Oscar Nominations and Final Awards

The 2018 Academy Award nominations came out last Tuesday and they have me feeling a certain way. I’m going to break down the major categories and share my final nominees and winners in the correlative categories. Let’s get to it.

All the Academy Award nominations are available here. The ceremony airs 24 February 2019 at 8PM EST on ABC.

Best Picture

The Academy Awards went with eight nominees this year. This seems to be where the anywhere from five to 10 nominee system (must receive 5% of the 1st place ballots to be nominated for Best Picture) is settling. I can’t speak to all the nominees as I haven’t seen Vice yet, but I don’t agree with one of them. I think Green Book is utterly mediocre and is only in the conversation so voters can feel good about themselves for a pale examination of race in America that doesn’t rock the boat. It’s Driving Miss Daisy levels of discourse and I’m not here for it. Bohemian Rhapsody is pretty bland, too, but it does have some solid sequences in the second half.

• Black Panther

• BlackKkKlansman

• Bohemian Rhapsody

• The Favourite

• Green Book

• Roma

• A Star is Born

• Vice

Of these nominees, I want Roma to win. I think The Favourite is going to be too divisive to get enough votes. Black Panther would be awesome, but it’s too commercial compared to most Best Picture winners. I worry that Green Book has the major precursors to actually take Best Picture. It’s a rare year that the PGA winner doesn’t repeat here. Sigh.

My nominees were discussed in depth here. My winner, Nanette, would not be eligible for the Academy Awards as it’s a comedy film with no physical theatrical release.

• Anna and the Apocalypse

• Black Panther

• Crazy Rich Asians

• Eighth Grade

• If Beale Street Could Talk

• Nanette

• Revenge

• Roma

• Tully

• Suspiria

I’m 2/8 in line with the Academy Award nominations, which is not surprising. Three of my nominees are horror films, Tully never picked up in awards season, and the Academy doesn’t go for comedies like they used to so Crazy Rich Asians and Eighth Grade were unlikely. The only surprise miss is If Beale Street Could Talk, which we have to assume came close with the amount of precursor love and critics prizes.

Best Actress

I love this lineup. I really do. It was an especially rich year for acting and my list is different just from the possibilities presented. I will say I wish Elsie Fisher for Eighth Grade and Toni Colette for Hereditary snuck in, but they were long shots from genre bias (teen comedy and extreme horror).

• Yalitza Aparicio, Roma

• Glenn Close, The Wife

• Olivia Colman, The Favourite

• Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

• Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

I think it’s going to come down to Glenn Close or Olivia Colman. Close has the narrative of never winning, while Colman’s performance is just phenomenal. My own pick of these is Melissa McCarthy, but I fear Can You Ever Forgive Me? isn’t big enough of a story to win in a tight category.

My own nominees are different, but most of the Oscar picks are close to my list.

• Toni Colette, Hereditary

• Olivia Colman, The Favourite

• Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade

• Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Revenge

• Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

• Charlize Theron, Tully

Like I said, not far off. My own win is Charlize Theron in Tully.

Best Actor

This is where the Oscar nominations get interesting to me. I only saw three of these nominees. I have no real interest in reliving the Bush administration and every review I saw of At Eternity’s Gate tells me it’s another narrative that glorifies mental illness as a sign of artistic greatness. No thanks. I’m not living through that nonsense again.

• Christian Bale, Vice

• Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

• Willem Defoe, At Eternity’s Gate

• Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

• Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

I have a feeling Viggo Mortensen might take this since Green Book is inexplicably so strong, though I could also see Christian Bale being recognized for another physical transformation in a pretty weak pool of nominees. I don’t see A Star is Born actually picking up a lot of hardware at the ceremony and At Eternity’s Gate is so tiny compared to most other nominated films.

I also don’t love any of these nominees and have a very different list.

• John Cho, Searching

• Ben Foster, Leave No Trace

• Kevin Janssens, Revenge

• Alex Sharp, How to Talk to Girls at Parties

• David Howard Thornton, Terrifier

• John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman

My win is Ben Foster in Leave No Trace. Thomasin McKenzie was right there on my Best Actress list, too.

Best Supporting Actress

This category is genuinely exciting. No one was predicting Marina de Tavira for Roma. She had not won one precursor or even been nominated at this point. Then there’s the issue of Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz arguably being leading performing competing in this category for The Favourite over actual supporting roles. It’s complicated. I love those performances so much so I’m glad to see them nominated, but they should be competing in Lead. For purely selfish reasons, I’m fine to see them both get another nomination. Especially Weisz. She should have won for The Deep Blue Sea.

• Amy Adams, Vice

• Marina de Tavira, Roma

• Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

• Emma Stone, The Favourite

• Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

My pick is Regina King and she has the precursors to pull it off.

My own list is very different because it’s actually supporting performances. Shocking, I know.

• Mackenzie Davis, Tully

• Ann Dowd, Hereditary

• Danai Gurira, Black Panther

• Angelica Houston, The Cleanse

• Tilda Swinton, Suspiria

• Michelle Yeoh, Crazy Rich Asians

This is going to be a shock around here (/s), but Tilda Swinton is my supporting actress winner. She’s so good in Suspiria. Ask me 10 years ago if I could say anything nice about a Suspiria remake and I would laugh in your face. I hate the ending of the original, but I thought a remake would be unquestionably worse. I was wrong, and it feels great.

Best Supporting Actor

I don’t mind this lineup. I can’t speak to Vice, but I do enjoy Sam Rockwell. My big issue is finding room for Adam Driver here but not John David Washington in Lead Actor, but that takes nothing away from the quality of the performances. It comes back to the same issue that lets films like Green Book be praised so easily by the Academy but also sees scenarios where, say, Sylvester Stalone is the only nominee for Creed for who knows why?

• Mahershala Ali, Green Book

• Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

• Sam Elliott, A Star is Born

• Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

• Sam Rockwell, Vice

It’s between Mahershala Ali and Richard E. Grant for the Oscar. Momentum is on Ali’s side, though I’m pulling for Grant.

My own list is, again, pretty different.

• Raul Castillo, We the Animals

• Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

• Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

• Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther

• Ron Livingston, Tully

• Alex Wolff, Hereditary

My win is Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?.

Best Director

I love what I’ve seen of the Best Director nominees this year. I can’t speak to Adam McKay’s work on Vice, though I do like what he did with The Big Short and The Other Guys.

• Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

• Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

• Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

• Adam McKay, Vice

• Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War

I think Cuaron is going to win, though I would love it if Pawlikowski took the trophy.

My own list isn’t that far off this time, truly.

• Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

• Coralie Fargeat, Revenge

• Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

• Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

• Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War

• Jason Reitman, Tully

My win is for Coralie Fargeat. I’m a sucker for good New French Extremity and I’m very close to calling Revenge my top of the genre over In My Skin.