Oscar races go down to the wire

Last Sunday’s BAFTA winners gave Oscar voters a surprising jolt, upsetting expectations.

Now, Sunday’s Actor Awards (live on Netflix) figure as the final stop before it’s Oscar time to shine on Sunday, March 15.

How are the nominees managing after months and months (and months) of campaigning? How do the favorites, the front runners, fare as we go down to the wire?

While “The Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s 1930s vampire horror outing, won a record-breaking 16, the most nominations ever for one film, it isn’t expected to beat Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” for the top prize, Best Picture.

That sense of inevitability is not just a testament to great filmmaking and a startling, exquisitely focused ensemble but the filmmaker’s subject:  America, where as the classic Gil Scott Heron song we hear over the end titles pronounces: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

“One Battle” IS about battle, a lost revolution. It’s about fear, about dreams and, above all, hope.

It’s also superbly cinematic, with a final car chase speeding up and down rolling highways that has to be seen to be believed.

The other 8 Best Picture nominees are winners, as you often hear, just by being nominated.

It’s the BAFTA upset wins in both Supporting categories – Sean Penn for Lockjaw, his deranged right wing military warrior in “One Battle” and Wunmi Mosaku as a Hoodoo priestess and warrior in “Sinners” – that were welcome surprises.

Best Actor has always been seen as a two-way race. There’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s comedic triumph as a stoner shocked out of a hidden life to race to save 16-year-old Willa (Infiniti Chase), his daughter born of the revolution.

And there’s Timothée Chalamet’s hyper-ventilated “Marty Supreme,” a genuine, remarkable tour de force, super-charged in its staid 1950s setting. Chalamet’s third Best Actor Oscar nomination, “Marty Supreme” also finds him a nominee as producer of a Best Picture nominee.

What’s wild is neither took home the BAFTA. Best Actor went to virtually unknown British actor Robert Aramayo for his astonishing work as a Tourette syndrome sufferer and pioneer in “I Swear.” (Opening late March in the US.)

Could this trio of unexpected winners signal a possible Oscar night shake-up in the Supporting category? Stellan Skarsgard is favored for Norwegian drama “Sentimental Value” while Teyana Taylor as a revolutionary in “One Battle” is considered a lock.

Perhaps only in the Best Actress race could there be a genuine surprise. Long the favorite, Jessie Buckley’s won several awards as the tearful mother and wife of Shakespeare in “Hamnet,” including the BAFTA last Sunday.

But Rose Byrne, whose Oscar nomination for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” was considered a surprise, won the Golden Globe for Comedy that Buckley won that same night for Drama with “Hamnet.” If there was a split among voters in this category would it go to Byrne?

Rose Byrne in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” (Photo Logan White/A24)

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