DAVID DUNN

Life is funny. At the beginning of this decade, I was screaming into a camera ranting about how the Academy Awards robbed The Dark Knight Rises by giving it precisely zero Oscar nominations. As year after year passed, the Academy kept making one senseless snub after another, from no nominations for Captain America: Civil War and Wonder Woman to not giving Sylvester Stallone his much-deserved Oscar for playing a weary Rocky Balboa in Creed (I still haven’t gotten over that, and probably never will). Last year seemed like the Academy’s first genuine attempt at branching out across all genres and recognizing mainstream films that truly deserved it, even going so far as to give Black Panther three Oscars and a Best Picture nomination. And then they end the decade by giving the most nominations to a film about Batman’s greatest nemesis, the Joker. We started the decade with no nominations for Batman, and then we end the decade with Joker earning some of the most nominations out of any film in the past 10 years.

Like I said, life is funny. And the one thing you need to remember about humor is that tragedy plus time equals comedy: and we have no shortage of tragic snubs to experience this year.

Take, for instance, Joker itself. Yes, it’s nominated the most this year with 11 nominations, including Best Picture. However, it’s not expected to sweep the night by any metric. After all, when you compare Joker side-by-side with the epic and grand scale of 1917, how do you think it compares? It isn’t even a competition: Joker is blown clean off of the German front lines.

That, however, isn’t the least of the losses we’re expected to witness throughout the night. Read on to see my predictions for how the Oscars will play out for the last time this decade:

Best Picture: It has become impossible to get into the minds of Academy Award voters and rationalize their loop-de-loop thinking when it comes to the Best Picture winners in the past few years. First, they award Spotlight with Best Picture over The Revenant, despite the fact that Revenant won three Oscars for directing, acting, and cinematography while Spotlight only won one for writing. Then Moonlight unexpectedly beat La La Land for Best Picture, with the infamous mixup announcement happening between the two nominees. After that, The Shape of Water frustratingly became the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture, even over the likes of Star Wars, Inception, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Finally, the play-it-safe Green Book won over the heartfelt and personal Spanish film Roma, a controversial move that did not go unnoticed by the larger moviegoing community.

In all of Oscar history, no foreign-language film has ever won Best Picture, which is why I’m hesitant to say South Korea’s Parasite will win it now. That leaves the night’s biggest contenders to duke it out for Best Picture: 1917, Joker, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and The Irishman. I doubt it will be Joker since it has the unfortunate stigma of being a comic-book movie working against it. I simultaneously don’t think Martin Scorsese will win for The Irishman either since he hasn’t won an Oscar since directing The Departed in 2006. That leaves 1917 and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, both heavy contenders for different reasons. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a jeering, clever, and sharp commentary on violence and media consumption, while 1917 is a mesmerizing masterpiece that immerses you in the soldier’s experience on the battlefield.

My bias may be influencing my prediction here, but I genuinely do believe 1917 will win Best Picture. For one thing, a war film has surprisingly not won Best Picture yet this decade, despite the fact that every decade has had at least one war film winning Best Picture at least once. It has also been silently sweeping up Awards season, previously winning Best Picture awards at both the Golden Globes and the Producer’s Guild.

Also, 1917 is just truly the most deserving winner out of the nominees. Few films place you so vividly in the reality of its characters as well as 1917 does with its tale of two soldiers venturing through the German front lines to stop a devastating attack. If 1917 does end up winning Best Picture, it will be very well deserved.

Best Director: Sam Mendes won the DGA Award, which means he will also win the Best Directing Oscar for 1917. Again, Mendes made a powerful, moving film made all the more impactful through its one continuous shot filming method (more on that later). Aside from his DGA win, Mendes is simply the most deserving out of all the nominees. That’s really saying something considering his competition is in The Irishman’s Martin Scorsese, Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Quentin Tarantino, and Joker’s Todd Phillips.

Speaking of Joker…

Best Actor: It will be a national outrage if anyone wins in this category other than Joaquin Phoenix for Joker. Not only did he deliver a visceral and haunting portrayal of a decent man gone mad and murderous, but he also gave one of the most unsettling performances this decade that challenges even Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the clown prince of crime. Leonardo DiCaprio did a great job switching between comedic and intimidating in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Adam Driver gave a vulnerable and affectionate performance as a heartbroken husband in Marriage Story. But no, if we’re talking about the best actor and the best performance of the year, it’s not even a competition. Joaquin for the win.

Best Actress: I loved Scarlett Johannson in Marriage Story and thought she did a wonderful job tenderly demonstrating how a family falling apart affects somebody as both a wife and mother. But the Academy has a history of awarding real-life roles moreover original ones, especially this year where Scarlett is up against three biographical performances in Bombshell, Judy, and Harriet. Who will it go to? My money is on Renee Zellweger considering how she completely disappears into her portrayal of Judy Garland in Judy. Sure, she’s won an Oscar before for Best Supporting Actress in 2003’s Cold Mountain, but considering she’s been out of the spotlight for a hot second, this seems like the perfect opportunity to recognize some of her under-the-radar work. Charlize Theron or Scarlett might pull an upset in this category, but it isn’t likely given Zellweger’s tenure.

Best Supporting Actor: There are several reasons to consider Brad Pitt winning Best Supporting Actor in his pointed and indomitable performance as a stuntman filled with swagger and violent tendencies in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. One such reason is that Pitt has never won an acting Oscar before and all of his competitors have. Another reason is that he already won the corresponding SAG award a week after he was nominated. But my reasoning is simple, straightforward, and to the point: his performance is just too freggin’ good to ignore. In a long line of memorable Quentin Tarantino performances from John Travolta in Pulp Fiction to Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds, Pitt’s is the most restrained and unnerving. Brad Pitt absolutely owned his role, and he deserves no less than the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for it.

Best Supporting Actress: First of all, shame on the Academy for not nominating Jennifer Lopez as a hardworking stripper with attitude in Hustlers. Her commanding presence dominated that entire film, and it’s ridiculous she wasn’t even recognized with a simple nomination. It’s even more maddening when you realize no Latina actresses were nominated in any of the acting categories this year, not even Penelope Cruz in Pain and Glory or Ana de Armas in Knives Out. Absolutely outrageous, but that’s regressive Hollywood at work here people.

As for the rest of the supporting actress nominees, my personal favorite is Scarlett Johansson in Jojo Rabbit as a German mother trying to keep her son playful and happy in a world rotting from death, misery, and antisemitism. But she’s picked up no traction this awards season, and it’s unlikely that she’ll pick up the pace in the next few weeks. No, Laura Dern is much more likely to win as a compassionate and charismatic divorce attorney in Marriage Story, which is weird because A) She’s in the film very little, and B) She doesn’t have a lot of space to really make an impact as a character. Or at least, not as much as her co-stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson do. It would be like Ray Liotta winning Best Supporting Actor as Adam Driver’s attorney, even though he was in the film very little and did even less.

Still, she was good in the role she played and fulfilled the part that she needed to. I’ll be happy if I get this category wrong, but for now, I’m going with Laura.

Best Animated Feature: If we’re going off of merit, the clear winner in this category deserves to be How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It was deep, affecting, incredibly moving, and featured the same beautiful and fast-paced animation you’ve seen from this whole franchise. I doubt it will win, however. The previous two movies lost to Pixar and Disney respectively both times, the first time with Toy Story 3 and the second time with Big Hero 6. I expect this year’s ceremony to repeat that trend with Toy Story 4 winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It’s a shame, especially since How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World was so committed to its ending whereas Toy Story 4 didn’t even commit itself to the toys’ original ending. But whatever. There are worse snubs that will pop up throughout the night.

Best Documentary Feature: Best Documentary has always been a difficult category to predict, especially when you haven’t even seen half of the nominees like I have. However, there’s one film that is a slight outlier to the rest of the nominees, and that is Honeyland. Not only does this Macedonian documentary focus on a lonely beekeeper keeping the craft alive in the mountainous region of Bekirlija, but Honeyland is also nominated for the Best International Feature. To put that into context, no film has ever been nominated for both Best Documentary and Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, so that has to carry some significance to it. Again, no assurances on this category, but if I have to place my bet on one of these nominees, I’m going with Honeyland. 

Best International Feature: Parasite. If anything else wins, the Dolby Theatre deserves to be burnt to the ground.

Best Original Screenplay: If there was any fairness in the Academy Awards’ voting process, they would just hand Rian Johnson his Oscar for Knives Out and call it a day. Unfortunately, he’s up against four other Best Picture nominees in the Best Original Screenplay category, so he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance. Ridiculous that one of the most creative, cunning, and crafty films of the year gets diluted to a mere honorable mention. But that’s the Oscars for you. At least Knives Out got nominated for something, which is more than can be said about Us or Uncut Gems.

That remains the dilemma of who will win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay? I doubt it will be 1917 since that film’s aesthetic and technique is more impressive than its actual writing is. I also doubt it will be Parasite since three other foreign-language films have been nominated this decade and all of them lost, though I am pleased the Academy nominated Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won in this category regardless.

That leaves Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Noah Baumbach for Marriage Story. Who will win? Tarantino has won this award twice already, once for Pulp Fiction in 1994 and another for Django Unchained in 2012. Three-peats are not common for Best Original Screenplay, but if anyone can do it, I guess it’s Tarantino.

At the same time, Noah Baumbach made a deeply affecting and personal homily with Marriage Story that was equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful. He has conversely never won an Oscar, though he was nominated once for The Squid and the Whale in 2005. Plus, the Academy has awarded more tender and heartfelt screenplays as of late than they have for witty and wild ones, with Manchester By The Sea winning in 2017 and Green Book winning last year.

This category is a coin toss, but if I’m going with my instincts, I’m going to guess Tarantino wins his third Oscar for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Don’t be surprised if Baumbach pulls an upset, however.

Best Adapted Screenplay: If Issa Rae’s “congratulations to all these men” remark tells you anything, it’s that the female filmmaking community really did not appreciate that Little Women director Greta Gerwig was not given a Best Director nomination. The Academy will make it up to her by giving her the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Little Women now. I don’t want to even think about the wrath the Academy might face if they snub Greta Gerwig twice in the same ceremony.

Best Film Editing: This category in particular is difficult to predict nowadays, mostly because you don’t know whether the Academy is going to give the Oscar to a nominee that truly deserves it like The Social Network or Whiplash, or if they’re going to give it to something completely bonkers like Bohemian Rhapsody. In the end, I find myself completely absorbed and mesmerized by Yang Jin-mo’s brilliant assembly of beauty and chaos in Parasite and cannot imagine any other film winning for Best Film Editing. It’s possible one of the flashier films like The Irishman and Ford v Ferrari might pull off a win, especially since Bohemian Rhapsody was last year’s underdog and it unbelievably beat both Vice and BlackKklansman. In unpredictable times like these, it’s best to go with the best nominee as opposed to the best prospects. So Parasite it is.

Best Cinematography: It would not have been possible to have made the film Sam Mendes did if it weren’t for Roger Deakins’ skilled and masterful cinematography for 1917. The way he fully captured the desperation and tragedies of war was captivating and heartbreaking, and it makes it even more impressive that he filmed it to look like one continuous shot. In many ways, 1917 is just as much Deakins’ film as it is Mendes’, and no other nominee deserves the Oscar as much as he does. If anyone else wins, it will be the 13th time the Academy has snubbed Deakins.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The first time I caught a glimpse at Charlize Theron in Bombshell, I seriously mistook her for Megyn Kelly. A lot of the makeup work done for the film is that exemplary, with characters appearing so starkly similar to their real-life counterparts that you could put them right on Fox News and you almost wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The makeup work on Joker and Maleficent is equally stunning, but if we’re going to go with the most skillful makeup job here, my money is on Bombshell.

Also, praise to the Academy for nominating five nominees in the makeup category this year as opposed to the usual three. Makeup artists are often the most overlooked professionals in Hollywood, and I’m glad they’re getting the exposure they deserve here. Hopefully, this is a trend the Academy will keep up for future ceremonies.

Best Costume Design: The Oscar winner for Best Costume Design is particularly difficult to predict this year, mostly because all of the nominees are so outstanding. Previous Academy Award winners Sandy Powell, Jacqueline Durran, and Mark Bridges are respectively nominated for The Irishman, Little Women, and Joker, while Mayes C. Rubeo and Arienne Phillips are also nominated for JoJo Rabbit and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. While JoJo Rabbit’s costumes were packed with as much personality and uniqueness as its wildly entertaining characters were, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood deserves special praise for doing the same thing while simultaneously calling back to the wardrobe of 1960s pop culture. I love all of these costumes equally, but if I’m going with the most likely winner, I’m going to have to guess it’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. 

Side note: Shame on the Academy for not honoring Jenny Eagan’s beautiful and mesmerizing work on the mystery-thriller Knives Out. The costumes on the film’s suspects were so colorful and alive that they echoed back to the mini figurines from “Clue.”

Best Production Design: Another difficult category to predict, especially with two clear frontrunners going head-to-head: 1917 and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Fun fact: the Academy Award winners for 1991’s Bugsy are also nominated here against each other – Dennis Glasner for 1917 and Nancy Haigh for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Man, if that isn’t an entertaining coincidence, I don’t know what is.

Anyhow, predictions. Many of the sets for 1917 were created from scratch in order to accommodate the one continuous shot filming method. This is especially impressive in scenes involving the claustrophobic trenches or the muddy No Man’s Land, given the harrowing detail in the damage and casualties surrounding the British soldiers. However, there is one flaw not necessarily with the production design itself, but rather the capturing of it. In especially dark scenes where they’re filming in the thick of night or deep in a tunnel, it’s impossible to observe the set design through all of the shadows. The sets in these sequences very well could be amazing or terrible. We will never know because of how opaque these sequences were.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, however, didn’t have a dark moment in it (well, in terms of the lighting, that is). Since that is the case, we’re able to absorb its full production design in detail, and man is it gorgeous. Whether Sharon Tate is walking up to an oldie theater to watch The Wrecking Crew, Rick is acting on-set of a spaghetti western, or Cliff is eerily investigating Spahn Ranch, all of the sets in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood were colorful, vibrant, and ripe with 1960s life. It’s a close call, but Once Upon A Time In Hollywood has a slight edge for being represented more on-screen and meeting the challenge. Sorry, Dennis. At least 1917 isn’t going home empty-handed in the other categories.

Another side note: Again, the Academy was wrong to snub David Crank and Jeremy Woodward’s phenomenal craft in assembling Harlan Thrombey’s ancient, isolated mansion in Knives Out. If the first 10 minutes alone wasn’t convincing enough of their hard work and deserving of being nominated, then certainly the other two hours were. Their absence was absurd and ridiculous to the highest degree, and Jacob would be rage-tweeting about it online if he found out his grandfather’s mansion wasn’t nominated for an Oscar either.

Best Musical Score: Do you know who I feel really bad for? Thomas Newman. Not only has he been nominated a whopping 13 times by the Academy, but he has also never won an Oscar for Best Musical Score. Not once. Not with The Shawshank Redemption. Not with American Beauty. Not with Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Skyfall, Saving Mr. Banks, or Bridge of Spies. The only other nominee who’s been snubbed the number of times Thomas Newman has been was cinematographer Roger Deakins, who was also nominated 13 times for Best Cinematography before he finally won for Blade Runner 2049.

This year, unfortunately, is no different for him. He’s facing stiff competition with the likes of Alexandre Desplat for Little Women and John Williams for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Most of his nominees, however, have already won Oscars. Thomas Newman is one of the few composers to have not won yet, along with Icelandic newcomer Hildur Guonadottir for Joker.

Since this is the case, the underdog brawl comes down to Newman for 1917 and Guonadottir for Joker – and Quonadottir has a slight edge, only because Joker won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score while 1917 didn’t. This is the only category where I really hope I’m wrong, however, as Newman is an outstanding composer and deserves to be recognized at least once in his 35-year career, especially for the hauntingly gorgeous themes he provided in the backdrop of 1917.

Please, Academy. If you have any sense or decency, give Newman his much-deserved Oscar already. Otherwise, you’ll look like the jokers Hollywood already believes you are.

Best Original Song: Elton John fans are already ticked off that last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody won four Oscars, whereas Rocketman only got one nomination this year for Best Original Song. If “I’m Gonna Love Me Again” doesn’t win the Oscar now, then it will break Rocketman fans’ hearts. Don’t let the sun go down on them, Academy.

Best Sound Editing: 1917. I know its commonplace to give this award to war pictures, but 1917 stands out even when compared to fellow winners Dunkirk and American Sniper. I don’t usually care much about the sound categories, but 1917’s sound editing truly deserves to be recognized. If not it, then Ford v Ferrari. 

Best Sound Mixing: 1917. Again, compared to recent winners Dunkirk and Hacksaw Ridge, 1917 is truly masterful in its sound engineering. There are scenes where a loud, ear-piercing BANG will go off from the screen and it just sends shivers down your spine. Other times, the soft and quiet sounds of a soldier singing “Wayfaring Stranger” crescendoes into a beautiful melody that captures your heart and your emotions. Again, its possible Ford v Ferrari might pull an upset, but 1917 is the current leader in this category for very good reason.

Best Visual Effects: A lot of people believe Avengers: Endgame is the clear leader in this category. No. Not this time. Last year’s Avengers: Infinity War clearly deserved to be the winner, but the Academy chose to give the visual effects Oscar to the shoddy, dull, and vastly unimpressive First Man instead. Does Endgame deserve to win against the likes of its fellow nominees Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Irishman, and The Lion King? Obviously, but it won’t win because of the Academy’s preconceived bias. So screw the Academy. Avengers: Endgame won’t win the Oscar for best visual effects, even though it clearly deserves to.

That being said, 1917 was stunning in how it placed you on the German front lines in World War I, especially in conjunction with Deakins’ one-shot filming technique. I still don’t know how the film fully encapsulated the epic-scale war violence and tragedy that it did. 1917 may not be my first pick for best visual effects, but it’s definitely a solid second, and I think it’s going to end up winning. If Avengers: Endgame ends up winning in its place, Thanos needs to come back and snap the Academy members off of the voting board.

And finally, the dreaded short categories, which I never watch and am yet condemned to predict anyway. I usually go with the most interesting titles for these categories, so with that criteria in mind, I’m gonna guess that The Neighbor’s Window, Hair Love, and Learning To Skateboard In A Warzone (If You’re A Girl) wins Best Live Action, Best Animated and Best Documentary Short respectively. I unbelievably got all three of these categories right last year, so let’s see if the good man Oscar looks down favorably upon my ballot again this year.

And those are my predictions, folks. Tune in on Feb. 9 to see how well I did on my ballot this year, as well as vent my frustrations at how Knives Out was unbelievably not nominated for anything this year except for Best Original Screenplay – which it should have won, by the way.

– David Dunn