This year’s Oscars class did not begin the season especially heralded, but on the precipice of the nominations, its reputation has turned around. The late-breaking duo of Wicked and A Complete Unknown added star power to the race. Festival hit Conclave became an actual hit. The Substance followed up its surprising box-office success with an even-more-surprising, even-more-successful run through the precursors. Love it or hate it, a film like Emilia Pérez becoming a front-runner is something that could have only happened in the past five years. The Oscars are weirder and more global than ever before, and we’re all the better for it.
It has become a cliché to note that, after a couple seasons when the Best Picture winner was a fait accompli, this year’s race is up in the air. That remains true: I think there are five, or maybe even six, movies with a chance to take the top prize. While the various precursors have helped the field come into focus, a few major categories remain in flux. (If anyone can figure out what’s going on in Supporting Actress, we should put them in charge of international diplomacy.) As I always say, though, these are the Academy Awards, not a machine that tabulates guild results, so we should expect some surprises. Here’s who I see getting into the eight biggest categories at Thursday’s Oscar nominations.
Best Picture
Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
A Real Pain
Sing Sing
The Substance
Wicked
This race has a clear top tier of Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Emilia Pérez. All were nominated for Best Film at the BAFTAs, and all saw their directors recognized by the DGA. Besides The Brutalist, all were nominated for SAG’s ensemble award, and Anora and A Complete Unknown also scored with the WGA. (The other three couldn’t get nominated since they weren’t written by guild members.) Having shown up nearly everywhere they were eligible, these are the five we probably would have seen in the old days of the Best Picture category.
The Brutalist’s seat at SAG was taken by Wicked, and the Broadway adaptation’s monstrous box office makes it feel like as much of a Best Picture lock as the movies above. Another blockbuster, Dune: Part Two, has recently looked in danger of falling out of the race, but the sci-fi sequel steadied supporters’ hopes with a fine showing at the PGAs and BAFTA. Also making it into the Producers Guild’s top ten were The Substance and A Real Pain, two films about struggling with those who share your blood, and which benefit from featuring presumptive front-runners in the acting races.
That leaves only one slot. At the PGAs, the tenth place went to September 5, but the journalism drama has otherwise failed to make much headway, and it fits the mold of a middlebrow contender that producers love more than the Oscars do. If the Academy keeps up its recent auteurist streak, the final nominee could be RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, a challenging film that’s won raves for its first-person conceit. However, Nickel Boys has been snubbed by guilds like the American Society of Cinematographers, so I’m inclined to go with another film about a penitentiary: Sing Sing. The A24 drama also missed key guild nominations, but two of its performances have gotten traction at the precursors, and it sports a warmer message that could be more to the Academy’s taste.
Best Director
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Sean Baker, Anora
Edward Berger, Conclave
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
Four directors have featured at every major precursor. Audiard is a former Palme d’Or winner whose film is catnip for international voters. Baker is the indie darling made good. Berger is an arty European who gave an airport novel some panache. And Corbet is the self-conscious heir to the New Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s who spent the weekend dealing with a very 2020s controversy. Joining them at the DGA nominations was A Complete Unknown’s James Mangold, but as his film bears less of a personal stamp I think he’ll drop out. Considering the recent history of the Best Director category, the safest bet for his replacement is an international auteur whose film premiered at Cannes, and as luck would have it we’ve got two options: The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat and All We Imagine Is Light’s Payal Kapadia. Since India didn’t submit Light for International Feature, Kapadia’s bid has received a lot of attention as the only way to recognize her film, but I think the power of the Best Picture spotlight will ultimately pull it to Fargeat. RaMell Ross deserves to be mentioned here as well, though so far industry bodies haven’t fallen as hard for Nickel Boys as critics’ groups did.
Best Actor
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Daniel Craig, Queer
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
In the thinnest major category, Brody, Chalamet, and Fiennes are repping top-tier Best Picture contenders, while Domingo is making the most of his late-in-life turn from character actor to leading man. All are former Oscar nominees: Fiennes is the only one to have been nominated twice, while Brody is the only one who’s won. (His record as the youngest-ever Best Actor winner could be broken by Chalamet this year.) Craig may be vulnerable, since Luca Guadagnino’s romance baffled as many viewers as it beguiled. Nevertheless, he’s got industry stature, an appealing narrative, and nominations from the Globes and SAG, so I’m not shaken. Sebastian Stan is waiting in the wings, but he’s campaigning two films at the same time, and awards voters can’t seem to make up their minds between his performances in the dark dramedy A Different Man and the Trump biopic The Apprentice.
Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Two weeks ago I compared this category to a cage match, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. But the top tier has solidified. Gascón and Madison broke out at Cannes, exciting new faces leading films that should compete for Best Picture. Erivo carried the fall’s biggest blockbuster with her multi-hypenate talents: acting, singing, and holding space. Moore was a later addition, as pundits slowly came to terms with the fact that The Substance was indeed an awards movie, but after winning a Golden Globe, she now appears the presumptive favorite.
Three women appear to be in contention for the final spot. I’ve gone with critics’ fave Jean-Baptiste, on the basis that I can’t imagine anyone watching her blistering turn in Hard Truths and not voting for her. But she’s got strong competition from Brazilian Fernanda Torres of I’m Still Here, who got a late boost with a surprise Golden Globe win, and Pamela Anderson of The Last Showgirl, whose comeback was potent enough to land a SAG nomination for the small-scale indie. Their performances are no less critically acclaimed, so this spot will likely come down to the wire.
Best Supporting Actor
Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
Once Kieran Culkin sewed this thing up, there was no need for a challenger as flashy as Gladiator II’s Denzel Washington in the race. Instead, precursor voters decided Culkin’s backing band should be a bunch of second fiddles. Borisov, Norton, and Pearce are able foils to lead acting contenders, while Strong is riding the coattails of Stan’s Apprentice bid. (Though he’s arguably drafting off Culkin, his former Succession co-star, just as much.) Washington is still popular enough to get in if one of these guys falters, but watch out for Sing Sing’s Clarence Maclin, playing a fictionalized version of himself, who all but takes over the movie from Colman Domingo.
Best Supporting Actress
Jamie Lee Curtis, The Last Showgirl
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Isabella Rosselini, Conclave
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
Even at this late date, only Grande and Saldaña appear to have locked down spots in our most wide-open acting race. (The power of musicals!) Otherwise, we’re choosing from a potpourri of fascinating performances. After earning SAG and BAFTA noms for the late-breaking Last Showgirl, Curtis’s leathery turn is closing in on an afterglow Oscar nomination, riding the momentum of her recent Everything Everywhere All at Once win. Jones and Rosselini are wobblier, since both were overlooked by SAG, and each has a clear impediment: Rossellini gives a mostly silent performance; Jones doesn’t show up until the second half of The Brutalist, which is generally considered more flawed. However, I think their films are strong enough to push them through, especially considering Jones is a past nominee, while Rossellini, like Curtis two years ago, is cinema royalty who has never been recognized by the Academy before.
Still, A Complete Unknown is surging at the right time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez show up here. Danielle Deadwyler is a standout in The Piano Lesson, though the August Wilson adaptation hasn’t lived up to preseason expectations. (Personally, I’d slot either of them in over Curtis.) International voters love Emilia Pérez, which might pull Selena Gomez in alongside Saldaña. In such an unsettled race, The Substance’s Margaret Qualley could ride in on Demi Moore’s coattails. Pump it up!
Best Original Screenplay
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist
Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers
As the Oscar field gets increasingly global, the WGA nominations have lost some of their luster as a prognosticator. The guild rules out screenplays not written under their bargaining agreement, which includes most foreign films and some indies. This leaves the BAFTAs as our best indicator, where Kneecap joined Anora, The Brutalist, A Real Pain, and The Substance in this category. Beloved as the Irish hip-hop biopic may be in some quarters, I have a hard time seeing it becoming as much of a thing at the Oscars. Mike Leigh’s five previous nominations in this category make Hard Truths a possible replacement. But Leigh couldn’t get in at his hometown BAFTAs, which leads me to believe Challengers, a WGA nominee that fits the taste of the Academy’s cool-kids branch, has more juice. If September 5 shows up instead, that’s probably a sign it’s getting the final Best Picture spot.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Joslyn Barnes and RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing
Jay Cocks and James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
Peter Straughan, Conclave
The Best Picture heavyweights are evenly split between the screenplay categories this year, which should make for some exciting races. Conclave, A Complete Unknown, and Emilia Pérez fill the top of this category, and I’ve chosen two Best Picture bubble contenders to round it out. There’s a chance that Wicked’s strong enough across the board to get in here, too — remember, 1917 got a Screenplay nod — in which case it probably bumps whichever of Sing Sing or Nickel Boys didn’t make it into Picture. But when they were all competing at BAFTA, the musical was the odd one out, and given the Brits otherwise preferred Wicked, that feels telling.