Oscars 2019 Category Breakdown: Best Picture

Here’s how this works: every day leading up to the Oscars, I break down each of the 24 categories. The goal is to both familiarize everyone with the category itself (how it works, what its history is and how you go about figuring out what’s gonna win) while also making it easier to reference when I write my giant article with picks and everything. A lot of the leg work is already here. But really, the goal is to see if there’s anything to look for leading into Oscar night that could be a shortcut to me picking the category.

What we do is — I give you all the winners of the category throughout history, go over all the recent trends if there are any, discuss the precursors and whether or not they matter, and then we talk about this year’s category and how we got to it, and then just look at where we are and rank the nominees in terms of their likelihood of winning (at the current moment in time. Of course, things can and will change going into the ceremony). It’s all pretty simple. I’ve done this every year. Everyone should know the drill.

We end, as we always do, with Best Picture.

We always have the most information about this one over all the others, so it’s the least surprising, typically. Very rarely do we get anything other than a 50/50 tossup. The only year I can think where it was remotely in doubt and had a couple of contenders was 2015. Otherwise, you kinda know where it’s going.

The main precursor is the PGA, whose winner has gone on to win the Oscar all but nine times:

• 1992, The Crying Game wins the PGA, Unforgiven wins the Oscar.
• 1995, Apollo 13 wins the PGA, Braveheart wins the Oscar.
• 1998, Saving Private Ryan wins the PGA, Shakespeare in Love wins the Oscar.
• 2001, Moulin Rouge! wins the PGA, A Beautiful Mind wins the Oscar.
• 2004, The Aviator wins the PGA, Million Dollar Baby wins the Oscar.
• 2005, Brokeback Mountain wins the PGA, Crash wins the Oscar.
• 2006, Little Miss Sunshine wins the PGA, The Departed wins the Oscar.
• 2015, The Big Short wins the PGA, Spotlight wins the Oscar.
• 2016, La La Land wins the PGA, Moonlight wins the Oscar.

(Technically they were both right and wrong in 2013, as they had a tie. But one of the tied films won, so we’ll just consider that as being right and just a quirk.)

Then there’s BAFTA, who tends to do whatever they want, and generally won’t give you a winner when the PGA falters. But they will help confirm a likely choice. They’re 12/30 over that same PGA stretch, which is only 40%. The only winner they picked up that the PGA did not have was Shakespeare in Love in 1998. Otherwise they were just as wrong.

BFFCA, meanwhile, is 14/24 all-time, and also generally are about as wrong as all the others. The only three they picked up that nobody had were A Beautiful Mind in 2001, The Departed in 2006 and Spotlight in 2015.

Next is SAG Ensemble. I generally don’t look at them as a helpful precursor, but I did look to see how much of the PGA slack they picked up. Which is the same as BFCA — three times. Shakespeare in Love, Crash and Spotlight.

And finally, the Globes. They have two Best Picture categories, which generally allows them to hedge their bets and have two top contender and two chances to get it right. They’re 18/30 in the PGA era. Which is the most solid of anyone else, though still only 60%. They picked up A Beautiful Mind in 2001 and Moonlight in 2016 (though it should be noted that La La Land also won at the Globes, which is kind of a hedged bet by them).

So really all it means is, you have a lot of information, and when the PGA cross-lists with other things, you’ve probably got a winner. Otherwise, the others are not always gonna get it right. But also, use common sense. If something has a lot of wins, it’s probably a good alternate if you’re doubting the PGA.

Best Picture

1917

Ford v Ferrari

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Joker

Little Women

Marriage Story

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Parasite

This category was exactly the category I was expecting and probably the best possible category we could have gotten. I’ve said from the start that I wasn’t crazy about Joker or Marriage Story as nominees, but I knew they were gonna be there and so I made peace with the fact that they were gonna be. The other seven nominees are all amazing and all in my top ten favorite films of the year, so I’m thrilled they all got on. I’d have been happier seeing Knives Out as a tenth nominee, though none of the precursors really had anything other than these nine films. Really the only question was whether or not there were gonna be nine nominees or just eight. And so when we got all nine, I was very pleased with the overall list.

Precursors:

• PGA: 1917
• BAFTA: 1917
• BFCA: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• SAG Ensemble: Parasite
• Globe (Drama): 1917
• Globe (Comedy): Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Rankings:

9. Ford v Ferrari — Okay, so if we’re trying to reason how all the ballots are gonna look, it’s probably not the least likely to win, but… it’s got 4 nominations and everything else has 6, 10 or 11. It didn’t get a Director nomination, the rest of its nominations are all technical (Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing) and it’s got no precursors. Even if you think it’ll get more votes than something, it’s not a contender to win. So just leave it at the bottom and move on.

8. Marriage Story — No Directing nomination, no Editing nomination, no precursor win. Oh, and it’s Netflix. And remember last year when people made the big deal about not counting a Netflix movie as a ‘real’ movie? Do you really expect them to backtrack on that in just a year? And if they’re gonna do that, it’s not gonna be for this one. In the end, I suspect Ford v Ferrari will get more overall #3 and #4 votes than this will, though in the end I suspect it helps neither of them get very far in the voting process.

7. Little Women — I’d love to see it higher, but I can’t tell where the votes are coming from. It showed up late, and people love it, but not enough people, and not the right people. Six nominations, but no Director or Editing. And no precursor wins. It’s kind of an empty Best Picture nominee, even though it looks respectable. I just can’t see this being higher than #5 on most ballots. You think the old white dudes are gonna have this in the spot to catch stray votes? Or are they gonna have Ford v Ferrari and The Irishman? You know? The old people know this movie. They’ve seen it three other times before. That’s not a good sign for Best Picture votes, no matter how amazing it is.

6. Joker — It’s got everything, and it’s got the most nominations… but where are the wins coming from? It’s got probably two awards in the bag, but other than that, where are they rushing to vote for this? MAYBE in Makeup? Maybe? If they can overlook Bombshell and Judy? No one’s rushing to give this statues, and the lack of precursor wins basically tells you this is destined to go home with a modest number of wins but not seriously contend for either Picture or Director. I can’t make a case for this being #2 or #3 on enough ballots. Even if people loved this movie, it’s not going that high on enough ballots. Not with those top three there and these other two hanging around. I can’t see it any higher than sixth or fifth.

5. Jojo Rabbit — Yes, probably Joker should be higher. But they both got Editing nominations, and the Director nomination is fungible to me. Doesn’t really matter. To me, the thing that matters when looking at this… especially when you’re parsing stuff that has no precursors… is what movies have fervent support? Stuff like Joker, Marriage Story… people like it, people respect it, but it’s not gonna get a shit ton of rabid support. This feels like it could. Which is why I bumped it up to fifth. People really adore this movie. Of course, some really don’t. So that’ll hurt it and clearly won’t help it in the end to seriously contend. But I think this will get some serious votes. But honestly, wanna swap it with Joker? Be my guest. Not gonna matter in the end unless something utterly shocking comes down the pike.

4. The Irishman — Doesn’t this feel like such a distant fourth? I mean, Martin Scorsese movie with 10 nominations, you’d think it’s right there in contention. And it felt like it was gonna be before this all got started. But then it just won nothing. Zero precursors and basically the film is just kind of there. That’s kind of what Wolf of Wall Street did too. This one at least could win Visual Effects and possibly Editing to salvage a potential 0-10 situation, like what happened with Gangs of New York. But there’s no urgency to vote for this whatsoever. It’ll get the requisite Marty ‘respect’ votes, but I can’t see it happening. No precursors, no real smoke for this. Very distant fourth and just highlights how small a race this one turned out to be.

3. Parasite — On pure precursors, this is the third choice. All it has is SAG Ensemble. HOWEVER… when I’m looking at the potential for how ballots are gonna go, I’m not ruling out a possible surprise win by this. I don’t think it’s likely, but I think it’s possible. And in the end, I may have this as a second choice. We’ll see. I’ve got a few days to finalize those thoughts. But this isn’t a distant third by any means, and at least there is a precursor there to be had. Though it’s worth noting that only once did something win Best Picture with SAG Ensemble as its only precursor. And that was Crash. So just keep that in mind before you pick anything. But I do think there’s a case to be made for this.

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — On paper, this is the second choice. It’s got BFCA and it’s got the Globe for Comedy. Which is the second most precursors. And A Beautiful Mind did win the Oscar with only those two same precursors. Though the only other time something had those two precursors opposite something that won the PGA and BAFTA was The Social Network. King’s Speech also had SAG, though, which 1917 doesn’t have. Still, it’s one of those… could happen, but no one thinks it probably will, situations. But it could! It’s kind of a three-horse race with one clear favorite. So you kind of have to play the odds and then hope for the best. Most people don’t do the Scorecard ballot, so for me, I’m set at the top, I just need to guess what’ll happen if #1 goes down. For most people, you’ve got a clear #1 choice and this should be an easy guess unless you really think an upset is coming through. In which case, that’s a rationalization that only you can do. Either way, this can only be second choice at best based on what we’ve seen.

1. 1917 — PGA win. BAFTA win. Globes win for Drama. Mendes won the DGA. It’s sure set up for this to win Picture and Director. Picture, Director, Cinematography and the two Sound categories. That’s 5, that’s a respectable number and that feels like a Best Picture winner when you go back and look at it. Can something beat it? Sure. But you’ve got three days to prepare your arguments for that. Until then any time something with the PGA and BAFTA, it’s the automatic favorite to win Best Picture.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://bplusmovieblog.com