Oscars 2024: Prospects for Surprises (and Disappointments)
My Oscar Book:
Best Actress
No offense to Annette Bening in “Nyad,” Carey Mulligan in “Maestro” and Sandra Huller in “Anatomy of a Fall,” but for months this seemed to be a two-person race between Lily Gladstone’s quiet performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Emma Stone’s wild one in “Poor Things.”
Bening, a well-liked veteran who’s been nominated for five Oscars over 34 years, has never won, and not likely to win this year.
This seems to be a two-man race for much of the season, with Cillian Murphy taking the early frontrunner status for “Oppenheimer” and Paul Giamatti stepping up later in the season with wins for “The Holdovers.”
The key moment may come on Feb. 24 at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, when the two performances will go head-to-head in a contest decided by the actors.
With a success rate of about 80% in predicting the Oscar winner in this category, SAG will give the appearance that a tight race is leaning one director or the other.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Only the Academy’s Writers Branch seems to think that “Barbie” is an adapted screenplay rather than an original one. So this will be a showdown between the formidable lineup of “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “American Fiction,” “Poor Things” and “The Zone of Interest” five Best Picture nominees in the only category that can give an Oscar to Greta Gerwig. (She wasn’t nominated for Best Director.)
Best Original Screenplay
This year provides opportunity to give an Oscar to “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Past Lives,” as well as another chance to honor “The Holdovers.”
All of those films are well-liked, but Anatomy of a Fall seems to be the favorite.
Best Documentary Feature
If Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony had been nominated in this category, it’d be the clear favorite. But the branch didn’t nominate that film, leading to a slate of international films:
“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” from Uganda;
“The Eternal Memory” from Chile, “Four Daughters” from Tunisia;
“To Kill a Tiger” from India and
“20 Days in Mariupol” from Ukraine;
The timely and harrowing 20 Days in Mariupol should (and would) win.
But the other four are also moving and powerful. Without any high-profile nominees to be first choice, Academy members interested in docus will watch all of the contenders before voting.
