93rd Academy Awards Preview

We are officially back, and we are back with a bang: the Oscar nominees dropped today! We want to know your opinions on everything, so please either comment on this post or send us a message on Instagram to tell us what you think!

Hey everyone, we’re back with a brand new website thanks to our friend (and loyal Squarespace employee) Chris Chan! As you might have heard, the nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards dropped today, and we are putting our 2010s bracket on a brief hold while we do what inspired this project: watch the Best Picture nominees. This is a rare year where we actually haven’t seen the vast majority of the nominated films yet, so we are sort of going in on a blank slate. Our minimum goal is to watch all of the Best Picture nominees as well as all the movies nominated for the acting awards, Best Director, Best Original and Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Then, we have a whole list of non-nominees that we’re going to work our way through at some point, including all types of short films. We would love some more recommendations!

Even though the only major nominees we have seen are Judas and the Black Messiah and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, you know we have thoughts on the nominations. Here they are, as well as some brief thoughts on them:

Best Picture
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Tom: Cool! This is the first year in a while I’m not disappointed by any of the nominees. While it’s interesting that favorites One Night in Miami… and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom didn’t get nominations even though there was still space left over, I think this looks like a solid group of movies, especially in a year hampered by the pandemic. It’s a pretty varied group. Overall, I’d say I’m most excited for Minari and Sound of Metal. I’m not too excited for Mank, but I’m a big David Fincher guy so hopefully he makes it interesting. Most importantly to me, only three movies (Judas, Mank, and Chicago 7, and we already watched Judas) are longer than two hours, which makes me even more pumped for the rest of them. Ready to start up!
Erin: I literally told Tom today that I want to go into this movie watching season knowing as little as possible about each film. That means that this little article is going to be WILD SPECULATION corner from me. I have only seen Judas and the Black Messiah so far, and I liked it, but I liked it less than I thought I would. For the other movies, I have the prediction that I will looooove Minari, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, and The Sound of Metal. My prediction is that I will think Mank is boring even though I like the director and the story behind the movie. I think The Father will be in solid “meh” territory, save for my obligatory Olivia Colman fawning. My last guess is that The Trial of the Chicago 7 would make for a great cable TV movie if it wasn’t a Netflix production. But who knows?!

Best Director
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)
David Fincher (Mank)
Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round)
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)

Tom: Two women got the nod, bringing the all-time Academy Award total for women nominees for this award to…seven. Total. In ninety-three years. And Zhao is the very first woman of color to be nominated for this award. All it took was a pandemic (and I assume a lot of pressure from people with eyes and brains) for the Academy to actually recognize women directors. This arguably could have included a third, Regina King (One Night in Miami…), though it looks like they opted for Vinterberg instead. This category looks like a layup for Zhao, but since only one woman has ever won Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010), it’s definitely not out of the question that the Academy gets really boring and gives it to Fincher.
Erin: I am rooting for the women. Like, a tie that makes people go…wow maybe we should think about giving more women the chance to direct movies. And maybe we should actually pay attention to women directors like Lynne Ramsey and Ava Duvernay and Lulu Wang and Debra Granik and and and.

Best Actor
Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal)
Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
Anthony Hopkins (The Father)
Gary Oldman (Mank)
Steven Yeun (Minari)

Tom: I love all five of these guys, so it really doesn’t matter to me who wins it, but I think it’s pretty much open-and-shut for Boseman. And I’m OK with that because he was an incredible actor who wasn’t appreciated as much as he should have been while he was around.
Erin: I think I read that Riz Ahmed is the first Muslim actor to be nominated for the Best Actor statue and Steven Yeun is the first Asian American nominee for the same award and that just makes me want to >:0. That being said, of course I am rooting for Chadwick Boseman without seeing literally any of these movies yet. I think he’s a lock.

Best Actress
Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday)
Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman)
Frances McDormand (Nomadland)
Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman)

Tom: I don’t have math or records to back this up, but I feel like there are always a few Best Actress nominees from movies that aren’t nominated for Best Picture. At least moreso than Best Actor nominees. I’m not entirely sure why that is. But it happens here, with only McDormand and Mulligan garnering nominations from Best Picture-nominated movies. It’s OK with me though - it just gives us a few more movies to watch! I think we expect McDormand to win this category, but we’ll see.
Erin: I like that there’s no real front runner this year. Wasn’t it so boring last year when everyone knew who would win?

Best Supporting Actor
Sacha Baron Cohen (The Trial of the Chicago 7)
Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night in Miami…)
Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)
Lakeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah)

Tom: A lot of the Twitter buzz has been confusion about the Stanfield and Kaluuya nominations and how they could both be supporting and not lead. I personally think it’s clear that Stanfield was the lead in the movie and Kaluuya was supporting - and that’s how the producers submitted their request to the Academy, along with Jesse Plemons for supporting - but for some reason the Academy chose to put Stanfield in this category. Hopefully it was simply to give Stanfield some recognition instead of nominating him for Lead Actor and possibly kicking out Yeun. Either way, I don’t think there’s a danger of splitting the vote here - Kaluuya was a force of nature. Unless SBC, Odom, or Raci are transcendent, I think Kaluuya has it on lock.
Erin: I always love the supporting categories and I agree with Tom that it will be hard to beat Daniel Kaluuya for this one. I just love him anyway. Think about his range! Judas and the Black Messiah, Get Out, Widows, Sicario…what an actor.

Best Supporting Actress
Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)
Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy)
Olivia Colman (The Father)
Amanda Seyfried (Mank)
Youn Yuh-jung (Minari)

Tom: This is the one category out of the acting ones that I think there’s a fair bit of debate about. We have a mix of some brand new faces (the 24-year-old Bakalova, the 73-year-old Youn), the old guard (Close, Colman), and Seyfried, who has been great in quite a few things and finally gets her due. Close seems to get nominated based on her name alone, even in movies that aren’t otherwise top notch films of the year (see The Wife, Albert Nobbs), and it goes to show that even when the material isn’t up to par, she continues to be one of the best. It would be interesting to see any of these women win, especially with the prospect of another insane Olivia Colman acceptance speech, but I think I’m pulling for some new blood with Bakalova, Seyfried, or Youn.
Erin: I think it is just so cool that Maria Bakalova is nominated!! I actually really liked Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. There is a lot of heart there, and Bakalova is the source of much of it. That being said, why is the Academy making me watch Hillbilly Elegy?

Best Original Screenplay
Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas, Kenny Lucas (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)
Darius Marder, Abraham Marder, Derek Cianfrance (Sound of Metal)
Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

Tom: I am sorry. I am excited to watch all of these - from Chung’s semi-autobiographical film about the American Dream to Fennell’s black comedic prowess to Sorkin’s Sorkin-ness to the Riz Ahmed star-making vehicle - but I can’t not root for the Lucas Brothers, who graduated from TCNJ in 2007, to win for Judas and the Black Messiah. I’m selfish like that. I just have to pull for them.
Erin: Team Lucas Brothers duh!

Best Adapted Screenplay
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, Lee Kern (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)
Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller (The Father)
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami…)
Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger)

Tom: I think Zhao probably has the best shot here as well, but it’s cool to see different nominees here like Borat, One Night in Miami…, and The White Tiger, especially since Kemp Powers is also the Miami playwright. It must be pretty cool to adapt your own material into various media. Borat was genius, but as that’s the only one I’ve seen here, I’ll hold off. They all look really good.
Erin: This one is very “to be continued…” but let’s face it—all of these categories are for me hahaha. I literally have only seen Borat so far, so imagine if I was ADAMANT that BORAT needed to win? My total blind guess is that Nomadland is getting the statue.

Best Cinematography
Sean Bobbitt (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Erik Messerschmidt (Mank)
Joshua James Richards (Nomadland)
Dariusz Wolski (News of the World)
Phedon Papamichael (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

Tom: The same as above. I’ll wait to see all of these, but Erin and I both noted a bunch of times throughout Judas how great the shots were in a bunch of different scenes, so if that were to win it would be deserving. Outside of the movies nominated for multiple awards, we also have News of the World, which is a western drama starring Tom Hanks. I’m intrigued by this category because the only nominee who has ever gotten the nod before is Papamichael for his work on 2013’s Nebraska - a great movie if you haven’t seen it. Besides him, they’re all newcomers to the category. Let’s see how it shakes out!
Erin: No Roger Deakins this year?