Toronto and Venice have unveiled their line-ups and speculation is abound as to which films will show up in Telluride. Once the three high profile fall film festivals are in the bag all the attention will move to New York and once that’s over with we’ll be knee-deep in the 2015 awards season. However, while Toronto, Venice and Telluride are less than a month away it’s still early and we’re still talking, for the most part, about dartboard style predictions, but it never hurts to get things set up in preparation for the coming months as today I open the doors to my first batch of Best Director predictions for the 2016 Oscars.
The reason I’ve held off so long on releasing these Director predictions is because it’s a really tough crop of names to sort. Several high profile names make the list including three past winners in my initial top five, all within the past seven years. Making this all the more difficult is the fact my top five doesn’t include such contenders as David O. Russell (Joy), Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies) or Robert Zemeckis (The Walk). Then you look at past winners such as Ron Howard (In The Heart of the Sea) and Oliver Stone (Snowden) and wonder if they can return to past glory.
Other contenders that didn’t make my initial top five include Sarah Gavron (Suffragette), Todd Haynes (Carol), Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), Scott Cooper (Black Mass), Ridley Scott (The Martian) or Denis Villeneuve (Sicario). It’s safe to assume one or more of these folks will hear their names come Oscar nomination morning, but for now my early predictions for the category are as follows…
My front-runner to begin the season is Danny Boyle with Steve Jobs followed immediately by Tom Hooper (The Danish Girl) and then Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant. It was up to the last minute before releasing this predictions that I had Inarritu at #1, but the history of the Oscars weighs too heavy on the idea of a director winning back-to-back Oscars that I just couldn’t do it.
Only twice in the history of the Oscars has a director won back-to-back Oscars for Best Director, the last time being Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1949 and 1950. The only other time it happened was John Ford winning in 1940 and 1941. This isn’t to say it can’t happen, but to ignore this bit of information would be foolish.
That said, when it comes to choosing between Boyle and Hooper, my thought process was to focus on what the talking points will be when it comes to their two films. With Steve Jobs I expect the credit to be much more widespread, a collaborative effort if you will between Aaron Sorkin‘s script, the performances, the score, etc. with Boyle bringing all those pieces together. With Hooper and The Danish Girl I think the talk will mostly target Eddie Redmayne, which I believe will distract from any campaign for Hooper. This, of course, is just a theory based on seeing nothing, but it’s all I have to work with at the moment.
In the fourth slot I have Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight), whom I also was making a case for his placement at number one out of the gates, but I feel his use of cartoonish violence will always be a sticking point when it comes to his films and the Academy. With films such as Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained unable to take home the top prize in the past I feel we may be looking at a situation where Tarantino’s chances at a Best Picture win may be in the past, though his films certainly maintain chances in several other categories as he’s a technical craftsman with a flair for talent both in front of and behind the camera.
Finally, it was between John Crowley (Brooklyn) and Sarah Gavron (Suffragette) for the fifth slot and I went with Crowley after his film made a big splash at Sundance. For the life of me I can’t tell what Focus is doing with Suffragette as it’s skipping the major fall film festivals to play the London Festival before opening on October 12 in the UK, followed by an October 23 release stateside. This is a film that needs to play, at the very least, Telluride and start gaining some traction. If we see it show up in Colorado I will almost certainly bump Gavron straight into the top five depending on the reviews, but for no Crowley has the edge in my opinion.
So that’s my top five and I’ve listed them below one more time, but this is my top five in a field of 30 contenders I currently have listed. For the full field you’re going to want to click here.
- Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs)
- Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant)
- Tom Hooper (The Danish Girl)
- Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight)
- John Crowley (Brooklyn)
Share your thoughts and contenders in the comments below and here’s a list of my previous early Oscar contender posts, though predictions in all of the following categories have been updated since I posted their early predictions. For my Oscar predictions homepage click here.
