My Oscar Ballot

This Sunday, ABC will air the 95th annual Academy Awards, a telecast that I (along with 3 to 5 other people) will watch, honoring the year’s best in film. The show provides a great opportunity to reflect. We are now two months from 2022 and can adequately reflect on the last year in film in all of its totality. But how?

I could write about my favorite movies of the year. Maybe I want to honor the Oscars by talking about what they got wrong and proposing my own set of nominees. Or I could create my own show, the Alternative Oscars, with new categories that would spice up a predictable telecast. Maybe next year. 

Here’s the thing- the Academy did a great job with the nominations this year. There were only a few egregious inclusions or snubs (there always will be). We’ll see how I feel after the winners are announced, but for now, I am satisfied. And since I’m satisfied, let’s enjoy the moment and do something different. 

In the following piece, I am going to fill out my Oscars ballot. A few caveats…

1. This is not who/what I think should win each award considering the totality of last year in film. This is who I think should win from the list of nominees. 

2. I am not an expert in any of the categories. I am not an editor or cinematographer, nor am I a seasoned sound designer. I watch a ton of movies and have an amateur understanding of what a good version of something is. As a result, I will not vote on some categories. 

3. I have not seen and will not see every nominated film. This is especially true for some that are harder to access- documentary short, animated short, international feature, etc. I will also not weigh in on those categories.

So, without further ado…

Actor in a Supporting Role

Nominees: 

• Brendan Gleeson- The Banshees of Inisherin

• Brian Tyree Henry- Causeway

• Judd Hirsch- The Fabelmans

• Barry Keoghan- The Banshees of Inisherin

• Ke Huy Quan- Everything Everywhere All At Once

My Pick: Ke Huy Quan is the emotional center of a film that would fall apart without his performance. Quan’s character Waymond grounds a film lauded for its maximalist, fast-paced, breakneck storytelling. He may not get all the biggest stunts or cathartic monologues, but his nuanced performance of a very complicated and emotionally damaged character deserves to be rewarded. And who can deny a good Hollywood comeback story? His all-but-sure win this Sunday might be the pinnacle of his life, but it also should be the beginning of a renewed career for an actor who deserves to be known for much more than his work as Indiana Jones’ kid sidekick.

Actress in a Supporting Role

• Angela Bassett- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

• Hong Chau- The Whale

• Kerry Condon- The Banshees of Inisherin

• Jamie Lee Curtis- Everything Everywhere All at Once

• Stephanie Hsu- Everything Everywhere All at Once

My Pick: The Banshees of Insherin is a movie centered around two quarreling friends on a small Irish island in the early twentieth century. The film uses the two leads and their conflict to ask the following… in this short life we are gifted, what do we pursue- art or friendship? If Padriac and Colm represent these conflicting desires in absolutes, Siobhán (Kerry Condon) threads the needle between them, displaying a level of nuance and level-headedness that Martin McDonagh expects his audience to approach the film with. This makes her performance essential. She represents the viewer, watching in absolute shock, as these two idiots bang their heads against each other. Plus, it's a win for Better Call Saul and we’ll take that where we can get it.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

• All Quiet on the Western Front

• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

• Living

• Top Gun: Maverick

• Women Talking

My Pick: Looking at the nominations for Adapted Screenplay, a swath of awards prognosticators gawked at the Top Gun: Maverick nomination. The obvious greatness of Top Gun is in its visual effects, cinematography, and directing, none of which were nominated. Perhaps less flashy is the rock-solid script. Part of Top Gun’s genius is its ability to tell this traditional action film story in an emotionally captivating and thrilling way. Yes, it’s a story about a leader and his team completing a nondescript mission. But more importantly, it’s a story of redemption, friendship, and the importance of saving an industry. Its success in telling that story has as much to do with the script as it does anything else.

Writing (Original Screenplay)

• The Banshees of Inisherin

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

• The Fabelmans

• Tár

• Triangle of Sadness 

My Pick: The movies nominated in this category are arguably the strongest of the year. In fact, you could make the case that any of these films could or should win. The category is wide open, but if I had a vote, I would give it to Tár (with The Banshees of Inisherin as a close runner-up). In Tár, Todd Field builds an entire character and her world with care and specificity. Thematically, he tackles hot-button contemporary issues with a deftness that places the onus on the audience to discover what they think for themselves. You could easily convince me that Tár deserves to win in Best Actress, Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay or Best Picture, but in the interest of spreading the wealth and recognizing the breadth of great movies this year, we’ll award a script that I actually sat down and read because I was so fascinated by its construction.

Music (Original Score)

• All Quiet on the Western Front- Volker Bertelmann

• Babylon- Justin Hurwitz

• The Banshees of Inisherin- Carter Burwell

• Everything Everywhere All at Once- Son Lux

• The Fabelmans- John Williams

My Pick: The best thing about Babylon is Justin Hurwitz’ score. Chazelle’s primary collaborator is Hurwitz, speaking to the central role that music plays in all of his films. It drives the plot, narrates events, and in Babylon, it’s the rocket fuel that shoots the film into outer space. The second the thumps of the Tom-Toms emerge or the screaming saxophones splatter the soundscape, the audience knows that this is not a clean or suave movie. It’s messy, it’s dirty, it’s gross. It’s a tone poem of rot. And just as Babylon is a reflection of Chazelle’s experience in Hollywood, so is the score. Themes from his work in La La Land and Whiplash are referenced, and in some cases, pasted into the Babylon score, as if he is actively acknowledging and commenting on the past. The score is propulsive, explosive, and is more strongly developed than some of the characters on screen. It is a performance itself, and is deserving of this Academy Award.

Music (Original Song)

• Applause (Dianne Warren)- Tell It Like a Woman

• Hold My Hand (Lady Gaga)- from Top Gun: Maverick 

• Lift Me Up (Rihanna)- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

• Naatu Naatu (M.M. Keeravaani)- RRR

• This is a Life (Ryan Lott, David Byrne, Mitski)- Everything Everywhere All at Once

My Pick: Naatu Naatu. No justification is needed. Watch the video and read my post on RRR. Nothing in a movie this year made me smile wider than Naatu Naatu. It’s a masterpiece. 

Visual Effects

• All Quiet on the Western Front

• Avatar: The Way of Water

• The Batman

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

• Top Gun: Maverick

My Pick: Have you ever thought about how difficult it might be to shoot a third of a three hour long film underwater? What if you were also editing motion capture footage using the actors along with layers of animation to create an entirely new species of beings called Navi? It took James Cameron 13 years to follow up on his groundbreaking blockbuster sensation, Avatar. In the meantime, people felt it was overrated and left no cultural impact. Avatar: The Way of Water proved once and for all that doubting James Cameron is as unwise as harpooning a Tulkun to lure Jake Sully. (It’s a bad idea). The best parts of Cameron’s newest action epic are the second and third acts- where he submerges audiences fully in his underwater world and then places that world in danger, leading to the culminating hour-long action sequence. I can’t fathom how he pulled it off, which is reason enough to give the film this award. 

Actor in a Leading Role

• Austin Butler- Elvis

• Colin Farrell- The Banshees of Inisherin

• Brendan Fraser- The Whale

• Paul Mescal- Aftersun

• Bill Nighy- Living

My Pick: Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin delivers one of the great uncomplicated performances. It is hard to do simple things well. But with a variety of cable-knit sweaters at his disposal and a thick, furrowed brow, Farrell achieves an astonishing level of depth playing a character who literally just wants to know why his best friend doesn’t like him anymore. Simple motivations lead to simple circumstances that illicit a remarkable level of emotion. Farrell captures it all. The sadness, the hopefulness, the disappointment, the anger, of losing everything that matters in your life for no good reason. 

Actress in a Leading Role

• Cate Blanchett- Tár

• Ana de Armas- Blonde

• Andrea Riseborough- To Leslie

• Michelle Williams- The Fabelmans

• Michelle Yeoh- Everything Everywhere All at Once

My Pick: If there is a popular Twitter account with 19 thousand followers impersonating the made-up lead character of a fictional film, you deserve an Oscar. If people think your performance is so convincing that there are several essays on whether or not Lydia Tár is a real conductor, you deserve an Oscar. In what is undoubtedly the best performance of the year, Cate Blanchett takes Lydia Tár, a fictional conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and breaths so much life, energy, character, and nuance into her. When you walk into the theatre, you may not know anything about conductors, or the orchestral world. But two and a half hours later, you will leave the theatre knowing more about the cultural importance and inner workings of this fake person than you ever have about Elvis, a real person who got a biopic this year. I know everything about Lydia Tár. I also know nothing. It’s a performance of a performance. A deconstruction of performance. And it's the performance of the year. 

Directing

• The Banshees of Inisherin- Martin McDonagh

• Everything Everywhere All at Once- Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

• The Fabelmans- Steven Spielberg

• Tár- Todd Field

• Triangle of Sadness- Ruben Östlund

My Pick: Steven Spielberg has not won a Best Director Academy Award in my lifetime. His last win came for Saving Private Ryan in 1999. But for the most bankable and reliable blockbuster filmmaker of the last 45 years, a third Oscar is surely deserved. It’s not worthy just for that reason, but because The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s best work since Lincoln (at least). It’s a return to the type of adolescent stories he likes to tell. But instead of analogizing his darkest memories, he tackles them head-on. Spielberg manages to tell the story of his childhood and subvert the public imagination of a man who brought us stories of childhood wonder. He’s an older man, entering the sunset of his life. And when he looks back to dig through his past, he is unafraid of showing audience the awesome, terrifying, constructive, and destructive power of seeing your life through lens of a lens. 

Best Picture 

• All Quiet on the Western Front

• Avatar: The Way of Water

• The Banshees of Inisherin

• Elvis

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

• The Fabelmans

• Tár

• Top Gun: Maverick

• Triangle of Sadness

• Women Talking

We’ve made it! The final award of the season. The Big Kahuna! These nominees are great. In the past, there has been tons of hand-wringing about the Best Picture nominees, and how many there are, and whether superhero movies should be recognized, and whether the best picture winners represent the breadth of movie-going. To be sure, these are all valid concerns. But we should give credit where credit is due. This year, the Academy nominated a wide variety of very good films that appeal to a diverse array of audiences. Do you like big blockbusters? Here’s Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick. Do you prefer the more traditional, sweeping epic? Great! You can throw your hat behind All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, or The Fabelmans. For the film Twitter dorks and art house nerds, you can root for Tár, The Banshees of Inisherin, or Everything Everywhere All at Once. The breadth of nominees this year represents the broad scope of film in 2022. There may be panic about the state of cinema, but everyone should take a deep breath after seeing the Academy recognize all of these types of movies.

If I were on the Academy and voting for Best Picture, I would choose Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun is not the best movie of the year. There are plenty of other films that intellectually stimulate me more. And yet, Top Gun: Maverick gets my vote because the Oscars are not about me. They should not reward any one person’s idiosyncratic tastes but should recognize a masterfully crafted film that succeeds with all audiences. I think the best movie of the year is Tár. But I think Top Gun: Maverick deserves Best Picture because it was genuinely great (1) and everyone loved it (2). It was the film that brought audiences back to theaters after a pandemic hiatus. Its technical achievements are groundbreaking. Tom Cruise and company tested the limits of cameras and human beings, sending both into the air to film incredible aerial sequences. But just as spectacular as the planes wooshing through the sky at Mach 10.2 is the rush I felt during the quieter moments, watching Tom Cruise throw the playbook in the trash, or Kilmer and Cruise’s touching reunion. Everything in this movie works. It is the rare sequel that lives up to and then exceeds the hype built up around it. In a year where everyone thought movies and theaters were headed for extinction, why not award Best Picture to the film that had the balls to say “maybe so, sir, but not today.”