One Category at a Time: Best Picture

In just over two days from now the 89th Academy Awards will be underway and everyone will be tuned in to see just how many Oscars La La Land can win on its triumphant march to Best Picture. Anyone predicting an upset in the top category at this point is just looking for attention. This is a done deal. Sure, you could point to its lack of a SAG Ensemble nod, a stamp which every Best Picture winner since Braveheart managed to attain en route to Oscar immortality, but why split hairs? We know why it didn't get that nod (it's far from an ensemble piece), and we know it doesn't matter. A happy ending is coming for the marvelous musical that hit the ground running this season and never looked back.

One Category at a Time: Best Original Screenplay

Just like in Best Adapted Screenplay, this race feels like a tight one, except that it comes down to two scripts instead of all five nominees. I gotta tell ya, as much fun as true suspense on Oscar night can be, I'm having a rough go of predicting Best Original Screenplay lately, batting less than 0.500 over the last seven years.

Part of it is that the two main industry precursors are doing just as poorly when it comes to prefacing the Academy (which isn't their job, of course, and thank God for that). The WGA and the BAFTA have each anticipated the eventual winner only half the time in this decade, so maybe I'm looking at the wrong precursors.

One Category at a Time: Best Actor

Dammit, SAG. Y'know if it weren't for you, this would be one of the easiest calls of Oscar night. So utterly dominant was one contender for so much of the season, it seemed unthinkable that we'd have this tight a race for Best Actor, but so it is. It's a true two horse sprint to the finish in one of those rare categories that we know La La Land can't win.

Top Twenty Movies of 2016, Part 1 (#20-11)

It's always interesting for me to see how the overall quality of the year in film affects my selection process for annual "Best of" lists. Strong years can make it easy to decide on a top twenty, but makes ranking them a chore. Years such as this, on the other hand, feel pretty settled in terms of what's the best (don't expect me to deviate too much from the median when it comes to my top two), but then fleshing out the rest of the list is more taxing.

For me, my #14-9 slots were constantly shifting as the year progressed, and will likely continue to do so long after this publication. #20-15 feel almost arbitrary, as all of them are largely flawed efforts that wouldn't even figure into my consideration during a stronger year, but boast specific assets and memorable hooks that help them to stand out.

I don't mean to cast shade here. The point of articles like this are to celebrate, not to denigrate. And anyone who claims that there aren't at least 20 movies worth celebrating any given year clearly doesn't watch enough movies.

First, a few shout-outs to titles that just missed the cut:

-To The Lobster for the originality of its deadpan dystopia

-To Moana for its grand musicality and gorgeous Pacific scenery

-To Queen of Katwe for its earthy slice of life wrapped in a sports movie

-To The Red Turtle for its painterly magic realism
-To The Salesman for its gripping moral complexity

-To Tanna for its vibrant cultural snapshot of native Melanesia

-To Toni Erdmann for its droll father-daughter absurdism

-To Tower for its powerful alchemy of testimonial, reenactment and animated abstraction

A now, the back half of my Top Twenty[-one] Movies of 2016 [UPDATED]:

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actor

Strangely enough, before the critics started announcing their winners back in December, this seemed like the most nebulous category. Now it's one of the most galvanized, with one name dominating the conversation (give or take an odd Golden Globes loss).

One Category at a Time: Best Director

Splits between Best Picture an Best Director have a weird arrhythmic history at the Oscars. They seem to crop up in bunches before to returning to long stretches when it never happens. We seem to be in the middle (or perhaps the end) of one such bunch, which has seen these two top categories go different ways in three of the last four years. Whether or not this is a blip on the radar or a more mainstaying result of the current Best Picture voting mathematics might require a few more years to suss out, but this year it appears that things will return to the status quo.

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actress

With all the major precursors and most regional critics groups lining up behind a single performance, this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar seems to be pretty open-and-shut. But up to a point this season, that wasn't the case.

Wealth-Spreading BAFTA Keeps Season Interesting...

The Brits have been known to throw a monkey wrench into awards season every now and then, even when ultimately bowing to the status quo. Such is the case today as they handed the unquestionable Oscar frontrunner La La Land their Best Film prize, but it was far from the clean sweep which many pundits believe the Academy will bestow upon it. While its five-category haul is impressive, it ultimately lost more prizes than it won, putting thoughts of it matching the Oscar record (11 wins) into serious doubt. I'm especially skeptical of the design categories and Original Screenplay.

Other notable successes include Lion and Manchester by the Sea, each taking a pair. Lion feels like something that could surprise anywhere on Oscar night, especially in Adapted Screenplay. Manchester, on the other hand, feels like a surprise shutout just waiting to happen, with Denzel taking Best Actor from Affleck, and Chazelle Best Original Screenplay from Lonergan, but we shall see.

List of winners and some commentary to follow:

BEST FILM
La La Land - Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt

On to Oscar...

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
I, Daniel Blake - Ken Loach, Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty

Hardly a surprise, given its nomination in Best Film.

My Award Nominations: Leading Actor

It wasn't as slim a year for Best Actor candidates as many pundits would have you believe. There were some sterling performances out there beyond Casey Affleck's slam dunk Oscar nod, if you knew were to look. Here are my five:

'Manchester', 'Moonlight' and 'La La Land' Lead Early Critics Awards

It has begun. Awards season is "officially" underway after what has been a busy seven days of early -- and I mean ridiculously, unnecessarily early -- precursor citations. The main takeaway: In a studio year as lack-lustre as 2016 was, it looks like critically acclaimed indies will be leading the race, namely Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea and Damien Chazelle's La La Land, while some sneak-peek twitter reactions to Scorsese's recently screened Silence paint it as a major last-minute lurker that could crash the party.

The National Board of Review got the ball rolling last Tuesday, handing Manchester four prizes including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Moonlight trailed with a pair of wins for Jenkins' direction and Naomie Harris' incredible performance.

The New York Film Critics Circle followed up two days after with three prizes apiece for both Manchester and Moonlight, but at the eleventh hour voted in favour of La La Land as Best Film (not an unprecedented move for that group).

That same day, La La Land went on to dominate the Critics Choice nominations with 12. Again, Moonlight had a prominent showing with 10, Manchester with 7 (Full list of nominees will appear at the end of the post with some quick takes).

The LA Film Critics Association rounded out the week by naming Moonlight the best of the year just this afternoon. The film also won Best Director, Supporting Actor and Cinematography. La La Land only earned a single prize from the west coast crew (for music), but was runner-up in five other categories, making it the most represented title in the group's day of announcements. Hmmm... were they afraid giving it multiple wins would smack of homerim?

'Manchester' Expands Just Before Awards Start Dropping

As November winds to a close we find ourselves on the eve of awards season, which is even earlier than usual this year thanks to the National Board of Review's ridiculously premature awards announcement slated for Tuesday. Many of the titles we'll be hearing over the course of the next month from regional critics groups and the like won't even be available to the public until the last possible week of 2016, with presumed heavyweights La La Land, Fences and Silence all bowing at Christmas (or much later depending on where you live). Might this allow the established love for the marvelous Moonlight to shine through when Oscar balloting starts? One can only hope.

But another modest indie that might challenge Barry Jenkins' humanist portrait for the lion's share of critical prizes is Kenneth Lonergan's much-buzzed-about Sundance hit Manchester by the Sea, which began its gradual expansion this weekend. Much has been written about how emotionally devastating the picture is, made all the more palpable by its chilly New England environs, but audiences may be surprised to discover it's practically a comedy of manners built upon grief. Lonergan is less interested in telling a tight, tidy story than he is in simply sitting us down with these characters and trusting us to find fascination in the varied -- at times amusing -- ways they respond to tragedy (which of course, is never tight and tidy anyway).