Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Director

The nominees are:

Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza

Kenneth Branagh for Belfast

Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car

Steven Spielberg for West Side Story

It took 82 years for a woman to be named Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow in 2009. Last year, Chloé Zhao became the second. This year, Jane Campion, who is the only woman ever nominated twice for this award, is likely to become the third. That would be three times in 94 years. It obviously is not enough. But, consider also that only six black directors have ever been nominated for this award, and none has won. Not one. In 94 years. This despite the fact that two films by black directors have won Best Picture in the past 10 years (Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight). No black woman has ever been nominated.

This is to say: Things are improving – unless something absolutely stunning occurs, we are going to get our second consecutive woman director to win – but they are not improving for everybody. The Academy has done a lot to diversify its membership, and it is to be commended for that effort, but the work continues. It must continue until we are regularly hearing names like McQueen and Jenkins and Jordan Peele and Ava DuVernay and Dee Rees when the Best Director envelope is opened.

Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog – Campion does not seem to get the credit she deserves for being a trailblazer for women filmmakers. She was the first woman to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, winning in 1993 for her masterpiece, The Piano. As mentioned, she is the only woman with two Best Director nominations, the first of which made her just the second woman nominated in Academy history. She has a chance this year to become the first woman to win both the Original and Adapted Screenplay awards – 11 men previously have accomplished this feat.

And, all of that is simply in reference to her success with different awards groups. Her meditative, wryly funny style has been highly influential to the most recent generation of filmmakers, and her storytelling has helped set a standard for writers who hope to depict complex characters and ideas on screen. All of that comes into play on The Power of the Dog, a film whose greatness, by design, sneaks up on you, but when it arrives, it hits with the force of a stampeding herd of cattle. With this film, Campion proves she never went anywhere, and it was probably the audience that needed to catch up to her. The debate this film has stirred among film fans is evidence that we are still trying to catch up.

Steven Spielberg for West Side Story – Speaking of game-changing directors with dizzying Academy Awards stats: Spielberg. For fun, I will just rattle some off quickly. His eight Best Director nominations tie him for third all time with Billy Wilder. Only William Wyler (12) and Martin Scorsese (9) have more. He has directed 13 films nominated for Best Picture. Twenty-seven of his films have garnered at least one Academy Award nomination, and his films have been responsible for a total of 140 nominations and 34 wins. He is a legend, and the record speaks for itself.

West Side Story is Spielberg’s first musical, and the genre is a perfect fit for the director’s particular genius. To wit, Spielberg is one of the preeminent visual stylists in Hollywood history, and the musical form offers myriad opportunities for him to show off. His films are already so tightly orchestrated that adding the famed choreography of a classic musical to the equation only leads to greater precision and more bravura sequences. Spielberg is definitely showing off a bit in ways that don’t always serve the story, but every now and then, it’s just a joy to watch the master flex his muscles.

Kenneth Branagh for Belfast – Branagh has always been a little hard to pin down. He is a gifted Shakespearean performer and a marvelous director of actors. He was nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for his feature film debut, Henry V, in 1989 when he was just 29 years old. In recent years, however, it has felt like we lost him to big-budget Blockbuster Land, as he took the helm for Thor, Cinderella, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile, which is still in theaters as I type this.

Then somehow, in the midst of all that fame and fortune, he found time to make his most personal movie yet and his most intimate film in ages. It is genuinely refreshing to see one of our most talented storytellers return to smaller, more grounded storytelling without the whizbang of big action and special effects. Clichéd as it may sound, the special effect in Belfast is human emotion, and Branagh once again reminds us why we were so taken with his work all those years ago.

Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza – Sometimes, I stare at Anderson’s filmography – nine feature films in total – and wonder how it is possible the same person made all of these films. How are There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza by the same writer-director? For that matter, how did Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread spring from the same mind? What is it that drives him to make these stories, each so utterly unique yet immediately identifiable as the work of PT Anderson?

Licorice Pizza finds the writer-director in Punch Drunk Love mode, crafting a good-natured drama about romance and finding one’s place in the world. It has the feel of an early Richard Linklater film, like Slacker or Dazed and Confused, organized more as a series of vignettes than a straight A-to-B plot. In this way, Anderson captures the feeling of long summer days and youth and anxiety over an uncertain future, creating a world that is a little seedy, a little dangerous, but also a hell of a lot of fun. 

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car – I had never seen a film by Hamaguchi before this year. I have been aware of his work and his stature in cinephile circles, but I have not watched his other critically acclaimed films such as Happy Hour or Asako I & II. However, I saw Drive My Car in theaters twice and intend to watch it again soon now that it is on HBO Max. The best compliment I can give is that I found it so moving and so well crafted that I am compelled to watch everything else he has done.

A fabulously slow burn, Drive My Car sucks you in, forces you to pay attention, then rewards you for that attention with layer after layer of depth and complexity. It is a smart film that treats its audience as smart people. Hamaguchi’s pacing may be deliberate, but he delivers themes and ideas at breakneck speed with such clarity of purpose that we are never at a loss for his intent. Each moment is so carefully planned and executed, each story beat so gingerly placed that by the end, when we have the full picture, we are satisfied. Satisfied not in some perfunctory, surface-level way, like so much popular cinema today, but in a truer, more holistic fashion, deep down, where it counts.

The final analysis

I wish there were some strange, complicated calculus I could do to see any other winner but Jane Campion. Not because I don’t think Campion deserves the award – she does – but because it would make for a more thrilling conclusion to this piece. Instead, what we have here are five excellent directors, each worthy of plaudits, each worthy of praise, discussion, and thought, and each worthy of our time and attention. But, this is the year of Jane.

Will win: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog

Should win: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog

Should have been here: Radu Jude for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

Next time: Best Picture

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart for Spencer

We saved the best for last, as far as these acting categories are concerned. For once, a truly wide-open race. I have spent almost 4,000 words talking about the acting categories already this year and have mentioned the BAFTAs over and over again. If it wins the BAFTA, it wins the Oscar. Well, we cannot rely on that here. Why? Because not one of the performers nominated for the Academy Award this year was also nominated for the BAFTA.

Going back to 1990 – before that, eligibility deadlines just don’t line up in a way that makes the data useful – this has never happened. Not once. The closest approximation is 2003, when the organizations matched just one nominee – Naomi Watts in 21 Grams. That year, the BAFTA went to Scarlett Johansson for Lost in Translation, while the Academy went with Charlize Theron in Monster (Note: At the BAFTAs, Theron was not eligible until 2004, when she lost to Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake). 

We are not flying blind, per se – Jessica Chastain won the Screen Actors Guild award and the Critics’ Choice – but we are missing our most significant bellwether. As a result, the predictions are all over the map, with support spread out across three or four of these nominees. For our purposes, what this means is one fun race right down to the end. By the way, for those curious, the BAFTA this year went to Joanna Scanlon for her work in the British drama After Love.

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Tammy Faye Bakker, as portrayed in this film, is an enigma for our times: a completely sincere person. It would seem her love of people is surpassed only by her love of god. Her desire to spread a message of acceptance and understanding (through Christian faith) runs up against the money- and power-hungry men in her life, including her husband. It is a fascinating story in a film that could have been better, but what is not in question is Chastain’s commitment to the role and passion for bringing it to life.

Though she had been around for a while before, Chastain broke onto the scene in a big way in 2011, when five films in which she had a role were released. Most importantly, she starred in the Palme d’Or winning The Tree of Life, the critically acclaimed Take Shelter, and the popular hit The Help, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. She is a remarkable performer who brings intensity and drive to everything she does, and here, she applies that intensity and drive to a role that requires every ounce of her talents. She proves more than up to the task.

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers – A four-time nominee who previously won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz has never been better than she is in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film. She plays Janis, a single pregnant woman who befriends a younger unwed mother-to-be. I will not reveal more than that since the movie’s secrets are among its great pleasures, but suffice it to say, Janis is presented with a moral dilemma no one should ever have to face.

Cruz plays this conflict wonderfully, showing the depths of Janis’ moral questioning with little more than a shift in her tremendously expressive eyes. One thing that has defined some of Cruz’s most memorable characters has been the sense of energy and motion the actress imbues them with, particularly in her previous Oscar-winning role. For Almodóvar, she drops all artifice and affectation, utilizing stillness and silence in ways we are not used to seeing from Cruz. In this silence, however, Cruz is able to speak volumes.

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter – Colman delivered one of the most memorable and rewatchable Oscar acceptance speeches in recent times when she won Best Actress for The Favourite in 2018. Among the standout lines from that speech was when she addressed her children watching at home, saying “This is not gonna happen again.” Little did she know. Now, after a Supporting Actress nomination last year and another leading nomination here, it seems almost inevitable that it will happen again, if not this year, then someday.

For my money, her work in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s stunning directorial debut is the best of the nominated bunch. She plays a woman on holiday, haunted by her past and beset by dread of the nefarious characters around her. She is not without sin, and there is never a moment in Colman’s performance that belies that fact. She is wounded but also capable of wounding. While her actions may on the surface seem inexplicable, Colman makes us understand what could drive this woman to do the things she does and hurt the people she hurts.

Kristen Stewart for Spencer – What a wild ride this awards season has been for Stewart, who after getting close on a couple of occasions, now has her first Academy Award nomination. As we talked about with Will Smith in King Richard, sometimes a performer and a part just seem to add up to an Oscar. That was the feeling around Stewart playing Princess Diana when the first trailer for Spencer dropped. Then, she won handfuls of critics awards, and the buzz would not die down. That was until she missed out on a SAG nomination and a BAFTA nomination. After that, it was an open question of whether she would even be Oscar nominated, let alone in line for the win. Now, here we are.

To her credit, Stewart has remained mostly nonchalant about the whole thing, blasé when it seemed she might miss out but humble and grateful when she made the final list. Her work in the film is sometimes uneven, but the longer you watch, the more she forces you to get on her wavelength. This is not the Princess Diana we all knew from the papers and the pictures, but rather a private Diana, dealing with demons and devils all around her. For bringing us into the world of the unseen Diana, Stewart deserves this recognition. 

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos – If you enjoyed Being the Ricardos, I am sorry if it seems like I am down on the film. The truth is I really feel nothing about it one way or the other. The film is not engaging enough to have strong feelings about, which is a fatal flaw of a different kind. It seems Kidman was always going to be nominated for this performance, which has the patina of something like Renée Zellweger’s recent Oscar-winning turn in Judy. Like that performance, this is a serviceable imitation of life, but it never really goes deeper than that.

The biggest problem, though, is that it just isn’t funny, and Kidman does not have the comedy chops to make the material funny. Lucille Ball is famously one of the funniest people in the history of television, so casting a talented dramatic actress in a bland day-in-the-life story does no one any favors, least of all Lucille Ball. Kidman is too cerebral, and to some degree, that is what the movie asks her to be, but it is wrong for the character and frustrating to watch.

The final analysis

I try not to read too many other sites when I am writing my pieces and making my predictions. Just enough to stay informed but not enough to be influenced. I confess, however, that I have read a lot about this Best Actress race, and what I have read has left me more confused than when I started. So, let’s reason this out together.

Who won what? Kidman won the Golden Globe, which was meaningless this year. Colman and Stewart each won a handful of minor critics awards, while Cruz won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award and the National Society of Film Critics award, two of the biggest around. Then, there is Chastain, who as mentioned, has won the SAG award and the Critics’ Choice. The signal is all over the place.

It would be foolish to discount how helpful making a big, televised speech can be, which tips things in Chastain’s favor. Stewart is probably too young for the Academy to go that direction, and she will have other chances. The only arguments I am seeing for Cruz and Colman – other than the obvious quality of the work – is that they are both well liked by a broad selection of Academy members. But, perhaps the similarity of their narratives works to cancel them both out, which brings us back to Chastain.

With everything I have witnessed this season, I just don’t see a compelling enough argument in any other direction, and some of the buzz around the other performances could really just be boredom with the frontrunners leading to wild second guessing. I will be okay if I get this wrong, but for now, I am sticking with Chastain.

Will win: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Should win: Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Should have been here: Rachel Sennott for Shiva Baby

Next time: Best Director

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Javier Bardem for Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick…BOOM!

Will Smith for King Richard

Denzel Washingtong for The Tragedy of Macbeth

I got burned last year predicting against the stats in this category. I thought the sentiment for the recently deceased Chadwick Boseman, coupled with his undeniably great performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, would override the fact that Anthony Hopkins won the BAFTA for The Father. I was wrong, and I will not make that mistake again

It is a little easier this year, considering one actor has won the BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild award, the Critics’ Choice award, and a somewhat meaningless Golden Globe. That actor …

Will Smith for King Richard – Sometimes, a pairing of actor and role just seems designed to win an Oscar. The buzz begins from minute one, long before any footage has even been shot. It does not always lead to an Academy Award win, but when it does, it becomes so inevitable it feels as though it were written in the stars. This is a long way of saying Smith has not been shy about his desire to win an Oscar, and taking on the role of Richard Williams has given him the perfect opportunity to do so.

Of course, none of this works if the performance is bad, so Smith throws himself fully into the role of the famed tennis instructor. He’s got the voice down. He’s got the walk. He’s got the attitude. Smith is showy in all the right ways, evoking the larger-than-life figure while still making the character his own. Smith’s take on Richard is difficult and a little deranged but devoted to his daughters and determined to make them the best they can possibly be. In other words, he’s playing a pretty good dad, which is a core Smith zeroes in on to carry the audience through the story.

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog – What a fascinating and enviable career Cumberbatch has built for himself. Just in the last 10 years, he has appeared in Star Trek: Into Darkness, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and as the voice of the dragon in two The Hobbit movies. But, he has balanced out the blockbusters with prestige work like 12 Years a Slave, The Imitation Game, 1917, and this film. He seems equally at home in either context and never repeats the same performance twice. There is always something new to discover with a Cumberbatch character.

Such is the case with Phil Burbank, a rancher whose self-denial and repression have curdled into anger and vindictiveness. There is no place in the world for him to be his true self, so he lashes out at the world and everyone in it, with Cumberbatch deploying a quiet menace that chills to the bone. Yet, within this villain, there is the soul of a poet, of the person he could have been if the world were more accepting, the side of himself he has suppressed. Cumberbatch nails this half of the character with equal finesse and skill, crafting one of the great movie characters of recent memory.

Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick…BOOM! – Garfield is one of my favorite actors working today. It has been fascinating to see him navigate the aftermath of starring in a pair of big-budget Spider-Man movies that kept him away from smaller, more interesting work for the better part of five years. He immediately followed The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with 99 Homes, Hacksaw Ridge, and Silence, three wildly different films in which Garfield is allowed to explore the full range of his abilities. This year, he returned to Spider-Man, but he has also given us this outstanding achievement.

I intend to wrap up 2021 with a later-than-usual Year in Review next week, once we are past the Oscars, but one bit of information I feel comfortable divulging: I think this is the best performance of the year. As Rent creator Jonathan Larson, Garfield embodies the spirit of every striving artist who is one phone call away from changing his life forever. He sings, he dances, and he brings us into the world of a Broadway wannabe with tons of talent but no luck. The movie does not work if Garfield does not get it right, but he soars and so does the movie.

Denzel Washington for The Tragedy of Macbeth – Would it surprise you to learn Washington is the most nominated leading actor of the past 10 years? It’s true. At an age when many actors start taking character roles or supporting parts or just start working less altogether, Washington has bolstered one of the finest resumés in cinema history with a decade of unmatched excellence. The New York Times recently named him the best performer of the 21st century, and it seems impossible to find fault with that determination.

You have never seen a take on the character of Macbeth like this. Much has been made of Joel Coen’s decision to cast older actors to play Lord and Lady Macbeth, but that has less to do with the success of the film than Washington’s decision to underplay every line where a lesser actor – or even a great actor with a more traditional take on the material – would shout to the back rows. Washington imbues each Shakespearean soliloquy with the weariness and nonchalance of a man at the end of his rope but who believes he always has another card up his sleeve. 

Javier Bardem for Being the Ricardos – I love Bardem. I think he is excellent. He deserves many more leading roles in which he is not cast as a villain but rather a romantic lead or sympathetic hero. He can do just about anything. Just about anything, except play a famously light on his feet Cuban musician and comedian. He does what he can in the part, but his casting here was a mistake.

Though talented and versatile, Bardem carries with him the weight of life and experience. He has seen things. These are great qualities for a performer, but they do not exactly scream out: 36-year-old song-and-dance man. Worse still is that the story does not give Desi Arnaz much to do, which means Bardem is held back by the script, as well as his own casting. But, anyway, good for Bardem earning his fourth acting nomination from the Academy.

The final analysis

For a while, it looked as if the momentum behind The Power of the Dog might carry Benedict Cumberbatch to a victory here, but that momentum has cooled, effectively killing his chances. Likewise, Andrew Garfield had buzz around his work in Tick, Tick…BOOM!, and the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home only bolstered his profile (interesting to note Cumberbatch also appears in that film but did not get a similar boost). However, missing out on a BAFTA nomination with the voters in Garfield’s adopted U.K. home (his family moved to England when Garfield was 3) put a serious dent in his chances.

No, this is Will Smith’s award to lose, and regardless of the twists and turns of the campaign trail, it always has been. A win for Smith would be a feel-good story, a reward from the industry for being one of the most successful and popular actors of the past three decades. Few actors in Hollywood are savvier than Smith, and with King Richard, he saw his moment and seized it. He has played this perfectly – including delivering a stellar performance – and for his troubles, he will walk away with that little gold statue.

Will win: Will Smith for King Richard

Should win: Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick…BOOM!

Should have been here: Dev Patel for The Green Knight

Next time: Best Actress

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actress

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are:

Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter

Ariana DeBose for West Side Story

Judi Dench for Belfast

Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis for King Richard

Right now, only two characters in history have ever earned multiple performers an Oscar. That will no longer be true after Sunday night. As it stands, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro each won an Academy Award for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, respectively, and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) and Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) won for playing the Joker. Both characters are villains who do untold amounts of violence to those around them. How cool is it, then, that the next character to join this lineage will be a smart, strong woman who refuses to submit to the violence around her?

One further note, while we are on the subject, each of these character pairs – Vito Corleone, Joker, and West Side Story’s Anita – functions in a slightly different way. Brando and De Niro were playing the same person at different points in his life. Ledger’s and Phoenix’s versions of the Joker are radically different interpretations operating in their own universes. Meanwhile, Anita, played in 1962 by Rita Moreno and this year by Ariana DeBose, is the same character in the same story but with 50 years of extratextual pop culture history and baggage.

Ariana DeBose for West Side Story – I love the tradition of the previous year’s opposite sex winner presenting the award to the new winner, and it will be fun to watch Daniel Kaluuya present an Oscar to the first queer, Afro-Latina recipient in Academy history. Still, part of me wishes they would get Moreno to do it. It would be a beautiful, full-circle moment, connecting past to present and highlighting the best of what the Oscars represent.

In any event, DeBose is magnificent as Anita. The Broadway veteran is, of course, an accomplished singer and dancer, so the character was always in good hands with this casting, but DeBose brings passion, ferocity, and a whole lot of fun to her interpretation. “America” is a show-stopper, like always, and as mentioned in the Costume Design piece in this series, the image of DeBose twisting and twirling in that yellow dress will be one of the iconic, lasting images of the year in cinema. But, the performance is more than that, and every moment DeBose is on screen, it feels as if she is capturing something special.

Aunjanue Ellis for King Richard – Ellis has the misfortune of coming up against an unstoppable awards juggernaut in DeBose, but her performance as Oracene Price is no less worthy of praise and recognition. She is more than the supportive wife to an inspiring man – a character we have seen too many times before. She embodies power and determination, qualities that she passes on to her daughters, and she fights for her rightful place at the table as an equal partner in the raising of two of the best athletes on the planet.

The kitchen confrontation with Richard (Will Smith) is Ellis’ Oscar scene, and she knocks it out of the park, but the strength of that scene does not come out of nowhere. Instead, Ellis spends the entire film building the internal world of the character, giving us subtle clues to her thoughts and feelings, so that when she is given license to unload all of that, the audience knows exactly where she is coming from.

Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog – Dunst is part of the fabric of Hollywood at this point. She has been making movies most of her life, and it seems almost impossible she has not been recognized by the Academy before this. Few actors in film history have handled the transition from child star to grown performer so well, parlaying the Spider-man franchise into the opportunity to work on fascinating, challenging films such as Melancholia, Midnight Special, Woodshock, and this picture.

She is great as Rose, a woman being emotionally terrorized by her new brother-in-law and thwarted in every attempt she makes to reclaim her life. Dunst is allowed to play notes all over the emotional scale in this performance, and she hits every one with subtlety and grace. In a career of excellent roles in films as diverse as Marie Antoinette, Bring It On, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this is the best part Dunst has ever played, and she absolutely makes it her own.

Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter – It is fun to catch a performer just before she takes off into the stratosphere. In 2018, we attended a screening of Wild Rose in Los Angeles, where Buckley stayed on afterward for a Q-and-A and to perform several songs off the soundtrack. If the movie hadn’t already done so, watching her speak and perform in person made it clear: This woman was going to be a star. Since then, she has appeared in the Oscar-winning Judy, Charlie Kaufman’s experimental puzzle box I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and this project, among others. Her star is only getting brighter.

As the younger version of Olivia Colman’s Leda, Buckley perfectly expresses the pent-up frustration of wasted talent and the desire to reclaim your life when circumstances conspire against you. The freedom she experiences when away from her children is palpable, and Buckley communicates this with the slightest change in gesture and smallest modulation of her voice. She represents so many young mothers, struggling to maintain their identity and individualism in a culture that wants to define them by their motherhood. I cannot wait to see what Buckley does next.

Judi Dench for Belfast – From four first-time nominees to the legend Dame Judi Dench. This is Dench’s third nomination for Supporting Actress and eighth overall. She previously won the category for Shakespeare in Love back in 1998. This is her first nomination since Philomena in 2014, and who better to guide her back to the Academy Awards than longtime friend and collaborator Kenneth Branagh? The two have known each other for 35 years, and this is the fourth film Branagh has directed in five years to feature Dench.

Their lengthy creative partnership almost certainly contributed to the ease with which Dench slides into the role of Granny, grandmother to the Branagh stand-in Buddy during The Troubles in 1960s Ireland. As a woman who refuses to be forced from her home despite escalating violence all around her, Dench conveys the quiet resolve at the heart of the character with equal parts wisdom and whimsy. The scene on the bus gives Dench one of the best showcases she has had in years, and she proves once again why she has been so successful for so long.

The final analysis

Two words: Ariana DeBose.

Will win: Ariana DeBose for West Side Story

Should win: Ariana DeBose for West Side Story

Should have been here: Riley Keough for Zola

Next time: Best Actor