On 3.2.16 L.A. Times reporter/analyst Glenn Whipp posted a piece about ten possible Best Picture nominees for 2016. I’ve got my own list of suspects but let’s first consider the Whipp roster plus another posted on 3.7 at Awards Watch.
Most of Whipp’s picks sounded interesting — David Michod‘s War Machine, Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals, Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea and Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Three could be described as generic, right-down-the-middle populist hambone movies — Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation (19th Century slave rebellion), Ben Younger‘s Bleed For This (boxing flick) and Garth Davis‘s Lion (shameless-sounding, Life of Pi-without-the-tiger-or-the-flying-fish lost puppy saga about Indian guy, played by Dev Patel, finding his family after 25 years of separation).
Forget Pedro Almodovar‘s Julieta, as that will feed right into the Best Foreign Language Feature category. And the last of Whipp’s picks — Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight — sound a bit too fringey and druggy and Jean Genet-ish for the Best Picture derby.
Not long after this Awards Watch posted a consensus chart about the same topic. Second verse, almost the same as the first. Their top 15 picks were (in this order) Silence, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, The Birth of a Nation, Jeff Nichols‘ Loving (period interracial marriage drama), Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, Denzel Washington‘s Fences (adaptation of honored August Wilson play), Lion, Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (inspirational saga of seasoned airplane pilot who landed damaged jet on surface of Hudson River), Damien Chazelle‘s La-La Land, Denis Villeneuve‘s Story of Your Life, War Machine, Deepwater Horizon, Passengers and Robert Zemeckis‘s Allied (WWII dramatic thriller about assassins falling in love w/ Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard — just began filming last month).