The two biggest awards at this year’s Oscars feel somewhat anticlimactic—partly because their outcome isn’t exactly suspenseful, and partly because it’s always more fun for me to present my personal choices in the acting categories. Still, the Academy has proved capable of delivering massive surprises at the end of the night, so you can never rule out fireworks. Let’s get to it.
BEST DIRECTOR
NOMINEES
Todd Field—Tár
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert—Everything Everywhere All at Once
Martin McDonagh—The Banshees of Inisherin
Ruben Östlund—Triangle of Sadness
Steven Spielberg—The Fabelmans
WILL WIN
Daniels (as Kwan and Scheinert collectively call themselves). Frankly, this seems like more of a lock than any major category outside of Best Supporting Actor (where another Everything Everywhere crewmember is destined to win). Weirdly enough, if Edward Berger had landed a nomination for All Quiet on the Western Front, you could make a decent case for him to pull the upset. As it stands, nobody is topping Daniels.
SHOULD WIN
Fun group here. McDonagh is nicely restrained in Banshees, Östlund infuses Triangle of Sadness’ hectic satire with impressive formal rigor, and Field lends Tár a silky malevolence that belies its classical trappings. But for me, this comes down to Daniels versus Spielberg, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m taking Daniels. Spielberg does wonderful work in The Fabelmans (said differently: “Spielberg makes a movie”), lending grace and beauty to his archetypal coming-of-age story. But Daniels have created a film of extraordinary ingenuity and flair, one that’s full of rambunctious energy but which is also impeccably controlled. They deserve this.
MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
James Cameron—Avatar: The Way of Water
Damien Chazelle—Babylon
Robert Eggers—The Northman
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert—Everything Everywhere All at Once
Park Chan-wook—Decision to Leave
This is very much a “dudes rock” ballot, but sometimes that’s just how things break. For the second time in a row (albeit 13 years later), Cameron shows us things we’ve never seen before. Chazelle’s sentimentality shouldn’t obscure his formal audacity. Eggers turns brutality into beauty. Park operates on a different level altogether, turning virtually every scene into a feast of visual imagination.
MovieManifesto’s winner: Park Chan-wook—Decision to Leave.
Honorable mention: John Patton Ford—Emily the Criminal; Romain Gavras—Athena; Chloe Okuno—Watcher; Dan Trachtenberg—Prey; Ti West—X.
BEST PICTURE
NOMINEES
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking
WILL WIN
This isn’t a done deal. Sure, Everything Everywhere All at Once is the heavy favorite, especially after recent wins at both the Producers’ Guild and the Screen Actors’ Guild. But it didn’t compete against All Quiet on the Western Front in either of those races, and there’s a vague rumble of intrigue surrounding the German war film. It racked up nine total nominations, and it’s likely to win in several below-the-line fields, including several categories where it’s competing against Everything Everywhere. Is it so implausible that Academy voters will keep clicking it when they turn their eyes to the big prize?
Well, kind of, yeah. Everything Everywhere may not be an unstoppable force along the lines of recent juggernauts like Birdman, The King’s Speech, or La La Land Slumdog Millionaire. If you gave me long enough odds on All Quiet on the Western Front, I might take the bet. But if the question is simply, “Which movie is most likely to win Best Picture?” then it’s impossible to answer anything other than Everything Everywhere All at Once. Let the (renewed) backlash begin!
SHOULD WIN
There are multiple ways of thinking about this. If I were rigidly applying my own top 10 list, then I’d vote for The Fabelmans, which I placed literally one spot ahead of Everything Everywhere. But setting aside the inherent fluidity of quantitative lists, I tend to think that Best Picture is less about quality than legacy—and often in a negative sense. Broadly speaking, I don’t care how other people feel about the movies I love; taste is subjective, and opposing viewpoints (while important to the overall functioning of criticism) rarely alter my own opinion. That said, I tend to prefer that my favorite films not suffer the inevitable backlash which accompanies virtually every Best Picture award. So while I’d be pleased if either The Fabelmans or Everything Everywhere won, I’d also need to stomach the prospect of seeing them associated with vague and obnoxious accusations of middlebrow complacency over the next decade.
But there’s another nominee, which also appeared on my top 10, that is essentially impervious to sudden backlash by virtue of it having experienced backlash before it was even made. I’m talking, of course, about Avatar: The Way of Water, that pie-in-the-sky sequel which had no cultural impact, which nobody actually liked, which nobody can quote a single line of dialogue from, and which was instantly forgotten by the millions of people who paid to watch it multiple times. A Best Picture win couldn’t possibly harm its reputation, because people have been feverishly shredding its reputation for ages. Also, it fucking rules. Give me Avatar or give me death. (Or just give me one of the other nominated movies; most of them are pretty good.)
MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Did I mention my top 10 list? That would be a good place to locate my own theoretical ballot of the best pictures of the year (not to mention learn where you can stream them).
Enjoy the show!
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.