Oscar's Best Director 2022

The five nominees for Best Director are...


Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Ryűsuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

haven't seen any of these but i'm stoked for my boy Hamaguchi getting a shoutout

I need to get watching! I haven't seen any of these yet.

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I’m waiting because I haven’t seen 3. Power Of The Dog and Licorice Pizza are both incredibly strong from a direction standpoint though.

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Letterboxd

Campion is likely a shoo-in. She's the only female.

Still, they might want to throw it to an Asian.

I haven't seen Drive My Car or Licorice Pizza...of the ones I've seen, I think Jane Campion is the frontrunner.

The woman wins it. Politics.

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

Or perhaps she deserves it?

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure PotD is the best film, and even I have misgivings over it. If I was on the academy, I’d toss my vote to CODA for now, but I really need to see the rest first.

Ryűsuke Hamaguchi is the only first-time nominee in this category. He is also up for Adapted Screenplay and Drive My Car is a Best Picture nominee as well as the favorite for Best International Feature. While the Academy seemingly hadn’t noticed him before this year, his Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy did well at the Berlin Film Festival (winning the Silver Lion) and Asako I & II had Cannes attention in 2018 before Drive My Car won Best Screenplay there last year. Embarrassingly Hamaguchi is somehow only the third Japanese director ever nominated by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences joining legends Akira Kurosawa for RAN in the ‘80s and Hiroshi Teshigahara for Woman in the Dunes in the ‘60s. Will he add to Bong Joon-Ho’s win two years ago as the only ever winner for directing a foreign language film? No. But it will certainly be a more interesting ballot if Palm d’Or nominees start consistently popping up here.




Paul Thomas Anderson now has three Best Director nominations: There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, and Licorice Pizza. He hasn’t won yet, and I don’t suspect that will change this year. His semi-autobiographical tale of a disarmingly confident and entrepreneurial teenager falling in love as he navigates through 1970s Los Angeles and the edges of Hollywood has his trademark flourishes all over it. PTA mega fans are very happy, I am sure. But if and when he wins his Oscar it will probably be for something more like There Will Be Blood than for Licorice Pizza. His peers and the actors clearly think he is a talented guy, and he is also nominated for Original Screenplay, but he won't assume the mantle of Oscar-winning director this year.




Belfast mark’s Kenneth Branagh second Director nomination. His first was for his feature debut, Henry V, the year Oliver Stone won for Born on the Fourth of July and Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture. Branagh is also up for Best Original Screenplay and, as the producer of the film, Best Picture. I like Branagh’s autobiographical film a lot, and it certainly shares similarities with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (which he won for in this category) and John Boorman’s Hope & Glory (he was nominated the year Bertolucci won for The Last Emperor). If there is going to be an upset come Oscar night I think Ken would be the fella to do it.




Steven Spielberg certainly needs no introduction. He may be the most famous director since Hitchcock and, in this media age, arguably even more famous. West Side Story is Seńor Lens Flare's eighth nomination in this category and he becomes the first person to have directing nods over six different decades, starting in the 1970s. They are West Side Story in the 2020s, Lincoln in the 2010s, Munich in the 2000s, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List (his only two wins, to date) in the 1990s, E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark in the 1980s, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the 1970s. Those eight nominations tie Spielberg with Billy frickin' Wilder! Only Scorsese with nine (so far) and William Wyler with a dozen have more noms. If Spielberg gets his third win it puts him with Capra and Wilder. John Ford is the only director who had more - Pappy had four wins. Of course the original West Side Story did win Best Director for Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins (along with the Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men, those are the only two directing duos to have won).




This is Jane Campion’s second nomination, the other coming for The Piano the year Spielberg and Schindler’s List won. Campion is the first woman to be nominated twice. Only six other women total have ever been nominated: Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerlad
Fennell (Promising Young Woman). Only Bigelow and Zhao have won. The cruel, psycho-sexual, emotionally abusive dynamics of The Power of the Dog seemingly have her poised to be the third. If Campion does win she will also join countryman Peter Jackson (LOTR: The Return of the King) as the only New Zealander winners in this category. Can Taika Waititi’s day be far behind?

Scorsese's comments on Campion and her film, bestowing her Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle.

The DGA Award continues to be the gold standard of Oscar predictors. Of course Jane Campion won Best Director for The Power of the Dog, a split with Best Picture. She is only the third woman and second New Zealander to win the award.

Anyone else surprised by the Picture/Director split? I loved Coda, but I was certain Power of the Dog and Campion were going to win Picture and Director, mainly because I didn't think they were going to win anything else.

I hate that Paul Thomas Anderson is 0-11

1. Boogie Nights (Writing)(Original)
2. Magnolia (Writing)(Original)
3. There Will be Blood (Wrting)(Adapted)
4. There Will be Blood (Directing)
5. There Well be Blood (Producing)
6. Inherent Vice (Writing)(Adapted)
7. Phantom Thread (Directing)
8. Phantom Thread (Producing)
9. Licorice Pizza (Writing)(Original)
10. Licorice Pizza (Directing)
11. Licorice Pizza (Producing)

He should have won for his screenplays for Boogie Nights and Magnolia and possibly for directing There ill Be Blood, he wasn't going to win anything for Licorice Pizza, a medicore film that was the weakest of Anderson's career.