Once more we are at that time, the time where we all take a guess if the Academy of Motion Pictures is going to do something really cool or be their usual kind of boring selves. It’s been a pretty good year for film and certainly for the nominees. A new record has been set for the number of nominations a single film can get. We have a brand new category to deal with and several major international films are in discussion for some of the biggest awards. It’s also the first year where every single voter is contractually obligated to watch every film (because that was apparently not a thing up to this point)… I am not contractually obliged to see every film, in some cases I literally physically can’t but I saw as many as I could and now will use that to make my predictions for what will win, what I think should win, and what would cause some glorious chaos.
Unseen: F1, Train Dreams, The Secret Agent
Every year the choice for Best Picture is done based upon ranked choice voting which is why it seems to seldom go to the most interesting choice… at least, that’s what was believed before Parasite won this award and now there’s a high chance that the Academy could actually choose to be interesting for once and deliver us a best film that meets the moment. Sinners being the most nominated film in history feels like it should be taking this one home; it was a smash hit and a cultural landmark on top of just being a generally great film. It’d also really show how much the Academy has grown by awarding a black-led horror film and also… again, most nominated film in history, it’d be awkward if it didn’t pull this off. Now that being said, much as I think Sinners should take it home, One Battle After Another is the smart money option that does still let the Oscars be progressive (something they like to try and do) and rewards a really good film. Would it shock some people? Sure would, but it’s probably what will happen even though Sinners is what should happen. Of course, Marty Supreme is kind of the outsider option, one that would still earn the title but might have lost the momentum, but that’s a real outsider here.
Unseen: Blue Moon, The Secret Agent
Since the start of the Oscar campaign, Timothee Chalamet has basically said that he deserves the award this year and damn anyone who thinks otherwise. It’s been kind of bold, normally people say “I hope I win” or “It’d be nice” but Tim’s been blunt about how he knows this award should be his… and he’s probably right. Look, Leo isn’t getting this, he had to be mauled by a bear to get his first one and nothing he does in One Battle Or Another really warrants his second award (honestly, I don’t actually get why he’s nominated). Timothee just blasts onto the screen with more confidence than any human should have, especially a human with that moustache. It’s the kind of performance that just demands attention and awards and he should be getting this one. Now, would I be happy if Michael B Jordan rode the love of Sinners to his first Oscar for his twin roles in Sinners? Fuck yes, it’s a delightful pair of performances and Michael B Jordan is long overdue for his Oscar, but I just don’t think he’s going to beat the supernova that is Timothee Chalamet… at least, I didn’t until the recent The Actor Awards came and threw Michael the award in a stunning upset that might show that this year the people who vote for this are gonna give Michael what he deserves.
Unseen: Song Sung Blue
Jessie Buckley has had one of the best award runs in recent years, and the only way she doesn’t win this is if everyone forgot to send in their ballots. It’s so clearly her, it should be her, she earned it and I look forward to seeing her get what she deserves for this performance. If I were to pick someone who could be a real surprise, it’d probably be Rose Byrne who is beloved and delivers a great performance so they might throw it her way, but let’s be real, it’s Jessie Buckley or that room will be torn apart.
This category is probably the most stacked one of the lot in terms of how the awards are spread out. Stellan got the Globe, Jacob got the Critics’ Choice and Sean just took home the BAFTA and the SAG (The Actor Awards). Then there’s Benicio who is nominated everywhere and Delroy who is not only nominated all over, he should probably just have an Oscar already. It’s really just all over the place in who it could be and while the combo of SAG/BAFTA might suggest Sean is a lock, he also already has two Oscars and I just don’t see him matching the amount of awards won by the likes of Jack Nicholson or Daniel Day-Lewis (not based on this performance, anyway). Who I think SHOULD win it is Delroy Lindo, long overdue and I’m here for a Sinners sweep whenever possible but I would bet money on Stellan Skarsgard taking it in the end, another one of those performers who are just overdue for some awards love. The wild card here honestly is Sean, while I don’t think he’ll get it and match the record of three Oscars for a male actor, it feels possible
This might be just as hard as supporting male, some truly wild choices that I didn’t see coming. My hope would be to see Amy Madigan get it. I stand by my assessment that her performance in Weapons is the best performance in 2025 and she absolutely deserves this award more than anyone else in the category as far as I’m concerned. She’s also gotten a few of the important precursor awards and has kind of rocked the PR element. If there’s a perfect campaign this year to get the Oscar, Amy is running it. Now, would I object to Wunmi Mosaku getting pulled up in the Sinners sweep and taking this one? Absolutely not, it would be kind of great and an early sign of the night to come, but I think it should and will be Amy’s
When it comes to directing, we have a chance to see history being made this year… we probably won’t, it’s the Oscars, but there’s a chance. Sadly, Chloe Zhao is probably not likely, while Hamnet was good, it probably wasn’t good enough for the Oscars to give the fourth Directing Oscar to a woman, certainly not one who only just won an award not too long ago. This feels like it’s a neck-and-neck race between Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler and if Sinners sweeps the Oscars with those endless nominations, Ryan has this. If not, Paul Thomas Anderson will finally get the award after so long. I want Ryan to get it, I think Paul’s the one who will end up getting it, but absolute chaos will reign Chloe Zhao comes in and makes a little bit of history by being the first woman to win two directing Oscars
Unseen: Blue Moon, It Was Just An Accident
This one is almost a no-brainer, it’s gonna be this year’s version of giving Get Out the Oscar for original screenplay so it can technically give the director an Oscar without giving him the Best Director Oscar. Sinners has this one pretty much locked down, it should and will take it home but Marty Supreme could sneak in and take it, giving a Safdie brother the Oscar they should’ve had a while ago for Uncut Gems.
Unseen: Train Dreams
This also feels like a pretty easy one, it’s gonna almost certainly go to One Battle After Another which has been just tearing this category up every single time it’s been nominated so it’s basically guaranteed to take this one home. It’s a lock, if not winning this will actually be a shock. What would be the interesting option to create that shock? Frankenstein would be a fun win, that’s my wild card pick for a little drop of chaos, but realistically this one’s going to One Battle After Another
Unseen: Train Dreams
This year we really got lucky with some genuinely beautiful films, every one of the nominees has some of the most gorgeous shots you could imagine but if I’m being honest, this is a race between Frankenstein’s gloriously stylised high contrast world and Sinners’ lush rich nighttime shoots. This one feels like it belongs to Sinners, every single shot in the film is glorious but in particular the barn music scene or the finale in the lake. It’s a visual masterpiece that just commands attention and should take it with ease. Frankenstein might sneak in just because its high contrast beauty is hard to ignore, but my money’s on Sinners here.
Unseen: F1
It’s kind of sad that the rule with Editing at the Oscars is usually not “Who is the best” but “Who’s is the most obvious”, it’s a hard category to call even at the best of times. This one honestly might just be one of those that ends up being part of a sweep, so if Sinners does well then it’s gonna get editing but if One Battle After Another pulls off the night it’s expected to, it’s got this. I feel like it will be One Battle After Another but it should be Sinners, meanwhile the pointed and intentional editing choices in Sentimental Value might make it a wild card here.
Really, this award depends on what you look for in production design. Are you making an accurate recreation of the real world or creating something we’ve never seen before? Now obviously it would be lovely to see Sinners pull this one out of the bag, the details of the production really help sell the world that the audience is placed in and I am, in general, hoping for a Sinners sweep (have I made that clear yet?) but the thing that might throw it is the creative strange wonderfully detailed world of Frankenstein. Every inch of the laboratory alone probably deserves this one, its wild weirdness is undeniable… sure, both of these are unlikely, smart money would be on the period piece Hamnet but let’s hope smart money doesn’t do it this time.
Unseen: Avatar: Fire and Ash
I may have just barely accepted that Avatar is eligible for this award because they technically made the costumes in real life and scanned them into the film, but I don’t want it to win on the grounds that I’m tired of Avatar. This year feels like it’s gonna be a Frankenstein year for costumes, they do so much to tell the aesthetic that Guillermo Del Toro is going for that it feels like they deserve it but I kinda feel this one should probably go to Sinners. Sinners not only nailed the period costumes, it nailed radically different periods, thanks to the end credit scene, and the clothing told you so much about these fascinating characters. Of course, the chaos entry is gonna be that Avatar movie but I hope we don’t get chaos here.
Unseen: F1, Sirat
Sound is always a bit of a pain in the years when there isn’t a musical because then it’s not gonna be obvious. I would say this one is another of those ones that’s gonna go to Sinners, while it’s not a musical it has plenty of sequences involving music that are key to the plot so it feels like it could go that way. As for what’s got a chance of beating it, well, One Battle After Another is always gonna be nipping at the heels of Sinners so it could sneak in but if all is right, this goes to Sinners
Unseen: Kukuho
For the design of Frankenstein alone, this award should go to that movie. It’s an undeniable triumph of taking the classic idea of Frankenstein and finding a new way to create it for film. It’s truly a spectacular creation in itself and deserves this award, will probably take home this award… but god, the fun wild card here would be if The Ugly Stepsister’s twisted nightmarish gory designs manage to win the day
You know, when one thinks about the impact of music on film, one cannot imagine how mu- Sinners. The answer to this is Sinners and every other film is just here to fill out the category. There isn’t a non-musical film that used its music better and with more pointed creativity than Sinners did, there really is nothing else that even comes close. My only other thought is maybe One Battle After Another might gain so much momentum that it wins this one but that’ll mean that this win is a sign that the night’s not gonna be the sweep it should be.
Unseen: Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi, Train Dreams
At this point, nominating Diane Warren is just mean. She’s basically here every year at this point and it’s a joke. She hasn’t really had a ghost of a chance at winning this award since 2015 and has literally been a nominee every year since 2017, in several cases the only nominee for the films she writes songs for (She’s literally why the Hot Cheetos movie gets to claim it’s an Oscar nominee… that’s wild). Anyway, this year the award is between Kpop Demon Hunters or Sinners and it’s hard to pick. Golden from Kpop Demon Hunters is probably going to snag it, it’s been a massive hit on Billboard for most of the year and it’s just a catchy song so that’s where I’d guess the academy would swing but I Lied To You is a genuinely fantastic song which helps create a lot of the mood that makes Sinners work, and with all the nominations Sinners has it’s going to probably do well tonight. If Sinners does a sweep, this will take it but if Kpop takes it, that’s also a sign that things won’t be going well for Sinners…. Of course chaos agent Diane Warren could take it out of pity and that’d be fucking hilarious.
I look forward to next year when Diane Warren gets nominated for a song she wrote for whatever C-tier dramedy she gets hired to write a song for.
Unseen: Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1, The Lost Bus
Even without seeing it you can tell that this would have to go to Avatar, it’s the one award that franchise is basically guaranteed because no one can deny the quality of those special effects – they’ve been what the entire franchise has been sold on. Hell, the last two Avatar movies have won this award so it’s basically a lock. It’s such a lock that I’m gonna say Sinners is actually the wild card here because it might pull off such a sweep they throw this award in just for fun.
Unseen: Arco, Little Amelie Or The Character Of Rain
The fact that Elio even got a nomination is weird. Look, I enjoyed that film but it wasn’t anyone else’s darling. This award is going straight into Kpop Demon Hunters’ pocket and it’s going to take some kind of insane trick for it to not pull that off. Now could it be beaten by something else? Sure, Zootopia 2 was in cinemas and a huge monster hit, it could sneak in at the final moment and take the big award but realistically it’s going to Kpop Demon Hunters because that movie deserves it for its absolutely fantastic animation, heartwarming story and cultural impact.
Unseen: The Secret Agent
The first time this category has been a part of the ceremony so we don’t really have a history to go off. This is gonna be a bit of a tone setter for future years, giving us an indication of what will win in the future. With Sinners taking home the best cast award as The Actor Awards recently, it feels rational to say that they have this award locked up and it would honestly be very cool to start this awards life by going to a film with a largely black cast (and to a casting director who is basically responsible for some of the best casts of the last 30 years). The only real competition I can think of is Marty Supreme which has one of the wildest casts possible. It’s a film that got the guy from Shark Tank, a magician and The Nanny in the same film and every one of them makes sense. While this feels like it’s gonna go to Sinners, Marty could sneak up on everyone.
And there’s my current predictions, now we just wait to see how wrong I end up being.
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