If you're tired of seeing so much 20th Century Women and Moonlight then you'll be sorely disappointed by these nominees, though perhaps you'll be excited by some of my other favorites that are finally getting mentions:
Best Director
Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius) - Harnessing film's length, images’ energy, and Braga’s magnetism to pinpoint a personal history and its intrusions.
Mia Hansen-Løve (Things to Come) - Few stylistic risks, but understated intersectionalities and frictions of radicalism, disappointment, and freedom are bold feats.
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) - Synthesizing a triptych of experiences, filtering their reverberations through filming-styles rarely seen within this narrative type.
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) - Exuding total confidence in his humor, frames, actors, and vision by embracing the bleak, slippery ambiguities.
Mike Mills (20th Century Women) - Seeing in Bening a mother’s ambivalence, and rooted in that ambivalence a whole ancestry of paradox.
Matches with Oscar: 1/5.
Runners-Up: Villeneuve (Arrival), Arnold (American Honey), Ahn (Spa Night), Larraín (Neruda), Audiard (Dheepan), Verhoeven (Elle), Ade (Erdmann), Almodóvar (Julieta)
Best Original Screenplay
20th Century Women (Mike Mills) - Incisive yet knotted threads of character insight, pulling us closer as their connections grow more complicated.
The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou) - Presenting a world of totalitarian affection and romantic skepticism, and asking if one entails the other.
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney) - Melds two distinct, personal voices as richly as it evokes the tensions of Chiron’s own identity.
Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve) - Understanding that time is a vital component of internal debate, capitalizing on short, revealing scene structures.
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade) - Unpacks deft characterizations, unusual relationships, and ambitious allegories by allowing scenarios humor, surprises, tension, and melancholia.
Matches with Oscar: 2/5. (Moonlight nominated in Adapted)
Runners-Up: Neruda, Zootopia, The Edge of Seventeen, Captain Fantastic, Manchester by the Sea, Little Men, Other People, The Treasure
Best Adapted Screenplay
Arrival (Eric Heisserer) - Devises an intricate setup for the twist, and the communication and flashback sequences offer such potential.
Elle (David Birke) - Penning a script about identifying a culprit, but chasing its psychological tremors through several heightened alleys.
Fences (August Wilson) - Offering its film so much, staying true to its source and giving the actors dazzling material.
Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar) - As bold, arresting, and emotionally fulfilling as his best scripts, avoiding fussiness without tidying the plot.
Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman) - Serving Austen and its ensemble so splendidly, delivering the heartiest laughs of 2016 and semi-arcs succinctly.
Matches with Oscar: 2/5.
Runners-Up: Silence, Pete's Dragon, The Handmaiden, Queen of Katwe, Lion, Sully, Embrace of the Serpent, The Family Fang
By all accounts, Moonlight may very well deserve to be here instead of in Original Screenplay. The script was never credited as being based on the McCraney's unproduced play, which initially caused some confusion during its successful campaign. Considering how seemingly close both McCraney and Jenkins worked during the scripting process I had more of the impression that they were expanding upon the play's original story, with new characters, scenes, conflicts, structure, etc. It should be considered "adapted" in that sense, but in terms of the actual script's spirit and energy it should be considered its own animal. I'm willing to change my opinion, but it's a marvelous script however you categorize it
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