The 97th Academy Awards Sunday will determine what films go down in history as the best of 2024 and will leave everyone that pays attention to awards season debating who should’ve won for years to come. There were 16 films that were nominated multiple times for awards led by “Emilia Perez” with 13 and “The Brutalist” and “Wicked” with 10 each, setting up what should be a tightly contested race in most categories. While nobody knows what will win until the envelopes are opened Sunday night, this is how I think the Oscars will play out this year:
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay): “Emilia Perez”
In the first major category of the Oscars, I think “Emilia Perez” is set up perfectly for winning Best Writing for an Adapted Screenplay. The film follows the powerful story of a Mexican cartel leader who enlists the help of a lawyer to transition into a woman and disappear from their family. There were multiple twists and turns throughout the movie, especially when you thought “where does this thing go from here” making this one of the best written movies of the year. The writing really moved you to feel for all the characters involved, like the wife of the cartel leader who thinks she lost her husband and the cartel boss who has never been able to come out as who they want to be. While I don’t think this film was the best I have seen this year, I think it is important to highlight a film like this when there is so much hate for the LGBTQ+ community right now.
Best Writing (Original Screenplay): “The Substance”
“The Substance” was unlike any movie I had ever seen in my life. I can’t even describe the feeling inside of me when the main character becomes “Monstro Elisasue,” an ugly and disgusting-looking creature. I just remember repeating “Oh my God” as I saw the weird thing slither around the screen. But the brilliance in the writing of the film is that it makes you feel bad for the main character and the creature, because they just want to live their lives without being forced to change who they are on the outside due to the harsh reality of the TV industry. I think this movie highlights the fact, in a very extreme way, how hard it is for female stars to live up to the expectations of what it means to “be pretty” in the entertainment world. And a lot of times, people are forced to do whatever they can and want to their body in order to live up to beauty standards. While a lot of people in the U.S. haven’t seen this movie yet, I think it will become a classic as the years go by.
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”
This is one of the hardest awards to give out because almost all of the nominees played their parts perfectly. To me, it comes down to Zoe Saldaña as Rita Mora Castro in “Emilia Perez,” Ariana Grande as Glinda in “Wicked” and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown.” As tempted as I am to give the award out to Grande because she literally played the Good Witch of the South to perfection, I think Barbaro is more deserving of the award for her performance in the Bob Dylan biopic. Barbaro was known predominantly as a dancer before being selected for the role of Baez, and she had to take guitar and singing lessons in order to prepare. Playing guitar is not something that comes very easily, especially the finger-picking style of Baez, which is why I think she deserves the award for all the hard work she put in. Also, almost all of the songs in “A Complete Unknown” were done live during the filming of the movie, without all those green screens and autotune crap, making her performance even more amazing. If you put a video of Barbaro and Baez side by side, you can’t tell much of a difference because her mannerisms were on point, which is why I think she deserves the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Edward Norton as Pete Seeger in “A Complete Unknown”
While everyone else is picking Kieran Culkin to win the award for his performance as Benji Kaplan in “A Real Pain,” I want to take a different approach in picking Norton. While I’m not sure how much I liked the story in “A Complete Unknown,” all of the acting was amazing. Just like Barbaro above, Norton played his role to perfection as the traditionalist folk singer in Seeger. Again, watching videos and listening to records of Seeger and then watching Norton’s performance on the screen showed me how much work he put into that role, and he sounded nearly identical to his real-life counterpart. What really drew me to Norton’s performance was how he toed the line at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival between supporting Bob Dylan and trying to dissuade him from going electric. The highlight for me came when Norton (as Seeger) became so enraged at what he was hearing onstage from Dylan that he grabbed an axe and tried to destroy the soundboard to stop the concert, just like what people claim Seeger did in real life. Luckily for Dylan, the axe was taken out of Seeger’s hands, but Norton’s attention to detail is why I think he deserves the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle in “The Substance”
Demi Moore single-handedly nearly scared me to death while playing Elisabeth Sparkle in “The Substance,” which is why I think she deserves the award in a movie that left me with nightmares. Again, I think hard work pays off for Moore, who had to spend between 45 minutes to 7 hours a day applying prosthetics and makeup in order to play her aging character. Moore basically had to play five different roles, from the beautiful Elisabeth Sparkle to a more aged look after taking the substance (where she had the most disgusting-looking aged finger I have ever seen) to looking like an old hag, to becoming a hunchback (and looking about 120 years old) to finally becoming the “Monstro Elisasue” (I can’t even describe what that looked like without almost throwing up). Anyone who is able to play five different parts in a movie deserves to win an award in my mind, especially when it took her hours to transition to each role. Moore was also the perfect person to be cast as Sparkle because she has had to deal with being held to beauty standards and speaking out on misogyny in the film industry. Moore was everything that this movie set out to accomplish, and I think she is the most deserving of winning Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown”
Bar none, Timothée Chalamet deserves to win this award not only for his performance in “A Complete Unknown” but also for playing the main character in “Dune: Part 2.” His versatility to go from being in a space opera to playing a folk singer just tells you all you need to know. Very rarely do you see two movies that feature the same actor in a leading role nominated for best picture. Similar to Norton and Barbaro above, Chalamet had to play all of his own instruments in the picture and sang 40 songs live during filming. His mannerisms looked exactly like Dylan’s in real life, especially with his constant mumbling, giggling and smoking. I hate to say the same things over and over again, but if you listen to Dylan’s recordings and listen to Chalamet sing, you can’t really tell much of a difference, and he just plays the part so well that it made me feel like I was watching Dylan actually perform. As soon as I got done watching “A Complete Unknown” I knew that Chalamet had locked up the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and I think the 29-year-old will have a lot more Oscars in his future.
Best Directing: Coralie Fargeat for “The Substance”
Like I’ve talked about a few times now, “The Substance” was really the only movie that felt different to me, and was able to be both entertaining, artsy and had a strong meaning behind it. Fargeat focuses on feminist and body image themes as a director, and I think she cooked up the only movie this year that drills its message into the viewer’s brain. I don’t think I can get the images of Elisabeth Sparkle and “Monstro Elisasue” out of my head even if I tried. That really helped me to identify the themes of how the film industry forces women to keep a certain beauty standard if they want to succeed, something that I think deserves to be looked into and maybe this film can finally start the conversation on ending beauty standards in Hollywood. I can guarantee that Fargeat is the only director this year to spray 5,500 gallons of fake blood through a fire hose onto an audience while filming the climactic scene of the movie. She also spent countless hours developing the costumes of the “Monstro Elisasue” and helped to design most of the prosthetics and practical effects. Fargeat directed a movie that pushed the boundaries of body imagery and practical effects, and I think she will be remembered as an influential director down the road. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may not give her the recognition she deserves, I think she is the only choice to win Best Directing.
Best Picture: “Wicked”
The biggest award of the night is also arguably the most tightly contested. While most critics seem to think that “Anora,” “The Brutalist” or “Emilia Perez” should win Best Picture, I think the best choice should be “Wicked.”
This movie was a really fun ride and was the only film nominated for Best Picture that I didn’t have to check the time to see how much longer it was going to be on. The songs in “Wicked” were so darn catchy that I had to stop myself from singing in the parking lot of the Marcus Oshkosh Cinema. I also think that “Wicked” deserves to win because of the homage that it pays to “The Wizard of Oz,” a movie that should have won Outstanding Picture back in 1939. The film picks up on the classic tale that is over 100 years old and really made me feel like my grandma going to watch the original movie in the early 20th century. Even though “Wicked” is a big-budget Hollywood production that can be a bit over the top, the characters are just so timeless I don’t know how someone wouldn’t have fun during it.
I loved the fact that it followed the end of “The Wizard of Oz” nearly identically, and almost all of the same characters as the original movie, not to mention all the fun easter eggs that Oz has to offer. I think with everything going on in the world right now, “Wicked” is the perfect movie to take your mind off of life for almost three hours and just have fun. “The Wizard of Oz” left us with a whole new world that was left untapped, and “Wicked” really brought out the personality and detail in the land of Oz. The acting was also superb as well, with Cynthia Erivo making the audience root for the Wicked Witch of the West and Grande making the Good Witch of the South seem like those annoying sorority girls who walk around campus thinking that they own the place.
Some people will say that “Wicked” really didn’t have the big underlying theme that the other movies did, but I think the movie was perfectly fine without heavily dealing with social issues while dropping in hints of racism in Oz. “Anora” was a film everyone praised for being about a sex worker (which I totally understand is groundbreaking and I’m not saying sex workers shouldn’t have rights too), but if I wanted to spend my time watching a Brooklyn woman yell at people and have sex for more than two hours, I’d just go visit a hooker in New York and get the same experience. “Emilia Perez” was a movie that, while the story was good, was a bit disappointing because the music was bad for a musical and the story didn’t flow at all. “The Brutalist” was a snooze-fest at almost four hours long, and while “The Substance” would be my second choice for Best Picture, I still feel like “Wicked” produced a magical movie because of all the money getting pumped into it. And I’m still a little scared of the “Monstro Elisasue.”
