In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
December 25, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We're not going to look in-depth at each group, as the amount of awards ranges from Phoenix to Oklahoma to New York City to Los Angeles to St. Louis to Florida. Some of the groups - yes, mostly just the ones who hover around the coasts of the country - will be looked at deeper, but for those of you who are curious about the major points, consider this: if you're involved with The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, or, on a slightly lower level, Avatar or Inglourious Basterds, be happy. If not, be glad your movie is nominated. The majority of the critics' groups have all awarded The Hurt Locker or Up in the Air as their best films of 2009; the exceptions are the Phoenix Film Critics Society and the San Diego Film Critics Society, which both awarded Inglourious Basterds as the best film of the year; and the Detroit Film Critics Society, which awarded Up as its best film of the year.
For the major analysis, let's start somewhere that's not hugging the East or West Coast: Chicago. The Chicago Film Critics Association, like many other critics' groups, has awarded The Hurt Locker as its best film of the year. More than most groups, though, Chicago fell in a big way for the Iraq-set war film. The film's director, Kathryn Bigelow; screenwriter, Mark Boal, and lead, Jeremy Renner, all won here. Among critics' groups, it's Boal's first win, while Renner picks up another honor, though he's fighting against the stampede known as George Clooney. Bigelow is just about the most solid frontrunner in her category, if we are to seriously consider critics' groups as being a consistent parallel to Oscar nods. Bigelow has won a heavy majority of awards from critics across the country, and has a very good chance of being the first female director to win the Best Director Oscar.
But the Chicago film critics have sometimes gone further toward eclectic choices in years past. Though their picks for the best film of the year matched up with Oscar in four of the past six years, some of the choices are a bit more unique. Last year, they chose WALL-E as the best film of the year; other winners that didn't match up are Sideways, Far From Heaven, and Mulholland Dr. The Oscars have not always matched up in this group's sometimes out-there tastes, so some of their winners this year may not match up. I would imagine that, among the big winners, Boal and Renner will likely be nominated but not win at the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony. Bigelow has the most complete shot of getting Oscar gold, despite her uniquely uphill battle, as she would be only the fourth female Best Director Oscar nominee.
Next up, it's the New York Film Critics, who also awarded The Hurt Locker as their Best Picture, and gave Kathryn Bigelow the award for Best Director. Other major winners are George Clooney as Best Actor, for Up in the Air and Fantastic Mr. Fox; Meryl Streep as Best Actress, for Julie and Julia; Mo'Nique as Best Supporting Actress, for Precious; Christoph Waltz as Best Supporting Actor, for Inglourious Basterds; and In The Loop, for Best Screenplay. Before we get any further into analyzing this group, let's also look at the big winners from the Los Angeles Film Critics awards, as these two major critics' groups can sometimes overlap.
The Los Angeles Film Critics also awarded The Hurt Locker as Best Picture, and Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director. They also overlapped with the New York Film Critics with Best Supporting Actor and Actress, as Mo'Nique and Waltz both took the top prizes. Their Best Actor and Actress awards, though, were completely different; for Best Actor, Jeff Bridges won as the lead of Crazy Heart, and for Best Actress, Yolande Moreau won as the lead of Seraphine. Both groups, though, did share the winner for Best Animated Feature; instead of the more popular Up, the groups gave the award to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's latest comedy-drama. The overlap among the Best Picture and Director awards is a precursor, but is it a potential direction to Oscar gold?
Well...listen, I love The Hurt Locker, and would put it right behind Up if I was making my top-ten list of 2009. But if we're going to sift through the tea leaves here, The Hurt Locker will get nominated for Best Picture and lose. Though the LA and NYC groups don't always overlap, when they do, it's rarely a good indicator for the winner. The last time the groups' shared winner won Best Picture at the Oscars, it was 1993, and the film was Schindler's List. Before that, only 1983's Terms of Endearment had the same trajectory. Other winners in LA and New York to not win Oscar are Goodfellas, Saving Private Ryan, L.A. Confidential, Brokeback Mountain, Sideways, and Hannah and her Sisters. Of course, The Hurt Locker could break the tide, but it would seem highly unlikely.
Another reason why The Hurt Locker has a less-than-solid chance is its lack of popularity. Here's a movie that everyone who is able to should see; though it is set during the Iraq War, the movie is one of the best action movies I've seen, which is all the more impressive because it may be one of the rarest films in the genre; in this movie, the main characters want very badly to have explosive devices not go off. If the action is meant to be more contained, The Hurt Locker succeeds, as it's also incredibly, unbearably tense. But it hasn't even made $20 million domestically. Chalk it up to not having any major stars (though such actors as Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, and "Lost" actress Evangeline Lilly all have supporting roles) and an unpopular topic. But if movies such as Avatar or Up in the Air get Oscar nods, they'll likely have more popular backing. I and the other 12 people who saw The Hurt Locker can hope that pessimism is the wrong attitude.
Though there are so many groups to talk about, the seemingly biggest critical awards news is from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, who head the Critics' Choice Awards. Thanks to the addition of some below-the-line (read: technical) awards categories, the two films that lead the BFCA nominations are Inglourious Basterds and Nine with, ironically for the latter film, ten nominations. Avatar, the sci-fi epic from James Cameron, was right behind with nine nods. The BFCA list of Best Picture nominees, with ten choices just like the Oscars, is as follows: Avatar, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Nine, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, and Up in the Air. Before we delve into what this means for the films nominated, and those left off the list, let's be clear about one thing: there is a very, very good chance that this list will be repeated exactly at the Oscars. None of the films here are shockingly included; The Lovely Bones may be the most well-known exclusion.
Also, let's go over some interesting inclusions before getting to the analysis. Viggo Mortensen, in the underseen The Road, got a nod for Best Actor. Sandra Bullock continues her potentially slow march to an Oscar nomination, with a nom for Best Actress in The Blind Side. An intriguing nomination went to Star Trek, as one of five nominees for Best Acting Ensemble; the other four nominees (Inglourious Basterds, Nine, Precious, and Up in the Air) all got on the Best Picture list. The addition of many technical awards, such as Best Cinematography, Best Sound, and Best Editing, makes this list seem more like an Oscar wishlist than ever. But how solid a predictor are the BFCA awards?
In the past ten years' worth of awards, the BFCA has predicted eight of ten Best Picture winners. They missed the boat in 2004, when they gave the top prize to Sideways, not the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby; and in 2005, when they gave the top prize to Brokeback Mountain, not Crash. What's most important for the time being, though, is that list of their choices for the Best Picture of the Year. Though 2009 will be the first year since the BFCA has been doling out awards that the Oscars will have more than five nominees, it's worth noting that the BFCA Best Picture nominees have almost always been matched at the Oscars. One notable exception was in 2001, when Gosford Park was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but not the BFCA trophy. Aside from that, all Best Picture nominees were represented in the BFCA awards. Will it be the same this year? Hard to say, of course, but don't be surprised if the lists mirror each other.
The Boston Society of Film Critics followed suit with L.A. and New York, handing out trophies to The Hurt Locker for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Jeremy Renner). The film also won for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Though it may not fully penetrate the Oscar voters for still being an Iraq War film (and also being an immensely intense action film), The Hurt Locker has been winning so solidly or appearing on nomination lists that the supposed frontrunner, Up in the Air, should be quaking in its metaphorical boots. The latter film didn't show up in the Boston critics' awards; however, Meryl Streep, Christoph Waltz, and Mo'Nique all won for their respective acting categories and the same three films we've talked about in this article.
Boston has been a very spotty indicator of awards glory, being more incompatible with the Oscars. Last year, though the critics here awarded Slumdog Millionaire"as its Best Picture...they also gave the same award to WALL-E. In fact, the three years before this announcement are the only ones since 1993 that Boston's critics matched up with the Oscars with regards to Best Picture. More than most critics' groups, Boston's society is a far more eclectic bunch, having awarded such films as Mulholland Dr. and Out of Sight as the best films of their respective years. We can't put too much stock into this group, but their having honored The Hurt Locker as the best film of 2009 is hard to ignore.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, there have been other critics' groups who announced their awards for 2009 recently. Let's finish off this Christmas edition of In Contention by taking a look at them. The Hurt Locker found friends in Oklahoma, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Austin, as all of the critics' groups in those cities awarded it as the best film of the year. Up in the Air got the top prize in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Florida, Indiana, St. Louis, Utah, and Washington, D.C. critics' groups. Basing on these and other critics' groups, though, it appears that, as has seemingly happened in recent years, the supporting actor categories are pretty much sewn up. Christoph Waltz, the clever villain in Inglourious Basterds, and Mo'Nique, as the hellish mother in Precious, have won, between them, 40 wins from critics' groups. The only other contenders (as in the only other actors to have won from various groups) are Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, and Woody Harrelson in The Messenger; & Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air, and Samantha Morton in The Messenger.
Let's clarify one thing before I leave you to your Christmas dinner. Critics' groups represent a vocal majority, but they are not Oscar voters. I'm not saying that movies like The Hurt Locker or Up in the Air won't be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, or that one of those movies may not win. However, Oscar voters are fickle, and sometimes make pointless or shocking decisions; remember Crash? Who's to say that they won't be won over as most audiences are with James Cameron's Avatar, a film that has wound up on some critics' top-ten lists? What of Precious, the season's first frontrunner? Then, there's always the possibility that, because of the labyrinthine Oscar voting process, a movie like Nine or Up could win the big prize, simply because of the rules of separating votes. Just as there are never any locks in the Oscar season, there's no guarantee that critics' groups, while important, will all match up.