It's been several years since I've written one of these "Oscar Picks & Predictions" articles, partially because I started to feel that the work involved in producing these posts far outweighed their worth. After all, I don't flatter myself that anyone is filling out their friendly office Oscar pool—let alone laying down thousands with Vegas bookies—based on my tentative, highly biased prognostications. (For the record, I tend to run around 70 percent accuracy with my predictions: respectable, but I wouldn't bet the house on anything I say.) And the posts themselves—which require a fair amount of work—have all the shelf-life of a week-old fish.

Besides, we all know that competitively ranking creative endeavors is ridiculous, and that these awards shows are not really any kind of determination of artistic merit. (After all, the Academy is the body that, only a few years ago, called Green Book "The Best Picture of the Year" with a straight face. They get it right about once per decade, at best.) But that's okay: arbitration of quality is not their true purpose. Primarily, the Oscars are a big company party and a marketing scheme, and it doesn't benefit anyone's blood pressure to take them very seriously.

So why am I doing it this year? Well, a couple of reasons, I suppose. The first, most concrete reason was the realization that this year—for the first time in my life—I was able to see every movie nominated. I've come close to that dubious goal before, but there were always a couple of films that proved impossible to see, and often an entire category (like "Documentary Shorts") that I never quite got around to. This year, somehow, I saw almost everything without even trying, and streaming (and a few last-minute trips to the cinema) allowed me to plug the few remaining holes in my watchlist. This may never happen again, so I didn't want to miss the rare opportunity to have an opinion about every nominee.

(Yes, I get fairly compulsive about my completism. Did I really watch Flamin' Hot, the story of the development of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, just because the song that plays over its end-credits was nominated? Reader, I assure you I did, and it even wasn't the last thing I forced myself to watch. That honor goes to the nearly three-hour Napoleon, which I hadn't expected to enjoy, and which did not thwart my expectations.)

That being said, the best argument for doing these posts is that it forces me to see things I might otherwise never get around to. I had not, for example, caught up with either Wim Wenders' Perfect Days (a Best International Feature nominee) or Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughters (Best Documentary Feature) before deciding to write this article. As it turned out, both were among my favorite films not just of this year, but of the decade so far. I'd like to think I would have caught them anyway, but artificial deadlines are a great motivator. (I didn't write an Oscar post in 2023, and to date I've still seen only one of those Best Documentary nominees.)

Finally, I think there's strange value in the sheer ridiculousness of the exercise. This year, after all, saw the cultural phenomenon of "Barbieheimer," in which the two biggest films of the year opened on the same day. These movies could hardly be more different, and even comparing them with each other—let alone putting them into competition with each other—is patently absurd. But that absurdity—and all the similar apple-to-orange death-matches award shows manufacture—can lead us to ask interesting questions about what we really value in cinema. Do we relish realism, or escapism? Is something serious, subtle, and cerebral necessarily superior artistically to something silly, broad, and visceral? My favorite film of the year was Celine Song's Past Lives, a quiet, wonderfully nuanced relationship drama in which nothing much happens and all the important things go unsaid. My best experience in a movie theater this year, however, was almost certainly John Wick: Chapter 4, a gorgeously filmed action orgy in which Keanu Reeves kills about 700 people in the most gloriously choreographed ways possible. Only one of these films was nominated for Best Picture this year, but I would have picked them both, because I think they are both masterpieces. Cinema is large, and contains multitudes within its multiplexes.

And so, without further ado, I offer my clumsy thoughts on what will win, what should win, what must not win, and a few other things that should have been in the running at the 96th Annual Academy Awards. (Because I need a structure, I'm tackling these in the order the nominations were announced, which may—but probably won't—be the order in which the awards are announced.) 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Will Win: Robert Downey, Jr, Oppenheimer
Should Win: Robert Downey, Jr, Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: They're all fine
Write-In Nominees: Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers; Ben Whishaw, Passages; Jimmy Tatro, Theater Camp

We begin with a good example of those absurd competitive comparisons. All five actors are excellent, and all five did reliably good work in these films. But how on earth does anyone judge what Robert Downey, Jr. is doing in Oppenheimer against what Ryan Gosling is doing in Barbie? (It's not even apples-to-oranges, since those are roughly the same species of thing. It's more like apples to…aardvarks?) Anyway, at this point in the awards season, there's little suspense: Robert Downey, Jr. won at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the SAG Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards, and there's little doubt he'll win the Oscar as well. I have no real issue with that: it was a pleasure to be reminded in Oppenheimer what a solid and nuanced serious actor Downey can be, after he spent a decade and a half doing his entertaining but effortless schtick in Marvel movies. Gosling is the only person with a (very) slim chance of pulling an upset—for his funny, vanity-free performance as a figure who is pure vanity—but unless voters are far angrier than I think about Barbie's snubs elsewhere, Downey is a lock.

As far as overlooked performances, the complete Oscar shutout of Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers is a shameful mystery, but certainly Paul Mescal—who was nominated (and should have won) for Best Actor last year for Aftersun—should have at least snagged a nomination here for yet another heartbreaking character. I'm less surprised about the shutout of Ira Sach's Passages, but I was happy to see the brilliant Ben Whishaw's long-suffering lover get a nomination over at the Spirit Awards. Meanwhile—from the almost universally neglected comedic side of things—when I look back at my favorite supporting turns of 2023—I keep remembering Jimmy Tatro's funny, clueless, surprisingly sweet character in Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman's underseen gem Theater Camp. 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Will Win: Barbie
Should Win: Poor Things
Write-In Nominees: Asteroid City, Saltburn

These smaller categories like Costume Design and Makeup & Hairstyling (below) are interesting, because they always seem to touch on those "what-do-we-value?" questions I mentioned. Is it more impressive to create beautiful, whimsical dresses (Poor Things) and amusingly flashy costume confections (Barbie), or to accurately and realistically populate a historical era across many decades (Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, Oppenheimer)? An unanswerable question. (In fact, the Costume Designers Guild splits its own awards into three separate categories: Contemporary, Period, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. That last category almost never makes it to the Oscar nominations.) This year, at least, the historical-accuracy fans are out of luck: this is a neck-and-neck race between two very different kinds of whimsy in Barbie and Poor Things. Personally, I'd give the nod to Holly Waddington's lovely and exquisitely strange work on Poor Things, but I feel confident that there's enough Barbie love to ensure a third win for nine-time nominee Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina, Little Women). 

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Will Win: Poor Things
Should Win: Poor Things
Must Not Win: Golda, Maestro
Write-In Nominees: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3; Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Year after year, this is the weirdest slate of nominees, but this branch of the Academy is gonna do what it's gonna do. In a year when making up goyim in "Jewface" became a subject of controversy, the Makeup Artists and Hairstylists went ahead and defiantly nominated the two most recent and prominent examples: Golda and Maestro. (Leaving aside the ethics of the makeup, and the larger issue of casting non-Jewish actors to play famous Jewish figures—neither of which I feel qualified to comment upon—I found the makeup in both cases unnecessary, unconvincing, and detrimental to their respective performances.) Maestro is actually narrowly favored to win here, but—in a category I historically get wrong more than right—I'm predicting a slight upset in favor of Poor Things. (I'd be just as happy to see Society of the Snow win—those people looked cold and miserable as all get-out—but it's not going to happen.)

Also—like the costumers—this branch hardly ever seems to nominate sci-fi and fantasy films. I guess they're the experts, but was turning Helen Mirren into Golda Meir really more impressive than creating the host of aliens in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, or populating an entire world of elves, orcs, owlbears, and other creatures in the surprisingly charming Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves? 

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM

Will Win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Should Win: Red, White and Blue
Must Not Win: The After

With the exception of The After—a film that crams so much trauma, grief, and simplistic recovery into 18 minutes that not even David Oyelowo can make it all convincing—this is a very strong slate of nominees. Look for Wes Anderson to win his first Oscar for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and the film is so charming and exquisitely rendered that it's hard to root against. Still, Anderson is unfair competition in a category that has traditionally been a showcase for up-and-coming filmmakers, and so I'd love to see any of the remaining films pull an upset here. Knight of Fortune—an original and wonderfully absurd tragicomedy set in a funeral home—probably has the best chance. But my favorite was Nazrin Choudhury's Red, White and Blue, the timely story of an impoverished Arkansas waitress (a quietly brilliant Brittany Snow) taking a seven-hour roadtrip with her daughter to reach the nearest abortion clinic. Beautifully restrained, utterly devastating, and searingly important, this feels like the kind of film this category should be celebrating.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Will Win: War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko
Should Win: Letter to a Pig
Must Not Win: War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko

Listen closely when this category is presented, and you'll hear me groan all the way from Chicago when executive producer Sean Ono Lennon accepts a trophy for War Is Over!, a staggeringly insipid bit of anti-war schlock, as cheesy and simplistic as the absolute worst of John and Yoko's well-intentioned ditties. (I hope I'm wrong in this prediction—because the other films are all far more worthy—but War is Over! is so shallowly awful that I doubt the voters will be able to resist it.) Of the others, Our Uniform is the most visually inventive, but its content is too slight: it feels like it ends right when it should have gotten going. Ninety-Five Senses is a crowd-pleaser, a deceptively jocular journey through sense memory that takes a surprisingly dark narrative swerve into unexpected avenues. Pachyderme is the most beautifully subtle, the devastating trauma at its center so delicately alluded to that I have seen reviews that appeared to miss it completely. My vote, however, goes to Tal Kantor's Letter to a Pig, in which a Holocaust survivor's remembrances to a classroom expand into haunting and beautiful visions in one child's mind. A dark and troubling story of generational trauma, I'm not sure I completely understood Letters to a Pig, but it's easily the most beautiful visually, and it's the one that lingered evocatively long after it was over.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Will Win: Barbie
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Write-In Nominees: All of Us Strangers; Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret; Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Note for your office Oscar polls: I'm predicting a significant upset here, and you may not want to follow my lead. If we believe the Vegas oddsmakers, American Fiction is favored to win, having already won the BAFTA and Critics Choice awards. (Oppenheimer is running an increasingly widening second place.) Personally, I have significant issues with all five screenplays, American Fiction most of all. (I thought its family drama and publishing comedy poorly integrated, and the racial satire itself was simplistic territory that was well-trod decades ago. The whole thing felt to me as if 1980s Woody Allen had tried to write Hollywood Shuffle.) Among the nominees, I admire Oppenheimer enough—despite its flaws—to give it my hypothetical vote. My hunch, however, is that Academy voters will want to throw Greta Gerwig something for the massive success of Barbie, after snubbing her for Best Director. This is the obvious place to cast their protest vote, allowing her and co-writer Noah Baumbach to ascend the stage and say their piece.

As will be a recurring theme throughout this post, All of Us Strangers got robbed in half a dozen categories, but writer-director Andrew Haigh's screenplay (adapted from a novel by Taichi Yamada) is breathtaking in both its tricky construction and its restrained emotional power. Meanwhile, in a perfect world, I'd loved to have seen a nomination for Kelly Fremon Craig's sensitive and delightful adaptation of Judy Blume's classic coming-of-age novel Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, which resulted in a film Blume herself insists is better than the book. And if we're going to complain about how bad the writing is in most superhero movies—and it is—we should also take a moment to acknowledge when a script is as narratively, emotionally, and thematically rich as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Will Win: The Holdovers
Should Win: Past Lives
Must Not Win: Maestro
Write-In Nominees: Afire

This is between Anatomy of a Fall and The Holdovers, with my personal favorite—Past Lives—running a distant and improbable third. (I'm so happy the Academy noticed Past Lives existed that I don't even begrudge the fact that it's probably not going to win anything.) Anatomy—the slight favorite—is a fiendishly clever bit of writing, an apparent murder-mystery/courtroom drama that opens up to reveal an emotionally stunning dissection of a marriage. The Holdovers is a deliberate throwback to the kinds of rich, intelligent, character-driven stories about actual people that Hollywood doesn't make anymore. Anatomy is the safer bet, but I'm going with my gut here and predicting enough Academy voters will want to celebrate Holdovers' nostalgic charms. (At the other end of the spectrum, I thought Maestro's screenplay was fairly terrible, telling me precious little about Leonard Bernstein, let alone about art, or music, or marriage, or any of the other things it seemed to think it was about.)

After Celine Song's restrained, delicate, note-perfect screenplay for Past Lives, my favorite script of the year was that of writer-director Christian Petzold's funny, tragic, surgically cringeworthy Afire.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Will Win: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Should Win: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Must Not Win: America Ferrera, Barbie
Write-In Nominees: Rachel McAdams, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret; Sherry Cola, Joy Ride; Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms

This is one of the least suspenseful categories of the night: Da'Vine Joy Randolph has been deservedly accumulating trophies all season for her tremendous work in The Holdovers, and I fully expect that winning streak to continue Sunday. Emily Blunt is on my personal how-does-she-not-have-an-Oscar? list, and she could theoretically win if the Oppenheimer sweep is broader than expected, but I wouldn't risk a dime on that bet. If anyone is going to pull a surprise upset here, I think it would be America Ferrera, in another last-minute surge of Barbie revenge. That—with all due respect to Ferrera—would be a mistake: I like Fererra, and she was fine in Barbie, but her "big monologue" is the single most overpraised piece of writing of the year, superficial low-hanging fruit where a real feminist message should have been.

Meanwhile, in terms of overlooked performances, there are simply too many great supporting turns to consider, but I want to spotlight the kinds of films (and roles) that aren't ever nominated, like Rachel McAdam's heartfelt mother in the wonderful Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, and Sherry Cola's hysterical (and emotionally complex) turn in the raunchy comedy Joy Ride. And while Ado Edebiri has been racking up TV trophies all season for her work on The Bear, she was every bit as good in two film comedies this year, Bottoms and Theater Camp.  

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Will Win: "What Was I Made For," Barbie
Should Win: "I'm Just Ken," Barbie
Must Not Win: I don't really care

Academy rules apparently prohibit one film having three songs in this category, which is the only reason Barbie isn't an even more prohibitive favorite. (Dua Lipa's "Dance the Night" is the tune that got bumped on this technicality, opening up the slot that forces me to say the words "the Academy Award-nominated Flamin' Hot.")

As my wife will tell you (in no uncertain terms), I am not known for my sophisticated musical judgement, so I feel unqualified to judge any of these songs as songs. So, when it comes to this category, I always default to the fact that the Oscars are movie awards, not music awards: the question to me is not how good a song is inherently, but how it contributes dramatically and cinematically to the film that uses it. This means I tend to disregard those nominated tunes that only play over the end credits, which this year is everything but the Barbie songs. "What Was I Made For," by Billie Eilish & Finneas, seems to be the favorite, and its sequence in the film is admittedly lovely. Of the two, however, I personally prefer Ryan Gosling's hysterically earnest power ballad "I'm Just Ken," and am looking forward to seeing him perform it live at the Dolby Theater on Oscar night.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: No opinion
Write-In Nominees: The Zone of Interest, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

As I said, I'm not really a music guy, and I don't really have a dog in this fight. Robbie Robertson, who passed away in August, could pull a posthumous upset here for his powerful work on Killers of the Flower Moon, but I think Ludwig Göransson will (and should) win his second Oscar (after Black Panther) for Oppenheimer. (I can't say I particularly noticed the scores in the other films, which probably says more about me than them.)

I did, however appreciate the scores of two films not nominated here: Mica Levi’s powerfully discordant, minimalist music for The Zone of Interest, and Daniel Pemberton's driving hip-hop soundtrack for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I'd have preferred to see either of those nominated, rather than yet another nod to the venerable John Williams for Indiana Jones and the Beating of a Dead Horse. 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Will Win: 20 Days in Mariupol
Should Win: Four Daughters
Must Not Win: They're all good
Write-In Nominees: Kokomo City

This is one of the strongest slates of the night, and my loyalties are split here. The likely winner, Mstyslav Chernov's Ukraine War documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, was probably the single most intense and emotionally devastating experience I've ever had in a movie theater. It's a tremendous, important piece of reporting, and it absolutely deserves to win. But as a piece of filmmaking—as an art object—I adored Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughters (or Olfa's Daughters, in the original title). The story of a Tunisian family coming to terms with their history and relationships through confessions and staged reenactments—with the members at home playing themselves, and actresses hired to play two daughters lost to radicalism—Four Daughters is wholly original and emotionally complex, a funny, frank exploration of familial trauma and healing. I've never seen anything remotely like it, and it was easily one of my favorite films of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll put in a nod here to one of my other favorite documentaries of the year: D. Smith's Kokomo City. There was probably no universe in which a sexually frank film about Black trans sex workers was going to be nominated—it didn't even make the short list—but Smith's raw, funny, insightful film was a delight from start to finish, and one of the most thrilling directorial debuts of the year.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM

Will Win: The Last Repair Shop
Should Win: The Last Repair Shop
Must Not Win: The ABCs of Book Burning

The apparent frontrunner in this category—the school censorship doc The ABC's of Book Burning—is by far its least worthy entry. Its intentions are good, its subject is timely and important, but the film itself is a shallow PowerPoint presentation that barely bothered to look like a movie. (It's the kind of thing a mid-level nonprofit would put out on TikTok with a link to their donation page.) Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó—a sort of affectionate home movie about the director's two grandmothers—is an amusing crowd-pleaser, but little more. The Barber of Little Rock is a not-particularly interesting film about a very interesting man doing good in his community. Island In Between is a not very interesting film about an interesting place, one that feels like it needed to be twice as long to explain why it was worth the effort. I'm (ill-advisedly) trusting the Academy voters to recognize that there is only one great film here, Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot's The Last Repair Shop. Focusing on the under-appreciated, overworked artisans who keep the musical instruments in L.A.'s school district working, The Last Repair Shop is a delightful celebration of the role learning an instrument can play in a child's life, but it's also a moving and profound demonstration that every person's life is a rich and fascinating story if we only bother to listen. The Last Repair Shop was the only short I saw all year that I wished had been feature-length.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

Will Win: The Zone of Interest
Should Win: Perfect Days
Must Not Win: They're all really good
Write-In Nominees: Afire, Anatomy of a Fall

I don't think there's any doubt The Zone of Interest will take the prize here, but its a film I admire more than love. (Its aesthetics and formal restraint are remarkable, but it ultimately left me cold, feeling like its rather thin and familiar points could have been made in about a 15-minute short.) I enjoyed both Io Capitano and Society of the Snow—impressively epic, and very differently harrowing survival stories—and I really liked The Teachers' Lounge, in which an excellent Leonie Benesch plays a substitute teacher in a middle-school sliding into paranoid authoritarianism. The masterpiece in this batch, however—the one that will last—is Wim Wenders' Perfect Days, a beautifully realized, delicately observed character study about an ordinary man (Koji Yakusho, flawless) who cleans Tokyo's public toilets. Short on drama, full of repetitive routines and fleeting encounters, Perfect Days alters the way you see the world, and with barely a word Yakusho creates a timeless character we love (and know to his soul) by the film's end.

Meanwhile, it is pointless to bemoan the peculiarities of this category's nominating procedure—in which countries choose which single film to submit for consideration—but there were a lot of good international films that didn't make the cut here. In addition to Anatomy of a Fall—which deservedly snagged a Best Picture nomination instead, after France chose The Taste of Things to submit here—my favorite was Christian Petzold's Afire, a fascinating, hauntingly funny study of what happens when you put the wrong kind of protagonist (Thomas Schubert's pitch-perfect misanthropic writer) in a situation brimming with narrative and sexual potential. (Germany chose the worthy The Teachers' Lounge instead, but Afire—already chosen for The Criterion Collection—was one of the best films of the year.)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Will Win: The Boy and the Heron
Should Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Must Not Win: Elemental 
Write-In Nominees: None

It has been over 20 years since Hayao Miyazaki won his only Oscar (for 2001's Spirited Away), and it was exactly ten years ago that the perennially-retiring master lost the trophy for his last "last" movie, when the quiet and delicate The Wind Rises ran into the unstoppable juggernaut of Disney's Frozen. The Boy and the Heron is not my favorite Miyazaki film—I think I need to see it a few more times to appreciate its poignant but perplexing charms—but I don't expect or want the Academy to forego the opportunity to reward the greatest artist of this medium for what almost certainly is his last film.

I enjoyed both Nimona and Robot Dreams very much, but my own vote would have to go to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a game-changing masterpiece that represents the future of animation as honorably as Miyazaki does its past. (The Vegas oddsmakers currently have Spider-Verse eking out a narrow victory, in fact, but I expect the combination of sentimentality and superhero-fatigue to throw the trophy Miyazaki's way, especially since the Academy already recognized the prequel Into the Spider-Verse in 2018.) Meanwhile, Elemental is bottom-tier Pixar, a muddled mediocrity from a studio whose glory days—occasional charmers like Turning Red notwithstanding—are sadly far behind them.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Will Win: Barbie
Should Win: Poor Things
Must Not Win: They're all worthy
Write-In Nominee: Asteroid City 

This is actually a tight race this year, with five entirely deserving contenders and two clear front-runners. I expect the trophy to go Barbie, and I'll be delighted to see it: the production design was glorious, and the team of designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer has six previous nominations without a win. (I've been a fan since 2006's Pride & Prejudice, and they definitely should have won for 2012's Anna Karenina.) Strap me to a lie-detector, however, and I'll be forced to admit that the immersive, phantasmagoric design of Poor Things—by designers James Price and Shona Heath and decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek—was probably the more impressive accomplishment this year, and I won't be completely surprised if it squeaks out a win. (Of the other nominees, I was least impressed with Napoleon, but I suspect that has more to do with its frustratingly muddy cinematography than its production design.)

Meanwhile—though I'm not the world's biggest Wes Anderson fan—the complete shutout of Asteroid City is most baffling in this category. (Say what you will about Anderson's films, but their production design is flawless. Yet his frequent collaborators Anna Pinnock and Adam Stockhausen have only one nomination and win in this category, for 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel.)

BEST FILM EDITING

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: They're all terrific
Write-In Nominees: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; John Wick: Chapter 4. 

There isn't a bad answer here, but Jennifer Lame gets my vote for Oppenheimer, and she will almost certainly get the trophy. (She's already been sweeping up every available award this season.) With its multiple timelines and stunning visual, emotional, and psychological montage, it's a complex and dazzling bit of editing and it absolutely deserves to win. After Oppenheimer, my vote would probably go to Thelma Schoonmaker's typically vibrant work on Killers of the Flower Moon, but the reigning queen of the editing bay probably doesn't need another award cluttering up her house anyway. (Martin Scorsese's long-time collaborator, Schoonmaker has been nominated nine times—the first time for 1971's Woodstock—and she's won three Oscars and literal scores of other awards.)

As far as my write-in nominees, no animated film has ever been nominated for Best Editing at the Oscars—though why, exactly?—so I'm not surprised to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse overlooked. (I'm pleased to see it has picked up a lot of editing nominations in various professional and regional critic awards across the country.) I'm slightly more surprised to see the immaculate editing of John Wick: Chapter 4 so completely ignored: I haven't seen such beautiful, clockwork chaos since Mad Max: Fury Road, which won this award in 2015.

BEST SOUND

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Oppenheimer

Like a lot of categories this is a two-horse race this year, between two films that both used sound to tremendous dramatic effect. The Zone of Interest has a real chance here, since it is primarily through its sound-design that the offscreen horrors of a concentration camp reach both the film's characters and its audience. But, for Academy voters, I doubt those more subtle intrusions will drown out the overpowering sensations of hearing—and seeing—an atomic explosion in chair-shaking, soul-rattling verisimilitude. It should be clear by now that I expect Oppenheimer to have a big night, and I imagine it will sweep up technical categories like this almost in passing.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Will Win: The Creator
Should Win: Godzilla Minus One

This is one of the few categories where technical teams don't have to contend with Oppenheimer, which must be a relief. And here's what else I like about this category this year: the two front-runners—The Creator and Godzilla Minus One—are both thoughtful, character-driven stories that feel made by actual humans, and they achieved their impressive effects for a fraction of the hundreds of millions their bloated competitors spent. (In terms of the nominees, I'm particularly relieved to see overpriced and visually incomprehensible sludge like The Flash, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania get the exact level of nothing they deserve.) So whichever film wins, it will be a blow for craft over corpulence. I'll be happy to see a win for Gareth Edwards' The Creator, an under-seen and under-appreciated original concept lost in a sea of existing IP blockbusters. But my vote goes to the team from Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One, which—on a microscopic $15 million budget—delivered the most exciting and emotionally engaging kaiju movie since the original Godzilla.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: Maestro
Write-In Nominees: John Wick: Chapter 4 

An interesting note about this category: four of the five nominees are either entirely (El Conde) or largely (Maestro, Oppenheimer, Poor Things) in black-and-white. (I haven't done a thorough accounting, but I suspect this is the first time that's happened since the Academy did away with the separate "Black-and-White Cinematography" category in 1967.) Unfortunately, to me, this indicates that modern Academy voters are overly impressed with the gimmick. The very strange Pinochet-as-a-vampire film El Conde was a surprise entry here, though its monochromatic digital cinematography is admittedly impressive, hearkening back to film techniques of German expressionism. Maestro—dully competent at best—doesn't belong here at all. (Voters are also—and always have been—overly impressed with films by actors-turned-directors.) Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things are both gorgeous, but director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema takes this in a walk—and deservedly—for Oppenheimer's impeccable, shifting visual palette.

For my money? I'm not sure I saw a better-looking film all year than John Wick: Chapter 4. The movies in that franchise are always so much more beautiful than they need to be, and two-time previous nominee Dan Laustsen (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water) got absolutely robbed of a nomination here.

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Will Win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Should Win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Write-In Nominees: Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers; Franz Rogowski, Passages; Koji Yakusho, Perfect Days; Teo Yoo, Past Lives 

With the exception of Bradley Cooper—whose movie I detested, and whom I can take or leave as an actor—this is a category of people I like enough that I can't bring myself to root against any of them. I was not a huge fan of American Fiction—as I said above, I thought it a tonally muddled and satirically shallow film—but Jeffrey Wright can do no wrong. (Sorry: unintentional pun.) And though it has been exciting to see the fabulous Colman Domingo enjoy a well-deserved renaissance in his third decade as an actor, I thought in Rustin he gave a good performance as a great man in a sadly mediocre film. (Sorry, Obamas: both Domingo and Bayard Rustin deserved a better screenplay.) That leaves us with the two frontrunners, Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti, and I am almost perfectly split between them. Giamatti is wonderful in The Holdovers, and he's a guy that needs a career Oscar already, especially since lead roles are few and far between for him. But I have to give the edge—just barely—to Murphy. (I said in my review that he would almost certainly win, and deserve, an Oscar, and I stand by that.)

Andrew Scott's omission here is the biggest crime in the total lockout of All of Us Strangers: I suspect that strange, quietly devastating movie just didn't click with Academy voters, but Scott was superb. Personally, I would also have nominated Koji Yakusho for Perfect Days—there was not a character all year more fully realized, and with a bare minimum of dialogue—and I'm not really sure how Franz Rogowski's critically acclaimed performance in Passages fell so completely out of everyone's consciousness this awards season. Meanwhile, I'm not surprised to see Teo Yoo's quiet, subtly heartbreaking work on Past Lives overlooked, but I was pleased to see the Spirit Awards recognize it as one of the best lead performances of the year. 

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Will Win: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Should Win: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Write-In Nominees: Greta Lee, Past Lives; Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One; Margot Robbie, Barbie

Common wisdom has it that this is a two-woman race, between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone. Personally, I think if anyone is going to pull an upset here it's Sandra Huller, who turned in two tremendous performances this year in two Academy darlings: Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. But this is clearly Gladstone's award to lose: she was absolutely mesmerizing in Killers of the Flower Moon, and I fully expect her to become the first Native American to win an acting award in Academy history.

Mulligan acted rings around her co-star in Maestro, but I didn't like the movie or its screenplay. Bening—who has five nominations over a 35-year career—was good in Nyad, but the movie itself doesn't belong in this company. Neither has a prayer here, and their slots probably should have gone to Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Margot Robbie (Barbie). (I have my issues with Barbie, but none of it would have worked without Robbie: her omission here is a far bigger travesty to me than Greta Gerwig's omission for Best Director.) Meanwhile, if I had my druthers, Teyana Taylor's powerhouse performance in A.V. Rockwell's A Thousand and One would have been a lock for a nomination, but we don't live in that kind of world. (The Spirit Awards nominated Taylor for Best Lead Performance, and gave Rockwell an award for Best First Feature, so there is some justice.)

BEST DIRECTOR

Will Win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Should Win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Must Not Win: They're all worthy
Write-In Nominees: Celine Song, Past Lives; Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers

Is there any point in pretending Christopher Nolan isn't a mortal lock for Oppenheimer? No. (This is the surest category of the evening: Yorgos Lanthimos is his closest competition, and the bookies currently have Lanthimos somewhere around a 30:1 longshot.) Nolan will win, and it's completely deserved. If you read my very long review of Oppenheimer, you'll see I have my gripes and reservations about both Nolan and his film, but no one can deny Oppenheimer is a stunning, staggering piece of work. And Nolan is such a critical and commercial darling, it is hard to remember that he has not only never won before, but has only been nominated once, for 2017's Dunkirk. This is his moment, and he's earned it, and there is virtually no chance he's not going to enjoy it.

I can't even, really, be mad about the omissions here. Past Lives was my favorite film of the year, but Celine Song has already received a host of nominations and awards elsewhere, and she won Best Director (and Best Picture) at the Spirit Awards, for her first film. The fact that she was almost certainly the sixth or seventh choice in this pack, with people like Nolan and Martin Scorsese, is already amazing enough. And I understand, but don't share, the anger over Greta Gerwig's absence here for Barbie. There's no denying Gerwig was responsible for making that movie far more interesting (and successful) than it had any right to be, but (as I said in my review) I thought her actual direction—especially in the bigger musical and "action" scenes—was one of its weakest elements, revealing how this sort of movie is not really her forté.

BEST PICTURE

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: Past Lives
Must Not Win: Maestro
Write-In Nominees: All of Us Strangers; Afire; A Thousand and One; Perfect Days; Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; John Wick: Chapter 4

Recently, Best Picture has been almost the only category in which surprises could happen, and there's a reason for that. In 2009, when the Academy expanded beyond five nominees—allowing as many as 10—they also instituted, for this category only, a preferential ballot, meaning every voter ranks all the nominees in order of preference. (In all other categories, members just vote for a single nominee.) The tallying process for Best Picture is complicated, but what it means is that a movie everyone likes can win over a movie some people love. (This, I think, explains how films like Moonlight and CODA became surprise winners: they may not have received the most first-place votes, but they may have been the consensus second- or third-place choice.)

I mention it here because I think this is the only way anything is going to beat Oppenheimer. Let's say there is a lot of disagreement about the first two slots—people either loved Oppenheimer or hated it—but nearly everyone has The Holdovers somewhere in their top three. Just from its sheer number of highly-ranked votes, The Holdovers could persevere.

I don't honestly think that will happen this year—I think Oppenheimer is a lock—but it's worth keeping in mind. (For the record, my ballot would look like this: 1. Past Lives > 2. Oppenheimer > 3. Anatomy of a Fall > 4. The Holdovers > 5. Poor Things > 6. Killers of the Flower Moon > 7. The Zone of Interest > 8. Barbie > 9. American Fiction > 10. Maestro. Though the middle of that list could easily be shuffled around, depending on my mood.)

(And even in making that ranking, I come back to those questions with which I began this post: what do we value? I actually enjoyed Anatomy of a Fall more than Oppenheimer, but I've ranked Oppenheimer ahead of it on my hypothetical ballot. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but it feels like the greater achievement: the greater spectacle, the greater craft, the more powerful cinematic experience. Yet I've still kept the quieter, less cinematically "impressive" Past Lives in my top spot. Why? I can't necessarily explain it—it's something to do with the way a film resonates and lingers—but I like thinking about the question.)

Anyway, at this point, I feel like I've expressed my preferences (Past Lives is the best film of the year), my predictions (Oscar night will be Oppenheimer's night across the board) and my prejudices (God, Maestro was mediocre) clearly enough that I'm not inclined to dwell on them further here. Instead, let me conclude by saying what I haven't said yet: this is a really, really strong slate of nominees this year. Yes, I have my gripes with the nominated films, and I have a long list of non-nominated favorites I haven't even mentioned at all. (I would watch Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One every day for a year, before I would rewatch Maestro once.) But these are interesting choices, artistically ambitious choices, and some of them—Past Lives, The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall—are, when you think about them, incredibly surprising choices. (I feel about them the way I felt about the nomination for Drive My Car in 2021: it was never going to win, but the fact that Hollywood even noticed it existed was a sign of tremendous progress.)

So—for what they're worth—those are my thoughts on Sunday's annual film bacchanalia. I welcome yours in the comments below. (And though it's been many moons since I posted anything to social media, you can follow me on Bluesky, where I may break my self-imposed embargo on Oscar Night to bemoan my failed predictions and snark about the dresses.)