Oscars 2024: The Odds and Ends

Welcome to Oscars week! Over the next five days, we’ll be walking you through all 20 feature categories at the 97th Academy Awards, providing predictions, preferences, and assorted gripes. Now before you grumble that the Oscars don’t matter, let me stop you and say: I agree. The notion that bestowing a trophy on a particular work of art somehow imbues it with greater value is, of course, nonsense.

But while the Oscars can’t change how you feel about a particular movie, they do serve a valuable historical function, providing a snapshot in time of the industry’s collective consciousness. Some decisions hold up well, others age horribly, but the point is that they’re there—etchings in stone to be commended or condemned as the decades pass.

And with that advisement in mind, let’s dig into the categories. Today we’re looking at seven miscellaneous fields that aren’t anybody’s idea of sexy, but which might make the difference in your office pool.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

NOMINEES
Flow
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot

WILL WIN
This would appear to be a two-film race between Flow and The Wild Robot. The former won at the Golden Globes, while the latter prevailed at the Producers Guild, though I don’t think either precursor victory means all that much. Flow is probably the more acclaimed overall, given its ambitious concept (it’s dialogue-free) and its painterly style. But The Wild Robot is fairly beloved in its own right, and it’s an undeniable crowd-pleaser. Plus, it has a far bigger budget that presumably extends to its campaign. That should give it the edge.

SHOULD WIN
Am I so basic that I must pick the Pixar? Aside from Memoir of a Snail, I like the other contenders quite well; Flow gathers an epic sweep, The Wild Robot is tender and gorgeous, and the new Wallace & Gromit flick is lovingly crafted and also hilarious. But Inside Out 2 is the total package: vibrant visuals, playful humor and provocative themes. I’d cross a sar-chasm to see it again.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

NOMINEES
Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane

WILL WIN
I generally considerable myself more knowledgeable about movies than most Oscar viewers, but this is one area where I’m flying blind. From my quick scan of the landscape, the likeliest winner is either No Other Land (about the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank) or Porcelain War (about the war in Ukraine). Both topical, certainly, but No Other Land seems be generating more ineffable buzz; based on my deeply scientific method of vibes-based analysis, I’ll go with that.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

NOMINEES
Emilia Pérez (France)
Flow (Latvia)
The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)
I’m Still Here (Brazil)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)

WILL WIN
So what exactly is going on with Emilia Pérez? If you’re ignorant of the controversy that has swallowed up this year’s top nomination-grabber (13 overall), count yourself lucky. The movie no longer seems to have any chance at the big prizes (save one, to be discussed later this week), but what about a category like this? Typically, international features that scoop up this many Oscar nods are shoo-ins here (e.g., The Zone of Interest, Roma), but Emilia Pérez isn’t a typical contender. It also isn’t the lone Best Picture nominee in this bunch; also here is I’m Still Here, which also sports a Best Actress nod and doesn’t have any associated baggage.

Is that enough to give it the edge? I’m inclined to think not. Sure, some voters might not longer favor Emilia Pérez in light of Stuff That’s Happened, but there’s also the countervailing possibility that a cadre of the Academy will dig in and refuse to bullied by wokeness or whatever. All told, I just think the movie has too many fans to be foiled by backlash in this particular category.

SHOULD WIN
Confession: I think Emilia Pérez is fine. I don’t think it’s good—its writing is sloppy, and its third act is a mess—but it’s a hugely ambitious musical with interesting ideas, and that counts for something. It’s certainly more enjoyable than The Girl with the Needle, a well-made, punishingly bleak piece of period miserabilism. As for the others, I admire both Flow and I’m Still Here, but neither of them rattled me like The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an urgently modern document that’s also a screw-tightening suspense thriller.

MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Evil Does Not Exist (Japan)
Green Border (Poland)
The Promised Land (Denmark)
Red Rooms (Canada)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)

Evil Does Not Exist lacks the grandeur of Drive My Car, but it remains a searching and haunting work. Green Border is a detailed, powerful exploration of a contemporary crisis. The Promised Land is a beautifully old-school epic with a sneakily modern sensitivity. Red Rooms will make you think twice about using the internet ever again.

MovieManifesto’s winner: Red Rooms.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

NOMINEES
A Different Man
Emilia Pérez
Nosferatu
The Substance
Wicked

WILL WIN
The Substance.

SHOULD WIN
The Substance.

SHOULD BE HERE
Behold Kathryn Newton’s hair in Lisa Frankenstein.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

NOMINEES
“El Mal”—Clément Ducol, Camille, and Jacques Audiard (from Emilia Pérez)
“The Journey”—Diane Warren (from The Six Triple Eight)
“Like a Bird”—Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada (from Sing Sing)
“Mi Camino”—Camille and Clément Ducol (from Emilia Pérez)
“Never Too Late”—Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt, and Bernie Taupin (from Elton John: Never Too Late)

WILL WIN
This is probably going to be “El Mal”; it’s the most memorable song from Emilia Pérez (aside from maybe the one about the vaginoplasty), and it features Zoe Saldaña, so voters can select it without feeling bad about ratifying Karla Sofía Gascón’s bad behavior. That said, it would be extremely funny if, as a combination of vote-splitting and general backlash, Emilia Pérez somehow paved the way for Diane Warren to win her first ever Oscar after something like 87 prior nominations.

BEST SOUND

NOMINEES
A Complete Unknown
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot

WILL WIN
Two dueling credos here: Pick the musical versus pick the biggest movie. Of course, three of the five nominees—A Complete Unknown, Emilia Pérez, and Wicked—are essentially musicals, so that’s not much help. Wicked could take it here, but I’ll go with the brawny blockbuster in Dune: Part Two.

SHOULD BE HERE
Hundreds of Beavers has a fraction of Dune’s budget, but it’s a marvelously inventive movie whose clever and recursive sound design is crucial to its brilliance.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

NOMINEES
Alien: Romulus
Better Man
Dune: Part Two
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Wicked

WILL WIN
No real hesitation here. Dune 2 should snag this one.

SHOULD WIN
I’m fine with Dune 2 winning; it’s an impressively helmed picture on a monumental scale. But I tend to prefer to honor works whose effects are more subtle and smoothly integrated. That would seem to nudge me toward Better Man, with its gonzo CGI monkey conceit. But the Planet of the Apes franchise has insanely never won an Academy Award, and the creature effects work in Kingdom is both majestic and elegant.

Back tomorrow with five more super-sexy categories.