We look at the main categories of this year’s Academy Awards – and put our picks on record.
Let’s face it—if anyone could predict the outcome of the Oscars, they would be placing large bets, not telling everyone about it. But that doesn’t stop us speculating about winners, something that’s a mix of reading the mood of the voters, guesswork, luck, competitive spirit, and assessing the quality of individual films (the latter being the least determining factor in Oscar success).
Here a few of the Flicks team look at key categories, and make foolhardy proclamations that we may regret when the Academy Awards take place March 12 (US time). Hopefully we can help in some way with your Oscar ballot picks, whether that’s a matter of agreeing with our picks or spotting the flaws in our logic…
Read on for some crystal ball gazing and all-round prognostication from Steve Newall, Eliza Janssen, Liam Maguren and Luke Buckmaster.
Best Picture
STEVE NEWALL: The expanded number of nominees in the Best Picture category seems to be achieving a couple of different things each year now—allowing some blockbusters to strut around convincing absolutely no-one that they have any chance of winning, and reducing the grumbles about good films that didn’t quite make the top five. The unintended consequence being, hang on, RRR is apparently less deserving of a nomination than the technically incredible but incredibly unlikely Best Picture winner Avatar: The Way of Water? Or the feeling, for those who didn’t make the cut last year: “My film’s not as good as… Don’t Look Up?!”
Which is all a long-winded way of saying not every one of the ten Best Picture nominees has a real shot, making this category perhaps the most prestigious participation certificate of all time. And, since this category is decided by preferential ballot, the results can favour films that most voters liked, ranked second or third on a lot of ballots, as opposed to those that elicit a more passionate but polarising response.
Having considered the above, the pics that seem most in the running to take home top prize are nominations frontrunner Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans and Top Gun: Maverick. Any of these feel like they could appear near the top of a lot of ballots, with Triangle of Sadness perhaps having a slim outside chance too.
Feels like this one comes down to a dogfight between Everything Everywhere All At Once and Top Gun: Maverick (before you scoff, remember how critics reacted to this superior legacy sequel)—but as it also feels like a year for fresh voices, I’m leaning EEAAO. The film’s buttplug, hot dog fingers etc. might not find favour with stuffy types, but they’re also the ones who may adore its ‘love letter to cinema’ elements the most.
Flicks Pick for Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Directing
STEVE NEWALL: A bunch of talented men (yes, they are all men, sigh) square off in this category. Most are first-time directing nominees, all competing with one another—and one all-time movie master.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the first time its co-directors have been nominated for either an Oscar or other significant directing award at other ceremonies—but they’ve already won six directing awards for the technically complex EEAAO heading into the Oscars. The Banshees of Inisherin’s Martin McDonagh is regarded more as a writer, and while Three Billboards saw him nominated for direction at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs in 2018, he was unsuccessful then. Todd Field and Ruben Östlund’s work (on Tár and Triangle of Sadness respectively) doesn’t feel like the strongest element of either film—both are writing contenders, and Cate Blanchett a standout performance—so feel pretty unlikely here.
This paves the way for Steven Spielberg, who already has two Best Director Oscars, but hasn’t won since Saving Private Ryan in 1999 (despite being nominated for West Side Story, Lincoln, and Munich). He brings name recognition and rep, and his deeply personal pic The Fabelmans bucks the trend of a lot of his recent filmography to make him feel like a stronger Best Director candidate than he has been in years.
Flicks Pick for Best Director: Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Best Acting
ELIZA JANSSEN: The most exciting thing about this year’s sexy famous people up for acting statues is the number of first-time nominees: hot new talents like Ana De Armas, Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan stand alongside longtime faves Brendan Gleeson, Bill Nighy, and Jamie Lee Curtis as newcomers to Oscar nom glory.
Biopics are usually an awards bait cheat code, but as mid-century icons Elvis and Marilyn, both Butler and De Armas might miss out on the season’s biggest gongs. The Academy can’t resist a comeback narrative, so we should instead expect Brendan Fraser to take Best Actor for his transformative feel-bad performance in The Whale. Ke Huy Quan might also repeat his Golden Globes success as the loveable husband in Everything Everywhere All At Once, unless one of the Banshees boys (Keoghan or Gleeson) surprises us.
In the female acting categories (why are these things still separated by gender?), Cate Blanchett is tipped to earn her third Oscar as the monstrous composer Tár. But there’s also been some funny industry business around Andrea Riseborough’s underdog nom for indie film To Leslie, and the Michelles (Yeoh or Williams) are hot on Blanchett’s trail too.
The most unpredictable category here is probably Best Supporting Actress, with Jamie Lee and energetic Gen Z villain Stephanie Hsu battling each other, and Angela Bassett nominated for her work in super-sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. We’d like to see the consistently terrific character actor Hong Chau take it for The Whale, after a tremendous year of also stealing scenes in The Menu and Poker Face.
Flicks Pick for Best Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Flicks Pick for Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Tár
Flicks Pick for Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Flicks Pick for Best Supporting Actress: Hong Chau, The Whale
Best Writing
STEVE NEWALL: Both the Adapted and Original categories are incredibly close, with strong arguments to be made for every single nominee.
Original is a bloodbath, with all five Best Director nominees slugging it out—all of whom are writer/directors, with playwright and repeat Spielberg collaborator Tony Kushner the only non-filmmaking nominee (for his co-writing credit on The Fabelmans). Everything Everywhere All at Once’s blend of complex concepts and emotional core put it in a leading position, alongside The Banshees of Inisherin and its more traditional feel on the page. This year could be a sweep, or a couple of pics could split awards right down to the big one—but I have Banshees by a nose here.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire… Glass Onion and Top Gun: Maverick are in Adapted, because they are sequels—but feel towards the back of a tight pack. There’s barely daylight separating the other three, all strong adaptations of complex works, but I’m leaning towards Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel Women Talking. Polley has already won several leading critics awards in this category, with the Writers Guild Awards on March 5 likely to confirm (or confuse) its frontrunner status.
Flicks Pick for Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Flicks Pick for Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Best Animated Feature
LIAM MAGUREN: This is Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar to lose. His Pinocchio has the awards momentum going into the Academy Awards and GDT’s “animation is cinema” speech will sound like sweet justice after last year’s presenters took a big ol’ dump on the entire art form.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio isn’t a guaranteed winner, however, and if Marcel the Shell can snag the BAFTA, we’ll see a stop-motion battle for the ages. Fellow critical darlings Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Turning Red are potential dark horses in the race. The Sea Beast is just happy to be there.
Flicks Pick for Best Animated Feature: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Best Shorts
LIAM MAGUREN: Want the favourites for Best Live Action/Animated/Documentary Short? An Irish Goodbye, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, and The Martha Mitchell Effect. There you go. The more pressing question is: how do we even watch all these short film nominees? While many are still floating in distribution limbo, the prominence of streaming platforms means Oscar-nominated shorts have become more accessible than ever.
More than just an entryway to making features, short-form cinema is an art in its own right, as any one of these nominees can prove. Fantastic teen sex comedy My Year of Dicks can be found on Vimeo; Alfonso Cuarón-produced short Le Pupille is currently available on Disney+; The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse can be experienced on Apple TV+, heartfelt true story The Elephant Whisperers and Watergate doco The Martha Mitchell Effect are both streaming on Netflix; and The New Yorker posted a trifecta of nominees with the existential shipwreck tale The Flying Sailor, walrus migration doco Haulout, and PTSD drama Stranger at the Gate.
Flicks Pick for Best Live Action Short: An Irish Goodbye
Flicks Pick for Best Animated Short: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
Flicks Pick for Best Documentary Short: The Martha Mitchell Effect
Best… Host?
LUKE BUCKMASTER: The choice of Jimmy Kimmel as this year’s Oscars host—marking his third time in the role—is intended to convey a sense of stability, evoking the good old days when an entire ceremony could take place without a single person being slapped. Kimmel will again bring pathos to the role, drawing on first-hand experience of having his own work overlooked by the Academy—his excellent 2008 short film I’m Fucking Ben Affleck receiving not a single nomination. The veteran presenter also has experience in what matters most—unscripted moments that embarrass everybody—being the host of the 2017 ceremony, when the infamous La La Land/Moonlight mixup occurred.
But does anybody actually care about the Oscars anymore? Well, it’s a bit like that question “does anybody actually care about the Oscars anymore?” It’s rolled out every year, entertains us for a bit, then we move on, secure in the knowledge that we’ll be doing it all again in 12 months’ time.
