Oscar Predictions

Ok, the Globes are (thankfully) over, I've seen most of the perspective nominees (I'm just waiting on Waltz with Bashir and maybe Revolutionary Road, I refuse to see The Reader) and most of the award shows have announced their nominees, so it's time for my Oscar picks. First will be my dream ballot, then my actual predictions

Best Picture:
Hope:
Synecdoche, New York
The Wrestler
The Dark Knight
the Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Knight
Benjamin Button
Milk
The Wrestler
Most people have Frost/Nixon making it over The Wrestler. I just can't believe that they'd nominate two films as needlessly mediocre as Slumdog and Frost/Nixon, and while Slumdog was unquestionably the lesser film, it also has much more hype. The Wrestler was the best reviewed non-documentary of the year.

Best Actor:
Hope:
Mickey Rourke The Wrestler
Sean Penn Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Synecdoche, New York
Brendan Gleeson In Bruges
Sam Rockwell Snow Angels
Actual:
Sean Penn
Mickey Rourke
Brad Pitt Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frank Langella Frost/Nixon
Clint Eastwood Gran Torino
Dicaprio is the dark horse, but I doubt he'll get it. The academy is far too stupid to actually honor Synecdoche, and they've already forgotten In Bruges and Snow Angels. Langella and Eastwood were fine, so I'm not really complaining.

Best Actress:
Hope (honestly, I haven't seen that many films with female leads this year, so I'm just basing this on actresses I like):
Anne Hathaway Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins Happy-Go-Lucky
Kate Winslet Revolutionary Road
Rebecca Hall Vicky Christina Barcelona
Cate Blanchett The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Actual:
Hathaway
Hawkins
Winslet
Hall
Merryl Streep Doubt
I don't know much about this category. Streep gets the nod over Blanchett because she's Streep.

Best Director:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
David Fincher The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Chris Nolan The Dark Knight
Darren Aronofsky The Wrestler
Jonathon Demme Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
David Fincher
Chris Nolan
Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire
Ron Howard Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant Milk
I think the directors of the five best films deserve the nominations (all five films had great visuals in their own way). Ron Howard is a bad director. People don't seem to understand this. Danny Boyle is a good director. Slumdog is his worst film. Even fewer people seem to understand this. I have no problem with Van Sant getting the nomination. Milk was a very well-directed film.

Supporting actor:
Wish:
Heath Ledger The Dark Knight
Emile Hirsch Milk
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes In Bruges
Actual:
Ledger
Brolin Milk
Fiennes The Reader
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Doubt
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
I refuse to see any films that can be described as manipulative dreck about the holocaust, so I haven't seen The Reader, but I do love Fiennes, and his performance in In Bruges was wonderful. Doubt just wasn't that good, so I'd rather see Hoffman's spot go to Downey, who gave the year's funniest supporting performance. They may be marketing Bardem as a lead actor, but he was great. Ledger should win.

Best supporting actress:
Wish:
Penelope Cruz Vicky Christina Barcelona
Amy Adams Doubt
Samantha Morton Synecdoche, New York
Marissa Tomei The Wrestler
Rosemarie Dewitt Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Cruz
Tomei
Kate Winslett The Reader
Taraji P. Henson The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Viola Davis Doubt
I'm in the minority on this, but I thought Amy Adams gave the best performance in Doubt, and essentially saved the film from absolute mediocrity. Things that make me angry: 1. The lack of any love for Synecdoche

Original Screenplay:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
Robert D. Siegel The Wrestler
Jenny Lumet Rachel Getting Married
Andrew Stanton Wall-E
Martin McDonagh In Bruges
Actual:
Lumet
Stanton
Black
Woody Allen Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Coen Brothers Burn After Reading
Why can't anyone recognize the brilliance of Synecdoche? Burn After Reading was great, but not really Oscar-worthy. I'd be perfectly ok if Allen was nominated.

Adapted Screenplay
Wish:
Eric Roth Benjamin Button
Jonathon Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer The Dark Knight
John Ajvide Lindqvist Let The Right One In
David Gordon Green Snow Angels
Dan Gilroy, Tarsem The Fall
Actual:
Roth
Nolans and Goyer
Simon Beaufoy Slumdog
Peter Morgan Frost/Nixon
John Patrick Shanley Doubt
The Fall really didn't have a great screenplay, but there weren't that many films I liked this year from adapted screenplay, namely the final three films listed here.

Dream major nominee count:

Synecdoche: 5

The Wrestler: 5

Rachel Getting Married: 5

Benjamin Button: 4

Dark Knight: 4

Milk: 3

In Bruges: 3

Vicky Christina Barceona: 3

Snow Angels: 2

Happy-Go-Lucky: 1

Revolutionary Road: 1

Tropic Thunder: 1

Doubt: 1

Let The Right One In: 1

The Fall: 1

Wall-E: 1

I'll pick winners after the actual nominations come out

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's films have always had a polarizing effect on audiences. Personally, I have at least sort of enjoyed all of his films. Pi is kind of a mess, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching, Requiem for a Dream is one of the most perfectly disturbing films of all time (can anyone give a legitimate explanation for Ellen Burstyn losing best actress to Julia Roberts?), and The Fountain, aside from some mediocre acting, is a pretty good film. All of those films are highly stylized and do occasionally rely too heavily on different camera and editing tricks to get the point across. When I finally saw the preview for his latest film, The Wrestler, I was shocked. The film looks like it was shot on a handheld camera (just like Rachel Getting Married) and uses none of the stylistic tricks of Aronofsky's earlier work. This film simply relies on a great story, good, simple (at least for Aronofsky) direction and one of the great screen performances in recent years from Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson.

As the film opens, the camera stays behind Rourke as he sits in the changing room after a match. He walks out and the camera follows him, almost afraid to show his battered face to the crowd. The other wrestlers and the devoted fans all treat the Ram as a hero, and his opponents are honored to lose to him. His promoter gets him to agree to fight a rematch of his most famous bout, against a wrestler called the Ayatollah, at an upcoming convention, and Randy, now relegated to weekend fights in high school gyms and rec centers, sees it as his shot at a comeback. That night he goes to a strip club to see his one friend not involved in the wrestling industry, a dancer named Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei. She is nearly Randy's age, and she can also sense that her days in this career are coming to an end. During the days he works, unloading boxes at a grocery store. After a brutal match involving barbed wire and a staple gun, Randy has a heart attack, and his doctors tell him that he must quit wrestling. He tries to leave the ring, pursue Cassidy and reconnect with his teenage daughter (played by Evan Rachel Wood), but nothing works out. Despite their obvious connection, Cassidy has a thing against dating customers, and his daughter hates him, deservedly so, for never being there and ruining her life. Even when he has a shot with her, he forgets to go, and she decides that they will never see each other again. Randy realizes that his life is in the ring, and he reschedules the rematch. The final shots of The Ram giving it all for the crowd in what he knows may be his final match are among the most intense and heartbreaking in any film this year.
Without Rourke, this film would have been nothing. If you have read any reviews of The Wrestler, you have heard enough of how Rourke's career path perfectly follows Randy's. The audience's knowledge of Rourke's life, going from Hollywood heartthrob to broken down boxer to resurrected star, adds to the depth and reality of the performance. The Ram's final speech to the crowd, where he talks about how he has always done this for them, feels more real than any other moment in film this year. If the Oscars were actually based on artistic merit and not politicking, Rourke would already have his trophy. As it stands, he is the leader in a race with Sean Penn for Milk and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, which I plan on seeing later this week. Since the academy will no doubt ignore Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work in the criminally underrated Synecdoche, New York, the other nominees will probably be Brad Pitt for his great work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and either Clint Eastwood, Leonardo Dicaprio or Richard Jenkins. I can say with full certainty that Rourke's performance is the best of the bunch. outside of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and maybe Hoffman in Synecdoche (the two performances are very different but essentially equal in my mind) it is probably the strongest leading role over the last few years. Tomei also got a golden globe nomination, and I think her work was strong enough to earn her a best supporting actress nomination later this month. Finally, just as a matter of note, any film that can make me forget how much I hate Guns 'n Roses, even if it's just for a few minutes, must be a great film, and that certainly describes The Wrestler.

Rating (out of ****): ****