A Post-AFI Fest, Pre-Presidential Election Look at the Race

A note from Scott: With October coming to a close and the presidential election just a week away, the Oscar race is humming all across the globe.

In the belly of the beast — Hollywood — Academy members had the opportunity to catch, at AFI Fest, the world premiere of Disney’s Music by John Williams on Oct. 23; the L.A. premieres of Janus/Sideshow’s All We Imagine as Light, A24’s Heretic and Sony Classics’ The Room Next Door on Oct. 24; the world premiere of Sony’s Here and the L.A. premieres of Sony Classics’ I’m Still Here, Amazon/MGM’s Nickel Boys, Searchlight’s Nightbitch and Vertical’s The Order on Oct. 25; the L.A. premieres of Netflix’s Maria, Searchlight’s A Real Pain, Paramount’s September 5 and Amazon/MGM’s Unstoppable on Oct. 26; and the world premieres of Warner’s Juror No. 2 and Netflix’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl on Oct. 27. Reactions were particularly enthusiastic for Maria’s lead actress Angelina Jolie, who cheerily gladhanded Academy and Golden Globes voters at a post-premiere reception — and were notably muted for Here and Juror No. 2.

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Meanwhile, official Academy screenings over the past week included, in L.A., Briarcliff/Rich Spirit’s The Apprentice on Oct. 25 (with actors Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong and writer Gabriel Sherman on hand for a Q&A); Netflix’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (director Benjamin Ree) and Nickel Boys (director RaMell Ross, star Ethan Herisse and others) on Oct. 26; and Level Ground’s Union (director Stephen Maing and others) on Oct. 27. In New York, there was Nickel Boys on Oct. 24 (with Ross and others). And in London, there was Neon’s Anora on Oct. 22.

Also beginning to screen more heavily in L.A.: A24’s The Brutalist. It showed twice at the Academy Museum on Oct. 27, followed by Q&As with writer/director Brady Corbet and writer Mona Fastvold, and seemed to go over very well with many Academy members who were in attendance (including Anora helmer Sean Baker).

The Gotham Awards, for which only indie films used to be eligible, now considers films of any budget size — but the slate of nominations announced on Oct. 29 shows that the quintets of film critics/journalists who served as jurors this season still gravitated almost exclusively to films that made on a budget. Anora led the field with four noms, including best feature, a category in which its competition will be A24’s Babygirl, Amazon/MGM’s Challengers, A24’s A Different Man and Nickel Boys.

The documentary race, meanwhile, is coming into clearer focus now that the shortlists of the Cinema Eye Honors, the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, the International Documentary Awards and DOC NYC have been announced. Only two titles appeared on all four lists — Nat Geo’s Sugarcane and the aforementioned The Remarkable Life of Ibelin — which seems highly noteworthy to me. (Another feather in Sugarcane’s cap: On Oct. 25, President Joe Biden formally apologized for the U.S. federal government’s role in running boarding schools at which Native children, years ago, suffered abuse. The boarding school featured in Sugarcane was overseen by the Canadian government, but the film surely helped to shine a spotlight on all such institutions.)

Another doc hopeful, however, suffered a bad blow this week: China’s best international feature Oscar entry The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, which was deemed ineligible for that prize because, it turns out, it does not meet the Academy’s requirement that a film must have “a predominantly (more than 50 percent) non-English dialogue track.” The film remains eligible for best documentary feature, but it is too late for China to submit a replacement candidate for best international feature.

Finally, let’s talk box office. Last weekend, Focus’ Conclave, in its first weekend in theaters (1,753, specifically), grossed $6.6 million, strong enough for fourth place among all titles. And Anora, in its second week, took in $908,830 from 34 theaters, winning the per-theater-average race by a mile, $26,730. Next weekend, three more awards hopefuls will go into limited release: Apple’s Blitz, plus Here and A Real Pain.

Please remember: You can bookmark this URL and return to it at any time to see my latest picks — I intend to update it once a week, usually on Mondays. Think of me like a meteorologist — my aim is to correctly predict what will happen, not to advocate for what I think should happen. My picks are arrived at by screening films, consulting with voters, analyzing campaigns and studying the results of past seasons. I do not rank things that I have not seen, because doing so is just silly. And now for my current forecast …

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