When it comes to recent Best Picture handicapping, you rarely go wrong betting on movies about Hollywood itself. The movie business is an anxious industry, uncertain about its economic future, worried about its relevance in the age of prestige television, all too aware of its artistic surrender to the blockbuster machine — so when the Oscars roll around, its denizens reach eagerly for movies that address those anxieties head on.
Three of the last five Best Picture winners fit that self-referential mold. In 2011, The Artist offered straight silent-era nostalgia. The following year, Argo made the romance of the movies seem happily relevant to geopolitics and spycraft. The winner two years ago, Birdman, agonized over all the art-and-commerce concerns that everyone in movieland wants the world to think he wrestles with. And now, with La La Land as the favorite for this awards season, we’re likely to have our fourth in six years — another nostalgia trip, this time to the golden age of musicals, that’s also a celebration of all that’s gorgeous in a sun-kissed Los Angeles today.
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