As much hash was made out of the Golden Globes’s decision to file Get Out as a comedy, there were surprisingly few skeptical words directed toward the same taxonomy being given to Baby Driver or I, Tonya. After all, if there are two things as funny as the systemic devaluation of black Americans by purportedly well-meaning white power-holders, they would have to be Kevin Spacey taking a sensitive young thing under his wing and a talented working-class woman being exploited and beaten down by her family, husband, and the snobby gatekeepers adjudicating her field. The ACE Awards similarly didn’t feel any compunction about grouping those three films together as comedies, even throwing noted side-splitter Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri into the same classification, a bridge too far for even the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—and we expect Oscar voters as well.
Effectively, that cleared a path for ACE to anoint Lee Smith’s taut, chronology-juggling cutting of Dunkirk as this year’s best editing for a dramatic film, handing their comedic prize over to I, Tonya. The latter admittedly is edited like a comedy would be, a primary reason the film has become a lightning rod in our #MeToo moment, and perhaps why it missed Oscar’s nine-deep best picture slate, despite nearly across-the-board guild support. Conversely, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who didn’t feel as though Baby Driver reached out to them directly from the screen to ask if they would care to have this dance. Which is why we expect it’s that peppy almost-musical, and not either of the other presumptive best picture frontrunners, that stands the greatest chance to torpedo Dunkirk’s best shot here.
Will Win: Dunkirk
Could Win: Baby Driver
Should Win: Baby Driver
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