Predictions for 92nd Academy Awards Nominations – by Daniel Joyaux

Welcome to our annual deep dive into what we can expect to see with the Oscar nominations for the major categories. You can safely depend on two things: (1) the reasoning will be unbearably long and exhausting, and (2) about 20-25% of it will be wrong anyway.

A note on formatting: All of the possibilities in each category are ranked in order of likelihood, with number one being the most assured of a nomination. The top five in each category are my official nomination predictions, except for Best Picture, which you’ll have to actually read to see where I’m predicting the cutoff will be. (Remember, Best Picture can have anywhere from five to ten nominees, depending on how the votes are allocated. This is explained more cogently below.)

So take a drag on that acid-dipped cigarette, because Away. We. Go.

BEST PICTURE

The Consensus Frontrunners

1. Parasite
2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
3. 1917
4. The Irishman
5. Marriage Story

Sadly Inevitable

6. Joker

Reasonably Safe

7. Little Women
8. Jojo Rabbit

Maybe One of These, Or Maybe Not

9. Ford v Ferrari
10. Knives Out
11. The Farewell

Pretty Unlikely

12. Bombshell
13. The Two Popes
14. Uncut Gems
15. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

A quick tutorial for how the Best Picture voting works (at least at the nomination stage): Voters rank their favorite films of the year, but first-place votes have an outsized importance. For a film to receive a Best Picture nomination, it must receive at least 5% of the first-place votes. The Academy has around 9,000 members, which means 450 first-place votes is the key number to think about. For a film to receive a Best Picture nomination, 450 Academy voters need to believe it was the best film of 2019. In other words, broad consensus isn’t nearly as important to this process as unmitigated passion.

But then it gets complicated. If a film gets over 10% of the first-place votes, it stops accumulating votes and all additional ballots that ranked it first instead become fractional first-place votes for whatever film was ranked second on those ballots. The specifics of the fractions are overly complicated and not worth the time or effort to explain. Just think of it this way: if, for example, you believe Parasite could get 15-20% of the first-place votes, it’s also worth asking yourself what people who loved Parasite might credibly think is the second-best film of the year.

Exactly how many Best Picture nominees we get depends on how the first-place votes eventually shake themselves out, once everything gets reallocated accordingly. In the eight Oscar cycles under this voting system so far, we’ve gotten either eight or nine Best Picture nominees every year, so it’s a reasonable assumption that we’ll land on one of those two numbers again.

Okay, let’s try to game this out.

There’s a large consensus around the top five films, each of which have passionate support in large numbers. None of them will have a problem getting 5% of the initial first-place votes, and it’s even a fair bet that most of them start with well over 10%, triggering the surplus reallocations. We’ll come back to that.

Unfortunately, Joker also won’t have any difficulty hitting the 5% first-place vote threshold. Although it’s received more backlash and vitriol (including my own) than any of the contending films, it’s also frustratingly loved by much of the industry. Exactly how much it’s loved is a question that will play out in other categories, but it’s sadly quite safe here.

Also quite safe, though perhaps less widely believed to be, is Little Women. 2019 was a banner year for films directed by women, but hope for any others to receive a Best Picture nominations has severely fizzled. This is sad for films like The Farewell and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, because they both deserve a lot more attention in this race than they’re likely to get. But the good news there is it means vote splitting will be kept to a relative minimum, and any Academy member that wants to help get a female-led film into the Best Picture race should know exactly which direction to send their vote. Combine that with the broad support Little Women is likely to have from actors, writers, and costume designers, along with the fact that it’s a truly wonderful film, and it should get in easily.

The level of passion for Jojo Rabbit seems to be smaller, and it may not hit the initial 5%, but it should clear that total once spillover reallocations play out. It was nominated for the top award by the producers, directors, writers, and screen actors guilds, as well as the Golden Globes, so what it may lack in top-tier passion, it more than makes up for in across-the-board support.

These top eight films are so widely supported that they may each end up with 10% of the vote once all of the reallocations finish playing out. That would only leave 20% of the vote, and for another nominee to get in, at least 5% of that 20% would have to be flowing in the same direction. There are seven possible films that could get there. If they all do reasonably well, and each finish with around three or four percent of the final vote, none of them will get nominated. But if one significantly pulls ahead of the others, it will get in. 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is one of those movies that most people appreciate but few people love. I don’t see how it gets in. On the opposite end of that spectrum is Uncut Gems, which will undoubtedly get a nice share of first-place votes, but its cult is probably too small to hit that 450 number. And reallocations likely won’t help it much, because it seems to be one of those movies that you either rank first or it misses your ballot entirely.

Bombshell and The Two Popes look like this year’s Steve Jobs—films that have passionate support among actors, but seemingly no one else. They were ignored by both the Producers Guild and Writers Guild, which is a bad sign for their chances at a Best Picture nomination. And though The Two Popes was heavily nominated by international awards bodies like BAFTA and the Golden Globes, it couldn’t muster a single SAG nomination, so it’s effectively dead.

The Farewell looked like it was in good shape all year and then just couldn’t quite get there. Unfortunately, it’s kind of had its thunder stolen in every direction at once. It lost its “the year’s best family drama” cred to Marriage Story, voters wanting to support a female-directed movie have mostly fled to Little Women, campaign attention from hipster distributor A24 has largely been diverted to Uncut Gems, and thanks to Parasite, The Farewell somehow isn’t even the best or most successful subtitled Asian film in the race.

That leaves Knives Out and Ford v Ferrari, films that both made the PGA top ten and have shown up semi-regularly in a fair number of other precursors. Both are crowd-pleasers with near unanimous acclaim and were big box office hits led by major stars. There’s no doubt that both are widely loved by voters, but the question is how many voters are passionate in their support. Sometimes the math just doesn’t work.

If one of them were to grab that ninth nomination, I’d give the slight edge to Ford v Ferrari for no other reason than it seems like more of an awards movie. Most voters think strategically about their ballots, and they don’t like throwing votes away. If there’s a prevailing perception that Knives Out isn’t really an awards movie, and that it doesn’t really have a chance to get a Best Picture nomination, that’s powerful enough to keep it off a lot of ballots (no matter how much the people filling out those ballots may love it).

On the other hand, Ford v Ferrari does strike people as an awards movie, possibly because of Christian Bale—one of those rare actors that can make anything seem like a prestige film. The whole time I’ve been writing this, I honestly hadn’t yet decided whether I would pick Ford v Ferrari to make the cutoff or not. But I’ve talked myself into it. I think it’ll be a nine-film Best Picture lineup, and Ford v Ferrari gets the last slot. Never underestimate the power of the Academy to love a period film based on the true story of a manly (white) man doing manly things and sticking it to the man.

BEST DIRECTOR

Basically Safe

1. Sam Mendes, 1917
2. Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
3. Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
4. Martin Scorsese, The Irishman

Probably One of These

5. Greta Gerwig, Little Women
6. Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
7. Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory

Feasible Long Shots 

8. James Mangold, Ford v Ferrari
9. Josh & Benny Safdie, Uncut Gems

Really Not That Likely

10. Todd Phillips, Joker
11. Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit

Who the Hell Knows With This Category

12. Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life
13. Jay Roach, Bombshell
14. Lulu Wang, The Farewell

No Academy branch—not even the documentarians—have provided more shocks on nomination morning in the last decade than the directors. There have been several times, from Ben Affleck in 2012 to Ridley Scott in 2015 to Bradley Cooper last year, that a director widely considered a lock to safely cruise to a nomination ended up being left out entirely. So no one is a lock here. The top four are as safe as anyone can be in this category, but none of them are a lock.

Having said that, I also won’t be daring enough to actually predict any of those top four to miss out. There’s just too much passion and consensus behind those films. So we’re only debating about one spot in this race.

Let’s start with who probably isn’t getting that spot: Todd Phillips and Taika Waititi. Although Taika got the fifth slot from the Directors Guild, and Phillips got it from both BAFTA and the Globes, I don’t see either getting in here. While the Academy Directors Branch sometimes throws huge curve balls regarding who gets left out, they’ve been extremely consistent with who gets in. This is a very small branch filled with serious elitist snobs, and I mean that as a compliment. Other than maybe the Writers, no branch of the Academy has better taste than the Directors. The Best Director field is where major auteurs often show up, but populists rarely do.

This is just not a category that critically divisive films get nominated in, and on the rare occasion where a borderline divisive film breaks through—Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, Vice last year—it’s by a director who’s been nominated before. That doesn’t apply to Phillips or Waititi, both of whom made films that are sitting below 60 on MetaCritic. While it’s not impossible, either of them getting a nomination would go against nearly everything we’ve learned about this branch.

Most likely, that fifth spot will go to either Gerwig, Baumbach, or Almodóvar. Only Baumbach hasn’t been nominated as a director before, and all three have been nominated for Original Screenplay (with Almodóvar winning that Oscar for 2002’s Talk to Her). Baumbach and Almodóvar both made films that are, at least partially, about a director. That may seem like a built-in advantage, but it also may cause them to split the vote.

I expect Gerwig to narrowly take it. Little Women is the showiest film of the three, both in terms of style and production. And perhaps unfairly, just because of how familiar we are with the careers of Baumbach and Almodóvar, Little Women also comes away feeling like the freshest film of the three. It’s the one that feels new and alive with possibility.

Additionally, it must be said, the Directors Branch has only ever nominated a woman five times. Statistically that may suggest Gerwig is a longshot, but she was one of those five times (two years ago, for Lady Bird), and I think a stat like that—and the increasing ubiquity with which it gets repeated every Oscar season—creates a huge pressure and feeling of responsibility among voters to help rectify it. Little Women is a wonderful film that makes that really easy to accomplish.

BEST ACTRESS 

Actual Locks

1. Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
2. Charlize Theron, Bombshell

Probably a Lock

3. Renée Zellweger, Judy

Four Names, Two Spots

4. Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
5. Awkwafina, The Farewell
6. Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
7. Lupita Nyong’o, Us

Not Gonna Happen

8. Alfre Woodard, Clemency
9. Jessie Buckley, Wild Rose
10. Julianne Moore, Gloria Bell
11. Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart
12. Ana de Armas, Knives Out
13. Elisabeth Moss, Her Smell

Theron, ScarJo, and Zellweger have all shown up in every precursor. They should all be completely safe. And yet, I can’t escape this nagging feeling that the biggest shock of nomination morning could be Zellweger missing out. Judy is relatively unloved compared to the films of her competitors, Zellweger’s Globes acceptance speech won’t exactly inspire voters to send her to another podium, and in a race this close between seven women, some voters may leave out the presumed frontrunner under the assumption that they’re safe.

There’s been significant writing and discourse about the belief that three non-white actresses—Awkwafina, Erivo, and Nyong’o—are fighting for the same final slot. If voters have been privy to this critique (and surely many have), some may deliberately strive for better representation on their ballots and vote for two, or even all three, of those women. If that happens, it necessarily comes at the expense of someone else, and the lone frontrunner who isn’t in a possible Best Picture nominee may be the one who loses the most votes.

But having said all that, I still can’t get myself to pull the trigger on predicting a Zellweger miss. Saoirse Ronan is likely the more vulnerable one, especially because male voters have apparently shown little interest in actually watching Little Women.

I think Ronan, Awkwafina, Erivo, and Nyong’o are all extremely tight here, and I wouldn’t be surprised at any combination of those four names getting the final two spots. But there are a few reasons I think Erivo and Nyong’o will be the ones to miss out.

First, as we saw with Toni Collette and Hereditary last year, a lot of voters just won’t bother watching horror movies. That genre bias didn’t hurt Nyong’o with the populist SAG, where she got in, but it may be fatal with Academy voters. Erivo also got in with SAG, and Harriet is the kind of easily digestible, just-prestige-enough box office hit routinely loved by that body. But when compared with Little Women and The Farewell, it’s probably the film that will hold the least sway with more discerning Academy voters. And the fact that Erivo is a likely nominee in the Original Song category may help voters decide to leave her off here.

But the biggest reason I think Erivo and Nyong’o will miss out is, ultimately, I just don’t have much faith that a lot of Academy voters will think proactively and seriously about diversity. For as much oxygen as the “don’t pit these two against each other” pleading has gotten in the awards conversation, I still don’t trust enough white voters to avoid succumbing to it.

BEST ACTOR

Actual Locks

1. Adam Driver, Marriage Story
2. Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Safe-ish

3. Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

The Great Bloodbath

4. Christian Bale, Ford v Ferrari
5. Eddie Murphy, Dolemite Is My Name
6. Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
7. Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
8. Robert De Niro, The Irishman
9. Taron Egerton, Rocketman

Too Little, Too Late

10. Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell
11. George MacKay, 1917
12. Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Welcome to maybe the most difficult acting race to predict of the decade, with nine major contenders who are all being somewhat widely predicted, and whose publicists are all assuring them their names will get called on Monday morning. A lot of pundits (probably including me) will only go three-for-five in this category, because how do you even choose?

Let’s start with the easy ones: Driver and Phoenix are in, and DiCaprio is pretty safe. Leo has been nominated by every major precursor, though he doesn’t feel quite as safe as Driver and Phoenix because no one really believes he can win. But we have to start somewhere, so let’s pencil him in.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Deep breath… Bale was nominated by SAG and the Globes, but not BAFTA or Critics’ Choice. Murphy and Banderas both got in with Critics’ Choice and the Globes, but not SAG or BAFTA. Pryce got in with the Globes and BAFTA, but not SAG or Critics’ Choice. Egerton won the Globe and got in with both SAG and BAFTA, but missed the Critics’ Choice. And De Niro got in with Critic’s Choice and nowhere else, but he’s Robert De Niro.

On that scoreboard of dubious reliability, Egerton is the leader and the stats say he should get in. But let’s look closer. We can’t take his BAFTA nom that seriously because he’s a British actor playing a British icon. We can’t take his SAG nom that seriously because he was in a wildly populist hit film. And we really can’t take his Globes win seriously at all because he allegedly invited every single voter in the Hollywood Foreign Press to personally attend his birthday party and see an Elton John concert. (Yes, really.) Among a voting body that is less British, more discerning, and that weren’t shamelessly wined and dined, I don’t think he can get in against this year’s steep competition.

De Niro is the next cut. Despite his poor performance in the precursors, he has to be considered a serious threat to get a nom given who he is and what movie he’s in. But again, the competition is too steep and of all the contenders, his performance seems to be the only one that some voters have actual problems with, particularly in the badly mismatched physicality of the scenes where he’s supposed to be much younger.

For the final two slots, there’s just no good way to choose between Bale, Murphy, Banderas, and Pryce. No matter who you pick, you’re relying on vague intuition and/or outright guessing. So we’ll make it quick.

I’m picking Bale because I think a lot of voters believe he’s arguably our greatest working actor, and that will hold a ton of sway with difficult decisions made in a pinch (which a lot of Oscar voting ultimately is).

Murphy is my final pick for a few reasons. He’s more known than Pryce, and The Two Popes never gained as much traction as an awards film as we thought it would. Murphy campaigned a lot harder than Banderas (who has been working on a play in Spain for the entire season), and his much ballyhooed return to SNL was a huge success and visibility boost.

But even more than how he compares to his competition, Eddie Murphy in 2020 is the kind of story Oscar voters just love. He was a mega-star who fell from grace (arguably more than once), people adore his transcendent talent, and he probably should have won the Oscar in 2006 for Dreamgirls, so many voters will see him as due. When I saw Dolemite Is My Name at Toronto last September, I immediately declared Eddie would get an Oscar nom. I feel a lot less sure of that now than I did then, but I also haven’t seen enough to make me change my mind.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The Lock (and the Winner)

1. Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Quite Safe

2. Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
3. Florence Pugh, Little Women

Probably Safe

4. Margot Robbie, Bombshell
5. Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit

It Could Happen

6. Shuzhen Zhao, The Farewell
7. Nicole Kidman, Bombshell
8. Annette Bening, The Report
9. Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell

Looming

10. Margot Robbie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

This is the only acting race that appears to have more or less sorted itself out, which means we may be in for a curveball. But after agonizing and overthinking everywhere else, I’m allowing myself to go chalk here.

Bening and Bates both got nominated at the Globes but nowhere else, and I have a longstanding and unbreakable personal policy to not take an actor’s candidacy seriously when all they have is a lone Globes nomination.

Kidman got a SAG nom over Pugh, but SAG apparently didn’t care for Little Women—a problem I don’t expect Oscar voters to share—and Kidman is the exact kind of superstar that SAG gives an outsized weight to in awards season.

Earlier in the year I thought Shuzhen Zhao would surely get in, but she’s been absent from nearly every precursor (except Critics’ Choice), and the overall chances for The Farewell to appear in several categories seem to have faded a bit.

The biggest potential pitfall with this race is Margot Robbie. Oscar rules stipulate that actors can’t be double-nominated in the same category (though they can be nominated for both lead and supporting roles in the same year), so if voters split on which film to honor her for, she may not get in for either. If that happens, a path could open up for Zhao or Kidman to get in. But the consensus to vote for Robbie in Bombshell over Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems to be pretty secure.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

The Lock (and the Winner)

1. Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Someone’s Getting Left Out

2. Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
3. Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
4. Joe Pesci, The Irishman
5. Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse
6. Al Pacino, The Irishman

Legitimate Spoiler Potential

7. Kang-ho Song, Parasite

Victims of Category Fraud

8. Alan Alda, Marriage Story
9. Jamie Foxx, Just Mercy
10. John Lithgow, Bombshell
11. Sterling K. Brown, Waves
12. Tracy Letts, Ford v Ferrari
13. Shia LaBeouf, Honey Boy

Welcome to the Best Actor spillover category, where most of the likely nominees are co-leads rather than true supporting actors. That sucks for most of the year’s actual supporting actors (like Alda, Foxx, Lithgow, Brown, and Letts), all of whom watched their odds disintegrate under the unstoppable power of category fraud. Instead, Joe Pesci might be the only true supporting actor this year to be nominated.

The precursors pretty strongly suggest that Pitt, Hopkins, Hanks, Pesci, and Pacino will be our five nominees. In fact, Willem Dafoe hasn’t shown up anywhere except Critics’ Choice (who also nominated all of the aforementioned five names). But I just can’t shake the feeling that Dafoe is getting in.

Here’s what we know: the Academy Actors Branch loves Willem Dafoe right now. He’s been nominated for the last two years in a row, including last January when he shocked most pundits by getting in for At Eternity’s Gate—a film that few people saw and even fewer people liked. The Lighthouse, on the other hand, was a significant arthouse hit that audiences really responded to. And it could be argued—in fact, I’ll argue it right now—that Dafoe gives a career-best performance in The Lighthouse. His scenery-chewing monologues are so over-the-top that they effectively come back down the other side and land in a perfect sweet spot. It’s the apex of the Willem Dafoe experience.

So here’s my against-the-grain, no-guts-no-glory prediction—Willem Dafoe is getting nominated for The Lighthouse. The question, then, is who gets left out? It’s obviously not Pitt, but the other presumed frontrunners are all vulnerable.

Hopkins was left off by SAG, while Hanks, Pacino, and Pesci all got nominated everywhere. Hanks has a troubling recent Oscar history—he hasn’t been nominated since 2001, and Academy voters seem to have developed a baffling aversion to recognizing him. But that can’t go on forever, and a year where he played Mr. Rogers and gave a rousing lifetime achievement award speech at the Globes feels like the moment his Oscar cold streak finally ends.

If Dafoe gets in, Pacino or Pesci are the most likely victims. I can imagine either getting left out, but there seems to be a firmer consensus about the understated supporting work Pesci does in The Irishman (not to mention his comeback after being absent from the screen for more than a decade). Praise for Pacino is fainter, and he mostly seems to be getting nominated everywhere based off of momentum for the film and momentum for being Al Pacino. That momentum has halted for De Niro, so why couldn’t it for Pacino? I think it will.

The big looming spoiler is Kang-ho Song, the beleaguered patriarch of the poor family in Parasite. Every year, one film does a whole lot better on nomination morning than was widely predicted. Last year it was ROMA securing nominations for both of its actresses, and two years ago it was Phantom Thread scoring surprise nominations for Picture, Director, and Supporting Actress. That could easily happen to Parasite this year, and if it hits with the Academy even better than expected, Song is the likely beneficiary.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Locks

1. Greta Gerwig, Little Women
2. Steven Zaillian, The Irishman

Reasonably Safe

3. Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes

Someone’s Getting Left Out

4. Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
5. Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
6. Todd Phillips & Scott Silver, Joker

Extreme Long Shots

7. Edward Norton, Motherless Brooklyn
8. Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham, Just Mercy
9. Lorene Scafaria, Hustlers
10. Too Many Names to List, Toy Story 4

Adapted Screenplay effectively seems to be a 6-film race, so the question is which one gets left out. Gerwig and Zaillian are very safe; there’s a history of reverence for them from this branch, and their unique approaches to the material will be rewarded. And though McCarten’s Two Popes script was ignored by the WGA, I think he’ll be safe with the more highbrow Academy Writers Branch, who have nominated him twice before (for Darkest Hour and The Theory of Everything).

In a weak year for the category, that leaves two highly divisive films (Joker and Jojo Rabbit) and one film that’s just struggling to get people to care about it (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). I think Taika is the safest because there’s so much goodwill for him as a writer and a creative, even among those who thought Jojo Rabbit suffered from serious tonal problems. Both he and his film are representative of the kind of quirkiness that often succeeds with this branch, and he’s probably past due for a screenplay nomination.

While it’s clear much of the Academy loves Joker, the Writers Branch is not representative of the Academy as a whole. Like the Directors Branch, the writers are one of the snobbiest groups in the Academy, and there’s very little evidence that they have any interest in comic book movies. Yes, Logan was nominated two years ago in an incredibly weak field (seriously, look up what the other options were), but Black Panther was ignored last year and The Dark Knight was ignored in 2008. And remember, Dark Knight received eight Oscar nominations; like Joker, it was broadly loved by much of the Academy, but not by the Writers Branch.

It’s also worth noting that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is literally about a writer trying to craft a story while dealing with family troubles, so even though the movie is having a hard time gaining traction across the board with the Academy, the Writers Branch should be especially susceptible to honoring it. I think it’ll be close, but there’s just more for writers to appreciate in a movie about a writer reconciling with his father than there is in a movie about a homicidal incel in clown makeup.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Locks

1. Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Wan, Parasite
3. Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story

Reasonably Safe

4. Rian Johnson, Knives Out

Probably One of These

5. Lulu Wang, The Farewell
6. Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory
7. Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917

Potential Spoilers

8. Too Many Names to List, Booksmart
9. Josh & Benny Safdie, Ronald Bronstein, Uncut Gems
10. Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, Dolemite Is My Name

Extreme Long Shots

11. Shia LaBeouf, Honey Boy
12. Charles Randolph, Bombshell
13. Jordan Peele, Us
14. Too Many Names to List, Ford v Ferrari
15. Trey Edward Shults, Waves

We’re in the home stretch, so it’s time for a speed round.

Parasite, Marriage Story, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are not just three of the most acclaimed films of the year, but they’re specifically acclaimed because of their story and dialogue. They’re obvious sure things to get in here. And Knives Out is right behind them. While it’s conceivable that Rian Johnson doesn’t get in for his expertly crafted whodunnit, it’s not really that conceivable.

In all likelihood, the final spot is between 1917, Pain and Glory, and The Farewell. Because 1917 isn’t very reliant on dialogue, it probably has the lowest chance. Pedro Almodóvar has won this category before (for 2002’s Talk to Her), so he certainly can’t be counted out for his lovely, semi-autobiographical film about an aging filmmaker facing mortality.

But The Farewell just feels like one of those quintessential films that’s a little too indie for the Best Picture field, yet finds its home in the Original Screenplay category, like First Reformed last year, or 20th Century Women the year before. Voters in the Writers Branch undoubtedly know that 1917 is a sure thing to get nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and Pain and Glory is a sure thing to get nominated for Best International Film, but for The Farewell, the place to honor it is right here.

And that’s it. My apologies that we’re skipping breakdowns of the Documentary and International Film races this year. Because of the shortened Oscar season I’ve only been able to see about half of the films on the shortlists for those categories, so I just don’t have enough of a sense for how they’ll breakdown and what voters will respond to. Hopefully full analyses of those races will be back next year, when the Oscar calendar mercifully returns to normal.