Best Picture Oscars Predictions (December)

It’s been all about Nomadland with the critics groups. With Best Picture wins from Boston, Boston Online, Chicago, and Indiana to add to the film’s TIFF People’s Choice Award and Golden Lion from Venice Film Festival, Nomadland is quickly becoming an unstoppable force. But there’s a long way to go yet.

The Best Film victory of First Cow at the New York Film Critics Circle is a huge boost for its Best Picture campaign. In the last ten years, every winner of this award bar one (Carol in 2015) has gone on to receive a Best Picture nomination. But this quiet, unassuming film isn’t your typical Best Picture fodder, and its nomination chances are stronger in the Adapted Screenplay category.

While Minari hasn’t scored big with the critics groups as yet, the film did receive a huge boost of free publicity when the HFPA confirmed it will be ineligible at the Golden Globes for the Best Picture – Drama category and will compete in the Foreign Language Film category instead. Despite being an American-made film, the HFPA has clear rules that a film must contain more than 50% English dialogue to avoid being classified as a “foreign film,” so this wasn’t a total surprise (The Farewell suffered the same fate last year). But the enormous wave of backlash on Twitter over this outdated decision brought enormous attention to Minari, and you can’t buy that kind of publicity.

There’s been a lot of love for Soul now that Pixar’s latest animated treasure has debuted on Disney+. But part of me thinks it will still struggle to join Beauty and the Beast, Up, and Toy Story 3 as an animated film nominated for Best Picture, especially with its certain nomination in Animated Feature. For now, it drops out of my top ten. In its place moves Promising Young Woman, which just seems to be growing in buzz with every day. However, it’s a divisive film that may not play well with older members of the Academy, so it still faces a tough challenge to make it into the final line-up.

BEST PICTURE PREDICTIONS:
1. Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
2. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
3. One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
4. Minari (A24)
5. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
6. Mank (Netflix)
7. The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
8. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
9. Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.)
10. Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)

MAJOR CONTENDERS:
Ammonite (NEON)
Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
First Cow (A24)
I’m Your Woman (Amazon Studios)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features)
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight Pictures)
The Prom (Netflix)
Soul (Disney)
Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu)