Last year, awards experts had their work cut out for them. In the aftermath of the autumn festivals, just two films (La La Land and Moonlight) emerged victorious, culminating in both teams mounting the steps of Hollywood’s Dolby stage on Oscar night. The landscape today is a lot less certain. Who deserves a trophy? A scrappy first-time film-maker? An overlooked 89-year-old screenwriter? One thing we know for sure is that the following films represent the best of this award season’s extraordinary output.
3. All The Money in the World
Sony Pictures Classics
This film has had by far the most dramatic post-production period of any other this year. It all looked so promising. The John Paul Getty III kidnapping biopic All the Money in the World – starring Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Spacey – was due to premiere at the prestigious American Film Institute Festival last month. In the wake of the deluge of sexual-misconduct allegations levied against Kevin Spacey, the distributor pulled the movie, now tarnished as box-office poison. There was talk of postponing the film until June; there was talk of not releasing it at all.
Eventually the director Ridley Scott made the (somewhat insane) decision to replace Spacey with Christopher Plummer, reshooting the relevant scenes in only six weeks to still comply with its original winter opening. According to Variety, this cost the studio more than $10 million. Not all the money in the world, but a large sum nonetheless. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognised the last-minute efforts of the All the Money in the World team, nominating Williams, Plummer and Scott for Globes.
