2023 Film Awards: An Update on the Oscar Race

By: JP Howard ‘24 Contributor

With this year’s fall film festivals having already wrapped up and a slew of holiday season releases still to be seen, it’s time to speculate on how the films of 2022 will fare in this winter’s awards season. Following last year’s infamous Will Smith-Chris Rock slap, this awards season is sure to generate abundant publicity, so here is a guide to navigating the upcoming season and an in-depth analysis of this year’s frontrunners for the top prizes at the upcoming Oscars ceremony.

Steven Spielberg’s auto-biographical drama The Fabelmans seems to be the definitive frontrunner for the Best Picture prize. Despite an abysmal performance at the box office (earning only $4 million domestically on a $40 million budget), the film won the coveted People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September. This award has, in recent years, become heavily correlated with receiving a Best Picture nomination, as all of its winners since 2011 have gone on to be nominated for the top prize at the Oscars. This, combined with Spielberg’s outstanding track record within the Academy, seems to be a surefire nominee for Best Picture, in addition to several other categories. Spielberg himself yields a great narrative for a Best Director win. Given that the film is an autobiographical account of the filmmaker’s life, its promotional campaign leans heavily on the fact that this movie is a passion project for the beloved filmmaker. The awards campaign for The Fabelmans mirrors that of 2018’s Roma, an acclaimed retelling of events from filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s childhood; Cuarón would go on to receive the Best Director Oscar for the film, a feat Spielberg may very likely achieve (for the third time) very soon. All signs seem to point to The Fabelmans and Spielberg being undisputed frontrunners in their respective categories.

Despite its strengths, several factors pose a threat to The Fabelmans’ path to victory aside from its poor box office numbers. For starters, the film appears vulnerable in the acting categories at the Oscars. As the actors’ branch of the Academy is its largest branch, the Best Picture win usually requires at least one acting nomination for the film (although there are notable exceptions to this with films like Parasite and Slumdog Millionaire). Michelle Williams, who plays a fictionalized version of Spielberg’s mother in the film and has received four Academy Award nominations to date, has controversially chosen to campaign for Best Actress despite a limited amount of screentime in the film. While she was hailed as the Best Supporting Actress frontrunner when the film premiered in Toronto, her chances of winning or even being nominated for Best Actress appear shotty in a year full of gargantuan performances in the category (Tár’s Cate Blanchett, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Michelle Yeoh, and Till’s Danielle Deadwyler, to name just a few). Additionally, no consensus has formed as to who should be nominated among the film’s Best Supporting Actor bids, Paul Dano and Judd Hirsch. Reactions to Dano’s performance have been positive but not ecstatic, although many consider the actor, who has given acclaimed turns in films like There Will Be Blood, Little Miss Sunshine, and this year’s The Batman, to be overdue for his first Oscar nomination. Hirsch, who is a previous nominee in the category for 1980’s Ordinary People, only has about eight minutes of screen time in the film despite relatively strong reviews for his performance. working the campaign trail in the past few weeks through frequent appearances on latenight talk shows. With wins in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress under its belt, along with a likely Best Director nomination for Polley, the film could very well claim the Best Picture prize by the time the Oscars roll around.

If Universal, the studio behind The Fabelmans, fails to push one actor for the award over the other given the lack of a standout supporting turn in the film, then both could slip through the cracks when nominations are announced, which would bode poorly for the film if Williams fails to make it into Best Actress as well.

Preying on The Fabelmans’ weaknesses is A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, an absurdist genrebending comedy about generational trauma and nihilism. While the film’s premise ventures far from typical Oscars fare, few films have Everything Everywhere beat this year in terms of acclaim.

It also helps, of course, that the film was a global box office success, becoming distributor A24’s first film to surpass $100 million at the box office. Unlike The Fabelmans, the film seems to have a few secured acting bids, with its Best Supporting Actor contender Ke Huy Quan being widely deemed the frontrunner of the category. Additionally, the film’s lead, Michelle Yeoh, will (after being unrecognized by awards bodies for a career in film that spans nearly four decades) likely receive her first Oscar nomination in Best Actress and seems to be seriously gunning for a win as well. Additionally, the film’s Best Supporting Actress bids, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis, have strong chances at nabbing their first nominations as well, although (like with The Fabelmans) there seems to be some confusion as to who A24 should actively push in their campaign for the category.

Supporting Actress. With four acting nominations for the film looking very possible, as well as likely nominations in Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for McDonagh, I would not be surprised if Banshees made a strong play for Best Picture this season.

Also posing a strong threat at the top prize is Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, a slow-burn drama following a group of women in an isolated colony and their troubling experiences with the colony’s men. The film, based on a 2018 novel of the same name, has received rave reviews for its direction and writing, being declared the frontrunner in the Best Adapted Screenplay. Additionally, the film (unlike The Fabelmans and Everything Everywhere All at Once) has decidedly provided equal campaign attention to the film’s standout performances, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, who seem poised to share nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category. Foy, herself seems to be the early frontrunner in the category herself and has been actively

Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, an acclaimed deadpan Irish comedy-drama, has also found itself in the Best Picture conversation. McDonagh’s last film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, performed exceptionally well with the Academy, ultimately taking home the prizes for Best Actress for Frances McDormand and Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell. The film seems poised to receive a handful of nominations in some of the major categories, including Best Actor for Colin Farrell. Farrell has gained lots of traction to win the award in the past few weeks; while Brendan Fraser was deemed the undisputable frontrunner for his emotional turn in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival this past summer, Fraser’s film has been unexpectedly met with a lukewarm critical response, ultimately paving the way for Farell’s potential win in the category. Additionally, Brendan Gleeson, a former collaborator of McDonagh’s who has gained significant acclaim for his work in the film, has solidified himself as a likely nominee for Best Supporting Actor. His co-star Barry Keoghan, also being campaigned in Best Supporting Actor for his equally acclaimed turn in the film, may find himself along with Gleeson in the category if the performers in The Fabelmans ultimately end up slipping through the cracks.

Kerry Condon, who has been deemed the film’s “scene stealer” in a nuanced supporting turn, will likely find herself nominated for Best

While the aforementioned four films seem to be the decided “locks” in the Best Picture category, several films compete to fill up the category’s other six slots.

Damien Chazelle, the Oscarwinning director of Whiplash and La La Land, finds himself back in the Oscar race with Babylon, starring Margot Robbie in a critically acclaimed lead performance. While early reception to the film has been fairly strong overall, the film has alienated some with its bizarre tonal shifts and excessive runtime, which may end up hurting the film as it enters a wide theatrical release this Christmas.

Top Gun: Maverick, perhaps the definitive blockbuster of this past summer, seems a likely nominee for Best Picture, being widely embraced by critics, audiences, and the film industry alike. As the Oscars have received steadily declining ratings over the past few ceremonies, it may prove to be a smart move for them to nominate the Tom Cruise-led blockbuster if its potential Best Picture nomination stirs up interest in the ceremony. Baz Luhrman’s Elvis, another bonafide summer blockbuster, may be on the way to a Best Picture nomination as well, with its star Austin Butler garnering significant buzz in the Best Actor category. Todd Field’s critically revered Tár seems a strong contender for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay nominations, in addition to its star, two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, potentially coming for her third Oscar win in the Best Actress category.

While the state of the Oscar race remains mostly unknown at this point and all of these predictions are subject to change, these films seem to be the ones making the most noise in terms of their awards prospects. 2022 has proven itself to be an excellent year in film, so I, for one, am very excited to see how the Oscar race shapes up this winter.