If you’ve been reading this series consistently, you’ll know that I’ve been saying for months that the Best Picture race is between The Brutalist and Anora.
The Brutalist looked on track with its early Golden Globes wins, particularly with its wins for Best Picture —Drama and Best Director. Anora, on the other hand, appeared to be slipping if anything.
Mikey Madison at one point was considered the frontrunner for Best Actress, and I resisted any narrative that she wasn’t for as long as I could. Alas, Demi Moore secured frontrunner status unequivocally with another win at the Critics Choice Awards this weekend.
But despite Anora falling in every other category at the CCAs, it came out of nowhere to win Best Picture, showing its first real sign of life this season.
Then within 72 hours, it picked up Best Picture wins at the Producers Guild Awards and Directors Guild Awards, suddenly making it the odds-on favorite for the big prize from the Academy Awards.
So here we are with the narrative I’ve been pushing for months—feels good, man. Except, it’s unclear whether The Brutalist remains a real number two as its possible the drummed-up controversy over AI use could have voters needlessly bumping it down.
One movie we know is dead in the water, praise be, is Emilia Perez. It sucks that it took overwhelmingly inappropriate and embarrassing tweets by Karla Sofia Gascon to do the movie in, but at least we escaped the silly world where we have to honor this ridiculous movie.
There’s still a shot that Wicked could take the ensemble prize at SAG, and who knows where the BAFTA will go (my bet is still on Brutalist). I think that the 10 nominations for The Brutalist clearly show a lot of support from The Academy when they made their announcement two weeks ago. I’m not sure if the controversy changed that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out on top on Oscars night.
Conclave could emerge from a preferential ballot on top by being the safe option, but I really think this race is down to the two I’ve been saying all along.
Sean Baker also won best director at DGA, which has predicted the Oscar winner 9 of the last 10 years. Again, that race always felt to me like it would end up between Baker and Brady Corbet.
Jon M. Chu won Best Director at Critic’s Choice, which is awesome and hilarious since he is not even Oscar-nominated. I personally think Chu did a great job adapting Wicked, so even though I wouldn’t have wanted him to win the Oscar, I’m glad he got some recognition.