Tom Cruise as Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. Photo / Supplied
Tom Cruise as Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. Photo / Supplied
First there was Nomadland, in all its austere, wind-whipped splendour. Then came CODA, which was – well, let’s be kind and just say not that. But in the third full film awards cycle of the 2020s, can the Oscars find it within themselves to reward a film people have actually seen? The Academy may have lately been wrestling with issues of diversity and representation, but the pandemic has brought another problem into stark relief: the gulf between the movies it enjoys and the ones that sell tickets.
Could the 2023 ceremony be a corrective? Happily, the signs look good. The Best Picture category includes two of the 12 highest-grossing films ever made, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water, and Elvis, an enormously successful summer musical biopic.
Even the trendy indie late-breaking frontrunner – the science-fiction multiverse caper Everything Everywhere All at Once – took more than $100 million worldwide, and was a long-running word-of-mouth hit in the US (and the UK too, to a lesser extent). In other words it’s potentially going to be a crowd-pleasing year, and the Academy sorely needs one.
Here, then, is how we expect Sunday night to unfold.
Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s parallel universe comedy may have made good on just one of its ten Bafta nominations. But in the US, its story of first and second generation immigrant family tensions and zany kitchen-sink humour have both struck a resonant chord. So while Top Gun: Maverick simply couldn’t have done more to earn this – it reminded the post-pandemic world just how thrilling and moving popular cinema can be – Everything Everywhere will make a fun Best Picture winner – and also one brimming with bright-young-thing energy, which is good for the Academy’s image.
Will win: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Should win: Todd Field, Tár
Most egregious snub: Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Woman King
The Everything Everywhere duo also appear to have this one sewn up, having won the Directors’ Guild of America award in February. But it’s an odd shortlist, which essentially just identifies the five Best Picture frontrunners by proxy, rather than singling out real directorial vision and verve. Whatever you think of Avatar, James Cameron should have probably been in the mix for bloody-mindedness alone – while the absence of Gina Prince-Bythewood, who brought such energy and style to her Africa-set historical epic The Woman King, is an embarrassment.
Austin Butler’s incredible portrayal of Elvis in Baz Luhrmann's feature film might win him Best Actor. Photo / Supplied
Best Actor
Will win: Austin Butler, Elvis
Should win: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Most egregious snub: Tom Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick
In a usually exasperating category, it’s exciting and novel to see a close-fought race between five strong candidates. Colin Farrell, Austin Butler, Brendan Fraser, Bill Nighy, Paul Mescal: any win here would be a memorable and worthy one. But while things were too close to call for weeks, Butler’s triumph at the Baftas appears to have nudged his blazingly charismatic Elvis into the lead. Tom Cruise’s reluctance to campaign may have cost him a deserved nomination here, but if that meant we got Mescal instead, it’s hard to grumble.
Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once is predicted to win Best Actress.
Best Actress
Will and should win: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Did Cate Blanchett give the best performance in this category, and perhaps of her entire career, in Tár? Yes, probably. But Michelle Yeoh has been so consistently undervalued by Hollywood over the years – not something you can say about the star of Carol, Elizabeth and Blue Jasmine – that some long-deserved official recognition would feel like the only just result. And it would be no career Oscar either: Yeoh is so steelily captivating in Everything Everywhere that without her, you suspect the whole thing might have fallen apart.
Seth Rogen, Paul Dano and Michelle Williams in a scene from The Fabelmans. Photo / Supplied
Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Should win: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Most egregious snub: Paul Dano, The Fabelmans
Brendan Fraser dominated the comeback talk this year, but the story of Ke Huy Quan – the former child star of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom who for two decades found it impossible to land Hollywood roles as a grown-up – might end up being the one that ends on the Dolby Theatre stage. His congenial performance in Everything Everywhere as Michelle Yeoh’s besieged husband Waymond packs serious voter appeal – as does Quan himself, whose selfie-heavy, just-grateful-to-be-here campaign is the sort of stuff the Oscars love.
The nominees for best supporting actress: Angela Bassett in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", Hong Chau in "The Whale", Kerry Condon in "The Banshees of Inisherin", Jamie Lee Curtis in "Everything Everywhere All at Once", and Stephanie Hsu in "Everything Everywhere All at Once". Photos / AP
Will win: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Should win: Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Most egregious snub: Dolly de Leon, Triangle of Sadness
Now here’s a prime opportunity for the awarding of a career Oscar, for services cumulatively rendered. Jamie Lee Curtis has been busily employed since 1987′s Halloween, but her supporting role as Everything Everywhere’s curmudgeonly tax inspector is the first time the Academy has been able to justify putting her onto their shortlist. It would be hard to begrudge her the win, although the superior performance by far came from The Banshees of Inisherin’s Kerry Condon, who made good at Bafta and a scattering of critics’ groups over the last month.
Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin. Photo / AP
Not that long ago, Martin McDonagh’s charred tragicomedy felt like a Best Picture frontrunner, but whatever momentum it may have lost in recent weeks, this prize – for its pungently witty, shiveringly unsettling script – must surely remain within its grasp. The lip-smackingly tricky ambiguities of Todd Field’s Tár are, I’d say, the greater achievement – but depending on just how much the Academy loves it, it’s all too possible that Everything Everywhere all at Once may slip out of an alternate timeline and claim this one too.
Rooney Mara as Ona in Women Talking.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Women Talking
Should win: Top Gun: Maverick
Most egregious snub: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Top Gun: Maverick’s screenplay isn’t merely award-worthy: it’s a masterclass in structuring, tempo and infusing spectacle with real emotional stakes. (It counts as an adaptation because it’s a sequel.) But as an action film, it’s also phenomenally unlikely to win a writing award. So let’s assume instead that this is where the Academy decide to recognise Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, a thought-provoking, ideas-rich ensemble piece, refashioned from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel about sexual abuse in an isolated religious group.
Will and should win: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Most egregious snub: My Father’s Dragon
The bloom is off the Disney-Pixar supremacy this year, though perhaps things would have been different if the latter studio’s Turning Red had been given the theatrical release it deserved, rather than being squirrelled away on Disney+. Anyway, that extra breathing space allowed Guillermo del Toro’s clockwork-smart stop-motion fable to establish itself as the fun-yet-meaningful, whizzy-yet-elegant frontrunner. It took the Golden Globe, the Bafta and top prize at the animation business’s own Annies: Oscar comes next.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a contender for Best International Feature. Photo / Netflix
Best International Feature
Will and should win: All Quiet on the Western Front
Most egregious snub: Decision to Leave
The success at the Baftas of Netflix’s First World War epic has had many Oscar-watchers wondering if it could repeat the same trick this weekend. And it might do – it’s enjoyably hard to tell, since Edward Berger’s film wasn’t in contention for many of the precursor awards that help outsiders divine the Academy’s tastes. It’s equally possible, though, that voters will have cooled on it slightly after its extraordinary Bafta tear, though nowhere near enough for it to miss out here. As the only foreign-language nominee with enough popular support to appear in other categories, this should be a done deal.
Navalny - Daniel Roher’s investigation into the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader will have pushed it onto many voters’ to-watch lists. Photo / Docplay
Best Documentary Feature
Will win: Navalny
Should win: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Most egregious snub: Moonage Daydream
Here again, the Baftas seemed to bring clarity to a previously tight-fought contest. The win for Daniel Roher’s investigation into the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader will have pushed it onto many voters’ to-watch lists, and it interestingly won the Producers’ Guild prize the following week. Fire of Love’s prior victory at the Directors’ Guild, however, makes Sara Dosa’s story of two lovestruck volcanologists the likeliest prospect for an upset.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon. Photo / Supplied
