Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

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 Actress

The nominees are:

Cate Blanchett in TÁR

Ana de Armas in Blonde

Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once

I have been covering the Oscar race in one capacity or another for 14 years now. In that time, there has never been an acting race this strange or this close. There have been surprises, certainly. Olivia Colman’s 2018 Best Actress win springs to mind immediately. Maybe Best Supporting Actress in 2013 felt this close, with Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o going down to the wire. But, this is infinitely closer and, again, stranger than that.

It started at the nomination stage with Andrea Riseborough’s moderately surprising nomination. She was, after all, nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards. But, the film world blew up and pretended like the nomination had manifested from nothing. Collusion and improper campaigning accusations were thrown around, and the Academy was essentially forced to investigate. They found nothing because there was nothing. 

It’s a good performance by a popular actor in an independent movie. Her team’s grassroots campaign had a helluva lot more integrity than most studio campaigns, for which millions of dollars are thrown around in hopes of getting this kind of recognition. That ultimately was what it was all about. The wealthy studios, who got so used to working this system to their advantage, got outplayed and they didn’t like it. It was a manufactured controversy from the word go.

The part of it that was not manufactured and had nothing to do with campaign procedures was the perception that Riseborough’s nomination specifically came at the expense of either Daneille Deadwyler or Viola Davis, two performers of color who gave brilliant performances in critically acclaimed films. Again, not Riseborough’s fault, but it served as further proof that we are hardly out of the #OscarsSoWhite days. Truly, if you saw Deadwyler’s performance in Till, there’s virtually no way to leave her off your top five. My guess, the still heavily white Academy didn’t watch it.

Once we got through all of that hullabaloo, Cate Blanchett continued to pick up every award under the sun for one of the great performances of the 21st century. When she picked up the BAFTA, her victory seemed all but assured. Truly, if Renee Zelwegger in Judy was undeniable, there was nothing going to stand in the way of this coronation.

Then, Everything Everywhere All at Once began to steamroll everything. It was already strong as the leading nominee at the Academy Awards. It won the DGA and PGA, all but cementing its status as the one to beat for Best Picture. When the Screen Actors Guild Awards arrived, the film was a freight train barrelling downhill. It won the most SAG Awards ever, including ensemble and leading actress for Michelle Yeoh. 

It felt like something had shifted. All of a sudden, Everything Everywhere All at Once wasn’t going to be just another Best Picture winner. It started down a path of historic victory, which is where we are now. And, due to a quirk of the schedule, it picked up all this momentum just before ballots were in hand. In a lot of years, the votes would already have been cast before the SAG Awards, but not so this year. This year, voters watched one movie win every award under the sun, then received their ballots. The face of that movie: Yeoh. So, how could the momentum not sweep her up, as well?

I could go through all the stats. In the face of all of this, they’re not particularly convincing. We’ll throw out the Golden Globes because they’re wonky and strange and not representative of much of anything. Let’s look at SAG and BAFTA, our favorites. We’ll use 2007 as the cutoff point because that was the year BAFTA really announced itself as the place to look for surprises. 

If you have forgotten, 2007 was the year Best Actress was supposed to go to Julie Christie for Away from Her and Supporting Actress was a race between Ruby Dee in American Gangster and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone. Christie and Dee won their respective SAG categories and were favored at the Oscars. The BAFTAs went to Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose and Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton, in actress and supporting actress, respectively. Cotillard and Swinton, of course, went on to win the Oscars.

The next year, SAG went with Meryl Streep in Doubt for actress, while the BAFTA went to Kate Winslet in The Reader. Winslet won the Oscar. In 2009, SAG got it right with Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, while the BAFTA went to Carey Mulligan for An Education. All three matched in 2010 on Natalie Portman in Black Swan. The next year, Viola Davis won the SAG for The Help and Streep won the BAFTA for The Iron Lady. Streep won the Oscar. It flipped again in 2012, when Emmanuelle Riva won the BAFTA for Amour and Jennifer Lawrence won SAG and the Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook.

The next five years in a row, they all matched. Then came the Colman-Glenn Close race, when the world expected Close finally to win a long-overdue Academy Award for The Wife. Instead, Colman, BAFTA in hand, shocked the world. They matched on Zelwegger in 2019. Then in 2020, SAG went with Davis again, this time for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. BAFTA and the Academy went with Frances McDormand in Nomadland. Last year, SAG picked the winner with Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but that film had not been released yet in England and was not eligible for the BAFTA.

It should be noted that no actress this century has won the Academy Award for Best Actress without winning at least one or the other of the SAG award or BAFTA. So, we can pretty safely discount Riseborough, Ana de Armas, and Michelle Williams, but we already knew that. If we’re reading all the stats correctly, Blanchett has the numbers on her side. But as the poet said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once – Yeoh is a legend. There are no two ways about it, and her resumé speaks for itself. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Memoirs of a Geisha. Crazy Rich Asians. She’s already in the Mummy franchise, the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and the MCU. Next up, she will be joining the Avatar universe, and she’s doing the highly anticipated film adaptation of Wicked. She can and has done it all.

She is as much an action star as a dramatic performer, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is really the first time since Crouching Tiger in 2000 that she has been allowed to flex both muscles at once. She gives it everything she’s got in a career redefining performance that will most likely net her an Academy Award. As much as I prefer Cate Blanchett’s performance this year and as much as I feel like Everything Everywhere All at Once flounders as a film, it would be hard to begrudge Yeoh her flowers.

Cate Blanchett in TÁR – The fascinating thing to me about all of this is that in actually watching TÁR, this feels like a no-brainer. Blanchett is one of the finest actresses of her generation – probably of any generation – and this is the best she has ever been. There is no one capable of doing the things Blanchett can do when she’s working at this level, and the character of Lydia Tár practically demands she raise her game to heights heretofore unimagined.

Blanchett plays Tár as a wrecking ball, destroying everything in her path but without the self-awareness that a wrecking ball swings back the other way. She destroys her own life and looks outward for anyone to blame but herself. She doesn’t mind being thought of as a mad genius, but at the end of the day, she’s really just mad. Blanchett never takes a wrong step in guiding the audience down the path of decadence and self-destruction. We’re passengers. Blanchett is the conductor, and she takes us places no actor has ever gone before.

Ana de Armas in Blonde – I really wanted to like Blonde. I greatly enjoyed director Andrew Dominik’s two previous films to this one, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly. The casting of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe is inspired. And, the behind-the-scenes pedigree is undeniable. The film, however, forces one to wonder what the hell any of these people thought they were doing. This is a disaster of epic proportions. 

The shame is that de Armas is damn good in the movie. She puts her whole self into the performance, mind, body, and soul. Unfortunately, over and over, Dominik proves that the only thing he is interested in is the body part of that equation. De Armas and the filmmakers are completely at odds over the film’s portrayal of Monroe. Somewhere in de Armas’ version, there is a good movie. Virtually none of that makes it into the movie we got. The nomination is earned as much for the performance as for what de Armas endured to bring anything resembling a human portrait out of the process. She deserved better.

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans – Speaking of actresses nominated by the Academy for playing Marilyn Monroe, we come to Williams. This is the performers’ fifth nomination, including that 2012 Best Actress nod for My Week with Marilyn. She has yet to win, and she’s not really in the running this year, but she will get over the hump someday. She’s a magnificent actress, the Academy loves her, and still just 42, she has a lot more career in front of her.

All that said, I am not entirely sold on the Mitzi Fabelman character in Steven Spielberg’s film. Williams does a fine job with the role, and the sequence of her dancing on the family camping trip is a true standout scene from the year. But, I don’t see the depth in the character that Spielberg must have been hoping to bring out. She borders on one-note, a bit of a flibberty-gibbet who is just as likely to bring home a monkey as the groceries. Being that the whole movie revolves around Sammy Fabelman’s feelings about his mom and dad, there wasn’t enough there there for it to come together, despite Williams’ best efforts.

Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie – This is the performance there was so much fuss about. The poor, alcoholic screw-up trying to reconnect with family is nothing we haven’t seen before. Riseborough does it better than most, committing fully to the bit, but the movie doesn’t give her anywhere to go. She is hung out to dry, so to speak, playing the same scene over and over with different characters. First with her son. Then, her old friends. Then, her new boss. Then, strangers. It gets old quickly.

Riseborough’s portrayal of an alcoholic perpetually sinking to rock bottom feels true and lived in, lacking in the histrionics of most Hollywood portraits of the disease. If nothing else, To Leslie is evidence of the possibilities for Riseborough’s career as a leading lady. She has been a supporting player in a number of great films over the years such as Never Let Me Go, Birdman, and The Death of Stalin. If she ever gets to be the lead of a great movie worthy of her talents, this won’t be the last time we see her at the Oscars.

The final analysis

I don’t think anyone is going to argue that Michelle Yeoh is better in Everything Everywhere All at Once than Cate Blanchett is in TÁR, for whatever it means to compare art and performances. But, Yeoh is the performer of the moment. It is her time. Blanchett’s got two Oscars, and though the Academy is not above handing out a third – Frances McDormand just won her third – there is a sense that she’s been rewarded. All the stats be damned, the sentiment and the momentum are with Yeoh.

Will win: Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Cate Blanchett in TÁR

Should have been here: Mia Goth in Pearl

A note about my favorite snub: Both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair got Oscar nominations for The Exorcist. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie made it in for Carrie. Hell, Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery. So, where are our modern horror nominations? This is a longer discussion, but the point is Mia Goth is on another level in Pearl. From dancing by herself in the cornfield to delivering that minutes-long monologue at the dinner table to that final shot, Pearl is a wholly unique creation that could only have been brought to life by Goth.

Next time: Best Picture

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

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 Actor

The nominees are:

Austin Butler in Elvis

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Paul Mescal in Aftersun

Bill Nighy in Living

Though I feel pretty good about my prediction in this category, I cannot guarantee who will win. However, I can with a good deal of certainty guarantee none of the five nominees will rush the stage to slap a presenter during the show. Of course, I would have said the same thing before last year’s show, and I would have been wrong. So, let’s see what happens.

Austin Butler in Elvis – The Academy does not really deserve its reputation for being obsessed with performers portraying real people. Over the past 50 years of Best Actor and Actress, the Academy has handed out 100 statues. Exactly 33 of those have gone to performers playing real people, which means fully two-thirds of the time, the award goes to an actor bringing to life a fictional character.

The reputation persists, I think, because the ones we remember tend to be the most egregious examples, like Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody or Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. No one complains when Daniel Day-Lewis wins for Lincoln or Will Smith (slap aside) for King Richard. Butler will slot pretty easily into the latter category for his full-bodied imitation of Elvis Pressley. It is an excellent performance and probably the saving grace of Baz Luhrmann’s otherwise mediocre Elvis. For a movie that goes wrong in so many ways, Butler is worth the price of admission.

Brendan Fraser in The Whale – If you follow this stuff at all, you know Fraser’s story. It has been written about extensively all over the place. In interviews, on red carpets, and in speeches, Fraser never comes off as anything but genuine and humble, grateful for the praise but a little bewildered by it all. His return to fame is one of the few positive things that has come out of internet nostalgia culture. Millennials who grew up on George of the Jungle and The Mummy have plastered Fraser everywhere on social media as a cause celebre. You may have seen the bumper stickers.

The lead role of Charlie in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a fascinating part for the once-upon-a-time matinee idol. Buried beneath layers of makeup and CGI, Fraser brings you into the world of a morbidly obese man who cannot forgive himself for things he has done and has essentially decided to die. But even in that state, he seeks ways to connect to his daughter and pass along a message of hope, kindness, and generosity. Fraser plays this one for the people in the back row, but it is actually perfectly attuned to the frequency of the film around him. He’s back, like he never left.

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin – This is the best performance of the year for me. The entire ensemble of The Banshees of Inisherin is doing tremendous work, but Farrell is transcendent. It would be condescending to suggest we didn’t know he was capable of this. He’s been great in plenty over the years, from Minority Report and The New World to In Bruges and The Lobster, but this is the best he has ever been. It’s a performance that proves his best is better than most.

Watch the way Farrell’s Pádraic reacts at the inciting incident of the film. Brendan Gleeson’s Colm tells him he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, and in two seconds, without saying a word, Farrell communicates everything – the pain, the incomprehension, the disbelief. It washes over in waves, and we feel it with him. The events of the film feel silly at first, but the movie works because Farrell never treats them as such. This is deadly serious for Pádraic. And as things get darker and darker, Farrell is already there, waiting for the audience to catch up to him.

Paul Mescal in Aftersun – When the Academy Award nominations were announced, Mescal was in London, playing Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. That’s a great part for him, and it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine the young actor following in the footsteps of Marlon Brando in becoming one of the “It” actors of his generation. That’s a lot to put on a 27-year-old performer, but those are the kinds of comparisons you draw when you are Oscar nominated for just your second feature film.

Charlotte Wells’ elegant little coming-of-age drama follows young dad Calum (Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), on their Turkish holiday. He is doing the best he can to be a father to this adolescent girl, but he is struggling, as he barely knows who he is, let alone how to understand his preteen daughter. Mescal brings depth and compassion to the role that would be difficult for a seasoned performer to convey. But, here he is in his first leading role, announcing himself as an actor to watch for a long time to come.

Bill Nighy in Living – On the flipside of that coin, we have the 73-year-old Nighy, who was 20 when he first performed Tennessee Williams on the British stage in 1969, some 53 years before Mescal got to it. His long film career has run the gamut from Shaun of the Dead to Love Actually to a key role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He has truly done it all, and yet, this is his first Academy Award nomination.

It would be easy to dismiss this nomination as a lifetime achievement nod, but that would be to ignore the work Nighy is actually doing in this film. It is no easy feat to step into the shoes of Takashi Shimura, the legendary Japanese actor, for a remake of one of Akira Kurosawa’s most revered films, about a dying bureaucrat looking to find some meaning in his final days. Nighy puts a uniquely British spin on the part while never losing the soul of the material. He carries the longing and regret of his years with him in everything he does, and in the film’s closing moments, borrowed from the Kurosawa film, we see that weight lifted and we finally view the man who once was.

The final analysis

Many Oscars prognosticators would have you believe this is a closer race than it is, particularly after Brendan Fraser’s triumph at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. But, if 2020 taught us anything, it taught us you can’t trust SAG when it comes to this one. That was the now-infamous Chadwick Boseman-Anthony Hopkins year. Boseman was a sure thing, especially after the posthumous recognition from his peers. And, that was true right up to the moment the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony ended with Hopkins’ name being read and Hopkins being prevented from accepting via Zoom call. It was a weird time.

In any event, Fraser has not received near the acclaim Boseman did in the runup to that ceremony. Butler won the BAFTA, he won the Golden Globe, and his rising star has shown no signs of slowing at any point this season. In my view, Butler is running away with this thing.

The only potential spoiler could come in the form of Colin Farrell sneaking up the middle if Fraser and Butler split the vote. That scenario is pretty rare, but many have used it to explain the 2002 Oscars when Adrian Brody won for The Pianist, beating out Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), who were considered neck and neck for the award. If it happens, it will make me as happy as anything else Sunday night is likely to make me, but I won’t hold my breath.

Will win: Austin Butler in Elvis

Should win: Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Felix Kammerer in All Quiet on the Western Front

A note about my favorite snub: All Quiet on the Western Front is entirely Paul’s story. He is our guide into the abyss. If that central performance doesn’t work, the whole thing falls apart. Luckily, Felix Kammerer is more than up to the task. Paul’s transformation from fresh-faced teen to shell-shocked vet is brutal, heartbreaking, and all too real, and Kammerer makes us feel every ounce of his pain.

Next time: Best Actress

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

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 Director

The nominees are:

Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans

Todd Field for TÁR

Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness

From 1960-1999, a span of 40 years, Best Picture and Best Director split just four times. Mike Nichols won Director for The Graduate in 1967, when In the Heat of the Night won Picture. Bob Fosse won Director in 1972 for Cabaret, beating out Francis Ford Coppola for his Best Picture-winning The Godfather. In 1981, Warren Beatty won Director for Reds, which lost Picture to Chariots of Fire. And, in 1989, Oliver Stone won his second directing Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July but lost Picture to the ever-controversial Driving Miss Daisy. That’s it. Four times in 40 years.

Since 2000, it has happened nine times, six in the past 10 years. I am not sure exactly what explains that shift. As we have discussed in previous years, splits tend to happen when there is a film voters admire but don’t love in the race, going up against a film they love but which maybe doesn’t display the same technical prowess. La La Land vs. Moonlight. The Revenant vs. Spotlight. The Power of the Dog vs. CODA, etc. This tends to hold pretty true.

They match when the well loved film can also boast some sterling crafts achievements, such as Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland. But, even then, movies don’t tend to win big anymore. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied the all-time record with 11 Oscars in 2003. Since then, the highest totals came in 2008, when Slumdog Millionaire won eight awards, and 2009, when The Hurt Locker won six. Since 2012, no Best Picture winner has won more than four awards. That likely ends this year. Right now, the only question with Everything Everywhere All at Once is: How high can it go?

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once – Winning this award will make Kwan and Schinert the sixth- and eighth-youngest directing winners in history, respectively (Kwan is roughly eight months younger). Coincidentally, sandwiched between them at No. 7 on the list will be Lewis Milestone, who was 35 years, 36 days old when he won his second Best Director trophy for All Quiet on the Western Front. Kwan will be 35 years, 30 days old on Oscars Sunday. 

Milestone will remain the third-youngest winner, having won his first award just before his 34th birthday. Damien Chazelle sits at the top of that list, being roughly seven months younger than Norman Taurog was when he won for Skippy in 1931. Taurog held the record for 85 years before Chazelle came along with La La Land. Anyway, the Daniels. Usually, a Best Director Oscar gives you the freedom to do whatever you want the next time out, but if Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once don’t represent them doing whatever they want, then I can’t even imagine what it is they want to do. But, it sure will be interesting to see whatever it is.

Todd Field for TÁR – If you haven’t noticed, I am just so happy to have Todd Field back and directing movies again. It was a long wait between Little Children in 2006 and this, but it was worth it because Field came back with a masterpiece. It is an undeniable work, announcing its brilliance from the very beginning with a wild gambit: opening with the full credits, run in reverse. Instantly, we are made aware this will be unlike any movie we have ever seen.

Field then delivers on that promise over and over again. It’s not just the precision of the camerawork or the propulsive rhythm of the storytelling or the high-wire balancing act of character and tone. It is the way Field orchestrates all of them, conducting his film like Lydia Tár might conduct a symphony except that Field is very real and the results are plain as day for anyone to see. If you want to call this a comeback film, then it is the greatest comeback film ever made. Let’s just hope the next one comes a little quicker.

Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans – Spielberg is already part of a lot of Oscars history. For instance, with this nomination, his ninth, he ties Martin Scorsese for the second-most nominated director of all time, three behind William Wyler. An interesting tidbit I found: Spielberg was already on the list of 32 directors nominated in consecutive years when he achieved the feat for Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. Now, after being nominated last year for West Side Story and this year, he joins the list of eight directors who have achieved the feat twice or more.

I’ll give you that list, in addition to Spielberg: Wyler was nominated four years in a row from 1939-1942; John Ford (1939-1941) and John Huston (1950-1952) were each nominated in three consecutive years; Billy Wilder achieved the double three times; and Clarence Brown, Frank Capra, and Fred Zinneman did it twice. If we’re playing “one of these things is not like the other things,” I’ll admit I had never heard of Clarence Brown. He’s actually a six-time nominee, good for eighth all time. Of those, I have heard of but never seen National Velvet and The Yearling, and the other four I have never even heard of. A knowledge gap I’ll need to rectify.

As far as Spielberg and The Fabelmans, the master still has his fastball, as they say. No films look like Spielberg films. No one moves the camera like he does, with due credit to his longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński. There is something classical about the feel to everything he does, which suits this material well. I wouldn’t call it my favorite Spielberg film of recent vintage, but there is no mistaking what makes the legend a legend.

Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin – McDonagh gets unfairly painted as only a writer in certain film circles. It is true that his screenplays are second to none, but it is not true that he lacks a visual flair or a directorial stamp. On the contrary, his work reminds me most of ‘70s Terrence Mallick or William Friedkin: gritty but gorgeous. Everything is purposeful but never feels overplanned. Camera movements flow effortlessly, motivated by plot and character.

Coming from the stage, as he does, he is of course an actors’ director. Between this and his previous film, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, he has directed six different actors to nominations, garnering recognition in each of the four acting categories at the Oscars. That’s not an accident. The Banshees of Inisherin only works as well as it does because McDonagh is a smart, insightful director, in addition to being one of the great film writers of our time.

Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness – This is what most Oscars watchers would call the wild card slot. It’s the fifth Best Director nominee that always feels like a one-for-us nod from the Directors Branch. In recent years, that has mostly meant recognition for foreign auteurs making critically acclaimed arthouse pictures. Last year, that would have been Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car. In 2020, Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round. Bong Joon-ho won it all from that position in 2019 with Parasite. In 2018, we got Paweł Pawlikowski with Cold War.

This time around, it’s Östlund’s turn with his Best Picture-nominated satire Triangle of Sadness. It’s likely Östlund’s fans, myself included, are more excited for this nomination than the Swedish auteur himself is, considering he is coming off winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this very film. That was his second Palme in as many features, an even shorter list than the one we talked about above with Spielberg. Triangle of Sadness is an excellent film, wonderfully directed by a world cinema master at peak form. Gotta love the Directors Branch for bringing him to the show.

The final analysis

The Daniels are just the fifth directing pair in history to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. They will be the third pair to win, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. 

I could pretend like there’s some competition in this race, but there’s not really even a whiff of it in the air. Like the Coen Brothers before them, there is every likelihood the Daniels will win three awards on the big night: Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. It’s a helluva coming out party for a duo with just one previous feature on their resumé.

Will win: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Todd Field for TÁR

Should have been here: Sarah Polley for Women Talking

A note about my favorite snub: There couldn’t be anything else here. Women Talking is the best film of the year, and apart from perhaps Todd Field’s work on Tár, it is also the best directed. From the color palette to the performances, to the way the camera soars in and out of certain sequences, Polley’s work is first in its class, and she deserved to join that all-too-short list of women nominated for Best Director.

Next time: Best Actor