​Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Back in January, just after the 2026 Oscar Nominations were announced, I published a piece detailing where you could watch every single one (or at least every single one we could personally find). Given that it’s now been just over a month and a half, that piece has now been updated to its latest iteration as some contenders moved from relative theatrical and VOD obscurity onto streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, so if you’re still looking to catch up on as many nominees as possible before Sunday, now is a perfect time for an Oscars movie marathon. 

​Speaking of movie marathons, I’ve more or less been running my own for this year’s Academy Awards over the past few weeks, and for the first time since 2021, I have actually managed to see every single one of the nominees for this year’s Oscars, a grand total of 50 films. It was not an easy task to accomplish, as some of these nominees are still largely inaccessible to the general public, but for those of us obsessed with all cinema has to offer, it’s nice to know that it can in fact be done, even without a pandemic forcing studios to provide wider availability for more obscure titles. With all that in mind, I thought it would be a fun pre-ceremony exercise to rank all 50 of this year’s nominees, one by one, from worst to best, leaving a few brief thoughts on each. (These blurbs should not be considered official reviews of any film; if I have reviewed any nominees in an official capacity, I will link those reviews to the titles below.) There’s not really an easy way to segue into the rest of this piece, so without further ado, let’s get started!

50. Viva Verdi!
​
Nominated For: Best Original Song (“Sweet Dreams of Joy”)
 
It always ends up that some of the least inspired nominations come Oscar time hail straight from the Best Original Song category, and this year, the bottom two slots are once more occupied by relatively obscure titles whose only purpose seems to be to garner said nominations. Viva Verdi! – which follows a group of senior musicians living at the historic Casa Verdi in Milan, built by the incomparable opera legend of the same name – wouldn’t be a bad film for a Sunday afternoon educational program, but as a film and especially as an Oscar nominee, it’s painfully, dreadfully boring. What makes its nomination worse is the fact that “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” the song for which the film is nominated, isn’t even an especially good song when compared to many of the other songs that were shortlisted for the category. Sure, some songs had no shot in hell of making the cut, but when the better of the two Wicked: For Good songs, as well as “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” “Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” and “Highest 2 Lowest” are all passed over in favor of this, a film which was released back in 2024 but only had its original song released and attached to it this year, it’s hard not to be dismayed at the state of the category. Something had to occupy the bottom slot, and unfortunately, Viva Verdi! drew the short straw this time around.

49. Diane Warren: Relentless
​
Nominated For: Best Original Song (“Dear Me”)
 
Ah, Diane Warren, the Best Original Song category mainstay that just won’t quit until she wins a competitive Oscar (the honorary ones don’t count). Every year, people make their predictions in the Original Song category too early, leaving Diane Warren out of their lineup, and every year, she managed to sneak right back in. Unfortunately, the film about her “relentless” pursuit (no pun intended) of Oscar glory can’t possibly live up to some of the genuinely impressive work she’s turned in over the years, thanks in no small part to the film’s very existence being an obvious play for an Oscar in itself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting an Oscar – anyone who works in movies and says they don’t care about it is usually just being dishonest with either the audience or themselves – but to create an entire documentary with awful lighting setups (which Warren herself acknowledges), no true exploration of the artist’s psyche, and a Wikipedia surface-level skimming of her greatest hits just to garner a nomination is absurd (but not as absurd as Warren claiming the nominated song is the “best she’s ever written” when its lyrics as a self-help ballad feel shallow and ten years out of date). 

48. Jurassic World Rebirth
​
Nominated For: Best Visual Effects
 
Credit where credit is due: Jurassic World Rebirth does contain some pretty great visual effects at a massive scale. It’s easily the best-looking of the Jurassic World films from a purely visual standpoint, thanks in no small part to a close collaboration with Gareth Edwards, whose directorial credits include such films as Rogue One and The Creator; whatever one thinks of those films narratively, there’s no denying their production quality, especially vis-à-vis their VFX. Where Rebirth falls short is…basically everywhere else. Apart from the Mosasaurus attack on the water and the river raft sequence (which was directly adapted from the original Jurassic Park book), there’s very little to glean from the film’s narrative and even less from its two-dimensional characters. The script even manages to take the much-hyped D-Rex – supposedly the ultimate threat – and do absolutely nothing interesting or even all that terrifying with it. This franchise has never lived up to the highs of its first entrant, but even after four failed Worlds in a row, its box office success seems to practically guarantee we’ll continue to see pale imitators like this for decades. 

47. The Three Sisters
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Short
 
The first of the short films on this list across three categories, The Three Sisters seems at first blush like a cleverly animated story of sisterhood, but soon devolves into a tongue-in-cheek comedy about them all fighting over a man (of all things) who happens to show up on their island. To say that this was a disappointing watch undersells just how childishly it handles the material it’s working with, but as a nominee over other, more worthy contenders, it feels like an even larger mistake. I really don’t see what the point of this one was at all.

46. Butcher’s Stain
​
Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short
 
The first of two short films from Israel to acknowledge Palestinian personhood, Butcher’s Stain gets so close to actually saying something meaningful about how Israelis post-October 7 have come to see Palestinians as lesser than them, but stops just short offering any genuine critique of the specific kinds of racism Palestinians face day to day. The film instead puts the burden on its lead character to “remain dignified” and just walk away from the coworker that slanders him to his superiors, rather than fight for actual justice for himself or in any way demonstrate how such slander has real-world consequences; it walks right up the point, and then walks away.

45. Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Short
 
For all the good Brent Renaud did the world with his commitment to journalism in the world’s most dangerous spaces, Armed Only with a Camera seems more interested in playing back his greatest hits than it does actually letting us get to know Renaud as a person. As impressive as those hits are, we don’t really get to know who Renaud was outside of his work, except through the words of those who attended his funeral. The film does attempt to gets its arms around the impact Renaud has left on the world both as journalist and filmmaker, and features some harrowing footage as he is on the ground gathering stories, but try as he might, Craig Renaud – who had to finish the film following his brother’s death – just doesn’t quite have the filmmaking instinct his brother did; at least, not yet.

44. Elio
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Feature
 
There’s a distinct feeling that Elio could have been one of Pixar’s great underrated gems were it to follow through on its familial themes and not devolve into a fairly wrote alien adventure film. It’s hardly a dud, and is certainly more entertaining than some other B-tier Pixar films, but its unfulfilled potential weighs it down in such a way that it only reminds me of how Disney Animation has either stolen or driven off a lot of the company’s great storytellers, and how it’s now the Pixar name, not the quality of their films, which feels like a staple of the Best Animated Feature category. At least Hoppers, for the faults it has, maintained its thematic structure throughout.

43. The Lost Bus
​
Nominated For: Best Visual Effects
 
There’s no one like Paul Greengrass to direct an on-the-ground thriller about real-life heroes facing impossible – and occasionally insurmountable – odds. Even with some thinly-written characters at its center, The Lost Bus manages to recreate the tragic circumstances of the 2018 Paradise fires with harrowing intensity, making the rescue of 22 people from Ponderosa elementary feel like a genuine life-or-death race as one watches the story play out. The visual effects for which the film garnered its nomination blend in seamlessly, and every minute in the heart of the fires showcases that even when Greengrass is working with lesser material, he’s still the best there is at exactly this sort of film.

42. Song Sung Blue
​
Nominated For: Best Actress (Kate Hudson)
 
The SAG slingshot heard around the world, Kate Hudson’s nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role was more or less a sixth-or-seventh place longshot right up until the Screen Actors Guild unveiled their nominations and left every international contender off the list. To be fair, Hudson is very good in Song Sung Blue, as is co-lead Hugh Jackman, but the film itself is largely so-so compared to many of the other nominees included here. Even with the mistake of spoiling the twist in the film’s marketing, it had so many opportunities to be more than just a run-of-the-mill musician biopic, and instead settled for the safest route at (almost) every turn. 

41. The Smashing Machine
​
Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
 
I feel like we’ve all done a disservice to Benny Safdie’s UFC drama about one of the sport’s ultimate icons by simply dismissing it as not very good narratively. Of course, the film doesn’t do much to make Mark Kerr’s life more interesting than it would already be to those familiar with his story, but the Dwayne Johnson performance at its center, as well as the naturalistic makeup he has to wear over the course of the film, offer a lot for viewers who are looking for something interesting to hold onto. Johnson plays Kerr as this giant, hulking mass whose softness juxtaposes brilliantly with Johnson’s insane physique; it’s the type of part I’ve missed seeing the actor play, and I hope – somewhat against hope – that Johnson continues on this kind of trajectory, challenging himself to non-typecast roles in the future.

40. Jane Austen’s Period Drama

Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short
​
As funny as Jane Austen’s Period Drama is, it never really goes for anything other than being an easy-to-swallow farce; it’s absolutely entertaining, and there’s lots of clever wordplay amongst a range of different comic styles in each performance, but what holds it back is the lack of a larger point, a theme to tie the whole thing together beyond being what amounts to a 12-minute Funny or Die sketch. Truthfully, there’s nothing especially wrong with it as a concept, but just because one could do significantly worse in terms of live-action nominees doesn’t mean asking for better should be out of the question. As it stands, this one is just…fine.

39. Forevergreen
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Short
 
If I had a nickel for every time there was a cute animated short centered on a bear experiencing personal growth and loss that was shortlisted for this year’s Oscars, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right? All joking aside, while I do ultimately prefer Snow Bear as the hand-drawn counterpart to this film, Forevergreen is nothing to sneeze at, and would’ve fit right at home amongst the old shorts that Pixar used to put in front of its theatrically-released movies (an unfortunate casualty of the Disney+ era). Much like the previous nominee, however, it doesn’t quite go beyond being a well-made version of something we’ve all seen before.

38. Avatar: Fire and Ash
​
Nominated For: Best Visual Effects
 
For all the hate that the Avatar films get for having “no cultural impact” (which in itself is demonstrably not true being that it’s simply not the kind of cultural impact one associates with large-scale blockbusters of the modern era), their box office numbers would suggest people across the world still love spending time on Pandora, and Fire and Ash is no different. The third of James Cameron’s films centered on the adventures of Jake Sully and his family’s life amongst the Na’vi people, the thing that holds this entrant back from reaching greater heights – apart from an underuse of the Ash tribe led by a terrific Oona Chaplin – is its status as the originally-conceived second half of The Way of Water, which means it has to spend a lot more time wrapping up the second film’s loose threads than it’s able to telling its own story. That said, it still features what are somehow the best visual effects of any Avatar film, some of the best performances from its returning leads that the series has ever had, and action sequences with such clear geography and momentum that only a filmmaker of James Cameron’s skill could have ever pulled them off. Hopefully the imminent fourth film the director has now confirmed as “very likely to happen” is able to push the Sully family in a genuinely new direction, and perhaps we’ll even get to see more of Oona Chaplin’s Varang once it’s ready to be unveiled.

37. Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Short
 
The most difficult of the documentary shorts to see if one wasn’t able to catch it in theaters, Children No More follows a group of Israeli citizens opposed to the genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli government and military that come together to protest their government’s actions by holding up photos in public spaces of children who have been killed by this ongoing conflict. This one has aged a bit given that it was all filmed prior to the Israeli hostages all being returned to their home country, so the segments of the film during which the former hostages are brought up feel like a moot point each time the group says they care about both the hostages and the loss of Palestinian life, but it can be nice to be reminded that there are a not insignificant number Israeli citizens who oppose their governments abhorrent actions and aren’t afraid to say so. Then again, much like the aforementioned Butcher’s Stain, the film doesn’t really go anywhere beyond showing the viewer that groups like this exist without actually examining the racism of its people or government at a larger scale, making it feel less like an acknowledgement of the very real harms Palestinians have endured for decades and more like a hand-washing or brand management exercise for Israel because “see? There are good people in here too,” especially since the short itself comes from that nation. Still, at least it is attempting to say something, even if its imperfections and the nature of where it comes from holds it back from being what could have been an extremely powerful examination of how the genocide came to be.

36. Perfectly a Strangeness
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Short
 
Do you ever want to just hang out with your donkey friends and explore an abandoned astronomical observatory in Chile together? If your answer was yes, you may be entitled to financial compensation…or you could just enjoy Perfectly a Strangeness, an indie documentary short that’s way more immersive (thanks to stunning cinematography) than it would otherwise have any right to be. How director Alison McAlpine managed to craft a beautiful, silent story of animal friendship and wonder at the cosmos in just 15 minutes, I’ll never know, but I felt enamored by it all the same. (That shot of the stars in one of the donkey’s eye? Goosebump-inducing.) The only thing that holds the film back from being higher on the list is that it, too, has very little to offer beyond its surface-level awe, but I’ll still take it over a short that only pretends to have a larger point. 

35. Cutting Through Rocks
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature
 
Out of the entire Documentary Feature category, Cutting Through Rocks is perhaps only the second-most conventional nominee, and yet, for me, it’s the least interesting. Granted, current socio-political development in Iran have shifted dramatically since this film was shot, but nonetheless, the film itself still feels as though it’s just scratching the surface of who its central subject is. As Sara (the Iranian woman at the center who seeks to challenge the patriarchal standards by which most of the country lives their lives) ascends, we’re invited to watch her struggle and triumph all the while, yet the story still feels a tad incomplete, likely due to the lack of anywhere else for it to go until perhaps a decade or so from now. As a documentary, the entertainment factor is there, and it’s mercifully on the shorter end, but overall, it’s a rather plain work when all is said and done.

34. A Friend of Dorothy
​
Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short
 
This is the most easily palatable of the live-action shorts for general audiences, and it’s not hard to see why when one watches it, but part of me wishes it had been bold enough to dive deeper into the concept of what a “friend of Dorothy” actually represents, rather than simply telling the audience that the two leads have a specific connection point through theater that drives their friendship and then leaving it at that. The short is well-made, though, and I would have been perfectly fine with a feature-length version of it should the filmmakers elect to expand the story, which could fix the above issue. With such little time to say something deeper, this short is barely able to dig an inch before it ends.

33. All the Empty Rooms

Nominated For: Best Documentary Short
 
When I first saw All the Empty Rooms, I was floored. Of course, not knowing what it was about – even if I suspected which direction it would go – helped that feeling lift off. The second time I saw it, however, it didn’t hold the same emotional impact, though its mission is as admirable as ever: offer some form of closure to parents whose children were victims of the horrific school-based gun violence that permeates the United States, which has heartbreakingly become not just a staple of life in America, but one of its defining features. Each room visited yields new pain, and new catharsis as we see these families be given a chance to say something meaningful not about the violence itself but about who that person in their family outside of the scope of said violence. Yet, as great as the film’s mission is in practice, there exists yet again this nagging feeling in the back of one’s head that there’s so much more to this idea that hasn’t yet been examined with the patience and care it deserves, and this short only scratches the surface of a deeply-rooted problem which has gone continuously unaddressed.

32. The Ugly Stepsister
​
Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
 
Kudos to writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt for managing to actually do something interesting with the Cinderella narrative beyond just making the villain a misunderstood protagonist we need to feel sympathy for. That’s not entirely off-base from what the film is on paper, but setting the tale of one of the princess’s step-sisters inside a body horror film focused the idea of a young girl changing and even mutilating her body in pursuit of what she believes are better circumstances for both herself and her family is an inspired stroke. I’m not personally sure the film’s makeup nomination is enough to make up for the fact that something like 28 Years Later was left off the shortlist for this category entirely, but it’s nice to see the branch taking major swings outside of putting an actor in a Churchill prosthetic and calling it a day. Also, not for nothing, this is the fourth 2025 film in which a character named Agnes encounters adversarial circumstances in a major way.

31. Kokuho
​
Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
 
For all the Tom Cruise hype behind Kokuho, the film gets off to a fairly slow start, but eventually morphs into a quiet tribute to the Japanese theater art of Kabuki. I found the film’s first act to be rather slow, but once the second act gets going and it becomes clear that the film is more or less a Japanese Amadeus, I was willing to go along for the ride. There is some truly beautiful makeup work here, as well as stellar wig work for the Kabuki actors, rendering the film’s nomination well-deserved, but I was surprised in watching it that it didn’t make the shortlist for Cinematography at all. All that to say, if you have the patience for a nearly 3-hour film about an ancient art form that only a few highly skilled people in the world still know how to do, Kokuho is worth at least a cursory glance.

30. Come See Me in the Good Light
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature
 
One of the buzziest debuts out of this past year’s Sundance Film Festival was Ryan White’s documentary chronicling non-binary poet Andrea Gibson’s emotionally fraught battle with cancer (Gibson passed away on July 14) and the ways in which it affected both their own life and their life in conjunction with their spouse, Megan Falley. Come See Me in the Good Light was was acquired by Apple and released over the summer, quietly gaining notoriety over a period of several months, though it was unclear whether it would make the cut for nominations once January came around. The film is a beautiful, even if rather plain, examination of what life with cancer can sometimes look like, buoyed by Gibson’s often stunning poetry as the viewer follows along their journey. Those who have had loved ones struggle with cancer may find it difficult to parse the film’s beauty with the realities of the disease itself, but if there were any film this year that managed to thread the ideas of finality and eternity together better than any other, it’s this one.

29. Retirement Plan
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Short
 
The shortest of the animated short film nominees, Retirement Plan clocks in at just 7 minutes, and manages in that time to tell a complete story of a life lived and hope for the future. Narrated by Domhnall Gleeson, the film’s brevity makes it an ideal candidate for the “short” part of the category name, and would be a worthy winner given how it embodies that name fully, even if there are others I personally enjoyed just a bit more.

28. Two People Exchanging Saliva
​
Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short
 
This was the first of the live-action short films I watched, as it was streaming on YouTube for free well before most others had been made available, and boy, did it leave a lasting impression. Two People Exchanging Saliva is a fascinating viewing experience, not at all what one might expect given its title, occupying something closer to a Yorgos Lanthimos-esque world than anything resembling our own reality. The performances are excellent, the writing is endlessly clever, and while some characters run an unfortunate risk of nearly turning into caricatures, the small interactions between others are some of my favorites in any film this year, short-form or otherwise. Plus, it helps that it’s easily the best-shot of the live-action shorts, with stunning black and white photography that immerses the viewer in its world without feeling like a gimmick. 

27. The Singers
​
Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short
 
While the previous film on this ranking may be my favorite live-action short on a personal level, there’s no denying that – much like Retirement Plan does for its own category – The Singers embodies the very definition of “Best Live-Action Short” more than anything else in this category. Sure, the ending perhaps doesn’t leave things off as cathartically as I might have hoped, but it does make for a rather comedic touch to what is otherwise a fairly somber tale. As the group in the bar all tries to out-sing one another in pursuit of a miniscule amount of money, the ensemble graces us with a variety of different styles of music, vocal intonation, and performance, and the way it all caps off is sure to leave first-time watchers with fond memories of the experience.

26. Sirāt
​
Nominated For: Best International Feature (Spain)
 
Is Sirāt good? Is it a film made purely for shock value tragedy or is there some deeper meaning behind its multiple upsetting turns and twists? I’m not sure I have a definitive answer to any of those questions, but I do know that once I saw it, I would never forget the experience of having watched it. The film’s presence on multiple Oscars shortlists briefly tricked some pundits (including myself for a short while) into thinking that Neon may actually be able to propel four of their international contenders to Best Picture nominations rather than three (of course, this was before It Was Just an Accident lost a lot of its momentum in the race, so the notion of only two Neon films getting in wasn’t yet likely). Following a father searching for his missing daughter by joining ravers in a journey across the desert, the film has become quite divisive over the past few months; those that like it seem to think it’s one of 2025’s absolute best, while those that don’t put it towards the bottom of their ratings pool. For myself, a rewatch is likely in order if I’m to determine exactly where on the in-between scale I fall. 

25. The Devil is Busy
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Short
 
I was surprised to see The Devil is Busy – easily the best of the documentary short films in my view – in first place for many Oscar predictions lists as what’s most likely to win the category. It’s not that it’s not worthy or even that it’s unlikely, but this category has burned me before, most recently when the Netflix doc The Only Girl in the Orchestra beat out Instruments of a Beating Heart for the gold last year. (Netflix is very good at campaigning in this particular category, so a win for All the Empty Rooms could very easily dash any chances this film has at a win. Then again, the issue-oriented short docs last year weren’t especially good, and this year has at least two excellent candidates.) The film follows the director of operations at an Atlanta-based abortion clinic as she deals with security, protestors, staffing, and challenges within the legal system, all to help her patients remain safe as they come in for their appointments. Of course, it helps that Geeta Gandbhir, one of the film’s co-directors, also has feature experience given that she directed The Perfect Neighbor, which leads the documentary feature category this year, so the edit for this film is as clean as they come, telling a complete story over the course of a single day. If this is to be the winner of this category, I’ll personally be very pleased.

24. The Girl Who Cried Pearls
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Short
 
Stop-motion animation is so difficult to pull off that most studios outside of those working in short-form filmmaking don’t even attempt it anymore, but when it works, the results can be a real treat. The Girl Who Cried Pearls is stunning to look at, and while its narrative can sometimes feel a bit lackluster in terms of its supporting characters, the story itself is one that would fit right in with classic stop-motion fair like Coraline or Frankenweenie (though it may use a more optimistic lens). The narration can sometimes get in the way of what the film is attempting to accomplish, but if one can briefly brush past its constant presence, the results are well worth the time.

23. KPop Demon Hunters
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song (“Golden”)
 
With such a banger of a soundtrack and some beautiful animation, it can be difficult to remember that the story of KPop Demon Hunters leaves a lot of missed opportunities on the table with its story in favor of being more digestible kids fair (perhaps the inevitable sequel can answer a lot of those questions). Then again, those animation qualities – and especially that soundtrack – do a lot of heavy lifting most animated films this year just haven’t been able to come close to. Golden is such a mainstream pop hit from a soundtrack full of great songs, it’s an undeniable Best Original Song winner (even if another film to be mentioned later features the better song in the category), and the film’s status as Netflix’s most watched original film ever more or less guarantees that it takes the Animated Feature Oscar as well, making it the streamer’s second win in that category. There’s really not much else to say about this one that anyone with kids wouldn’t already know, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

22. Mr. Nobody Against Putin
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature
 
While My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow occupies the documentary epic space, covering Russia’s systemic suppression of independent journalism at a macro scale, Mr. Nobody Against Putin instead takes a micro approach to the Putin regime’s attacks on education through the lens of one teacher who documents the slow descent of his school from a place which teaches the usual curriculums into a mouthpiece for Russian military propaganda. As a film, it’s an interesting document to see, but the ethical concerns around how it was made – the lack of blurred faces (both adults and children), the use of real names, etc – does keep it from being an essential piece of journalism regardless of the subject at hand. As necessary as it is to tell this story, the film’s approach feels a bit sloppy and a tad-self serving for its lead subject, who positions himself as a sacrificial hero by simply getting this documentary out into the world. Still, to have a more honed-in look at what the Russian government is doing at a personal scale is valuable; what viewers have to reckon with is whether that value is worth the cost of what said government could do in retaliation to those involved.

21. Blue Moon
​
Nominated For: Best Actor (Ethan Hawke), Best Original Screenplay
 
Every year there’s at least one “bottle” movie that gets some Oscar love, even if it doesn’t ultimately make the nominations cut, but for this year, Blue Moon garnered not just a Best Actor nomination for Ethan Hawke, but also an Original Screenplay nod for writer Robert Kaplow. Of Richard Linklater’s two films released last year, this is easily the better one in my opinion. The film features Hawke as Lorenz Hart and the whole thing takes place over one night in a bar during the opening of the musical Oklahoma!, which followed the split between Hart and Richard Rogers as a musical writing duo. The script is extremely talky, so if you can’t vibe with films that are light on action and heavy on dialogue, it might not be something I could recommend, but every once in a while, a film comes along that could have been a play and demonstrates an actor’s skill in keeping us engaged with the film anyway. This really is the Ethan Hawke show, and it’s one of his absolute best performances since he last worked with Linklater on Boyhood back in 2014, and easily his best lead part since First Reformed in 2017. That said, if one isn’t already open to what is essentially a capital A acting showcase for Hawke, the experience is likely pretty draining.

20. Butterfly
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Short
 
“Every frame a painting” has never been more applicable to a short film than it is to this year’s most powerful animated short, Butterfly, which sees a man swim in the sea, each surfacing resurrecting a memory from his life, all of them linked to water in some form or fashion. The film’s art style is stunning to look at, and pairing it with a touching story about past traumas and triumphs just adds a little extra weight to the whole thing that, while it didn’t actually need it, makes the film all the better. This one is also streaming on YouTube I believe, so check it out if you get the chance.

19. Frankenstein
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Jacob Elordi), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound
 
I’m slightly on the lower end of Frankenstein than most of my peers are, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t aspects of the film I still thoroughly enjoyed. The film is a bit slow in its first half as Oscar Isaac recounts his story to the boat captain that opens the film, but once Jacob Elordi shows up as The Creature, it really starts to sing. It’s also beautifully-designed top to bottom, from costumes to makeup to set design, even if the photography makes a lot of it look more like a digital effect than it should given how practical all the sets actually are. All in all, the film is good if one sticks with it, but feels closer to a more formal exercise in adapting a classic work than a truly emotionally-grounded story.

18. Zootopia 2
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Feature
 
There are some detractors out there who don’t consider Zootopia 2 to be especially good – and it notably pales in comparison to its predecessor – but I had a lot of fun with it. The continuing adventures of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are a delight to watch, even when some of the jokes and many, many other film references don’t quite land as well, and the film’s ultimate twist manages to work extremely well without needing to drop a bunch of not-so-subtle hints along the way. Succession with a lynx family? Now that’s a genius-level idea.

17. Arco
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Feature
 
For my money, Arco is easily the most unique of the animated features released this year, and that makes it one of the two films I personally think should be winning the Oscar over KPop Demon Hunters, but it’ll probably have to settle for a third or fourth place finish when all is said and done. Set in the year 2075, the film sees a boy from a time-traveling family accidentally launch himself and his rainbow flight suit into a wildly different past, eventually meeting up with a young girl who shelters him and vows to help him return to his time. The film more or less follows the trajectory one might expect for a story like it, but it’s all of the imaginative concepts within that trajectory that make it worth watching; it’s also not afraid to take some risks with its characters, which is refreshing to see given how most animated films refuse to do so for fear of alienating their core audiences. Of the films nominated in this category – even if there is at least one better one – this is my personal favorite.

16. The Voice of Hind Rajab
​
Nominated For: Best International Feature (Tunisia)
 
Buckle up: this is a heavy one. The Voice of Hind Rajab follows a group of workers at the Red Crescent as they attempt to rescue the titular 6-year-old Palestinian girl from a car that’s under attack by the IOF by trying to keep her on the line until they can get to her. The film’s real world ties to the ongoing Palestinian genocide make it an urgent watch all on its own, but given that the film blends its semi-fictional emergency call center story with the real-life audio recordings from the day this all took place, including those of Hind Rajab herself, the docu-drama takes on an even more devastating double meaning as one watches it. If you already know the story of Hind Rajab and what happened to her, you’ll be familiar with the basic story of how everything went down, so there’s little included in the film that you wouldn’t already know, but if for whatever reason you haven’t heard her story before, this film is an excellent, respectfully-crafted recap of that tragic day’s horrible events.  

15. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
​
Nominated For: Best Actress (Rose Byrne)
 
The screenplay categories this year are so stacked that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein’s tale of a mother in crisis – probably wasn’t even close to making the cut in Original Screenplay, but that doesn’t make the film any less worthy, especially given how it straddles the line between pseudo-horror and stress-inducing drama. Rose Byrne is excellent in this movie, which refuses to fall back on the old “isn’t motherhood still worth it” trope seen in so many of these types of films and instead focuses on all the ways the world at large makes it difficult to even be a mother or be understood as one in the first place. It’s a fairly thorny performance in a pretty thorny movie, and while I’m reticent to give anything else about it away, the way in which the ending plays out is one of the great film endings of 2025.

14. The Secret Agent
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Actor (Wagner Moura), Best International Feature (Brazil), Best Casting
 
I owe The Secret Agent another watch I’m sure, especially given how many pundits have described their experience with it as a multi-watch unraveling of all its many tendrils of meaning, but for the time being I’ll have to settle for loving the Wagner Moura performance at its center while feeling as though it never quite got me there emotionally speaking. Still, the aesthetics of it are gorgeous, and the supporting cast for the film all really bring their A game, especially Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana. 

13. The Alabama Solution
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature
 
Whatever Alabama governor Kay Ivey is up to, I hope she’s having a miserable time. The Alabama Solution – which follows the lives of inmates in Alabama’s royally messed up prison system as they experience awful conditions, brutal violence, and scorching heat – is perhaps the most traditionally-rendered documentary in its category, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful or important to watch. Much of the footage smuggled out of the prison system comes from the inmates themselves (one of whom dies during the film), and to watch the cover-up of these horrific abuses play out – knowing nothing will be done about it by the state government – is enraging, especially given the governor’s solution to the prison problem is just to build three brand new larger prisons without addressing any present issues in a meaningful way. This would be the lead contender for the category in any other year; for now, it just has to settle for being yet another great HBO documentary in a very long line of them.

12. Weapons
​
Nominated For: Best Supporting Actress (Amy Madigan)
 
When Jordan Peele couldn’t acquire Zach Cregger’s follow-up to the bonkers horror of Barbarian, he fired his entire team, and having seen Weapons, it’s not hard to see why losing that acquisition would cause a director of his caliber to make that decision. As far as horror films go, Weapons has the most singular vision of any released this past year, and the Aunt Gladys character for which Amy Madigan received her Best Supporting Actress nomination – as well as a recent major win at the Actor Awards – is an instant icon, so much so that she was the subject of many Halloween costumes following the film’s release. The script is often quite funny, the performances are all top-notch, and while I do feel the film’s larger scale gets away from itself at times, it’s hard to complain when a film is this much fun to watch (especially with a crowd).

11. Bugonia
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score
 
Whether you’re more of a Dogtooth and Killing of a Sacred Deer person or more of a The Favourite and Poor Things person will likely determine your enjoyment level when it comes to Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest release, as it steers well away from the period-centric aesthetics of the latter two in favor of the strangely disquieting nature of the former two (I find myself leaning more towards the period piece films, personally). That said, Bugonia is still an excellent watch, wrongfooting its audience to the very end while all the while engaging in a farce about the corporate world, conspiracy culture, and bees of all things. I haven’t seen the Korean film Save the Green Planet from which this film is adapted, so I can’t comment on its strength or lack thereof as a translation of the source material, but as its own film, it’s just the same level of weird and uncomfortably comic that I’ve come to expect from a Lanthimos movie. Emma Stone is so excellent in the film, per usual, one feels she could do a part like this in her sleep, but it’s Jesse Plemons who truly steals the spotlight here with what may be his best performance to date (personally I would’ve nominated him or another lead actor contender I’ll mention later over Ethan Hawke).

10. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
​
Nominated For: Best Animated Feature
 
While Arco may be my personal favorite, there is simply no denying how Little Amélie or the Character of Rain outshines every other animated feature in its category by a longshot. The art style is stunning to look at, the storytelling is just unconventional enough to holds ones attention while being familiar enough that such attention doesn’t feel like a chore, and the emotional core of the film as the two-year-old titular character comes of age is as affecting as they come. There may be a few too many big ideas in the film for it to completely succeed in every way it wants to, but if the Oscars were going to pull one genuinely major upset this year, the animated feature category would be the place to do it, and this would be the film to choose.

9. Hamnet
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Chloé Zhao), Best Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Casting, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score
 
Having read the book beforehand, I knew what was coming in Hamnet from a mile away, and was surprised when the film opened with a text card that reveals the central driving force of the film right away; and yet, even knowing all of that ahead of time, I was still so struck by the force in question, I couldn’t keep my eyes dry even if I wanted to. As an adaptation, the film is imperfect – there’s a great deal about Agnes’ step-family that’s left out which I think would have helped flesh out her story more fully – but it does pull off some brilliant ideas, especially where it concerns the ending and its expansion to include the whole Hamlet play, rather than stopping before it finishes in the way the book does. Even the use of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” which has become somewhat of an annoyance to some viewers, seemed to fit for me, though I would have liked to hear a more original piece of music at the film’s climax. Chloé Zhao’s return to small-scale filmmaking after her Marvel excursion didn’t quite work out could not have vindicated her more as a director with unique skills in accessing the emotion and catharsis at the intersections of art and grief than it does here, and even with its imperfections, this remains one of my favorite films of 2025, top ten or not.

8. F1
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound
 
Yeah, yeah, F1 is the one in Best Picture that doesn’t seem like it ultimately fits in there the same way Top Gun: Maverick did, and It Was Just an Accident should have been in that spot, but that doesn’t make it a less good movie when one looks at it on its own terms. As flat as some of the Brad Pitt performance at the center of the film feels, Joseph Kosinski is still one of the best directors in the business at capturing fast vehicles in extremely cool ways with large-scale filmmaking techniques and high budgets. This is a capital M sports movie through and through, and it’s hard not to get sucked into everything when watching it, especially in a theatrical setting where the cars are loud, the action is fast, and most of the needle-drops are so hype inducing one wants to jump out of their chair. Damson Idris is excellent in the film, as are Kerry Condon (who they wisely did not ask to switch accents for this one) and a perfectly-placed Javier Bardem, and the film’s rewatchability is up there with the likes of Creed and yes, Top Gun: Maverick. If Kosinski is going to keep making movies like this with all manner of different transportation vessels, I’ll take ten more.

7. The Perfect Neighbor
​
Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature
 
While I still prefer My Undesirable Friends in terms of documentary features from last year overall, this film was so close to making the cut for my top ten that I almost put it back in at the last minute. The Perfect Neighbor is a devastating watch but a nonetheless essential document about the kinds of insidious, implicit racial biases that continues to exist all around the United States and the ways in which legislation like “stand your ground” laws can have very real, harmful effects on the communities in which they’re implemented. Told primarily through police bodycam footage, the film chronicles in just an hour and a half, beat for beat, how the specific type of “neighborly” racism Susan Lorincz engages in throughout slowly escalates until that implicit bias turns it into outright racially-motivated violence that infects everything around it. The fact that this is just one of many stories like this in the United States is infuriating and disheartening, made more so by the fact that the justice reached at the film’s end is almost forced to act as a catharsis for the victims, highlighting the ways in which these systems often continually perpetuate harm against those they’re meant to protect. 

6. Train Dreams
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (“Train Dreams”)
 
Although Frankenstein is the more lauded movie from a technical standpoint, Train Dreams is easily Netflix’s best movie released last year, and it’s not close. Though some take issue with specific changes made from the Dennis Johnson novella as it regards the lead character (personally I was fine with the change), there’s no denying the film’s innate beauty in how it captures the natural world, thanks in no small part to stunning digital cinematography by Adolpho Veloso. Joel Edgerton turns in what might be a career-best performance in the film, subtle and layered in such quietly devastating ways once could swear he’s played parts like this all his life (unfortunately I suppose it was too quiet for the Academy to give him the Best Actor nomination he deserves), and William H. Macy turns in some of the best work of his career as well. Director Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the adaptation with fellow director Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing) is quickly becoming a director I’ll always return to when he puts something new out, and I can’t wait to see what this writing duo gets up to next.

5. It Was Just an Accident
​
Nominated For: Best International Feature (France), Best Original Screenplay
 
While It Was Just an Accident wasn’t my first Jafar Panahi film, it is the first one where I finally began to click with what it was he wanted to do. Filmed entirely in secret, the Palme d’Or winner deserved a lot better than the Oscar package it received in my opinion, especially with an ending shot as showstopping as this one. The script for this thing is razor sharp, every performance shines bright (especially that of Miriam Afshari), and the fact that, once again, this was all filmed in secret due to Panahi’s continuous struggles with the Iranian government – including serving a one-year jail sentence upon his return to the country for having made the film in the first place – makes the film’s excellence all the more stunning to experience. It’s also, not for nothing, quite funny at many of its most unexpected moments.

4. Sinners
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Ryan Coogler), Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku), Best Supporting Actor (Delroy Lindo), Best Casting, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Original Song (“I Lied to You”), Best Visual Effects, Best Sound
 
The record-break heard round the world, Sinners’ status as the top dog of the Oscar nomination pool is a well-deserved title, as Ryan Coogler crafted not just one of the best vampire movies ever made, not just one of the best “all in one night” movies ever made, not just one of the best pseudo-musical movies ever made, but all three of them wrapped into one incredible package. Sure, scene geography is not exactly Coogler’s strong suit when action sequences involve more than two people in a boxing ring, but the film is so strong with everything else that the action feels incidental to the larger narrative and the film’s themes of cultural vampirism and Black self-determination and prosperity. There are so many layers to the film’s script that I uncover more on every subsequent rewatch, the performances and the filmmaking get deeper and deeper the more I learn about them, and the “I Lied to You” scene will go down as not just the defining movie scene of 2025, but one of the greatest set-pieces in Coogler’s entire filmography.

3. Marty Supreme
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Josh Safdie), Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet), Best Casting, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design
 
Controversy on opera/ballet aside (not that it should be much of one given how those comments were resurfaced from a 2019 conversation and taken wildly out of context at large), Marty Supreme is a whirlwind of a film from director Josh Safdie (who has his own controversy to worry about) from director Josh Safdie (who has his own, far more concerning controversy) that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its radically unconventional casting and its lead star, Timothée Chalamet, who turns in his best performance to date as Marty Mauser, a young hotshot ping pong player with ambitions to be known as the best player in the world. Not a single ounce of the film has any sympathy for Mauser, but just like the people in the film who continually get screwed over by him, it can’t help but be drawn in by his sheer charisma and blind self-belief, even when it’s clear that he’s operating more under self-delusion than anything else. The ending is also already incredible before Marty flies back home, but those final moments with the particular needle drop are as stunning an ending as many movie last year ever had.

2. One Battle After Another
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actress (Teyana Taylor) Best Supporting Actor x2 (Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn), Best Casting, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound
 
There were exactly two defining films of 2025, which subsequently became the two defining films of awards season; the first one was Sinners – this is the other one. One Battle After Another is a stunner from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the director’s absolute best amongst a sea of great works, and easily his biggest from a budget and scale perspective. Partially adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film follows former French 75 revolutionary Bob Ferguson as he seeks out his missing daughter following an attack from a former adversary. If by some miracle you haven’t heard of the film yet, I’d be impressed, but not as impressed as I was during the film’s many stellar set-pieces, from the opening camp liberation to the forty-minute escape sequence following Lockjaw’s attack to the road chase that caps off the film’s third act to some of PTA’s best dialogue ever to some of the best performances of their careers from the entire cast. Though I can understand some of the recent criticisms levied against the film, for me, it’s pretty damn close to perfect, and if I had to pick a “best” movie of 2025, this would be it without question. For me, everything about it works.

1. Sentimental Value
​
Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Joachim Trier), Best Actress (Renate Reinsve), Best Supporting Actress x2 (Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Best Supporting Actor (Stellan Skarsgård), Best International Feature (Norway), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing
 
If you read my Top 10 piece for this past year, you already know why this is ranked number 1 here, but suffice it to say, this is still my favorite movie from last year, not necessarily because I would consider it pound for pound the year’s best (though it’s nothing to sneeze at in that department either), but because of all the way in which I can personally relate to many of its specificities in the storytelling and the characters, and how I can see so many of the people around me in each of them. All this to say, I chose to (mostly) prioritize this list in terms of personal preference, rather than trying to parse out whether one film was “objectively” better as a nominee than another, and that means Sentimental Value sits atop them all. I won’t wax poetic about it here too much, but somehow Joachim Trier made a film that I can so specifically see the margins of all around my own life, and that is a rare skill indeed. I’ll be at least partially devastated if this goes home empty handed on Sunday night.

And that’s my ranking of every single 2026 Oscar nominee! How would you personally rank these nominees? Anything you’re surprised is ranked higher? Lower? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading. Next up: The Friendly Film Fan Award Winner and our FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! In our last Oscars piece, we went over all this season’s major Oscar contenders, but they are not the only films vying for gold this season. There are still plenty of films outside of the major contenders that have a solid chance at sneaking into some nomination fields, whether below-the-line or above, the only differences being they’re unlikely to be competitive across a wide spectrum of Oscar categories, or they’re simply not as big of releases as those discussed in the other piece. As with last time, this is not a fully comprehensive list of everything competing for Oscar glory, but more of a guide as to where things could be heading. There’s still plenty of time for momentums to rise and drop, category shifts to take place, and things to change dramatically throughout the awards season regarding what constitutes a major or minor contender. With all that said, let’s dive right in. Here are this season’s minor Oscar contenders!

The Apprentice
​
Despite having released nationwide over the October 11 weekend, it’s still unclear just how strong this Donald Trump/Roy Cohn biopic really is in terms of awards contention. For my own part, I found it to be tremendously entertaining, buoyed by two fantastic central performances from Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Stan is the most obvious contender here, having played the former President immaculately (and as unfortunate as it is, it’s more likely that the Academy nominates him for this than for his career-best turn in A Different Man), but with such an uncertain race ahead in the Supporting Actor category, don’t be surprised if Strong slips in as well. After all, the film hinges on the idea that Roy Cohn was at least partially – if not entirely – responsible for creating Donald Trump as we know him today, so if voters feel that nominating the lead actor also means connecting that nomination to the supporting part the performance bounces off of, it would be entirely likely that Strong lands that coveted 5th spot. The Academy also loves subtle makeup effects, particularly in biopics, so an Apprentice appearance in that category shouldn’t shock anyone, were it to happen.
 
Best Chances: Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong), Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Civil War
 
Alex Garland’s Civil War – divisive as it was upon release – was a barn-burner for A24, becoming their second-highest-grossing film to date (only behind Everything Everywhere All at Once), and stayed in theaters for a good while. The studio’s gambit to open themselves up to more I.P. and spectacle-driven storytelling only has this one success story thus far, but it’s an undeniable success. To that end, while the film is unlikely to compete above-the-line, there are at least two tech categories in which it stands a fighting chance. Chief among these categories is Best Sound, which – regardless of how one feels about the narrative or pacing thereof – remains the film’s standout element by a wide margin. The whiz of sniper bullets, the sharpness of the gunfire, the ferocity of every explosion follows the viewer everywhere, especially during the film’s masterfully-crafted third act raid on Washington D.C. One other category, however, that awards enthusiasts may not be considering hard enough is Best Visual Effects. As 2019 showed us with 1917’s win in the category, war films can contain a great deal more visual effects than one might expect, and it’s the seamless blending of these effects that the Academy pays attention to. That said, Civil War would still face a tough uphill battle in that department, so if you’re set on just giving it one shot, Sound should be it. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

​Didi
 
It’s a real shame this Sundance darling about a young Vietnamese boy named Wang-Wang growing up through the dawn of the digital age doesn’t have as large of an awards reputation as some of its contemporaries in the genre, but then again, Bo Burnham’s near-perfect Eighth Grade may be its closest contemporary, and that didn’t get any awards love either. Didi’s one and only hope – apart from a miracle break into the original Screenplay category – is in Joan Chen’s endearing turn as the lead character’s mother. Chen is genuinely fantastic in the film, anchoring all of Wang-Wang’s anxiety with a steely vulnerability, and a well-deserved nomination in Best Supporting Actress is not out of the question as a surprise spoiler in the category. Unfortunately, with all of Focus Features’ awards attention fixed on Conclave, it’s highly unlikely for that spoiler to gain enough momentum by the time nominations are announced.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Joan Chen)

​A Different Man
 
As mentioned above, most of Sebastian Stan’s award attention is likely to be focused on The Apprentice for obvious reasons, but in my not-so-humble opinion, if he is to land a Best Actor nomination, it should be for this performance instead. A Different Man is an incredible look at the idea of self-hatred, internal insecurities, and identity that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Stan’s towering turn, but also happens to feature Adam Pearson as one of the film’s funniest characters. While the script may be darkly comic and unendingly clever though, the limited amount of collective watch time amongst audiences and Academy voters (plus the crowded fields in both Screenplay categories and most other above-the-line slots for which it would have competed) likely means that beyond the Makeup & Hairstyling category, it basically only has one other shot, if A24 and Stan want to campaign for his performance.
 
Best Chances: Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
 
In case any of you were wondering, no, I will not be forgiving everyone who let this movie go DOA and flop so hard at the box office that director George Miller had to pull back on his certainty that he would be doing another Mad Max movie at all. There simply is no one better at making this kind of movie than him, and it will be a black mark on all movie-goers if he dies being taken for granted as a director. Furiosa is no Fury Road, to be sure, but to even make a post-apocalyptic revenge epic this well more than deserves all the praise anyone could throw at it. Fury Road took home 6 Oscars (all in tech categories) the year that it competed, so it’s not out of the question that some of those techs could repeat nominations as long as the movie is shown to Academy members in time for voting. Here’s hoping. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound

​Joker: Folie À Deux
 
My oh my, how the mighty have fallen. Joker: Folie À Deux certainly has its defenders – even I admired Todd Phillips’ “screw your fantasy sequel” approach to putting it out there – but there’s no denying the film just doesn’t work, buried underneath layers of poorly-staged musical covers and lacking the conviction that comes with being allowed to rip off two of Scorsese’s best works. This was meant to be Warner Bros’ big fall season awards push; now, the studio could consider themselves lucky to land a few tech nominations. What happened?! Well, apart from the film’s myriad of issues like a repetitive narrative, lack of development for most non-Joker characters, and twist ending that essentially means the film before it meant nothing, it also didn’t make any money. Box office isn’t necessarily an indicator of awards consideration, but having a sequel to one of your most successful movies of all time flop, and having your star drop out of an upcoming Todd Haynes film just days before shooting, thus ruining his nomination chances for the same part he won Best Actor for last time, burns a lot of good will the movie may otherwise have kept even with the drop in quality. As it stands, Folie À Deux still has the slimmest of chances to repeat some of its old techs, but don’t expect it to go any further than that. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling

The Substance
 
Something is happening with The Substance amongst awards pundits, who seem to consider the film stronger than ever as awards season is in full swing and Oscar voting approaches. Many have still kept it out of the above-the-categories (save for one), but even with the Academy’s understood bias against the horror genre, the momentum for it seems to only be building, especially where it concerns the towering Demi Moore performance at its center. Personally, I doubt that it competes in many categories apart from the obvious due to that Academy bias, but if this thing somehow lands a Best Picture nomination, I will be shocked and delighted. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Hard Truths
 
Each year in one of the acting categories and in the screenplay category, there’s always one wildcard selection that has the potential to throw every would-be 5-for-5 predictions list out the window. This year, that’s Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, a film containing a Marianne Jean-Baptiste performance every critic who’s seen the film raves about. It’s not hard to imagine Jean-Baptiste as an included fifth contestant, especially if the Academy refuses to nominate Demi Moore, and Mike Leigh is beloved enough by movie enthusiasts that there’s some good will towards his landing a nomination for an original script, regardless of how far the film could go after those considerations. This early in the race, it’s too difficult to tell how certain these nominations would be, but if the potential for dark horse candidates is in play, so is the dark horse movie of this season.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Best Original Screenplay

​Nightbitch
 
Following a disastrously bad first trailer, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch received mixed-positive reviews, with many pundits singling out Amy Adams starring turn as mother who thinks she’s turning into a dog as proof that she’s still got it. Coming off a historically bad run following her Best Actress snub in 2016 for Arrival, this movie could be seen as a comeback vehicle for Adams, even if it’s unlikely to appear anywhere else that matters. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters on December 6 just how competitive Adams is likely to be, if at all.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Amy Adams)

​The Piano Lesson
 
August Wilson adaptations have done well at the Oscars in the past, with both Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom racking up nominations above-the-line left and right, although the latter did miss out on Picture and Director. Both received Adapted Screenplay nominations, and both had their lead and supporting performances recognized by the Academy, so it stands to reason that The Piano Lesson won’t be much different except with respect to the fact that John David Washington, who leads this movie, may not be able to crack this crowded of a Best Actor field, and Samuel L. Jackson – whom many pundits originally predicted to win the Best Supporting Actor category – apparently isn’t in the movie very much. That said, everyone who’s seen the movie thus far has raved about Ray Fisher’s performance, so Best Supporting Actor could still happen, and almost all of them also have Danielle Deadwyler’s supporting turn – as well as the screenplay – still locked into a nomination position, with the latter looking the most wobbly if something else were to take its place. The film is being put out by Netflix, which is also platforming Emilia Pérez and Maria this season, so it’s entirely likely that some of the larger categories don’t feature it as heavily.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Danielle Deadwyler), Best Supporting Actor (Ray Fisher), Best Adapted Screenplay

The Room Next Door
 
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film has received a bit of a mixed reception from those who have seen it, with many citing the magic he’s able to conjure in the Spanish language not translating correctly to English, leaving the script feeling clunkier than it’s likely meant to. That said, it does still have many defenders, including people who still believe it has a chance to make its mark in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress with Tilda Swinton, even if a Supporting bid for her would have worked out better for a competitive win. Stars Julianne Moore and Swinton are both campaigning in Lead Actress, but given Swinton is the one everyone talks about regarding this film, it’s most likely the nod goes to her or neither, leaving a more dark horse candidate to fill up that fifth spot. Both Pain and Glory and Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s last two films, managed to score some surprise nominations along the way, so we’ll see if that streak of surprises continues here.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Tilda Swinton), Best Adapted Screenplay

​The Seed of the Sacred Fig
 
A thriller apparently made in secret in Iran, Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig has been burning up the minds of those who’ve seen it ever since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year. The film is Germany’s official selection for the International Feature Oscar race, but also seems to be nomination-competitive in at least one other category (Original Screenplay), and some are predicting it to break into Picture and Director as well. I’ll have to see the movie myself before I consider adding it to my predictions in those latter two categories, but International Feature is all but a certainty, and Original Screenplay is very much in play, so don’t count it out of your predictions just yet.  
 
Best Chances: Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay

​September 5
 
A film about the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, September 5 is told entirely from the perspective of the ABC newsroom who covered the story at the time. Bottle movies about journalism tend to fare well with the Academy, in at least the Editing category, and the studio is campaigning its cast for Supporting considerations given the ensemble nature of the piece, Peter Sarsgaard being the most obvious contender amongst the group. The predictions betting site GoldDerby has listed September 5 amongst its ten predicted nominations for Best Picture, but without having seen the film, and with much of the awards release slate still to come, the lack of certainty surrounding such a prediction is why I’m hesitant to throw it that bone just yet. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it sneak into the #10 spot, especially with such a wide-open Best Picture race only seeming to be getting wider.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Sarsgaard), Best Film Editing 

And with that, we’ve covered most (if not all) of the major and minor Oscar contenders this awards season! Which of these films are you looking forward to the most? Do you foresee any of these minor contenders making the switch to major? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Awards season has arrived as both major and minor studios vie for distribution rights from festival premieres and focuses shift toward a fairly unpredictable Oscar race. With the current awards field becoming simultaneously overcrowded and difficult to nail down in terms of finding front-runners for most major categories, sifting through what to watch out for and what not to worry about can be a daunting task to say the least, especially if (like me) you feel that there’s never enough time in the day to figure those things out organically by seeing everything you want to see. That’s where I come in.
 
Over the next three to four months, a whole slew of new works – some from respected masters, some from audacious new talents – will be released to cap off the movie year as we prepare for one of the most unpredictable Oscar seasons in recent memory. This piece serves as both a directory of titles for those who may be interested in knowing more about the films most likely to be competing, as well as a guide to determine which categories these films best stand a chance of entering. This will be a two-part piece covering both the major and the minor contenders in the race, with the first publishing of our Early Oscar Nomination Predictions soon to follow. There’s still plenty of time for things to change (I’m not sure if anyone saw The Brutalist coming when this awards season was first being discussed), but for now, let’s survey the cinematic landscape ahead and explore what exactly the major contenders are.

Dune: Part Two
​
If there were one film above all others that has never wavered on its way to the finish line, it’s Denis Villeneuve’s second-half adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel, Dune. Dune: Part Two was a powerhouse when it released to rapturous acclaim, and has showed no signs of slowing down at all as this year’s grand-scale blockbuster achievement. When one considers the immaculate craft, committed performances, brilliant storytelling, and the failures both critically and commercially of WB’s other major player this season (Joker: Folie À Deux), it’s no wonder the cultural foothold of Dune: Part Two has continued to stay so strong, making it by far the most obvious major contender across eleven different categories, even if some wins outside of the tech categories are unlikely to occur. One thing’s for sure though: with the brutal snub of Denis Villeneuve for Best Director in 2022 in favor of Kennth Branagh’s so-so work on Belfast, Oscar enthusiasts are waiting with their metaphorical pitchforks to make sure the Academy doesn’t make the same mistake twice, so it seems all but a certainty that a snub there will not occur. (Then again, this is the Academy we’re talking about.)

Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Denis Villeneuve), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

​​Saturday Night
 
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which has now been released following its world premiere at Telluride (man, they had a good lineup this year), chronicles the opening night of NBC’s very first Saturday Night Live show. The trailer demonstrates just how chaotic and unpredictable the mounting of such an audacious production ended up being, though according to some pundits, those more familiar with the history of SNL may find the film lacking a bit. As an ensemble piece full of young stars about the history of a visual medium, however, the film has a strong chance to land some SAG attention, which could push it over the hill and into Best Picture territory, a sandbox with which Reitman is not unfamiliar. It’s doubtful that any acting nods will come out of it, but to put a movie like this together, Editing and Screenplay are far from out of the question, apart from the question of which Screenplay category the Academy decides the film belongs to. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

​Sing Sing
 
The unfortunate reality of the race’s current state is that as soon as A24 picked up The Brutalist, its other fall and winter releases (sans the horror films) seemed to fall almost entirely by the wayside in terms of marketing. Sure, Queer and Babygirl are still coming out, and are well-positioned to get some awards love of their own outside of most major categories, but the bulk of the campaigning from A24 seems to have fallen in line behind Brady Corbet’s great American epic. Despite this, however, and despite one of the more confusing release strategies for an A24 summer movie in recent memory, Sing Sing is still positioned by most pundits to take up a decent amount of space come Oscar nomination time, and in my opinion, it would fully deserve everything it’s given. It’s not only the year’s best movie so far, but one of the only real challengers to Dune: Part Two in terms of relative certainty in competition. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Colman Domingo), Best Supporting Actor (Clarence Maclin), Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay

​Anora
 
Winner of the Palme d’Or at perhaps the most prestigious film festival on the main circuit (it competes with Venice on that), Anora comes to us from director Sean Baker, and stars Mikey Madison as the titular character, a sex worker who gets married to the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. NEON picked up U.S. distribution for the film, and considering the immensely positive word of mouth surrounding the project, as well as the fact that NEON has won the coveted Palme d’Or five years in a row now, with three of those wins translating to Best Picture nominations at the Oscars, this seems like one of the more “no-brainer” type of contenders, even with its limited and worldwide public release dates still weeks away.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay

​Blitz
 
This is where things start to get a little more complicated. Steve McQueen’s Blitz, which will be released in limited theaters on November 1 leading up to its nationwide debut on AppleTV+ three weeks later, has been the big question of awards season ever since news of its production broke. For a long while, it was unclear whether it would ever make a fall/winter release date, or have to be pushed into 2025 due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. It was also unclear just which categories its starts would compete for, as Saoirse Ronan prepares to mount a comeback to the awards field with this film and The Outrun. Would she be lead or supporting? How prevalent is Harris Dickinson in the movie? Does it look like a strong contender in the tech categories? These were all questions that, until the trailer released, had inconclusive answers. Few people have seen the film as yet, but with the film’s London Film Festival premiere having now occurred, things do appear to be looking favorable, though not everyone's praises appear to be as gargantuan as the film might need to be win-competitive. Of course, there is also the looming shadow of the Academy’s complete shut-out of McQueen’s previous theatrical feature, Widows. McQueen’s Small Axe limited series, which was essentially five short films that debuted on Prime Video, was warmly received by critics, but due to the confusing categorization of the project relegated it to Emmy contention instead of Oscar glory. Widows, on the other hand, was a straightforward crime thriller, and received no acclaim at all, apart from positive reviews. When taking all of this under advisement, it seems that the Academy’s love for WWII-set films, as well as the talent involved, is what’s most likely to give Blitz the boost it needs to become more than just a craft category staple.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Steve McQueen), Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design

​The Brutalist
 
If you’ve stepped onto film twitter over the last several weeks even once, you’ve likely heard raves from every direction about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which is being dubbed a new American epic by pretty much everyone who’s seen it, in part due to its lengthy runtime which features an intermission, and in part due to its apparent high qualities of craft and storytelling. Every reaction and review to come out of a screening of the film regards Adrian Brody’s work as some of the best – if not the best – of his career, while pundits also single out Guy Pearce for shining in a supporting part, as well as Felicity Jones, who plays Brody’s wife as – according to IMDB – the two “flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America.” Many thought NEON would jump at the chance to have another major contender in the mix, and I’m sure they put up a pretty penny, but A24 holds distribution rights and has set the film for a limited December 20 release, with an expansion coming in 2025, likely in January. There’s something to be said for the studio spreading their awards campaigns too thin, but if any of A24’s acquisitions appear to be the most muscular in terms of awards competition, it's this one, especially since comparisons have already been made to Once Upon a Time in America and There Will Be Blood, two of the great American epics of all time. Could The Brutalist join those ranks? We’ll have to wait and find out.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Brady Corbet), Best Actor (Adrian Brody), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound

​A Complete Unknown
 
Regardless of how one feels about James Mangold’s unusual miss in helming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, there’s no denying the director’s immense talents, which has seen him put out more hits than misses in the course of his overall directing career. Now, he’s set his sights on Bob Dylan, a subject who’s no stranger to the cinematic landscape. What remains to be seen is whether or not Mangold’s take on the famed musician can stand out enough to rise above other fare covering the same subject, including Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, which saw Cate Blanchett play Dylan, and no less than two separate Martin Scorsese documentaries, one of which can be found in the prestigious Criterion Collection. Mangold has a good team with him on this – largely the same that made Ford v Ferrari back in 2019 – and with a Christmas Day release date, it seems likely that this is the big play for Searchlight Pictures this season.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Cinematography, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound

​Conclave
 
Though it’s unlikely to achieve front-runner status in the Best Picture category, Conclave – which comes to us from All Quiet on the Western Front helmer Edward Berger adapting the Robert Harris novel of the same name – has been one of the race’s most certain contenders since it premiered at Telluride in August. Many pundits have tapped both Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci for Oscar contention in the Lead and Supporting Actor categories, and some have even gone so far as to include Isabelle Rossellini among the mix for Supporting Actress despite her apparently not being in very much of the film (one might call this “the Judi Dench effect”). Whether Berger himself holds enough capital with the Academy in such a competitive director year is anyone’s guess, but it would hardly be a surprise to see him slide into that fourth or fifth spot next to the year’s three most obvious candidates (Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, Denis Villeneuve). Focus Features, who is distributing the project, has already moved up the film’s release from November 1 to October 25, likely to give it some distance from the upcoming U.S. Presidential election given the film’s subject matter, so we’ll see soon just how strong a candidate it’s likely to be. According to book readers, the politics of the story’s finale may sour some voters on its winning more major categories (I’ll find out myself when I finish the book, hopefully before the film’s release).

Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Edward Berger), Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Tucci), Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay

Emilia Pérez
 
Without a major domestic awards player this season, Netflix has gone international (as it has in years past, the most famous of which being Roma), opting to become the home of Jacques Audiard’s audacious trans Mexican drug lord musical, Emilia Pérez, which won both the Cannes Jury Prize for its director as well as a four-way split for Best Actress between Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. The former two actresses are widely expected to be competitive in both the Lead and Supporting Actress category (Gascón in Lead, Saldaña in Supporting), with the latter of those two widely speculated to be win-competitive. The trailers have not given much to viewers in the way of plot, so its chances of winning Picture seem slim at best, but a nomination is likely, and many pundits have the film tapped to compete in a few below-the-line categories as well, especially since France wisely selected it as their submission for International Feature, a mistake they made last season by opting out of selecting eventual six-time nominee Anatomy of a Fall. The film opens in select theaters on November 1 before dropped on Netflix November 13, so it won’t be long to wait now before viewers are able to decipher for themselves just how competitive it really is, and given the musical genre’s recent struggles at the box office, a streaming home might be just what it needs to entice reluctant would-be patrons.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Jacques Audiard), Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound

​Gladiator II
 
For my money, one of the biggest questions this Oscar season is whether or not multiple sequels will make it into the Best Picture field. It’s not an unheard of prospect – only two years ago both Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick competed for the top prize (which would eventually go to Everything Everywhere All at Once) – but that was also the first time in Oscars history that such a thing has ever occurred. When it comes to this year, the big question mark hovers over Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated Gladiator II, which sees former Oscar nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun) in the lead part after Russell Crowe’s Maximus tragically perished at the end of the original film, which won Best Picture in 2001 (2000 being the competition year). First reactions to the film, which dropped following its first screening on October 18, praise it as perhaps Scott’s best since Black Hawk Down, with nearly everyone singling out both its audacious production values and Denzel Washington’s performance, an apparent front-line contender in the Supporting Actor race (some have even pegged it as win-competitive). That sounds like a recipe for enormous awards success, provided it hits with the right audiences, and if its projected box office opening – which it’s set to pull off against Universal Studios’ Wicked – is anything to go by, there will be a lot of audiences for it to hit.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Mescal), Best Supporting Actor (Denzel Washington), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Maria
 
Pablo Larraín’s recent output of biopics about complicated famous women and the public’s relationship to their personas has been a consistent staple in the Oscars race for each year in which they’ve been released. Both Jackie and Spencer managed to score Lead Actress nominations for Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart respectively, with the former also scoring nods for Original Score and Costume Design. This season looks to be another repeat success for the Chilean filmmaker, as Larraín is poised to go three for three in the Lead Actress category, this year’s nominee being Angelina Jolie, who plays renowned American-Greek soprano Maria Callas. Those who have seen the film rave about Jolie’s performance, with many citing this as the best of Larraín’s leading lady performances to date. The film is also expected to contend in other below-the-line categories, though its critical appraisal – as of this writing – may keep it from reaching the necessary heights required to attain other above-the-line category nods.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Angelina Jolie), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design

​Nickel Boys
 
Another Telluride premiere turned Oscar hopeful, Nickel Boys is based on the Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. Early reactions to the film have raved about its bravery, daring cinematography, and devastating emotional core. Having not yet read the book (and, of course, not having not seen the film), I can’t speak to just how emotional the story gets, nor its production qualities, but it is expected to be a strong Oscar contender nonetheless. In fact, director RaMell Ross currently sits in my number 5 spot in Best Director predictions, given how the Academy does like to surprise with an unexpected name (or lack thereof) in that category. The film is set for mid-December release in New York and Los Angeles prior to a likely outward expansion over the winter months.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (RaMell Ross), Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay 

​Nosferatu
 
Until the most recent trailer was released for Robert Eggers’ upcoming take on the titular vampire horror story, many Oscar pundits (including me) may have assumed that the furthest it could reach would be a Best Cinematography nomination. After all, The Lighthouse is Eggers’ only film to not be completely shut out by the Academy come nomination time, and it was in the Cinematography category that it found its singular point of praise. In fact, this film was not originally included on this list. However, once viewing the trailer, Cinematography became all but a certainty; the question now becomes not “can Nosferatu score any nominations,” but “how many more nominations can it score?” As a remake of one of the most iconic silent era classics, it’s sure to enthuse many a cinephile from within the Academy’s ranks, and with Robert Eggers’ star only rising every time he puts out a movie, this could be their chance to reward him for nearly a decade of visionary filmmaking.
 
Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling 

​Queer
 
With Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers remaining conversationally relevant in terms of the best movies of 2024 to date, it’s tough to tell whether the director’s upcoming Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, will hold enough sway with the Academy to ultimately make a stronger dent, or if the former is the stronger bid for Picture contention. Early reactions from the film out of Venice suggested that it may be too unwieldy for some fans, whereas others praised just how strange it was. In any case, not one of those reactions suggested that Daniel Craig would be dropping out of the Best Actor race, and the film – which is adapted from the William S. Boroughs’ novel of the same name – still holds strong odds in Adapted Screenplay. Personally, I’m always interested to see what Luca Guadagnino is up to, so I’ll be seeing it either way. Whether the Academy will like what they see enough for a real push is anyone’s guess.
 
Best Chances: Best Actor (Daniel Craig), Best Supporting Actor (Drew Starkey), Best Adapted Screenplay

​A Real Pain
 
Searchlight Pictures’ other contender this awards season is Jesse Eisenberg’s writer/director project, A Real Pain, in which the actor plays David Kaplan, who embarks on a guided tour through Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) following the death of Benji’s grandmother. While critical reception of the film itself has been on the mixed-positive side, Culkin’s performance is one of the two strongest contenders right now for a Supporting Actor win, and that tenth spot in Best Picture could mean the film has an opening to fight for amongst the pack, depending on whether or not it hits properly with audiences when it releases on November 1. It certainly is likely to land (and perhaps be win-competitive) in Original Screenplay as well, especially with a slightly less crowded field than Adapted, and I’ve got a personal sneaking suspicion that if it does well, Culkin and the script won’t be the only nominations it can muster.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin), Best Original Screenplay

Wicked
​
While nomination counts may ultimately appear lower in the major categories, there’s no denying the box office juggernaut Universal Studios has on their hands with Wicked, which adapts the first half of the Broadway musical phenomenon by the same name. Pre-sales for the film are already sky high, and many pundits believe there are a few of the larger tech categories in which it could be win-competitive. Such a large production – with a Thanksgiving release no less, opening against Gladiator II – requires some impressive production quality to pull off, and although the color grading in the trailers has left some cinephiles wanting, the design work itself appears to have leaned into the audacious nature of such a production. The reveal of the soundtrack’s song list indicated that there would be no original music included in this half of the Wicked story, so Best Original Song is definitively not happening, but a surprise Sound nomination could be in the cards if it truly blows viewers away. We’ll be able to sniff out whether Universal’s bid to campaign its two stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, for Lead and Supporting Actress bears any weight with the Academy once people have had a chance to see the film, but for the time being, expect it to at least show up in all major design categories.
 
Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling

And that’s it for the major contenders for this year’s Oscars season. Have you seen any of these films? Was I right on the money or way off on some? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the minor contenders, coming soon!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

The Friendly Film Fan Makes its Final Predictions for the 95th Academy Award Nominations.

​Greetings, readers! It’s been a while. There will be time for explanations later, Where did he go? Where has he been? How is he so unbelievably handsome and only getting more so every day but also staying so humble about it? All things in due time, but right now, there is lots to get into and not a lot of time to get into it, so here we go!
 
Oscar nominations are tomorrow morning! Every year, I post nomination predictions; this year I did slip a little bit in that department, BUT I am back one last time to give you all my rundown, now that all the major pre-cursors have revealed their own nominations, of what I think stands to compete at this year’s awards ceremony. Each nomination field will include my selections for what’s most likely to be nominated in said category, as well as the presence of 3 “wildcard” picks, which are outside possibilities that could sneak in under the right circumstances. Sometimes these wildcard selections are very likely spoilers, some are somewhat possible, and some are genuine long shots with only the slimmest of probabilities, but one thing is always clear on nomination day – the possibilities are endless. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in. These are my final predictions for the 2023 Oscar Nominations!

BEST PICTURE
Predicted Nominees:

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Elvis
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Fabelmans
• TÁR
• Top Gun: Maverick
• The Whale
• Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• Babylon
• Triangle of Sadness
• The Woman King

 
BEST DIRECTOR
Predicted Nominees:

• Edward Berger, All Quiet on the Western Front
• Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
• Todd Field, TÁR

Wildcard(s):

• James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water
• Baz Luhrmann, Elvis
• Joseph Kosinski, Top Gun: Maverick

 
BEST ACTRESS
Predicted Nominees

• Ana de Armas, Blonde
• Cate Blanchett, TÁR
• Viola Davis, The Woman King
• Danielle Deadwyler, Till
• Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Wildcard(s):

• Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie
• Margot Robbie, Babylon
• Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans

 
BEST ACTOR
Predicted Nominees

• Austin Butler, Elvis
• Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Brendan Fraser, The Whale
• Paul Mescal, Aftersun
• Bill Nighy, Living

Wildcard(s):

• Tom Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick
• Jeremy Pope, The Inspection
• Adam Sandler, Hustle

 
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Predicted Nominees:

• Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Hong Chau, The Whale
• Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Dolly de Leon, Triangle of Sadness

Wildcard(s):

• Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
• Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Carey Mulligan, She Said

 
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Predicted Nominees:

• Paul Dano, The Fabelmans
• Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Eddie Redmayne, The Good Nurse

Wildcard(s):

• Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway
• Brad Pitt, Babylon
• Ben Wishaw, Women Talking

 
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Predicted Nominees:

• Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
• Turning Red
• Wendell and Wild

Wildcard(s):

• Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood
• My Father’s Dragon
• The Sea Beast

 
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
Predicted Nominees:

• All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany)
• Argentina, 1985 (Argentina)
• Close (Belgium)
• Decision to Leave (South Korea)
• The Quiet Girl (Ireland)

Wildcard(s):

• Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Mexico)
• Corsage (Austria)
• EO (Poland)

 
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Predicted Nominees:

• All That Breathes
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• Descendant
• Fire of Love
• Navalny

Wildcard(s):

• Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
• Moonage Daydream
• The Territory

 
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Predicted Nominees:

• James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front
• Greig Fraser, The Batman
• Mandy Walker, Elvis
• Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
• Claudio Miranda, Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• Russell Carpenter, Avatar: The Way of Water
• Darius Khondji, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
• Janusz Kaminski, The Fabelmans

 
BEST FILM EDITING
Predicted Nominees:

• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Elvis
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Fabelmans
• Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• TÁR

 
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Babylon
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Elvis
• The Fabelmans

Wildcard(s):

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• The Batman
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

 
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Predicted Nominees:

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Elvis
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
• The Woman King

Wildcard(s):

• Amsterdam
• Babylon
• Blonde

 
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Predicted Nominees:

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• The Batman
• Blonde
• Elvis
• The Whale

Wildcard(s):

• Amsterdam
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Crimes of the Future

 
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Predicted Nominees:

• Justin Hurwitz, Babylon
  
• Carter Burwell, The Banshees of Inisherin
• John Williams, The Fabelmans
  
• Alexandre Desplat, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
  
• Hildur Guðnadóttir, Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• Volker Bertelmann, All Quiet on the Western Front
  
• Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Terence Blanchard, The Woman King

 
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
Predicted Nominees:

• “Applause,” Tell It Like a Woman
• “Ciao Papa,” Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
• “Hold My Hand,” Top Gun: Maverick
• “Lift Me Up,” Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• “Naatu Naatu,” RRR

Wildcard(s):

• “Carolina,” Where the Crawdads Sing
• “New Body Rhumba,” White Noise
• “Stand Up,” Till

 
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Predicted Nominees:

• Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, and Ian Stokell, All Quiet on the Western Front
• Kazuo Ishiguro and Akira Kurosawa, Living
• Rebecca Lenkiewicz, She Said
• Darryn Aronofsky, The Whale
• Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews, Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• David Kajganich, Bones and All
• Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
• Noah Baumbach, White Noise

 
BEST ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY
Predicted Nominees:

• Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
• Todd Field, TÁR
• Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness

Wildcard(s):

• Charlotte Wells, Aftersun
• Damien Chazelle, Babylon
• Park Chan-wook and Seo-kyeong Jeong, Decision to Leave

 
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Predicted Nominees:

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• The Batman
• Thirteen Lives
• Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

 
BEST SOUND
Predicted Nominees:

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• The Batman
• Elvis
• Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
• Moonage Daydream

 
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT
Predicted Nominees:

• An Irish Goodbye
• Le Pupille
• Nakam
• The Red Suitcase
• Warsha

Wildcard(s):

• Ivalu
• The Lone Wolf
• The Treatment

 
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Predicted Nominees:

• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
• The Flying Sailor
• My Year of Dicks
• New Moon
• Save Ralph

Wildcard(s):

• The Debutante
• It’s Nice in Here
• Steak House

 
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Predicted Nominees:

• The Elephant Whisperers
• The Flagmakers
• Holding Moses
• How do You Measure a Year?
• 38 at the Garden

Wildcard(s):

• American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton
• Haulout
• The Martha Mitchell Effect

And that’s it! What do you all think will wake up to nominations tomorrow morning? Are there any true wildcards you’re expecting? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! More soon!

- ​The Friendly Film Fan

 It is finally time. For those of you who have stuck around with me for a while, you know that there is one season I look forward to more than any other: Oscar season. Every year, the best of the best come out to show off what they can really do, and it’s always been fascinating to me to witness old legends mounting triumphant returns as new faces are celebrated and auteurs of all sorts crafting meaningful and provocative stories. Typically this season begins about halfway through the major festival circuit which occupies some of September and most of October. However, before that season begins in full force, it’s always fun to speculate what will make it through the sheer volume of content coming to theaters to contend for Hollywood’s highest honor. Of course, there are always great movies that get overlooked or passed over, whether due to lack of notoriety or simply how long it’s been since the initial release. But there are also films whose trajectories come out of nowhere, rocketing to triumphs no one expected and shaking up the hierarchy of what voters can expect. CODA won all of its Oscar nominations last year (including Best Picture), whereas mere weeks before awards were handed out, it landed firmly in third or fourth place on most predictions lists. Parasite was expected to lose to Sam Mendes’ 1917 for the big prize and ended up being the first non-English-language film to ever pull off that kind of win. There’s always something to keep film enthusiasts and voters on their toes, but for now, we’ll work with the playing field we have.
 
For those of you who are unfamiliar with how I make these predictions lists, they typically come in fours. The first three are all varying degrees of Nomination Predictions – one very early, one further into Oscar season when most of the films have been released and thus given either a boost or a humbling, and one just before the Oscar nominations are announced. Each of these feature guesses for every respective category in the Oscars program based on the number of nominees in said category, plus three “wildcard” picks that could steal a spot from one of the predicted nominees. For the first two of these lists, however, the Short Film predictions are not included, both due to lack of accessibility and the sheer volume of eligible or submitted Shorts remaining unknown until the Academy reveals their shortlists closer to Oscar night. (For those of you who do want an idea though, count on at least one of the Disney+ or Pixar shorts to make it in Animated Short.) The fourth predictions list is a set of Winner Predictions based on the field of nominees, typically posted the day before the Oscars telecast. We have a lot to get through, and a lot that could change very soon, so let’s get started. Here are my ridiculously early Oscar nomination predictions for the year 2023!

​BEST SOUND
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Babylon
• The Batman
• Elvis
• Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• Nope
• I Wanna Dance With Somebody
• TÁR

 
Over the past few years, Best Sound has become one of my favorite categories to reckon with in predictions lists, and one of my favorite aspects of film in general (so it figures that the Academy combines Sound Mixing and Sound Editing just as I had the difference between them figured out). The hum of Dune’s Ornithopters, the roar of Top Gun: Maverick’s F-18 engines, the subtle in-helmet vibrations of Gravity, the near-deaf acceptance of Sound of Metal – all of these things are some of my favorite elements of their respective stories, so predicting what will likely succeed in this realm and what will just miss the cut is very fun. There are, as always, the mainstays of the music biopic, a famous (and occasionally infamous) occupant of these nominations lists, so Elvis, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and TÁR seem like smart choices here, as do the other genre mainstays in movies about moviemaking, such as Babylon and, to a less explicit extent, Nope. That leaves only the tentpoles for consideration, barring Empire of Light or White Noise having ridiculously good sound. And the tentpoles this time around are undeniable; Avatar is almost sure to get in, and while it’s not on the list at the moment, Black Panther’s previous chapter was nominated in both of the aforementioned sound categories before they were merged, so Wakanda Forever has a decent chance at repeat success. Frankly, Top Gun: Maverick is in the lead to win it all and shows no signs of slowing down, but let’s also not forget how thrilling it was to hear the Batmobile power on for the first time in The Batman, or how the dark knight’s boots were made to sound like an ominous demon was approaching. Both of these films more than deserve to be here at the end of the day, and honestly, I wouldn’t be mad at either of them taking the gold.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Jurassic World: Dominion

Wildcard(s):

• The Batman
• Nope
• Pinocchio (Netflix)

 
This category can seem fairly easy to predict at first, but in reality, it’s difficult to tell beyond about three or four selections what fits the bill for a Visual Effects nomination in the eyes of the Academy. With Shazam!: Fury of the Gods now being pushed to 2023, we come closer and closer to having Thor: Love and Thunder appear in a VFX predictions list it has no business being near. That said, there’s still plenty left in its way that could break into the list instead. Avatar: The Way of Water, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Jurassic World: Dominion seem like forgone conclusions given how those films rely almost entirely on VFX to deliver spectacle, and the notion that no film but Forrest Gump has beat James Cameron at the VFX game since 1986, so it’s likely his movie wins this category again, especially as the advancements in VFX and Motion Capture tech made specifically for Avatar are one the film’s primary selling points. That leaves a number of things on the table, including Everything Everywhere All at Once, a film whose VFX seems relatively small or subsidiary to the story around them, but which are immensely impressive once one learns that the whole VFX team consisted of just five people. Other notable candidates include The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Bullet Train, Nope, and Netflix’s animated Pinocchio. Top Gun: Maverick is also an interesting case here, as Tom Cruise’s films are famous for their reliance on as much practicality and in-camera action as possible, but there are still plenty of digital effects in the film if you know where to look for them. With that in mind, I doubt Academy voters will bolster it to 1917 levels, as even the practicality in that film was thoroughly mixed with those VFX.

BEST ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Damien Chazelle, Babylon
• Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Sam Mendes, Empire of Light
• Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg, The Fablemans
• Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness

Wildcard(s):

• Nicolas Giacobone and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bardo
• Park Chan-wook and Seo-kyeong Jeong, Decision to Leave
• Todd Field, TÁR

 
Original Screenplay works largely in the opposite fashion from Adapted, where the number of options is ultimately what cripples certainty, but even then, there are pathways to follow and patterns to note. A class satire like Triangle of Sadness has its best shot at a nomination here, while this category is also often reserved for the wild indies and audience favorites that otherwise may not have made it to picture. Everything Everywhere All at Once will likely still land in Picture as it’s simply too good of a film to deny, but it’s still pretty out-there as movie premises go, so it would fit that second qualifier nonetheless. International films, too, have increasingly become mainstays in the screenplay categories over the past few years, with Parasite winning Original Screenplay in 2019 and Drive My Car being nominated for Adapted in 2021. In that spirit, Bardo and Decision to Leave both feel as if they have decent shots of breaking through. There are your mainstays, such as the Spielberg one (The Fablemans), the one about movies (Babylon), and the other one about movies (Empire of Light), but personally I’m more partial to rooting for those fringe picks to break in, even if TÁR is likely to suffer the same fate as Spencer by attaining a Lead Actress performance and little-to-nothing else.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Rebecca Lenkiewicz, She Said
• Florian Zeller, The Son
• Darryn Aronofsky, The Whale
• Noah Baumbach, White Noise
• Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews, Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
• Keith Beauchamp and Chinonye Chukwu, Till

 
Most of the time, the Oscar categories can be difficult to predict due to a wealth of options at one’s disposal with no clear path for which ones will end up staying the course all the way to the nominations announcement, but Adapted Screenplay is a different beast in that its difficulty is in finding more candidates beyond the obvious. A Harvey Weinstein scandal drama a la Spotlight, a Noah Baumbach adaptation of a beloved novel, a female-led ensemble piece built on conversation, and a follow-up to the 2021 Best Adapted Screenplay winner The Father from the same writer of that film all feel like choices destined to eventually hear their titles called, but once outside of those, it becomes difficult to find adaptations that could conceivably compete. This makes Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of The Whale a candidate almost by default, as it’s the only Academy-like choice left that seems unquestionably of quality, at least on paper. Till may land here, but isn’t exactly a hot contender elsewhere, and Glass Onion may fall prey to a Knives Out curse, missing a nomination in its best-bet category. That leaves Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin left to shake up the race and not much else. McDonagh has been a welcome guest of the Oscars before, and has even been nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category twice, but hasn’t appeared in this one and hasn’t won an Oscar since his win for Best Live-Action Short with Six Shooter in 2006. That doesn’t spell great expectations or hot competition for a category with all but one near-guaranteed candidates; nevertheless, when the nominations do come, the winner may well be hotly contested.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
​
Predicted Nominees:

• “Hold My Hand,” Top Gun: Maverick
• “Nobody Like You,” Turning Red
• “Trigger Song,” Don’t Worry Darling
• “Turn Up the Sunshine,” Minions: The Rise of Gru
• “Obligatory Diane Warren Spot,” N/A

Wildcard(s):

• “Good Tonight,” The Bad Guys
• “Vegas,” Elvis
• “N/A,” Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

 
This is the hardest category to predict nominations for because if you’re not in the music business or not watching literally everything that’s released in a given year and keeping track of whether or not there’s a song it has to show for itself, it’s the category to which pundits and predictors have the least exposure by far. There’s simply no way to tell which songs from which films will even be submitted, or even if some obscure film people haven’t seen has enough support to bolster a song nomination when it has nothing else to push for awards consideration. That said, there’s a decent amount to work off of so far. Almost every year, there’s an obligatory Diane Warren-written song attached to a film one isn’t considering that gets nominated and then loses her yet another Oscar (this would be the 15th loss for the icon), so one of the spots will go to that, and the team from The Greatest Showman has written the music for the upcoming children’s film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which stars Shawn Mendes as a singing CGI crocodile (yes, that’s actually what I meant to write there), so that could very likely land at least one song on the board, although neither of their songs from Dear Evan Hansen made it, so it’s less likely than you might think. News was released on August 24 that Harry Styles had written a song for Florence Pugh to sing in their movie, the Olivia Wilde-directed Don’t Worry Darling, so that will almost certainly appear here if for no other reason than Styles being a mega-star and the fact that he wrote it for Pugh, who is inarguably the biggest young movie star of the moment.
 
For the others, there are the obvious picks, such as Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand,” and probably “Nobody Like You,” the boy band song from Pixar’s Turning Red. “Turn Up the Sunshine” from Minions: The Rise of Gru doesn’t seem like it’s heating up the box office or anything, but it could land a spot here if Illumination plays their cards right, and the same franchise has landed a nomination in this category before. Then, there are some more fringy, outlandish picks that nonetheless could break through in the way that “Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest did two years ago. “Dosti,” which doesn’t appear on this list but does seem very prominent on many others, seems to be the most famous one from the Indian smash hit RRR, but it’s unclear whether it can clear the International Feature barrier in its way, and although “Good Tonight” from The Bad Guys doesn’t have the greatest lyrical ingenuity, it is – as the saying goes – a bop. It remains to be seen whether the rap-fused hybrid of “Hound Dog” in the song “Vegas” by Doja Cat from Elvis is too fringe for the Academy’s taste, but as it’s one of the only prominent songs still being played from a movie this year apart from “Hold My Hand,” I wouldn’t count it out just yet.

​BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Predicted Nominees:

• Justin Hurwitz, Babylon
• Ludwig Göransson, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Michael Giacchino, The Batman
• Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Empire of Light
• John Williams, The Fablemans

Wildcard(s):

• Simon Franglen, Avatar: The Way of Water
• Michael Abels, Nope
• Hildur Guðnadóttir, TÁR
• Harold Faltermeyer, Hans Zimmer, Lady Gaga, and Lorne Balfe, Top Gun: Maverick

 
This is the only category where I have four wildcards instead of three. Hopefully the following will explain why.
 
Though both Hildur Guðnadóttir and the Avatar franchise have both been nominated in this category before (with Guðnadóttir having won for her work on Joker), the former’s work is on a film which will already contain a lot of other music with which it would have to significantly compete (and not likely win), while the latter’s first score was composed by the late James Horner; The Way of Water’s music, however, was composed by Simon Franglen, whose music I’m not familiar with enough to confidently assert that this category will be one of Avatar’s bevvy of nominations, though he did co-compose themes with Horner for Walt Disney World’s Pandora theme area. As it stands, the presumed competition is already stiff, with all five predicted nominees being previous winners, one of whom is John Williams, and two of whom – Justin Hurwitz and Ludwig Göransson – won their respective awards within the past decade, Göransson for the same franchise. This also may be the best chance for Michael Abels to finally be nominated for his work on a Jordan Peele project, having been passed up for Us, which is authentically a horror score, whereas Nope retains some further elements of old spaghetti western music to mix in with its more sinister moments. Göransson’s task this time around, though, is a bit more challenging this time around, as Academy rules stipulate that at least 35% of the music in a given film must be brand-new (original) score, and Marvel Studios does like to re-use a lot of themes for big moments, so it’s likely that the original Black Panther themes from the 2018 film play in Wakanda Forever’s most climactic segments, ditto Avatar.
 
Where this rule may come in handy, actually, is in assessing the chances of Top Gun: Maverick to break out of the wildcard category, as the new music composed for it by original Top Gun composer Harold Faltermeyer, as well as Hans Zimmer and Lady Gaga under production from Lorne Balfe, measures a little over 50% of the total music used, thus qualifying it for competition in this category. Gaga’s main contribution is essentially form the love theme of the movie in conjunction with her song “Hold My Hand” as the film’s closing anthem (the song also plays in the background during Maverick’s second visit to Penny’s bar, The Hard Deck, when he first encounters Amelia), whereas Zimmer and Balfe focused on the action scoring, and Faltermeyer ensured his themes were woven in appropriately. Scores that tie in with closing songs often have a good chance at selling their chances for nominations here, especially if the theme is as essential and befitting to its film as this one is to Top Gun: Maverick, so it’s within the realm of possibility that the score could be just flying under the radar until the time comes to begin the attack (campaigning). On the other hand, new scores based on pre-existing material don’t often land in this category, and Maverick’s themes may feel too tied into its predecessor’s legacy for the music branch of the Academy to consider honoring it over something brand new.

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
​
Predicted Nominees:

• The Batman
• Babylon
• Elvis
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Woman King

Wildcard(s):

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Blonde
• Don’t Worry Darling

 
Another category where genre fare can actually score some pretty decent nominations in is Makeup & Hairstyling, though inevitably, there will come along a film with relatively plain, unassuming makeup that gets nominated over something more deserving, so watch out for The Fablemans or Don’t Worry Darling to knock out something The Batman or The Woman King further down the line. In fact, the latter may have a better shot at staying in, as the former could end up competing with the other design-heavy superhero movie this year in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The original Black Panther was not nominated in this category, but with the introduction of Atlantis and Namor the Submariner, entirely new makeup designs and hairstyles for the underwater nation are sure to be one of Wakanda Forever’s many highlights.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Babylon
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Don’t Worry Darling
• Elvis
• The Woman King

Wildcard(s):

• Blonde
• Empire of Light
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

 
The second of the two design categories Black Panther won in 2018, the Ryan Coogler follow-up to that film may well be competing with another that also centralizes its story on a tribe of African warriors in The Woman King. Then again, if the Academy simply isn’t feeling that they need to reward Marvel Studios with a second costume design Oscar and feels that the latter film’s looks aren’t distinctive enough, it could easily reward the fanny-pack-wearing looks of EEAaO or the period pieces of Babylon or Don’t Worry Darling. Truthfully, there’s not much in the way of outlandish costume design this year apart from Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist Elvis biopic, but it remains to be seen whether simply recreating the icon’s looks will be enough to push it past entirely new conceptualizations.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Babylon
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Empire of Light
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Wildcard(s):

• Amsterdam
• Don’t Worry Darling
• The Woman King

 
The last time a Black Panther movie was at the Oscars, it won three of them, and two of those three wins were in design categories. Production Design was one of those two, so even competing with all the design work in Avatar, Empire of Light, and Babylon, it should fit pretty snuggly into this category’s lineup. The shakiest prediction I have here is Everything Everywhere All at Once, but given the sheer level of creativity in the most minute details and frame background of every shot of that magnificent movie, I find it difficult to count it out. Other candidates with elaborate set designs could include the mysterious Don’t Worry Darling which is plastered in old-timey shiny 50s aesthetics and Amsterdam. The Woman King or Rian Johnson’s upcoming Glass Onion could also appear here, but the former is much more likely to succeed in Costume Design and we don’t really have any significant footage of the latter yet.

BEST FILM EDITING
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Babylon
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Fablemans
• Top Gun: Maverick

Wildcard(s):

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Empire of Light
• White Noise

 
A nomination in Best Film Editing is often an indication that whatever appears there makes it to the Best Picture lineup, but not always an indicator of winnings at the end of Oscar night. For the past three years, Film Editing and Sound have gone hand in hand, with Ford v Ferrari winning Best Sound Editing in 2019 (at the time, the category was split by Editing and Mixing – 1917 won Mixing but was not nominated in Editing), while Sound of Metal and Dune took home both categories in 2020 and 2021. One of the old adages about the Academy’s voting process for this category is that – rather than voting for the Best Editing – they vote for the Most Editing, which bodes well for the two most popular predictions in this category, the hyper cross-cut multiversal edits of Everything Everywhere All at Once and the frenetically fast-paced aerial sequences in Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun has the edge in sound here, but as we’ll get to later, may not be as safe in this category as one might think, given that EEAaO is more likely to land a Best Picture nomination. Then again, the wildcard picks – with the exception of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – are widely expected to land Best Picture nominations as well, so any of these could be knocked out. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Russell Carpenter, Avatar: The Way of Water
• Linus Sandgren, Babylon
• Greig Fraser, The Batman
• Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
• Janusz Kaminski, The Fablemans

Wildcard(s):

• Darius Khondji, Bardo
• Hoyte van Hoytema, Nope
• Florian Hoffmeister, TÁR

 
There are two simple truths when it comes to the cinematography category that every awards pundit worth their salt abides by as scripture: never bet against James Cameron or his team, and never exclude Roger Deakins when he’s in the race. While Avatar: The Way of Water and Empire of Light are the most obvious picks here, however, there’s also room for Janusz Kaminski to receive another nomination after unexpectedly breaking into a tough category last year for his work on Spielberg’s West Side Story. Given that The Fablemans has been dubbed “Spielberg’s Roma” by most people familiar with the project, it seems not simply possible but inevitable that Kaminski is capturing something special here, even if Linus Sandgren swoops in anyway for his first win since La La Land in 2016, which he also shot for director Damien Chazelle. Genre fare isn’t the most popular in this category, but it’s not unheard of, especially as two other Batman films – Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – did land nominations here, and as Greig Fraser is the reigning winner for his work on Dune, it seems likely that this is one spot where The Batman has a real shot at breaking through. Other possible candidates include Hoyte van Hoytema for Jordan Peele’s sci-fi thriller Nope, which seems the most likely to leave its spot for a nomination given that Hoytema has been nominated in this category once before for Dunkirk, but could also fall to Darius Khondji for Bardo. AGI is fairly picky about his cinematographers, and led his longtime shooting partner Emmanuel Lubezki to two back-to-back wins in this category, so it's not out of the question he could do it with someone new.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Fire of Love
• Descendent
• Moonage Daydream
• Navalny
• The Territory

Wildcard(s):

• All That Breathes
• Riotsville, U.S.A.
• The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

 
Admittedly, Best Documentary Feature is a tough nut to crack if you don’t live in an area where people are talking about these sort of things all the time. I’ve only seen one of my predictions myself and only one of them besides that is even widely available for people to watch (Navalny is on HBO Max…for now). This makes predicting the category quite tricky, as one has to rely on the reputations of studios and their marketing campaigns for each movie when predicting it this early in the game. Other predictions are due to some films having fall festival debuts (such as Descendent) – which typically means the film is gearing up for an awards run once released – or on the notoriety of their subjects; Moonage Daydream, a documentary about David Bowie from Neon, is sure to make an impression on Academy voters, so it could have a real shot at a win here. Then again, this is the same branch that failed to nominate The Rescue, so what do I know?

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Bardo (Mexico)
• Decision to Leave (South Korea)
• RRR (India)
• One Fine Morning (France)
• Triangle of Sadness (Sweden)

Wildcard(s):

• Argentina, 1985 (Argentina)
• Holy Spider (Denmark)
• The Quiet Girl (Ireland)

 
Most submissions for Best International Feature have not yet been made in this category, apart from Decision to Leave and The Quiet Girl being official picks, so this one runs largely off of speculation, but it’s widely expected that Bardo, RRR, and Triangle of Sadness will appear here (the last being submitted by Sweden, as it was coproduced by both Sweden and France, but the latter has more options at their disposal for submission). Essentially everything else comes down to word of mouth and great campaigning, with no less than four possible choices for France (including Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade) and a slew of other films which could also get in if submitted, such as Argentina, 1985 and Alcarras. That said, since Bardo comes from Alejandro González Iñárritu, and is on track to be an eventual Best Picture nominee, it’s most likely not to just get nominated for this category, but outright win it when all is said and done.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
​
Predicted Nominees:

• The Bad Guys
• Pinocchio (Netflix)
• Strange World
• Turning Red
• Wendell & Wild

Wildcard(s):

• Lightyear
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

 
Yet another film I don’t understand how more pundits aren’t paying attention to is The Bad Guys, DreamWorks’ genuinely good animated film that released in April. It certainly isn’t likely to win the category, but its absence among predictions is curious, especially considering Animated Feature is the one category (apart from Best Picture) that the entire Academy is allowed to vote on for nominations, rather than it being decided solely by its own branch. The Bad Guys remains a fairly popular film post-theaters, and I don’t see that popularity waning enough for it not to be here. Currently, the leader of this race is actually Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Pinocchio (the second of two Pinocchio films releasing this year), but as it’s released by Netflix, it remains to be seen whether the Academy will go for rewarding it over something more tradition, such as Disney Animation’s upcoming sci-fi flick Strange World. Lightyear may be Pixar’s better-looking candidate in this category, but given its lukewarm reception, box office failure, and the re-evaluation of Turning Red’s success amongst critical bodies, it’s likely the latter is the one that actually makes this category. The true curiosity is A24’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which has been deemed eligible for Best Animated Feature, but remains uncertain as it would rely on Academy members deciding that there was enough animation within its live-action setting to feel appropriately placed here.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Paul Dano, The Fablemans
• Woody Harrelson, Triangle of Sadness
• Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Michael Ward, Empire of Light
• Ben Wishaw, Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• Christian Bale, Amsterdam
• Don Cheadle, White Noise
• Zen McGrath, The Son

 
There are only two categories where Triangle of Sadness seems to have the best shot at landing a nomination – this is one of them. That said, this seems like a race between Paul Dano and Ke Huy Quan more than anything. The former is starring in Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans, which currently leads the Best Picture race, while the latter is tour-de-force of movement and emotion as Quan is put through the acting wringer multiple times in his stellar comeback performance. Dano could also be submitted for The Batman, but genre films don’t tend to ace this category – The Dark Knight notwithstanding – and it seems like the Academy would be more likely to go after Colin Farrell in that film instead (though he, too, has The Banshees of Inisherin to rely on for awards attention). The variable here is really Christian Bale, who stars in David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, and is supposedly the only real above-the-line push for that film. Russell’s films do have a tendency to be nominated for a lot of performance awards at the Oscars, so even if it land nothing else, Bale could easily get in here.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
• Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Vanessa Kirby, The Son
• Sadie Sink, The Whale
• Michelle Williams, The Fablemans

Wildcard(s):

• Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Laura Dern, The Son
• Samantha Morton, She Said

 
This category pretty much reflects the GoldDerby top five odds beat-for-beat, but of the wildcard candidates present, Laura Dern may actually be the most likely to break though on either name recognition or the Academy doing what the Emmys did and ignoring Sadie Sink for a nomination she most likely will deserve (especially since she’s acting opposite surefire Best Actor candidate Brendan Fraser). Two nominations for The Son here seems unlikely, and the same goes for Everything Everywhere All at Once, whose other contender is Jamie Lee Curtis in one of her most outrageous parts. Logically, Samantha Morton would be next in line for the Weinstein scandal drama She Said, as she appears to play a crucial role in getting the story out, and doesn’t have other competition in this category from her own film (barring an unbelievable Zoe Kazan performance). Then again, as with all categories, there may be a performance no one’s considering that could come in and shake things up significantly by the time we get to January.

BEST ACTOR
​
Predicted Nominees

• Austin Butler, Elvis
• Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Bardo
• Adam Driver, White Noise
• Brendan Fraser, The Whale
• Hugh Jackman, The Son

Wildcard(s):

• Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
• Song Kang Ho, Broker
• Bill Nighy, Living

 
This category seems the most locked-up at the moment, but don’t underestimate the presence of Bill Nighy here. Sony Pictures Classics, a studio which has always been sneakily good at getting their films into major Oscar races, in the distributer behind Living, a film whose trailer heavily features Nighy showing off his performing chops. GoldDerby currently has Nighy as the fifth most likely nominee, but I’m not quite ready to give up Adam Driver in this category yet, especially considering he was also nominated in this category for Noah Baumbach’s previous Oscar contender, Marriage Story, and has returned to work with Baumbach again for the New York Film Festival opener, White Noise.

BEST ACTRESS
​
Predicted Nominees

• Naomi Ackie, I Wanna Dance With Somebody
• Cate Blanchett, TÁR
• Olivia Colman, Empire of Light
• Margot Robbie, Babylon
• Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Wildcard(s):

• Ana de Armas, Blonde
• Viola Davis, The Woman King
• Danielle Deadwyler, Till

 
Perhaps the category whose fifth candidate is most difficult to predict, Best Actress – per usual – is absolutely stacked with top-tier talent. The only predicted nominee about whom I’m not almost 100% certain is Naomie Ackie, who portrays music icon Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which releases in December. Portrayals of musical icons almost always land in this category somewhere, especially if said portrayal is the film’s main selling point, but it could very easily come about that one of the wildcard candidates takes that spot. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, so Armas could be that film’s only true contender, as she’s the most likely to break through the stigma of its NC-17 rating (provided costumes and hair & makeup don’t come through). Viola Davis, too, could break through here as the leader of an all-female African warrior tribe in The Woman King, though whether the performance can crack the top five we’ll know in just under a month. That leaves Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till’s mother in Till, a film which has stirred up some online debates around centering Black trauma in storytelling, and whose only shot at a nomination is likely to be Deadwyler herself. Very little of the performance has been seen, so for that, we’ll simply have to wait and see.

BEST DIRECTOR

Predicted Nominees:

• James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water
• Damien Chazelle, Babylon
• Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bardo
• Daniels, Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Steven Spielberg, The Fablemans

Wildcard(s):

• Sam Mendes, Empire of Light
• Noah Baumbach, White Noise
• Sarah Polley, Women Talking

 
How most pundits still don’t have James Cameron in their running for Best Director, I will likely never understand, but it’s not as if this category is all-but-guaranteed. Sarah Polley could very easily squeeze in here for her female ensemble piece Women Talking and there’s no sure bet that Daniels or Iñárritu stay put. If New York Film Festival opening night pick White Noise hits especially hard, Noah Baumbach could see a slot picked up, and Sam Mendes is hot off a nomination in this category for his last film, 1917 (which was originally pegged to win this award and Best Picture), which had the unfortunate task of coming out in the Parasite year. Other unlisted candidates include Park Chan-wook, whose film Decision to Leave is South Korea’s official submission for International Feature, a category which has been known to cross over in Best Director any number of times. That said, it would be difficult for almost any of these predictions to be knocked out completely, so a Directing nod for Decision to Leave – while not out of the question – remains unlikely at this stage.

BEST PICTURE
​
Predicted Nominees:

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Babylon
• Bardo
• Empire of Light
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Fablemans
• The Son
• She Said
• White Noise
• Women Talking

Wildcard(s):

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Top Gun: Maverick
• The Whale

 
There are several contenders I did not list in this category, but not for lack of enthusiasm. Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness is absent here, as is Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin and David O. Russell’s ensemble piece Amsterdam. The reason for these exclusions largely come down to the sheer number of Best Picture slots being capped at 10, per the Academy’s expansion of the category in 2010. Palme d’Or winners, as well, don’t have a stellar track record for being nominated in this category unless they’re considered outright masterpieces, such as Parasite (the latest Palme d’Or winner to Best Picture nominee translation before that was Amour in 2013). Neither Blue is the Warmest Color nor Titane were even nominated in the International Feature category in their respective years, and in fact it was Drive My Car – which lost the Cannes prize to Titane – which was nominated for Best Picture last year instead. Triangle of Sadness is not a foreign language film, so it doesn’t have that working against it as the aforementioned do, but it still seems unlikely to crack these 10 predictions, especially considering the wildcards at play. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s franchise predecessor was the first superhero film ever to be nominated in this category, and if it nails its farewell to Chadwick Boseman, groundswell support could carry it the rest of the way. Another film facing a similar fate is Top Gun: Maverick, which is Paramount’s highest-grossing domestic film ever and the sixth highest-grossing domestic release of all time, having recently passed the likes of Avengers: Infinity War. The Tom Cruise-starring blockbuster could land a nod here by knocking out Bardo or Avatar: The Way of Water, as those seem to be the shakiest candidates. Until such a time comes, however, where either Alejandro González Iñárritu or James Cameron are no longer Oscar darlings or unbelievably good filmmakers, their movies will remain on this list.

And those are my ridiculously early Oscar nomination predictions for 2023! Obviously, all of these guesses are pure speculation and pattern recognition at this point, and the final predictions list is bound to look quite different post-festival season, but for now, what’s there is all I can speculate about. What are you predicting in these categories? Is there anything I’m sorely missing? Am I putting too much faith in Avatar and not enough in Top Gun? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!

​- The Friendly Film Fan