Feb 22, 2019 3:58 PM

What Should Actually Win at the Oscars

Roma should win Best Picture—for itself, not Netflix.

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Let me say this right off the bat: Most film geeks write down their predictions for the Oscars. This isn't that kind of story. Everything here is based on opinion, not on what will or should win. Play-along-at-home fans who fill out Oscar ballots each year often do one with their heads and one with their hearts—this is my heart talking. Nerds rule a lot of the universe now, but not necessarily the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so while more and more genre fare gets recognized with little gold men every year (hello, Shape of Water!), it still doesn't rule the night. This piece, then, is full of pie-in-the-sky wishes, not presumed outcomes. Are you with me? OK, here we go.

First up, Best Picture. Has there been a year in recent memory when the field was more varied but had no clear front-runner? Right now the nominees are BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, Roma, A Star Is Born, and Vice. The film that should, and probably will, win is Roma. Director Alfonso Cuarón's black-and-white 1970s period film is a beautiful love letter to the women who raised him in Mexico. The movie is a treasure, and of the crop here, is the closest thing to a shoo-in academy voters saw this year. But the craziest, and best, upset of all time would be giving the award to Black Panther. It may not be a pinnacle of art, but as my colleague Jason Parham noted, Ryan Coogler's movie is the pinnacle of what a superhero movie can be. If the academy recognized that, it would be game-changing.

There's just one problem with Black Panther winning, though: The statue wouldn't go to Coogler. Best Picture is a producing award, so it would go to Marvel's Kevin Feige (a great guy, don't get me wrong, but it's the work of others that made Panther great). Cuarón, though, is credited as a co-producer on Roma, so if his film wins, he gets the prize. And that's as it should be. There's been a lot of chatter about Roma being Netflix's big Oscar play—including on this website—but if it wins, the streaming service will likely get a thank you, but not a trophy engraved with Reed Hastings' name.

Which brings me to the Academy Award that shouldn't get Cuarón's name: Best Director. It only seems right that the person who made the best movie of the year should win in this category, but in this particular instance, the award belongs to Spike Lee. For one, Cuarón's already won the top nod with 2014's Gravity. For another, Lee has been an industry stalwart for decades and has never been nominated for directing. He's got strong competition from Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favourite and Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War, but BlacKkKlansman was a true achievement, and Lee's best film in years. Now is the time.

There's more than one film whose time has come: Minding the Gap. Bing Liu's skateboarding movie that's not about skateboarding is a rich testament to what it really means to grow up, and the things from childhood that haunt us well into adulthood. It's also proved to be one of the best things on Hulu in 2018. Jimmy Chin's Free Solo and Betsy West and Julie Cohen's Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc RBG have more wind at their backs, but if the academy wanted to honor someone truly documenting life and serving up a universal story, they'd give the statue to Liu.

I would surrender my favorite Star Wars Funko Pop figurine to see just one more upset: Kendrick Lamar and SZA winning Best Original Song for "All the Stars" from Black Panther. "Shallow" from A Star Is Born is likely the surefire winner, especially considering it's in a music movie, and co-written by its star Lady Gaga. (Also, if you didn't cry during that song in the theater, you have no soul.) But Lamar and SZA's theme song was catchy, popular, and poignant. It was everything Black Panther was, and you could listen to it in between multiple screenings of the film. Win-win.

Out of all of the nominees, there is one movie I'd like to see take home the gold that has a real shot: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It's up against some heavy-hitters in the Animated Feature category—Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs, Ralph Breaks the Internet—but it was such an audience and critics' fave, chances are this is one the academy will get right.

Will any of these things happen? Maybe. Will all of them? Definitely not. But at a time when even big Oscar upsets are predictable, a few of these wins would say a lot about how the appreciation of movies is changing. For too long, the definition of a film has been constricted to a certain kind of critical and cultural metric that leaves far too many features—genre flicks, stories about people of color, unconventional tales produced by studios without huge Oscar campaign budgets—left in the lurch. Nerdy movies like Avengers; Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Black Panther often fare well in the technical categories, but a few Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-type wins aside, those movies rarely break through to the upper echelons. That could all change this year—and transform Hollywood forever.