Last Oscars Sunday, I wrote: "Oscars Sunday is here and truly, after the week I’ve had, I am surprised that this article got written. I am hiring ghost writers for next year. Please apply to chat with me about movies forever and ever."
Well, here's to consistency, I guess. A year later, I still don't know how I managed to write this article after the week/month/season I've had. Some things never change. But now, writing from where my love for movies started before it blossomed into something more personal, I am grateful that I have a new thing to come back to every March, despite everything else in my life. This is my Super Bowl. My World Cup finale. So let me have it.
Last year, I included with every one of my predictions which of the nominees you should add to your watchlist for every category. This year, I made this list along the way for all of you out there who aren't as film-crazy as me and haven't had time to watch as much this year. I gotchu. Here is your...
TLDW (Too Long; Didn’t Watch) Guide — in five words or less
Best Picture Nominees
Anora — American working class Cinderella rollercoaster.
The Brutalist — Fight-for-your-architecture epic.
A Complete Unknown — Fight-for-your-voice bio-musical.
Conclave — Papal gossip thriller.
Dune: Part Two — Straight allegorical fantasy sci-fi.
Emilia Pérez — Queer crime melodrama musical.
I’m Still Here — [Impossible to find uncorrupted file.]
Nickel Boys — Quiet fight-for-life puzzle.
The Substance — Visceral gory Cinderella horror.
Wicked — Queer allegorical fantasy musical.
Other Notable Nominees
The Apprentice — Grunge political antihero disco.
Gladiator II — Homoerotic revenge gore.
Inside Out 2 — Teenage angst, parent adult version.
Nosferatu — Gothic horror tragedy.
A Real Pain — Brothers’ comedic adventure reunion drama.
Sing Sing — Prison Shakespeare family redemption story.
The Wild Robot — Anti-AI fight-for-family.
Hope this helps you figure out which ones you want to watch yourself. And now, for whatever it’s worth, here are my thoughts and predictions at the nth hour.
Big hits for the 97th Oscars:
Anora, Conclave, and The Brutalist will win at least two awards each.
Biggest races to watch: Best Actress (for the third year in a row!), both the Screenplay awards, Directing, and Editing.
History will be made in many categories, including first-time wins (from first-time nominations) for many key artists.
THE CAMPAIGNS
If, by some miraculous feat, you have avoided all the ever-developing controversies surrounding the original presumed frontrunners for this year’s Oscars, let me quickly catch you up where each of the films nominated for Best Picture stand at the end of their respective campaigns.
It’s a miracle I’m Still Here is still here, after not running a big Hollywood campaign like the other nominees. It’s partly because it is not a Hollywood film. But several campaigns work from the inside, with personal testimonies and endorsements going a long way to convince voting members of the Academy to take a closer look. And I’m Still Here, the favourite international feature from Brazil this year, has followed that route. And it’s not a bad strategy at all, as the last-watched sometimes has the freshest impression. And I hear Fernanda Torres is a force in this film that I have not been able to find access to after all my very legal scouring.
Indie hit The Substance has pulled off quite a feat by being so heavily nominated for how small a film it is. And besides laying out the carpet for Demi Moore, they haven’t really done much publicly to secure a Best Picture win.
Dune: Part Two has stood the test of time, securing a position in this pool from an early release in the year. Many others have not – The Bikeriders and I Saw The TV Glow particularly come to mind – and that by itself is impressive. The film itself is impressive, and I cannot wait for the next instalment. But this is not Dune’s year to win big.
Which brings me to the classic quiet film nominated for just enough awards to make it seem like the Academy is noticing and acknowledging the breadth of genres represented in this group of 10. Last year, it was Past Lives. This year, it is Nickel Boys, a masterclass in flipping first-person POV. Again, no flashy campaign from this project, but this film is in my top two from all the nominees this year.
A Complete Unknown and Wicked fulfil some other must-haves for this category: a biopic of a beloved musical artist (think, Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody in recent years) and the sensation of the year (Barbie). Wicked’s phenomenal marketing and press tour should be the focus of its own documentary, and maybe they will campaign a little more strategically next year for Wicked: For Good (for the uninitiated, yes, the film was shot altogether but has been split in two parts).
And then we have the actual scandals. Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist were the most nominated at this year’s Oscars (the latter tied with Wicked at 10). And after a sweep at The Golden Globes in early January, the lead actress for Emilia Pérez, Karla Sofia Gascón’s racist and Islamophobic tweets resurfaced and everybody on the project — including the director Jacques Audiard, her co-star and fellow nominee Zoe Saldaña, and the film’s distributor Netflix — cut her off. Ouch. Thankfully, this has not affected Zoe’s achievement in the film, and she has continued to sweep her own category at practically every award show. But this has also thwarted any chance of the film being the first to pick to win at the Oscars. Oof.
Meanwhile, The Brutalist clocks in at 3 hours 35 minutes, with an integrated 15-minute intermission. So many people struggled to watch it with the time and patience it deserved before the nominations. But during the awards season, the editor went on record admitting that AI was used to alter the dialects for both Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones to make them sound as genuine as possible. Director Brady Corbet has since clarified that none of the English dialogue (which is the majority of the film) has been tampered with, but rather only some of the Hungarian (or Yiddish?) dialogue. And this is after a monthslong strike that the actors went on to fight against the use of AI to alter any of their performances. Yikes.
Which brings us to the current frontrunners, two ensemble stories: Anora and Conclave. One is a rollercoaster ride of a Cinderella story, with a host of unexpected twists and turns, including several funny Russians, propelling us toward a heartbreaking final scene for our heroine, “Annie” or Anora. The other is Gossip Girl 2.0, but secluded in the Vatican, with only eyes and lips doing all the necessary communication. Both are scot-free of any scandal. While Anora has been on a steady rise over several months, the ailing health of Pope Francis has made Conclave a very topical subject. The ensemble of Conclave just won Best Ensemble at the SAG awards last Sunday! One of these films is most likely to take home the prize at the end of the night. But before we get to that finale, let’s get through all of my other predictions.
THE SHORTS
Admittedly, I haven’t watched everything in these categories, but I can make some educated guesses.
The ever-so-timely Incident over the quieter storytelling in Instruments of a Beating Heart and The Only Girl in the Orchestra for Documentary Short.
The really enticing Yuck! is my pick over the festival favourite and BAFTA-winning Wander to Wonder for Animated Short.
The Live Action Short pool is filled with gems. My favourite is I’m Not a Robot and I will be rooting for that.
DOCU, INTERNATIONAL, and ANIMATED FEATURES
It’s always a timely war piece that emerges victorious in the Documentary Feature category, so this year it’s between Porcelain War, surrounding the still-ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and No Other Land, which explores an unexpected bond between a Palestinian activist and a Jewish Israeli journalist. The latter is my prediction to win.
Emilia Pérez would have won International Feature if not for the scandal, so now I’m Still Here will prevail.
As for Animated Feature, I would’ve normally chosen The Wild Robot, which ticks all the right boxes for this category (with a modest amount of cringe in there), but after The Boy and the Heron’s win over Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse last year, I’m gravitating towards the more artistic choice that’s also in the running for International Feature: Flow. A pity, really, as both Memoir of a Snail and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl are delightful (and nowhere as close in pathos as Inside Out 2 strives to be). But hey, a fantastic pool to choose from, which is always the best kind of problem to have.
ACHIEVEMENTS IN DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, and MUSIC
Dune: Part Two will take home the award for Visual Effects, because have you watched that film.
The Substance must win for Makeup and Hairstyling, because that’s the focus of the entire film.
Wicked is the clear winner for achievement in Costume Design.
Dune: Part Two might upset a Production Design win, but, seriously, after planting 9 million tulips… Wicked has to win, right? Although, if I'm being honest, both Conclave and The Brutalist are strong contenders, too, and I would not be surprised if one of them beats the tulips. And I'm just glad Nosferatu got nominated, because I could not stop thinking about the gothic beauty they conjured in every shot while watching the film.
My vote for Cinematography goes to The Brutalist.
For Sound, it’s between the two Timothée-led films, Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown. And the latter presents Bob Dylan’s discography in a very different sentiment than we are accustomed to, for which I hope they will be recognized.
As for Original Score, unfortunately, most of the Academy will think that the score for Wicked was already a part of the stage musical and will not truly appreciate how cleverly it contributes to the larger storytelling of the two protagonists. And Emilia Pérez’s score isn’t as memorable compared to the rest of the nominees. Although I was most impressed by Volker Bertelmann’s world for Conclave (so that’s who I’m rooting for), I suspect after multiple wins this season, The Brutalist’s Daniel Blumberg will take home one final statuette. If The Wild Robot’s Kris Bowers pulls off a surprise win… I will refuse to predict this category in the future.
As is starting to become custom at the Oscars, whichever film has two songs nominated, will win. Original Song is one of two categories that will not be affected by the scandal surrounding Emilia Pérez, so expect “El Mal” to win here.
THE BIG FOUR
No, these are not the acting categories. These are the categories to closely follow to predict more accurately in whose tide the big prize is going at the end of the night.
Directing and Editing are the most exciting categories to me, as the wins here will likely signal who’s taking home Best Picture. Sean Baker’s first-time nomination for Anora promises to be lucky and I’m predicting his victory over Brady Corbet for The Brutalist. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance puts in a good fight for the race, though.
As for Editing, I think I prefer Conclave to Anora and The Brutalist, which is where things get really interesting, as it — once again — evens the Anora/Conclave race if Sean Baker wins for Directing.
This is not made any less riveting by the fact that I’m predicting that Anora will win Original Screenplay, while Conclave will take the cake for Adapted Screenplay.
Which brings us to…
THE ACTORS
Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña will finish their awards season sweep with wins in the Supporting Role categories for their lead roles in A Real Pain and Emilia Pérez. If only supporting actors had been nominated in these categories, however, Isabella Rossellini would’ve won for holding her own in every small scene she appears in, as if an after-thought to the popes in Conclave. And it would’ve come down to Anora’s Yura Borisov and The Apprentice’s rendition of Roy Cohn, Jeremy Strong.
I will just preface the Best Actor race by saying that I’m a long-time Colman Domingo stan. Everything he touches is gold. This is his second successive nomination in this category, and I look forward to his big win one day. Ralph Fiennes is perfect in Conclave but unfortunately will not prevail this year. Despite the AI scandal, I think Adrien Brody will still win for The Brutalist. I’m all in for a surprise, though, as Timothée might pull off an Adrien by becoming the youngest to win in this category. Back in 2003, Adrien became the youngest actor to take home the trophy for his work in The Pianist. Who am I rooting for, knowing he will not win? Sebastian Stan for his transformation as Donald J. Trump in The Apprentice. It’s an uncomfortable film, and he is phenomenal in it.
The tightest race for the past few years has been Best Actress. And what a time to be alive when we see magnificent showdowns between Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett (2023), Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone (2024), and now, Demi Moore and Mikey Madison. Mikey is transcendental in Anora and her arc follows one of finding herself through the shit that the world throws at her, very similar to Emma’s Bella in Poor Things last year. In the awards season, too, they are neck-and-neck, with Demi securing trophies at the Globes and SAG and Mikey (and Anora) winning big at the BAFTAs and the Indie Spirits. Demi’s “popcorn actress” reputation might make older Academy members hesitant to vote for her comeback role in The Substance, while the hot fire of Anora might propel Mikey to her win.
Honestly, I am once again torn. I will be happy for both. I will even be happy for a Fernanda Torres surprise win. But I am predicting Demi over Mikey for today. And I am grateful to be living in a time where all of these actresses get to play such fierce, compelling roles.
BATTLE OF THE ENSEMBLES
If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. Thank you for reading as I think out loud (write) about my favourite thing in the world. To bring this season to a close, I am predicting a win for the instant American classic Anora, though I will be rooting for the quiet chaos of Conclave.
And now I’m off to the theaters to watch Flow. See you next year.
Happy Oscars Sunday!
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