With the 87th Academy Awards just over two months away, voters and critics have now the last of this year’s films hoping to vie for Hollywood’s most coveted awards.
Well, almost all the films: JJ Abrams intensely anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens stands a shot at netting a slew of nominations, but the notoriously secretive Abrams has prevented Disney from showing it to anyone prior to the world premiere in Los Angeles for fear of leaks.
Still, given what has screened, we now have a surer grasp than ever of how Oscar season is shaping up. Here are the latest additions to the race:
The Revenant
Less than a year after Birdman he snatched best director and best picture from Richard Linklater’s clutches, Alejandro González Iñárritu is back in the race in a big way.
Iñárritu was in the midst of shooting The Revenant while campaigning on behalf of Birdman and his latest is even more of a high-wire act than his previous effort: Iñárritu and team braved severe outdoor locations for a whopping nine months to complete it. The extreme production took such a toll on its crew that some called the making of it “a living hell”.
Judging by the response thus far to the finished product (The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw bestowed a five-star review), the risk paid off, and will likely result in nominations across the board.
The lead, Leonardo DiCaprio, stands a solid shot at finally collecting a best actor Oscar for his intensely committed turn as an explorer in 1823 who miraculously survives a brutal bear mauling in the Rockies, and then finds himself fighting survival after being left for dead by his evil comrade (Tom Hardy). It’s unlikely Iñárritu will triumph just one year after Birdman, but a nomination for the Mexican film-maker most definitely is in the books – the fact that he even got The Revenant made is an achievement itself.
Possible major nominations: Best picture, director, actor (DiCaprio), supporting actor (Hardy), screenplay.
Creed
Sylvester Stallone: Oscar-winner? The actor leapt the front of the best supporting actor race when Creed, the latest Rocky movie was first unveiled, with Stallone reprising the role that landed him his only actor nomination back in 1977. Creed finds Stallone’s Rocky Balboa retired, and looped intro training the troubled son of boxing legend Apollo Creed, played with fierce bravado by Michael B Jordan.
The film, from Fruitvale Station writer/director Ryan Coogler, is a bonafide hit with critics (it boasts a 93% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (it’s doing blockbuster business at the US box office). The original Rocky scored 10 nominations and three wins. Creed is not the cultural phenomenon that the first entry was, so it’s therefore unlikely it will factor into next year’s race in that big of a way. Still, expect it to enter the ring.
Possible major nominations: Best picture, supporting actor (Stallone).
The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino’s last two movies (Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained) were both revisionist spaghetti westerns and among his best-received films, earning three Oscar wins collectively. The Hateful Eight, shot in 70mm and about a motley crew of 19th century bounty hunters and criminals who take refuge in a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass to shelter from a blizzard, no doubt hopes to make it a hat-trick. But with an arduous running time of over three hours and less attention-grabbing subject matter, its prospects remain unsure.
Reviews are embargoed until the week of its release on Christmas day, but having seen it, we can say this: The Hateful Eight will appeal mostly to die-hard Tarantino fans. Like most of the film-maker’s work, it’s outrageously violent and densely scripted, and finds him once again mining racial tensions to provoke, and draw, uncomfortable laughs.
Out of the ensemble cast, Jennifer Jason Leigh is gaining the most momentum after a win for supporting actress by the National Board of Review. She’s delightfully unhinged as criminal Daisy Domergue, and steals every scene she’s in from her all-male co-stars.
Possible major nominations: Best picture, supporting actress (Leigh), screenplay.
The Big Short
One of the major surprises this season is The Big Short, Adam McKay’s damning black comedy about the Wall Street crash of 2008. The film was barely on the Oscar radar before it premiered as the closing night film of AFI Fest in Los Angeles, but as soon as the screening was over, awards pundits pushed it to the top of the heap.
Boasting an A-list cast that includes Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei and Brad Pitt, the film is bound to be hit with the actor voting body of the Oscars. And in past years, the ceremony have been known to favour films documenting the financial crisis, like Margin Call and The Wolf of Wall Street, both of which received major nominations.
Possible major nominations: Best picture, actor/supporting actor (Carrell), screenplay.
Joy
Former enfant terrible David O Russell is now something of an establishment Academy figure, with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle all resonating strongly with Oscar voters. Here he gives Jennifer Lawrence her own vehicle: a fact-based comedy drama about a single mother of three who becomes a successful businesswoman after inventing the Miracle Mop. Lawrence’s frequent collaborator Bradley Cooper co-stars, as do Robert De Niro, Isabella Rossellini and Virginia Madsen.
Lawrence fires on all cylinders to deliver a hugely appealing performance, with Rossellini offering hilarious support as a widow with endless funds.
Coming off his last three films, Joy feels like a minor effort from Russell, who struggles to rustle up a story as compelling as the characters that populate it. Still, voters love him, and in Lawrence we trust.
Possible major nomination: Best actress (Lawrence).
Chi-Raq
Chi-Raq, Spike Lee’s urgent call to end gun violence, is the comeback his fans have craved.
Since his 2006 heist thriller Inside Man, Lee has struggled to attain the brazen heights set by his masterworks Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, with his recent remake of Oldboy marking an all-time low. Coming off an honorary Oscar win at last month’s Governors Awards, Lee has delivered one of his most daring and accomplished films to date with Chi-Raq, which transplants the Greek play Lysistrata to modern-day Chicago, to offer a passionate treatise on the gun epidemic that has crippled America.
There couldn’t be a film more timely for voters to latch on to this season, but like all of Lee’s work, Chi-Raq is intensely confrontational and formally audacious, which could scare off some members.
Possible major nomination: Best screenplay.
