I’m going to stay up and watch the Oscars tonight because of what has turned out to be a fascinating (for movie lovers) and surprising battle for Best Picture between a dark and excellent movie that makes you think but feels bad and a suspenseless and slick film that doesn’t give you any reason to think but feels good.

I predict that CODA (Children Of Deaf Adults), the out-of-nowhere offering by Apple TV, will take the Best Picture Award away from The Power Of The Dog, the overwhelming favorite for months. I watched it last night for the first time.

I loved both movies in different ways, but there is no question that CODA is the movie we all need now and Power Of The Dog is the movie we know we should love the most but don’t really.

Movies, like life, are not always fair, and sometimes the best guy or gal doesn’t win. And sometimes, like tonight, that’s okay.

This contest is symbolic and a textbook lesson in creativity and the new world of filmmaking. Both movies come from the new streaming world, not the Hollywood Studios, which are no longer capable of risk or imagination and are disconnected from ordinary life.

Jane Campion’s Power Of The Dog is a gorgeous and brilliantly conceived film imagining what it meant to be gay in the old wild west.

Like The Batman, it is unrelentingly cold and dark, even though almost every scene is so beautiful, it almost hurts.

It is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Everything about this movie is near perfect – the acting, the cinematography, the directing, the writing, the soundtrack.

But it didn’t make me feel good; it is a sad and wrenching movie in many ways. I’m rooting for CODA.

Power Of The Dog is proud to be dark. It’s not looking to spread happiness or comfort.  It is also, without a doubt and technically and creatively the best film in years. Jane Campion is one of the best and most respected directors in movie-making.

Sian Heder’s CODA is a groundbreaking look into the lives of the deaf, and it’s about time.

It is wonderfully acted, utterly predictable, ordinary in its writing, cinematography, and mediocre in almost every other way. You don’t need to think while watching this movie, and there is never any worry about the outcome.

But I cried at least six times and felt uplifted and reassured when it was over. That is no small thing in the age of nasty and treasonous politicians, war, and pandemics. Isn’t that what movies are supposed to do?

It is a remarkable thing that these two different movies are competing for one another for Best Picture. It makes the Oscars more interesting to me than they have been for a good while.

CODA is the story of the Rossi’s, a third-generation fishing family in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The story is centered on Ruby (Emilia Jones), a seventeen-year-old high-school senior whose parents, Jackie (Marlee Matlin) and Frank (Troy Kotsur), are deaf, as is her older brother Leo.

Since she was three years old, Ruby was the only hearing member of the family and their intermediary and interpreter to the outside world.

The big studios insisted that Heder get a big-name star in the film, but he refused, holding out for the family to be deaf actors, not actors who pretended to be deaf. Based on the 2014 French film “The Belier Family,” the movie languished for a while.

Eventually, Heder got private funding, and when the film was screened at Sundance, it was an instant hit, and Apple TV bought it for $23 million. It’s a savvy movie; I feel in my bones that it will win tonight.

Since its release on Apple TV and in some theaters (where it is free), the buzz has gained ground in Los Angeles, the movie has done well in some of the early awards. If it does win, it will signal yet another earth-shaking shift in the world of movies.

Ruby is fluent in sign language, and her life revolves around the family business, which depends on her to navigate the hearing world and the turbulent world of fishing.

She and Leo go out on the family fishing boat every morning with Frank (his acting is extraordinary, I imagine he will win Best Supporting Actor).

After fishing, Ruby goes to school, often without time to change her clothes. Once onshore, Ruby does the bargaining with greedy and slimy fish wholesalers who take advantage of the Rossi’s because they are deaf.

The tension (if you want to call it that) revolves around Ruby’s desire to have a life of her own; she loves singing and finds a sympathetic music teacher to encourage her and work with her, and who (surprise!) urges her to apply to the famous Berklee Academy Of Music in Boston.

They have their ups and downs (in this movie, all of the uncertainty has to be manufactured and obvious because there really isn’t any), but they work it out.

There is the prerequisite love interest for Ruby,  plagued with difficulties and understandings, but – guess what? – it turns out well.

The smelly, bullied fishing girl from the deaf family turns into a confident, poised and popular musical Swan and saves her family even while plotting to leave them behind.

The family has no money, but (guess what?) Berklee offers scholarships.

That’s the plotting narrative in the movie – there is never a shred of doubt that every difficulty will be overcome and everything will work out.

The family is crazy, and the parents are horny and inappropriate, but everybody has always loved everybody else, and love will get them through.

I’m not spoiling anything by saying it all somewhat magically works out. This movie lurches and bumbles into good outcomes.

The predictability didn’t spoil the movie; it was comforting, and I was still tearing up when the inevitable occurred. I loved this movie; I told Maria it felt good to watch it.

In a sense, the film harkens back to the glory days of Hollywood when feel-good movies got the country through the Great Depression and World War II. I suppose it’s about time moviemakers figure this out. Heder did.

The genius of CODA is that Heder makes predictability work.

The movie promises us a feel-good payoff and maintains an almost invisible level of faux suspense.

The film is never threatening, as Story Of The Dog is throughout; you will never think watching CODA that there is the actual possibility of loss. In Story Of The Dog, doom and darkness are in every frame.

The Rossi family has to figure out how to live in a cruel and risky world, yet they somehow feel risk-free. We are all off the hook when we watch this looming happiness flower take shape.

We had nothing to worry about; we could sit back and be happy for everyone involved. And you know what? It is nice. I’m weary of heavy and dark thinking; give me and everybody else a break. The news is dark enough.

When we first see Ruby, she’s singing beautifully aboard the fishing boat while she spears fish and tosses them into containers. When she auditions for the school choir, she is so terrified she has to flee the room without singing.

But guess what? When she comes back to the teacher to apologize, he gives her another chance, and she suddenly turns into Aretha Franklin.

Normally, I would cringe at such heavy-handedness, but my heart lifted and smiled and got soppy when it happened.

There’s mystical chemistry to movies that I love. I was in awe of Jane Campion’s Story Of The Dog, but it left me impressed but untouched.

CODA left me unimpressed but deeply touched.

I think it will win Best Picture, and I hope it does. It is the movie we need.

You can see it on Apple TV right now (I recommend watching it before the Oscars) or at some selected movie theaters.