Posted on November 24, 2022
Our resident Oscars Oracle and Artistic Director, Brian Owens, has been keeping an eye on the best cinema from around the world all year round. Now he is ready to place his early bets on the upcoming nominations for the 95th Academy Awards!
We've included some reviews alongside the potential nominees to give you an idea of where they stand going into the big night. Without further ado, these are our early picks for the Big Five categories; Best Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director and *drumroll* Best Picture!
BEST ACTOR
Brendan Fraser, THE WHALE
Fraser imbues Charlie with a simultaneous sense of warmth and guilt, completely avoiding treating him as an exploitative, morbid spectacle, despite both the character's size and the amount of both practical and digital effects used in The Whale to portray him. -ScreenRant
Colin Farrell, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Farrell brings extra layers of depth and mournfulness. He’s the character you want to protect, and the one who sends your heart sinking when you see him harden, out of necessity, against the world. He gives The Banshees of Inisherin its soul and its beauty. - TIME
Bill Nighy, LIVING
Nighy, one of the great British character actors of our time, is given one of the richest roles of his career, showcasing tender and deeply moving moments throughout the film. - Variety
BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, TAR
More otherworldly than Galadriel, more regal than Elizabeth, and more devilishly unrepressed than Carol Aird, “Tár” might just be the actor’s signature role. -THE WRAP
Michelle Yeoh, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction. She is a movie star and this is a movie that knows it. Watching her shine so bright and clearly having a ball brought tears to my eyes more than once. - Roger Ebert
Danielle Deadwyler, TILL
Danielle Deadwyler, who plays Emmett’s mother Mamie with such a profound and raw intensity that the actress (best known until now for her work on television’s Station Eleven) instantly cements her status as one of the most exciting performers working today. - The Globe and Mail
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Tragedy and comedy are perfectly paired in this latest jet-black offering from Martin McDonagh, which seems a strong contender for the Oscars’ best picture race. - The Guardian
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
Yes, the movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down — and also right on the surface — it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.- The New York Times
THE FABELMANS
The script, by Tony Kushner and Spielberg, brilliantly illustrates the birth of a filmmaker and could net Spielberg his first nom for screenwriting.- Variety
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY
Daniel Craig once again dons the natty little cravat as ace detective Benoit Blanc, but elsewhere there’s fresh blood, both in the cast and splattered all over the location. But the real star? Johnson’s crisply mischievous screenplay, which crams in so many laughs you almost don’t notice the occasional plot holes. - The Guardian
WOMEN TALKING
Author Miriam Toews and now filmmaker Sarah Polley, inspired by a real mass rape in a Mennonite enclave in Bolivia, sharply render what is so terribly, universally relevant about what these women are debating. - Vanity Fair
THE WHALE
"This faithful, and faith-filled adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play invokes classical literature such as Moby Dick and even The Bible. Starkly different from the visual spectacle and surrealism of Darren Aronofsky’s previous work, The Whale stays true to the spartan settings of the play."- NME
BEST DIRECTOR
Sarah Polley, WOMEN TALKING
Toews’ book could easily have been made into a play, but every widescreen frame of Polley’s film will make you glad that it wasn’t. She infuses this truth-inspired tale with a gripping multi-generational sweep from the very first line, which puts the violence in the rear-view mirror and begins the hard work of keeping it there. - IndieWire
Stephen Spielberg, THE FABELMANS
To say that Spielberg is performing at the top of his game is no hyperbole. This dramatic opus, which pulls at the heartstrings, could bring Spielberg his third directing statuette (after “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan”), and maybe his second for best picture (after “Schindler’s List”). - Variety
Martin McDonagh, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s soulful masterpiece offers a windswept elegy on a camaraderie that has reached its inexplicable expiration, as well as a melancholic rumination on mortality. - AV Club
BEST PICTURE
THE FABELMANS
This fictional version of his childhood and adolescence is also among his most rigorous and emotionally honest films, largely avoiding self-indulgence. Infused with family warmth, but with a knowing adult eye on the loss of innocence, it is one of the year's most genuinely heartfelt films. - BBC
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Visually, cinematographer Ben Davis and production designer Mark Tildesley create painterly interiors that recall the canvases of Vermeer and the compositions of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, while composer Carter Burwell emphasizes the film’s fable-like qualities with refrains that sound like off-kilter nursery rhymes played on cracked shellac records. As for the cast, they are a note-perfect ensemble, a flawless instrument upon which McDonagh plays his deliciously melancholy danse macabre. - The Guardian
WOMEN TALKING
“Women Talking” is such a visceral and commanding ode to the stories we tell ourselves — and the stories that women share with each other — that it’s destined to be more alive in our memories than it ever was before our eyes. Like dragonflies that migrate across such epic lengths that only their grandchildren survive to get where they’re going, Polley’s film is playing the long game. It’s scouring deep within itself and along the horizon in search of the strength to envision a better tomorrow. - IndieWire