Reporter: Jack Marshall
This year’s Academy Award proves to be one of the most interesting in recent years. 2023 brought us many upon many excellent films, including the formidable summer box office hit of ‘Barbenheimer’, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer both grossing in and around a billion U.S dollars. From such hits on the mainstream, smaller movies have gained worldwide recognition such as Celine Songs A24 produced ‘Past Lives’. International cinema has been widely celebrated too in the form of French film Anatomy of a Fall (‘Anatomie d’une Chute’). Similarly, Wim Wembers “Perfect Days” the international film submission of Japan has also accumulated a heap of momentum moving forward into the award season.
©NBCNews – last summer’s blockbuster double feature: ‘Barbenheimer’
Category Is…The Favourites, and some Dark Horses
Best Picture – THE FAVOURITE
Oppenheimer strides forward as the undoubtably most favoured to win this year’s Oscars after a hugely profitable award season at the BAFTAS. The formidable duo of Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy created a piece of biographical cinema that will forever stand the test of time. The first twenty five minutes are a sublime example of why film is a true, if not the truest art form we have today. I’ve never been more immersed, terrified and left in awe in a cinema then when watching Nolan’s masterpiece. Not to give anything away but the Trinity Bomb Test scene had me curled up in my seat, in a profound state of amazement and horror.
Nolan heavily leans into the almost biblical story of how this Jewish team of scientists created Pandoras Box during the height of their peoples annihilation. I really appreciated Nolan telling it in such a style. Nolan never involves religion or ethnicity into his stories but this was an essential element to the depiction of this most enderaring historical event. Youve no doubt heard that Cillian Murphy brings something otherworldly to his performance and thats most certainly the case. Its formidable, raw and something that no amount of praise or awards can ever give merit to. The same can be said for the always-superb Robert Downey Jr, who delivers a career best performance and in his own words had a fantastic role in “ the best film I’ve ever been apart of”.
Best Picture – THE DARK HORSE
“The Holdovers” is a beautifully melancholic tale of loss, family and meaning as it follows a cranky Ancient Civilization teacher (Paul Giamatti) as he stays behind for the christmas break at a New England Ivy League school. To look after the kids left behind, the only other adult being the lunch lady (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who recently lost her son to the war in Vietnam. The plot moves swiftly from there as we explore the lives of these three characters. It takes its time but is never slow. It lets the dialogue and moments breathe, to find this fantastically sentimental tone yet also finds time to subtly comment on America and adolescence. It’s the sort of film your Mum would adore in the best way.
It feels like a movie made forty years ago, once again in the best way. Its emotional and hits all the right notes of being an emotional film and Alexander Payne is a brilliant director. When you watch a Payne movie, you forget it’s not actually real people you are watching. It will most certainly become an iconic Christmas classic and I’ve no doubt will obtain cult classic status very soon.
Best Actor – The Favourite
The most talked about and fawned over performance of the year (and rightly so) is Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy. It’s a perfect Oscar winning story: a humble actor who has been in the game for yonks, finally lands his first leading role in one of the most iconic films of all time. Murphy is universally liked, admired, talented and charismatic, and most of all, he’s credited with urging people into theatres and cinemas. In short, he possibly revived the idea of the summer intellectual blockbuster. In the age of dying interest in cheap action and superhero flicks, an Oscar win is what the viewers and critics desperately want or all hope in the Oscars as credible may be lost.
Best Actor – The Dark Horse
I couldn’t pick a more likely candidate for a surprise win than Paul Giamatti, who is truly an actor’s actor. Like Murphy, he is an actor long in the game with heaps of experience. Yet unlike Murphy, he is quite underrated by most. His performance is nothing short of incredible, he works with a fake prosthetic eye that just adds significance to the character. It’s an emotional yet intelligent performance: something that the Oscars tend to look for. The definition of a dark horse going into this years Oscar’s.
Best Actress – The Favourite
The three-hour long Scorsese epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, follows the true story of the systemic genocide of the Osage people in America as they become wealthy due to the plethora of oil on their land in the 1920s. Lily Gladstone as a Native growing up on the BlackFeet reservation is excellently cast opposite DiCaprio, as they act out the troubling and conflicting relationship their characters go through. Gladstone plays into the rage and despair all too well as her family are systemically killed by her husbands for their money and land. American schools in Oklahoma do not teach this in schools because they are afraid to, or so they say. This is yet another reminder as to how powerful film is and the light it can shine and all the many ways it can tell stories, crucial stories never before heard on a mass scale. This film is important and deeply harrowing to view. Lily Gladstone is subtly superb in it and she has a great shot at the Oscar.
Best Actress – The Dark Horse(s)
I have two picks for a possible Best Actress surprise. Quirky, out-there, and perhaps even off-putting for some is the nonetheless utterly otherworldly Poor Things. The story follows a mad scientist reviving a woman through the brain of her unborn child. Must of been an awkward pitch.
Emma Stone stars as this new woman rapidly ages and learns about this fantastical world. Stone is excellent as always, but it feels like a very Oscar bait type movie to me. That being said, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro has been accused of the same idea but I personally think Maestro has a bit more weight to it. My personal favourite actress performance of the year was Carey Mulligan in Maestro. Shes not completely out of discussion but the other two previously mentioned are the types of roles and films that the Oscars tend to lean more towards. This is a real shame because, for me, it carried more weight than both of them at times. Sadly the Oscars is never just who displayed the best acting. If I was a betting man, I’d put it on Stone but it’s still anyone’s game here.
Best Supporting Actor (The Favourite)
Robert Downey Jr is an immense talent and a true superstar, yet this can in fact be limiting in an actor’s career. However, the death of the Marvel franchise and with a few misses since Iron Man, Downey is now back in full force. If Murphy’s Oppenheimer is a god trying to be a man, then RDJ’s Strauss is a man trying to be a god. Jealous, calculating, cruel and utterly human, Robert Downey Jr opposes Murphy beautifully but can really take a scene by the throat and own it as seen in the final scenes of the film. He’s been around, won before, and redeemed himself time and time again. But who doesn’t fall into his web of charm? Robert Downey Jr. is most certainly the favourite.
Best Supporting Actor — Dark Horse
A dark horse for this category is Ryan Gosling’s scene-stealing performance as Ken in Barbie.
Self-explanatory.
Best Supporting Actress ( The Favourite)
This movie was my first time seeing Da’Vine Joy Randolph on screen and I was instantly blown away by her screen presence. Randolph captures lightning in a bottle in her performance from silent grief for her son to beautifully delivered comedic lines and moments of silence that said more than dialogue ever could. From the first moments we see her on-screen at the school’s Christmas mass, her eye movement alone and breathing as her son is mentioned by the pastor is superb.
There is no dark horse for this category, no one is on the same level as her. If you were to put a few bob on any category, this is the one. Not that I encourage gambling.
If I was a Gambling man / Lock ins
Sound — The Zone of Interest
Original Score – Oppenheimer
Original Song – Barbie (I’m Just Ken)
Production Design – Poor Things
Costumes – Poor Things
Best Director- Christopher Nolan
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