Bun B's Year In Film And His Amazing Oscar Predictions

Bun B is a big time cinefile. When reached by phone shortly after the Oscar nominations where announced at the end of January, the Texas rapper had seen every one of the films in the running for Best Picture save for one (Brooklyn), as well as a number of films that either received nods in other categories or were perhaps overlooked. Below are his thoughts on some of the year's biggest films, and his hopeful predictions as to who will be taking home a statue at Sunday night's ceremony.

The top two for me are Spotlight and The Revenant. Everything says The Revenant, but Spotlight is special. I think this movie would have been a lot more jumpy and fast-faced if anyone else had done it. This movie is very unassuming in how powerful it is. It very calmly, and very cooly, eats you up inside. I think if there's anything that will upset the Revenant run, it's gonna be Spotlight.

I feel like the only person who has a chance against Alejandro González Iñárritu is Lenny Abrahamson. [The Room] was very awkward, very odd, very uncomfortable as it should have been. And then it became very beautiful. It tugged all the emotional chords beautifully.

I'd swap out Brian Cranston [who is nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Trumbo] for Géza Röhrig, the star of Son of Saul, all fucking day. Brian Cranston's a great fucking actor, but not in Trumbo. Hell, I liked him better in Godzilla than fucking Trumbo. But Trumbo's one of those movies by Hollywood for Hollywood.

I'm going with Charlotte Rampling. In 45 Years, you start out feeling so bad for her, and then it kind of shifts. I don't know how long you have to act to be able to say everything when you say nothing. The acting feels so real. It's not a fluke that a movie that probably no one's heard of, an actress performance comes out of it.

Can I just say, that I don't think Jennifer Lawrence deserves to be in this category? Joy is a great movie, obviously. She's a great actress and I don't want to take anything from her, but it ain't American Hustle. I think in an ensemble cast she will always stand out. But it can be tiring after a whole movie. Kate Winslet [for Steve Jobs] is the darling. If you wanna be the king you gotta kill the king. I think Charlotte is the dark horse on this one. No one does classic beauty better than her.

Sylvester wins, obviously. That's the whole point of this. We're all getting dressed up to go to the Oscars to hear Sylvester Stallone, let no one get this twisted. The academy can't pay for a better moment than this: this is the Oscar's original darling. I would have liked to have seen [Spotlight's] Mark Ruffalo win this one because it's another one of those movies where the acting is just so subtle, it could almost slip right past you. But this one's written.

It would be kind of ill to see Rachel McAdams win an Oscar [for Spotlight]—I don't think people give her credit for her range, she started in a kind of character with younger demographic-aged films and really made a push to be taken more seriously and got a lot of opportunities and knocked it out the park. But I feel like Jennifer Jason Leigh deserves one, maybe not just for Hateful Eight but for [Anomalisa] and everything. Like, I tried to watch Adaption again, that's rough!

Hateful Eight is probably gonna win because Ennio Morricone is royalty. He doesn't really do this a lot and Quentin brought him back. Quentin basically went back and made his The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-kind of film, the ultimate epic spaghetti western, and then you've got mister spaghetti western himself scoring your movie. It's gonna be hard to not vote for him in a landslide. Probably the easiest win of the night.

It should be Wiz Khalifa for "See You Again," but this is an amazing song and it's easily the biggest song out of any of the songs nominated. It was a huge hit. And really, I'm just happy for Weeknd as a person. I've seen the way that he's tried to remain true to himself throughout this entire process, and you could have done something a lot more accessible but this song is just as dark, just as sexual, as anything else that he does. Which makes all the sense int he world, because this is a very dark, a very sensual movie. This is the exact kind of artist that he is and I think that he complimented that movie very well. Kudos to them for even thinking outside the box like this, because the Weeknd was still kind of teetering at this moment, but the people in charge of the soundtrack recognized that he is an artist that creates music that plays along the lines of dealing in sin and having a darker side.