2) Best Picture
Will win: The Revenant, or Spotlight
Should win: The Big Short
Perhaps it’s because Adam McKay’s The Big Short is something of a comedy-drama, and isn’t just straight-up po-faced, that the movie is being judged as a lesser product (comedy rarely does as well at the Oscars as drama). Whatever the reason, The Big Short appears set to be an also-ran at this year’s Oscars, trumped by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s worthy The Revenant or Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight to Best Picture.
The Academy often rewards movies based on their subject matter, and 2016 seems an odd year to forego the practice. The Big Short is about the defining event of the last ten years – the housing market crash that led to a global economic crisis – and its power is in how it sells this most complicated and tedious of subjects to a mainstream audience. It’s a deeply important, incredibly timely message movie, that also happens to be one of the most entertaining, confidently put-together and quietly powerful of last year.
Published: Jan 25, 2016 01:34 pm