With the Gold Derby gang having begun to pull award-season predictions out of their ass, we might as well have fun by asking ourselves (with almost no firm knowledge about anything and with the b.s. factor piled higher than an elephant’s eye) a subversive question of sorts: Which of the presumably Oscar-friendly headliners may experience the hype-and-crash syndrome that befell Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, Ava DuVernay‘s Selma and Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood last year?
This is a fool’s errand as every film has its own path to follow and no two Oscar-season experiences are the same, but let’s play this stupid game anyway. For those who were living in caves in Northern India during last year’s Oscar season with no wifi access, here’s a recap of what happened with these three.
Starting in late summer and all through September, October and November, several Oscar handicappers had Unbroken at the top of their list of likely Best Picture candidates. Grit and survival in a Japanese POW camp, Coen brothers‘ script, Roger Deakins‘ cinematography…can’t be denied! And then Jolie’s film screened on Sunday, 11.30 at the WGA theatre on Doheny and it fucking collapsed. The air just whooshed out. High levels of craft but too labored, too Christian, too torture-porny. It was respectably reviewed and made $115 million domestic, but the Oscar game was stillborn when everyone realized it was more or less The Passion of the Christ revisited — a stealth Christian film.