Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Score

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best Original Score

The nominees are:

American Fiction

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

American Fiction

Laura Karpman’s jaunty jazz numbers are the perfect accompaniment to Cord Jefferson’s satire of the literary world. Karpman expertly plays the emotions of the film without ever telling the audience what emotions to feel. It is an elegant piece of work. I had the chance to see Karpman and Jefferson talk about their collaboration after a screening at Vidiots in December, and it sounded like a match made in cinema heaven. Hopefully, these two keep working together because Karpman displays just the right touch to play the full range of feelings Jefferson is trying to evoke.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

I might be getting a little rude about the Diane Warren thing over in the Best Original Song category. If that’s the case, I’m sorry. I just think she might be garnering undue acclaim for arguably mediocre work based on a long history of quality and success. So, how about that John Williams, eh? The second-most nominated person in Academy history, this is Williams’ 54th nomination (48th in this category). He is inching ever closer to Walt Disney’s record of 59, though at 92 years old, that might be asking a lot.

Among those 54 nominations, six have come for Star Wars films, four for Indiana Jones movies, including this one, and two for Harry Potter. I am not claiming to have the world’s greatest ear for music, but I do defy you to listen to the scores for The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker and tell me with 100 percent confidence which one is which. Anyway, I didn’t think Dial of Destiny was all that bad, and the music is Indiana Jones music. It’s a ripping good time. What else do you want?

Killers of the Flower Moon

It would be an overstatement to claim this was the dearly departed Robbie Robertson’s crowning achievement. I mean, he was the leader of The Band. He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He performed with everybody. And, yeah, he has been a key collaborator of Martin Scorsese’s over the years. So, I’m not saying the score for Killers of the Flower Moon is the best thing Robertson ever did, but damn if it isn’t absolutely note perfect from beginning to end.

Robertson was indigenous on his mother’s side and split his childhood between Toronto and the Six Nations reservation outside the city. In a way, that made him the perfect person to write the score for a film about a native world beset by white interlopers. Much like Robertson, himself, the music has a foot in both worlds and belongs wholly to neither. It is something else, something grander, something special.

I would urge you to read Chris Willman’s full piece in Variety, covering the last interview Robertson gave before his death in early August last year. It’s an excellent article. But, I want to pull out one quote Robertson gave that has stuck with me: “On something like this, where its soul is from Indian country, for me, it comes down to: You couldn’t have written this. You couldn’t have made something like this up. This is so magical.” Magical, indeed.

Oppenheimer

When I think of composer Ludwig Göransson, I think of him as Ryan Coogler’s guy – the same way you might think of Williams as Steven Spielberg’s guy. Göransson met Coogler at USC and the two have collaborated on every feature Coogler has made. He won an Oscar for his Black Panther score and was nominated alongside Coogler for Best Original Song last year for “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I imagine they will continue to do great work together.

But, for now, it appears Göransson has picked up the baton from Hans Zimmer to become Christopher Nolan’s guy, as well. He joined the Nolan team on Tenet and continues the collaboration here with a propulsive, dread-filled score that perfectly matches the tone and energy of this richly layered biopic. Göransson particularly shines during the lengthy Trinity test sequence, when all of the film’s threads come together at one of the most significant moments in human history.

Poor Things

It was necessary that Yorgos Lanthimos’ weirdo sci-fi fantasy – which I say with love and admiration – have an equally gonzo score. The director found the right man for the job in British musician Jerskin Fendrix. Fendrix deftly blends classical score structures and instrumentation with more experimental synth pop to arrive at something akin to Casablanca by way of Björk. It is both wholly original and wholly appropriate, filled with the same sense of wonder and discovery that the film’s lead character experiences throughout the story.

The final analysis

So, we’ve reached the point in this series where we’re going to be doing a lot of talk about Oppenheimer. There are 10 categories where it is not nominated, and we’ve already covered seven of them. Of the 13 categories where it is nominated, it is the clubhouse leader in at least seven or eight, including this one. What I’m saying is get ready to hear a lot about it. Promise we’ll try to keep it interesting.

In another year, Robertson’s Killers of the Flower Moon score would have a real shot here. It is a perfect, beautiful score to a much loved film, and a posthumous Oscar would be a fitting tribute to one of the musical legends of our times. But, it’s an Oppenheimer kind of year and I fully expect Göransson to win his second award. 

Will win: Oppenheimer

Should win: Killers of the Flower Moon

Should have been here: May December

A note about my favorite snub: The Music Branch would never deign to nominate something as interesting and experimental as Marcelo Zarvos’ work on Todd Haynes’ May December. Zavros composed a number of original pieces for the film but also spends a significant portion of the soundtrack interpolating Michel Legrand’s original compositions for the 1971 film The Go-Between. It is daring, inventive work that plays an integral role in establishing the tone of Haynes’ film. 

The Music Branch is always wary of nominating work that combines previously existing material with new compositions – these are the same people who refused to nominate Zimmer’s iconic Inception score because of its use of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” – so recognition was always unlikely. But, these are the kinds of nominations the Academy should open itself up to if it wants to remain fresh and relevant in the coming years.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Score

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 Score

The nominees are:

All Quiet on the Western Front

Babylon

The Banshees of Inisherin

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Fabelmans

I said this last year, but it is exciting to watch the Music Branch of the Academy expand its thinking on the Original Score category. Gone are the days of cut and paste strings and horns blaring over everything, telegraphing every action or emotion. And, good riddance. What we have instead are much more nuanced, interesting, and experimental works that nonetheless complement their films wonderfully.

This year, we have a brilliant jazz composer, two electronica artists known for their experimentation and highly successful in the world of pop music, and none other than the best composer in film today. The Academy still found space to nominate, for the 53rd time, one of its legends who is mostly playing the hits at this point, but with the variety of the other nominees, who can find time to complain?

Babylon – I put on the Babylon Original Score this morning just to listen to it, and I have had “Voodoo Mama,” probably its most recognizable track, stuck in my head ever since. If you have seen the trailer, you know the track. If you have seen the movie, then you know how well it is deployed. Babylon is an epic work of mad genius by director Damien Chazelle, and the same could be said of the score, written by Chazelle’s Harvard roommate, Justin Hurwitz.

Hurtwitz is one of the best young composers on the scene, and it is almost unfathomable to think of the work we have yet to hear from him. So far, he has only worked on Chazelle’s films, writing all those supposed jazz standards at the heart of Whiplash, winning Oscars for Score and Song for La La Land, and composing the doomy, atmospheric tones of First Man. It feels like the sky’s the limit for Hurwitz and we’re all just along for the ride.

All Quiet on the Western Front – Three tones. That’s all it takes for composer Volker Bertelmann, credited under the stage name Hauschka, to evoke endless reservoirs of dread. The first time it kicks in on the soundtrack, you wonder if something has gone terribly wrong with the film. This is not the kind of score we have grown accustomed to for prestige war pictures. This is darker, more aggressive, impossibly angry. It is the sound of the machinery of conflict dispatching one victim after another. It is, frankly, terrifying.

Hauschka, who has had a long successful career as an experimental electronic musician, has taken to feature composing without missing a beat. He often works with noted American composer Dustin O’Halloran, and together, they were nominated for this award in 2016 for Lion. This time around, Hauschka is going at it alone, and the results are some of the most spectacular work of the year.

Everything Everywhere All at Once – From one successful experimental musician to a trio, Son Lux is the electronica group credited with composing the score for the Daniels’ sci-fi mish mash. As the film moves from melodrama to kung-fu to multiverse action-comedy, the score matches it beat for beat, tone for tone. It is a fascinating work, pulling from a vast array of genres and incorporating a wide assortment of instruments to arrive at the eclectic, if schizophrenic, place it lands. If nothing else, this nomination is evidence of how far the Music Branch has come from the traditional strings and horns arrangements of old.

The Fabelmans – Speaking of which, we come to the second-most nominated person in the history of the Academy Awards. Second behind no less a luminary than Walt Disney himself, we have longtime Steven Spielberg collaborator and all-around legend John Williams. This is his 53rd Academy Award nomination, and not to say Williams isn’t one of the best ever to do it – he is – but at this point, he is getting nominations just to show up to work.

His score for The Fabelmans is fine, but I promise you it is breaking no new ground. It is, perhaps, one of the master’s most restrained scores, leaning on a set of tinkling piano refrains, but it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. The Music Branch likes to find its people and just nominate them over and over – we’re going to talk about this problem next time when we discuss Original Song. Since 2010, Williams has worked on 12 films, and he has received eight nominations. He’s a legend, but it’s time to open the doors for a new generation.

The Banshees of Inisherin – I won’t pretend to be impartial here, and I’ve said it before on the site: Carter Burwell is the best composer working in film today. That has been the case going back at least to his work on Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges in 2008 and the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man in 2009. Honestly, he probably put his stamp on the film composition world with his brilliant work on the Coens’ Fargo back in 1996. It has simply been decade after decade of accomplishment.

Every score of his is instantly recognizable as a Burwell work – in the way of early Williams or Thomas Newman – but they are all distinct and specific to their films. Here, he avoids the traditional Irish instrumentation one might expect in favor of something more haunting and universal. It’s a masterclass in underplaying the emotion. Burwell isn’t telling us how to feel, rather he is helping make us feel something. Unbelievably, this is just Burwell’s third nomination, following Carol and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. If there is justice in the Oscars world, he will win this award someday.

The final analysis

Hurwitz’s Babylon score is the showiest work of the bunch and has certainly picked up its fair share of accolades throughout the Oscars season. It is the one of this bunch that most screams for attention – in a good way, in a way that makes sense within the narrative in which it appears. The only thing that could potentially prevent a win here is that voters just like the other movies better overall. 

Babylon is the only film in this category not nominated for Best Picture, but it’s unclear how much that matters. Since 2000, just three films have won Best Original Score without a corresponding Best Picture nomination – Soul, The Hateful Eight, and Frida – but Soul was a popular movie about music and The Hateful Eight was a (well deserved) career award for Ennio Morricone. That said, as a previous winner, Hurwitz is in the club, and the power of his work will likely be enough to carry the day.

Will win: Babylon

Should win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Should have been here: TÁR

A note about my favorite snub: Hildur Guðnadóttir’s work on TÁR is without parallel this year. It is the perfect brooding accompaniment to everything director Todd Field is trying to accomplish. The Music Branch likely felt the score relied too much on the classic composers with whom the central character is obsessed (Mahler, first and foremost), but there is no mistaking the tremendous work Guðnadóttir puts into every second of music she composes for this film.

Next time: Original Song

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Score

Dev Patel in Lion, which is nominated for Best Original Score.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Original Score

The nominees are:

Jackie

La La Land

Lion

Moonlight

Passengers

For the previous two years, the music categories have been an airing of grievances of a sort for me, particularly Best Original Song, but this category has drawn my ire nearly as often. Outdated rules and a branch seemingly content in its insular, stodgy tastes contribute to the problem. Once again, wonderful scores were left out in the cold after they were deemed ineligible for one reason or another, including two-time nominee Jóhann Jóhannsson’s work on Arrival.

However, to the charge of insularity, the Academy’s music branch, for once, can plead innocent. Apart from a well-deserved nomination for one of the Academy’s favorite sons, these composers are all first-time nominees, making for an exciting and eclectic list. By nominating so many first-timers, many of whom are quite young, relative to the average age in the music branch, the Academy is signaling a way forward and offering a glimpse of its own future. Based on these nominees, that future looks bright, indeed.

Jackie – The Oscars often, sadly, are a boys’ club. One need only know no woman ever has been nominated for Best Cinematography to see that fact. The Academy has taken steps to address its racial diversity problem, which is admirable, but the lack of representation for women is equally pressing, particularly in the crafts branches, where the disparities are greatest. Mica Levi is the first woman nominated for Original Score since Rachel Portman in 2000. That’s 16 years since the last nomination for a woman here. I promise you the problem is not with the women and their work.

Levi’s work here, for instance, is the best of this group, the best of the year in fact. Hers is no token nomination – and the Academy doesn’t seem sufficiently concerned about representation in its craft categories to bestow a token nomination anyway. On just her second feature film score, Levi matches the intensity and ominous portent of director Pablo Larraín’s film with a strange, unsettling series of compositions that have no equal this year.

Jackie is a film about loss, grief, pain, and the discomfort of feeling all of those emotions in the public eye. Levi’s magnificent and magnificently weird string arrangements tell us all we need to know about Jacqueline Kennedy’s (Natalie Portman) headspace. She is adrift, caught at all times among competing emotions that twist and turn not in smooth curves but at right angles. Levi’s score is willing to go dark places and is not afraid to make the audience uncomfortable, and that is its greatest strength.

La La Land – Justin Hurwitz holds the distinction of being this year’s only triple nominee with his nomination here and a double nomination in the Best Original Song category. It is not unheard for someone to score three nominations in a single year from the music branch, but it does not happen every year, and it stands as a remarkable achievement.

Like Levi, Hurwitz is relatively new to the film scoring game with just three features to his credit, all for his former Harvard roommate and buddy writer-director Damien Chazelle. Their collaborations, which all revolve in one way or another around jazz and jazz musicians, have been incredibly fruitful, and their shared ride to Hollywood prominence truly is a feel-good story.

It almost is not fair to ask other films to compete in the same category as La La Land, which is wall-to-wall music. The instrumentations are straight from the jazz playbook, and similar to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the movie has a poppy, rhythmic feel throughout thanks to its pulsing, endlessly listenable score. Even the smallest cues are given pep and verve by Hurwitz’s insistent, playful choices, all of which feel of a piece with the film’s jaunty, spritely tone. Hurwitz won a pair of Golden globes this year for song and score, and he should clear some space for the extra hardware he will pick up here.

Lion – It’s like a riddle with an easy and obvious answer: What happens when a pair of piano virtuosos come together to compose the music for a dark but uplifting saga of loss and discovery? Magic. Dustin O’Halloran and Volker Bertelmann, performing under the stage name Hauschka, compose a score for Lion that is gorgeous and intricate but never overwhelming.

Director Garth Davis’ film is too delicate for the kind of overtly orchestral score it would be easy to impose on it. Instead, O’Halloran and Bertelmann find the story’s soul in the dogged commitment of its main character, Saroo (Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel). The composers’ beautiful repeating piano patterns are a tribute to and reflection of the single-mindedness possessed by the film’s hero. The push and pull between the repetitions and variations eventually become the point as the score grows and expands to encompass a world that feels larger by the minute.

Both O’Halloran and Bertelmann are first-time nominees whose primary careers exist outside the world of film, though each has numerous film scores to his credit. They are musicians and performers first and foremost, but here is to hoping they continue to explore, either together or individually, the world of cinema and its possibilities, which are limitless for composers such as these.

Moonlight – Here is an interesting bit of trivia that may seem a little convoluted but bear with me. Nicholas Britell was a co-producer on Whiplash, La La Land director Chazelle’s previous Oscar-winning film. Now, he is the nominated composer for a film competing for the top award against Chazelle’s follow-up film. I cannot be 100 percent certain, but I doubt if this has ever happened. Britell and Chazelle’s Harvard connection clears things up for the most part, but man, sometimes Hollywood seems so small.

Moonlight, from writer-director Barry Jenkins, is an arresting film from its first frames. It grabs you and brings you into its world in a way few other films can or even attempt. For most viewers, it is a jarring experience, a direct challenge to our preconceived notions of lives we have never known. It is not, however, confrontational. Instead, it evokes curiosity and, through that curiosity, empathy. As we are drawn deeper into the minds of these characters, we become more immersed in who they are, and Britell’s music expertly guides us along this process.

Like the film itself, the score refuses to coddle the audience, never simply giving in to viewers’ ideas of what a film score should sound like. Its use of strings is haunting and deeply moving, particularly on standout composition “The Middle of the World,” which featured prominently in the film’s advertising. Each of the story’s versions of the main character – Little (Alex Hibbert), Chiron (Ashton Sanders), and Black (Trevante Rhodes) – has his own theme, helping create distinct characterizations within the narrative. However, everything feels part of a cohesive whole, and we are always aware we are watching the journey of one young man, discovering who he is and who he wants to be.

Passengers – Thomas Newman’s dad, Alfred Newman, is the most awarded composer in Academy history with nine Oscars from 45 nominations – 43 for Original Score and two for Best Original Song. Such a legacy would cast a shadow over anyone, but I bring it up only because the younger Newman does not operate in that shadow. He is his own bright, brilliant light, and his fellow composers have recognized as such to the tune of 13 Original Score nominations. He also has a nomination for Original Song. However, he has never won, and his 13 nominations place him just one behind the late, great Alex North for most without an Oscar win.

This will not be the year Newman finally breaks through and has his name read out. The score is typically wonderful work from Newman, but it comes in a film that was not otherwise popular, either with the Academy or the public. Passengers is certainly the biggest film on this list in terms of scale, but Newman does not fall into the trap of going for full bombast where something subtler will do. It takes a composer of skill and courage to rely on the slow build of tension within these compositions when the action would seem to beg for something grander. It is laudable, admirable work from one of the best film composers around, and that is something to be cherished, awards or not.

The final analysis

Anyone else but Hurwitz winning would be an absolute shock. It would be an early indication perhaps La La Land is not as strong as perceived and could be in danger in other categories as well. But that is not what is going to happen. The beautifully composed music from the wonderful and well-liked musical will take this award in a walk.

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Jackie

Should have been here: Moana

Tomorrow: Best Original Song

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Score

Ennio Morricone's score for The Hateful Eight is the frontrunner at the Academy Awards for Best Original Score.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Original Score

The nominees are:

Bridge of Spies

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

So, I spent a lot of words yesterday tearing down the music branch for its uninspired nominations for Best Original Song. Last year, I used this space to gripe about the exclusion of the year’s best score due to the branch’s seemingly arbitrary rules. The entire system for determining eligibility and nominees in both music categories needs an overhaul.

However, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and though these may not be the five nominees I would have chosen, the music nominated for Best Original Score this year is fantastic across the board. A few of the best composers working today are nominated alongside two of the best film composers of all time, and their work covers a broad spectrum from big and bombastic adventure music to subtle and subdued drama.

Unusually for this category, only one nominated film is also nominated for Best Picture. The last time that happened was in 2003 with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which went on to win the award. In fact, a Best Picture nominee has won this award every year since 2003, though interestingly only three Best Picture winners in that 12-year span have also won Best Original Score. Either way, the run of Best Picture dominance in this category seems set to end this year as the Academy may finally be ready to reward one of the giants of the craft.

The Hateful Eight – Ennio Morricone is among the most famous composers in the world, and his compositions have been repurposed in countless ways across a wide variety of mediums. The main title theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly might be one of the two or three most recognizable pieces of film score ever written. He has been nominated for six Oscars and received an honorary Academy Award in 2007 for his contributions to cinema.

Morricone had consciously avoided scoring westerns recently to avoid being thought of as only a western composer, and it took Quentin Tarantino to convince the Italian master to return to the genre that launched his career. The funny thing is – and Tarantino has acknowledged this in numerous interviews – Morricone pretty much avoided writing a western score. The music in The Hateful Eight sounds like it belongs in a horror movie more than a talky western.

Every element of the score oozes dread. From the sinister pounding of the drums to the whining and pulsing strings layered over it to the low-register lead, Morricone has perfectly tapped into the drawing-room mystery aspects of Tarantino’s script while bringing an unhinged energy that ultimately makes the music the best part of the film. The Hateful Eight is well liked enough by Academy members, and the season appears headed in the direction of awarding Morricone his first competitive Oscar. It would be a well-deserved and fitting honor.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – The man who could stand in Morricone’s way, though, has been here before – more times than almost anybody. John Williams’ 50 Academy Award nominations are second only to Walt Disney for most nominations for an individual. His compositions for Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark are part of the cultural heritage, and the American Film Institute named the theme to Star Wars the greatest score of all time. It does not get much more iconic than that.

If Morricone returning to the western genre is exciting, then Williams returning to the Star Wars universe is on another level. The 84-year-old Williams has reduced his work load significantly in recent years, but there is only one man for the job of composing a Star Wars soundtrack. His music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is everything we have come to expect from Williams – big horns, driving strings, and dynamic tension between the quiet and the loud that signals adventure and mystery.

Williams has been nominated 19 times since his last win for Schindler’s List in 1993. Not among those 19 nominations are any of the Star Wars prequels, though he was nominated for each film in the original trilogy and won for A New Hope. Williams is a legend, and every single member of the Academy knows it, and it is possible that respect will carry him to a sixth Oscar.

Bridge of Spies – While Williams went off to compose the score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Thomas Newman stepped in to fill the musical void for director Steven Spielberg on the Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies. This is the first Spielberg film in 30 years not conducted by Williams, but Newman does an admirable job of getting on Spielberg’s wavelength and finding the right tones for an old-school story of heroism in the face of insurmountable odds.

The horns and military-style drums immediately stand out, and some of the main themes feel like a throwback to some of James Horner’s early 1990s compositions for films such as Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and Apollo 13. Newman has been nominated 12 times for Best Original Score and once for Best Original Song, but he has never won.

Newman’s compositions throughout his career have tended to be more idiosyncratic than the Academy usually likes, and his more classical work on Bridge of Spies could be right up members’ alley. That, coupled with the Best Picture nomination for the film, would make him a threat for the win in most years, but with Williams and Morricone in the picture, Newman will likely be relegated to bridesmaid status once again.

Carol – A little more than six years ago on this site, I called Carter Burwell the best composer working in Hollywood. That feels even truer today than it did then. He is my personal favorite music composer of any kind, film or not. His scores for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, In Bruges, A Serious Man, and Where the Wild Things Are rank among my favorite albums of all time. He is best known probably for his work with the Coen Brothers – or perhaps among certain people for his Twilight scores – but his recent collaborations with director Todd Haynes on the Mildred Pierce miniseries and Carol have been equally fruitful.

For Carol, Burwell is working firmly within his favorite subgenre – off-kilter dramas about descent into darkness. The way his strings swirl around the listener while the piano holds the center together just spells gloom and madness, but it is never overbearing, which is key for a film as subtle and restrained as Carol. Burwell also introduces themes of romanticism into the score that he rarely uses but that perfectly complement the film’s thematic intent.

I am ecstatic that Burwell has received his first Oscar nomination. It is long overdue. He is unlikely to win and is probably running third or fourth in the category this year, but now that he is in the club, expect to see Burwell pop up as a perennial nominee. He will win one eventually, and when Burwell accepts his Oscar someday, that will be one of the happiest moments of my Oscar-watching life.

Sicario – Kudos to the music branch – how often do I say that? – for nominating something as strange and unsettling as Jóhann Jóhannsson’s work on Sicario. Jóhannsson earned his first Oscar nomination last year for his far more traditional score for The Theory of Everything. I had him pegged for the win last year as well, but he lost out to the overwhelming popularity of The Grand Budapest Hotel. This time, I would be shocked if Jóhannsson found himself onstage, not because the work is not deserving but because the Academy rarely goes for something this unusual in the category.

The driving percussion and punishing strings remind of Hans Zimmer’s iconic work on Inception but set in a world without hope. Amid the brutality and carnage of the U.S.-Mexico border wars, the music makes the characters’ sense of dread palpable for the audience. Deep feelings of disquiet creep into viewers minds thanks in large part to the way Jóhannsson’s score penetrates the narrative. You do not so much hear the music as feel it in your gut. That does not make it a good bet to win an Oscar, but it does make it a great score.

The final analysis

Morricone has the inside track here. Along with a Golden Globe win and general industry love, he is overdue for this honor, and voters know it. Williams could get in on sentiment, but much of the same sentiment that would drive him to a victory also holds true for Morricone. The other nominated scores are great and would be deserving winners, but a win for Morricone would be history-making, and that temptation might be too much to pass up for the Academy.

Will win: The Hateful Eight

Should win: The Hateful Eight

Should have been here: It Follows

Tomorrow: Best Sound Mixing

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay

Miles Teller (left) and JK Simmons star in the Best Picture-nominated Whiplash.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are:

American Sniper, written by Jason Hall

The Imitation Game, written by Graham Moore

Inherent Vice, written by Paul Thomas Anderson

The Theory of Everything, written by Anthony McCarten

Whiplash, written by Damien Chazelle

The Writers Guild of America hosted its annual awards ceremony Saturday night. For best original screenplay, the writers chose Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness’ The Grand Budapest Hotel, and for adapted, they chose Graham Moore’s The Imitation Game. This has a number of people picking those two films for the same awards at the Oscars. Though it is certainly possible, the outcome is by no means a sure thing.

While the writers’ branch of the Academy does not have the same kind of eligibility issues as the music branch has shown, the Writers Guild has some very specific guidelines for what can and cannot compete for its awards. Every year, these guidelines prevent a number of top contenders from competing against each other, making the Writers Guild awards a poor bellwether at best.

Recent history shows missing out with the Writers Guild means little when it comes to the Academy Awards. Just last year, John Ridley won the Oscar for adapting 12 Years a Slave, despite not being eligible with the Writers Guild. Two-time Academy Award winner Quentin Tarantino has never competed at the Writers Guild. The point being: It is a nice feather in the cap for a contender, but it is hardly a golden ticket to the Dolby Theater stage.

As with Best Original Screenplay, a little Best Picture heat does not hurt an Adapted Screenplay contender, and four of the five nominees this year are in the mix for the top prize. None is a likely threat to win Best Picture, but the heat is enough. The fifth nominee, the most deserving and least likely winner, is a beloved auteur whose film did not do as well with the Academy as it might have, but his films rarely do.

Overall, I would call this a fairly weak category this year – not because this is the worst lineup I have ever seen but because the two most likely winners are middling films about British science geniuses that almost completely ignore science, one is a terrible script that was turned into a passable movie by a great director, the best film and script in the lineup is the least likely winner, and the last nominee comes from a brilliant script that has no business in this category because it is most certainly an original screenplay and not an adaptation.

The Theory of Everything – McCarten made an interesting choice in deciding to adapt the memoir of Stephen Hawking’s first wife, Jane Hawking, rather than a more conventional biography of the famed mathematician. The shift in perspective is an intriguing direction for such a film, but due to the obvious interest Stephen Hawking’s life draws, McCarten is forced to straddle the line between telling a story about a world-renowned theoretical physicist and the scientist’s long-suffering wife. McCarten is intermittently successful.

One wishes he had committed fully to telling Jane Hawking’s unique story of love, strength, and perseverance rather than attempting to combine her story with her husband’s. What results is a biopic about Stephen Hawking that seems strangely more interested in his relationship than with his world-changing science. McCarten is clearly a talented writer, and for what he was attempting, the screenplay has a loose, natural feel to it. It would have been nice to see what McCarten could have done had he focused solely on Jane Hawking.

The Imitation Game – From one film about a brilliant man to another film with similar issues, Moore zeroes in on the events of Alan Turing’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) life around World War II and his part in cracking the German enigma code. Spoilers for those who do not know their history, but Turing cracks the code and helps win the war. It is a thrilling story about one man’s mathematical and technical genius saving the lives of millions. Unfortunately, nowhere in the film are we shown the process of Turing’s work. We must simply take it on faith that he is a genius. Turing says as much in the film.

It is a structural mess, bouncing around from the war to Turing’s childhood to his final years, when he was persecuted by the British government for his homosexuality. While the film wants to make a larger point about that persecution, it treads so lightly around the issue of Turing’s sexuality that it undercuts its message of tolerance by fearing the audience might not be tolerant of a gay war hero. I said as much in my review that there is a great film to be made from telling Turing’s life story. This is not it, and much of the fault lies in Moore’s lacking screenplay.

Whiplash – I love Whiplash, and Chazelle’s script absolutely shines. It is sharp, funny, and insightful in ways that few others are. It is also wholly original. Due to a weird quirk in the eligibility guidelines brought to light during the nominating process, Chazelle’s script was forced to compete in the Adapted Screenplay category rather than Original, where it rightly belongs. You can read more about it here, but the short version is that Chazelle filmed a scene from the feature script as a proof of concept to raise money to make the film. Though the “short” came from Chazelle’s original screenplay, the Academy rules dictate the feature is an adaptation of the short. It makes no sense, but here we are.

Luckily, the error did not cost Chazelle a well deserved nomination, despite being caught long after nominating ballots were already in hand. Chazelle is a fierce young talent, and any recognition his film gets has been hard earned. Whiplash is a complex portrait of two obsessives that does not paint either as a villain or a hero. Chazelle’s script refuses to hold the audience’s hand through a dizzying series of power reversals and shifting sympathies that builds to a stunning climax. It is magnificent work that will hopefully give Chazelle the capital to continue making films.

American Sniper – I actually enjoyed American Sniper quite a bit. It is a well made action picture with a great central performance that manages to thrill while making engaged audiences think. Its script, however, is the least of its virtues. I would go so far as to say the film succeeds in spite of its script, and though director Clint Eastwood makes the most of what he is given, he does not start out with much. Eastwood famously does not interfere with the screenplays he chooses, shooting more or less the story that is on the page. While the final product is a good war film, Hall’s script would have benefited from a more authorial director.

Hall is to be commended for attempting to insert important questions about the war on terror and the nature of heroism, but the ham-fisted way he does so is to the film’s overall detriment. Too often, Hall has characters come out directly and state the themes of the film rather than allowing his ideas to develop organically through the plot. The film is structurally boring, as well, based as it is around Chris Kyle’s (Bradley Cooper) four tours in the Middle East. He falls into a pattern of home, deployed, home, deployed, etc., that becomes tiresome about halfway through the film.

Inherent Vice – Seeing Anderson in this group of writers is a bit like playing “One of these things is not like the other things.” While the other four nominees have a total of 12 feature screenplays among them, Anderson has written and directed seven features, each the brilliant vision of a once-in-a-generation auteur. Anderson has been nominated for six Academy Awards in his career, four for writing, one for directing, and one for producing his Best Picture-nominated There Will Be Blood. He will win an Oscar one day, but it will not be for this film.

I wish, however, that he were in the conversation because this is masterful work. Inherent Vice was one of my top 10 films of the year, and almost all of the credit for the film’s tremendous artistic success goes to Anderson. He adapted a basically unfilmable Thomas Pynchon novel into a stunning masterpiece that is as much a stoner comedy as it is a poignant examination of the death of the hippie dream. No one writes films like Anderson because no one takes the chances he does. His films, up to and including Inherent Vice, have always been as challenging as they are entertaining, and he will get his Oscar due – just not this time.

The final analysis

The two British biopics will probably duke this one out to the end. While The Imitation Game won the Writers Guild award, The Theory of Everything was not eligible. When these two films did go head to head at the British Academy of Film and Television Awards, McCarten came away the winner. Of course, the BAFTA win comes with the caveat that three years running, the Academy has gone a different direction in this category than its British counterpart.

Chazelle could swoop in at the last minute and take this as well if the love for Whiplash runs as deep as its Best Picture nomination suggests. Whiplash has yet to go up against any of these films as it has competed in the best original category at every other awards show. It should be a fun fight to the finish, and we will not know the winner until the envelope is opened.

Will win: The Theory of Everything

Should win: Inherent Vice

Wish it had been here: A Most Wanted Man