When it comes to Best Picture, the 97th Academy Awards initially seemed like an open race for as many as five films: A Complete Unknown, Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, and Emilia Pérez. If you had to guess when the nominations came out a month ago, Emilia Pérez, which notched an eye-popping 13 Oscar nominations—tied for the second-most nominations in the ceremony’s history—appeared to be the front-runner. But three major events have transpired since then that’ve had a seismic impact on the Best Picture landscape.
First, there was the controversy surrounding Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón, whose past social media posts denigrating Muslims, George Floyd, and the diverse lineup of winners at the 2021 Oscars were resurfaced by journalist Sarah Hagi. Just like that, Emilia Pérez’s Oscar hopes in several—if not all—categories were on shaky ground. Then came Anora’s big weekend at the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America Awards earlier this month, where the film claimed the top prize from both organizations. The feature film award from PGA, in particular, has been a reliable predictor of the Best Picture winner. But just when it seemed like Anora cemented its front-runner status, Conclave won big at the BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Now, Best Picture has morphed into a two-horse race that could go either way.
This year’s uncertainty is an intriguing shake-up of what we’ve come to expect from the Oscars: With so many award shows leading up to Hollywood’s big night, several categories can feel already etched in stone. But no matter what goes down on Sunday, you can bank on there being a difference between what films and artists will win and whom (or what) you want to see win. Sometimes, these two sentiments overlap—shout-out to Parasite—but there are always occasions when Academy voters don’t recognize greatness when they see it. (American Beauty winning Best Picture over The Insider at the 2000 Academy Awards should’ve led to criminal charges.) With that in mind, I’ve put together an Oscar winners wish list for Sunday’s ceremony with eight categories, including Best Picture. Obviously, this is a subjective exercise, but there’d be a compelling narrative behind each of these wins—even if some of them are about as likely to happen as Tom Hardy adopting a normal accent in a movie.
Flow for Best Animated Feature
The presumptive winner for Best Animated Feature will be The Wild Robot, DreamWorks Animation’s adaptation of Peter Brown’s 2016 novel of the same name. It’s hard to find fault with The Wild Robot, which nails just about everything you’d want to see from an animated studio film: a collection of A-listers at the top of their voice acting game, stunning visuals, and a heartwarming (and at times tear-jerking) message that kids can wrap their heads around. (The Wild Robot explores parenthood, community, and the ways in which technology is tearing us—and our natural world—apart.)
But there’s another Best Animated Feature nominee that checks many of the same boxes. Flow, a Latvian indie film made over the span of five and a half years, follows a group of animals displaced by a biblical flood before learning how to navigate their new world together. In lieu of dialogue, the animals—led by an adorable black cat—simply behave like, well, animals. Evoking the works of Studio Ghibli, Flow is one of the most affecting ecological parables I’ve ever seen, and it’s legitimately harrowing to watch at times. (Imagine if Homeward Bound took place after a cataclysmic tsunami.) The visuals, while somewhat reminiscent of video game cutscenes, have a transporting effect once you’re on the movie’s frequency. That Flow accomplishes so much with so little is nothing short of extraordinary, and in a category that’s been historically flooded with big-budget efforts from the animation wings of major studios, I’d love to see an indie movie swim against the tide.
Yura Borisov (Anora) for Best Supporting Actor
Anora pulls off an incredible feat in which a character who appears to be on the fringes of the story ends up becoming the film’s emotional anchor. Amid all the chaos surrounding Mikey Madison’s Anora, a sex worker caught up in a whirlwind romance (and ill-fated marriage) with the son of a Russian oligarch, we’re introduced to Igor (Yura Borisov), a taciturn henchman tasked with accompanying our protagonist until the marriage is annulled. For a dude explicitly hired to be the muscle, Igor’s low-key demeanor—particularly his gentle affection for Anora—sneaks up on you. It helps that Borisov is, like so many of the actors in Sean Baker’s movies, a face you likely haven’t seen before. You barely notice when Igor first enters the frame; by the end of the film, chances are you’ve been Igor-pilled.
The Oscars tend to favor showier performances—one reason Kieran Culkin’s demonstrative turn in A Real Pain makes him a near lock to win Best Supporting Actor—but Borisov’s work in Anora flips the script. It’s a showy movie, yet Borisov’s character helps ground the proceedings, which I’d argue has a higher degree of difficulty. There’s also the historical context if Borisov won an Oscar: He’s the first Russian actor to be nominated since Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1977 for The Turning Point, and you’d have to go back to 1964 to find a Russian winner (Lila Kedrova for Zorba the Greek). Unfortunately, these factors probably aren’t enough to land Borisov a statuette, but as a consolation prize, Igor’s a first-ballot entry in the Henchman Hall of Fame.
Demi Moore (The Substance) for Best Actress
Barring something quite unexpected, all signs point to Demi Moore actually winning this Oscar—as she well should. From an awards season standpoint, Moore’s touching acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was the kind of moment voters could rally behind; it’s still hard to imagine it was the first major acting award she’d ever received in her career. After she was overlooked and marginalized by the industry—the very themes explored in The Substance—who could resist giving Moore her long-overdue flowers at the Oscars?
Of course, Academy voters shouldn’t just be tempted by a narrative hook: The acting ought to be deserving of praise, too. For a movie as bonkers as The Substance, Moore’s performance ends up being surprisingly introspective and understated. Elisabeth Sparkle spends most of her time holed up in her swanky apartment, and while the body-horror elements of The Substance reeled audiences in, the film’s most devastating sequence sees Moore repeatedly—and aggressively—wipe makeup off her face before chickening out of a date. Being able to convey a range of emotions with minimal dialogue and some truly WTF prosthetics? If that isn’t enough to land Moore an Oscar, I’m gonna go full Monstro Elisasue on her behalf.
Dávid Jancsó (The Brutalist) for Best Film Editing
Around the same time that Gascón tanked Emilia Pérez’s chances of winning Best Picture, Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó didn’t do the period epic any favors. In an interview with the tech publication RedShark News, Jancsó revealed that the movie used generative AI to enhance the Hungarian spoken by Adrien Brody’s and Felicity Jones’s characters to sound more authentic. “It’s an extremely unique language,” Jancsó said. “We coached [Brody and Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.” Given that AI was one of the main points of contention in 2023’s Hollywood labor strikes, The Brutalist’s use of the technology has dominated the conversation around its Oscar hopes.
I sympathize with Jancsó, who surely didn’t anticipate that he’d set off such a firestorm. The AI controversy also detracts from one of the great strengths of The Brutalist, which can be attributed to Jancsó: its editing. Much was made about The Brutalist’s meaty 3-hour-and-35-minute running time, but length isn’t nearly as important as how a film feels in the moment. (If it’s bad enough, even a 90-minute movie can be a slog.) And wherever you stand on The Brutalist, it doesn’t overstay its welcome; in fact, I was itching for the 15-minute intermission to end so I could get whisked back to the trials and tribulations of Laszlo Toth. Like the historical epics it’s patterned after, The Brutalist pulls you in—and if we want to embrace an architectural metaphor, the film would’ve crumbled without Jancsó laying the foundation.
Better Man for Best Visual Effects
The Best Visual Effects category is essentially a stand-in for the Academy’s widely criticized—and ultimately scrapped—plan to create an Oscar for Best Popular Movie. If the films considered for this award have anything in common, more often than not they’re massive tentpoles that take the box office by storm. But this year’s lineup added a strange wrinkle: Three of the five nominees—Better Man, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Wicked—feature CGI monkeys. Even among its simian contemporaries, however, Better Man stands out from the pack.
For starters, the Robbie Williams biopic, rather infamously, bombed at the box office—mirroring the British pop star’s inability to break out across the pond. More importantly, in the context of this Oscars category, it’s also the kind of movie where the effectiveness of the visual effects stems from how quickly you forget about them. I know how weird it sounds, but as one of the few people in America who watched Better Man, I can confirm it’s surprisingly easy to acclimate to the sight of a talking chimp existing alongside regular human beings. There’s really nothing quite like Better Man, but in terms of recent Best Visual Effects winners, it reminds me a bit of Ex Machina—the CGI is great, but the movie endures because the visuals enhance the story rather than pull your attention away from it. Not that Better Man didn’t conjure some impressive imagery along the way. Forget Dune: Part Two’s sandworms—the greatest visual achievement of the year was “Rock DJ” on Regent Street.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Challengers) for Best Score
Was Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s electric score for Challengers even nominated after winning the equivalent Golden Globe Award last month? No. Is its exclusion from the Best Score lineup an absolute travesty? Yes. Should the Academy atone for its sins by retroactively nominating Challengers as well as incorporating an erotic, tennis-themed dance number set to “Match Point” at the ceremony? Maybe.
Dune: Part Two for Best Sound
What a difference 12 months can make. When Dune: Part Two came out in March 2024 to overwhelming critical acclaim, it seemed destined to be not just the cinematic event of the year but the kind of blockbuster that could go full The Return of the King and collect a ton of Oscars. Alas, Wicked has stolen a lot of Dune: Part Two’s thunder, and it could pip Denis Villeneuve’s film in categories like Best Production Design and Best Sound. (One potential reason Dune: Part Two lost so much Oscars momentum: The Academy is waiting to crown the franchise until after Dune: Messiah, which could pose a problem since Frank Herbert’s sequel novel is weird as hell.)
Sure, give Wicked Best Production Design for bringing Emerald City to life. But Best Sound is a category that belongs to the Dune franchise. So much attention is paid to Dune: Part Two’s transportive visuals—and rightly so—but immersive sound design is just as essential to the equation. You don’t get the full effect of the Shai-Hulud with imagery alone; hearing these creatures barrel through the sand dunes of Arrakis makes you understand the fear and reverence they inspire. The Harkonnen language sounds as harsh and imposing as its people look. Ornithopters? Ornithopters!!! Yes, the first Dune already won the Oscar for Best Sound in 2022. But [Bene Gesserit voice] WHY MESS WITH A GOOD THING?
Nickel Boys for Best Picture
When the Oscar noms were announced, you could have made the case for half the Best Picture lineup winning the award—even more if you believe Academy voters caught Wicked fever. Then there’s the films that slot into the “just happy to be here” camp. That certainly applies to Nickel Boys, director and cowriter RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel of the same name, which follows two Black youths at an abusive, tyrannical reform school in 1960s Florida. Nickel Boys edged out films like A Real Pain and Sing Sing, and its recognition as a Best Picture nominee is an accomplishment in and of itself. But when we revisit the 2025 Oscars in 10 or 20 years’ time, I suspect Nickel Boys will be the movie held in the highest esteem.
While it’s far from the first film to be shot from the point of view of its leads, Nickel Boys uses that perspective in a way that’s revelatory rather than a cheap gimmick. You don’t just see the brutality of the Nickel Academy; you’re immersed in it; you feel it. The emotional connection the audience forms with Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) also reflects how the characters become drawn to one another: We witness everything through their eyes, including the moment when their perspectives come together. There’s pain, there’s resilience, there’s a level of intimacy that doesn’t just command your attention: To paraphrase Roger Ebert, Nickel Boys becomes a machine for empathy. The stylistic conceit coupled with the intensity of the subject matter makes Nickel Boys the most singular cinematic event of 2024. And in a just universe, the Academy would see Nickel Boys’ worthiness for Best Picture as clearly as we experience what its characters endured.
