Attribution: Photo by Martti Salmi on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
And the Winner is….
There’s something about award season that’s magnetic and nearly irresistible—but still a guilty pleasure. A part of me likes the drama, the glamour, the sophistication and style of the Hollywood elite, but another part of me thinks that it’s a lot of hoopla that is, in the bard’s immortal words, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Because in the grand scheme of things, even in the arena of this liveliest art, does it really matter which films win the Oscars? Will it affect their final places in the canon of great cinema? Will the brilliant performances by any of the nominated actors be diminished whether they win or lose? Of course not. What will be affected by the results are the publicity, the marketing, and the box office receipts. This is why the Academy Awards, and the entire awards season for that matter, have become as much of a political tussle as a measure of excellence for artistic performance. Why else would F1 be nominated for best picture?
Any arts awards contest, from the Oscars to the Pulitzer to the National Book Award to the Grammys and Tonys and all the others, are necessarily predicated on subjectivity. There are very few objective criteria to distinguish which is the best film or the best novel or the best album. A lot of it is a matter of personal taste.
On what grounds could anyone say that Hamnet is a better film than One Battle After Another? Or whose performance was better, Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon or Michael Jordan in Sinners? What tastes better, apples or oranges? It’s impossible to give a definitive answer. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
With that being said, the Academy Awards are nothing short of an international popular phenomenon. Millions of people will tune in to watch the broadcast. Almost twenty million viewers watched the spectacle last year. People love Hollywood and they love hearing about it. Critics, pundits, and bloggers everywhere will be airing their opinions and making their predictions about who the Oscar will go to.
And, for all my previous hedging, I will also (most humbly) throw in my own two cents and be make my predictions. I realize this may sound a little hypocritical, but I will discount my personal prejudices and preferences as much as possible. I’m probably flattering myself to believe my choices are based on at least somewhat objective criteria, because I do—like everyone else—like some movies and actors more than others.
But I promise to try and judge on the basis of artistic criteria and shy away from popular trends, which is a huge factor in the Academy choices, so, because of this, I will first list who I believe will win and then who I think should win.
Note: I have not been able to screen all the nominees in every category, so I have not entered choices in those areas.
2026 Oscar Predictions
Best Film: Who Will Win: One Battle After Another. Who Should Win: Frankenstein.
This group could almost be broken down into two subcategories: the introspective, psychological works like Hamnet, Sentimental Value, and Train Dreams, and the epic action films like One Battle After Another, Sinners, F1, and Marty Supreme. I suppose Frankenstein and The Secret Agent would land somewhere in the middle While Battle is an immaculately constructed, acted, and directed film that is incredibly entertaining, but I like del Toro’s Frankenstein because the story, acting, production, cinematography, and costumes coupled with the booming dramatic sensibility (underlined by the unexpected sensitivity of the creature) is epic—even operatic.
Best Actor: Who Will Win: Timothee Chalamet from Marty Supreme Who Should Win: Ethan Hawke from Blue Moon.
Timothee Chalamet gives an absolutely brilliant manic performance in Marty Supreme. Even within the parameters of a character who is a manically ambitious narcissist, he provides a surprisingly sympathetic and funny portrayal, but Ethan Hawke’s well-rounded, sympathetic portrayal of Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon is brilliant. Not only does Hawke transform himself physically into the diminutive lyricist, his performance transcends his physical presence on the screen, immaculately communicating the pain, desperation, and optimistic yearning of an American romantic through a very fragile façade of optimism, romance, and hope.
Best Actress: Who Will Win: Jessie Buckley from Hamnet. Who Should Win: Jessie Buckley from Hamnet
While this group of nominees—Rose Byrne in particular—have delivered simply outstanding performances, Buckley’s visceral portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare is a performance for the ages. The depths of joy, agony, pain, and forgiveness in this role are remarkable, more of a force of nature than a simple performance; in a sense, Buckley nearly becomes the pain and the grief and the guilt which threaten to consume her. Simply brilliant.
Best Supporting Actor: Who Will Win: Sean Penn. Who Should Win: Benicio del Toro
This is only one example of what is an embarrassment of riches for One Battle After Another. Between these two nominees, Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor (and the criminally overlooked Chase Infiniti), this ensemble is nothing short of phenomenal. Penn does deliver a seminal portrayal of male toxicity and hostility as Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, but del Toro’s charming and understated portrayal of the cooler than cool Sergio St. Carlos is just beautiful, charming, and genuinely funny.
Best Supporting Actress: Who Will Win. Teyana Taylor. Who Should Win: Amy Madigan
Taylor’s razor-sharp performance as Perdita Beverly Hills is one of those cases where a great actress meets the perfect role. It’s hard to imagine anyone else boiling over with the anger and drive portrayed by Taylor. It is a great performance, but Madigan’s depiction of the evil Aunt Gladys in Weapons(which was otherwise criminally overlooked by Oscar) is a bravura and fearless performance which could have been—in the hands of a lesser actress—nothing short of caricature. It is a close choice, but I loved Amy’s audacity.
Best Director: Who Will Win: Ryan Coogler. Who Should Win: Paul Thomas Anderson.
All of the nominees in this category did incredibly singular work realizing their epic yet personal visions. Chloe Zhao, and Joachim Trier offered penetrating visions into the painful dynamics of family, and Josh Safdie relentlessly drove his breathtaking narrative into overdrive. They were fantastic realizations of directorial visions. Ryan Coogler also laid out a unique vision of the Jim Crow South in Sinners that encompassed history, myth, the personal, culture and community, but it was Anderson’s seamless sprawling epic of revolution, family, history, and survival in One Battle After Another that simply surpassed everything else here.
Best Original Screenplay: Who Will Win: Sinners. Who Should Win: Blue Moon.
The premise of Sinners, that music is the cultural glue that binds us through history, but which is also manna for all things evil is a deceptively complex conceit. Starting as an historical social drama, the narrative suddenly switches gears into an unexpected but highly entertaining direction. It is a brilliant conceit. Blue Moon is a clever, witty, and well-conceived screenplay that captures the charm, optimism, and desperation of a lonely and abandoned man. Its dialogue simply sparkles. It is simply beautiful writing.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Who Will Win: One Battle After Another. Who Should Win: Hamnet
Like Sinners, One Battle is a sprawling adventure encompassing generations of dissidence, vengeance, and hope. Its complex interwoven narratives of personal and political involvements are immaculately drawn, and the rendering of characters like Lockjaw and St. Carlos are solid sterling. Hamnet is a richly drawn portrait of a woman torn between grief, love, and guilt who finally finds her highly personal redemption through art. The dialogue is brilliant, and the conclusion is heart-wrenching. It should win.
Animated Short: Who Will Win: The Girl Who Cried Pearls. Who Should Win: Butterfly.
To my eye, this was a rather weak field of nominees this year. The Girl Who Cried Pearls tells a compelling story, and the stop-animation is brilliantly conceived and executed, but the animated characters appear grotesque and inhuman—almost like something out of Sherwood Anderson. It’s very good, but Butterfly, the tale of an Olympic swimmer who survives the Holocaust and which is beautifully rendered in a Gaugin-type style of painting, is brilliant.
Live Action Short: Who Will Win: Two People Exchanging Saliva. Who Should Win: Jane Austen’s Period Piece
Two People Exchanging Saliva, a beautifully rendered allegory where kissing is forbidden and people pay for purchases with slaps, is a beautifully shot and wonderfully written piece which probably deserves the award, but Jane Austen’s Period Piece is so hilarious, so charming, and such a great parody that it probably deserves a separate award. This is one instance where Oscar might do well to have separate categories for comic and dramatic pieces as they do in the Golden Globes.
Documentary Short: Who Will Win: All the Empty Rooms. Who Should Win; Perfectly a Strangeness
The poignancy of the conceit behind All the Empty Rooms and its stark message of the human cost of school shootings is remarkable, harrowing, frightening, and—once again—probably deserves the award, but there is something moving, sweet, funny, and poignantly mysterious in Perfectly a Strangeness that should not be overlooked. Plus the acting in Strangeness is great.
As I said earlier, picking one winner in each category is ridiculously subjective and almost inherently unfair, so I tried to base my choices as objectively keep my personal preferences to a minimum. Using objective criteria to judge individual movies, acting, and directing is theoretically possible, but given the vast range of screenplays, roles, and production budgets in this competition, there are just too many variables to make a completely objective judgement. This is not a football game.
Then, finally, we need to recognize those passed over by Oscar. There’s Chase Infiniti’s phenomenal acting debut in One Battle After Another, Adam Sandler and George Clooney’s wonderful performances in Jay Kelly, Jesse Plemmon’s sterling turn in Bugonia, and Guillermo del Toro’s and Jafar Panahi’s direction of Frankenstein and It Was Just an Accident. , respectively. And there are still many, many more. A competition does not do them justice.
The truth is that they’re all winners. And so are we, the audience.
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