After Toronto, is Tarantino still the favorite of the Oscars?

Over the past seven years, you could count on the future winner of Best Picture Oscar from the three major film festivals that unofficially mark the start of the awards season.

And of course, the films that debuted in the past two and a half weeks in Venice, Telluride and Toronto – including Noah Baumbach's comedy on divorce, "Marriage Story," character study Joker comics and the irreverent character of Taika Waititi, Hitler The comedy "Jojo Rabbit" will revolutionize the Oscars race decisively.

I'm not sure anyone can beat Quentin Tarantino.

After the festivals, Tarantino's summer success "Once upon a time … in Hollywood" still looks like our best favorite. "Once Upon a Time" is a big budget big screen movie with big stars. It was a love letter to the art of making movies – the kind of thing that Oscar voters usually win to reward – and its $ 135 million of raw plants that he alongside the winners of the best film, such as "Argo" and "The Departed".

Although he has won two Oscars for scriptwriting, Tarantino has never won the best director nor the best Oscar, and with a long-awaited feature film retreat, voters may decide that it's the best chance to give the 56 year old director his due. It's the right movie at the right time, and unless last minute movies like "The Irishman" and "Little Women" stand out, it should be Tarantino's year.

The old guard of the academy will also be eager to reward "Once Upon a Time" as a bulwark against the streaming services encroaching on the film industry, the same momentum that had given to "Book green "advantage last year on the" Rom "of Netflix. year, the streaming behemoth used the festival season to launch several new contenders.

Perhaps the most successful image competition is Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story", starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as two artists in a divorce. The two leaders are sure to be nominated, as is Laura Dern in a hilarious and intelligent turn Johansson's lawyer.

Netflix will also feature Martin Scorsese's film "The Irishman", which will be shown at the New York Film Festival later this month, as well as "The Two Papes", an attraction that has won over Telluride and Toronto. This latest film, directed by Fernando Meirelles, imagines a series of head-to-head meetings between Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) and the more progressive pontiff who comes to supplant him, Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce).

Although this has been equated with "The King's Speech" and the "Green Paper", two previous two-handed ones who won the best picture, the subject "The two popes" tilts older and narrower. However, the film contains enough comedy to play loud, and if Netflix manages to convince enough viewers to see it during the three weeks of theatrical engagement "The Two Popes" takes place in front of the public on December 20, the company could flood the category best picture with several contenders.

The film division of 20th Century Fox has been absorbed by Disney, but the studio will continue to promote "Ford v Ferrari", a drama series that has won good reviews in Telluride. It's a well-done, but definitely old school, which may not be a flow for academy members in search of traditional dishes. If voters are attracted to something more contemporary, A24 publishes "Waves," a tragic family tragedy directed vigorously by Trey Edward Shults and that brought comparisons with "Moonlight" in Telluride and Toronto.

Among the festival's films that could at least be as noisy as Tarantino's film is "Jojo Rabbit," a whimsical look at Nazi Germany dividing critics in Toronto, and in particular "Joker," which tells a new origin for Batman's greatest enemy, although this one was emptied of almost all the superhero signifiers. Instead, it is a deep dive into the brain of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a mentally ill clown who pushed further and further into the commission of criminal acts. Squint, and you can see a trajectory that draws it into a familiar territory of comics, but director Todd Phillips is more interested in conjuring up "Taxi Driver" and "The King of Comedy" than anything else. who has a cape and a hood.

"Joker" was right to take first prize in Venice, and it will undoubtedly gain its share of success and attention at the box office in the coming months, but I think that Phoenix draws better from an Oscar than the movie itself . The 44-year-old, considered one of the best actors of his generation, plays the character quite different from Heath Ledger's Joker performance in The Dark Knight to be just as worthy of a prize.