We had four films release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.

Little Women

Since the creation of the Academy Awards, five big-screen versions of Little Women have been made, with all but the modern day-set from 2018 being the only one to fail to earn an Oscar nomination.

George Cukor’s 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn as Jo March, earned three Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Director, and Adaptation. The latter is the only award it won. 16 years later, Mervyn LeRoy took a stab at the narrative with June Allyson as Jo and Margaret O’Brien and Elizabeth Taylor co-starring. That version wasn’t as Oscar popular, but still managed two nominations for color cinematography and color art direction, the latter of which it won. Fast-forward 45 years to the Gillian Armstrong version with Winona Ryder in the lead. Three more Oscar nominations followed with Ryder in Best Actress, Colleen Atwood for costume design, and Thomas Newman for Original Score. It did not win any.

It’s now 2019 and there have been 25 intervening years. Greta Gerwig, who was a mainstay of the indie movie scene, stepped behind the camera for the second time, the first without a co-director. With Lady Bird, Gerwig emerged as a leading voice in cinema. Her film was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), and Best Supporting Actress (Laurie Metcalf). The film was well regarded, winning numerous awards, but Oscars were not among them. Three of her primary actors from Lady Bird make the leap to Little Women, Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in prominent roles and Tracy Letts in a supporting one.

The film has been building buzz since its debut and stands a good chance of replicating Lady Bird‘s success in all of the same categories along with Original Score, Production Design, Costume Design, and Film Editing all possibilities. Ronan’s chances in lead are a bit weaker than Florence Pugh’s chances in support, but if the film does well enough, it could easily be pulled into all of the listed categories. The only issue the film suffers from is the lack of interest male audiences have in seeing the film. There are rumors that some voters, especially at SAG, simply refused to watch the film, which could certainly cause the film harm. This is perhaps one of the reasons that sank Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars, but this time around, the diversity in the Academy could easily propel the film forward.

Uncut Gems

A film like Uncut Gems is hard to quantify. It’s a critically acclaimed film with an award-winning central performance that seems to be doing satisfactory box office business. Yet, the film has hardly shifted from being a dark horse candidate to a mainstream one. Why?

Part of the reason could be the inaccessbility of the Safdie Brothers’ filmography. Their work has been highly recognized, but it’s hefty violence and unusual subject matters have kept them from breaking through. While Uncut Gems certainly sounds like something more mainstream, that could be one of the reasons. The other is Adam Sandler. Hardly known for his Oscar-caliber career, Sandler has received universal praise and numerous awards for his performance. His last glowing reviews came in 2002 under the direction of Paul Thomas Anderson in Punch-Drunk Love. A nearly 20-year span of credible recognition doesn’t sound like the kind of thing the Academy would go for.

Whatever the reason, Uncut Gems remains on the periphery of several categories including Best Picture, Directing, Actor (Sandler), Original Screenplay, Original Score, and Film Editing. Sandler and the editing are the most recognized entities in the race, so either could be possible and, if not those, a welcome-to-the-mainstream Original Screenplay nomination is possible.

1917

Ever since Sam Mendes’ acclaimed debut at the helm of American Beauty, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Directing, Mendes has been turning out successes galore with 2009’s Away We Go and 2015’s Spectre his only mediocre missteps. Films like Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, and Skyfall have kept critics interested in his output with all but Jarhead scoring Oscar nominations. However, 1917 is the first time anyone has really talked about him as being a major Oscar player himself.

This World War I-set film has been receiving loud praise largely thanks to the intimacy brought by the film’s well executed single-take gimmick. It has brought cinematographer Roger Deakins a number of awards and the film and its director have been nominated numerous times. With few films becoming dominant players in this year’s Oscar race, their are several well liked films in play, but no one English-language one is pushing to the front (Parasite is certainly dominating, but the language barrier will hurt its chances).

All Mendes needs an opening and he could be a double- or triple-Oscar winner. The film is sure to make a play in several categories with Best Picture, Directing, Original Score, Film Editing, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing its best opportunities. Padding out those likely seven nominations, the film could also make the list in screenwriting, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, and Visual Effects. If it could pick up all of those, it would have 12 nominations, which is the absolute sweet spot for a Best Picture contender, at least if this were still the 1980s. It isn’t, so don’t count the bunkers until they are bombed.

Just Mercy

This little film seems to have slowly built itself up since its Toronto International Film Festival debut. The film has been chugging along with decent reviews and a handful of mentions for supporting actor Jamie Foxx. The film expands this coming weekend, so we could know better whether it can crossover into box office hit and become this year’s Hidden Figures.

Starring Michael B. Jordan as a Civil Rights defense attorney trying to free a wrongly-accused man (Foxx) from death row. This is director Destin Daniel Cretton’s fourth feature film and it tackles a subject matter that has a lot of modern implications and lessons. That he hasn’t directed an acclaimed film since 2013’s Short Term 12, it’s hard to imagine him becoming a huge Oscar player.

The film’s single best chance at a nomination is Jamie Foxx in Supporting Actor. The film’s lack of critical acclaim and general absence from the awards circuit so far this season suggests that Foxx is not only its best bet, but also highlights its weak prospects.