September Poll: What Will Win Best Picture?

Very true. It's very hard to say anything bad about a movie that very few have seen yet!!!

I think we're looking at a solid 6 atm.

Babylon
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Fabelmans
TAR
Top Gun: Maverick
Women Talking


Potential shit show after that.

I think they should just give it to Maverick and call it a night. Women Talking just looks like the type of movie that nobody but critics bother to see. The Academy needs to award best picture to a movie that people actually liked, did well with critics and saw. If they give it to yet another movie that nobody bother to watch then they need to go back to being a private event.

Right now, going with a picture/director split: Maverick/Spielberg.

It's the most obvious choice at this point. 

I think you’re severely underestimating it.

If Beyonce decides to release a theatrical film for her new album Renaissance, I could see that doing well.

Clearly intended to be a reply to the guy before you..

Perhaps, but it has almost universal appeal, both commercially and critically. Even though it’s IP it’s viewed as a breath of fresh air and the opposite of Marvel with its practical effects and old school movie star lead. And it’s likely to benefit from a preferential ballot system. I’d predict it gets a huge percentage of top 5 vote placements, whereas something like EEAAO might have passion for more #1 votes but will also find itself at the very bottom of a lot of ballots as well.

Fuck it, I’ll say Top Gun. Lots of people love it, and nobody dislikes it, both of which are key to winning on a preferential ballot. It’s a massive crowdpleaser, it’s got emotional moments, it ends on a high note, it hits those nostalgia buttons… plus it has a legitimate chance at both BA and adapted screenplay nominations since both those categories are wastelands. Hitting PGA, DGA, SAG, WGA + tech guilds actually feels pretty realistic to me.

We don’t know how The Fabelmans is yet, but my gut tells me that it might be a bit too slight to go all the way. It could be great, but it doesn’t strike me as the type of thing that will generate enough passion to propel it to a win.

Even though EEAAO is probably going to get at least 2 acting noms and is more likely to get into Director, I still don’t buy it as a winner... just feels too oddball/silly, potentially tiresome for some viewers, and not to everyone’s taste. This is anecdotal, but the fact that I’m seeing “this is the worst movie I've ever seen” on random user reviews doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that it will outperform Top Gun on a preferential ballot, especially since that has near-perfect audience scores. That’s not to say EEAAO won’t have passion, just that it doesn’t have as wide of appeal as Top Gun.

Babylon is really the only other movie I could see winning. It’ll probably have the largest nomination total and it’s performed very well at test screenings, but a couple things about it give me pause: The fact that there’s no fest premiere, its runtime (which is apparently 3 hours?), plus part of me thinks that the more prudish members of the Academy might not respond well to the film’s purported salaciousness. While the film’s old Hollywood setting makes it seem like it could be Academy catnip, I’m just not sure I can see everyone completely embracing a three-hour carnival of decadence and debauchery. I imagine it will do better nomination-wise than Wolf of Wall St, but still...

I'm just not seeing Top Gun. It's pretty much just a "boom boom" action movie that borrows some heart from Goose dying in the first film and the real life situation with Kilmer. Cruise of course carries it with his charisma but that's the case for all his action movies and this isn't any better than an MI movie, Edge of Tomorrow, or Oblivion. I wouldn't have had any objection to stuff like The Dark Knight, Skyfall (since The Master had no shot), or Joker winning but this just doesn't seem like the right "blockbuster choice". I think it still gets a nom as a nod to the commercial success but that's it.

These days the Academy always seems to go for the boring little dick energy film twitter movie that everyone forgets about as soon as it wins. When's the last time you've thought about Spotlight, Moonlight, Shape of Water, Nomadland, or Coda? With actual classics like The Revenant, La La Land, or Phantom Thread losing out. Sounds like Fablemans and/or Babylon will be the classic that loses out this year while they give it to Women Talking or something.

Thoughts on The Fabelmans from someone at AW who was at the premiere:

“The Licorice Pizza comparison is actually pretty apt. Kind of got Linklater vibes too. It's essentially a memory piece that doesn't really follow one plot. It sort of jumps from incident to incident without an obvious throughline, which is why some people found it meandering. Looser than I expected, and surprisingly not super sentimental.”

This is my most anticipated film for the rest of the year, and it sounds like something I will love, but the comments about it being “meandering” and “loose” on top of it being a “small and sweet coming of age story” with “a very soft touch” and “not an obvious crowdpleaser” don’t really scream BP winner to me, especially with the comparison to Licorice Pizza (though it seems like it’s more emotional/moving than that). I still think this will be a top 5 BP film, and the fact that it checks the “love letter to cinema” box is definitely a feather in its cap... I just get the feeling BP will go to something bigger this year.

Officially going with Everything Everywhere until completely convinced otherwise. It'll be a bit of an upset, but I think it takes SAG Ensemble and rides the momentum to a surprise BP win.