The upcoming 96th Academy Awards have one of the best line-ups in years.
Most categories are so stacked that you could easily replace the worthy nominees for a handful of other candidates and it would still be a fair assessment of last year’s exquisite quality level. Take Best Director, for example. Made up of an impossibly talented selection of filmmakers including Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall), Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), and Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest), yet missing almost the same amount of deserving contenders, the likes of Celine Song, Greta Gerwig, Alexander Payne, or Todd Haynes.
Oppenheimer, as expected, is the ceremony’s most nominated film with 13 nods, followed by Poor Things with 11, Killers of the Flower Moon with 10, Barbie with eight, Maestro with seven, and The Holdovers, American Fiction, The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall all with five.
The months leading up to the March ceremony. Industry prizes like the Directors, Actors, and Producers’ Guild Awards are significant in predicting Oscar nominations due to the overlap in their voting bodies. Those will take place on Feb 10., Feb. 24, and Feb. 25, respectively.
With less intersection but more cultural relevance, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Spirit Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards have all become Oscar indicators in their own ways. Critics Awards like the NYFCC, LAFCA, and NSFC Awards always create momentum as well.
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
Christopher Nolan’s biographical epic Oppenheimer is well on its way to being the big winner at this year’s Oscars. The Academy loves a biopic and has gone on to award movies in this genre that were much less deserving. Not only has Oppenheimer been celebrated by critics, but it has also broken box-office records and experienced extraordinary demand for its physical copies — something which feels historic in its own right during this streaming era.
The Oscars Oppenheimer is most likely to win based on the buzz and other accolades it’s received so far are Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr., Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Sound. The competition for Directing and Adapted Screenplay is too fierce to predict for now and considering their winners don’t always line up with the ceremony’s chief prize, these two might result in upsets for the Universal Pictures juggernaut.
Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
The wacky Frankensteinian narrative Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, Dogtooth) created for Poor Things from a screenplay by Tony McNamara leaves no one indifferent, for better or for worse. Still, the film’s reception at the festival circuit has been overwhelmingly positive, which combined with Lanthimos and his cast’s track record should make this black comedy a 2024 Academy Awards heavyweight.
While it would take a big plot twist for Poor Things to go home with either the Best Picture or the Best Director statuettes, the Searchlight Pictures film is among the favorites to win in the Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay categories. Emma Stone is Lily Gladstone’s biggest competitor, especially since the latter was shockingly shunned from the BAFTAs. Fortune could also come for Lanthimos’ feature in Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Cinematography.
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
The master filmmaker Martin Scorsese delivered what was arguably the year’s most striking film with Killers of The Flower Moon, landing nominations in all major categories. The crime drama is a ruthless yet stunningly sensitive dissection of the murders of Osage Nation citizens by predatory white businessmen looking to steal their oil rights in the 1920s.
Robert De Niro might just give Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan Gosling a run for their money in the Best Supporting Actor category, while the love and respect for Scorsese’s career could give him the edge over Nolan among voters. Lily Gladstone would make for a revolutionary Best Actress winner, but the competition might just prove too fierce. The film won big at the NYFCC Awards and the National Board of Review awards, securing the top prize of Best Film and wins for Scorsese, Gladstone, and Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto.
Barbie (Warner Bros.)
Barbie was the biggest movie of 2023. Last year’s winning streak for Everything Everywhere All At Once attests to Academy voters’ openness to unconventional contenders which could bode well for Greta Gerwig’s fierce fantastical take on the most famous doll in the world, but the lack of love for her and Robbie in the Directing and Acting categories could prove ominous.
At this point, Ryan Gosling’s culture-shifting supporting performance as Ken and the two iconic original songs by Mark Ronson (“I’m Just Ken”) and the Oscar-magnet siblings that are Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (“What Was I Made For?”) seem to be Barbie‘s biggest shots at an award, along with prizes for production and costume design.
Maestro (Netflix)
Bradley Cooper has been exceeding expectations in the director’s chair, with Maestro being hailed as a step-up from A Stair is Born, which did well enough at the Oscars in 2019 too. The Leonard Bernstein biopic was initially plagued by controversy but has since won over the hearts of both critics and audiences.
Hailed from the start as an Oscar darling, Maestro‘s seven nods don’t seem all too threatening at this point. The one category we could see the Cooper vehicle conquering is Best Sound.
The Holdovers (Focus Features)
Paul Giamatti plays a grouchy prep-school teacher who gets assigned babysitting duty over all the students who have no one to spend the Holidays with, known as “the holdovers,” in this Alexander Payne dramedy, which had quite the steady run-up to the Oscars. Tugging at the heartstrings and a healthy dose of sincerity usually play well with Academy voters, so The Holdovers naturally made quite a dent on the nominations list, with five total nods.
Giamatti is Cillian Murphy’s biggest competition for Best Actor, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph who plays bereaved school cook Mary Lamb has been sweeping all other awards she’s been nominated for so far, including but not limited to the Critics Choice, the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review, the NSFC, and the NYFCC Awards. She is our easiest prediction, and her unlikely loss would be up there with the Oscars’ most shocking turnarounds.
Anatomy of a Fall (Canal+, Neon)
This French courtroom-procedural-meets-domestic-psychological-drama from Sibyl director Justine Triet has been capturing the hearts and minds of film critics and aficionados since its Cannes world premiere. It centers around a family, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), Samuel (Samuel Theis), and their son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) as the investigation into the mysterious death of the father begins unearthing disturbing truths about the marriage.
Star Hüller is having a gigantic year with her other film, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, also becoming one of the biggest titles at the Oscars. While she is a fierce contender for Best Actress, it’s not likely she’ll beat out Stone and Gladstone. Similarly, Triet’s chances of winning Best Director are, unfortunately slim. Where Anatomy of A Fall could have its big win is in the Original Screenplay category, where it is competing against the likes of The Holdovers, Maestro, and Past Lives.
The Zone of Interest (A24)
Like Anatomy of a Fall, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest has been on the awards circuit’s radar since it won the second-highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival (Hüler’s other film won the Palme D’Or). It’s now made it all the way to the Oscars.
A chilling analysis of complacency in the face of horrors happening around us, this World War II drama tells the story of a Nazi family who attempt to build an idyllic home for themselves right next door to Auschwitz. Despite a handful of nominations, The Zone of Interest is most likely to go home with just the Best International Feature trophy.
American Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios)
American Fiction‘s five nods were a pleasant surprise among the list of nominees. The hard-hitting satire about Black stereotypes in media and the publishing industry at large, directed and written by Cord Jefferson, received love in the Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Score categories.
Despite receiving nominations in a large number of other awards ceremonies on its way to the Oscars, we predict American Fiction will go home empty-handed, although it might just beat out the fierce competition in Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Oscars air on Sunday, Mar. 10, on ABC.
