2022 Oscar Nominee Predictions: Who Knows, Really?

Here are my predictions for Tuesday's Oscar nominees in the major categories. The less said about what follows, the better. Usually the job of predicting who will be nominated for the major eight Oscars is not a particularly challenging endeavor, even if on the edges there is space for surprises. This year, there is hardly a category that I would consider a dead set lock. Front runners early in the race now do not merely look like they will not win, but are no longer even certain to be nominated. Perhaps part of the problem is that this year I have actually had the opportunity to see the vast majority of the movies that are major contenders, which fills me with greater doubt than normal. Nevertheless, as usual, take all that follows with a grain of salt.

Best Picture

Being the Ricardos

Belfast

CODA

Don't Look Up

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

The Power of the Dog

tick, tick... BOOM!

West Side Story

Dark Horses: The Tragedy of Macbeth, Drive My Car, The Lost Daughter

If Only: The Green Knight, C'mon C'mon

I see the Best Picture race this year as having six absolute locks: Belfast, Dune, King Richard, The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, and West Side Story. The other four spots (and there will be exactly four, given that the Academy has gone back to guaranteeing ten nominees) are a bit more up in the air. In the past few weeks, Don't Look Up seems to have solidified a seventh spot for itself. That leaves six movies to battle it out for the final three spots: Being the Ricardos, CODA, tick, tick... BOOM!, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Lost Daughter, and Drive My Car. I'm giving the edge to the first three, all of which snagged crucial Producer's Guild of America Award nominations a few weeks ago, but I would not be surprised if any of the others sneak in. Keep a close eye on Drive My Car especially, a Japanese film that looks sure to take International Feature and could well be this year's Parasite.

Best Actress

Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)

Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza)

Lady Gaga (House of Gucci)

Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)

Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

Dark Horses: Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Jennifer Hudson (Respect), Rachel Zegler (West Side Story)

If Only: Jodie Comer (The Last Duel), Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby)

I'm taking a bit of a swing here. My gut says that Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Hudson will be in, and my personal favorite Alana Haim along with one of the others I have listed will be out. Kristen Stewart, who missed out on a Screen Actors' Guild nomination despite being the putative frontrunner for this award throughout the race, could be that other one displaced, unlikely as that may have seemed months or even weeks ago. But Haim's performance is just spectacular, and frankly doing something more interesting and challenging than mere imitation, which is what both Hudson and Chastain (and Kidman and Stewart, for that matter) are doing. Of course, the Academy laps up imitation in the acting categories, so I'm all but sure to be wrong. But one can dream, right?

Best Actor

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)

Dark Horses: Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up), Peter Dinklage (Cyrano), Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley)

If Only: Nicolas Cage (Pig), Simon Rex (Red Rocket), Dev Patel (The Green Knight)

Everyone but Javier Bardem is a lock, and the more I think about it, Bardem could well be a lock as well, what with the SAG nomination he received. The love for Being the Ricardos confounds me, but its momentum is hard to deny. Awards voters just cannot get enough of showbiz flicks, even the most third rate, overstuffed, messy versions of them.

Best Supporting Actress

Catriona Balfe (Belfast)

Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)

Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog)

Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

Ruth Negga (Passing)

Dark Horses: Judi Dench (Belfast), Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley), Ann Dowd (Mass)

If Only: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter), Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth), Riley Keough (Zola)

The only real question here is whether Judi Dench could sneak into this category, which would be improbable. But with Judi Dench, anything could happen – I mean, she won in this same category for Shakespeare in Love, a movie which she was in for all of eight minutes. Balfe, DeBose, and Dunst aren't going anywhere, so only Aunjanue Ellis and Ruth Negga could be vulnerable. But I doubt it; this is one of two categories that I consider next to locked.

Best Supporting Actor

Bradley Cooper (Licorice Pizza)

Ciarán Hinds (Belfast)

Troy Kotsur (CODA)

Jared Leto (House of Gucci)

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

Dark Horses: Jamie Dornan (Belfast), Mike Faist (West Side Story), Ben Affleck (The Tender Bar)

If Only: Ben Affleck (The Last Duel), Colman Domingo (Zola), Woody Norman (C'mon C'mon)

The main uncertainty in this category relates to the overall amount of support there is for Belfast. The film nabbed the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival back in September, which is traditionally a signifier of the early favorite for Best Picture. The ardor seems to have dimmed a bit after more middling reviews than the early buzz augured, but this category perhaps the best test of whether it continues to have a chance. A Jamie Dornan nomination instead of Bradley Cooper, Troy Kotsur or Jared Leto (the most likely to go being Cooper) would signal continued strength for Belfast. (A side note: I am in disbelief that Jared Leto seems to be pretty much a lock here. His House of Gucci performance is pure, thick-cut, honey glazed ham, a shock of confounding mannerisms and preposterous accent work. Yet here he is.)

Best Director

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)

Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Denis Villeneuve (Dune)

Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)

Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)

Dark Horses: Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car), Guillermo del Toro (Nightmare Alley), Adam McKay (Don't Look Up)

If Only: David Lowery (The Green Knight), Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), Sean Baker (Red Rocket)

Many awards season prognosticators seem to think that West Side Story and Steven Spielberg are falling out of contention. I think they are wrong. Forget about how good the remake is (and it really is a marvel, infusing a well-known classic with just enough new material to be simultaneously nostalgic and fresh). It ticks all of the Academy's traditional boxes: flashily constructed, spectacularly acted, possessing deep roots in film history, and brought together by one of their favorite filmmakers to celebrate. Spielberg will maintain the fifth spot in this race, and Drive My Car's Ryusuke Hamaguchi will remain on the outside looking in. If this nomination flips, that would signal both the end of West Side Story's prospects and serious momentum for Drive My Car. I would go as far as to say that a Hamaguchi nomination here means that Drive My Car will nab a Best Picture slot. But I doubt it.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

CODA – Siân Heder

Dune – Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth

The Lost Daughter – Maggie Gyllenhaal

The Power of the Dog – Jane Campion

West Side Story – Tony Kushner

Dark Horses: Drive My Car – Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe, Passing – Rebecca Hall

If Only: Nightmare Alley – Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan, The Green Knight – David Lowery

The same narrative from the Best Director race is at play here: could Drive My Car nab the place I am giving to West Side Story? I think the chances are actually higher in this category than in Best Director; Tony Kushner's work on West Side Story is fantastic, but the fact that he was working off such a classic piece of cinema may work against him. All of the other likely nominees are adapted from books, which the Academy sometimes perceives as a more difficult and creative endeavor than adapting something that has already been put on screen. I also think Hamaguchi and Oe's screenplay for Drive My Car is an absolute stunner. I am still giving the edge to West Side Story, but would not be surprised to see it flip (or at least less surprised than if Best Director flips).

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)

Being the Ricardos – Aaron Sorkin

Belfast – Kenneth Branagh

Don't Look Up – Adam McKay and David Sirota

King Richard – Zach Baylin

Licorice Pizza – Paul Thomas Anderson

Dark Horses: The French Dispatch – Wes Anderson, C'mon C'mon – Mike Mills

If Only: The Card Counter – Paul Schrader

This is the other category (along with Supporting Actress) that I consider a lock. If there were justice in this world, Sorkin's messy, overwrought script would be nowhere near this race, and Mike Mills' magnificent C'mon C'mon would be front and center; but the Academy's love for his work is undying. Don't Look Up is witless and preachy, but on that count I think the Academy will be guilted into showering McKay's film with nominations to signal their belief that climate change is, indeed, very bad. Otherwise they risk yet another Twitter full-court press by the filmmakers and actors behind that film, claiming that criticism is tantamount to climate change denial. I personally think that one should be able to separate a film's message from its execution, but hey, that's just me.

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All will be revealed on Tuesday morning, after which I will question whether plowing into the wee hours of the morning hemming and hawing over whether CODA will edge out The Tragedy of Macbeth was worth it. Probably not. But only time will tell!

[Update: Correct predictions have been noted in bold. My tally on the predictions was a respectable-not-excellent 34/45, or 75.6%.

A ton of big surprises that I didn't even account for in my Dark Horses picks. I called (in my comments) that Drive My Car would sneak into the Best Picture race, but was pleasantly surprised to see my beloved Nightmare Alley grabbing a slot as well. I was unsurprised to see Alana Haim miss out in Best Actress for Chastain (presumably), but did not expected Penélope Cruz to sneak in for Parallel Mothers and Lady Gaga getting pushed out. I nailed Best Actor (woo; it's the only category I did so for). The Supporting categories were nuts. The brilliant Jessie Buckley and Judi Dench snagged Best Supporting Actress nods in place of Ruth Negga and Catriona Balfe. I wasn't startled by Negga's omission, but never in a million years would I have thought Balfe's slot was in peril.

Best Supporting was even more confounding, with Jesse Plemons for The Power of the Dog and J.K. Simmons for Being the Ricardos coming in when I had not even thought of them as Dark Horse contenders. That being said, Cooper and Leto were always fourth and fifth among my predicted group, so the fact that they were the ones replaced did not come as a shock. Hamaguchi making his way into Best Director was not out of the blue, but I really thought that it would be Spielberg (or, in a just world, Kenneth Branagh) making way; Villeneuve seems as settled as it gets, and I think it's a bit of a travesty that his work wasn't recognized. In the screenplay categories, Drive My Car got into Best Adapted and The Worst Person in the World got into Best Original, in place of West Side Story and Being the Ricardos (yes!) respectively; the former was more than possible, while the latter is a glorious surprise.

The screenplay surprises especially (and the general Drive My Car love) indicate that the recent trend of the Academy being more open to including international contenders in major categories continues with a vengeance. It is not hard to think about the Oscars becoming more and more dominated by international contenders in the future, with the show becoming less insularly American and more adventurous in the type of movies it celebrates. That is, if the Oscars continue exist long enough for that trend to become pronounced. The overwhelming response from those who read my predictions was that they had not heard of, much less seen the majority of the movies I mentioned. This is not a function of the majority of these movies being hard to see. Many were rolled out on streaming services, so they could (and can) be watched in the comforts of one's own home; so the pandemic is not the source of this lack of awareness. Instead, it is a signal that movies (and thus the Oscars) is quite far from the pop culture preeminence they once held. The increased volume (and in some cases, the improved quality) of material put on television is one definite reason why movies have faded from the pop culture zeitgeist. But social media, YouTube, and TikTok are all far more relevant threats, dominating attention spans and making the ability of movies to dominate the cultural discussion next to impossible.

So it seems that the movies (outside of the IP-driven "event films" that dominated the box office last year), and the Oscars in particular, are doomed to a gradual erosion of relevance, until the only people who care are film snobs like me. We may be loud, but we are not numerous. The general public has to have some degree of passion about cinema in order for the art to continue to survive.

Anyway. Apologies for the tangent. See you in a few weeks, for predictions of winners before the ceremony on March 27th. Catch a few of the nominees in the mean time – they're well worth making a trip to the theaters for!]