There is an entire Internet subculture devoted to predicting the Oscars. It has its own Vegas odds-makers, like sporting events, and several different blogs devoted to handicapping the ceremony. Hard and fast rules don't work, and even renowned statistician Nate Silver wasn't as good at predicting who got little gold men as he was at predicting how the 2012 election would unfold.
No matter. If you followed my advice last year, you went with a consensus arrived at after several years of obsessive following of pre-Oscar indicators, gut instinct, and a resolution to not take it so seriously. You also got 18 out of 24 categories correct, which is more than enough to win the pool at most offices or Oscar party pools.
This year should be no different if you follow my foolproof guide to the Oscars. These are the winners wrought by the awards season narrative, and I'll be absolutely sure of each one — until a few of them are wrong on Sunday.
Argo has made a late season push to the front of the pack for Best Picture. Hollywood loves itself, so a movie about making movies (sort of) could swoop in and prevent the solid, but straightforward Lincoln from Mitt-Romney-ing its way to victory.
Argo should pick up Editing and Adapted Screenplay awards as well, while Lincoln consoles itself with wins for Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones performances, and Steven Spielberg's direction. In the other major categories, Jennifer Lawrence wins Best Actress by a nose for Silver Linings Playbook, while Anne Hathaway wins Best Supporting Actress in a landslide (pretty much just for singing the Susan Boyle song from Les Mis, which will also win Sound Mixing for its innovative live-singing production). In a wide-open race, Django Unchained stands poised to take Original Screenplay.
Life of Pi should take a bunch of technical awards for looking pretty — mark it down in cinematography, art direction, visual effects and throw in Best Score as a bonus. Skyfall will become only the third Bond movie to win an Oscar, taking home both Sound Effects Editing and Best Original Song for Adele's titular ballad. Anna Karennina easily wins Best Costumes, and The Hobbit wins makeup for dusting off the hobbit-feet.
That leaves Wreck-It Ralph winning Best Animated Feature, Amour (a Best Picture nominee) easily winning Best Foreign Language Film, Searching For Sugar Man taking Best Documentary, and finally the unpredictable short films. Getting one short film right is a good day: at least Paperman (a partially hand-drawn industry favorite) is a lock for Animated Short. I have gone with Curfew in Live Action Short (it has a cute little kid), and Mondays at Racine (it's about cancer) in Documentary Short.
Without further ado, here's my comprehensive guide to the Academy Awards. Best of luck! And if I'm way off, I promise all of your money back.
Picture: Argo Director: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables Original Screenplay: Django Unchained Adapted Screenplay:Argo Editing:Argo Cinematography:Life of Pi Score:Life of Pi Song: "Skyfall" by Adele from Skyfall Art Direction:Life of Pi Costumes:Anna Karennina Sound Mixing:Les Miserables Sound Effects Editing:Skyfall Makeup: The Hobbit Visual Effects: Life of Pi Foreign:Amour Animated Feature:Wreck-It Ralph Doc Feature:Searching for Sugar Man Doc Short:Mondays at Racine Animated Short: Paperman Live Short: Curfew
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables, for Best Supporting Actress.
The most important thing for any movie to establish early on is its tone. No matter the genre, a film needs to make its audience understand how they should feel as the story unfolds so that they’re willing to go along with whatever transpires on screen. A film that doesn't do that, such as the new Onslaught, runs the risk of failing to connect with viewers even if it has some interesting or fun elements to offer.
One of the biggest issues for the movie is that it fails to fully invest in its main character, Celeste (Adriana Arjona). She’s a military veteran who now lives in and manages a desert trailer park, which is filled with a motley crew of offbeat people. She also has a contentious relationship with her ex, who unexpectedly drops off their daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy), soon after the film begins.
Celeste has a stash of high-powered weapons, showing she hasn’t left her former career fully behind. Her expertise comes in handy when something goes wrong at a nearby military contractor facility run by Hans Kemmler (Dan Stevens), and a trio of super soldiers escapes into the wild. Trained to kill everyone in their path, it’s not long before they set their glowing eyes on the trailer park.
Directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, the film has elements of horror, action, and comedy, but the filmmakers struggle to find the right combination of the three. Wingard and Barrett divide the film’s focus between the trailer park and the military facility for a long time at the beginning of the film, and the quirkiness of people at the former mixed with the bold weirdness of the people at the latter keeps viewers off balance in a bad way.
Once they finally settle into the main part of the story where the super soldiers go on a rampage, the filmmakers overpromise and underdeliver. The showdown between a seemingly unstoppable group and an angry woman and her band of misfits seems destined to be highly entertaining, but comes off as underwhelming. The sequence is filled with brutality with no meaning and heroics that feel more accidental than purposeful.
The ham-fisted way in which the story plays out is disappointing since the film has a bunch of characters who could have been great if used properly. The trauma of Celeste’s military career and personal life is hinted at, but doesn't come into play as much as expected. Hans and his wife Hanna (Rebecca Hall) are completely off-the-wall, but their eccentricities seem to be apropos of nothing. The super soldiers are initially intimidating, but the climactic sequence undercuts them significantly.
Arjona has yet to fully break out despite some good roles in Hit Man and the Disney+ show Andor. She makes for a good lead here, embodying the toughness of a military veteran while still being relatable. Stevens and Hall go all in with their bonkers characters, but the story doesn’t serve them well. Comic relief comes in the form of Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Wareheim, and they do a great job in smaller roles.
A movie like Onslaught is typically one where the audience just turns off their brains and enjoys the carnage. But Wingard and Barrett try a little too hard by throwing in oddball characters that don’t add much to the story, forgetting to pay enough attention to the mechanics of the plot in the process.
