Awards season is in full swing, and 1 February was the balloting deadline for the most prestigious awards ceremony in the world: the 94th Academy Awards. The nominations will be announced this Tuesday, 8 February, and with the Best Picture category returning to a 10 film format and the Academy touting the largest voter turnout in history, there is a lot of speculation around which films will be lucky enough to snag a nomination.
Now that I’ve seen the majority of the frontrunners for each major category, I’ll be going over my predictions for this year's Oscars ceremony and discussing some of my personal favourites along the way. (And there are plenty – 2021 was a fantastic year for cinema!)
Without further ado, here are my predictions for this year (ranked by likeliest first)…
Best Picture
“The Power of the Dog”
“Belfast”
“Dune”
“CODA”
“Licorice Pizza”
“West Side Story”
“Don’t Look Up”
“King Richard”
“Being the Ricardos”
“Drive My Car”
Best Director
Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”
Denis Villeneuve, “Dune”
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”
Steven Spielberg, “West Side Story”
Best Actress
Nicole Kidman, “Being the Ricardos”
Lady Gaga, “House of Gucci”
Olivia Colman, “The Lost Daughter”
Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”
Kristen Stewart, “Spencer”
Best Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Power of the Dog”
Will Smith, “King Richard”
Andrew Garfield, “tick, tick… BOOM!”
Denzel Washington, “The Tragedy of Macbeth”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “Don’t Look Up”
Best Supporting Actress
Ruth Negga, “Passing”
Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story”
Kirsten Dunst, “The Power of the Dog”
Aunjanue Ellis, “King Richard”
Caitriona Balfe, “Belfast”
Best Supporting Actor
Kodi Smit-McPhee, “The Power of the Dog”
Ciaran Hinds, “Belfast”
Troy Kotsur, “CODA”
Jared Leto, “House of Gucci”
Bradley Cooper, “Licorice Pizza”
Best Original Screenplay
“Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh
“Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay & David Sirota
“Licorice Pizza,” Paul Thomas Anderson
“King Richard,” Zach Baylin
“Being the Ricardos,” Aaron Sorkin
Best Adapted Screenplay
“The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion
“CODA,” Sian Heder
“The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal
“Drive My Car,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe
“West Side Story,” Tony Kushner
Best Animated Feature
“Luca”
“Encanto”
“Flee”
“The Mitchells vs the Machines”
“Raya and the Last Dragon”
Best International Feature
“Drive My Car”
“The Worst Person in the World”
“A Hero”
“Flee”
“The Hand of God”
Best Cinematography
“The Power of the Dog,” Ari Wegner
“The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Bruno Delbonnel
“Dune,” Greig Fraser
“Belfast,” Haris Zambarloukos
“West Side Story,” Janusz Kaminski
For Best Picture, “The Power of the Dog” is the favourite to win this year, with “Belfast” a close second. “Being the Ricardos” and “Drive My Car”are the least likely to be nominated (especially the latter – I think most would be surprised to see a three-hour long Japanese film make the list!). “tick, tick… BOOM!”(dir. Lin-Manuel Miranda), “Nightmare Alley”(dir. Guillermo del Toro), and “House of Gucci” (dir. Ridley Scott) are all in with a good chance of replacing them.
Some of the awards seem much easier to predict than others – the Best Actor category for example has seen almost universal agreement over who will be nominated, while Best Actress is much more open, especially after Kristen Stewart was snubbed at the BAFTAs.
“The Power of the Dog” and “Dune” are favourites to win big this year, with nominations and wins in several categories looking likely, while “Drive My Car” is the frontrunner for international feature. Some people (including myself) are predicting a Best Picture nod for Hamaguchi’s adaptation of the Murakami story, which would make it only the 13th non-English language film to be nominated in that category since the inception of the Oscars in 1929.
Personal preferences
All in all, there are many brilliant films this year that all deserve to be acknowledged. So many, in fact, that if I were to choose the nominees myself, only two of my Best Picture predictions would keep their place. “The Power of the Dog” and “Dune” are worthy nominees, but the rest I would replace. Here are my top 10 films from the past year:
“Annette”
“The Power of the Dog”
“A Hero”
“Pig”
“The Last Duel”
“Titane”
“The Tragedy of Macbeth”
“Dune”
“The Green Knight”
“Malignant”
My choice for Best Picture would be “Annette,” a wonderfully weird phantasmagoric pop opera in which comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) and adored soprano Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard) fall in love and have a daughter together. Utterly bonkers yet somehow heartfelt and touching by the end, nobody but Leos Carax – whose past work includes the equally insane “Holy Motors” – would have been able to make this film work. It is one of the most memorable films you might ever watch for a number of reasons, not least because of its soundtrack by Ron and Russell Mael, who form the quirky and influential band Sparks.
Unfortunately, most of my personal picks for Best Picture would never happen in reality; two non-English language films being nominated in the same year has only happened once, which means “A Hero” and “Titane” have an almost nonexistent chance, especially with “Drive My Car” being the favourite international feature. Additionally, the Academy is still averse to genre films like “Malignant,” which is one of the wildest horror films to come out in recent years.
Surprisingly, I would mostly agree with the favourites from the other categories. Minus one or two likely nominees (I would sooner nominate Jared Leto for a Razzie than an Oscar after his “House of Gucci” performance, for example), the frontrunners for this year’s Academy Awards are all deserving of every bit of praise that’s coming their way.
Tune in tomorrow (Tuesday, February 8) to find out how accurate these predictions are when the official nominees are announced.
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