After the indie hit “Everything Everywhere All at Once” swept all the major guild awards, the first time that grand slam had happened in a decade and only the fifth time in history, the suspense seemed to drain out of the 95th Academy Awards. After all, how suspenseful can it be if everything goes to “Everything?”
But it’d be a mistake to think that Sunday’s show won’t be a nail-biter in many ways. Three of the four acting races, for example, are up in the air, with the fate of Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Austin Butler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Michelle Yeoh and others still hanging in the balance.
And more than that, “Everything Everywhere” has the potential to be one of the weirdest Best Picture winners ever, a frenzied trip through the multiverse that looks and feels nothing at all like the kind of movie that usually wins the top Oscar. It could be the fourth Best Picture winner in a row that doesn’t really seem like a Best Picture winner, after “CODA,” “Nomadland” and “Parasite.” And that would reinforce just how dramatically the Academy has changed over the past seven years.
Plus, if today’s Academy is weird enough to name “Everything Everywhere” the year’s Best Picture, they’re probably weird enough to throw some surprises at us, too. Here are our best guesses as to what might happen on Sunday.
Best Picture
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”
“Triangle of Sadness”
“Women Talking
With its wins at the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a prohibitive favorite to win over “Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “The Fabelmans.” It’s one of only five films to win all four major guilds, and the first four to do it (“American Beauty,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Argo”) all won Best Picture – so really, there’s no precedent for it not to win.
But precedent has meant less and less in recent years as the Academy membership has gotten larger and more international. Anecdotal evidence – the kind that is even less reliable than precedent – suggests that the hyperkinetic “Everything Everywhere” might be too crazy for some of the Academy, especially the older members that still make up much of the organization. If that’s true, the ranked-choice voting system used in this category could push the vote toward a more universally acceptable choice like “Top Gun.” But “Everything Everywhere” beat “Top Gun” at the Producers Guild, which also uses ranked-choice, so that scenario is a longshot as best.
If there is a shocker in this category, it will likely be the German-language war film “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which dominated at BAFTA and has support from lots of the Academy’s below-the-line branches. “All Quiet” wasn’t even nominated by any of the major guilds (which voted earlier than the Academy), but Oscar voters showed their appreciation with nine noms, which makes it the kind of stealth candidate that could actually pull off an upset if voters don’t mind awarding a movie that played mostly on Netflix and didn’t report theatrical grosses over one that made more than $100 million. “All Quiet” may also be one of the last nominated films that many voters saw, which definitely helped “CODA” last year.
Still, “Everything Everywhere” is on one hell of a roll, completing its major-guild sweep and also setting a record for wins at the Independent Spirit Awards while Oscar voting was going on. Even though the film stumbled at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, and even though I can’t help but think that an upset is possible, it seems foolhardy to pick anything else to win.
Predicted winner: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Director
Nominees:
Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans”
Todd Field, “Tár”
Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness”
A lot of this year’s awards shows, including the Directors Guild Awards, have been rife with presenters and winners paying homage to Steven Spielberg by talking about how profoundly his films influenced them. And at most of those ceremonies, it seems that all those tributes to Spielberg were followed by him losing to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka “the Daniels.” Spielberg may be the sentimental choice for his semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” but the award is probably going to two guys who are younger than Spielberg even if you add their ages together, and whose filmography is 32 movies short of his. (But hey, they lead him in music videos, 11-1.)
Predicted winners: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “The Fabelmans”
Best Actor
Nominees:
Austin Butler, “Elvis”
Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
Paul Mescal, “Aftersun”
Bill Nighy, “Living”
Colin Farrell was once thought to be in the thick of this race, but he just hasn’t won enough to hold that position – although there’s still a lot of affection out there for him and his performance. Mostly, though, this seems to be a two-man race between Austin Butler in “Elvis” and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale.” Butler is a flurry of activity as Elvis Presley while Fraser barely even gets off the couch in “The Whale,” but they’ve been divvying up the awards all season: Butler at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, Fraser at Critics Choice and SAG. The Oscars and SAG agree in this category more than 80% of the time, which is a powerful sign for Fraser, but in a razor-close race the lack of a Best Picture nomination for “The Whale” could hurt, and Butler seems to have a little more momentum.
Predicted winner: Austin Butler, “Elvis”
Best Actress
Nominees:
Cate Blanchett, “Tár”
Ana de Armas, “Blonde”
Andrea Riseborough, “To Leslie”
Michelle Williams, “The Fabelmans”
Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
For most of the season, Cate Blanchett has been winning everything. But over the last week and a half, Michelle Yeoh beat Blanchett at the SAG Awards and then at the Indie Spirits. Considering that the first of those shows happened the week that Oscar voting began and the second happened in the middle of the voting period, it’s safe to say she got on a roll at exactly the right time – and she’s so central to the appeal of “Everything Everywhere” that a win for the movie really ought to spill over into a win for her. But is two-time winner Blanchett in a fearsome role just too formidable a foe, given that she’s also the only real chance for “Tár” to win an Oscar?
Predicted winner: Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Supporting Actor
Nominees:
Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway”
Judd Hirsch, “The Fabelmans”
Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
This is the one acting category that seems locked. Barry Keoghan had a surprise win at BAFTA, but Ke Huy Quan has been winning everything everywhere this awards season. The Vietnamese-American actor, who hasn’t gotten much attention from Hollywood since he was a kid in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies,” has a comeback story that might beat Brendan Fraser’s, and that story seems all but guaranteed to have a very happy ending at the Oscars.
Predicted winner: Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Supporting Actress
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”
Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Who knows? Angela Bassett won at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, and seemed to be the Oscar frontrunner for much of the season. Then Kerry Condon won at BAFTA, part of a “Banshees” sweep of the supporting categories. Then Jamie Lee Curtis scored a hugely popular upset victory at the SAG Awards. The most wide-open Oscar acting race may hinge on whether voters feel comfortable giving an acting prize for a Marvel movie, or whether they want to give Jamie Lee Curtis an award for a long and underappreciated career of being Jamie Lee Freakin’ Curtis.
Predicted winner: Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”
“Living”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
“Women Talking”
In literary circles, the monumental presence in this category is author Kazuo Ishiguro, who adapted the 1952 Japanese film “Ikiru” into the exquisite “Living.” But his Nobel Prize in Literature doesn’t mean much at the Oscars, where the likeliest winners in the category are Sarah Polley for “Women Talking” and Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell for “All Quiet on the Western Front.” “All Quiet” is big and bold while ”Women Talking” is quiet and intimate – and a look at the writing categories in recent years suggests that a movie about talking might have the slightest edge over one about shooting.
Predicted winner: “Women Talking”
Best Original Screenplay
Nominees:
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“The Fabelmans”
“Tár”
“Triangle of Sadness”
Unless Kerry Condon wins supporting actress, this category is probably the best chance for “The Banshees of Inisherin” to win an Oscar for one of its nine nominations. The problem, though, is that “Banshees” is up against “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in the category, and “Everything Everywhere” is weird and wordy, too.
Predicted winner: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Animated Feature Film
Nominees:
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”
“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”
“The Sea Beast”
“Turning Red”
Academy voters have shown an unparalleled fondness for Pixar and Disney in this category, which will help “Turning Red.” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” has been the most active campaigner in the homestretch and is very well liked, and “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is one of the year’s biggest indie darlings. But “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has won one guild award after another, and del Toro has an outsized presence in the animation race.
Predicted winner: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
Best International Feature Film
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front” – Germany
“Argentina, 1985” – Argentina
“Close” – Belgium
“EO” – Poland
“The Quiet Girl” – Ireland
The last time a film was nominated for international film and for Best Picture and didn’t win in this category was 1971, when the category was called Best Foreign Language Film and the nominee was “The Emigrants.” (And that was an odd case, because it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture until the following year.) In other words, Best Picture nominee “All Quiet on the Western Front” has a decided advantage here. Under the old rules that required voters to see all five films in a theater, some of the other nominees might have had a chance to score an upset – but that’s no longer a rule, and the nine total noms for “All Quiet” mean it’ll almost certainly be seen by more voters than any other nominee in the category. That’s an almost insurmountable obstacle for the other contenders.
Predicted winner: “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Cinematography
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”
“Elvis”
“Empire of Light”
“Tár”
While “Empire of Light” cinematographer Roger Deakins is a legend, the leaders in this category are probably James Friend (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), who could become the first winner for a film not in English since “Roma,” and Mandy Walker (“Elvis”), who could become the first woman ever to win in this category. “All Quiet” has the scale and drama that the Academy would ordinarily recognize, while the historic nature of a Walker win could give her a boost. But the Oscar ballot only lists the names of the nominated people in the acting categories; in the other 19 categories, including cinematography, voters are just looking at a list of film titles.
Predicted winner: James Friend, “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Film Editing
Nominees:
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Elvis”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Tár”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
If “Everything Everywhere” is the Oscar magnet it seems to be, it’s logical to assume that it’ll be rewarded for its breakneck pace and multiverse-hopping freneticism. But the winner in this category hasn’t matched the Best Picture winner for 10 years, and “Top Gun: Maverick” has to be recognized for its impact on the box office and on the movie business in general, doesn’t it? If so, this is one of its likeliest categories to win. P.S., for Oscar viewers who want to read the tea leaves as they’re watching, an “Everything Everywhere” win here will probably mean it’s unstoppable; a loss will leave the door open for a potential upset.
Predicted winner: “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best Costume Design
Nominees:
“Babylon”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Elvis”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
In 2002, Catherine Martin won the only two Oscars that went to Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!.” one for costume design and one for production design. A dozen years later, she had the only two wins for “The Great Gatsby,” in the same two categories. It’s unlikely that Martin will be the only person to win for “Elvis” this year, but this category does give her a clear path to extending her record as Oscar’s winningest Australian ever. (But don’t rule out “Babylon” or “Black Panther.”)
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Production Design
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“Babylon”
“Elvis”
“The Fabelmans”
It’s safe to say that Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” was not particularly well received by critics and voters this year, but the over-the-top extravagance in its re-creation of old Hollywood makes it one of the frontrunners in this category. Its chief rival is probably “Elvis,” which built Memphis and Vegas in Australia. “Babylon” might be too huge to ignore, but you should never underestimate Baz Lurhmann/Catherine Martin collaborations in this category. Plus the last eight winners in a row, and 10 of the last 12, have been films also nominated for Best Picture.
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“The Batman”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Elvis”
“The Whale”
What’s better, transforming Austin Butler into Elvis Presley or transforming Brendan Fraser into a 600-pound man? The makeup artists on “The Whale” may have had the more elaborate job on Fraser, but the last five winners in this category turned actors into the real-life people: Tammy Faye Bakker, Ma Rainey, Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, Dick Cheney and Winston Churchill. Do you sense a trend? And can “The Whale” buck that trend?
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Original Score
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Volker Bertelmann
“Babylon,” Justin Hurwitz
“The Banshees of Inisherin,” Carter Burwell
“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Son Lux
“The Fabelmans,” John Williams
The sentimental choice is John Williams. The degree-of-difficulty ones are “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or “Babylon,” both of which required enormous amounts of music. But if you’re looking for the single piece of music that is most identifiable with its film and most impactful in the film, it might well be Volker Bertelmann’s doomy theme to “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Predicted winner: “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Original Song
Nominees:
“Applause” from “Tell It like a Woman”
“Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick”
“Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Naatu Naatu” from “RRR”
“This Is A Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
For months, I’ve been convinced that if voters watched “RRR” or watched the film clip of the “Naatu Naatu” performance available on the Academy’s members website, that song would win in this category. But did enough voters watch it? And even if they did, will that overcome the fact that Rihanna had the massive showcase of the Super Bowl halftime show, which she performed while pregnant? Or the fact that 14-time nominee Diane Warren probably deserved to win a competitive Oscar before the Board of Governors stepped in last November to give her the first-ever Honorary Oscar for a songwriter? That’s a lot to overcome — but I still think that a crazy Indian film with an amazing dance sequence can and will do it.
Predicted winner: “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR”
Best Sound
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“The Batman”
“Elvis”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
This is another of the two likeliest categories for a “Top Gun: Maverick” win, and the fact that it won at both the Cinema Audio Society’s CAS Awards and the Motion Picture Sound Editors’ MPSE Golden Reel Awards is significant. Other options: “Elvis” wins because music goes hand-in-hand with sound, “Avatar” wins on its huge scale or “All Quiet on the Western Front” uses this category to announce that it’s a serious across-the-board contender.
Predicted winner: “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best Visual Effects
Nominees:
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“The Batman”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
“Avatar” is such a crazy visual-effects achievement that it won one Annie Award as an animated movie and another as a live-action film. It’s impossible to imagine anything beating it.
Predicted winner: “Avatar: The Way of Water”
Best Documentary Feature
Nominees:
“All That Breathes”
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”
“Fire of Love”
“A House Made of Splinters”
“Navalny”
There’s often a runaway favorite in this category, but this year’s lineup is strong top to bottom. “Good Night Oppy” could have been this year’s “My Octopus Teacher” (the feel-good movie that wins over meatier competition) if it had been nominated, but its absence creates a wide-open field that includes Laura Poitras’ sharp “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Sara Doss’ playful but sadly romantic “Fire of Love” and Daniel Roher’s revealing “Navalny,” with a scene so startling that you can’t believe Roher had his cameras running to capture it. After a year of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, the fact that “Navalny” is about a dissident Russian who was targeted by Putin could give it the extra oomph it needs to stand out in a very even category.
Predicted winner: “Navalny”
Best Documentary Short Subject
Nominees:
“The Elephant Whisperers”
“Haulout”
“How Do You Measure a Year?”
“The Martha Mitchell Effect”
“Stranger at the Gate”
The other documentary category doesn’t have an obvious frontrunner, either. “Stranger at the Gate” has made such canny use of Malala Yousafzai that some people are referring to the movie as “produced by Malala,” when she was actually recruited post-shortlist to be an executive producer and then deployed liberally on the campaign trail. Her presence has muted criticism of what would otherwise be the most polarizing nominee, giving it a real chance to win. Among the others, “Haulout” is noteworthy for, among other things, containing one of the year’s most mind-boggling cinematic shots: A door opens in a small hut above the Arctic Circle, and the entire beach is blanketed with enormous walruses who have been driven to rest there because climate change has melted their usual ice floes. “Stranger at the Gate” is probably the favorite, but that staggering scene might be enough to boost “Haulout.”
Predicted winner: “Haulout”
Best Animated Short Film
Nominees:
“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
“The Flying Sailor”
“Ice Merchants”
“My Year of Dicks”
“An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
“The Flying Sailor” and “Ice Merchants” are stylish and stylized entries, and “My Year of Dicks” is a provocative look at female coming-of-age that will likely garner a lot of support. But Charlie Mackesy’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” was an award-winning, bestselling book, and the film adaptation finds a lovely tone that serves the material while adapting it to another medium. Sure it’s sentimental, but it’s hard to watch it and not be moved.
Predicted winner: “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
Best Live-Action Short Film
Nominees:
“An Irish Goodbye”
“Ivalu”
“Le Pupille”
“Night Ride”
“The Red Suitcase”
You could make cases for any of these films being a potential winner, from “Ivalu” (children in peril having a long history in the category) to “Night Ride” (pathos with a touch of humor) to “The Red Suitcase” (a timely look at women in the Muslim world). But despite the strength of that last film in particular, this feels as if it could come down to “Le Pupille,” the most lavish and playful entry and a film directed by Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher and produced by multi-Oscar winner Alfonso Cuaron, and “An Irish Goodbye,” the most sentimental nominee and one with the kind of amusing twist ending that often appeals to voters. The last of those films is also the only one in English.
Predicted winner: “An Irish Goodbye”
