There have been two years in a row where the Oscars have been almost preposterously easy to predict, so we were due for something like this: you can count the wholly locked categories on the fingers of one hand, assuming you have a six-fingered hand, and there at least that many “who the hell knows, throw a dart”-style categories. And that, let us be honest, does make all of this a bit more fun, even if we can be very extraordinary sure about this depressing knowledge: Mad Max: Fury Road will win fewer Oscars than it patently deserves, and The Revenant will earn more. But hey, who back in May would have assumed that Fury Road would end up with any nominations to speak of, let alone the second-highest tally?
At any rate, if your relationship to the Oscars is to think of them as a big giant game with no significant real-world application – and I do, mostly – this is the most fun they’ve been in a few years, even though the results are almost certainly going to be deeply disappointing.
Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
Predicted to Win: The Big Short
Spoiler: The Revenant
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
It’s one of those very special years where every single nominee obviously can’t win, like we haven’t had since the 2006 Oscars. But the ones that specifically obviously can’t win are Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, The Martian, and Room. And this is sadly not going to be one of the places that Mad Max takes a prize, even though it’s obviously the critics’ favorite in the race.
So that leaves us with The Big Short and Spotlight splitting the “meaningful drama about Contemporary Stuff” crowd, and The Revenant rolling in on the strength of the… I don’t even know. What, in all honesty, is the argument in favor of The Revenant as 2015’s best feature? It’s winning shit left and right, but there’s no sane argument that this is even slightly in the industry’s wheelhouse. And that’s where the ol’ Preferential Ballot argument comes in. See, a film can win just about every award of the season with a 20% + 1 vote tally. But not the Best Picture Oscar. It has to clear a much more arcane threshold, one that very much favors films with a lot of consensus – and I cannot persuade myself that The Revenant is a consensus favorite. I think it’s adored by more people than Spotlight or The Big Short, but it’s almost certainly also hated by more people than either of those films, and this is a voting system where being hated actually does hurt a movie.
The only other awards-granting body that uses a preferential ballot is the PGA, and they went with The Big Short; since that’s by far the most of-the-moment Message Movie, it’s the one I’ve been nurturing as my pick to win pretty much since the very beginning (it’s also my least favorite of the eight nominees, and I would unhesitatingly call it – or The Revenant, for that matter – the worst winner since Crash). So I get to both follow a semblance of logic and my gut.
Best Director
Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Predicted to Win: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Spoiler: George Miller
My Pick: George Miller
Even before the nominations, I was predicting McKay and The Big Short, but I’ve finally chickened out – the one and only realistic argument against González Iñárritu is that he won last year, and I really can’t see how that actually affects him in the minds of voters. If Miller couldn’t win at the DGA, he has absolutely no chance in Hell of winning here, but why not, I’ll leave him in the runner-up slot. Though it does feel that since McCarthy and McKay’s films have a much better shot at the top prize than Miller’s, they’re both probably likelier to win.
Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Predicted to Win: Leonardo DiCaprio
Spoiler: Bryan Cranston
My Pick: Not any of these five. Fassbender, I guess?
If there’s an acting category that you can count on to be generally unexciting, it’s Lead Actor, but even so, this year is some deep-down dire shit. I went back trying to figure out the last time that this category had such a low average; I stopped when I got as far back as 1990. All of which robs the long-awaited Leo’s First Oscar of some of its triumph, though that’s probably a pissy way to think of it.
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Predicted to Win: Brie Larson
Spoiler: Saoirse Ronan
My Pick: Charlotte Rampling
In contrast, a race where all five nominees are up to something good, though Lawrence found a very odd path to get there. To me, the grande dames are clearly the most impressive, but it’s just as clearly between the ingenues, and Larson has made a fairly clean sweep of the whole awards season, so…
Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Predicted to Win: Sylvester Stallone
Spoiler: Christian Bale
My Pick: Mark Rylance
Is this tough to predict? People are acting like this is tough to predict. But who doesn’t want to see Sly win for what’s legitimately one of his best-ever performances, in a return to his most beloved signature character?
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Predicted to Win: Alicia Vikander
Spoiler: Kate Winslet
My Pick: Jennifer Jason Leigh
In theory, given bodies of work and narratives and all, anybody but McAdams could win, though the stats say this is a Vikander-Winslet showdown. I would like to imagine that anybody with eyes and ears could tell that Winslet is better (than this particular Vikander performance, anyway), but this has been so much the Year of Vikander that I really don’t see anybody else muscling her out. Close your eyes and pretend it’s for Ex Machina.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short (Adam McKay and Charles Randolph)
Brooklyn (Nick Hornby)
Carol (Phyllis Nagy)
The Martian (Drew Goddard)
Room (Emma Donoghue)
Predicted to Win: The Big Short
Spoiler: Room
My Pick: Carol
If there’s a lock this year, outside of Animated Feature, it’s in the screenplay categories. Which is particularly galling when that lock is for the weakest of the five nominees.
Best Original Screenplay
Bridge of Spies (Matt Charman and Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
Inside Out (Josh Cooley, Pete Docter, & Meg LeFauve)
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer)
Straight Outta Compton (Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, & Alan Wenkus)
Predicted to Win: Spotlight
Spoiler: Inside Out
My Pick: Inside Out
Ditto, except for the “weakest” part. I actually admire the Spotlight script; it does a good job of streamlining and enlivening history. It’s boringly straightforward, but Tom McCarthy as an Oscar recipient will cause me no tears.
Best Cinematography
Carol (Ed Lachman)
The Hateful Eight (Robert Richardson)
Mad Max: Fury Road (John Seale)
The Revenant (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Sicario (Roger Deakins)
Predicted to Win: The Revenant
Spoiler: Sicario
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
It’s so weird that Lubezki could go from “who does he have to murder to win an Oscar?” to “stop giving him Oscars, already” in such short order. And even being the first cinematographer to win three years running isn’t enough to salve the pain of knowing that he lost for Children of Men. I have a somewhat morbid fear that this will turn out to be Deakins’s final nomination (Blade Runner 2 sounds like a very unlikely Oscar play, and Hail, Caesar! will be long forgotten by this time next year), but other than my own private sentiment, I can’t imagine what could turn the tide in his favor.
Best Editing
The Big Short (Hank Corwin)
Mad Max: Fury Road (Margaret Sixel)
The Revenant (Stephen Mirrione)
Spotlight (Tom McArdle)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey)
Predicted to Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Spoiler: The Big Short
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
Beastly tough, especially if, like me, you’re predicting The Big Short in Best Picture – it can’t walk away with just two awards, right? And this surely is the next one in line for it. But doesn’t all sanity decree that this is a Fury Road versus Revenant situation? When there’s an action film with tremendously energetic, radical cutting, this one tends to break away from following the Best Picture winner, and Fury Road is very obviously the “most” edited of these. But I was horribly torn between those three. Obviously, if The Big Short or Spotlight takes this, that film ends up snagging Picture.
Best Costume Design
Carol (Sandy Powell)
Cinderella (Sandy Powell)
The Danish Girl (Paco Delgado)
Mad Max: Fury Road (Jenny Beavan)
The Revenant (Jacqueline West)
My record: 4/5
Predicted to Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Spoiler: The Danish Girl
My Pick: Carol
I figured this was the clear-cut place for the Carol fanciers to rally behind the film to be most visibly shafted in the nomination process, but then the costume guild went and spooked me. Assuming it’s a toss-up between Fury Road and The Danish Girl, I’m going with the logic that they don’t usually give crafts awards to films generally perceived to be bad, unless they absolutely cannot avoid it.
Best Production Design
Bridge of Spies (Adam Stockhausen / Rena DeAngelo, Bernhard Henrich)
The Danish Girl (Eve Stewart / Michael Standish)
Mad Max: Fury Road (Colin Gibson / Katie Sharrock, Lisa Thompson)
The Martian (Arthur Max / Celia Bobak, Zoltan Horvath)
The Revenant (Jack Fisk / Hamish Purdy)
Predicted to Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Spoiler: The Martian
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
The world doesn’t make sense if this doesn’t come down to the two fantasy/sci-fi competitors – though I would be secretly cheered if Bridge of Spies somehow finagled it. This is of course the only award The Martian can possibly win, but Fury Road is more in the conversation, appears to be more on the voters’ minds, and arguably has “bigger” design setpieces, though so very much of it is empty desert…
Best Hair and Makeup
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Predicted to Win: The Revenant
Spoiler: Mad Max: Fury Road
My Pick: The Revenant
A coin flip. Most people are predicting Mad Max, and for damned good reason, but the blood and gashes and all-round awfulness of The Revenant seems almost showier, in a film with a much clearer shot at Best Picture.
Best Original Score
Bridge of Spies (Thomas Newman)
Carol (Carter Burwell)
The Hateful Eight (Ennio Morricone)
Sicario (Jóhann Jóhannson)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (John Williams)
Predicted to Win: The Hateful Eight
Spoiler: Carol
My Pick: Sicario
“Give the living legend his first-ever Oscar” sure seems like a can’t-miss approach to this category: Carol is far and away the film with the most distinctively “present” score, but Carol has been having a shitty awards season, so why change that now? I will puke acid if Bridge of Spies wins, which seems unpleasantly possible.
Best Original Song
From Fifty Shades of Grey: “Earned It”
From The Hunting Ground: “Til It Happens to You”
From Racing Extinction: “Manta Ray”
From Spectre: “Writing’s on the Wall”
From Youth: “Simple Song #3”
Predicted to Win: “Til It Happens to You”
Spoiler: “Writing’s on the Wall”
My Pick: “Simple Song #3”
Surrounded by pop songs running the gamut from “generic pap” to “oh my God get the burning off of me Sam Smith what are you doing?”, the ploddingly operatic “Simple Song #3” emerges as the best of the nominees pretty much by accident (the transcendent voice of Sumi Jo is always a pleasure, at least), in what strikes me as being among the worst slates of nominees in any category in all the history of the Oscars. Feel free to check my math on that. But this is dire enough to make that heinous year where The Muppets and Rio squared off in this category with no other nominees look artful and well-considered. Anyway, Lady Gaga is a particularly famous person, so I imagine that she (and the often-nominated, yet-to-win Diane Warren) takes it.
Best Sound Mixing
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted to Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Spoiler: The Revenant
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted to Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Spoiler: The Revenant
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
I have no god-damned clue. The sound categories were the hardest for me to predict this year, so let me walk you through my logic.
–Bridge of Spies and Sicario push
–The Martian is everybody’s third-favorite tech-heavy Best Picture nominee
–The Revenant isn’t conspicuously an effects movie like Fury Road or The Force Awakens, though its status as a Best Picture frontrunner obviously compensates for that.
–The Force Awakens ably re-creates the iconic sounds of a 38-year-old movie – easy to write it off as just being a copycat
-And anyway, Fury Road has lots of gigantic, loud action. Still, I can easily see these both going to The Revenant, though, or Mixing to The Revenant and Editing to Fury Road (the reverse is hugely unlikely). This will be where my ballot gets fucked hardest, I suspect.
Best Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted to Win: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Spoiler: The Revenant
My Pick: Mad Max: Fury Road
It has been decades since this category failed to go to a Best Picture nominee when one was available (it last happened when Tora! Tora! Tora! beat Patton, 45 years ago). But only once was one of those BP hopefuls facing a Star Wars (The Two Towers beat Attack of the Clones in 2002, which I think we can all agree would have happened anyway). And I have a really hard time imagining that the newly-anointed highest-grossing film in U.S. box office history wins zero Oscars. All of which tells me that the frankly rather crummy-looking animated bear in The Revenant simply won’t be enough to overcome the fullness of the space battles and fantasy world-building – and the frankly rather crummy-looking Supreme Leader Snoke – that ILM working from Disney’s bottomless money bin could provide.
Best Foreign Language Film
Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia)
Mustang (France)
Son of Saul (Hungary)
Theeb (Jordan)
A War (Denmark)
Predicted to Win: Son of Saul
Spoiler: Mustang
My Pick: I have not seen all of the nominees
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a real argument for why Son of Saul might possibly miss out here. It’s the least-locked of the night’s locks, maybe, but it’s still one of the night’s locks.
Best Animated Feature
Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep
When Marnie Was There
Predicted to Win: Inside Out
Spoiler: Anomalisa
My Pick: Boy and the World
And here’s the night’s strongest lock. You don’t get Inside Out‘s reviews and box office and miss.
Best Documentary
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
Predicted to Win: Amy
Spoiler: Cartel Land
My Pick: The Look of Silence
My heart says that What Happened, Miss Simone? is right in striking distance: two biographies of famous singers with thorny personal lives, and only one of them is also a very strong and certain political document in the year of #OscarsSoWhite. But popularity goes a long way with this category, especially lately, and Amy plays more heavily to the audience than the other four combined. Cartel Land certainly wallops Winter on Fire in the “grave story of a serious real-life situation”, but serious films are doing worse and worse here, with last year’s Citizenfour an enormous exception.
Best Documentary Short
Body Team 12
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom
Predicted to Win: Chau, Beyond the Lines
Spoiler: Body Team 12
My Pick: I have not seen all of the nominees
On paper, this is a no-brainer: Holocaust film, chance to pretend that they’re making up to Lanzmann (who is the subject, not the creator, of Spectres of the Shoah). But every review I’ve read – it’s one of the films I haven’t seen – makes it sound like the dullest thing you could conceive of: three separate, unrelated critics I’ve encountered have described it as a barely-glorified DVD extra.
So where does that leave us? Last Day of Freedom is animated and can thus be discarded out of hand. Chau, which I have seen, nails the mix of being depressing but also kind of uplifting and sentimental that the nice old people who vote for this award tend to feel is Highly Artistic. Body Team 12, meanwhile, sounds newsy and apparently a bit insubstantial, and A Girl in the River sounds emphatically political. Emphatically political films are not what this category likes, even though it feels like that’s not the case.
Best Animated Short
Bear Story (Historia de un oso)
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow
Predicted to Win: World of Tomorrow
Spoiler: Bear Story
My Pick: World of Tomorrow
Prologue is a miracle of drafting and careful observation of human movement; it also has hella gore and male nudity. But any of the other four could easily take it; We Can’t Live Without Cosmos perhaps least easily, as it is by far the most unconcerned with foregrounding its artistry. And Pixar does surprisingly terribly in this category, so I’m not comfortable putting Sanjay’s Super Team at the level of the other two. I admit it is only my wholly subjective sense that Don Hertzfeldt is massively overdue – goddamn Rejected lost an Oscar, which is my version of “Alfred Hitchcock never won Best Director” – that leads me to resolve the coin flip in favor of World of Tomorrow, and it certainly has the most visible presence out of any of these five – it’s a short film that showed up on critics’ top ten lists, for Christ’s sake, and not just mine. But I am probably permitting my heart to get in the way of my head.
Best Live-Action Short
Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay (Alles wird gut)
Shok
Stutterer
Predicted to Win: Stutterer
Spoiler: Shok
My Pick: Everything Will Be Okay
Although just about everyone finds there way to some version of “none of these are really great, but at least Everything Will Be Okay has some pretty interesting stuff going on, so I guess it’s the best?”, I’m fairly confident in reducing this to Shok and Stutterer. In part because the latter is the only one of these that’s even a little bit fun (Ave Maria tries to be, and fails). And this category has a strong recent history of giving English-language comedies – romantic comedies especially – special favor here. Shok is a heart-wrenching story about kids, one of those formulas that seems like Oscar bait and actually isn’t, but I have to assume that Ave Maria and the unfocused Day One are non-factors, and Everything Will Be Okay is just plain fucking nasty. So if they want a “serious” pick, Shok is the obvious one to go. But given Stutterer‘s exceedingly high-gloss production and a deeply beguiling lead performance by Matthew Needham, I feel fairly comfortable in supposing that they’re not going to go serious.