Contender Profile: The Visitor

The Visitor
Broad Appeal: 93%
Perceived Quality: 79
Mini-Review: A interesting mix of a middle-aged awakening story with a harrowing immigration nightmare. Jenkins is quite good, but the film's true strength is in the story it tells. Ultimately it's too naturalistic to be transcendant and too convenient to be truly naturalistic, but is easy to discuss and difficult to forget.

Awards Chances: It's only really competing in two categories, best actor and best original screenplay. It has a better than average shot at either, but will need some critics awards to pitch in for the cause. Probably won't win either.

Contender Profile: The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight
Directed by Christopher Nolan



Broad Appeal: 94
Perceived Quality: 82





Mini-Review: Yeah, it's the best comic book film ever, but it's more. It's the movie event of the year, and one of the best reviewed and with the most buzzed performance. Less pulpy and more substantive than Batman Begins, this is a rather sober meditation on authority, society, and terrorism wrapped into a satisfying action formula. It's not the best film of the year, but you have to admire its ability to probe and entertain at the same time.



Awards Chances: It's more than a dark horse for Best Picture, this film is simply too big to ignore. Add to this the record box office returns, the emotional support for Ledger, and the fact that several contenders have deferred to next year or foundered with critics and a best picture nomination seems more likely than unlikely. Ledger appears to be a lock for Supporting Actor, and look for a slew of technical nominations even if TDK misses the best picture nomination.

Contender Profile: Wall-E

Wall-E
Directed by Andrew Stanton


Broad Appeal: 96
Perceived Quality: 93


Mini Review: This will probably be my favorite movie of the year. Dazzling visually, it is also hilarious, deeply touching, and able to deliver a message without making it sound like a “message.” A film about what it means to be human.

Awards Chances: While I’m over the moon about it and the critical reaction is extraordinarily positive, we have seen this dance almost every year: Pixar releases a film that is one of the best of the year and it has to settle for a best Animated Feature award. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille have all had strong Best Picture support, so why should Wall-E be any different? Perhaps a growing sense that the studio deserves an award will do the trick. If so, this is the year.

Verdict: Dark horse for Best Picture, sure to get nods for sound, score, song and a lock to win best Animated feature.

Contender Profiles

Here's a quick guide to the Profiles I'll be doing for all the major awards contenders after they are released.

I begin with the movie's score on Rottentomatoes. For those not familiar, Rottentomatoes is a site that takes a wide range of reviews, cuts them up into favorable (fresh) and unfavorable (rotten) and then tells you the percentage of folks that liked the film. I'll call this metric "Broad Appeal" since it doesn't differentiate between a lukewarm endorsement and a rave and because it's sampling size is enormous.

I'll also include the Metacritic score, which is a sampling of 30-40 prestigious critics and assigning a qualitative score out of 100. The sampling pool is small, but the reviewers have clout and the scores are more exact. I'll call this metric "Perceived Quality"

Then I'll include a short review of the film, if I have seen it (I will try to see them all) and then an assesment of their awards potential.

I will also be developing different metrics and I will update the profiles as I go along. If you ever want to see all of the contender profiles, just to get a sense of the race, click on the Contender Profile link below to get a list of them.

Wall-E will be the first film I profile.... tomorrow. Now it's time to sleep off the tryptophan.