ORWAV Oscars 2019: The Nominations

It’s a good time to be a film fan, and unusually, it’s a pretty good time to be an awards fan too. Aside from the chaos unfolding within Academy HQ as they change the format of the broadcast (then change it back again), it’s been another great year for Oscar films (and you can read our opposing thoughts on the pros and cons of the revamped Oscar ceremony here and here).

A few traditional “Oscar films” like Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and A Star is Born have cropped up, but generally the awards have been dominated again by more international and more arthouse films than usual.

The Favourite is a period film unlike any you’ve seen before, Roma is a black and white Netflix film in Spanish and Mixtec, and the nominees are blacker than ever after recent #OscarsSoWhite controversies with Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, If Beale Street Could Talk and Green Book on the slate.

As usual we’ve been kicking ass and taking names for our own ORWAV Oscar nominations, ready and waiting for you just below…

Best Screenplay

Most of the main Oscar script frontrunners made it through to our nominations, and they were joined by two well-deserved left-field candidates in The Death of Stalin and Sorry to Bother You. Both took very dark, political topics and turned them into something inventive, audacious and hilarious. With politics dominating the world right now, it’s perhaps a surprise neither got an actual Oscar nomination.

Best Cinematography

Cinematography is always a category that attracts less mainstream nominees, almost by definition, and our selections are no different. We’ve repeated the Academy’s excellent choices of Łukasz Żal, Alfonso Cuarón and Robbie Ryan, but more importantly we’ve corrected their criminal omission of James Laxton for his stunning work on If Beale Street Could Talk.

Best Director

Our nomination cut-off (top five, including anyone tied for 5th place) has thrown up a wide field for Best Director, recognising a dazzling array of talent. We’ve got some genre champions in Christopher McQuarrie, John Krasinski and Alex Garland, but the real headline is the presence of two women – Debra Granik and Lynne Ramsay – after they were notably shut out of the Academy’s nominations.

Best Actress

If there are three certain things in life, it’s death, taxes, and that an actor in a mainstream studio comedy will not be nominated for an Oscar. Rachel McAdams, we see you. We’ve got a huge amount of incredible performances to choose from here, with the likes of Davis, Hahn, Collette and Buckley, rubbing shoulders with Oscar favourites like Colman and Close.

Best Actor

It’s ironic: we’ve nominated Adam Driver for the last three years, and now he gets picked by the actual Academy we go and ignore him. What can we say: we like him more when he’s an underdog. Maybe that’s why we celebrated Hugh Grant’s delightful performance in Paddington 2, as well as the underappreciated talents of Steven Yeun and Brian Tyree Henry.

Best Film

I love our set of nominees for Best Film. What an eclectic bunch of cracking films. You could make a solid case for every single one of these being a 5-star film. Any category that can contain both Burning and Into the Spider-Verse is a winner in my books.

Check in to oneroomwithaview.com on Sunday evening to see our winners and then stick around for the annual live blog to keep you company through the biggest night in the film year.