Favorites to Win Best Picture at 2016 Oscars: Spotlight Odds-On Favorite at -150

MyBookie.ag is among the first online bookmakers to release odds on the 2016 Oscars with Spotlight among the top favorites to win Best Picture.

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Let’s be honest here -- the Hollywood voters love pictures that are about an expose -- especially if they do so in a smart way. This is why Spotlight has to be the odds-on favorite, sitting at -150 on MyBookie.ag. Michael Keaton is spot-on as the leader of the Spotlight investigative team at the Boston Globe.

His deadpan style keeps one of the most important secrets of the plot until the end -- and then his style as the coolly committed investigative reporter squares with what we would expect out of an intrepid journalist. He is the reasoned side of the reporter -- but Mark Ruffalo is the angry side, pushing every possible boundary to get interviews with sexual assault victims of people in the Boston Archdiocese and then galloping around the area to get previously sealed documents. His body language, verbal range and facial expressions seal the role -- and make him a strong candidate for

Best Supporting Actor. Rachel McAdams expertly walks that fine line between the emotionally invested reporter and the writer cool enough to extract detail after detail from people who spent their adolescence in hell. Jamey Sheridan is a pleasant surprise as the establishment lawyer who pushed hundreds of cases under the rug but comes out at just the right time...his handling of a role that combines guilt and outrage, both at himself and at those who want to overturn the reputation of the Catholic Church in Boston, is nothing short of masterful.

How about some of the other candidates? There is Carol, the story of an April-October affair between two women set back in those proto-Victorian 1950s. Rooney Mara, who already wowed audiences in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, walks the fine

lines that the 1950s required expertly, as she and Cate Blanchett both crackle with passion but also deal with repression and

resentment, two consequences of daring to feel that sort of love in an era when the nuclear family was just as much a part of Americana as George Washington, the bald eagle and Old Glory. MyBookie.ag lists this as a +1000 bet to win Best Picture, but given the lesbian subplot and the work of these two masterful actresses, it would not surprise me to see this film win it all.

Finally, there’s Room, listed at +1600 to win Best Picture on MyBookie.ag. This adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel (which won the Orange Prize in 2010) convincingly captures the limitations that come with a story narrated by a young child without falling into the sentimentality that such a narrator creates. It becomes relatively clear early on that Jack and Ma are the prisoners of Old Nick, who comes by to rape Ma while Jack is asleep in the closet. When Ma decided that it’s time to liberate Jack, she starts teaching Jack all that she can about the world outside the only environment he knows — the room that they share. This is a terrific allegory about what it means to grow up, and the pain of leaving childhood behind. As Jack resists all of this new information coming so quickly, the movie is full of suspense. The emotional intensity that rains down when Jack finally leaves the room shows both the sadness and the joy of finally finding oneself free. This is definitely a dark-horse candidate, but it might be the most artistically sound of the three films in this article.

- Jordan Bach, Gambling911.com