The Skinny's Final Oscar Predictions

As ever, the Academy Award voters have giveth with one hand, and taketh with the other. In a year that both a foul-mouthed British art movie (The Favourite) and heartbreaking Mexican drama (Roma) are the most nominated films with ten nods apiece, it’s also disappointing to see the Academy voters falling for films as deeply mediocre as Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice. And in a year when Spike Lee gets his first ever Best Film and Best Director nominations (for the blistering BlacKkKlansman), and Black Panther becomes the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture, they’re sharing the stage with tone-deaf race relations drama Green Book.

Ahead of the Oscar ceremony this Sunday (24 Feb), we try and guess how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 8000 members have voted

Best Picture

One reason to cherish this year’s awards season is that the Best Picture race still feels wide open. As suggested by their respective awards this year, the various filmmaking guilds who make up many of the Academy voters haven’t yet settled on one film to champion, with the Actors' Guild getting behind Black Panther, the Directors' Guild celebrating Alfonso Cuarón and Roma, the Producers' Guild giving their backing to Green Book and the Writers' Guild surprising everyone with their top prize going to Bo Burnham’s wonderful Eighth Grade, which was completely snubbed by the Oscars.

Roma is the narrow favourite with bookies, and few could argue that Cuarón’s drama doesn’t deserve the title: it is among the finest cinematic achievements of the year. A win for Roma would, however, also legitimise its distributors, streaming service Netflix, who gave the film the most cursory of theatrical releases. Would awarding a straight-to-streaming title send out the wrong message on a night designed to celebrate cinema achievement?

In saying that, the idea of the bookies' second favourite Green Book winning would set the Academy back two decades. Our hope is that there’ll be an upset. With no clear frontrunner the preferential voting for Best Picture, where voters put forth their top five films, will be crucial, as a consensus pick could well sneak it, so don’t count out The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman or even Black Panther, films we can imagine getting a lot of support in the second and third place ballots.

What will win: Roma
What should win: The Favourite
What should have been nominated: Leave No Trace

Best Director

The Best Director nominations are a mixed bag this year. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see two directors of foreign language films in contention: Alfonso Cuarón for Roma and Paweł Pawlikowski for Cold War, the latter a pleasingly leftfield inclusion. There’s also Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who’s nominated for his delightful work on The Favourite.

Less heartening is to see Vice director Adam McKay in the mix. His hectoring, smug satire about Dick Cheney’s life in public office is the worst film on the Best Picture list (in a year in which Bohemian Rhapsody is also nominated, that’s saying something) and is clearly a case of being nominated for most direction, rather than best direction.

If we’re putting our support behind any filmmaker it’s Spike Lee. Incredibly, this is the Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour director’s first Best Director nod. The Academy was so embarrassed with this oversight that they gave Lee an honorary Oscar back in 2015. Three years later, they should make it official and give him an Oscar proper. Cuarón, though, seems to have this in the bag, and will likely add to his Best Director prize for Gravity in 2013.

Who will win: Alfonso Cuarón for Roma
Who should win: Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman
Who should have been nominated: Debra Granik for Leave No Trace

Best Actress

This is the one major category where there can be few grumbles; all five women up for Best Actress deserve their plaudits. Melissa McCarthy is the delightfully spiky literary forger Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Greenhorn actor Yalitza Aparicio is the compelling heart of Roma, playing a middle-class family’s hard-working maid. Lady Gaga oozes charisma in her first major film role as the on-the-rise singer in A Star is Born. And Olivia Colman is hilarious and original as Queen Anne in The Favourite. Despite these great performances, we can’t see past Glenn Close in The Wife.

Björn Runge’s drama, adapted by Jane Anderson from the novel by Meg Wolitzer, is hardly the most inventive or dazzling in terms of the writing or filmmaking, but Close’s performance as the long-suffering spouse of Jonathan Pryce’s revered novelist who might not owe all his success to his own literary genius is a wonder. Her watchful, slyly intelligent turn is among the best of her long career. She’s been the bridesmaid at six previous Oscar ceremonies – come on, Academy, give Close her Oscar on her seventh nomination.

Who will win: Glenn Close for The Wife
Who should win: Glenn Close for The Wife
Who should have been nominated: Carey Mulligan for Wildlife

Best Actor

By contrast to the Best Actress list, this is pretty weak sauce. Two of the nominations are good performances in bad films (Christian Bale in the headache-inducing Vice and Viggo Mortensen in the crass Green Book), one is a little-loved film that hasn’t been released in the UK yet (Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh in biopic At Eternity's Gate), and one nomination is for a horrible performance in an even worse film (Rami Malek letting his false teeth do the talking in Bohemian Rhapsody). That leaves Bradley Cooper as a jaded alcoholic rocker who takes Lady Gaga’s ingénue under his wing in A Star is Born – by process of elimination, this is the most deserving lead actor performance in an extraordinarily weak year.

Depressingly, though, Rami Malek is the frontrunner. Christian Bale’s transformative performance could rain on his parade, but Cooper is the most deserving of this less-than-inspiring bunch.

Who will win: Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody
Who should win: Bradley Cooper for A Star is Born
Who should have been nominated: Ben Foster for Leave No Trace

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The Academy Awards take place in Hollywood on Sun 24 Feb