October Oscar Predictions: Best Actor

While the Best Actress race remains somewhat devoid of serious challengers, the race to win a Best Actor nomination is almost comically large.  If ever there was a year that clearly illustrated the problems facing women in Hollywood, it would be this year, where I could theoretically make the case for some twenty men being included in the nominations for Best Actor, whereas I would have trouble listing twenty lead performances period from women this year.

That said, I’ll get off my soapbox (for now) and will instead discuss the bizarrely competitive field of actors that could well be a duplicate of last year depending on how the Globes shake out in terms of surprises on Oscar nomination morning.  Like Best Actress, there are three men who seem destined to receive a nomination this cycle.

The first of these men is Eddie Redmayne, who has started to move into a slight frontrunner status for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.  While he’s still very young (at 32, he’d be one of the youngest Best Actor winners ever), he’s got everything else going for him in terms of BAIT (he’s playing a real-life disabled person-I mean, throw in an accent and you’ve got yourself an Oscar).  Plus, he’s charming (though he might be a bit too handsome to win an Oscar-we’ll wait on that one).

Joining him will be his pal Benedict Cumberbatch, who is playing Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.  Cumberbatch is playing the Oscar game well (sorry-I’ve been writing so long about the Midterms that I cannot quite turn off that switch when discussing the awards season, though let’s be honest-they’re occasionally uncomfortably similar).  Cumberbatch has Harvey Weinstein behind him, but he’s also got a teensy bit of a hit on the film already (the “straight-washing” of the main character being the knock so far).  Plus, he’s so damn ubiquitous that the backlash may start sooner than Oscar night.  Still, he’s never been nominated and is a near certain contender-he’ll be cited.

While Oscar loves a real-life hook, they’re nearly as fond of a comeback, which should bode well for Michael Keaton.  I was initially reluctant about him being able to score (the meta aspect didn’t seem like it would sell well with Oscar), but the reviews are universal, the Box Office is strong, and most importantly Keaton is an aging former movie star, male, and has never been nominated.  This has worked for every actor from Mickey Rourke to Burt Reynolds, and I suspect that it will be enough for him to score a first nod (and perhaps even a trophy).

As for the remainder your guess is as good as mine.  Steve Carell has been at the top of most people’s lists for the bulk of the year, but Foxcatcher seems like it’s a bit on a slide lately, and I cannot quite tell why.  It doesn’t seem to be peaking at the exact right moment that it is supposed to be.  This may be because they seem to be completely screwing up the campaign for Carell’s competitor Channing Tatum.  Tatum got really strong reviews too, and could split votes with Carell, which in a year with this many competitors could be critical.

Timothy Spall is clearly on the upswing for his work in Mr. Turner, though I think that Mike Leigh’s reputation for helping actors get Oscar nominations may be a bit overrated (just ask Lesley Manville and Jim Broadbent), and the film has a much better shot for writing.  Still, biopic!  David Oyelowo for Selma has remained one of my frontrunners-he’s clearly emerging as a big star and “having a moment.”  The trailer didn’t give us a lot of hints though-this looks relatively standard, and in the wake of something like The Butler getting shut out-could that be a sign that AMPAS doesn’t want to embrace traditional Civil Rights biopics?

Bradley Cooper is a fast-emerging dark horse candidate.  Clint is always in the conversation even if he hasn’t been able to land too many punches since his big scores in 2004 and 2006, but American Sniper has the feel of a Clint film that could stage yet another AMPAS comeback for the director.  Cooper has been on a roll the past few years, and clearly the Academy is a major fan.  Could this be the Christian Bale nomination of the year?

Other names that clearly should be mentioned but don’t have the same cache (yet) include Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year and Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (both sensational reviews, but both may be in too dark of films and may be too young/beautiful to score).  Christian Bale shocked last year with a nomination, but I’m having a hard time getting a read on Exodus: Gods and Kings.  Is it a laughable sort of film that we’re all going to mock mercilessly, or does Ridley Scott have a stealth Gladiator on his hands?  Ben Affleck has never been cited for his acting, but he’s in a likely Best Picture nominee, which should at least keep him on ballots (ditto Matthew McConaughey, Ellar Coltrane, and Jack O’Connell).  Finally there’s Ralph Fiennes, who will surely score a Globe nod for his bravura work in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but may be too early in the year and too slight in such a heavy field of competitors.

September Oscar Predictions: Cumberbatch, Oyelowo, Carell, Keaton, and Redmayne

October Oscar Predictions: Honestly, that list still feels about right to me.  Oyelowo and Carell lose some points in my book due to relative silence regarding their films in the past month, but I don’t quite feel anyone has gotten high enough to mean that one of them is dumped.  I’m definitely feeling Bradley Cooper (figuratively…unfortunately) and Timothy Spall, who are in sixth and seventh place, respectively, in my book, but neither have quite hit that point in their campaigns where I think they will unseat one of the frontrunners.

How about you?  Who do you think is currently in the Top 5?  Who is the frontrunner for the win?  And how good was that American Sniper trailer?  Share your thoughts in the comments!