Oscar voting is officially over for the 98th Academy Awards, and now we are just patiently waiting until the awards are handed out on March 15th. As we do every year, Matt Neglia and I spoke with several Academy voters about what they are voting for and why. We’ll be posting some of those thoughts for your amusement in the lead-up to the Oscars (because that’s all this is at the end of the day). Remember, as you read these, they represent only a tiny fraction of the 11,000+ people who vote on the Oscar winners. While these may help provide some insight into how voters make their selections, they are far from the be-all and end-all of what will eventually win and should always be taken with a grain of salt.
Best Picture:
I really struggled with whether to put “One Battle After Another” or “Sinners” in number one. Having these two masterpieces by two of our greatest living filmmakers in the same year was just such an embarrassment of riches. I felt like “Sinners” was the bigger swing in terms of gutsiness of the filmmaking, and I’m so impressed by how Ryan Coogler was able to put so much emotion and subtext into a vampire movie. I’ve watched “One Battle After Another” three times now, and after each rewatch, I’ve ended up feeling like it’s maybe a slightly better movie as a whole. So what I ended up doing was putting “One Battle After Another” as number one in Best Picture and voting for it for Best Adapted Screenplay. But, then I voted for “Sinners” for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
1. “One Battle After Another”
2. “Sinners”
3. “Hamnet”
4. “Marty Supreme”
5. ”Bugonia”
6. “The Secret Agent”
7. “Train Dreams”
8. “Sentimental Value”
9. “Frankenstein”
10. “F1”
Best Director:
Coogler for “Sinners” as stated above.
Best Actress:
I voted for Rose Byrne. I won’t be surprised or sad if Jessie Buckley wins. That’s also a great performance. But I really loved “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” It would have been in my top 5 of the year if it had been nominated for Best Picture, and the movie basically is 100% her. She’s in every scene, and everything plays out from her POV. We’ve seen many movies where characters misbehave and make bad decisions, and that’s certainly the case with her. But, unlike some of the others, she elicited such an empathetic reaction from me.
Best Actor:
I was so impressed by how Michael B. Jordan portrayed two such distinct characters. There was never a moment onscreen where I had any issue discerning which twin it was, and that’s got to be so difficult to pull off.
Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Madigan. That is just a classic, show-stopping supporting performance.
Best Supporting Actor:
I went with Sean Penn. This was tough because I really liked Benicio Del Toro, too, but I think Penn’s choices are just so bonkers and unpredictable. He walked this fine line between being menacing and pathetic, which is so hard to pull off.
Best Adapted Screenplay:
“One Battle After Another”
Best Original Screenplay:
“Sinners”
Best Animated Feature:
Let’s give “Little Amélie” some love. I just really loved the characterizations, and I thought the animation style was beautiful. “Kpop Demon Hunters” was really fun, but for me it was like eating junk food. It didn’t really make me think or feel much of anything.
Best Documentary Feature:
I thought “Cutting Through Rocks” was so riveting. Sara Shahverdi is a very courageous woman, especially given how difficult everything is over there in Iran.
Best International Feature Film:
“The Secret Agent.” It was between this and “It Was Just an Accident.” I was really struck by the filmmaker’s ability to build this really specific sense of time and place.
Best Casting:
“One Battle After Another.” I really liked how both “Marty Supreme” and this cast a lot of non-actors. I couldn’t believe the guy who plays the interrogator was a non-actor. Some of the other casting decisions here were just genius, too, like Jim Downey as the Christmas Adventurers guy.
Best Cinematography:
“Sinners.” It was a tough decision between this and “Frankenstein,” but I thought what Autumn Durald Arkapaw accomplished here was amazing. I think she’s a really exciting cinematographer, generally. I’ve loved pretty much everything she’s shot for the last decade.
Best Costume Design:
“Hamnet.” I wanted to spread the wealth since I voted for “Frankenstein” in Best Production Design.
Best Film Editing:
I mentioned that I’ve watched “One Battle After Another” three times now, and the fact that I can do that with an almost three-hour movie and have it sustain my attention the entire time is a miracle of editing and pacing.
Best Makeup & Hairstyling:
“The Ugly Stepsister.” I was committed to watching all the nominees before voting, and when I saw the list of Makeup & Hairstyling contenders, I was like “Goddammit, Makeup & Hair Branch…I don’t want to watch, like, “The Smashing Machine.” But then, “The Smashing Machine” wasn’t that bad, and I thought “The Ugly Stepsister” was great. I’m a good Academy member, so I watched the makeup bakeoff presentations too. And I’m glad I did, because I was going to vote for “Frankenstein.” But I saw the bakeoff reel where the “Ugly Stepsister” makeup guy was like, “We shot this movie in five weeks, and the makeup department was just my assistant and me.” And then the hair woman was like “The producers told me they didn’t have money for wigs, so I made them myself…and we had to reuse the same wigs between characters, and change them just enough that you wouldn’t notice.” And I found that kind of endearing, especially when it was up against something like “Frankenstein” that had a lot of resources to work with.
Best Production Design:
“Frankenstein“ The sets here were just incredible, especially the ship and that factory where he creates the lab.
Best Original Score:
“Sinners.” For as much as I love the movie, I couldn’t stand the “One Battle After Another” score. I love Jonny Greenwood, and the score accomplished what it was going for, I guess, in that it made me so tense throughout, but I found it just excruciating to listen to. I don’t think it’s a bad score, because those were deliberate choices, but that’s why I didn’t vote for it and why I think “Sinners” has been winning all the prizes for this.
Best Original Song:
I voted for “Golden.” I have a rule: I only vote for songs that were actually included in the film, not the credits. “Golden” was integrated into the score very well here and a central piece of the movie. Plus, I already voted for Ludwig for score.
Best Sound:
“F1.” The film has like nine different races, but they’re all sonically distinct. Some are music-driven, some are dialogue-driven, and they’re all different. I also loved the big crash sequence…they basically take all the sound effects out, and the scene plays almost entirely in silence. You could hear the audience gasp, which made it kind of a communal movie experience.
Best Visual Effects:
“Avatar: Fire and Ash.” I don’t have much to say about this. It was great work. You could vote for this without having even seen it but I did and I enjoyed the bake-off reel too.
Best Animated Short Film:
“Butterfly.” All the animated shorts had such vibrant and memorable animation styles, but this one really stuck with me.
Best Documentary Short Film:
“Perfectly a Strangeness” is a short doc with no dialogue…it’s kind of a tone poem. It’s about these three donkeys and their relationship with the machinery in this automated observatory. There are no humans in it. I voted the way I did because I was having a bit of an allergic reaction to what I felt were these documentary shorts that were kind of engineered in a test tube to get a nomination…they’re all tackling very important issues, whereas here, this was such a thoughtful, quite juxtaposition of the donkeys and their natural environment against this advanced technology.
Live Action Short Film:
“The Singers.” This one just caught me completely off guard. It took a turn and became something I was not expecting at all. I struggled between this and “Two People Exchanging Saliva.” I definitely found that one really arresting and captivating. It kind of reminded me of “Alphaville” and some of those great French New Wave films, but “The Singers” moved me more.
**This voter asked us not to reveal which branch they’re a part of.**
Please let us know your thoughts on our X account and be sure to listen to our final Oscar predictions podcast episode. Please click here for more important upcoming dates this awards season, here for our most recent Oscar predictions, and here for the most recent tally of awards season winners for the current year.
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