What if the Oscars’ Best Picture race were held tomorrow? VIDEO
Topics:
Beguiled,
Dunkirk,
Entertainment,
Get Out,
Good Time,
Movies,
the oscars, Entertainment News
To be a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences is to process the coming of the autumn differently than the non-Academy population. Where a non-Academy person may have their thoughts consumed with Pumpkin! or. .. Pumpkin what? or [Sigh] School, members of the Academy hear a voice that sounds like Dap at the end of “School Daze” screaming WAKE UP!
Every year, it’s as if the Academy sleeps deeply through the first eight months of movie awards eligibility, only stirring when there is a loud buzz from a Linklater or an Anderson or a Bigelow. It treats these movies as skeptically — but not as flirtatiously — as Miss Martha treats wounded Union soldiers.
Granted, the Academy harbors more harmful prejudices than its one against films released in the first two thirds of the movie calendar. But its bias against these films verges on its most consistent and pronounced. In the past five years, only five films released from February through September have been nominated for Best Picture (11.6% of nominated films) , and none has won. And the situation doesn’ t get much rosier when you go back further. Since 2000, only four films released during that period have won the Oscars’ biggest award (“American Beauty, ” “Gladiator, ” “Crash” and “ The Hurt Locker ”) .
In fairness to the Academy, though, the disproportionate outcomes can just as easily be pinned on the movie studios. Movie studios release their most prestigious films at the end of the year and campaign hard for those films to win awards. Executives would probably tell you that they do that because voters have recency bias and don’ t pay as close attention to movies released early in the year. But voters might tell you that they don’ t pay attention to movies released early in the year because studios release their best material at the end of the year. Somewhere in movie studios’ actions and voters’ actions there is a chicken and an egg; it’s hard to pinpoint which is which. Both sides’ perceptions compound the effect.
But it doesn’ t have to be this way. There are great movies released in February and March, April and May. Hell, even in June and August and September. A film released in July has never won best picture. But damnit, a film released in July can be good too!
This year has felt like a particularly good one for films released in those barren non-fall and early winter months. “Dunkirk” is the sort of undeniable cinematic tour de force that actually breaks the pattern and wins Best Picture despite its August release. Sofia Coppola made one of the most sumptuous movies I can recall laying my eyes on with “The Beguiled” — a movie which is also in turns frightening and funny. No matter what comes this fall, it’s hard to imagine a film being more culturally resonant than Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” And young indie filmmakers like Sarah Adina Smith, Macon Blair, Josh and Benny Safdie and David Lowery made films that felt truly fresh — beautifully weird or emotional or some combination thereof. And most importantly, this year’s movies have been fun. There have been redneck heists, 90-minute shootouts, perfectly scored car chases, even a superpig chase.
