Man✤y of the other Oscar races are still up in the air, but there’s a clear front-runner for Best Actress: Julianne Moore as a Columbia University linguistics professor who struggles to hold onto her personality after a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s in the emotionally devastating drama “St꧃ill Alice.’’
Can her only serious compe🍰tition — Reese Witherspoon in the survival adventure “Wild’’ — possibly catch up?
Moore has been the one to beat since “Still Alice’’ bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. This superb film, by the writer-director team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, will have a one-week Oscar qualification run in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 5 and wi💃ll begin spreading out around the country on Jan. 16, the day after Oscar nominations are announced.
“Still Alice’’ will almost certainly bring a fifth nomination for the highly respected Moore, who hasn’t gotten a nod since 2001, when she double-dipped as Best Actress nomineeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ f♔or “Far From Heaven’’ and Best Supporting Actress nominee for “The Hours.’’ She scored earlier lead nominations for “The End of the Affair’’ (1999) and “Boogie Nights’’ (1997).
Characters struggling with mental and physical challenges areꦿ longtime catnip for Oscar voters. So far this century, Judi Dench and Julie Christie both received Best Actress nods for playing women with Alzheimer’s in “Iris’’ (2001) and “Away From Her’’ (2006), respectively. Meryl Streep won in the category for “The Iron Lady’’ (2012) as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who exhibits Alzheimer’s symptoms as an old woman.
In “Still Alice,’’ Moore receives strong support from Kristen Stewart as her youngest daughter, an actress with whom she has had a strained relationship, and Alec Baldwin as her sympathetic but self-absorbed husband. More important, she has two or three of the kind of scenes ꧃that typically put an Oscar nominee over the top.
Moore is the Best Actress pick of a whopping 20 of 25 Oscar oracles at the awards prediction site Gold Derby. Over at the film portal Movie City News, the Gurus O’ Gold have Moore leading with 82 points on their weigh♑ted ballots, well ahead of 61 points for her closest competitor, Witherspoon.
As I wrote back in September, Witherspoon’s vivid performance in “Wil♈d,’’ as a writer who hikes 1,100 miles to put her troubled past behind her, represents the actress’ most impressive work since she won the Best Actress Oscar for “Walk the Line’’ (2005).
Witherspoo𒊎n also co-produced “Wild’’ (as well as the controversial box-office smash “Gone Girl,’’ in which she does not appear) after nearly a decade of squandering her clout on mostly dubious projects. This reinvention narrative — which neatly dovetails with the theme of “Wild’’ — may resonate with Oscar voters. I don’t think this will be enough for her to surpass Moore, however, who is considered overdue for this honor by many — but stranger things have happened.
Most prognosticators give the third and fourth Best Actress slots to a pair of British actresses. Felicity Jones, little known in the US, is superb as disabled genius Stephen Hawking’s wife in the double-biography “The Theory of Everything.’’
And, of course, there’s erstwhile Bond girl Rosamund Pike, who’s finally achieved stateside stardom for her evil tour de force in “Gone Girl.’’
Who will snag the remaining Best Actress nod? Per the experts, it’s between Hilary Swank — who does her best work since winning the Best Actress Oscar nine years ago for “Million Dollar Baby’’ — in the feminist Western “The Homesman’’ — and five-time nominee ♒Amy Adams as artist Magaret Keane in “Big Eyes,’’ a Tim Burt🃏on biopic that only a handful of insiders have seen at this point.