It was Birdman versus Boyhood for best picture last year, and 12 Years a Slave versus Gravity the year before. The list goes on. With few exceptions, film industry observers can usually narrow down the front-runners to one or two films.
With the Golden Globes and SAG Awards nominations announced this week, however, the 2015 Oscar race is shaping up as anything but certain. There are a lot of strong movies and performances, and critics groups and awards voters have yet to reach any consensus on the best of the best.
“There’s not a film this year that people really have a crush on,” says awards consultant Tony Angellotti, an academy member. “Every group seems to like a lot of different things, but you’re not seeing that emphatic stamp of approval.
“There’s no clear front-runner, and that makes it interesting,” adds director Pete Docter, whose Inside Out earned a Globes nomination for animated feature. “Who doesn’t love a little suspense at the Oscars?” Nearly every contender could look at the last two days and foresee scenarios of glory. Or doom.
Spotlight earned nominations for SAG ensemble and Globe drama, but, individually, its male actors have gone unsung.
The Martian and Joy found love from the Globes’ Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. voters, but both wiggled their way into the group’s comedy categories, where the competition is softer.
Straight Outta Compton scored with SAG but not the Globes. Mad Max: Fury Road continued its critics group momentum — the film and its well-liked director, George Miller, won prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the National Board of Review — with the Globes.
But Fury Road doesn’t fit the usual definition of most best picture films, which tend to have social relevance, a historical hook or a biopic format (plus extra points if it’s about Hollywood). “It’s essentially one really long car chase that feels like it never ends,” one academy member gripes.
Meanwhile, Steve Jobs earned four Globes nods — tied for second-most — but the film flopped at the box office, and Oscar voters rarely reward failure. Jobs’ nominations also did not include that of best picture. Perhaps it should have petitioned the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. to be considered a comedy — it has as many laughs as Joy and The Martian.
The period romance Brooklyn couldn’t find any takers except for its lead actress, Saorise Ronan, whose name isn’t quite the tongue-twister Dennis Quaid made it out to be when announcing her Globes nomination. (It’s pronounced Sir-shuh, Mr. Quaid.)
Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies is also off to a slow start, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see academy members, who packed its screening in Beverly Hills, give it momentum. Spielberg and the film’s star, Tom Hanks, remain two of Hollywood’s most popular figures.
Netflix’s child soldier war drama Beasts of No Nation pulled off a surprise SAG ensemble nomination with just three cast members cited (the lowest number) since Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. Netflix made certain SAG voters got to see the film, giving them a free, three-month subscription to the streaming service.
All these contradictory signals have created an air of uncertainty around this year’s awards races. Nobody in the industry — or watching it — knows what to think.
“It’s all over the place,” says Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which saw four of its films — Son of Saul, Grandma, The Lady in the Van and Infinitely Polar Bear — each win a single Globes nomination.
“Looking at the race, I had predicted five movies I thought were surefire best picture nominees, and only one of them won a SAG ensemble nomination,” Barker says. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be a tough year to predict.’”
Courtesy: InStep Today (The News)
