3. Inside Llewyn Davis
Possible categories: Best Actor (Oscar Isaac), Best Supporting Actor (Justin Timberlake), Best Supporting Actress (Carey Mulligan), Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing
Likely categories: Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Original Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen) The Coen Brothers are the rare talent that seem to transcend all types of movie prejudices. Whether you're a hardcore cinephile obsessed with the French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realist movements, or if you're a more contemporary film fan familiar with the work of famous auteurs such as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, or maybe even if you're a casual consumer of cinema who simply sees the movies that have a lot of commercials on television, chances are that at some point you have seen and liked a movie directed by the Brothers Coen. They have that mysterious ability to appeal to a large cross-section of the increasingly sub-dividing body of the movie-going public, creating a tenuous bond of commonality between disparate niches that no other directors, with the exception of Quentin Tarantino, can seem to unite. This is rather ironic given their unassuming beginnings as purveyors of indie dark comedies. Long before the $244 million worldwide gross of True Grit, the Coens were a favorite of Cannes though, winning the Palme d'Or for their 1991 writer's block film, Barton Fink. They have not won the award since then (although 2007 jury president Stephen Frears pretty much admitted they did not give No Country for Old Men any awards only because they knew the movie needed no help from Cannes), but they have competed for it a total of eight times and are now bringing their newest creation, Inside Llewyn Davis, back for another round. The movie stars Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis, a 1960's-era Greenwich Village folk singer who is trying to break into the big leagues of the music business. Loosely based of the memoirs of folk singer Dave van Ronk, the film also stars Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, and F. Murray Abraham, and is said to have a fair amount of musical numbers. Being a huge fan of the Brothers' work, I am very much anticipating this film, but something tells me the film may be too intimate and small in scale to make a big splash with the Academy. The Coens have been incredibly successful with the Academy as of late, with three of their last four movies receiving a Best Picture nomination (the espionage comedy Burn After Reading being the lone exception), but I doubt Inside Llewyn Davis will do the business that either No Country for Old Men or True Grit did. This means for Inside Llewyn Davis to pave a road to a nomination, it will have to follow the path that A Serious Man successfully walked. From all accounts though, their newest film will be nowhere near as enigmatic and self-autobiographical as their 2009 Job allegory, which may mean critics may not as boisterously compliment the movie as they did A Serious Man. If this were to be the case, no matter how high of a quality film Inside Llewyn Davis actually is, it will probably be sitting out Oscar night, so everything may ride on its initial buzz out of the Croisette. Cannes debut: Sunday, May 19