Ahead of Sunday’s 87th Academy Awards, Associated Press film writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr share their predictions for a ceremony that could be a nail biter.
BEST PICTURE
COYLE:
Will Win: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman comes home to roost despite the landmark accomplishment of Boyhood. As a celebration of showbiz, it’s the Shakespeare in Love of its time.
Should Win: Boyhood marries film and time in a uniquely powerful way, but it’s also worth making a case for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, the most relentlessly fun and inventive film of the year.
Should Have Been a Contender: Interstellar. Christopher Nolan’s epic is unloved, but it’s a glorious sci-fi soup that would have added some big-budget dazzle to the Oscars. I mean, it’s got a fourth dimension.
BAHR:
Will Win: While Birdman’s formal ambitions and extraordinary ensemble cast are impressive, the earnest 12-year experiment that spawned a compelling film in Boyhood is just too good a narrative to ignore.
Should Win: Boyhood, but not because of dedication. A lot of people toil for years on their dream projects. Boyhood is a great and deeply humane film that celebrates the ordinariness of the everyday and is destined to be a classic.
Should Have Been a Contender: In ten years we’ll look back on Interstellar’s near-absence from this year’s Academy Awards as a grave cinematic injustice. At least Nolan is in good company. 2001: A Space Odyssey was shut out of the best picture race too.
BEST ACTOR
Will Win: In one of the most hotly contested categories of the entire race, it wouldn’t be surprising if the academy went with the comparatively elder statesmen Michael Keaton for the comeback performance of a lifetime. Redmayne will get another shot.
Should Win: Keaton. We shouldn’t really care about the artistic endeavours of a past his prime megalomaniac, but Keaton was able to make Riggan Thomson at turns sympathetic, wholly unlikable and desperately sad.
Should Have Been a Contender: There are so many great performances that would have warranted a nomination here, including David Oyelowo for his powerful and studied take on Martin Luther King, Jr in Selma and Oscar Isaac’s determined entrepreneur in A Most Violent Year.
Will Win: Redmayne. The freckled one appears to be the favourite for his technically impressive performance.
Should Win: Keaton. Redmayne is a talented young actor, but he’s a little precious for a physicist. Keaton has been an electric live-wire for decades.
Should Have Been a Contender: The performance of the year was Timothy Spall’s J.M.W. Turner in Mr. Turner. If the Oscars were judged on grunting ability (and shouldn’t they be?), he’d win in a cakewalk.
BEST ACTRESS
Will Win: Julianne Moore, Still Alice. A great actress overdue for an Oscar, although the film is … forgettable.
Should Win: Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night. The French actress deserved nods for both this unadorned performance and for the unfairly overlooked The Immigrant.
Should Have Been a Contender: Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive. In Jim Jarmusch’s bitingly funny vampire tale, she’s captivating just walking down a Tangier street. One of cinema’s most exotic creatures.
Will Win: Five-time nominee Moore is long overdue for an Oscar and her nuanced portrayal of an accomplished woman deteriorating at the hands of early onset Alzheimer’s in an otherwise mediocre movie is her golden ticket.
Should Win: Moore for any other performance? But if we have to count this year’s contenders: Felicity Jones. The Theory of Everything is Jane Hawking’s story and Jones’ self-possessed take on a woman in an incredibly difficult situation has been upstaged by the flashier performance in the film.
Should Have Been a Contender: Comedian Jenny Slate showed great depth, humour and empathy in the perfectly realized Obvious Child, a film so enjoyable and of its time that older guard institutions probably didn’t know what to do with it.
BEST SUPPORING ACTOR
Will Win: J.K. Simmons’ maniacal jazz instructor in Whiplash has been the top choice since the film premiered at Sundance over a year ago.
Should Win: Simmons, and it’ll be extremely disappointing if he doesn’t lose it at the Oscar orchestra when they try to play him off.
Should Have Been a Contender: Tony Revolori was barely even in the conversation for his magnetic, loyal lobby boy Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson’s stylish esthetic seems to blind people to the fact that there truly compelling and emotional performances beneath the Popsicle-colored environs.
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