The Skinny's Final Oscar Predictions

The Oscars are upon us, and we could be looking at the most exciting ceremony in years. Sunday’s event might prove even more nail-biting than last year’s, which ended in a jaw-dropping cuffufle that saw La La Land initially crowned Best Picture before the statue was handed to the real – and truly deserving – winner, Moonlight, after organisers realised Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty had announced the winner from the wrong envelope.

Best Picture

There are two factors that make this year’s awards genuinely so exciting. One, the films are great. If any of Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out or Dunkirk won, we’d be happy. To find the last time we loved five Best Picture nominees you'd have to go back to 1975, when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws and Nashville were all in the running. And two, there is no real Best Picture frontrunner this year – there are a few ponies still in this race.

What sours the Best Picture race slightly is that the bookies' favourites are two of the poorest in the lineup: the bizarrely overpraised Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Guillermo del Toro’s gorgeous but cliched adult fairy tale The Shape of Water. Making up the numbers are Steven Spielberg’s by-the-numbers The Post and Darkest Hour, which is only really notable for Gary Oldman’s performance as Winston Churchill.

If there is any justice in the world, Jordan Peele’s Get Out will be crowned the winner on the night. Not only is it a knockout film that audiences lapped-up, it’s also the movie released in 2017 that most speaks to this bizarre moment in time in US politics.

Nominees: Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Bookies’ favourite: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Who we’re rooting for: Get Out

Dark horse: The Shape of Water

Best Director

This is another category where it’s anyone’s guess. Traditionally, Best Director usually chimes with the Best Picture winner, but the cats were put among the proverbial pigeons this year when Martin McDonagh, the director of early Best Picture frontrunner Three Billboards..., was shut out of the directing category by Academy voters.

The five filmmakers duking it out for Best Director are Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), who became only the fifth woman to be nominated in this category.

The bookies fancy del Toro for this one. This is the Mexican filmmaker's first nomination for Best Director, but he’s been making such vibrant and inventive cinema for over 25 years that it would be churlish to say he doesn’t deserve recognition for his talents. The Shape of Water, however, is far from his best work and a drop in quality from the films by his fellow Best Director nominees.

We’d happily see either of the other four win. Nolan and Anderson have been among the most exciting voices in Western cinema for the last few decades, while the relative newbies Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig have made smaller but no less compelling films this year. However, our heart says Gerwig. Not only is Lady Bird a perfectly formed gem of a movie, it about time another woman won Best Director.

Nominees: Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)

Bookies’ favourite: Guillermo del Toro

Who we’re rooting for: Greta Gerwig

Dark horse: Christopher Nolan

Best Actress

The acting categories are, unfortunately, less unpredictable. The most sewn up is Best Actress, which looks certain to go to Frances McDormand for her blistering and foul-mouthed turn in Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. She’s by far the finest thing in the movie, but it always sticks in one's craw when an acting awards go to a performance in a film that’s sure to be forgotten in a year or two.

We’d much rather see the Best Actress statue go to Saoirse Ronan for her spiky turn as the titular character of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. The Irish actress may only be 23, but she’s no ingenue. This is her third acting nomination, and we’re hoping third time’s a charm.

Nominees: Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Meryl Streep (The Post)

Bookie’s favourite: Frances McDormand

Who we’re rooting for: Saoirse Ronan

Dark horse: Margot Robbie

Best Actor

As is the case with McDormand, we wouldn’t bet our house against bookies’ favourite Gary Oldman winning here, but we might put a tenner on one of his fellow nominees. Timothee Chalamet has come from nowhere to be Oscar-nominated for his first leading role, and if the 22-year-old New Yorker wins he’ll be the youngest Best Actor winner in Oscar history. His performance in Call Me By Your Name is terrific and full of surprises. Playing a precocious teen coming of age over one languid Italian summer, he manages to combine sunny and sulky, goofy and charismatic, and the physical and the internal in his performance.

Also wonderful, as ever, was Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread. The fact that the 60-year-old Londoner has suggested this will be his final role might play a factor on Academy voting. Oscar voters are a sentimental bunch, and the opportunity to reward one of modern cinema’s greatest actor on his final performance might be too good to turn down.

Nominees: Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.)

Bookies’ favourite: Gary Oldman

Who we’re rooting for: Timothee Chalamet

Dark horse: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Supporting Actress

This category is the battle of the nightmare mothers. Allison Janney’s loud, flashy turn in I, Tonya has caught the eye of most awards voters this season, but don’t rule out Laurie Metcalf’s more nuanced and humane turn as a sympathetic but no less formidable matriarch in Lady Bird. We’d also be delighted to see the award go to Lesley Manville, who’s wonderfully inscrutable as the sister of Daniel Day-Lewis’s character in Phantom Thread. With one askance glance across a breakfast table she’s more terrifying than all of Janny’s histrionics combined.

Nominees: Mary J. Blige (Mudbound), Allison Janney (I, Tonya), Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread), Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird), Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water)

Bookies' favourite: Allison Janney

Who we're rooting for: Lesley Manville

Dark horse: Laurie Metcalf

Best Supporting Actor

Sam Rockwell has won pretty much every award going for his turn as a racist cop-turned-good in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but the mood seems to have turned on this movie and it’s getting sourer by the day. Best Supporting Actor is one of the early awards given out on Sunday, so if it doesn’t go Rockwell’s way it might prove a disappointing night for McDonagh and his film.

The actor we’re rooting for here is the mighty Willem Dafoe. Not only has Dafoe been doing great screen work for four decades, he also represents the only Oscar recognition for Sean Baker’s wonderful The Florida Project – a win for him would be a small consolation for a film that really should have been in the running for Best Picture.

Nominees: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project), Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water), Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World), Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri),

Bookies' favourite: Sam Rockwell

Who we're rooting for: Willem Dafoe

Dark horse: Willem Dafoe