As someone who writes about both politics and pop culture, I often strive to find the connections between the two – the areas where politics does indeed seem to be downstream from culture, and the way that relationship feels like it’s been reversed in some ways in recent years. That’s easy enough to do when reviewing a movie or an album, but a bit harder when it comes to writing about awards season, a very silly tradition that, for reasons that would require an entirely different article, is still precious and important to me. Part of that is due to the apparent homogeneity of Hollywood awards voters – part of what makes predicting awards, especially in the short film and documentary categories, possible is that one can typically suss out what issue-based films will resonate with voters, even if you haven’t seen the movies in question. But when it comes to things like Best Picture, those considerations don’t weigh quite as heavily – you’d be hard pressed to find an explicitly liberal film go up against an explicitly conservative film, because the latter isn’t typically nominated (or, outside of boutique examples like The Sound of Freedom or Reagan, even made. And when they are, they aren’t usually Best Picture level caliber). Even examples of supposed conservative backlash, like Green Book’s win in 2018, seems to reflect more of a stylistic conservatism than a political one. Sure, the foregrounding of Tony Vallelonga’s story over Don Shirley’s feels like a backwards choice, but it’s still ultimately a movie about a white racist learning to love his gay and Black employer (and also arguably about a gay and Black artist learning to love his white racist employee, but that’s another subject that would require its own article).

But beyond the ideological content of the nominees themselves, what’s made writing about the Oscars in a compelling way difficult in recent years is that the Best Picture races have rarely seemed competitive. Watching films like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Oppenheimer romp over the competition the last two years is what I imagine watching election returns in 1964 or 1984 must have been like – the winner was never in doubt, and the only thing left to wonder about was the scale of their victory. Even upset wins like CODA or Parasite had a certain binary quality to them – it was either them or the frontrunners (The Power of the Dog and 1917, respectively), and their wins weren’t hard to see coming if you sifted through the precursor awards carefully enough – if we’re going to extend my (admittedly fraught) election metaphor, call them Trump 2016 (in terms of their chances to win and virtually nothing else).

What makes this year’s Best Picture race so refreshing – and if you’re a prognosticator, potentially vexing – is that the field and precursors are so diffuse that it feels like virtually anything could happen. Emilia Pérez seemed like the clear favorite after it notched 13 nominations (tying the record for second most ever and putting it on par with past winners like Gone with the Wind, From Here to Eternity, and Forrest Gump, to name a few) and won best comedy/musical at the Golden Globes, but controversy and critical backlash (more on those later) put its frontrunner status in doubt. The Brutalist, which won the Golden Globe for drama, and seems like possible winner for Best Director, briefly cropped up as its most likely competition, but its flagging results at the DGAs, PGAs, and WGAs signaled that it may not have been as strong as it appeared. Anora, the film that did win those awards, and which seemed like the preseason favorite, has emerged as the most likely winner for a few weeks now. But an acting ensemble win for Conclave at the SAG awards, combined with a loss for Anora lead Mikey Madison, threw a new challenger into the fray, one with a more classical and accessible sensibility than most of the other major contenders. So instead of coming off like a modern presidential election, the 2024 Best Picture race feels like the multi-ticket feeding frenzies of 1828, 1860, or 1912 – a fractured field where it feels like virtually anything could happen.

To draw the politics comparison even further, the viciousness of the campaigning has had a particularly presidential flavor as well. Anora, while broadly well received, has raised eyebrows for Madison’s insistence on not using an intimacy coordinator – a bold prospect for a film with multiple explicit sex and lap dance scenes, and starring many actual sex workers. Further controversy ensued after the release of its Criterion collection cover, which critics alleged objectified the main character and exposed broader problems with the way the script depicts sex work and treats its lead character. Concurrently, The Brutalist, a film about the struggle between artistic vision and capitalistic realities, was accused of using AI to both smooth out Adrien Brody’s Hungarian lines and to generate architectural concepts meant to be designed by his character – allegations that not only clashed with films message but also sparked anxieties about the possible obsolesce of creative work in the age of generative technology.

Of course, the most stinging, and apparently damaging, controversies cropped up around Emilie Pérez. A quasi-opera about a drug lord who comes out as trans and then founds a non-prophet meant to identify the disappeared victims of Mexico’s drug war, the content of the film alone made it ripe for raised eyebrows. First and foremost was that, despite depicting a very painful slice of the Mexican experience, the film itself is barely Mexican at all – director and screenwriter Jacques Audiard is French, and stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez are Spanish, Dominican-Puerto Rican-American, and Mexican-American, respectively. Perhaps this wouldn’t cause quite as much of a stir if Carla Hool, the film’s casting director, hadn’t revealed that the filmmakers had initially planned to cast Mexican actors, but adjusted the origins of the characters after settling on non-Mexican actors for the lead roles, and if the release strategy of the movie didn’t seem designed to minimize the backlash by launching in Latin America after the film had already received praise at European festivals and after Oscar nominations were already locked. Despite generally good reviews and festival awards, that backlash manifested nonetheless, particularly on venues like Letterboxd, where the film currently has a dismal average score of 2.1 stars, an impressively low mark for any movie, let alone a Best Picture nominee.

The potentially killing blow, however, came last month. No matter what one thought of the film itself, Gascón, its nominee for lead actress, was a feel-good story. The first openly trans performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar, Gascón, perhaps even more than the content of the film itself, helped make Emilia Pérez appealing to Academy voters – what better way to respond to an openly transphobic presidential administration than highlighting the work of trans artists? That consideration is probably why Gascón, rather than Audiard or one of the film’s producers, gave the acceptance speech after Emilie Pérez’s win at the Golden Globes – it framed the victory as not just a triumph for the film, but for an entirely marginalized community. But unfortunately for Netflix and Emilia Pérez’s other stakeholders, this Gascón-forward strategy backfired spectacularly. A tweet thread from journalist Sarah Hagi revealed that Gascón made a series of tweets denigrating Arabs and Muslims, while subsequent reporting revealed that she also harshly criticized Black Lives Matter protestors and even the Academy Awards themselves, which she negatively referred to as an “Afro-Korean festival,” to say nothing of a post in which she called her Emilia Pérez co-star Gomez a “rat.” Audiard explaining that he wrote Emilia Pérez in Spanish instead of his native French because it’s the language “of modest countries, developing countries, of poor people and migrants,” didn’t help matters either.

Nor did Gascón’s flailing response, as she complained in a CNN interview that she had been “judged, condemned, sacrificed, crucified, and stoned without a trial.” Netflix has since tried to distance her from the larger Emilia Pérez campaign, so much so that she wasn’t even present at the recent SAG awards, where she was nominated (and where the clip package received a tepid response from the audience). But the damage seems to be done, and Emilia Pérez’s Best Picture prospects are all but buried. Then again, I can think of a few politicians who, seemingly done in by scandals of their own making, managed to rise from the ashes and pull off a victory, nonetheless. Will Emilia Pérez experience the same kind of comeback? Take a look at my predictions, and watch The Oscars on Sunday night, to find out.

Best Picture

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Pérez
  • I’m Still Here
  • Nickel Boys
  • The Substance
  • Wicked

As I’ve already explained for hundreds of words, this is the most diffuse and unpredictable Best Picture race in years, if not decades, and it feels like five films (Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Emilie Pérez) have at least a puncher’s chance to win. Despite Conclave’s SAG ensemble win, my gut still says Anora will reign victorious on Sunday night – only one film (Brokeback Mountain) has ever won its combination of DGA, PGA, and WGA awards and not taken home Best Picture. But I would not be shocked if Conclave ultimately won by virtue of its apparent popularity with the actors’ branch and its status as a down-the-middle thriller unlikely to seriously offend any voters. If I were casting my own vote, it’d be for Dune: Part Two, whose epic scale and technical mastery are what I tend to look for in a Best Picture winner. But Anora is probably the film on this list I’ll end up watching the most throughout my life, and I’d be thrilled if it ended up taking home the top prize as well.

Will Win: Anora

Should Win: Dune: Part Two

Upset Special: Conclave

Best Director

  • Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez
  • Sean Baker — Anora
  • Brady Corbet – The Brutalist
  • Coralie Fargeat – The Substance
  • James Mangold – A Complete Unknown 

I could be overrating Brady Corbet’s prospects here, but even though Baker won at the DGAs and I think Anora will ultimately take Best Picture, The Brutalist simply comes off as a more typical Best Director winner. Big, noisy, and visually striking, Corbet’s work is more evident than the rest of the fields, and his outspokenness about endeavoring for artistic control and the long and winding road he and his wife Mona Fastvold took to make the film should appeal to voters who frequently find themselves up against the IP-fueled big studio machinery. But if Anora has a big night, Baker will be the beneficiary. Comedies don’t tend to win this award, but the long screwball kidnapping set piece in the middle of the film is a miracle of blocking and physicality that should capture voters’ attention.

Will Win: Brady Corbet

Should Win: Brady Corbet

Upset Special: Sean Baker

Best Actor

  • Adrien Brody – The Brutalist
  • Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown
  • Colman Domingo – Sing Sing
  • Ralph Fiennes – Conclave
  • Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice

This is pretty much a two-horse race between Brody and Chalamet right now, with the latter making a late push thanks to his win at SAG on Sunday. Chalamet has also had what feels like the most active campaign of any nominee in any category, ingratiating himself with the bro-ey crowd by appearing on College GameDay one week while trying to dazzle the more artistically inclined voters by performing Bob Dylan deep cuts on Saturday Night Live the next. His self-stated desire to become “one of the greats” at SAG may have rubbed some people the wrong way (I thought it was fine) but it came well after the voting deadline, and many voters may have decided that he belongs in that upper echelon already.

If Chalamet does win, he’ll be the youngest performer to ever win Best Actor, edging out… Adrien Brody, who set the current record when he won for The Pianist in 2002. But despite the chance for a history-making moment, I still think most voters will go for Brody, who delivers a subtler performance that requires him to express a wider range of emotions than the arrogance and mystique Chalamet deployed in A Complete Unknown. It’s for those same reasons that Brody would get my vote if I had one – I still think about his “cube” monologue at least once a week.

Will Win: Adrien Brody

Should Win: Adrien Brody

Upset Special: Timothée Chalamet

Best Actress

  • Cynthia Erivo – Wicked
  • Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez
  • Mikey Madison – Anora
  • Demi Moore – The Substance
  • Fernando Torres – I’m Still Here

Who says the Golden Globes don’t matter? It seemed for a while that Mikey Madison was the heavy favorite for this award until Demi Moore upset her at the Globes and gave an impassioned speech about how she thought her career was over until she received the script for The Substance, kicking off a campaign that seemed like a longshot as late as a few months ago – after all, how many Oscar winning performances can you name from gory body horror-comedies? It’s simply too good of a story for voters to pass up, even if Madison’s immersive blend of cynicism and naivete (to say nothing of her physical commitment) in Anora is the more impressive performance.

Will Win: Demi Moore

Should Win: Mikey Madison

Upset Special: Mikey Madison

Best Supporting Actor

  • Yura Borisov – Anora
  • Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain
  • Edward Norton – A Complete Unknown
  • Guy Pearce – The Brutalist
  • Jeremy Strong – The Apprentice

As the winner of virtually every precursor award, Kieran Culkin is as sure a victor as anything at this year’s Oscars. Is he deserving? Sure, I guess, but he’s not doing anything in A Real Pain that you haven’t seen him do a dozen times before. I’d personally rather see the award go to Yura Borisov, whose slow burn transformation from a detached henchman to a (spoiler alert?) lovestruck quasi-guardian radiates a kind of silent charism, or Guy Pearce, who occupies the complete opposite end of the spectrum, exploding with bluster, grandiosity, and menace. If you do want to place a longshot bet, I’d go with Edward Norton, a well-respected veteran performer playing a progressive musical icon who also happens to be the heart and soul of A Complete Unknown.

Will Win: Kieran Culkin

Should Win: Yura Borisov

Upset Special: Edward Norton

Best Supporting Actress

  • Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown
  • Ariana Grande – Wicked
  • Felicity Jones – The Brutalist
  • Isabella Rossellini – Conclave
  • Zoe Saldaña – Emilia Pérez

Unlike the rest of Emilia Pérez’s award prospects, Zoe Saldaña’s campaign has emerged mostly unscathed from the film’s controversies, and one wonders if she’ll win this award at least in part for being such a good sport about it all. In the off chance that she does lose, the next most likely winner is Isabella Rossellini, who has a small role in Conclave but has gone her decades-long career without so much as a nomination until this year, and could be in line for a lifetime achievement award even if she lags the field in terms of screentime (kind of like Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once). I don’t have too many strong opinions about the performances (outside of not thinking Felicity Jones was very good in The Brutalist), but if I had to cast a vote, I’d go for Monica Barbaro, who not only deftly conveys a simultaneous sense of adoration and disgust for Chalamet’s Dylan, but also imitates one of the finest vocalists of the 60s folk revival despite never having sung professionally before.

Will Win: Zoe Saldaña

Should Win: Monica Barbaro

Upset Special: Isabella Rossellini

Best Original Screenplay

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • A Real Pain
  • September 5
  • The Substance 

An irreverent indie dramedy that’s quick and darkly funny, Anora would feel like a prototypical screenplay winner even if it weren’t contending for Best Picture. All of that could also be said about A Real Pain, which has a non-zero shot of becoming the first non-Best Picture nominee to win a screenplay award since Gods and Monsters did so in 1998. Its author being the very famous Jesse Eisenberg probably doesn’t hurt its chances, either.

Will Win: Anora

Should Win: Anora

Upset Special: A Real Pain

Best Adapted Screenplay

  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Emilia Perez
  • Nickel Boys
  • Sing Sing 

Peter Straughan has already taken home the BAFTA and Golden Globe for Conclave, which he adapted from Robert Harris’ novel, and it stands to reason that his winning streak will continue Sunday night. Given how much the Academy seems to love A Complete Unknown, that figures to be the next most likely winner, although its actual chances of pulling off an upset are marginal at best. Nickel Boys may not be a snappy or quippy script, but it’s far and away the most original in the field, a unique take on literary adaptation that blends fiction and documentary in a way that I was not truly expecting, making it a deserving winner in my eyes.

Will Win: Conclave

Should Win: Nickel Boys

Upset Special: A Complete Unknown

Best Animated Feature

  • Flow
  • Inside Out 2
  • Memoir of a Snail
  • Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
  • The Wild Robot 

The Wild Robot was one of the biggest hits of the year, which made it all the more shocking when Flow, a small, wordless French-Latvian-Belgian co-production about a cat and its friends navigating the aftermath of a flood, beat it out for the Golden Globes in January. I suspect it’ll be a tight race for the Oscar, but I’ll give the slight edge to Flow, which should appeal to the cineastes in the Academy who may not usually go for traditionally kid-targeted animation. From my perspective, The Wild Robot hangs together better as a complete film and avoids most of some of the bloat and pitfalls that can often befall mainstream animated films, therefore earning my vote.

Will Win: Flow

Should Win: The Wild Robot

Upset Special: The Wild Robot

Best International Feature

  • Emilia Pérez (France)
  • Flow (Latvia)
  • The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)
  • I’m Still Here (Brazil)
  • The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)

Usually, this is the section of the preview where I write about how whichever International nominee is also nominated for Best Picture will win this award, lest the Academy violate the transitive property. Well, the Academy decided to give us an actual race this year, nominating two of these nominees – Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here – for Best Picture for the first time in the awards show’s history. By virtue of being the most nominated film this year (and one of the most nominated of all time), Emilia Pérez looked to be the clear winner here, but I do believe that Gascón’s scandals have been enough to sully it in the eyes of voters and shift their attention to I’m Still Here, which also has the benefit of being a rather timely story of political repression and activist perseverance. Important though that message is, I nevertheless found I’m Still Here to be a boring movie, which means that, by default, I would cast my vote for Flow (I haven’t seen The Girl with the Needle or The Seed of the Sacred Fig yet).

As an aside: would Flow still have been considered in this category if it was still called Best Foreign Language Film? It’s a foreign production, sure, but, seeing as how it’s all sound effects and animal noise, there’s no actual spoken language within it. In fact, one could argue that it’s actually a Universal Language Film. That language? *Adjusts ascot, puffs pipe.* Cinema.

Will Win: I’m Still Here

Should Win: Flow

Upset Special: Emilia Pérez

Best Documentary Film

  • Black Box Diaries
  • No Other Land
  • Porcelain War
  • Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
  • Sugarcane 

If Emilia Pérez’s various controversies weren’t enough for you, let me tell you about a little film called No Other Land. A documentary following the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, No Other Land, which was co-directed by two Israelis and two Palestinians, does not currently have a U.S. distributor, and has had to settle for short runs in specialty theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and a handful of festivals in lieu of a proper theatrical release. In a crass sort of way, that could become an asset for its awards prospects: an Oscar would give Hollywood the chance to stick it to distributors scared of acquiring a film critical of Israel and give the filmmakers the chance to shine that they’ve thus far been denied. But it could also be a sign that the industry is still wary of embracing films that directly address the war in Palestine, by evidence of the tizzy that ensued after Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech for winning Best International Feature last year. Are enough voters squeamish about the possibility of a controversial acceptance speech to pass up No Other Land for another nominee? My guess is no, but if they are, I expect them to go with Black Box Diaries. None of these films are about “light” subjects, but Black Box Diaries’ focus on sexual assault feels like the one hot button topic that most voters would be able to agree on.

Will Win: No Other Land

Should Win: N/A (haven’t seen any)

Upset Special: Black Box Diaries

Best Documentary Short

  • Death by Numbers
  • I Am Ready, Warden
  • Incident
  • Instruments of a Beating Heart
  • The Only Girl in the Orchestra 

Of these five nominees, two are about violence (I Am Ready, Warden; Incident) and two are about art (Instruments of a Beating Heart, The Only Girl in the Orchestra). But Death by Numbers, which according to Wikipedia is about a Parkland shooting survivor confronting “her assailant in a poetic journey to empowerment,” is the only one that seems to be about violence and art, which is enough to make it a favorite in my book. Incident, which tells the story of a police shooting via bodycam and surveillance footage, seems like another topical contender.

Will Win: Death by Numbers

Should Win: N/A (haven’t seen any)

Upset Special: Incident

Best Live Action Short

  • A Lien
  • Anuja
  • I’m Not a Robot
  • The Last Ranger
  • The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent 

Judging purely by plot description, it’s tough to see a world in which A Lien, about a green card interview gone wrong, doesn’t win votes from a Hollywood smarting from Donald Trump’s general existence (and, hey, who could blame them). The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, which dramatizes an anti-Muslim massacre during the Bosnian War, could also scratch that progressive itch.

Will Win: A Lien

Should Win: N/A (haven’t seen any)

Upset Special: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Animated Short

  • Beautiful Men
  • In the Shadow of the Cypress
  • Magic Candies
  • Wander to Wonder
  • Yuck!

Given the heavy subject matters in the other categories, I’m going to predict that voters will look to the animated shorts for some relief and reward Yuck!, which seems to be about tweens falling in love. But if they’re still in a dour mood, In the Shadow of the Cypress, which features a character living with PTSD, seems to fit the bill.

Will Win: Yuck!

Should Win: N/A (haven’t seen any)

Upset Special: In the Shadow of the Cypress

Best Original Score

  • The Brutalist
  • Conclave
  • Emilia Perez
  • Wicked
  • The Wild Robot

This really shouldn’t be much of a contest: Daniel Blumberg (formerly of indie band Yuck fame) put together a score for The Brutalist that stands alone as its own work of art, equal parts triumphant, foreboding, and mournful, with its own disco remix to boot. If Conclave has a big night, Volker Bertelman’s strings-heavy score could pull off the upset, but in this writer’s opinion, the only real competition Blumberg should have had was the somehow unnominated Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for their invigorating work on Challengers.

Will Win: The Brutalist

Should Win: The Brutalist

Upset Special: Conclave

Best Original Song

A weak slate for what’s typically a weak category, “El Mal,” the big, constantly advertised set piece from Emilia Pérez, feels like it will win almost by default, more so for Zoe Saldaña’s dancing than the dully percussive and awkwardly written music that accompanies it. With that being said… could the Emilia Pérez controversies finally make this Diane Warren’s year? “The Journey” marks her 16th nomination, all for which she has exactly zero Oscars to show for. Considering how slim the pickings are this year, maybe some voters will decide to throw her a bone so they can stop feeling guilty and stop nominating her for movies like Four Good Days and Tell It Like a Woman, films that I’m not entirely sure actually exist.

Will Win: “El Mal”

Should Win: I don’t know, this is a pretty bad category. “Like a Bird” I guess?

Upset Special: “The Journey”

Best Sound

  • A Complete Unknown
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Perez
  • Wicked
  • The Wild Robot 

All of these movies outside of A Complete Unknown won something at the Sound Editors Golden Reel awards last weekend, making this a pretty competitive category. Considering it’s a musical, my guess is voters will be focusing on the sound the most in Wicked, which will lead to a win, even though I found the way the score was mixed to be quite underwhelming. As a lover of sci-fi sound effects, I’d be inclined to vote for Dune: Part Two here, although I wouldn’t be shocked if A Complete Unknown, the other music-heavy non-Emilia Pérez nominee, pulled off an upset.

Will Win: Wicked

Should Win: Dune: Part Two

Upset Special: A Complete Unknown

Best Production Design

  • The Brutalist
  • Conclave
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Nosferatu
  • Wicked

Considering that Wicked has already won at least two production design-related guild awards, I expect it to win on Oscars night as well. But if Conclave ends up being a stronger contender than suspected, its recreation of the inner chambers of the Vatican could net it some gold here. My vote would go to Dune: Part Two for creating a new world based on Frank Herbert’s prose alone and doing a bang up job once again, but considering that Part One won this award three years ago, my guess is that the Academy will succumb to spice fatigue and opt for other nominees instead.

Will Win: Wicked

Should Win: Dune: Part Two

Upset Special: Conclave

Best Cinematography

  • The Brutalist
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Perez
  • Maria
  • Nosferatu 

The sheer variety of styles and moods in The Brutalist’s cinematography – from the shaky anxiety of the early sequences to the serene beauty of the Carrara marble mines – makes it the most deserving and likely winner of this group. Maybe Greig Fraser, who won this same award for the first part of Dune, pulls off a repeat, but that kind of repeat rewarding is more the Emmys’ thing.

Will Win: The Brutalist

Should Win: The Brutalist

Upset Special: Dune: Part Two

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

  • A Different Man
  • Emilia Perez
  • Nosferatu
  • The Substance
  • Wicked

Wicked and The Substance both won awards at the Make-Up Artists and Hairstylists Guild Awards, which makes them both contenders here, but Wicked won two awards to The Substance’s one, which compels me to give it the edge here. That said, anyone who’s seen The Substance knows that the makeup and character design go to some crazy places in the third act, so much so I don’t know how anyone in their right mind could reward a different film (even if the work in A Different Man and Nosferatu is also impressive).

Will Win: Wicked

Should Win: The Substance

Upset Special: The Substance

Best Costume Design

  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Gladiator II
  • Nosferatu
  • Wicked

Another diffuse field, in which Conclave, Nosferatu, and Wicked have all won Costume Designers Guild Awards. Given the ornate nature of cardinals’ vestments in Conclave and the way that they’re visually presented in the film, I suspect that the Academy will (rightfully) reward costume designer Lisy Christl for her work. But, once again, this may be a category where they feel compelled to reward Wicked, one of the year’s biggest box office successes.

Will Win: Conclave

Should Win: Conclave

Upset Special: Wicked

Best Film Editing

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • Conclave
  • Emilia Perez
  • Wicked 

The murky Best Picture race and the fact that the ACE Eddie Awards don’t take place until March 14 make this a particularly difficult category to predict, so I’ll go with Anora, my pick for Best Picture, which would also give the Academy an opportunity to reward director Sean Baker, who did his own editing. This isn’t a very flashy field, but the way Anora’s pace shifts from wild euphoria to heart-pounding anxiety and on to hungover depression is enough to make Baker worthy. But, at the risk of repeating myself, if Conclave does end up having a big night, look for this award to be an early indicator.

Will Win: Anora

Should Win: Anora

Upset Special: Conclave

Best Visual Effects

  • Alien: Romulus
  • Better Man
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
  • Wicked 

Dune: Part Two came away with four wins at the VFX Society Awards, and considering that it’s one of two Best Picture nominees here, my guess is that it comes away with a win at the Oscars as well for its detailed, textured depiction of a sci-fi desert society. Wicked, the other Best Picture nominee, stands out as its most likely competition, but anyone voting for its garish effects when compared to the superior work in Dune probably shouldn’t be voting at all.

Will Win: Dune: Part Two

Should Win: Dune: Part Two

Upset Special: Wicked