The Film Experience

by Nathaniel R

The annual 'April Foolish' Oscar speculation charts are up for the 95th Academy Awards. They'll be held next winter or spring in 2023 honoring the films of 2022. Normally by now we'd have a ceremony date but perhaps burnt by two years of COVID and media fallout from Oscar night, the Board of Governors is being coy about the dates for the new season. Now about these predictions...

While we did Best Picture first (knowing it would influence other categories) and posted it last, somehow we still ended up with a confused overall spread. If all of these way-too-early predicted nominations came to pass (not that that's remotely likely!) that would mean we'd have the lowest nomination tally for Best Pictures since, like, 2005 when Brokeback Mountain was the nomination leader with only 8 citations.

While we can't say necessarily that we have "faith" in these ten pictures predicted... you have to predict something with almost everything sight unseen so in the end these pictures were in the crystal ball.

AVATAR 2 (Disney) James Cameron's long gestating sequel to his box office behemoth. The internet likes to make fun of Avatar and pretends that nobody ever liked it but they would be very wrong. It's only one of the biggest hits of all time and Cameron has defied expectations over and over again. People also predicted Titanic would tank at the box office before it opened.
BABYLON (Paramount) Damien Chazelle is back with an original story about Old Hollywood. They love movies about showbiz.
BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (Searchligh) Playwright/Director Martin McDonagh reunites his In Bruges co-stars and we're expecting magic. Of course it could be another Seven Psychopaths and land with a thud. You never know!
ELVIS (Warner Bros) Baz Luhrmann's music biopic of the King of Rock n Roll. There's usually one summer release in the mix.
THE FABELMANS (Universal) Steven Spielberg's autofiction about his adolescence and dreaming of becoming a filmmaker
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Apple/Paramount) Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the non-fiction book about the investigation into murders of Osage people in the 1920s. Last year's results proved that Apple is willing to pour money and efforts into Oscar campaigning
POOR THINGS (Searchlight) Yorgos Lanthimos returns with another oddity so this is kind of a big swing. It's an adaptation of a darkly comic Victorian novel which has echoes of Frankenstein. Is this one "hope-dicting"? Perhaps!
THE SON (Sony Pictures Classics) Florian Zeller brings us the second feature in his thematic trilogy which began with The Father
THIRTEEN LIVES (MGM/UA) Ron Howard directs a narrative version of the Thai cave rescues. A story that was just made into the documentary The Rescue last year. Howard hasn't had an Oscar hit since Frost/Nixon but perhaps this one will be a maintream crowdpleaser? CODA proved they still want their heartstrings pulled in super accessible non-artsy ways.
WHITE NOISE (Netflix) writer/director Noah Baumbach adapts the famous Don DeLillo novel about a professor pioneering the field of Hitler studies and his relationship with his fourth wife (played by Baumbach's partner Greta Gerwig)

Immediately we know we've erred by undersestimating Netflix which will surely be more present than just one picture nominee but we didn't quite have faith that Oscar would fully embrace Rustin, outside of acting and maybe screenplay. And since it's a biopic about gay civil rights icon... well, Oscar can be hard to predict when it comes to gay stories.

Other possibilities that we didn't quite predict were the journalism #MeToo drama She Said, the romantic drama Empire of Light, the biopic Till, and James Gray's Armageddon Time which we have a good feeling about (so we're perplexed that it's not higher up in multiple charts... but you try doing this. It gets confusing!)

Finally, you'll notice in Best Director there's a big predictive swing: DAVID CRONENBERG for Crimes of the Future. Consider it a Blue Velvet or Last Temptation of Christ style nomination prediction. Even if other branches can't quite deal with the reportedly shocking body horror picture maybe the directors branch will finally realize that Cronenberg is getting on in years and is hugely influential and awesome and he's never been nominated for anything and they really screwed up back in 2005 by not nominating him for A History of Violence (which is surely the closest he ever came). This isn't as outlandish as it sounds. If could happen if the film is a critical sensation. Will it be? Well we'll find out soon enough since it's in competition at Cannes next month.

Hope you enjoy the charts.

Oscar Charts *ALL NEW*