The oldest movie awards show—the first ceremony was held in 1929—is also the most highly regarded; plus, it comes at the very end of the annual awards season, which means Oscar predictions involve a complex math that takes into consideration who’s already won that year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and other esteemed accolades. But for almost a century, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has doled out the most coveted and brand-name of all movie honors: The Academy Award, nicknamed the Oscar. It’s been called that almost from the very beginning, after a member of the Academy staff noted that the trophy (depicting a trim, golden, hairless and featureless knight, standing bolt upright atop film canisters) resembled her Uncle Oscar. The name stuck as the peer-voted honors, chosen by film-industry insiders, came to connote prestige, artistic achievement and a pinnacle of showbiz recognition. Will you be watching Sunday night, March 27, when the 94th Academy Awards are broadcast live from Hollywood (8 p.m. ET on ABC) to see if your Oscar predictions come true? You should—it promises to be a big night, as always, honoring last year’s top films, actors and craftspeople. Will ThePower of the Dog, leading with its 12 nominations, deliver a sweep? (If it does, it will tie The Lord of the Rings, Ben-Hur and Titanic as one of the most Oscar-y films of all time). And speaking of nominations, Steven Spielberg has been in the running 11 times for Best Director, an Oscars record—will he add a fourth Academy Award to the three already has? The most-nominated Black actor in Oscars history (with a total of 10), Denzel Washington, also stands a chance of getting his third statuette this year for his take on Shakespeare in The Tragedy of Macbeth. And what do Lady Gaga, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Hudson (former winners all) have in common with newcomer Alana Haim, who wowed just about everyone with her universally praised acting debut in Licorice Pizza? They were all snubbed this year and shut out of the Oscars race, with zero nominations among them in 2022. The Oscars are rarely a slam-dunk when it comes to predictions of who’s going to win. There’s almost always an “upset” surprise or two. Odds-makers and pundits consider a lot of things, including the number of accolades a movie or an actor has, or doesn’t have, coming into Hollywood’s biggest night. There are also certain unquantifiable factors, such as trends, sentimentality and how the winds of Hollywood might be blowing. Sometimes awards lightning—repeating wins across the movie matrix of different awards presentations—strikes again and again, like a chain reaction. But sometimes it doesn’t. And a lot of times, for some movies and actors at the Oscars, it doesn’t strike at all. I write about movies for Parade.com, post reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and vote for the Critics’ Choice and the Music City Film Critics’ awards. I (mostly) know what, and who, I think should get Oscars this year. But “should” doesn’t necessarily mean will. There are going to be some particularly tight races, as well as some seemingly unstoppable shoo-ins. Here are my Oscarpredictions, in a dozen top categories, of likely recipients this year of moviedom’s top honor.
Oscar predictions 2022
BEST PICTURE
Belfast Coda Don’t Look Up Drive My Car Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog West Side Story The biggest award race—the only one with 10 nominees, instead of five—has some super-strong horses in the running. Spielberg renewed, revamped and reinvigorated a classic America’s movie musical with Disney’s West Side Story. One of the most solidly successful theatrical hits—and spectacles—of 2021 was Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s epic re-staging of Frank Hebert’s sci-fi odyssey, more than 35 years after it was originally made into a film. Licorice Pizza was Paul Thomas Anderson’s sweet, flavorful paean to growing up and falling in love during the 1970s in sunny California. In King Richard, Reinaldo Marcus Green brought the backstory of tennis-superstar siblings Serena and Venus Williams to life with a foreground focus on their father, who drove their drive to greatness. You want star power and satire? Don’t Look Up had Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Timotheé Chalamet,Meryl Streep and DiCaprio in a scathing social comedy about the perils of ignoring the signs of science. You can’t get much more personal and intimate than director Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, a semi-autobiographical ode to his childhood in Northern Ireland. The touching drama Coda, from writer/director Sian Heder about a teenager who’s the only hearing member in her deaf family, marks the first Best Picture nominee from Apple—and the first Oscar-nominated film with a central non-hearing cast. Drive My Car, a Japanese entry from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, is the rare international, foreign-language film to get a Best Picture nod; could it become this year’s Roma or Parasite? Nightmare Alley, a stylish noir remake of a 1947 potboiler, was a masterful descent from director Guillermo del Toro into the dark abyss of a carnival con man’s rise and fall. But none of them stands much hope of overpowering The Power of the Dog, New Zealand director Jane Campion’s Western psycho-drama opus featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as a complicated, conflicted Montana cowboy. The lauded Netflix film has additionally received accolades from the British BAFTAs, the Screen Actors Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics, and it’s already been named movie of the year by other critics’ groups, giving the tea leaves a discernible tilt toward Campion to bring home her second Oscar; she can add it to her previous one, for the screenplay of The Piano in 1994, which she also directed. When it comes to top dog at the Oscars, my prediction is that The Power of the Dog will almost certainly take a big bite.
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Javier Bardem,Being the Ricardos Benedict Cumberbatch,The Power of the Dog Andrew Garfield, tick, tick…BOOM! Will Smith, King Richard Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth Will Benedict Cumberbatch ride the wave of The Power of the Dog’s raft of nominations to a win? His performance as a taunting, macho cattle baron—with a soft, sentimental underbelly—was widely hailed, the kind of character that audiences love to loathe. But Javier Bardem was a delight in Being the Ricardos, bringing to the screen the hot-blooded personality of DesiArnaz, the entrepreneurial husband and partner of pioneering comedian Lucille Ball. Will Smith—still Oscar-less after two previous nominations in this category—was as smooth as a perfect backhand return in King Richard, playing the tennis-guru dad who groomed his racket-prodigy daughters to rule the court. Denzel Washington gave a master class in acting in The Tragedy of Macbeth, the majestically staged new take on Shakespeare’s classic from director Joel Coen (flying solo without his usual collaborator, his brother Ethan). And Andrew Garfield took us passionately behind the scenes of the Broadway dreams of the real-life theatrical composer who would eventually create the smash-hit musical Rent. Like Cumberbatch, Garfield is a Brit nominated for playing an American, and Oscar voters love to see actors “stretch.” But I predict it’ll be Will Smith, born and raised in the bosom of America (the city of Philadelphia), who finally brings home the gold for a performance that many critics called the best of his career. And after coming away from previous ceremonies empty-handed, I predict this could finally be—in tennis parlance—his winning break back. ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos Kristen Stewart, Spencer Coleman, Kidman and Chastain—sounds like a law firm, right? But if one of them doesn’t take home this prize, it might take a law firm to sort out what went awry, so surely it is to come down to those three. Olivia Colman gave one of the year’s most intriguing, most calibrated performances in The Lost Daughter, as a vacationing college prof with some deep-dish mommy issues. Nicole Kidman was pitch perfect as Lucille Ball, going through a particularly stressful week back in the 1950s with her TV series and her marriage. And Jessica Chastain channeled the camp, hype, high drama and humanity of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. You can likely rule out Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers; her performance was strong, and the movie well-received, but it will likely be overshadowed here. And it’s also probably not the year for Kristin Stewart, as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer; her acting was better than the film itself, which sometimes seemed like a dressed-up, trippy Lifetime TV biopic. It’s almost an impossibility there could be a tie in this category; there have only been six ties in Oscars history, and only one of them was in this category—in 1969, when Barbra Streisand and Katherine Hepburn both received exactly 3,030 votes. So, roll the Oscar dice, and put my bet on Chastain, who visibly transformed and became her character in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. This makes her third Oscar nomination, but she’s never won. My prediction: That’s about to change.
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Ciarán Hinds, Belfast Troy Kotsur, Coda Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog This category features a previous Oscar winner (J.K. Simmons, for Whiplash) and a critics’ darling (Jesse Plemons, with dozens of nominations stretching back for two decades). Another nominee, Irish-born stage veteran Ciarán Hinds, gets his first-ever Oscar nom here, for playing a doting grandfather in Belfast. Troy Kotsur, also an Oscar newbie, becomes the first deaf male Academy Awards nominee for his affecting portrayal a non-hearing parent of a budding singer in Coda, a charming little indie-underdog movie that made a big splash with critics and fans. In Being the Ricardos, Simmons’ embodiment of curmudgeonly I Love Lucy co-star William Frawley seems like fate smiling down on an actor for a role that fits him like a 1950s glove. It’s going to be hard to beat Kodi Smit-McPhee for his portrayal of a sensitive young man bullied by a surly, malevolent rancher (Benedict Cumberbatch); the chance for a split vote, however, between him and his Power of the Dog co-star, Plemons, might not work in his favor. But I think the actor to come out on top of the Dog fight will be Kotsur, who also recently brought home acting trophies from the Screen Actors Guild and the Independent Spirit Awards. He’s on a roll, and I predict it will continue on Oscars night.
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter Ariana DeBose, West Side Story Judi Dench, Belfast Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard There’s a lot of love, synergy and symbolism going into the nomination here for Ariana DeBose; she electrified West Side Story as Anita, putting her own stylish stamp on a role that previously brought an Oscar to Rita Moreno for the 1961 movie version of the Broadway musical. Jessie Buckley was terrific in The Lost Daughter, in crucial recurring flashbacks that helped explain the older version of her character (Olivia Colman). In King Richard, Aunjanue Ellis held her own—as the tennis-coach mom of Venus and Serena Williams—in toe-to-toe scenes with Will Smith. Judi Dench, the veteran British actress, has an Oscar, a Tony, 10 BAFTA awards and seven trophies recognizing her British theatrical achievements. This nomination, for playing the grandmother in Belfast, marks her eighth Oscar bid. Voters will be hard-pressed to ignore Kirsten Dunst in The Power of the Dog, as a widow driven to drinking by the psychological abuse of her husband (Benedict Cumberbatch, again!). It’s going to be a close race, especially when it comes down to Dunst or Debose. But I’m siding with DeBose, the Afro-Latina actress, singer and dancer who previously appeared on Broadway in Hamilton and received a Tony nomination as Donna Summer in the Broadway musical about the disco diva. I predict more West Side Story mojo, and a win for DeBose would make her and Moreno the only women of color to join the impressive Oscar club of actor pairs who’ve won for playing the same character (alongside Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando as godfather Vito Corleone, and Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger as Batman nemesis The Joker).
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Encanto Flee Luca The Mitchells Vs. The Machines Raya and the Last Dragon Flee is a grown-up, innovatively animated documentary about an Afghanistan refugee telling his story of relocating to Denmark. The Mitchells vs. The Machines, a sci-fi comedy, used a genre-bending blend of 2D and 3D techniques in its vibrant tale of a family fighting to save the Earth from a tech takeover. But the House of Mouse dominates this category, with three of the nominees from Disney (Encanto, Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon). Of those, it looks like a cinch for Encanto, the charming, song-filled tale of a multi-generational Columbian family, with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda; the film has a lot of 2022 Oscar momentum, with additional nominations for Score and Original Song, marking the first time for a decade, since Toy Story 3, for an animated film to be recognized in three or more categories (and Toy Story 3 brought home two Oscars that night). So, things are lining up for Encanto, and a win would be an additional sign that the Oscars are being proactive in recognizing diversity, a lack of which has been the scourge of movie awards—and Hollywood—for decades. I predict Encanto to win, and maybe win big, for all the right reasons.
DIRECTING
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog Steven Spielberg, West Side Story Lots of interesting things going on in this category! Branagh’s visually stunning Belfast has been a film-festival favorite for months, and he’s proven—in previous films—the breadth of his talents as a writer, director, producer and actor. Nominated eight times but never winning, you could say he’s overdue for an Oscar, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But he’s up against some formidable competition—like Spielberg, perhaps America’s most iconic active filmmaker, who’s won two Best Director Oscars already (for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) and becomes the first person to be nominated in this category (eight times now) in each of six decades. Anderson is no stranger to the Oscars, with 11 nominations as of this year for writing and directing (including Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia and Boogie Nights). And the Academy loves throwing a wider spotlight on deserving foreign films, like Japan’s Drive My Car. Hamaguci likely won’t topple everyone else here, but his movie is a strong contender to win as Best International Film, for which it’s also nominated. No, this category feels like it’s belonged, since even before the nominations, to Jane Campion, whose gorgeous, slow-burn, big-sky cowboy meditation on toxic masculinity, repressed sexuality and addiction in The Power of the Dog cinches this category for Campion. A win for her here—as the only female nominee in this top-tier category—will make it the first time for females to take the Directing Oscar two times in a row, following Chloè Zao last year for Nomadland.
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Be Alive” from King Richard; music and lyrics by Dixson and Beyoncè Knowles-Carter “Dos Orugutas” from Encanto; music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda “Down to Joy” from Belfast; music and lyrics by Van Morrison “No Time to Die” from No Time to Die; music and lyrics by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connor “Somehow You Do” from Four Good Days; music and lyrics by Diane Warren Movie-music perennial Diane Warren has been here before, with a total (now) of 13 Oscar nominations, but no wins yet. The trophy case of the hit British tunesmith isn’t empty, however; it’s filled with her Grammy, her Emmy, a pair of Golden Globes and a trio of Songwriter of the Year awards from Billboard. So don’t feel bad when she doesn’t win tonight, for “Somehow You Do,” performed by country’s Reba McEntire on the soundtrack of the drug-recovery drama Four Good Days. Warren and her song will almost certainly fall to this category’s tough, superstar competition. Beyoncè wrote the rousing Black-pride anthem Be Alive after seeing an early screening of King Richard and feeling a connection to its tennis-superstar sisters. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Spanish-language over-credits ender (the title translates “Two Caterpillars”) for Encanto was part of the film’s multilingual mega-hit soundtrack, which was released in more than 40 languages. (Miranda and the other composers for Encanto are also nominated for Best Original Score, the only nominees from this list to make that crossover this year.) “Down to Joy,” from Belfast, a new tune from Irish icon Van Morrison, adds to the film’s cultural authenticity—but the singer’s staunch outspokenness about his government’s COVID-19 health measures hasn’t made him many friends in Hollywood. So: Tonight’s top tune will be “No Time to Die,” from the movie swan song for Daniel Craig as pop culture’s most famous secret agent. The Bond movie franchise has become known for its opening themes—from Shirley’s Bassey’s “Goldfinger” to Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better” and Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die.” Two Bond songs—Adele’s “Skyfall” and Sam Smith’s “The Writing’s on the Wall”—took previous Oscars in this category, and my prediction is for Billie Eilish and “No Time to Die” to make it a 007 three-fer.
VISUAL EFFECTS
Dune Free Guy No Time to Die Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Spider-Man: No Way Home Free Guy took us inside the eye-popping virtual word of a comedically violent videogame; No Time to Die featured all the high-speed car stunts, explosive face-offs, fisticuffs and superspy world-building that we’ve come to expect for a Bond flick. The effects in Spider-Man: No Way Home (the top-grossing box-office flick of 2021) made a murderer’s row of Spidey’s time-honored Marvel comic-book foils spring to movie life. Another Marvel movie spinoff, the Chinese martial-arts fantasy adventure Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, set box-office pandemic records when it opened, and it looked awesome, depicting a magical world of wonders and using FX to create and manipulate the story’s mysterious superpower source, the Ten Rings. But making a prediction in this category is pretty easy: Dune sits at the top of the list, figuratively, literally and alphabetically, with its futuristic sprawl across the cosmos and eye-popping scenes resulting from a virtuoso combo of CGI, stunts and 3-D props—buzzing dragonfly aircraft, monstrous roaring sandworms, the marvels of space travel and the catastrophic bombast of galactic warfare. Sorry, everyone else; you look good, just not good enough tooutdo the spectacular delights of Dune (which, incidentally, is this year’s second-most nominated film, represented in 11 categories).
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Coming 2 America Cruella Dune The Eyes of Tammy Faye House of Gucci House of Gucci replicated the glitzy world of the fashion dynasty with the styling of the film’s all-star cast, most notably in turning thin, long-haired Jared Leto into a chubby, balding wannabe designer, and customizing dozens of wigs for Lady Gaga to reflect her character’s changes over time. Dune’s 600-pound, naked Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgärd) was a memorable character standout, requiring a seven-hour application process that involved a complex body suit and multiple applications of silicone and plaster. Cruella was a colorful circus of changing styles as Emma Stone’s Disney anti-princess evolved through several visual stages, including 1970s-inspired punk. And Coming 2 America used layers of prosthetics to recreate characters (played by Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Clint Smith) from the original film for a classic scene of barbershop babble. But Jessica Chastain’s amazing transformation for The Eyes of Tammy Faye puts that film’s achievements in a league of their own, with a team of hairstylists, makeup artist and FX designers changing the very anatomy of the actress to resemble that of Tammy Faye Baker, whose eye makeup alone came to be one of the wonders of the mascara world. In this category, the prediction is that the Eyes really do have it.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Cruella Cryano Dune Nightmare Alley West Side Story This category nearly always looks backward, into “period films” that use clothing and costumes to recreate bygone eras. Nightmare Alley was both grotesque and gorgeous, oozing the retro-noir seediness as well as the splendor of the 1930s and early 1940s. Cyrano, a musical based on the late 1890s play—about a poet wooing his crush with letters—immersed viewers in 17th century France, with special costume consideration (fabrics that were lighter and more flow-y) for actors who would break out into dance, and song. The design palette for West Side Story including dressing the rival gangs in clothes that broadcast each group’s attitudes and ethic separation—from the Jets’ cool-cat jackets and jeans, echoing Marlon Brando and James Dean, to the festive, floral, more celebratory patterns of the Puerto Rican Sharks. Dune looked to the future, and into space, for original costumes that were both futuristic and medieval, referencing nomadic-desert tribal wear, Greek mythology and artwork by the 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya. But I predict the movie to beat is clearly Cruella, Disney’s live-action backstory to one of its most famous villains, as Cruella de Ville establishes herself as a rebellious fashionista who rises to the top in a sea of cut-throat couture. So, of course, the costumes were lit—fab, fun, edgy and befitting Disney’s most fashionable villainess.
BEST SOUND
Dune West Side Story No Time to Die The Power of the Dog Belfast You probably don’t watch a movie and think, “Wow! That sound was awesome!” But sound and audio professionals, who nominate and vote in this category, certainly do, because they’re responsible for everything you hear—or don’t hear. Like the expertly orchestrated opening sequence of No Time to Die, an extended car chase in which 007’s sleek Aston Martin is assaulted by a gang of motorbike-riding assassins throwing out a hail of bullets, or later when the audience is going down—along with Bond—in the hull of a rapidly sinking ship. West Side Story was filmed mostly in New York, on location, which can present many audio problems. A complicated key sequence, shot in a gymnasium, involved fitting everyone with concealed microphones, dancing and getting the mix of ambient conversations, music and dialogue just right. ThePower of the Dog required a spectrum of sound, from a symphony of cattle, howling wind and galloping horses, to the gentle gurgle of a stream and the ominous pluck of a banjo. For Belfast, the audio team constructed full-size recreations of director Kenneth Branagh’s childhood in Northern Ireland, then made the “city” a sound-scaped character unto itself; an explosion that violently interrupts street play, signaling the beginning of 10 years of chaos and conflict, was recorded by mixing various recorded bits of destruction, including glass shattering, metal breaking and wood splintering. But I’m predicting a win for Dune, which is unmatched in any of these other films by its sheer scope and sonic complexity—from the low-frequency rumbling of massive underground sandworms to the rhapsody of the cosmos itself and the otherworldly voice of an oracle (which took over a year to perfect). When it comes to sound, nothing else sounded as big as Dune—and I predict that nothing else sounds stands a chance of spoiling its success in this category. Next, get the scoop on the 2022 Grammy Awards!
