Out on a Limb: Oscar picks & predictions

This has been considered one of the most volatile awards seasons in memory, as the buzz has been continually shifting around who might be in line to take home Oscars. There are a couple of sure things for the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night, but the most important precursors -- Bafta, PGA, SAG -- didn't agree in many categories. Watching the ceremony, I always love an upset, so those will get my loudest cheers. Here's who I think will, should and could win [with winners in bold after the fact]...

PICTURE
Will/should win: Sinners
Could win: One Battle After Another

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
Will win: Sentimental Value
Could win: It Was Just an Accident
Should win: Sirat
Dark horse: The Secret Agent

ANIMATED FEATURE
Will/should win: KPop Demon Hunters
Could win: Zootopia 2

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Will win: The Perfect Neighbor
Could win: Mr Nobody Against Putin
Should Win: Come See Me in the Good Light
Dark horse: The Alabama Solution

ACTRESS
Will/should win: Jessie Buckley - Hamnet

ACTOR
Will/should win: Michael B Jordan - Sinners
Could win: Timothee Chalamet - Marty Supreme
Dark horses: Ethan Hawke - Blue Moon / Wagner Moura - The Secret Agent

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Will/should win: Amy Madigan - Weapons
Could win: Teyana Taylor - One Battle After Another 

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Will win: Sean Penn - One Battle After Another 
Could win: Delroy Lindo - Sinners 
Should win: Stellan Skarsgard - Sentimental Value  

DIRECTOR
Will win: Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another
Could/should win: Ryan Coogler - Sinners

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Will win: One Battle After Another - Paul Thomas Anderson
Could/should win: Hamnet - Chloe Zhao & Maggie O'Farrell

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Will/should win: Sinners - Ryan Coogler
Could win: Sentimental Value - Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt

CASTING
Will win: Sinners - Francine Maisler
Could/should win: The Secret Agent - Gabriel Domingues
[Winner: One Battle After Another - Cassandra Kulukundis]

ORIGINAL SCORE
Will win: Sinners - Ludwig Goransson
Could win: One Battle After Another - Jonny Greenwood
Should win: Hamnet - Max Richter

ORIGINAL SONG
Will/should win: Golden - KPop Demon Hunters - Ejae, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Teddy Park

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Will win: One Battle After Another - Michael Bauman
Should win: Sinners - Autumn Durald Arkapaw

FILM EDITING
Will win: Sinners - Michael Shawver
Could/should win: One Battle After Another - Andy Jurgensen

PRODUCTION DESIGN
Will/should win: Frankenstein - Tamara Deverell, Shane Vieau

COSTUME DESIGN
Will win: Frankenstein - Kate Hawley
Should win: Sinners - Ruth E Carter

MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Will win: Frankenstein - Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey
Should win: Kokuho - Kyoko Toyokawa, Naomi Hibino, Tadashi Nishimatsu

VISUAL EFFECTS
Will/should win: Avatar: Fire and Ash - Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, Daniel Barrett

SOUND
Will win: Sinners - Chris Welcker, Benjamin A Burtt, Felipe Pacheco, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker
Could win: F1 - Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A Rizzo, Juan Peralta
Should win: Sirat - Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas, Yasmina Praderas

Critical Week: Ready, aim, fire

Things are definitely cranking up in London as awards season takes over screening rooms across the city. Many of the big hitters from recent festivals are being screened for those of us who vote in various awards. There's not a free evening in my diary for a few weeks. After a clash prevented me from attending the only press screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, they made public showings available, so I was able to watch it in glorious VistaVision this week. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti (above) and is a thrillingly entertaining rollercoaster ride.  

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Urchin • The Smashing Machine
The Lost Bus • The Shadow's Edge
Scared Sh*tless
PERHAPS AVOID:
Him • The Ice Tower
ALL REVIEWS >

I also caught up with Richard Linklater's Blue Moon, in which Ethan Hawke gives a superb one-man-show kind of turn as legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart. Riz Ahmed and Lily James are excellent in David Mackenzie's nerve-jangling and smartly twisty thriller Relay. Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers give it their all in the horror thriller Him, but it never amounts to much. And Malcolm McDowell turns up in The Partisan, the intriguing but dryly told true story of a female Polish spy (played by Morgane Polanski) working for Britain during WWII. I also attended live performances of the disco-tastic KC and the Sunshine Band musical Get Down Tonight at Charing Cross Theatre and Andrea Peña's rather elusive Bogotá at Sadler's Wells East.

Films this coming week include George Clooney in Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly, Idris Elba in Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite and Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez in Kiss of the Spider Woman. The 69th London Film Festival kicks off on Wednesday with Rian Johnson's Knives Out whodunit Wake Up Dead Man. And there's a live performance of Ghost Stories at the Peacock Theatre.

Critical Week: Shape your reality

HAPPY CHRISTMAS! My special gift today was a positive covid test, despite being triple-jabbed and always wearing a mask, so I'll be isolating through the holidays this year. This won't be much of a change from the past few weeks - but I'll miss being able to meet people in person for a week or so. And I don't have another in-cinema screening until January 5th, so I'll keep watching things at home on screener links. 

This past week, the bigger films I watched included The Matrix Resurrections, a 20-years-later sequel that has some enjoyably brain-bending nonsense in it and a refreshing refusal to take itself seriously. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are superb, plus the always watchable Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Henwick and several returnees.  Paul Thomas Anderson's latest is freeform comedy Licorice Pizza, an enjoyably loose slice of 1970s nostalgia starring Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour) and Alana Haim (of the pop group). Plus starry scene-stealers like Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Parallel Mothers • Sing 2
The Matrix Resurrections
ALL REVIEWS >

Smaller movies included the unsettling, atmospheric British horror Amulet, actor Romola Garai's writing-directing feature debut. The Worst Person in the World is a wonderfully complex drama from Norway following a young woman (the superb Renate Reinsve) over four years as she tries to find herself. From Austria, Great Freedom is a stunning prison drama that traces the lingering legacy of a cruel Nazi law outlawing homosexuality. And the autobiobraphical odyssey HipBeat is a bit preachy but makes some nice observations along the way.

I also caught up with a couple of movies for fun. The hugely entertaining doc Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It traces the astonishing career and personal life of the iconic actress who's still going strong at 90. And the Christmas comedy Single All the Way is an enjoyably silly holiday romance with an above average cast including Michael Urie, Kathy Najimy and Jennifer Coolidge.

And this coming week, as I am in forced isolation, I'll be catching up with a few more awards contenders, including I'm Your Man, The Summit of the Gods, Mandibles and Writing With Fire. And I have a few links to watch as well for films coming out soon, including the thriller Borrego and the shorts collection The Last Days of Innocence.

Critical Week: Fashion forward

Since I travelled mid-week, my film viewing over the past few days was somewhat limited (I've already seen everything worth watching on the plane!). But before leaving Los Angeles, I caught an awards-season screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a 1950s London dressmaker. It's tricky, twisty and utterly mesmerising. And James Franco's The Disaster Artist is a hugely entertaining look at the making of a terrible movie, which turns into an ode to the importance of following your dreams. The all-star cast is excellent, and a lot of fun.

I also saw the family adventure Kepler's Dream, a rather simplistic TV-style movie that will appeal to undemanding audiences. It's boosted by the presence of Holland Taylor and Sean Patrick Flanery. And then there was the chance to revisit the 1969 Western Tell Them Willie Boy is Here, starring a surprisingly feisty Robert Redford. It's a complex ahead-of-its-time drama set in California's Native American community - riveting, emotional, challenging.

Coming up this week: the Cannes winner The Square, the Hungarian drama Jupiter's Moon, Rupert Graves in Native and the British drama Beast. There are also a number of for-your-consideration awards screenings coming up.