Here’s my quick Oscar preview, just because I wanted a place for everyone to share their hopes or predictions and then their thoughts after the show, if they want to.
This year I did manage to see everything in the major categories (picture, director, writing, acting) and reviewed most of them. It’s an exciting year because I loved some of them, didn’t hate any of them, there is some suspense about many of the categories, and some of my favorites seem to be frontrunners. On the other hand there wasn’t that magic of the movie I only watched for homework purposes and ended up really liking. I pretty much meant to see all of them anyway. The only real victory was that I was wise enough to put off watching WICKED: FOR GOOD even though everybody said it would be nominated.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER seems to be the frontrunner for best picture. I rewatched it last night and still loved it. It’s a movie that starts out very serious but quickly gets extremely funny, and that’s sort of how life is, for good and bad. To me it’s a funhouse mirror reflection of the very serious struggle we face in this country, and it says that unfortunately we’re all a bunch of burnt out, horny fuck-ups but some of us are gonna try our best to make things better. And maybe somebody will get it right.
If it wins this will be that very rare time when the best picture winner is also my favorite movie of the year. (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is the only time this happened before.) The one other nominee people seem to think has a shot is SINNERS, and seeing it win the best ensemble Actor (the award formerly known as SAG) was the first time I could picture it happening. See, we all know the Academy has had trouble recognizing Black films, but they’re even less open to horror films. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is considered the one and only time in history that a horror movie ever won best picture, and I personally don’t even think of it as a horror movie. Some wise guys are saying the same thing about SINNERS, but it’s about trying not to get bit by vampires. It’s a horror movie. And when I rewatched it last week and remembered there were parts where distorted electric guitars were rocking out over the horror movie I returned to my feeling that there is no fucking way it’s winning best picture. But I’ll be excited if I’m wrong.
As a life long Fangorian I’m just impressed that SINNERS and FRANKENSTEIN are nominated in one year. That’s progress.
But what about best director? Some are predicting there will be a split, and that would in fact be historic. A Black director has never won it, even when their movie won best picture (12 YEARS A SLAVE and MOONLIGHT). I love Ryan Coogler so I will jump through the ceiling if it happens, but let’s not work ourselves up to be disappointed. Paul Thomas Anderson would very much deserve it for this film specifically and for his long career as well.
Best actor is a category I’ve seen varying predictions about. Mostly people are saying Chalamet. Some think Wagner Moura from THE SECRET AGENT. He won the Golden Globe, but that doesn’t mean shit. Nobody seems to think DiCaprio (already has his, doesn’t seem hungry for it), everybody is writing off Ethan Hawke from BLUE MOON too although I can almost see it. The Gen-X icon people are starting to realize is underappreciated. But I’m actually feeling it might be Michael B. Jordan, and that’s who I’m rooting for most. He’s one of the greats of his generation and he’s still hungry but he would be winning for a challenging but un-Oscar-like role, and I would love that.
Best actress – I think everyone agrees it’s Jessie Buckley for HAMNET. Everybody in the category is really good in their movie, though I don’t think we want to see Emma Stone win for BUGONIA just because she already seemed to feel guilty winning for POOR THINGS.
Supporting actor is another one that doesn’t seem set in stone. When I walked out of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER I said Sean Penn was gonna get it, and I think that would be deserved. His disgusting biceps, his bizarre watch, his simpering anger, he is the crisis of contemporary masculinity splattered onto a wall and scraped off with a stick. On the other hand, Benicio Del Toro is the heart of that movie, and apparently suggested many of the best parts of the story, we all love Sensei Sergio and want to honor him.. Jacob Elordi is definitely not gonna win but I’m so happy his great creature work in FRANKENSTEIN is being honored – that’s meaningful. Delroy Lindo seems like a possibility to me, and I’m sure he’d make us all cry. That might be the best possible outcome. But I kinda think it’s gonna be Stellan Skarsgård. Very good in SENTIMENTAL VALUE in a role that kinda reminds you what a solid body of work and range of skills he’s had for decades now, omnipresent but never overexposed.
Supporting actress I think will be Amy Madigan for WEAPONS, and if so that’s pretty fuckin cool, a veteran working actress coming out with this crazy cartoon witch in a horror movie and earning universal praise. If I believe this though maybe I need to be questioning my other rules about horror because, you know – we didn’t see Toni Collette winning for HEREDITARY. We didn’t see Mia Goth nominated for PEARL. This would be new territory.
I do think Teyana Taylor could possibly upset, but I think being so impactful at the beginning of a long movie and then mostly disappearing probly works against her.
In the other categories I’m not really sure what will happen. I hope FRANKENSTEIN gets a technical award or two, but I know most people didn’t like it as much as I did. I think it’s great that THE UGLY STEPSISTER got a nomination for hair and makeup. I wish Raphael Saddiq could get an Oscar but those fucking K-POP DEMON HUNTERS had to swoop in and ruin it.
Anyway have fun watching or not watching, drinking a couple small beers and a French 75 or not. I’ve been scrambling to meet two deadlines next week and I have not even seen any movies let alone written about them, so I will unfortunately be down some or all of the reviews I would normally post in a week. Sorry about that, but I will be back soon and thank you always for reading.
p.s. I don’t really do Letterboxd much but I did make a (roughly) ranked list of my 2025 favorites, if you want to be reminded of some of the great non-Oscar movies last year.
March 14th, 2026 at 1:03 pm
As in the last years, I still haven’t seen most of the nominated movies, although I try at least to squeeze in BATTLE and WEAPONS before the show, since they are both available on streaming for me.
KPOP DEMON HUNTERS might win best animated movie. Although in the last few years they picked more artsy movies over the popular crowdpleaser Disney & Dreamworks movies, that category still has the sad “I don’t care and vote for whatever my kids liked” stigma attached to it and obviously this was the one that was the most popular with the kids. The only actual threat it 2TOPIA (Or ZOO2PIA?), which also has the benefit of being “the Disney movie”. I don’t know about the other three nominations. I am sure that it actually has little chances in terms of song. By the time voting started, the voters might have been already sick from hearing it on the radio and out of their kids’ rooms all day every day so while this category isn’t above letting the pop hit of the year win, the overexposure might work against it.
Something tells me FX will go to F1: THE MOVIE. It was another one of those “We did it all in camera and the actor were in the cockpits for real yo” hypes, even though every racing scene had a tons of unnoticable CGI stuff in it. AVATAR might win too, but the last two already did, so maybe not this time?
Will be interesting to see what the brand new Best Casting category will be like. Will they just let the one with the most stars win? Will it be somehow linked to who wins Best Actor in any of the categories? We will see.