There is no frontrunner this year. The more you get that inside your head, the less stressful it is to think about the Best Picture race. In fact, we won’t know for certain what film will be the odds-on-favourite to win until the Producers Guild of America, the greatest of precursors, declares a winner in early February.
Until then, we have a de facto frontrunner in Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast.” And yet, I don’t know a single soul who was blown away by Belfast. Unless you count former Academy head honcho and producer Sid Ganis, who was quoted at Telluride as saying that “Belfast” was “one of the best films he’s ever seen in his life.”
What that single quote courtesy of Ganis did for Branagh’s film is give it the kind of momentum that most of the other Oscar contenders would have died to get. Consequentially, “Belfast” ended up winning the people’s choice award at TIFF and receiving what I like to call “artificial buzz” at Telluride.
And yet, “Belfast” has barely benefited from its status as de facto frontrunner. It’s also the whitest movie imaginable. Can you imagine some of the more progressive-minded voters actually going for this underwhelming black and white Anglo-Saxon-Irish movie? Of course not.
So, what else can sneak in and snatch the Best Picture prize this year? If enough people see “King Richard”, I guess that could strike a mainstream-induced chord with voters, but it failed miserably at the box-office and Will Smith is now a limp Actor frontrunner, with Benedict Cumberbatch slowly creeping in to dethrone him.
How about “Power of the Dog”? Maybe. It seems to be the contender that Film Twitter firmly believes will win. The Campion-deserves-her-due narrative is also a pretty strong one. So is the fact that critics have championed it more than any other American film this year. However, its morose vibes are maybe too much for a batch of voters who need a lift up after what many considered to be the worst year of their lives. It’s also not as widely acclaimed with audiences as it is with critics.
Then there’s Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.” Are we ready to reward Best Picture to a box-office bomb? Not just that, but a remake of a former Best Picture winner? Suffice to say, rewarding Spielberg’s film with Best Picture would be historically odd, but these are not normal times either. Also, its buzz, stemming mostly from critical acclaim, seems to have diminished a bit these last few weeks.
As you can see, there is no perfect frontrunner at the moment. We’re also now left with 16 possibilities to nab a Best Picture nomination:
CONTENDERS
West Side Story
The Power of the Dog
Belfast
King Richard
Dune
Licorice Pizza
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Nightmare Alley
The Lost Daughter
POSSIBILITIES
The Tragedy of Macbeth
The Last Duel
Tick, Tick … Boom!
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Being the Ricardos
House of Gucci
Bassim Tariq was the first one in the chair. The "Mogul Mowgli" director spent two years building out the Mahershala Ali vehicle before exiting in 2022, and he's now letting the air out on this one.