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.