Moonlight. Image via A24
BEST PICTURE: Moonlight
Frontrunner: La La Land
Potential Upset: Moonlight
La La Land is the current favorite to win Best Picture. The romantic musical has taken home top honors at the Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards, and has a record-tying 14 nominations (same as Titanic and All About Eve).
Moonlight is the potential foil to La La Land, and could easily walk away with Best Picture. The film has been a box-office success for its small, indie film budget, has been a critics’ darling, and has already won major awards itself.
Oscar-nominated films occupy certain slots year after year. There’s the prestige biopic, the box office hit, the surprisingly good genre film, the movie about Hollywood, and the little movie that could. Moonlight is absolutely the little movie that could. It’s a film that has taken years to get made, struggled to find financing, was made for a modest budget (only $5 million) and went on to be a critical and commercial success (has brought in about $23 million so far). And that’s before you factor in that it’s a deeply personal story about a gay black man growing up in a rough neighborhood.
This is the kind of story that Hollywood loves. A scrappy underdog filmmaker, a passion project, a surprise success. La La Land might be about chasing your dreams, but Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is what happens when someone does chase their dreams.