2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions: ANIMATED & DOCUMENTARY FEATURE (October)

The surprisingly robust box office start for The Addams Family this weekend is enough to vault the macabre comedy into the top 5 month as one of the few original animated films (using that term loosely here) in contention this year. Still to be seen though, the Will Smith/Tom Holland spy flick Spies in Disguise.

Here are my 2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions in Animated Feature for October 14, 2019.

Green – moves up Red – moves down Blue – new/re-entry

1. Toy Story 4 (Disney/Pixar)
2. Frozen II (Disney)
3. Weathering With You (GKIDS)
4. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dreamworks)
5. The Addams Family (MGM)

NEXT UP (alphabetical by film)

The Swallows of Kabul (TBA)
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (Warner Bros)
Missing Link (LAIKA/Annapurna/UAR)
Spies in Disguise (Blue Sky)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (Illumination/Universal)

OTHER CONTENDERS (alphabetical by film)

The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily (TBA)
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (GKIDS)
Children of the Sea (GKIDS)
Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie (Aardman/Lionsgate)
I Lost My Body (Netflix)
Klaus (Netflix)
Marona’s Fantastic Tale (TBA)
The Thousand Miles (TBA)
Where Is Anne Frank? (TBA)
White Snake (GKIDS)
Wish Dragon (Sony Pictures Animation)
The Wolf House (TBA)

WILL THEY OR WON’T THEY?

The Lion King (Disney)

It’s another incredible year for documentaries, as my top 10 here shows. Netflix, Neon and Amazon have really elbowed themselves into this race the last few years, offering the average moviegoer a much better chance to actually see the films nominated here than in years past where limited releases kept them from public view and made this category a deeply insular and exclusive one. Last year, National Geographic brought us the winner in Free Solo and this year has the riveting Syrian war doc The Cave and the Leo DiCaprio-produced film Sea of Shadows, that pits environmental activists, Mexican navy and undercover investigators against Mexican cartels and Chinese mafia.

Here are my 2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions in Documentary Feature for October 14, 2019.

Green – moves up Red – moves down Blue – new/re-entry

1. American Factory (Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar) – Netflix
2. Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller) – Neon
3. One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang) – Amazon
4. Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov)
5. The Cave (Feras Fayyad) – National Geographic

NEXT UP (alphabetical by film)

Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia) – HBO
For Sama (Waad Al-Khateab and Edward Watts)
Gaza (Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell)
Maiden (Alex Holmes) – Sony Classics
Sea of Shadows (Richard Ladkani) – National Geographic

OTHER CONTENDERS (alphabetical by film)

17 Blocks (Davy Rothbart)
A Dog Called Money (Seamus Murphy)
Advocate (Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche)
Always in Season (Jacqueline Olive)
The Apollo (Roger Ross Williams)
Ask Dr. Ruth (Ryan White)
Bedlam (Kenneth Paul Rosenberg)
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Bruegger)
The Edge of Democracy (Petra Costa)
Everybody’s Everything (Ramez Silyan and Sebastian Jones)
Framing John DeLorean (Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce)
Gay Chorus Deep South (David Charles)
The Great Hack (Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim)
Hail Satan? (Penny Lane)
Halston (Frédéric Tcheng)
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (Alex Gibney)
Knock Down The House (Rachel Lears)
Lapu (Juan Pablo Polanco and César Alejandro Jaimes)
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein)
Lorena (Joshua Rofé)
The Magic Life Of V (Tonislav Hristov)
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (Midge Costin)
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (Nick Broomfield)
Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog)
MERATA: How Mum Decolonised The Screen (Heperi Meta)
Midnight Family (Luke Lorentzen)
Midnight Traveler (Hasan Fazili)
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Stanley Nelson Jr)
Moonlight Sonata: Deafness In Three Movements (Irene Taylor Brodsky)
Muhammad Ali (Ken Burns)
Penguins (Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson)
The Projectionist (Abel Ferrara)
Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins (Janice Engel)
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Matt Wolf)
Rewind (Sasha Joseph Neulinger)
Roll Red Roll (Nancy Schwartzman)
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese)
Scheme Birds (Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin)
Serendipity (Prune Nourry)
Shooting the Mafia (Kim Longinotto)
Superpower Dogs (Daniel Ferguson)
This Is Personal (Amy Berg)
Tigerland (Ross Kauffman)
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)
Untouchable (Ursula Macfarlane)
What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali (Antoine Fuqua)
Where’s My Roy Cohn? (Matt Tyrnauer) Sony Classics
Words from a Bear (Jeffrey Palmer)