A still from Spotlight, the based-on-true-story drama centring on the team of Boston Globe journalists who unravelled the widespread cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in 2002.
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https://scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/1908619/revenant-spotlight-big-short-front-runners-oscar-best-picture Lifestyle
The Revenant, Spotlight, The Big Short front runners for Oscar for best picture
Three films seen as most likely to snare the top prize, though Birdman winning last year may count against The Revenant, while Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson, Sylvester Stallone and Alicia Vikander look best placed to win acting Oscars
HANDOUT IMAGE: Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) struggles to stay warm during a vicious winter. Copyright © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. THE REVENANT Motion Picture Copyright © 2015 Regency Entertainment (USA), Inc. and Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. All rights reserved.Not for sale or duplication. Photo by Kimberley French/
Once again, it looks to be a three-way race for the best picture Oscar.
Spotlight won the Screen Actors Guild Awards’ film ensemble honour at the weekend. A week earlier, The Big Short took the Producers Guild’s best picture prize.
A few days from now, when the Directors Guild of America hands out its awards, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a favourite to win for his work on The Revenant .
The last time three movies divided and conquered the guilds along these lines? Just two years ago when 12 Years a Slave, Gravity and American Hustle jostled in a wide-open best picture race that came down to the wire before 12 Years ultimately prevailed when the final envelope was opened.
Issues of racial diversity have dominated the headlines since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to nominate any people of colour for its 20 acting nominations for a second consecutive year. The controversy has partially obscured a tight contest for the academy’s top prize, a race that the studio backers of three movies – The Revenant, The Big Short and Spotlight – genuinely believe they will win. 
Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling star in The Big Short, a drama-comedy about the financial crisis of 2008.
The Spotlight team found new potency with its SAG Awards cast honour, even though the movie winning that award has gone on to take the best picture Oscar just 10 of 20 times over the years. So that’s a coin flip, but it’s better than nothing. And if The Big Short had parlayed its PGA win with an SAG trophy, right now we’d be writing an obituary for Tom McCarthy’s sturdy journalism drama.
As it stands, we’re looking at any number of possible outcomes. Here’s one: Mad Max – also a best picture nominee – will likely win the most Oscars – make-up and hair, production design, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects and, possibly, one for its director, George Miller (let’s see how the DGA sorts things on Saturday) – with Spotlight and The Big Short coming away with only screenplay awards.
And The Revenant, Inarritu’s brutal, beautiful frontier western takes best picture, nets cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki an unprecedented third straight Oscar and finally puts Leonardo DiCaprio in the winner’s circle for his turn as the movie’s long-suffering, bear-battling trapper. 
Mad Max: Fury Road has a chance to take home the most Oscars, including the directing prize for George Miller.
The only problem: the academy has never given back-to-back best picture Oscars to movies from the same director, and Inarritu’s Birdman won last year. And The Revenant didn’t earn a screenplay nomination, meaning that it’d be only the second movie in the last half century to win best picture without recognition for its writing.
So, maybe we should wait for the DGA before any further shuffling of the best picture puzzle pieces. (The other contenders are The Martian , Brooklyn, Room and Bridge of Spies .) Besides, Saturday’s SAG Awards did offer some useful intel for the four individual acting Oscar races.
Lead actor: Before The Revenant even began screening in late November, the drumbeat to crown DiCaprio king of the world (with help from an internet meme) was insistent. The academy did have to go through and, you know, formally fill out the field with four other nominees, but no member of that quartet of challengers – Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, Eddie Redmayne – has emerged as much of a threat. And each time DiCaprio has won an award this year – the Golden Globe, the SAG statue – his peers have risen from their seats and cheered. Everyone feels good about this Oscar – even the other nominees.
“It looks, like, oh my God, the torture that all the people involved in that film went through,” Cranston told me last month. “But as Inarritu said, ‘Pain is temporary. But film is forever.’ And there’s truth to that.”
Lead actress: Unlike DiCaprio, Brie Larson isn’t “due”. This is her first Oscar nomination. She’s 26. But she had a firm grip on the lead actress Oscar from the moment that Room premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in early September and audiences witnessed her intense turn as the movie’s protective mother. When Room secured Oscar nominations for picture and director Lenny Abrahamson, it became clear the movie had more than enough support to secure Larson the Oscar. 
Brie Larson is a heavy favourite to win the best actress Oscar for her performance in Room, as a kidnapped mother held in confinement for years.
Supporting actor: For the last three years, all four SAG Awards acting honorees have gone on to win Oscars. That won’t be the case this year, as the academy did not nominate SAG’s supporting actor victor, Beasts of No Nation standout Idris Elba.
Elba’s win rated as probably the best case scenario for Sylvester Stallone, the Oscar nominee many pundits see winning this Oscar. If Christian Bale (The Big Short) or Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) had taken the SAG Awards trophy, they would have enjoyed validation, a moment in the spotlight and a chance to build momentum for their Oscar chances. As it stands, Stallone’s compelling comeback story for Creed (yo, 39 years between Oscar nominations) remains the category’s dominant narrative.
Supporting actress: Alicia Vikander’s SAG Awards victory for her turn as artist Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl probably settles the debate as to which lead actress (Vikander or Carol’s Rooney Mara) will prevail in supporting. Once she’s holding the Oscar, no one will remember the category.
Final voting for the Oscars begins on February 12, closing on February 23. The Oscars will be held February 28.
Los Angeles Times