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Clockwise from top left: Hamnet, Sinners, Marty Supreme, and One Battle After Another.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Everett Collection (A24, Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features, Warner Bros.)
There’s one fundamental question undergirding Thursday’s Oscar nominations: Just how international can the Oscars get?
Hollywood will not be shut out, of course. The Best Picture race is being headed up by two big studio contenders, One Battle After Another and Sinners, that should show up all over the ballot. (With the addition of a new category for Casting, each could tie or even exceed the record of 14 nominations.) But in most races, the last couple of spots will be decided by whether the Oscars continue their recent trend of recognizing global cinema or if they’ll prefer to reward films closer to home.
Helpfully, the precursors have provided two different visions of what that might look like. December’s Golden Globes nominations were notable for the international bent: Five of the 12 nominees in the two Best Picture categories were foreign-language films, four of which came from a single studio, Neon. (The other was Nouvelle Vague, a French film with an American director.) The guilds, by contrast, preferred to buy American: SAG snubbed every international film in the running, while the PGA only nominated one, Sentimental Value. (The DGA is a trickier case, since it nominated Frankenstein’s Guillermo del Toro and Hamnet’s Chloé Zhao — international directors of English-language films.) And there’s no telling which way BAFTA will lean, as the Brits don’t announce their nominations until next week.
How do I see it playing out? Read on to see, but at the risk of spoilers, I expect the Academy’s international bent to continue. Here’s who I predict will get nominated in the eight biggest races on Thursday morning.
Emma Stone in Bugonia.
Photo: Focus Features/Everett Collection
Bugonia
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Sirāt
Train Dreams
It’s been a while since we had a truly unpredictable Best Picture race, but welcome to Thunderdome. This year’s field has a clear top tier: Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, and Sinners all earned top nominations from SAG, the DGA, and the PGA. If we were still in the olden days, they’d likely be our five nominees. But who fills out the bottom half of the roster?
The Norwegian drama Sentimental Value missed out at many of the American guilds, but after sweeping last weekend’s European Film Awards — whose membership increasingly overlaps with the Academy’s — it seems to have enough juice with the international contingent to make it in. Skål! Staying on the international theme, Brazil’s The Secret Agent has been coming on strong, winning foreign-language prizes from the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes while earning plenty of buzz for Wagner Moura’s performance. I’m not sure which of those two Neon films is stronger, but given how friendly the Oscars have been to global cinema recently, there’s room for both. For much of the season, I thought Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning It Was Just an Accident would be right there alongside them, but after a string of surprising misses for Panahi’s film, I’m worried it’s fallen by the wayside. (Like front-runner OBAA, The Secret Agent foregrounds the community and solidarity of anti-authoritarian resistance; could IWJAA’s darker rendition of similar themes be the reason it’s struggling at this fraught moment?)
Second-tier contenders Bugonia and Train Dreams aren’t guaranteed to show up, but both got nominated at the PGAs, indicating these two smaller art-house films have wide support inside the industry. That leaves us with one open seat, and I’ve had a Payakan of a time trying to figure out what will fill it. Avatar: Fire and Ash made a billion bucks, and Wicked: For Good earned the most spots on the Oscars shortlists. However, they’ve otherwise struggled to hit the marks set by their predecessors, which could put off voters who like to root for a winner. At the PGAs, the last two spots went to a pair of summer hits, F1 and Weapons. While I’ve entertained the thought of them getting in, I’m not sure if either has the air of prestige the modern Academy prefers. They may be a little too basic and a little too gonzo, respectively.
A year like this feels like the right time to make a big bet on an underdog. Last week, Numlock’s Walt Hickey wrote about how, with the recent changes to the Academy’s membership, our mental model of the median Oscar voter should now look like an Austrian sound mixer. At the European Film Awards, every trophy that Sentimental Value didn’t win was won by the Spanish raver epic Sirāt, which mixes Euro cred with blockbuster crafts. This came a month after Oliver Laxe’s film stunned observers by popping off at the Oscars shortlists, so that’s two industry precursors the film has made waves at despite being Neon’s fourth priority. If our imaginary Austrian sound mixer could be said to have a favored horse in the race this year, all signs point to that film being Sirāt.
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Paul Thomas Anderson is getting this trophy in a BOGO deal with Best Picture, while Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao feel like our silver and bronze medalists, in some order. (I’ve seen fears that this most elitist of branches could snub Coogler for being too commercial, but given his film-nerd bona fides, they should consider him a kindred spirit.) Josh Safdie seems like he’ll get his “welcome to the club” nomination for leveling up his grimy aesthetic to a grander scale. Frankenstein’s Guillermo del Toro has often been alongside them at the precursors, but I’m not convinced he’ll make it to the finish line for the simple reason that I’ve yet to meet anyone who really liked that movie.
For the longest time, I thought the fifth nominee would be Jafar Panahi, but the fact that he hasn’t been able to get any traction with industry voters leads me to believe it’ll be Joachim Trier, who beat Panahi whenever they went head-to-head at the European Film Awards. (With the caveat that voters there may have felt that, while It Was Just an Accident is being submitted by France, the Iranian dramedy isn’t really a European film.) Trier seems to have consolidated the Euro vote, and the directing lineup doesn’t feel complete without one Scandinavian auteur. If The Secret Agent is the real deal, though, expect to see Kleber Mendonça Filho instead.
Michael B. Jordan in Sinners.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
It’s a battle of twink versus twunk as Timothée Chalamet faces off against his idol Leonardo DiCaprio for the trophy. Otherwise, many of the expected heavy hitters in this race — George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Jeremy Allen White — had essentially dropped off by November, opening up room for further-afield performances from Ethan Hawke in a chamber-piece Broadway biopic and Wagner Moura in a Brazilian political thriller. Voters don’t always reward feats of movie-star charisma (when it comes to acting, they often prefer effortful, not effortless), though Michael B. Jordan’s performance as twins in Sinners comes with enough degree-of-difficulty points to make it in.
I’ve stuck with these five names for so long that I can’t help feeling there’s another shoe about to drop, but though their films should make Best Picture, I haven’t seen enough from Bugonia’s Jesse Plemons or Train Dreams’s Joel Edgerton to feel justified in bumping any of my presumptive nominees.
Chase Infiniti in One Battle After Another.
Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia
Jessie Buckley wrapped this trophy up sometime around Labor Day with her raw turn as a grieving 16th-century mother, but that hasn’t calcified the nomination race. The only other contender I feel confident in is Rose Byrne, whose on-edge performance made her the Best Actress alternative for people who couldn’t get onboard with Hamnet for one reason or another. A notch below them sits Emma Stone, who has shown up at all the precursors. I think the two-time winner makes such a dramatic transformation — and has enough residual goodwill — to overcome her movie’s controversial ending. But she also feels like a name that misses on nomination morning and everyone says, “Of course!”
After Stone, things get even murkier. Renate Reinsve was left out at SAG alongside every other non-English performer, but I’m confident in Sentimental Value’s overall strength. (The fact that she’s playing a professional actress doesn’t hurt her chances with this branch, either.) Most pundits peg the race for the fifth seat as a showdown between a newcomer and a veteran. There’s OBAA’s Chase Infiniti, our first ingénue named after a credit card, who gives a breakout performance in the Best Picture front-runner — though in a case of reverse category fraud, she’s just not in as much of the movie as most of her rivals are. Then there’s Song Sung Blue’s Kate Hudson, who presses a lot of this branch’s favorite buttons: She’s playing a real-life person who has something horrible happen to her, and who also sings! Though Hudson’s movie is far less acclaimed than Infiniti’s, she’s been making the most of her web of Hollywood connections on the awards trail. And as we’ve seen with films like CODA, winning Best Picture is no guarantee your leading lady will get nominated.
Could we see a wildcard sneak in? My colleague Joe Reid is planting his flag on Sorry, Baby’s Eva Victor, who could benefit from a late surge of interest after Julia Roberts shouted out her performance onstage at the Golden Globes. I’m not quite that brave, so I’ll bow to a piece of awards-season wisdom that’s rarely steered me wrong: In a close race, go with the contender whose film has more Best Picture heat. Chase Infiniti it is.
Paul Mescal in Hamnet.
Photo: Focus Features
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Paul Mescal, Hamnet
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
The triumvirate of senior-age dudes here have all seemed like the Supporting Actor front-runner at various points of the season. The never-nominated Stellan Skarsgård has the career-capping narrative. Sean Penn has the showiest performance, embodying all that is ridiculous about fascism, while his co-star Benicio del Toro makes an equally indelible impression embodying the quiet dignity of resistance. If they keep splitting the OBAA vote, Skarsgård should be the one to benefit … but what if they don’t?
Joining them, we’ve got not one but two under-30 actors. Though he’s not dominating his category the way she is, Paul Mescal keeps riding Jessie Buckley’s coattails and should share his-and-hers noms with his Irish compatriot. I’d underestimated Jacob Elordi due to the Academy’s long-standing bias against hunks (and probably my own, as well), but very quickly the Euphoria star went from “Wouldn’t that be fun?” to looking like a surefire nominee, a journey he capped off by winning the Critics Choice Award earlier this month.
I’m bummed, though, that Elordi’s rise has elbowed out Sinners’s Delroy Lindo, who I thought had some career-achievement-nom equity but has generally been overlooked by the precursors. His co-star Miles Caton snuck in at SAG, but the 20-year-old’s out-of-nowhere performance as Sinners’s secret lead feels more liable to garner recognition for casting director Francine Maisler than Caton himself.
Amy Madigan in Weapons.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Odessa A’zion, Marty Supreme
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
The way a twin sometimes absorbs another in the womb, the Supporting Actress field is full of women who’ve already survived competing bids from their own co-stars to become their film’s sole standard-bearer. First up is Teyana Taylor, whose portrait of a revolutionary in perpetual motion is so meaty it made Regina Hall’s lower-key part feel far more meager in comparison. After winning the Globe, Taylor now feels like the front-runner for the trophy. Despite being a new face for voters, British actress Wunmi Mosaku fended off previous Oscar nominee (and NFL WAG) Hailee Steinfeld; another unknown, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, has ridden one perfect Oscar clip to open up a lead over Elle Fanning in the Sentimental Value Derby. And though preseason predictions pegged Marty Supreme as Gwyneth Paltrow’s big Oscar comeback, Odessa A’zion’s performance as a girlfriend with gumption has usurped the Goopster’s buzz.
That Amy Madigan had no such internal competition is only one of the many ways she feels like a singular presence in this race. It would have been all too easy for voters to ignore her performance in Weapons; what a pleasant surprise that the precursors have given Aunt Gladys her due. Speaking of witches, the stats say that Ariana Grande’s Glinda should show up over one of Lilleaas or A’zion, but with Wicked: For Good fading fast, I’m going with Grande as this year’s shocking nomination-morning snub.
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident.
Photo: NEON
Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Zach Cregger, Weapons
Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, Sentimental Value
We don’t have WGA nominations yet this year, but the guild’s picks have begun to diverge from the Academy’s anyway, as its strict eligibility rules disqualify most international scripts. And as it happens, I’ve got two of those making it this year. Regardless of whether Panahi gets into Picture and Director, It Was Just an Accident should find a warm welcome here, as the writers’ branch is perpetually the most cinephile-friendly segment of the Academy. (For the same reason, I would not be surprised to see The Secret Agent sneak in.) Of this race’s two former comedians, Zach Cregger of Weapons and Eva Victor of Sorry, Baby, I’d give the edge to Weapons, whose structurally ambitious script sets it apart. The other spots are filled out by three of the season’s across-the-board contenders — Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, and Sinners — setting up what should be a tough race for the trophy.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
Photo: Ken Woroner/Netflix
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, Train Dreams
Guillermo del Toro, Frankenstein
Maggie O’Farrell and Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Will Tracy, Bugonia
Both Screenplay categories are fairly evenly matched this year, though Adapted feels a little less wide open: In all likelihood, the trophy will go to OBAA as part of a Best Picture sweep or Hamnet as a runner-up prize. Bugonia has the kind of quirky, heady script that feels up this branch’s alley, and you could say the same about the literary stylings of Train Dreams. If the international wave continues, you could see Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice show up here, but despite the satire outgrossing its Neon brethren, awards recognition has proven harder to come by. A Benoit Blanc whodunit has yet to miss a Screenplay nom, which could be good news for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, but I have a hard time looking past Guillermo del Toro and Frankenstein, which is not a traditional Screenplay movie but should benefit from the Academy’s love for the affable auteur.
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