October Oscar Predictions: Best Actress

Wait, John, it's not October anymore!  Well, you're right, but between work, the election, and more work, I never had a chance to finish up our October Oscar predictions, so I'm going to quickly wrap up Best Actor, Actress, and Picture this week (we already did Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress), count them as October, and we'll do November predictions (in all categories!) at the end of the month.

The Best Actress race this year is, let's call it, looking pretty weak.  In a year where almost every male actor in Hollywood seems to be gunning for a nomination, the women appear to have taken a year off after the "Year of Five Movie Stars" in last year's contest.  This means that the race feels more settled than it probably actually is.  Still, though, it's hard not to believe that at least three names have been cemented into place this year.

Julianne Moore is at the top of that list.  While I'm not sold on Moore winning quite yet (no actress in her fifties has won Best Actress since Shirley Booth in 1952...and no other actress has done it, period), her chances at a nomination continue to improve daily.  She's got other performances this year that will buoy her chances with Still Alice but ultimately not compete with them (Maps to the Stars is a supporting turn with little actual chance at turning into something and Mockingjay is just a blockbuster everyone will see).  Considering she's still in the hunt for her first Oscar and pretty much everyone agrees she deserves an Oscar at some point, this is a sure thing.

Best Actress is constantly rewarding newcomers and ingenues, and while Rosamund Pike might be a little old to be an ingenue and has been working steadily for years, expect her to still be a "newcomer" for the Academy with Gone Girl (she's basically one to the American public).  Gone Girl has been one of the major hits of the year (it's still in the Top 3 for the weekend box office!) and Pike's performance as Amazing Amy is its centerpiece.  Considering she may well carry the film to a Best Picture nomination, it's absolutely certain that she'll be able to score a nomination for herself.

The final "surefire" nominee would be Reese Witherspoon in Wild.  This is the sort of performance the Academy goes gaga over-a major movie star goes prestige, works their star charisma opposite harsh terrain and anchors a movie almost entirely on their own-Oscar gold.  Witherspoon has seemingly been through the Hollywood wilderness in recent years, watching her America's Sweetheart sensibility tarnished pretty severely by her drunken disorderly arrest and string of flops.  Still, she's clearly back in the game and very aware of what that has cost her career.  Films like Mud prove she's more interested at the moment in pleasing the critics and the press, and Wild should cement that-she may well win a second Oscar for the role.

The rest of the field has some debits, but if I were a betting man I'd say that won't stop Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything.  Focus Features is smartly campaigning Jones along with her surefire nominated costar Eddie Redmayne, as if they are a pair that cannot be separated, and that will definitely help.  Jones may well be in for a win if the film truly takes off, particularly if the Academy decides that Redmayne simply could not do it alone.  I hesitate to call her a lock quite yet because it's so early and four locks seems a bit outlandish (and Jones is definitely second billing in her particular film), but there really aren't a lot of options on the horizon to throw Jones, who like Pike has been on the verge for years of finding a breakout role that could propel her into the conversation, out of contention.

The final nomination is where all the marbles seem to be at.  Personally I think that this race has become a three-horse race between a trio of actresses, but before we get there I want to list a few other names that keep getting mentioned.  I am still not 100% sold that Jessica Chastain won't be promoted back into lead for A Most Violent Year (she seems to be a threat regardless of the category).  Critics continue to trumpet names like Jenny Slate (Obvious Child), Gubu Mbatha-Raw (Belle), and Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night) though in the case of the first two I think this is just a "we know you exist" style year (like Brie Larson and Greta Gerwig last season) and with Cotillard she's continually a bridesmaid since her Best Actress victory.  Then there's the strange case of Emily Blunt, who is in a similar camp to Felicity Jones and Rosamund Pike with AMPAS (she's been edging toward a nomination for years), but is in fact quite well-known with the populace and would probably be an easier sell.  That being said, Into the Woods doesn't quite feel like a film that's going to score in the major AMPAS categories outside of Meryl, and I'm sticking by that unless it's a mammoth hit (Blunt will land the Globe nod necessary to remain in the conversation, though, so don't entirely forget about her).

No, in my mind there are three women fighting it out for the final nomination: Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars), Amy Adams (Big Eyes), and Hilary Swank (The Homesman).  With Woodley, it's easy to see why this has so much traction with Oscar obsessives and enthusiasts: it's a throwback to the days when Oscar used to nominate popular movies when an actor had a breakout year (think Julia Roberts in Pretty Women or Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean).  Woodley is clearly the year's big new star (even though she was already a pretty substantial star to begin with), and if they aren't feeling super compelled by other pieces of work, why not stamp "Oscar-nominated" on an actor they clearly want to welcome to the club?

Amy Adams, on the other hand, is an actor who has been in the club for years, and almost never misses with AMPAS (her only major slight with Oscar was Enchanted, and that was a Disney princess movie when you get down to it).  Big Eyes definitely has lost some momentum-Adams is no longer in contention to actually win the trophy, but Adams may push hard for the nomination anyway-at this point her race to an Oscar statue is a numbers game, and the more nominations she gets, regardless of whether she was in fifth place in that particular year, is going to only help her when it comes to actually winning the trophy (I've been saying for a long time that I think that Adams is about to do that semi-retirement thing that many actresses in their forties end up doing when they have started to move out of movie star mode, but she clearly wants an Oscar before she gets there).

Finally, there's Hilary Swank, one of the most fascinating actresses of the past two decades in terms of her career path.  You could look at someone like Sally Field for an example of an actor who turned their backs on conventional stardom and awards prospects after her two Oscar wins, but this actually forgets history: Field was a major motion picture star during the 1980's and had Oscar shots with films like Absence of Malice and Steel Magnolias.  Swank, on the other hand, has never been able to make herself a bankable movie actress despite critical accolades, and with the clear exception of her two Oscar-winning films (and her surprise SAG nomination in 2010 for Conviction), hasn't really charmed the critics as well.  Still, she feels like the sort of actor that could randomly show up once a decade, and she obviously wants back into the conversation with this year's The Homesman based on interviews.

My September Predictions: Adams, Pike, Witherspoon, Maggie Smith, and Woodley
My October Predictions: It's quite obvious that Pike, Witherspoon, Jones, and Moore are all in this race, and so I'll mark all four of them down.  For the final nomination, I am not quite sure.  On paper Adams makes the most sense, but this is a Tim Burton film and compared to Woodley's breakthrough and Swank's serious film, may not have the weight to anchor this nomination.  Swank is a pro when it comes to the campaign trail, and has been my dark horse contender all year (Landmark Theaters willing, I will have seen this performance by the time we check in next).  However, I'm going to go for now with Woodley.  This has been a rough year for the Box Office in Hollywood, and AMPAS is surely aware of this fact.  Woodley has starred in two big hits this year (combined, Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars made $600 million), and is clearly our newest bankable actress.  I think that Oscar will want to recognize that, and in a weak year can get away with giving her a nomination that in most years she wouldn't be able to muster.