It’s that time again, dear readers. With a lot of help from veteran oddsmaker Johnny Avello of DraftKings, here are some thoughts on what’s going to go down on Sunday night. First off, we’re picking a mild upset, on the strength of Sinners‘ (+500) surprise Best Ensemble win at the SAG Awards. We think it rides that momentum, great box office and a record number of Oscar nominations to Best Picture status. Yes, One Battle After Another (-500) has led from wire to wire, but it’s a hard film to warm up to (although incredibly pertinent) and frontrunners have a tendency to fade in the home stretch. Our metaphorical money is on Ryan Coogler‘s Dixie vampire opus. Besides, it’s been a few years since the Motion Picture Academy embraced a blockbuster. We think it’s going to happen this weekend. Should win: Sinners. Will win: Sinners.
Best Actress: This category is Jessie Buckley‘s to lose. The Hamnet star (-1800) carried that picture, in a forceful breakthrough performance. Likely runner-up Rose Byrne (+900) might score an upset for the execrable If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Byrne is the Diet Coke of acting: It looks like acting but has no flavor. Still, being shot in relentless closeup might bamboozle impressionable Academy voters. (Incidentally, Oscar host Conan O’Brien played Byrne’s therapist and deserves a special award for Best Performance in an Otherwise Godawful Movie.)
Best Actor: After a couple of near-misses, Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) takes this home in a -500 walk. True, the movie is a load of pants and Chalamet’s character is a total worm, but he makes it watchable. Ethan Hawke‘s portrayal of Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon should get serious consideration but he’s a +2500 long shot instead. We like the idea of Leonardo di Caprio (+550) taking the statuette, but wish it had been for Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood instead.
Best Supporting Actress: What is Amy Madigan doing at +175 for POS horror picture Weapons? She could ace out the deserving and -195 Teyana Taylor from One Battle After Another. For everyone else, the real honor was being nominated. Should win: Taylor. Will win: Taylor.
Best Supporting Actor: Many years back, Pauline Kael astutely observed that every so often there is a performance so perfectly atrocious that it is swept to an Academy Award. This year’s stinker of a nomination is Sean Penn (+330) for his grotesque overacting in One Battle After Another. Penn doesn’t play his character (a right-wing fanatic) but rather his negative opinion of the character, to signal to his liberal fan base that he’s not really like that. As though we labored under any such delusions. This hamming could well snag Penn his third Oscar. It would be a gross injustice to Golden Globe laureate Stellan Skarsgård (-120), who delivers a career performance as a self-absorbed film director in Sentimental Value. For that matter, Delroy Lindo (+2800) in Sinners could be argued to deserve a ‘legacy’ award for decades of being the best thing in a movie. And watch out for the surprisingly short odds (+650) on Jacob Elordi as the creature in Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein. Should win: Skarsgård. Will win: Penn. Barf!
Best Director: Speaking of being due, Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another, -1800) is long overdue. We think the Academy splits the ticket and gives PTA his Oscar. He was the odds-on favorite to win Best Original Screenplay a few years back (for Licorice Pizza) but lost to Kenneth Branagh (for Belfast). That’s the only reason we think he has to fear another snub, this time at the hands of Coogler (+800). Choe Zhao (Hamnet, +1400) already has an Oscar, for the somnolent Nomadland, so we think she sits this one out. Josh Safdie‘s presence for Marty Supreme just goes to show that if you shake the camera a lot people will mistake it for Serious Filmmaking. And where is Guillermo del Toro, for Frankenstein‘s sake? Should win: Anderson. Will win: Anderson.
Best Original Screenplay: This is a tightly bunched category but we think Sinners (-360) gets it as a consolation prize for not landing Best Director. Marty Supreme (+400) is a threat, as is It Was Just an Accident (+650). Should win: Blue Moon (+2500). Will win: Sinners.
Best Adapted Screenplay: No odds are available for this or any of the remaining categories, but our gut (and we’ve got a lot of it) says One Battle After Another is PTA’s fallback position, in case of a Best Director or Best Picture upset. Then again, the Academy likes Yorgos Lanthimos, so don’t count the inventive Bugonia out.
Best Cinematography: One Battle After Another made far better use of newly revived VistaVision than did Oscar-winning The Brutalist. So we favor it here, too, unless the Shake-O-Vision antics of Marty Supreme get Darius Khnondji recognition.
International Feature: The Secret Again (from Brazil) is a lumbering, sprawling, shapeless, interminable mess. It is also cleaning up at awards season, so expect it to win this category. Plus awards voters have a serious crush on lead actor/producer Wagner Moura (+800 for Best Actor). That being said, we doubt anything in this category was better than Sentimental Value, so that’s our “Should win.” But don’t bet against Brazil on this one, mainly because the Academy will want to make a political statement.
Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters. Because it’s the fad of the moment.
Film Editing: Traditionally this is a harbinger of Best Picture but we think F1, the best racing movie in 60 years, gets the nod. It certainly deserves it.
Production Design: The Academy is a sucker for lush, period movies AND for Guillermo del Toro, so we think Frankenstein snares this trophy.
Costume Design: What the actual fuck is computer-generated Avatar: Fire and Ash doing being nominated? Again, we’re going with Frankenstein, for the reasons cited above.
Animated Short: We loved whimsical The Three Sisters but it may be too irreverent and off-color. Besides, sentimental and eco-friendly Forevergreen pushes all the right Oscar buttons.
Documentary Short: Armed Only with a Camera is exhibitionistic and somewhat unseemly, so we hope it doesn’t win. All the Empty Rooms, which deals with aftermath of school shootings, left a strongly positive imprint, as did Perfectly a Strangeness (starring three Chilean donkeys). However, Children No More: Were and Are Gone is a lock. Why? One word: Palestinians.
There you go. We’ve led with our chin (again) and we’ll see if we’re wiping egg off it in a few days.