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Only a few days remain before Oscars Lite takes center stage on broadcast TV. And, having seen all five dramas nominated for Best Motion Picture, I figured it’d make sense for me to weigh in with my opinions of each – and what I figure their chances of winning to be.

I’ll start with what I think is the least likely to win – Black Swan – and work my way through the list until I get to the odds-on favorite.

5) Black Swan
Were Black Swan to win Best Motion Picture at the Globes on Sunday, I dare say it’d be one of the biggest upsets of all time. This has less to do with the other films it’s competing against, and more to do with the kind of film Black Swan is. It’s profoundly creepy, and as much as I dug it, I really think I need only see it once (in much the same way I only needed to see Requiem for a Dream – another Aronofsky – once).

Before actually seeing it, Black Swan’s Best Picture nod made a ton of sense. It had great press, it was a product of Darren Aronofsky’s extraordinary mind, it featured Natalie Portman at her (allegedly) absolute best and, probably least important but I’ll list it here anyway, it had a $80,000+ per screen average over its opening weekend. At the time it got nominated – and this still rings true today – it was the hot indie movie. Again, the whole thing made total sense.

I saw Black Swan, and I struggle with the idea of it being a Best Picture nominee. The flick is hellishly dark – extremely chilling, let’s say – and caters more to Natalie Portman and her abilities as an actress than to the ensemble at large. I guess I get caught up in the idea of it competing against the bigger guys because it isn’t as rounded a movie. It doesn’t have the mythology of Inception or the family drama pull strings of The Fighter or the sense of completeness that The Social Network abides by. It’s more or less a vehicle for Portman to amaze us. And though she does, that’s really all I got out of the movie.

With that said, it’s exciting that the Hollywood Foreign Press would select a flick like Black Swan to contend for the big prize. I’d argue it’s a step in the right direction, because Black Swan, among other things, is art. It focuses hard on Portman and favors the close-up over other camera angles. Like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, we oftentimes follow Portman – a view of the world from a few steps behind her. It’s a fantastic style touch, really, that kept me in the moment and at unease.

Anyway, I’d love to see Black Swan pull off such a rare, rare feat – imagine the kind of statement that would make – but it just ain’t gonna happen.

4) Inception
It’s awful nice seeing a flick like Inception earn a rightful spot among the Hollywood elite with its Best Motion Picture nod (and three more Globe considerations to boot). That’s because Inception is that atypical blockbuster that rears its head every few years that goes against the grain of what you’d expect from mainstream film. More than an impressive watch, Inception is smart. Successive viewings of the thing have yielded new insight into Nolan’s thought processes and ideas. (If anything, they’ve made me appreciate his work more so than I did the day I saw Inception in theaters. And I really liked the movie that day).

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