Countdown to the Oscars: Best Picture

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Picture

The nominees are:

All Quiet on the Western Front

Avatar: The Way of Water

The Banshees of Inisherin

Elvis

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Fabelmans

TÁR

Top Gun: Maverick

Triangle of Sadness

Women Talking

It has been a while since a single movie so bulldozed the competition all season as to take all the guesswork out of Best Picture. So long, in fact, that I have never covered a season like this in such depth. Honestly, it’s been kind of lame and exhausting. Now, I am aware enough of myself to recognize that if it were a film I loved running away with the top prize, I would probably enjoy it quite a bit more. I’m sure I could wax poetic all day every day about Women Talking or The Banshees of Inisherin or TÁR. The truth is I ran out of things to say about Everything Everywhere All at Once on Day 2.

I will refrain from writing a eulogy on the year in film that was 2022 until after the Academy Awards are over on Sunday, but I can’t help but feel a little sorry that a year that was so excellent – both overall and at the Oscars – will end up mostly defined by a film I found so dreadful. But, as I’ve said a number of times before, they don’t erase all the other movies on Monday. The great ones will still be around to be watched and shared and admired, no matter what wins Best Picture.

In order of least likely to most likely winner:

Avatar: The Way of Water – Kudos to James Cameron on continuing one of the most remarkable runs in film history. He made the highest grossing film of all time. Then, he did it again. Then, he took 13 years to make a sequel, delivering it into a film universe that had changed immensely since the last time he conquered the box office. Virtually no one thought this was a good idea or likely to work. How to follow up the biggest movie in the history of movies? Well, we doubt Cameron at our peril. Avatar: The Way of Water isn’t entirely successful, but it’s successful enough, and even that is a miracle.

Women Talking – This is the best film of 2022. As the years go on, more people will catch up to that realization. They will get a look at the artistry of the filmmaking, the poignancy of the writing, and the brilliance of the acting, and they will wonder how this got so overlooked by the Academy. The silver lining is that great films don’t go away. They are continuously discovered, passed along by film fans to other fans until they take their rightful place in the canon.

Triangle of Sadness – If Ruben Östlund’s superb satire were going to challenge for Best Picture, Dolly de Leon would have snuck into the lineup for Best Supporting Actress. It’s a shame. The success of the film hinges on her turn in the third act, and she carries that weight in a way few other actresses could. There is irony in the Academy nominating for Best Picture a film specifically meant to skewer the most visible of the membership, but they might have missed that. It’s okay. I’m sure Östlund is chuckling to himself.

Top Gun: Maverick – The movie that saved movies, of course it had to be nominated for Best Picture. But, something feels a little off about the nomination, doesn’t it? Why does the movie succeed? There are probably two big things: the stunningly choreographed action sequences and the star power of Tom Cruise. So, why were neither director Joseph Kosinski nor Cruise nominated for their work? If you think the movie is successful, those are the two people most responsible for its success. (Note: Cruise is nominated as a producer, but we’re talking about star power as the lead of the film.)

The Fabelmans – Steven Spielberg feels a little like Thanos at this point: He is inevitable. He has made nine films since 2011, and six of them have been nominated for Best Picture. No other modern filmmaker can boast a resumé like that. A couple of the nods have felt like obligations on the Academy’s part, like The Post or Bridge of Spies, two movies I like. Lincoln, on the other hand, was a major player in 2012. The Fabelmans feels somewhere in between those two spaces. It picked up a number of major nominations and it has admirers within the Academy, but it’s not threatening to win the big prize.

All Quiet on the Western Front – This is the dividing line. The five movies above are the also-rans, the “just happy to be here group.” The next five are the ones that would be battling it out for the win if it weren’t for the fact that the top film on the list is utterly dominant. Edward Berger’s film is a grand accomplishment and should instantly vault into the discussion of greatest war films of all time. It builds on the modern classics that came before it such as Saving Private Ryan and Letters from Iwo Jima to deliver a totally immersive experience. To paraphrase another filmmaker talking about his own war picture, this movie is not about war; it is war.

TÁR – In the Best Picture lineup this year, there are multiple war movies, a big-budget action-adventure flick, a multiverse spanning sci-fi mashup, and a biopic of one of the most famous figures of the 20th century. Despite that, Todd Field’s TÁR is the one that feels the most like a grand, epic achievement. It’s There Will Be Blood in an orchestra pit. It’s Barry Lyndon goes to the symphony. It has all the hallmarks of a movie that will be discussed and debated for the next 50 years. It doesn’t need to win Best Picture to leave a mark on cinema history. The mark has been made.

Elvis – I feel odd putting Elvis this high in the rankings when Baz Luhrmann failed to garner a Best Director nomination, but it’s been a weird season. As it stands, I expect Elvis to be the next big winner after Everything Everywhere All at Once, taking home anywhere from three to five statues. It would hardly be the first time a big, flashy movie with a showy lead performance wowed voters into showering it with awards. It’s just that in a year with this many tremendous films, it’s unfortunate to see the Academy falling in love with “most” over “best.”

The Banshees of Inisherin – In 2017, it felt like Martin McDonagh got really close to winning it all with Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. This year, it feels like he got even closer with The Banshees of Inisherin. As mentioned before in this series, McDonagh has said he wants to focus on moviemaking as he moves forward in his career. More than likely, that means he will be back in this race again, and he will probably get that Best Picture statue someday. One hopes it is for work as formidable as this. Knowing McDonagh, I have no doubt.

Everything Everywhere All at Once – What more is there to say? This film premiered at SXSW on March 11, 2022. The world fell in love with it. One year and one day later, it will be crowned Best Picture of the year at the Academy Awards. Some started predicting it for the big prize at that premiere. Kudos to them. I thought it was wishful thinking, forecasting with the heart, not the head. But, damned if the whole film industry didn’t just embrace this thing with open arms in ways I have found truly shocking. I don’t get it. I probably won’t ever get it. But, I don’t need to get it. It’s happening.

The final analysis

Sometimes, weird things come to pass. When Crash won in 2005, it basically proved that we can never be 100 percent sure of anything. But, even Crash had some bit of precedent, if only in hindsight, in winning the SAG ensemble award. If we’re being honest, it also had a sizable voting bloc of homophobic, anti-Brokeback Mountain folks.

There is no precedent for anything other than Everything Everywhere All at Once winning Best Picture. It has won every important guild award – PGA, DGA, SAG, and the WGA. It has won virtually all of the below-the-line guild awards, too. It has all the important Oscar nominations – Director, multiple acting nominations, Screenplay, Editing, along with a few others just for show. The industry has fallen absolutely head over heels in love with this movie.

There is no conflict here. There’s no scrappy underdog like CODA or Parasite. There’s no one campaigning hard against it for political reasons, like the year the anti-Netflix crowd tanked Roma in favor of Green Book. There’s not even an interesting two-horse race like Birdman vs. Boyhood or Moonlight vs. La La Land. It’s just pure sweep all the way down the line.

This is like that run from 2010-2012 when The King’s Speech, The Artist, and Argo all just dominated from start to finish. Those were all years when the movie of the moment triumphed over the movie that would prove to have staying power. Proof, perhaps, that the Oscars are a snapshot of what the movie industry is feeling at any given time. Academy members aren’t voting based on how history will remember their choices. They’re voting for what feels good right now. Making history is incidental.

It really doesn’t matter if Everything Everywhere All at Once holds up the way Women Talking will or TÁR will. That’s not the point. The point is that for one week of voting in March 2023, a lot of people just really had a good time with this strange little confection. Like cheap champagne, it feels great while you’re drinking it. Worry about the hangover tomorrow.

Will win: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Women Talking

Should have been here: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

A note about my favorite snub: No documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture. I’m not even sure what the Academy rules are anymore on films competing for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Picture. Doesn’t matter. I don’t feel any need to be beholden to their rules in dream casting my ballot. Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is poignantly felt, deftly executed, and stirringly resonant. It is without question one of the 10 best films of the year and would absolutely be on my list of Best Picture nominees.

Next time: We’re going to rank all the nominated movies! That should be fun.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are:

All Quiet on the Western Front

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Living

Top Gun: Maverick

Women Talking

Let’s go back to 2007 (you’ll see why in a moment) and consider the source material for the last 15 winners of Best Adapted Screenplay. In order, they were: novel, novel, novel, nonfiction book, novel, memoir, memoir, nonfiction book, nonfiction book, play, novel, memoir, novel, play, movie. That’s six novels, three nonfiction books, three memoirs, two plays, and a movie. 

CODA, last year’s winner of Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, was adapted from a French film called La Famille Bélier. It was just the second time in history the winner in this category had been adapted from a previous film. The first time: 2006, when Infernal Affairs adaptation The Departed brought home the hardware.

This is important because as the media world becomes more diffuse and studios look for IP to bring to the screen from worlds they never considered, the source material for these nominees is likely to become more eclectic and, almost by accident, more interesting.

This year, Women Talking is the only traditional book-to-screen adaptation of this group. All Quiet on the Western Front certainly comes from the famed novel but features wholly invented sequences and is more than a little inspired by previous film adaptations of the material. Living is an adaptation of an original Akira Kurosawa film, Ikiru, hoping to follow in the footsteps of CODA and The Departed.

Then, you have Glass Onion and Top Gun: Maverick, both sequels to popular first films, oddly considered adaptations because they use characters from their predecessors when in fact they are wholly original stories. Only twice before has a sequel film won Adapted Screenplay: The Godfather Part II in 1974 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. In both instances, however, the adaptations themselves came from novels, not the previously produced films in their respective franchises. 

This all means Top Gun: Maverick and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery are in position to make a little history if either can pull off the upset in this category. But first, they’ll have to take down some pretty serious competition.

Women Talking – This was my No. 1 film of the year, and I believe it was unjustly ignored by many branches of the Academy where it should have been a strong awards contender. Off the top of my head, the score, the cinematography, the costume design, and the direction by Sarah Polley all should have been a part of the conversation. When we get to Supporting Actress in this series, I’ll have even more to say. But, the two places it is properly recognized are in Best Picture and here in Adapted Screenplay, where it is the presumed frontrunner.

It deserves that status, both for the elegant storytelling and the killer speeches that make up the bulk of this film’s runtime. Writer-director Polley turns what could easily be an academic exercise into a treatise on empowerment and self-determination. She is mostly faithful to the novel, itself based on real incidents of abuse that took place in a Bolivian Mennonite community, but she structures the events so that the abuse we witness is never lurid or exploitative. The opening title card refers to the events of the film as “an act of female imagination.” The same words could apply to Polley’s masterful script.

All Quiet on the Western Front – This is what I wrote two months ago when I named All Quiet on the Western Front the eighth best movie of 2022:

It takes a certain amount of courage to adapt one of the most famous and popular novels of the 20th century. Even more courage to choose one that has already been adapted into one of the most acclaimed and best loved movies of all time. And still even more to cut out large chunks of the plot and insert your scenes and ideas into a story many know by heart. This is the courage it took for German director Edward Berger to bring All Quiet on the Western Front to the big screen.

This adaptation, co-written by Berger with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokewell, is a truly remarkable achievement. By making the changes it does from the Erich Maria Remarque novel, it manages to make you forget about anything outside of the movie. You are not thinking about the novel. You are not thinking about previous adaptations. You are in the moment with these characters at all times. It is a brilliant gamble that pays off splendidly. Ironically, by straying from the text, Berger exemplifies the themes of Remarque’s novel better than we have ever seen and better than we are ever likely to see again.

Top Gun: Maverick – I have seen the criticisms of this nomination. I have seen the refutations of that criticism. I am neither bothered nor surprised that Top Gun: Maverick is a nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay. That said, the film’s screenplay is a little silly. The whole thing is obviously jingoistic, which comes with the territory, but the refusal to name a specific enemy stands out as a conspicuous marketing maneuver more than an essential element of a great script. There is a lot of corny dialogue, which you might expect out of this kind of throwback action movie, and that’s all fine, too. 

My biggest issue is with the structure, which is excruciatingly repetitive and forces the characters to play out about four endings when one would have done. Every sequence plays out thusly: Maverick tells his superiors what needs to be done; they say he can’t do it that way; he does it anyway and proves them wrong. Rinse and repeat. I get that it’s part of the DNA of these kinds of movies. I find it just as fun to watch as anybody else. But, best writing of the year, it is not.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – I love Rian Johnson, and I have enjoyed every movie he has made. In a film universe where Christopher Nolan is constantly praised for his puzzle-box filmmaking, I would argue Johnson is actually the writer doing the most interesting and complicated things with the mystery genre. I hope he keeps making Benoit Blanc movies for as long as Netflix will fund them.

At each twist and turn of the story, Johnson reveals another layer of his titular Glass Onion. It is one of the smartest scripts of the year and absolutely benefits from repeat viewings. At the halfway point, Johnson pulls the rug out from under us in a way that is shocking but also makes perfect sense, recontextualizing everything we have seen up to that point. Then, he does it again in solving the mystery at the end. It would be a lot to ask a writer to pull that off successfully even once, and he does it twice in a span of about 45 minutes. All I can say is: Give me the next Benoit Blanc mystery.

Living – If pressed, I would call Ikiru one of the 25 greatest films ever made. I think it is Kurosawa’s best. Seven Samurai and Rashomon are brilliant, of course, but Ikiru is the most compassionate and human Kurosawa ever got. Living never quite reaches the heights of its forebear – what could? – but this adaptation by famed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro maintains much of that first film’s empathy for the people trapped by bureaucratic systems and its righteous fury over a world that could be so much better if we would just let it.

This is a fascinating choice of adaptation for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ishiguro, whose novels have been adapted into well received films but who has written just three feature screenplays in his career. This is his first in 17 years. One can only imagine that the 68-year-old Ishiguro saw something in the life of Ikiru’s aging main character that he felt the need to explore. This is a quiet, gently humorous script about doing the most we can with the time we have, and perhaps only Ishiguro could have made such a grand story his own.

The final analysis

Only three films ever have won this award without a Best Picture nomination – The Bad and the Beautiful in 1952, Sling Blade in 1996, and Gods and Monsters in 1998 – so we can pretty safely eliminate Glass Onion and Living from contention. The nomination for Top Gun: Maverick feels more like a reward for the film’s massive box office than recognition of its writerly merits, so I think it comes down to two.

Women Talking is the presumed frontrunner and will win this award unless there is a tremendous groundswell of support within the Academy for All Quiet on the Western Front. It could happen. There are shades of the year Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit snuck up in the final days and took this award from Greta Gerwig’s far superior Little Women. This would not be on the level of that travesty, and Jojo Rabbit probably doesn’t belong in the same conversation as Little Women, Women Talking, and All Quiet.

Berger’s film is excellent and his team’s adaptation is wonderful and would be a deserving winner in any other year. But against Polley, this is no contest. Polley was previously nominated for this same award in 2007 for Away from Her but lost to the Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men. If she wins, it will be one the highlights of the night to see the actress turned writer-director on stage with the award. I hope it happens. For now, I am betting it will.

Will win: Women Talking

Should win: Women Talking

Should have been here: Pearl

A note about my favorite snub: It wasn’t exactly a banner year for adaptations, and a lot of the films I watched that were adapted from other material were either just fine or actively bad. But, going by the letter of the Academy’s law, the Pearl character in Pearl is pulled from X, so that makes this Ti West/Mia Goth script collaboration an adaptation. And, boy, what an adaptation! Everything we see deepens the themes of X while making Pearl a richer, more interesting character than fans could have dared to dream.

Next time: Supporting Actor

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Original Song

The nominees are:

“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

“This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once

“Naatu Naatu” from RRR

“Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman

“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick

You don’t need to hear me go on about this category again. Go back and read every previous installment of this series over the years if you want to know my complaints. At this point, it’s a plus if the Music Branch of the Academy doesn’t actively embarrass itself with its nominees. With one glaring, annual exception, this list accomplishes at least that.

“Naatu Naatu” – I can’t guarantee M.M. Keeravani’s and Chandrabose’s absolute banger of a pop song is going to win the Oscar, but I can guarantee that the three minutes it takes to perform will be the best three minutes of the ceremony. This ear worm is impossible not to move to, and it’s likely you have seen videos on social media of people dancing in the aisles to this song at packed screenings of the film. Get Hugh Jackman up on stage to perform this song with the film’s stars and open the show that way – boom, instant hit.

A critical darling, there was buzz around RRR for nominations up to and including Best Picture. None of that materialized, but “Naatu Naatu” is undeniable, and as the film’s only nomination, there’s a good chance fans of this wild ride will take the opportunity to reward it in the only way they can. For what it’s worth, it’s also the only song in the lineup that fits what I believe to be the spirit of the award, in that its performance is integral to the plot of the film. But, the Academy has never really cared about that.

“Lift Me Up” – What a good break for the producers of the Academy Awards. Hot off a much talked-about halftime performance at the Super Bowl, Rihanna has confirmed she will perform her closing credits song from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at the Oscars. This, combined with the next song we’re going to talk about, is exactly what the Academy hopes for in this category: buzzy stars they can sell to advertisers and young people. Last year, they got Billie Eilish and Beyoncé. As replacements, they could do a lot worse than Rihanna and Lady Gaga (next one down). 

While I’m not a fan of closing credits songs in this category, “Lift Me Up” feels more necessary than most, coming as it does on the heels of a powerfully emotional entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By the end of Ryan Coogler’s latest Black Panther movie, we are thrilled by what we have seen but mourning for our lost star, Chadwick Boseman. Rihanna’s song, penned with Coogler, composer Ludwig Göransson, and Tems, hits all the right notes, sending the audience out on a high.

“Hold My Hand” – Lady Gaga is quickly becoming a fixture at this ceremony. A three-time Song nominee and one-time winner already, Gaga has also performed as part of past tribute packages and just last year helped Liza Minnelli present the Best Picture Oscar to CODA. Due to Minnelli’s obviously declining health, the moment teetered on the brink of disaster, but Gaga’s grace and compassion under immense pressure saved the day and is now remembered as one of the more heartwarming moments in recent Oscars history.

As for “Hold My Hand,” it is exactly the kind of song you would imagine would accompany a Top Gun sequel in the year 2022. It is listenable, forgettable, and entirely too on the nose. Which is to say, it’s not that far removed from “Take My Breath Away,” the pop anthem from the original Top Gun that won this category in 1986. At the very least, the Academy will get its Gaga ratings bump once again.

“This Is a Life” – Exactly as oppressively whimsical and all over the map as the film in which it appears, this track from Everything Everywhere All at Once is notable mostly for the composers – Son Lux, Mitski, and David Byrne. Byrne is a previous Oscar winner for Best Original Score for The Last Emperor in 1987. Now, 35 years later, if this is what it takes for the man behind the Talking Heads to get another statue, so be it.

“Applause” – This is the Diane Warren song this year. Here is, word for word, exactly what I wrote about her nomination last year:

At a certain point, one really has to feel for the Music Branch – not me, I don’t have any sympathy for a branch that so consistently gets this category wrong. But, members really, really love Diane Warren, and they seem positively desperate to get her an Oscar. This is the fifth consecutive year in which Warren has received a nomination and seventh out of the previous eight. She has 12 total nominations and no wins. She probably could have won for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon or “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin, but she didn’t. So, here we are in an endless cycle of nominating not very good work every year just to try to get her over that hill.

This brings us to “Somehow You Do,” which not only is not very good, but it is actually quite bad. More than that, it is part of a pretty bad movie. Ironically, the song’s lack of subtlety is kind of a perfect fit for the generically somber addiction drama that is Four Good Days. Once again, Warren will be a bridesmaid, and even if I can muster no sympathy for the Music Branch, I do feel a little bad for Warren having to get dressed up every damn year just to lose an award.

Let me update the numbers for you: This is six consecutive years, eight out of nine, and 13 total nominations with no competitive wins. She does have an Oscar now, as this very year she was the recipient of an honorary award. That did not satisfy her peers, who are demanding she be voted queen for a day at the big show. It ain’t gonna happen. I haven’t watched Tell It Like a Woman. I probably won’t. But, I listened to this song, and once again, it was quite bad. There’s probably nothing to be done about this situation, so perhaps the Academy would be best off just reserving a couple seats for Warren every year.

The final analysis

Anything could win, except the Warren song. There is not really a clear frontrunner. There is no Bond song nominated this year for the Academy to vote blindly for. No Pixar or Disney movie with a catchy pop hit like “Remember Me” (Coco) or “Let It Go” (Frozen). No musical with a single standout tune like “City of Stars” (La La Land) or “Shallow” (A Star Is Born). Just a bunch of really famous people writing popular songs for big hit movies (and Diane Warren).

I am going to place my chips on “Naatu Naatu” because that is what’s most fun to do and because I think the love for RRR is real and needs somewhere to go. But if Rihanna ends up holding an Oscar – which would be a cool but strange win for Coogler, as well – or Lady Gaga wins another, I won’t be the least bit surprised. If the Best Picture heat for Everything Everywhere All at Once carries the day, that wouldn’t be so out of the ordinary either. For now, let’s bet with our dancing shoes on.

Will win: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR

Should win: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR

Should have been here: “Ciao Papa” from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

A note about my favorite snub: This is actually the animated musical that deserved recognition in this category, but because it is not from Disney or Pixar, it did not get the same attention. Now, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a Netflix production, so no one is crying over lack of promotion, and it will likely win Best Animated Feature, but this jaunty little number that plays a couple of times in the film to great effect deserved to be here.

Next time: Animated Feature