The 91st Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director

After 90 years of English-language films winning the Best Picture Oscar, could it be time for a film from Mexico to cop the golden prize? It seems that way, but only seems, as this year's Best Picture race has been a bumpy ride, with films taking the pole position and then fading, while others lurk in the weeds, ready to pounce (mixed metaphor, I know).

Best Director is more certain. Alfonso Cuaron, director of Roma, won the DGA and the Golden Globe. While Spike Lee may be due, he will probably win for Best Original Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman. Yorgos Lanthimos (he's become so familiar to me that I can now spell his name without looking) and Pawel Pawlikoski (who I still need to look up) are out of the running--the former because there is no precursor awards, the latter because his film is not nominated for Best Picture (their films are The Favourite and Cold War, respectively). Adam McKay, director of Vice, which at one time was the hot favorite, has cooled along with the film.

Cuaron, who four years ago for Gravity, would make it five in a row for the Three Amigos--Cuaron, Alejandro Inarritu, and Guillermo del Toro, which is quite an astounding success for Mexico, even if it is limited to three men. We can hope that their success will bring other younger Mexican directors, maybe even women, to prominence. And I think that if Roma does win Best Picture, it will be a crowning moment for world cinema, not to mention Netflix.

But there's a catch: Roma is also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. Will voters check off the name twice? I think they will choose it for Foreign Language, but to win Best Picture, which uses a preferential ballot, it will have to have a lot of second and third choices. Movies like Green Book, which I think is the second favorite, has polarized the voters (some think that a white man like Peter Farrelly telling the story of the segregated South is a bit much) that it will fall short.

It used to be that films that didn't have a director nomination would never win Best Picture. It's still only happened twice in over eighty-seven years. That would tell us that Green Book will not win because Farrelly was not nominated, the same with A Star Is Born, with no nomination for Bradley Cooper. A Star Is Born also had its moment in the sun as the film to beat, but has taken a drubbing throughout awards season. Is it because the voters are loathe to nominate a film that is the third remake of another film? Are people jealous of Cooper? Lady Gaga will win for Best Song, perhaps the only award the film will win.

BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite, and Vice all have the necessary nominations: director, screenplay, and editing (Roma does not have editing, which is worrisome for its supporters), but I don't expect any of them to win. Vice was not loved by everybody, and it's cartoonish quality may have turned even liberals off, while BlacKkKlansman is the best of the eight films, but in contrast to Green Book's vintage racism, Lee pushes our face in it, and reminds us that racism is still alive. The Favourite, which is the kind of period piece the Academy loves, may be a bit outre for them, as it doesn't play by the rules of that genre.

That leaves two films, Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody, as the trailers. Neither of them have a director or screenplay nomination, and no film has ever won without those since Grand Hotel in 1932. Black Panther, while a cultural milestone, is still a comic book movie (the first nominated), and Bohemian Rhapsody, the worst of the nominees, was ostensibly directed by Bryan Singer, who is persona non grata these days, and that certainly can't help.

So, for Best Director:

Will Win: Cuaron
Could win: Lee
Should win: Lee
Should have been nominated: Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

For Best Picture:

Will win: Roma
Could win: Green Book
Should win: BlacKkKlansman
Should have been nominated: The Death of Stalin

Here are my entire picks, for shits and giggles:

Best Picture: Roma
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Best Actor: Rami Malek
Best Actress: Glenn Close
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King
Best Original Screenplay: The Favourite
Best Adapted Screenplay: BlacKkKlansman
Best Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Animated Film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Cinematography: Roma
Best Editing: BlacKkKlansman
Best Production Design: Black Panther
Best Costume Design: The Favourite
Best Song: "Shallow"
Best Musical Score: Black Panther
Best Documentary Feature: Free Solo
Best Documentary Short Subject: A Night at the Garden
Best Makeup and Hairstyles: Vice
Best Animated Short Subject: Bao
 Best Live Action Short Subject: Marguerite
Best Sound Editing: Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Sound Mixing: Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Visual Effects: First Man