The 92nd Academy Awards: Who Should Win (Part II)

We are just two days away from this year’s Oscar ceremony, following what has been an atypically brief but typically controversial awards season. In this article, I rank the contenders in the Screenplay, Directing, and Best Picture races and dive into my take on the relative merit of the contenders.

To find out who I think should win in the four acting categories— check out Part I of this article.

To find out who I think will win — check out my preview of tomorrow night’s ceremony.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

5.) Todd Phillips and Scott Silver, Joker (Prior Oscar Appearances: See above re: Phillips; Silver was previously nominated for co-writing 2010’s The Fighter). I didn’t find any aspect of Joker’s screenplay to be particularly impressive. I though it was uninteresting as a character study, lacking in meaningful commentary, devoid of humor or thrills, and even unconvincing as an origin story of a great arch-villain.

4.) Steven Zaillian, The Irishman (Prior Oscar Appearances: He won in this category for 1993’s Schindler’s List and has additional nominations for 1990’s Awakenings, 2002’s Gangs of New York, and 2011’s Moneyball). The truly gifted Zaillian did strong work adapting Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses into a sprawling organized crime epic, but I found the film as a whole to be unnecessarily long and meandering, which is in large part due to an unfocused screenplay.

3.) Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit (Prior Oscar Appearances: He was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film in 2004; this year he is also nominated for co-producing). The ever-quirky and creative Waititi’s adaptation of Christine Leunens’s Caging Skies is full of rich characters, tremendous heart, clever satire, and thought-provoking commentary. However, it also has some cringe-inducing comedy, unbecoming slapstick, and moments that fall a bit flat. Overall it’s a winner, but it’s a bit too flawed to get my vote.

2.) Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes (Prior Oscar Appearances: He was nominated for writing and producing 2014’s The Theory of Everything and for producing 2017’s The Darkest Hour). McCarten’s superb adaptation of his own 2019 book The Pope, is brimming with incisive commentary on society and religion, thought provoking moral questions, and swells of unexpected humor. It also manages to turn two icons into fully believable humans. The degree of difficulty was very high on this one, yet he pulled it off spectacularly.

1.) Greta Gerwig, Little Women (Prior Oscar Appearances: she was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for 2017’s Lady Bird). Two substantial criticisms have been lobbed at Gerwig’s deconstruction on Louisa May Alcott’s timeless 19th century novel, and both of them have sexism at their core. The argument that it is too confusing collapses when you look at how narratives by male auteurs that are far more muddled and unconventional go lauded. The argument that her screenplay deviates from the source material by converting Little Women into a work of feminist resistance represents a serious misunderstanding of Alcott’s book. Even though the story that has already had three high profile big screen adaptations, Gerwig’s version feels fresh, bold, urgent, and necessary. It is almost as much a masterwork as her Lady Bird, which unjustly lost the Best Original Screenplay Oscar two years ago.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

5.) Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917 (Prior Oscar Appearances: see below in Best Director re: Mendes; this is Wilson-Cairns’ first nomination). Some grumbled at the WWI drama’s nomination here given that it is fairly light on plot and heavy on visuals and atmosphere. I, however, found much to admire in the atypically intimate, stage drama-like approach Mendes and Wilson-Cairns took to the traditional war epic.

4.) Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (Prior Oscar Appearances: see below in Best Director). I have enormous respect for the two time Oscar winner and found parts of this film to be on par with his best work. Unfortunately, I found other parts of it to be overwhelmed by self-indulgence, a lack of focus, and regressive vision.

3.) Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story (Prior Oscar Appearances: He was nominated in this category for 2005’s The Squid and the Whale; he is also nominated for co-producing his year). Some have criticized Baumbach for concocting a lopsided narrative for his semi-autobiographical divorce drama in which the husband’s feelings and actions were better articulated and more believable than the wife’s. I didn’t have that problem, though, and actually thought he did a tremendous job of exploring some of the most painful aspects of uncoupling that most films gloss over. Nevertheless, there were some unnecessarily pretentious elements that prevented this one from being a slam dunk for me.

2.) Rian Johnson, Knives Out (Prior Oscar Appearances: None; this is his first nomination). Johnson’s brilliant murder mystery is a screenwriting masterpiece. It is savagely funny, rapidly paced, genuinely intriguing, and brimming with rich social commentary. For me, the most impressive part of screenplay is how it becomes apparent after viewing that there was not a single set up that does not pay off.

1.) Bong Joon-Ho and Han Jin-Won, Parasite (Prior Oscar Appearances: See below in Best Director re: Joon-Ho; this is Jin-won’s first nomination). It is unsurprising that what was easily my favorite film of the year also had my favorite screenplay. Joon-Ho and Jin-Won’s genre-defying script has a remarkably complex narrative that creates a host of memorable and believable characters caught up in a remarkably complex plot that builds nail-biting suspense and examines universal themes about the relationship between the rich and the poor in the modern world.

BEST DIRECTOR:

5.) Todd Phillips, Joker (Prior Oscar Appearances: He was nominated in 2006 for co-writing the Sacha Baron Cohen satire Borat; he is nominated for three Oscars this year for directing, co-producing, and co-writing). It truly brings me no joy to be this savage, but there wasn’t a single stretch of Joker that I didn’t feel like was made by an aspiring film student desperate to emulate the early works of Martin Scorcese.

4.) Martin Scorcese, The Irishman (Prior Oscar Appearances: He has been nominated for 12 Oscars and won for Best Director in 2006 for The Departed; he is nominated for two Oscars this year for directing and co-producing). As one of the greatest living film directors in the world, Scorcese’s mastery of his craft is not up for debate. As expected, there is much to admire about the way the sprawling drama is brought to screen, including the sustained dramatic tension, the rich period detail, and that gorgeous denouement that serves as a fascinating commentary on the final stage of his life and career. However, the film is also at least one hour too long, which undercuts much of the film’s power.

3.) Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (Prior Oscar Appearances: He has been nominated five times prior and has won twice for Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained; he is nominated for three Oscars this year for directing, co-producing, and co-writing). Another impressive film by an indisputably great director that didn’t quite cohere into a masterpiece due to having a bit too much fat left on the bone, Tarantino’s Hollywood is a delightful, visually dazzling, and engrossing film that nevertheless also has numerous problematic elements and an overly long running time.

2.) Sam Mendes, 1917 (Prior Oscar Appearances: He won the Best Director Oscar in 1999 for American Beauty; he is nominated for three Oscars this year for directing, co-producing, and co-writing). Many hailed Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk as a modern masterpiece, but I could not help feeling that it was far more of a technical achievement than as a human drama. In contrast, Mendes manages to create a deeply emotional and resonant story (if not an overly complex one) while nearly matching Nolan’s astonishing production values.

1.) Bong Joon-Ho, Parasite (Prior Oscar Appearances: None; he is nominated for three Oscars this year for directing, co-producing, and co-writing). I have no doubt that decades after he inevitably loses the Oscar to Mendes on Sunday night, Joon-Ho’s work on Parasite will be considered as one of the greatest achievements in film history. It is visually and emotionally captivating and feels wholly original in tone and execution.

BEST PICTURE:

9.) Joker (11 nominations). I won’t belabor the criticisms, I have lobbed against its screenplay, direction, and acting. Suffice it to say, I found this film to be dramatically inert, lacking in tension, and largely devoid of substance.

8.) Ford v. Ferrari (4 nominations). If the phrase “They just don’t make them like they used to” was somehow converted into a film, the result would be Ford v. Ferrari. That’s not necessarily a criticism. James Mangold’s period car racing film features an involving story, superb production values, and terrific acting by Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Catrione Balfe, and Tracy Letts. It was hardly my favorite film of the year, but the Academy has nominated much, much weaker films for its top award.

7.) Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (10 nominations). I have written at length about my mixed feelings about Tarantino’s 9th film both in my Oscar preview articles and in the review I published on the opening weekend. In sum, there were some truly brilliant aspects and unforgettable scenes in the film, but there were also some significant problems that prevent it from being a serious contender for best film of the year in my view.

6.) The Irishman (10 nominations). Similar to Hollywood, The Irishman is a film that is less than the sum of its respective parts. Unlike Hollywood, there is no single element or scene of The Irishman that doesn’t work. There’s just too much of it to be a truly focused, compelling experience.

5.) Marriage Story (6 nominations). Despite some distracting pretentiousness and overly familiar tropes, Baumbach’s divorce drama is a brilliantly acted, incisive, and deeply affecting character drama that fully deserves the accolades that have been bestowed upon it.

4.) Jojo Rabbit (6 nominations). I was initially turned off by the bizarre premise and the seemingly glib trailers, but once I got past all that I was delighted to find something far deeper than the Nazi-era Wes Anderson knockoff I feared it would be. I found a deeply involving coming-of-age story about how hate is perpetuated and how love can defeat it. Waititi really pulls off something special and unexpected here.

3.) Little Women (7 nominations). Greta Gerwig’s retelling of the literary classic is a work of tremendous beauty. It is visually dazzling and highly entertaining, while also being a masterful character study that handles complicated themes and a tricky time period with aplomb. It’s a superb achievement that should have made Gerwig the first woman to ever receive two nominations for Best Director.

2.) 1917 (10 nominations). I am not a particularly big fan of war films. I typically find them to be impressive technical feats that fail to engage me emotionally or surprise me with fresh themes. Unexpectedly, I was blown away by Sam Mendes’s urgent, captivating, emotionally raw, and all around stunning drama about two young men’s extremely dangerous mission behind enemy lines to prevent a regiment from walking into a deadly trap. Many who, like me, are rooting for Parasite to triumph in the Best Picture race have unfairly painted the inevitable win for 1917 as a travesty. I hugely disagree and believe that it would be a worthy winner.

1.) Parasite (6 nominations). No film released in 2019 — or perhaps even the last few years — knocked me out like Parasite. It is extremely rare that a single movie manages to astonish me with its visuals, challenge me with its themes, and keep me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It is a truly brilliant film that will be remembered as the best film of 2019 even after it inevitably loses the top prize.

I will be blogging all throughout awards season, so follow me on Medium and/or Twitter if you want to stay up to date on how things progress.

Check out my other awards show articles on last year’s Oscars and this year’s Golden Globe Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Primetime Emmys.

Check out my reviews of the following nominees: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and Marriage Story