 Image c/o Drew Paxman By Drew Paxman Editorial Designer/Visiting Entertainment Columnist Awards season is wrapping up and very few questions remain. This season’s Oscar races, with a few exceptions we will dive into, have cemented clear frontrunners in almost every above-the-line category. But that doesn’t mean we necessarily think those frontrunners should win.
In this article, you’ll see our final predictions for the above-the-line categories for the 2024 Academy Awards and who The Collegian staff thinks should win. Best Picture The nominees: American Fiction Anatomy of a Fall Barbie The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon Maestro Oppenheimer Past Lives Poor Things The Zone of Interest Expected Winner: Oppenheimer Staff Pick: Oppenheimer or Barbie This one is a done deal. Christopher Nolan’s sweeping summer blockbuster biopic is (spoiler alert) set to dominate on Oscar night. Oppenheimer won best picture prizes at the Golden Globes (for Best Motion Picture - Drama), the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the BAFTAs in addition to picking up a win for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the SAG Awards. Couple those wins with 13 nominations and you have a set frontrunner. Our staff, however, is more divided. While half of us sided with the likely winner, the other half favored its summer blockbuster sibling, Barbie. While our polling may have been close, don’t expect the same results on March 10. Best Director The nominees: Anatomy of a Fall - Justine Triet Killers of the Flower Moon - Martin Scorsese Oppenheimer - Christopher Nolan Poor Things - Yorgos Lanthimos The Zone of Interest - Jonathan Glazer Expected Winner: Christopher Nolan Staff Pick: Christopher Nolan This one may be more set than Best Picture if you can believe that. Like his film in the Best Picture category, Nolan has won every best director award at the major precursors. Additionally, Nolan has never won an Oscar before, creating an “overdue” narrative that provides more incentive for voters to vote for him. Both our staff and awards voting bodies agree: Nolan’s directorial achievements are undeniable. Best Actor The nominees: Bradley Cooper - Maestro Colman Domingo - Rustin Paul Giamatti - The Holdovers Cillian Murphy - Oppenheimer Jeffrey Wright - American Fiction Expected Winner: Cillian Murphy Staff Pick: Cillian Murphy More Oppenheimer dominance, though this category is less crystal clear. After taking home the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor, Paul Giamatti seemed like the likely frontrunner for his starring turn in The Holdovers. However, after recent wins at the BAFTAs and SAG (in addition to his Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama at the Globes), Murphy has ascended to the frontrunner position. Our staff agrees that Murphy should win, but also note both Giamatti’s and Bradley Cooper’s performances as particularly stellar. Best Actress The nominees: Annette Bening - Nyad Lily Gladstone - Killers of the Flower Moon Sandra Hüller - Anatomy of a Fall Carey Mulligan - Maestro Emma Stone - Poor Things Expected Winner: Lily Gladstone Staff Pick: Lily Gladstone or Emma Stone The hardest category to predict. A case can easily be made for both Stone and Gladstone as far as who will win on Oscar night. Let’s start with the basics. Both Stone and Gladstone won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in their respective categories. Stone then went on to win the Critics’ Choice and the BAFTA, while Gladstone recently was the victor at SAG. A few external factors separate these two nominees, as well. First off, Gladstone has a much stronger narrative than Stone. Her win would signify the first Best Actress win for any indigenous person and, unlike Stone, would be her first win in the category (Stone previously won this award in 2017 for La La Land, so there may not be a desire to reward her a second time so soon). Disputes given whether Gladstone is in the right category given her limited screen time, however, hurt her campaign. Gladstone was also not nominated at BAFTA, a noteworthy miss given Killers of the Flower Moon’s success in securing nominations in other categories. This situation can very easily be compared to last year’s Best Actress race in which SAG and Golden Globe winner Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once) defeated Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and BAFTA winner Cate Blanchett (Tár) for the Oscar, becoming the first Asian-American actor to win Best Actress. While on the surface it seems like Gladstone’s case is identical to Yeoh’s, a couple factors separate this year’s race from last year’s: 1) Yeoh is a veteran actor and has been a force-to-be-reckon with in the film industry, creating an “overdue” narrative, and 2) Yeoh’s film went on to be the biggest Oscar winner since 2008, winning Best Picture and six other awards. Gladstone is a relatively new face in the film industry and does not have an “overdue” narrative like Yeoh. Additionally, Killers of the Flower Moon is firmly out of the Best Picture-winning conversation (Gladstone’s win would likely be the only one it would get). However, because of the significance of winning a SAG Award and because of similarities between Gladstone’s and Yeoh’s cases, we are hesitantly predicting Gladstone to win the Oscar. Our staff is just as torn on our personal preference as we are on our prediction. Stone and Gladstone give star-marking performances in their respective films. While Gladstone is subtly brilliant, Stone is eccentrically commanding on the screen. We understand voter’s confusion in picking a winner. Best Supporting Actor The nominees: Sterling K. Brown - American Fiction Robert De Niro - Killers of the Flower Moon Robert Downey, Jr. - Oppenheimer Ryan Gosling - Barbie Mark Ruffalo - Poor Things Expected Winner: Robert Downey, Jr. Staff Pick: Robert Downey, Jr. or Ryan Gosling Another addition to the Oppenheimer sweep. RDJ has this one in the bag. The former Avenger has won a Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice Award, BAFTA, and SAG Award for his performance as Lewis Strauss. At The Collegian, we are a little more mixed than the voting bodies. While we love Downey, Jr.’s performance, we are partial to Ryan Gosling’s comedic turn as Ken in Barbie. Unfortunately for him, Gosling’s performance might not have been Kenough to steal this Oscar away from Robert Downey, Jr. Best Supporting Actress The nominees: Emily Blunt - Oppenheimer Danielle Brooks - The Color Purple America Ferrera - Barbie Jodie Foster - Nyad Da’Vine Joy Randolph - The Holdovers Expected Winner: Da’Vine Joy Randolph Staff Pick: America Ferrera Another easy one here. Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s hauntingly beautiful performance in The Holdovers has got her all four major precursors and plenty of critics awards. Like Supporting Actor, this race is over. Our staff, however, preferred a different performance. Most of The Collegian staff voted for America Ferrera’s powerful performance as Gloria in Barbie. Her powerful monologue near the end sealed the deal for many of our writers.
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 By Andrew Martinez Cabrera Entertainment Editor For cinephiles, the new year has begun with several momentous cinematic events. The Oscars are coming up and audience members have been bickering over nominations, snubs, and ultimately, disappointing winnings. While studios are busy campaigning for their Best Picture nominees, they have also been dumping movies that no one will watch and, ultimately, will die on arrival. The movie that has been leading in this category is the new live-action adaptation of Madame Web.
Madame Web is the third movie made by Sony-Marvel that is not connected to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It also relates to Spider-Man’s extended universe (whatever that means) without ever showing Spider-Man. Instead, audience members follow the title character, Cassandra Webb, played flatly by Dakota Johnson, an EMT/ambulance driver in 2003’s New York City before getting her superpowers. I find it fitting that the movie is set in the early 2000’s. It felt like they found a 20-year-old script in a warehouse and decided to produce it so that Sony wouldn’t lose their license. Madame Web feels like a time capsule, reminiscent of a time when studios were still trying to figure out how to make superhero movies and would just throw things on a wall until something stuck. Madame Web, unlike an itsy-bitsy spider climbing on the wall, is a massacred splotch that stained the wall and somehow found itself in movie theaters. Let's be honest, no one is going to watch this. If I were to assign merit to an otherwise meritless cash grab, I’d say it is fun to watch. That being said, this fun comes at the cost of also having to sit through some boring sludge, just to end up laughing at the most abysmal line reads. So, indulge me in spoiling a movie that isn’t worth $12 of your hard-earned cash. Instead of going to the theaters, choose to stream this movie in the future, like Madame Web would have wanted it. That’s her whole gimmick anyway. Tell me, when you think of Spider-Man’s superpowers, do you picture web-swinging, superhuman abilities like strength and speed, and the famous Spidey-sense? What are Madame Web’s powers, you might ask? Clairvoyance. You know, that classic thing spiders do. Does she have any other abilities? Nope. Does she get a costume? Not until the last minute of the movie. The only connection between the two franchises is that she was bitten by a spider in the Amazon (or technically her mother was). A lot of plot building happens, and then she falls into a river and dies. Cassandra then gains her powers when an indigenous tribe of Spider-people helps her dying mother give birth to her or something. Hence, her powers become trauma-induced. This chaotic scene takes place in the first 20 minutes of the movie before it becomes a confusing version of Groundhog Day, where she’s struck with disjointed flashes of the future yet to happen. One of these flashes reveals to Cassandra that three teenage girls will also be targeted by the same evil Spider-Man-like figure that killed her mother. Does that sound convoluted? It is. Does this sound like a real movie? I know it shouldn’t be. Madame Web is undercooked in every single aspect of the movie-making process, from its weak script to weirdly-paced editing sequences, it is a disappointment. And again, no charismatic actors occur whatsoever. Part of its “charm” (and that’s being generous) is that it doesn’t feel like a superhero movie for the majority of its runtime. The references to Spider-Man are there to remind you of a different universe that audiences like more. This can clearly be seen in the movie’s teasing of the birth of Peter Parker,as if he were Jesus Christ Himself. The final scene of this movie perfectly encapsulates Sony/Marvel’s capitalistic ethos. Throughout the movie, Pepsi incorporated explicit product placement during seemingly inappropriate scenes, making their brand critical to the plot itself. Instead of ending the movie at a famous New York landmark, the director settled on a Pepsi-Cola billboard atop a decrepit firework factory. The ending in itself sounds like a cheap mad-libs construction. It culminated with one of the letters from the billboard detaching and crushing the villain to death; we can thank Madame Web’s clairvoyance for that one. To make matters worse, this death was teased throughout the entire movie. I couldn’t help but groan when I realized why: an advertisement takes out the bad guy and an inanimate Pepsi-Cola becomes the hero. It sounds like something Don Draper from Mad Men would have pitched. The movie ends with Cassandra saying that the best part about the future is that it hasn’t happened yet. It’s a sweet-enough sentiment lazily hamfisted into the movie. The best part of my future is never having to see Madame Web again. |
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