Oscar Season Preview

GOING FOR THE GOLDEN GUY by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Jennifer Lawrence in David O. Russell’s “Joy.”  Photo ©20^TH Century Fox

2015 has already outstripped 2014 in terms of cranking out quality movies.  But the next three months will be the real test, as studios roll out scarlet carpets heralding the arrival of the movies they consider to be Oscar worthy. 

This does not mean the season ahead will be artistically fruitful; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could never be accused of having faultless taste (this is, after all, the same organization that picked “The King’s Speech” over “Inception”).  But it is true that studios often save their most vibrant, cutting, and convention-busting works for last.

            What follows is a dossier on the awards season movies I’m anticipating most. 

JOY (David O. Russell) With Hollywood slowly awakening to its abysmal lack of diversity, the pop cultural moment has never been riper for a decades-spanning epic about the life of a female business titan.  The ballsy Jennifer Lawrence plays that woman; David O. Russell (whose last film was the manic, heartfelt “American Hustle”) directs.

 

THE MARTIAN (Ridley Scott) Even if Ridley Scott has fallen in our eyes since the heady days of “Blade Runner,” his big studio entertainments usually ooze beautiful colors and provocative ideas.  Hopefully, this one (about a stranded astronaut played by Matt Damon) will too.

THE REVENANT (Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Another Iñárritu opus, his first since the insufferable “Birdman.”  This time, he directs Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, a nineteenth century hunter who, abandoned by his comrades after being mauled by a bear, went on a muddy quest for revenge (which here is captured by the hard-working cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki).

 

SICARIO (Denis Villeneuve) Denis Villeneuve’s films (including “Enemy” and “Prisoners”) have a way of snaking their way into your skull and preying upon your most mesmerizingly nasty fantasies.  Considering the rapture that greeted this crime thriller’s debut at Cannes, it should do the same.

STAR WARS: EPISODE VII—THE FORCE AWAKENS” (J.J. Abrams) If there’s anyone equipped to infuse a slab of Disney product with genuine emotion and visual grace, it’s Mr. Abrams, the man who reinvented “Star Trek” as a vibrant saga of sacrifice and grief.

 

STEVE JOBS (Danny Boyle) Aside from the attraction of being a biopic of the controversial, ingenious mind behind Apple computers, Mr. Boyle’s new movie offers a meaty part for its star, the always-abounding Michael Fassbender.