Sure, It's only October, but the Oscar race is in full swing

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This was published 5 years ago

Sure, It's only October, but the Oscar race is in full swing

By Kyle Buchanan
Updated

The 2018 award-season aspirants will include superheroes, space travellers and Lady Gaga, but will their movies prove popular enough to assuage the fears of an academy that nearly introduced an Oscar just for blockbusters? With three significant film festivals now on the books, and with a few impressive holdovers from earlier in the year still making waves, it's time to take a look at the clarified landscape of Academy Award contenders. Here are some of the movies and performances that we expect will be in the running for the six biggest Oscars.

BEST PICTURE AND BEST DIRECTOR

Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) in

Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) in

This year's best picture line-up could be the most hit-laden group the academy has recognised in many years and will probably include one of the biggest movies of all time. That would be Black Panther, the superhero movie from Ryan Coogler that shattered box-office records when it opened in February. Disney is expected to mount a big awards campaign for the film, which could bring Marvel Studios its first Oscar and will factor into a number of craft categories such as costume design and original song. But the blockbuster with a mostly black cast has enough real-world resonance to break into the races for best picture and best director.

A clutch of new films may also become big hits on the way to a best picture nomination. The sky is the limit for the well-reviewed musical romance A Star Is Born, which Bradley Cooper directed and stars in opposite Lady Gaga. Green Book came into the Toronto Film Festival amid low expectations and emerged a ferocious crowd-pleaser: A racial-issues dramedy, the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali as mismatched personalities on a road trip through the Deep South. And though the man-on-the-moon biopic First Man was hit by an unexpected controversy over whether the US flag appeared prominently enough, critics and audiences alike should take to the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling).

Director Damien Chazelle on the set of

Director Damien Chazelle on the set of

Both Cooper and First Man helmer Damien Chazelle have a strong shot at making the best director line-up, though they will be challenged by another group of recent Oscar victors. In 2017, the Barry Jenkins-directed Moonlight won best picture over Chazelle's La La Land, and Jenkins is back with If Beale Street Could Talk, an intimate story of love tested by racial injustice. In 2014, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave won best picture while Alfonso Cuaron took home best director for Gravity; both men are in the mix again: McQueen with Widows, a galvanising, female-led crime thriller, and Cuaron with Roma, a black-and-white Netflix drama drawn from the director's Mexico City childhood.

First-timers in the director category could include Spike Lee, whose fact-based film BlacKkKlansman took a top prize at Cannes and has done well at the box office, and Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos brings his askew sensibility to the British royal court with his comedy The Favourite. Marielle Heller's light larceny tale Can You Ever Forgive Me? is expected to earn acting nominations for Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, which may raise Heller's chances of cracking what is traditionally a male-heavy category; other women who could enter the mix include Mimi Leder (On the Basis of Sex) and Josie Rourke (Mary Queen of Scots).

And then there are the contenders yet to screen, including Dick Cheney comedy Vice from The Big Short director Adam McKay and possibly even The Mule, an undated drama from Clint Eastwood.

BEST ACTOR AND BEST ACTRESS

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If A Star Is Born proves to be an award-season hit, Bradley Cooper may set a record for the most Oscar nominations a single person has earned for one film: In addition to directing and starring, he also produced it, co-wrote it and had a hand in the songs. Of those potential nominations, the likeliest win will be for best actor. As a veteran crooner whose drinking increasingly gets the best of him, Cooper is the present frontrunner in a category that is not yet filled with sure things.

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in a scene

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in a scene Credit: AP

Still, expect consideration for Gosling in First Man, as well as outside bids for Robert Redford's cinematic swan song in The Old Man and the Gun and Ethan Hawke's acclaimed turn in the indie First Reformed. More muted performances from Hugh Jackman in the political drama The Front Runner and Lucas Hedges as a teenager sent to gay conversion therapy in Boy Erased may struggle to find traction against the flashy transformations offered by Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Vice and Rami Malek as Queen singer Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

A similar uncertainty makes the best actress field hard to predict, since The Favourite fields three women, each of whom could position herself as a lead: Olivia Colman shines as a diminished Queen Anne manipulated by two crafty women in her court, played with comic precision by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz. Two more royal schemers are still to come in Mary Queen of Scots, which stars Saoirse Ronan in the title role and Margot Robbie as her rival, Queen Elizabeth I; both Ronan and Robbie were nominated for best actress last year and could return to that category once again.

Toni Collette in

Toni Collette in Credit: AP

Outside of those royal period pieces, the best actress field remains robust: Of the four acting races, this one has the largest group of legitimate contenders. Some are previous Oscar winners, such as Viola Davis as a grieving wife plotting a big heist in Widows, Nicole Kidman tearing through Destroyer as a detective in free fall and Julia Roberts in Ben Is Back as a mother who must cope with a holiday interruption from her son, who is in recovery from drug addiction. But then there is Lady Gaga, who more than holds her own opposite Cooper in A Star Is Born; McCarthy as a lonely forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Glenn Close playing a secretive spouse in The Wife and newcomer Yalitza Aparicio as the maid holding a household together in Roma. Some contenders hail from period pieces, such as Keira Knightley in Colette, Carey Mulligan in Wildlife, KiKi Layne in If Beale Street Could Talk, and Felicity Jones as a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex, but still others offer more modern-day thrills, such as Toni Collette in the horror hit Hereditary. If you thought the cuts in that movie were unkind, just wait until a dozen worthy women are left out of the best-actress final five.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR AND ACTRESS

Three of last year's Oscar nominees could figure into this year's supporting actor race, making it a familiar bunch: Timothee Chalamet plays a young man wrestling with his drug habits in Beautiful Boy; Daniel Kaluuya is terrifying as a murderous henchman in Widows. Sam Rockwell, who won the supporting-actor Oscar last year for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, may return to the field for his work as George W. Bush in Vice, though until the film screens, we will not have a clear idea who is the standout. (Perhaps Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld?)

If A Star Is Born and Black Panther end up in best picture contention, each could push a never-nominated actor into this category: Sam Elliott brings heart to the former as Cooper's older brother, while Michael B. Jordan is so ferocious in Black Panther that his character Killmonger has become one of the year's most talked about villains. The supporting-actor race will also probably make room for Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Outside bids could include Boy Erased with Russell Crowe as a religious man in turmoil over his gay son, and Adam Driver and Topher Grace filling out the cast of BlacKkKlansman.

Nicole Kidman with Russell Crowe in

Nicole Kidman with Russell Crowe in

Should Olivia Colman drop down to the supporting-actress category for The Favourite, she would probably coast through Oscar season, picking up trophies right and left, but other contenders in that category include Claire Foy as Neil Armstrong's wife in First Man, Amy Adams as vice-presidential spouse Lynne Cheney in Vice and two fiercely loving mothers, Nicole Kidman in Boy Erased and Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk. Should Widows hit big, Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki could break through, but the most interesting contender is Tilda Swinton, who plays three separate roles in Suspiria, one of whom is an elderly male psychiatrist. Perhaps she could give the men gunning for best supporting actor a run for their money.

The 91st Academy Awards are on February 24, 2019.

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