time there’s a chance to dig deeper into character and his mortality, the writers take the easy way out and veer off into the male fairy tale of ageless virility and strength. Finally, Sarah Polley’s adaptation of the novel Women Talking is exquisite, taking a book that in form consists of meeting notes and transforming it into something cinematic and heartbreaking and deeply moving.
Prediction: Women Talking
Spoiler: Living
Preference: Women Talking
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Martin McDonagh’s screenplay for The Banshees of Inisherin is haunting, poetic, funny, and incredibly sad – telling of the rupture between two friends during the Irish Civil War and yet managing to have deep resonance for our own fractious times. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert tell a multiverse sci-fi tale with their own blend of wit and humor, keeping the life-or-death stakes grounded in a deeply personal story about family and the immigrant experience. While The Fabelmans is ostensibly Steven Spielberg’s memory film, his script with Tony Kushner manages to excavate deep family wounds, explore his love of cinema, and avoid painting it all with a sentimental sheen. TÁR is a richly layered, deeply complex film – not just because of Todd Field’s visual language, but also due to his densely layered script that gives a rich, challenging role to its central performer and is filled with rich symbolism and allusions that only deepen your appreciation for the film the more you consider it. A satire of power and the way power shifts (in relationships as well as in society), Triangle of Sadness is a sharp, hilarious comedy that uncomfortably points out the hypocrisies in our culture and in our own lives.
Prediction: The Banshees of Inisherin
Spoiler: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Preference: The Banshees of Inisherin (though this year I’d be happy to see any of the nominees win)
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Cate Blanchett is stunning in her performance as a composer and conductor facing the consequences of her abuses of power in TÁR, not only conveying the character’s imperious defiance but also her willful self-deception and growing dread. As Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, a fictional retelling of the actress’ life, Ana de Armas walks a tightrope in allowing for a measure of artifice to seep into her performance, yet still convey the psychological toll taken on so many of the women working within the film industry. To Leslie is a story of addiction and recovery, and Andrea Riseborough’s performance hits many of the expected beats and emotional registers, though when the film allows her moments of stillness and quiet, we can see what a magnetic, subtle, and powerful performer she can be. Playing Spielberg’s troubled and unhappy mother in The Fabelmans, Michelle Williams is often too false and performative, though there are some lovely nuances that rise to the surface the further into the film we get. Michelle Yeoh’s performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once gives the cinema veteran so much variety and depth to explore – a meaty mother/daughter relationship, a failing marriage, incredible fight sequences, moody romance, comedy – and she manages to pull off every version of her character with a grace and aplomb that is stunning to see.
Prediction: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Cate Blanchette, TÁR
Preference: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Best Actor in a Leading Role
In Elvis, Austin Butler manages to bring the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to life without merely putting on a shallow impersonation, but by making his Elvis Presley a fully realized human being. Colin Farrell’s work in The Banshees of Inisherin is masterful, turning in a performance that is soulful, sad, and hilarious (sometimes all at the same time) as he attempts to repair the rift in a friendship that has ended. With his performance in The Whale as an obese man attempting to reconnect with his daughter, Brendan Fraser gives an openhearted, emotionally vulnerable performance that ends up being much stronger than the movie it’s in. Paul Mescal is stunning in Aftersun portraying a father on holiday with his daughter, showing a loving and troubled, kind but difficult man who can be inscrutable even as his child tries all the harder to understand him. Living features the always wonderful Bill Nighy as an office clerk who attempts to truly start living toward the end of his life, and the slight modulations and the emotional arc he finds within his British reserve is incredibly moving.
Prediction: Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Spoiler: Austin Butler, Elvis
Preference: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin (though I would be very happy to see Paul Mescal win for Aftersun)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
As the other half of the feud which occupies much of The Banshees of Inisherin, Brendan Gleeson has the task of being less sympathetic and remaining more taciturn throughout the film – yet he still manages to make us care about the depth of longing he conveys and the sadness that has permeated so much of his life. Brian Tyree Henry is the best part of Causeway, bringing depth and subtlety and nuance to a script that is wooden and stiff. While he may not have much by way of screen time, Judd Hirsch’s performance in The Fabelmans is lovely and charming, exuding warmth and compassion. The Banshees of Inisherin’s most heartbreaking character is played by Barry Keoghan with such a deep well of sadness and rage and pain that it can be easy to overlook the actor’s comic timing and the way he manages draw us in with a tossed off line of dialogue or a moment of stillness. As the emotional core at the center of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ke Huy Quan expertly shifts from dowdy husband to suave heartthrob to action hero and finds lovely moments of connection with all of his fellow castmates.
Prediction: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoiler: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Preference: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Angela Bassett provides so much of the emotional catharsis necessary in order for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to work as well as it does – she brings a gravitas to this comic book film and, in her character leading a nation to mourn for the death of their king, she helped us mourn the loss of Chadwick Boseman. While The Whale’s script is mawkish and maudlin, Hong Chau is one of the other performers who manages to come off well, bringing kindness and warmth to her caregiver role, but also a tough-as-nail practicality and bitterness that is rooted in grief and tragedy. As the woman caught between feuding friends who is fed up with the ways their drama is hurting everyone around them, Kerry Condon’s performance in The Banshees of Inisherin expertly hits notes of loss, longing, exasperation, and resignation. Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic as the IRS agent auditing the central family in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and like all of the cast members, she gets the opportunity to try on multiple roles and bring lovely depth and nuance to her performance in this otherwise over-the-top cinematic extravaganza. The second nominee from Everything Everywhere All at Once, Stephanie Hsu, plays the second half of the film’s mother/daughter pairing that is central to the film’s narrative and emotional stakes, and Hsu is able to convey the sense of loss and sadness that are key to understanding just how dire things can truly get.
Prediction: Angela Basset, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Spoiler: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Preference: Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
