Clockwise from left: Amy Madigan, Wagner Moura, KPop Demon Hunters, Renate Reinsve, Joe Alwyn and Jessie Buckley, Miles Caton, The Perfect Neighbor and Leonardo DiCaprio. Courtesy Of Netflix (2); Courtesy of Focus Features; Courtesy of Warner Bros. (3); Courtesy of Neon (2)
THR’s awards expert Scott Feinberg and chief film critic David Rooney `weigh in ahead of the 98th Annual Academy Awards.
THR‘s awards expert Scott Feinberg and chief film critic David Rooney weigh in on the probable and preferred victors, respectively, ahead of the 98th Annual Academy Awards.
- Best Picture Genre films aren’t always awards catnip, but Sinners landed an all-time record 16 Oscar noms, won the best cast Actor Award and may be a beneficiary of the preferential ballot. However, One Battle After Another, though it landed three fewer noms, has dominated the precursor awards — from the Directors Guild and Producers Guild to the Globes, Critics Choice and BAFTAs — so it remains the safer bet. The sleeper: Hamnet. — SF WILL WIN One Battle After Another I’d choose The Secret Agent here since there was no more complex or skillfully executed movie in 2025. But the chances of the Brazilian political thriller pulling off a Parasite victory seem slim to none, so I’ll go with Paul Thomas Anderson’s radical epic: wildly entertaining but also timely as it taps into collective discontent with creeping authoritarianism and vilification of otherness, with a stellar ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio. — DR SHOULD WIN One Battle After Another
- Best Director Sinners‘ Ryan Coogler is tremendously liked and respected and would be the first Black filmmaker ever to win this award. But One Battle‘s Anderson has been around longer, has racked up 14 Oscar noms without a win and is widely regarded as overdue. Plus, PTA won every major precursor this cycle, including the DGA’s top honor, which has presaged this Oscar’s winner all but eight times over the past 77 years. — SF WILL WIN Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another Humor me while I grumble about the absence in this category of The Secret Agent‘s Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose Cannes best director win should have been a precursor to Oscar contention. That leaves me torn between Anderson and Coogler, both of whom delivered bold, original works with a lot on their minds. I’m going with the latter since Sinners offers so many expertly crafted narrative and thematic layers to unfold. — DR SHOULD WIN Ryan Coogler, Sinners
- Best Actress If there’s one result that you can take to the bank, it’s this one, given that Irishwoman Jessie Buckley, the heart and soul of Hamnet, has swept the entire circuit of televised awards shows (Critics Choice, Golden Globes, BAFTA and Actor) with utter charm. Just a few years ago, when the Academy was half its size and clubbier, Song Sung Blue‘s Kate Hudson, as Hollywood royalty, would have had a better shot. — SF WILL WIN Jessie Buckley, Hamnet This won’t be a popular opinion, but I find Buckley’s performance gratingly overwrought in Hamnet, which only kicked in for me in the stage scenes at the Globe. Rose Byrne’s tightrope walk across the abyss of maternal delirium in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a remarkably sustained feat, and her win would be well-earned. But I’m going with Renate Reinsve’s transfixing balance of emotional volatility and sly humor. — DR SHOULD WIN Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
- Best Actor For the second straight year, Timothée Chalamet is in contention for playing a polarizing character in a best picture nominee. Marty Supreme‘s star won Critics Choice and Golden Globe honors, then stumbled at the BAFTA and Actor awards. Michael B. Jordan, who plays twins in Sinners, prevailed at the latter and is slightly older, more understated and up for a better-liked film. Wild card: The Secret Agent‘s Wagner Moura. — SF WILL WIN Michael B. Jordan, Sinners Chalamet is the presumptive frontrunner for Marty Supreme, and his performance is indeed a marvel — brash, shameless and steadfast in its refusal to sand off the abrasive edges. But Moura, in a far less showy role, makes something extraordinary of an ordinary man, his calm, contemplative exterior belying a turbulent interiority, with roiling currents of indignation, grief and tender concern for his young son. — DR SHOULD WIN Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
- Best Supporting Actor Septuagenarian vets Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value) and Delroy Lindo (Sinners) are overdue first-time nominees. But Lindo wasn’t nominated for other awards (only Marcia Gay Harden overcame this, in 2001), and Skarsgard won the Globe but missed an Actor nom. One Battle‘s Sean Penn, despite having won twice before, refusing to campaign and competing with a co-star (Benicio Del Toro), won the BAFTA and Actor awards. — SF WILL WIN Sean Penn, One Battle After Another For me, it comes down to two beloved veterans who scored their long-overdue first Oscar noms. Lindo is wonderful in Sinners as a boozy, old-timer blues musician already acquainted with the devil. But it’s impossible to pass up Skarsgard’s wily ability to keep the audience in the corner of a narcissistic filmmaker whose efforts to reverse decades of lousy parenting are more opportunistic than redemptive. — DR SHOULD WIN Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
- Best Supporting Actress Most acting winners hail from best picture nominees — good news for Sinners‘ Wunmi Mosaku (BAFTA winner), One Battle‘s Teyana Taylor (Globe winner) and Sentimental Value‘s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning. But Weapons‘ Amy Madigan has literally been acting — and been an Oscar-nominated actress — for longer than any of them have been alive. Her relationships, name ID and colorful turn should boost her. — SF WILL WIN Amy Madigan, Weapons The women in Sentimental Value are finely chiseled pieces in a playfully Bergmanesque chamber drama; Madigan’s Aunt Gladys is terrifying in Weapons; and Taylor in One Battle is such a blazing life force that her presence lingers long after she exits the action. But Mosaku floored me as a spiritual healer whose toughness, wisdom and warmth translate from this life to the next. — DR SHOULD WIN Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
- Best Adapted Screenplay One can’t totally rule out Hamnet, given people’s high regard for the author of its source material, Maggie O’Farrell, the fact that she’s co-writer of the adaptation (with Chloé Zhao) and the resulting film’s popularity. But all indications — including USC Scripter, Critics Choice, Globe and BAFTA awards — point toward PTA becoming an Oscar winner via this prize with more certainty than any others for which he’s nominated. — SF WILL WIN Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another I love the poetic Americana of Train Dreams, a fine-grained portrait of frontier life that endows the novelistic beauty of Denis Johnson’s prose with cinematic vitality. But the dearth of big-swing risk-taking in Hollywood makes Anderson’s bold reinvention of Thomas Pynchon feel like some kind of miracle, a provocative movie synced to our current political moment with sardonic humor and equal parts hope and despair. — DR SHOULD WIN Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
- Best Original Screenplay Blue Moon and Marty Supreme are polarizing, and It Was Just an Accident and Sentimental Value aren’t in English, which is still a hurdle. Voters will almost certainly seize this opportunity to ensure that Coogler goes home with at least one Oscar for Sinners, which also is unique and out-there in the way of many recent recipients of this award (e.g. Anora, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Parasite and Get Out). — SF WILL WIN Ryan Coogler, Sinners I sound like a broken record, but don’t get me started on the absence of The Secret Agent here, not that it would have been easy to eliminate even one of the final five. Each of them has its own distinctive artistry, but I’m opting for Joachim Trier’s piercing reflection on family and memory: The Norwegian drama balances light and darkness while examining the mutable contracts between sisters and, even more so, fathers and daughters. — DR SHOULD WIN Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
- Best Documentary Feature The doc race has been all over the place this year, with the PGA, DGA and International Documentary Association giving their top honors to films that aren’t even Oscar-nominated. Meanwhile, the Cinema Eye Honors championed Come See Me in the Good Light, BAFTA backed Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and Critics Choice and Spirit Award voters cast their ballots for The Perfect Neighbor. Advantage: Netflix. — SF WILL WIN The Perfect Neighbor Some of the year’s strongest documentaries — Apocalypse in the Tropics, Orwell: 2+2=5, Cover-Up, Afternoons of Solitude — were passed over. But the standout here is a film that reimagines the true-crime genre using police body-cam footage, making us feel like real-time witnesses to the senseless killing of a mother of four. The doc throws Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law and its inherent racial bias into stark relief. — DR SHOULD WIN The Perfect Neighbor
- International Feature France’s It Was Just an Accident won Cannes’ Palme d’Or, but the Oscar race seems to be between two films it beat: Norway’s Sentimental Value (BAFTA winner) and Brazil’s The Secret Agent (Critics Choice and Golden Globe winner), both of which are nominated for best picture and in other major categories (the former’s haul includes director, original screenplay and four acting noms, the latter’s a best actor nom). It’s a nail-biter. — SF WILL WIN Sentimental Value (Norway) Sirat is a staggering example of the visceral power of cinema, but the Brazilian entry is a sui generis masterwork, a shape-shifting portrait of life under a brutal regime. Winner of the trifecta of New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics’ awards in this category, it’s also a useful reminder of the dangers of ignoring history. — DR SHOULD WIN The Secret Agent (Brazil)
- Animated Feature This Oscar’s last two winners emanated from outside the U.S., so it’s not impossible that France’s Arco or Little Amélie or the Character of Rain could win. But every major prize thus far has gone to the Netflix-backed global phenomenon, KPop Demon Hunters, save for the BAFTA Award, for which it was ineligible. That went to Disney’s blockbuster Zootopia 2, a sequel to the film that won this award nine years ago. — SF WILL WIN KPop Demon Hunters This was not a memorable year for animation, following last year’s exceptional bounty, with Flow, The Wild Robot, Memoir of a Snail, Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit. Of this year’s crop, Zootopia 2 is funny and endearing enough, though I barely made it through the others. The shiny exception is KPop Demon Hunters, a genuine pop culture phenomenon with insane energy, eye-searing colors and catchy tunes. — DR SHOULD WIN KPop Demon Hunters
- And Feinberg Forecasts the Rest … Cinematography One Battle After Another Costume Design Frankenstein Film Editing One Battle After Another Makeup & Hairstyling Frankenstein Original Score Sinners Original Song “Golden,” from KPop Demon Hunters Production Design Frankenstein Sound F1: The Movie Visual Effects Avatar: Fire and Ash Animated Short The Girl Who Cried Pearls Documentary Short All the Empty Rooms Live-Action Short The Singers This story appeared in the March 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Genre films aren’t always awards catnip, but Sinners landed an all-time record 16 Oscar noms, won the best cast Actor Award and may be a beneficiary of the preferential ballot. However, One Battle After Another, though it landed three fewer noms, has dominated the precursor awards — from the Directors Guild and Producers Guild to the Globes, Critics Choice and BAFTAs — so it remains the safer bet. The sleeper: Hamnet. — SF
WILL WIN One Battle After Another
I’d choose The Secret Agent here since there was no more complex or skillfully executed movie in 2025. But the chances of the Brazilian political thriller pulling off a Parasite victory seem slim to none, so I’ll go with Paul Thomas Anderson’s radical epic: wildly entertaining but also timely as it taps into collective discontent with creeping authoritarianism and vilification of otherness, with a stellar ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio. — DR
SHOULD WIN One Battle After Another
Sinners‘ Ryan Coogler is tremendously liked and respected and would be the first Black filmmaker ever to win this award. But One Battle‘s Anderson has been around longer, has racked up 14 Oscar noms without a win and is widely regarded as overdue. Plus, PTA won every major precursor this cycle, including the DGA’s top honor, which has presaged this Oscar’s winner all but eight times over the past 77 years. — SF
WILL WIN Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Humor me while I grumble about the absence in this category of The Secret Agent‘s Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose Cannes best director win should have been a precursor to Oscar contention. That leaves me torn between Anderson and Coogler, both of whom delivered bold, original works with a lot on their minds. I’m going with the latter since Sinners offers so many expertly crafted narrative and thematic layers to unfold. — DR
If there’s one result that you can take to the bank, it’s this one, given that Irishwoman Jessie Buckley, the heart and soul of Hamnet, has swept the entire circuit of televised awards shows (Critics Choice, Golden Globes, BAFTA and Actor) with utter charm. Just a few years ago, when the Academy was half its size and clubbier, Song Sung Blue‘s Kate Hudson, as Hollywood royalty, would have had a better shot. — SF
This won’t be a popular opinion, but I find Buckley’s performance gratingly overwrought in Hamnet, which only kicked in for me in the stage scenes at the Globe. Rose Byrne’s tightrope walk across the abyss of maternal delirium in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a remarkably sustained feat, and her win would be well-earned. But I’m going with Renate Reinsve’s transfixing balance of emotional volatility and sly humor. — DR
SHOULD WIN Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
For the second straight year, Timothée Chalamet is in contention for playing a polarizing character in a best picture nominee. Marty Supreme‘s star won Critics Choice and Golden Globe honors, then stumbled at the BAFTA and Actor awards. Michael B. Jordan, who plays twins in Sinners, prevailed at the latter and is slightly older, more understated and up for a better-liked film. Wild card: The Secret Agent‘s Wagner Moura. — SF
WILL WIN Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Chalamet is the presumptive frontrunner for Marty Supreme, and his performance is indeed a marvel — brash, shameless and steadfast in its refusal to sand off the abrasive edges. But Moura, in a far less showy role, makes something extraordinary of an ordinary man, his calm, contemplative exterior belying a turbulent interiority, with roiling currents of indignation, grief and tender concern for his young son. — DR
SHOULD WIN Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Septuagenarian vets Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value) and Delroy Lindo (Sinners) are overdue first-time nominees. But Lindo wasn’t nominated for other awards (only Marcia Gay Harden overcame this, in 2001), and Skarsgard won the Globe but missed an Actor nom. One Battle‘s Sean Penn, despite having won twice before, refusing to campaign and competing with a co-star (Benicio Del Toro), won the BAFTA and Actor awards. — SF
WILL WIN Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
For me, it comes down to two beloved veterans who scored their long-overdue first Oscar noms. Lindo is wonderful in Sinners as a boozy, old-timer blues musician already acquainted with the devil. But it’s impossible to pass up Skarsgard’s wily ability to keep the audience in the corner of a narcissistic filmmaker whose efforts to reverse decades of lousy parenting are more opportunistic than redemptive. — DR
SHOULD WIN Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
Most acting winners hail from best picture nominees — good news for Sinners‘ Wunmi Mosaku (BAFTA winner), One Battle‘s Teyana Taylor (Globe winner) and Sentimental Value‘s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning. But Weapons‘ Amy Madigan has literally been acting — and been an Oscar-nominated actress — for longer than any of them have been alive. Her relationships, name ID and colorful turn should boost her. — SF
The women in Sentimental Value are finely chiseled pieces in a playfully Bergmanesque chamber drama; Madigan’s Aunt Gladys is terrifying in Weapons; and Taylor in One Battle is such a blazing life force that her presence lingers long after she exits the action. But Mosaku floored me as a spiritual healer whose toughness, wisdom and warmth translate from this life to the next. — DR
One can’t totally rule out Hamnet, given people’s high regard for the author of its source material, Maggie O’Farrell, the fact that she’s co-writer of the adaptation (with Chloé Zhao) and the resulting film’s popularity. But all indications — including USC Scripter, Critics Choice, Globe and BAFTA awards — point toward PTA becoming an Oscar winner via this prize with more certainty than any others for which he’s nominated. — SF
I love the poetic Americana of Train Dreams, a fine-grained portrait of frontier life that endows the novelistic beauty of Denis Johnson’s prose with cinematic vitality. But the dearth of big-swing risk-taking in Hollywood makes Anderson’s bold reinvention of Thomas Pynchon feel like some kind of miracle, a provocative movie synced to our current political moment with sardonic humor and equal parts hope and despair. — DR
SHOULD WIN Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Blue Moon and Marty Supreme are polarizing, and It Was Just an Accident and Sentimental Value aren’t in English, which is still a hurdle. Voters will almost certainly seize this opportunity to ensure that Coogler goes home with at least one Oscar for Sinners, which also is unique and out-there in the way of many recent recipients of this award (e.g. Anora, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Parasite and Get Out). — SF
I sound like a broken record, but don’t get me started on the absence of The Secret Agent here, not that it would have been easy to eliminate even one of the final five. Each of them has its own distinctive artistry, but I’m opting for Joachim Trier’s piercing reflection on family and memory: The Norwegian drama balances light and darkness while examining the mutable contracts between sisters and, even more so, fathers and daughters. — DR
SHOULD WIN Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
The doc race has been all over the place this year, with the PGA, DGA and International Documentary Association giving their top honors to films that aren’t even Oscar-nominated. Meanwhile, the Cinema Eye Honors championed Come See Me in the Good Light, BAFTA backed Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and Critics Choice and Spirit Award voters cast their ballots for The Perfect Neighbor. Advantage: Netflix. — SF
Some of the year’s strongest documentaries — Apocalypse in the Tropics, Orwell: 2+2=5, Cover-Up, Afternoons of Solitude — were passed over. But the standout here is a film that reimagines the true-crime genre using police body-cam footage, making us feel like real-time witnesses to the senseless killing of a mother of four. The doc throws Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law and its inherent racial bias into stark relief. — DR
France’s It Was Just an Accident won Cannes’ Palme d’Or, but the Oscar race seems to be between two films it beat: Norway’s Sentimental Value (BAFTA winner) and Brazil’s The Secret Agent (Critics Choice and Golden Globe winner), both of which are nominated for best picture and in other major categories (the former’s haul includes director, original screenplay and four acting noms, the latter’s a best actor nom). It’s a nail-biter. — SF
Sirat is a staggering example of the visceral power of cinema, but the Brazilian entry is a sui generis masterwork, a shape-shifting portrait of life under a brutal regime. Winner of the trifecta of New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics’ awards in this category, it’s also a useful reminder of the dangers of ignoring history. — DR
SHOULD WIN The Secret Agent (Brazil)
This Oscar’s last two winners emanated from outside the U.S., so it’s not impossible that France’s Arco or Little Amélie or the Character of Rain could win. But every major prize thus far has gone to the Netflix-backed global phenomenon, KPop Demon Hunters, save for the BAFTA Award, for which it was ineligible. That went to Disney’s blockbuster Zootopia 2, a sequel to the film that won this award nine years ago. — SF
This was not a memorable year for animation, following last year’s exceptional bounty, with Flow, The Wild Robot, Memoir of a Snail, Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit. Of this year’s crop, Zootopia 2 is funny and endearing enough, though I barely made it through the others. The shiny exception is KPop Demon Hunters, a genuine pop culture phenomenon with insane energy, eye-searing colors and catchy tunes. — DR
And Feinberg Forecasts the Rest …
This story appeared in the March 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
