SURPRISES
Best Actress – Ruth Negga
OK, not one negative word was uttered about “Loving” this season. Focus Features had a beautiful movie on their hands, it had a political and diversity angle to it, so while not traditional Oscar bait nor made for cynical reasons, it seemed Oscar bound. But during the season “Loving” had no heat and felt like it was headed for snubs across the board. And yes, “Loving” nearly was totally shut out. But a huge surprise: Ruth Negga scoring Best Actress and moving actresses like Amy Adams (“Arrival”) to the side. Now pretty much all critics and pundits agreed, Negga was the standout in “Loving,” deserved all the recognition in the world, but pretty much everyone thought the film was DOA for awards. Even more than Isabelle Huppert (who scored lots of awards and critical love along the way), there’s an argument to be made that Negga’s Best Actress nomination is THE biggest shocker of the 2017 Oscar nominations.
Best Actress – Isabelle Huppert
Wow! OK, everyone actually adores Isabelle Huppert, one can argue it’s her time after all these years, she had a terrific 2017 (see “Things To Come” and other small pictures that hit Cannes) and critics groups fell over themselves to laud her brave, nuanced and complex turn in Paul Verhoeven’s incredible but insane, border-line offensive “Elle.” The question was, despite all the love, and a Golden Globe win for Best Actress too, would enough Academy voters have actually seen “Elle”? The answer was yes (and or they voted for her regardless). It’s paving the way for an amazing run for Huppert, and who knows, this could be her moment.
Best Director – Mel Gibson
Its surprise hit status and mostly positive reviews meant that awards love for “Hacksaw Ridge,” in the “American Sniper” red meat category, became increasingly possible as the weeks and months went on across the season. But even as the movie itself and Andrew Garfield became solidified as strong possibilities, if not certainties, there remained a question over its director. It’s hard to quibble with the movie’s craft, but Gibson’s controversies over the last decade or so are hard to forgive in many quarters. Were the Academy ready to separate the art from the artist, and honor Gibson’s directing work in the movie? Well, we live in a world where orange sex pest Donald Trump was elected president, so yeah, duh, obviously they were.
Best Supporting Actor – Michael Shannon
Look, Michael Shannon was hands down the best element of “Nocturnal Animals,” but no one expected this. His turn as the dying and nutty Texas Sheriff was gonzo and unhinged; an extreme delight in the movie. But throughout the season, Shannon received no love (with most expecting Golden Globe winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson to make it if anyone did from this movie) , so this is certainly a pleasant surprise.
“Passengers”
What? OK, besides being one of the most problematic films of 2016, you know, with all those pesky ethical issues and whatnot (guess we can’t spoil yet), “Passengers” was a pretty forgettable, anonymously directed sci-fi film. No one would have ever guessed that a movie like this would earn some recognition. But “Passengers” scored two nominations for Best Production Design and Best Original Score. The former we understand in a sense. There’s a world created here and it’s… a distinct look (though rather clean and bland). But Best Original Score is borderline outrageous. First of all, John Williams has been nominated for his last four scores and is like Meryl Streep — he’s almost a lock every time. But his score for Steven Spielberg’s “The BFG” went completely unnoticed (so did the entire movie). Secondly there were plenty of more deserving scores and perhaps one whose praises hasn’t been sung enough is the beautiful chorale of “Manchester By The Sea” by Lesley Barber. Some predicted “Hacksaw Ridge” and other expected possibilities included “Nocturnal Animals,” “Kubo And The Two Strings,” and “Hidden Figures.”
Best Original Song – “The Empty Chair”
Quick, raise your hand if you’ve heard of “Jim: The James Foley Story”? Yeah, us neither. And that pretty much says it all about the nomination of “The Empty Chair” for Best Song, until you realize that the music and lyrics were co-written by Sting. Believe it or not, this is now the former The Police frontman’s fourth Oscar nomination for Best Song, previously honored for “Cold Mountain,” “Kate & Leopold,” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.” He’ll probably have to keep waiting to put an Oscar on the shelf thanks to “La La Land,” but it seems inevitable that one day Gordon Sumner will take home the trophy.
Best Visual Effects: “Kubo & The Two Strings”
Given that we consider “Kubo & The Two Strings” to be one of the best films in any medium to be released last year, we were thrilled to see it turn up in the Animated Feature category. But we were doubly excited — and rather surprised — that it managed a second nomination, for Best Visual Effects. There’s a slight assumption among voters that effects in animated films are part and parcel of the whole package, but Focus and Laika clearly did a good job at convincing the branch that the embellishment of the stop-motion work in their film was just as impressive as anything in a Marvel or “Star Wars” movie, and it became the first animated film since “The Nightmare Before Christmas” to be nominated in the category. Also more surprising was a VFX nod for “Deepwater Horizon,” an financially underperforming movie that most had written off in this category (and in Sound Editing, where it also picked up a nomination).
Best Original Screenplay: Mike Mills and “The Lobster”
Few films inspired as much adoration last year at Playlist HQ than “20th Century Women,” but we’d mostly resigned ourselves to the thought that it only really had one shot at a nomination, for Annette Bening. Bafflingly, she didn’t make it (see above), but thrillingly, the film was still recognized, for Mike Mills’ Original Screenplay. The category is often used to recognize films that voters like but not enough to nominate elsewhere, and that definitely paid off for Mills here. Also filling a similar role was “The Lobster,” a movie that’s very firmly not one that usually appeals to the Academy, but which made the cut for Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou’s work today. It was perhaps less of a surprise than “20th Century Women” — though its WGA ineligibility and a miss with BAFTA might have made it look like an outsider, the shift of “Moonlight” and (the un-nominated) “Loving” from Original at the WGA to Adapted with the Academy helped free up a slot for a film that many experts, including our own awards guru Greg, had predicted to make the cut.
Best Sound Editing – “La La Land”
In order to get fourteen nominations and tie the all time record, “La La Land” had to pull off a nomination that no one was predicting. The obvious contender would be in Sound Editing, but actually the odds were still pretty long: remarkably, no musical has ever been nominated in the category before. But the Academy’s love for the movie carried through there, and Damien Chazelle’s movie got to make history twice over. The next question is: how many can it win?
Anything else you think deserves a shout-out as a shock or a surprise? Let us know in the comments.
– Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez, Kevin Jagernauth, Gregory Ellwood
