2018 Oscars Predictions
Gettysburgian media critic Jackie McMahon
By Jackie McMahon, Staff Writer
The nominations have been announced, the stars are getting red carpet ready, and the 90th Academy Awards ceremony is set to air on March 4 on ABC. That means it’s time to place our bets on who will take home those coveted golden statuettes. Here are this author’s predictions for who will win Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture, and if you want to fill out your own Oscars predictions, you can do so on their official website Oscars.com.
Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Oldman has already won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for his performance as Winston Churchill in this World War II historical drama. With two wins under his belt, the Oscar seems to be his for the taking. Fellow nominees Timothée Chalamet and Daniel Kaluuya are both Hollywood superstars in the making after their roles in Call Me By Your Name and Get Out, but it’s rare to see such young actors win Best Actor, putting them at a disadvantage. And while the other two nominees, Daniel Day-Lewis and Denzel Washington, give admirable performances in Phantom Thread and Roman J. Israel, Esq. respectively, these aren’t their most memorable roles. They don’t seem to match up to their previous Oscar winning performances (Day-Lewis has three Best Actor awards for Lincoln, My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood, while Washington won for Glory and Training Day).
Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Like Oldman, McDormand already has a Golden Globe and a SAG Award under her belt for her role in Three Billboards, which is a solid indicator of Oscars success. She also seems to be in the Academy’s good graces, with a Best Actress win for Fargo in 1997 and three Best Supporting Actress nominations. However, I wouldn’t count out Lady Bird’s Saoirse Ronan, whose performance in the film is above reproach. Ronan has been nominated for Oscars twice before, for Atonement and Brooklyn, but has yet to nab a statuette. McDormand’s history gives her a slight edge, but it would be wonderful to see Ronan finally get a much-deserved win.
Best Director: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Best Director is a very hard category to pick, because it has frequently gone to nominees that the public at large were not expecting to win. That being said, del Toro seems to have a solid chance considering he just pick up a Director’s Guild of America award for The Shape of Water, which is being called one of the best films of his career. While I would love for Lady Bird’s Greta Gerwig to win, she was snubbed at the Golden Globes and the Academy does not recognize female directors that often. Only one woman has ever won Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) and only five women have been nominated in the category since the awards began in 1929. I would love for the Oscars to prove me wrong here, but their history speaks for itself.
Best Picture: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
While The Shape of Water has the most nominations, Three Billboards has received critical acclaim and already has the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama and the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. (Also La La Land was the picture with the most nominations last year, and it was the winner for approximately one minute, so this factor doesn’t seem to carry much weight anymore.) I would love to see Lady Bird win – because if you can’t tell by now, I absolutely love this film – but the odds seem to be in Three Billboards’s favor at the moment. Then again, the Best Picture snafu last year was absolute craziness and gave me the worst second-hand embarrassment of my entire life, so who knows what’s going to happen this year.
