Happy Oscar Nominations Eve! Twelve months have flown by, and Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid will be making the big announcement on Tuesday morning at 8:30 AM ET. It’s been an exceptionally odd year for film, with runaway successes (and certain Oscar nominees) like Barbie and Oppenheimer, dramatic industry-wide disruption from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that impacted potential contenders like Challengers and Dune: Part Two, former sure things that fizzled at the box office like The Color Purple and Napoleon, and the collapse of the superhero epic as the tentpole of modern Hollywood. Mix it all together and you have the makings of a rewarding and atypically populist Oscars season with an undercurrent of gratitude that film is somehow still alive and well. I’ll dive into my thoughts on the major contenders below. Join me in the comments for complete predictions in every category and to share your own thoughts, and tune in tomorrow morning for the annual nominations liveblog!

Since I already mentioned them, let’s start with the obvious: the Barbenheimer juggernaut. These two polar opposites opened to critical and audience acclaim on the same weekend, played off of each other to become global box office smashes, and have been impressing on the awards circuit so far (particularly Oppenheimer). Barbie is looking at a solid haul Tuesday morning, with a Best Picture nomination a certainty and a long-awaited nod for Greta Gerwig in Director seeming likelier than not after she garnered support at the Golden Globes and from the Directors Guild. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling both seem likely to pick up their third Oscar nominations, in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. One echo of the WGA strike is that the guild’s awards are significantly delayed this year, so we don’t have them as a normal precursor this time around. That said, Barbie’s screenplay has picked up nominations at the Golden Globes and from BAFTA, and I anticipate it walking away with an Adapted Screenplay nomination here. Costume Design and Production Design nominations are certain, though weirdly it’s already out of the Makeup and Hairstyling race after missing the shortlist. On the other hand, a whopping three songs made it onto the Original Song shortlist – “Dance the Night,” “I’m Just Ken,” and “What Was I Made For?” The latter two are sure things, and if Dua Lipa’s chart-topping earworm misses, it’s because of Diane Warren’s requisite annual nomination, this time for “The Fire Inside” from Hulu’s Flamin’ Hot Cheetos origin story, The Fire Inside. If Barbie is doing well on Tuesday, it’ll sneak onto the Film Editing and Sound lists, and if it’s doing really well America Ferrera will come away with her first nomination, in Supporting Actress.

Set to be this year’s most-nominated (and likely most-winning) film is Oppenheimer. It’s certain to garner nominations for Picture, Director Christopher Nolan, Actor Cillian Murphy, Supporting Actor Robert Downey Jr., and Supporting Actress Emily Blunt (shockingly her first nom!). Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography are sure bets, as are Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Score, and Sound. It’s crazy that twelve nominations seems like the floor for this one, but the ceiling isn’t much higher, as the only other place it might show up is in Costume Design. 

Nipping at Oppenheimer’s heels in total nomination count will be Martin Scorsese’s masterful Killers of the Flower Moon. Again, there’s no question of Picture and Director nominations, and Lily Gladstone’s soulful work leaves her as the current Best Actress frontrunner. Robert De Niro is all but certain to show up in Supporting Actor, earning his eighth acting nomination after missing for The Irishman four years ago (though he did get a nom as producer for that one). Leonardo DiCaprio is looking a bit weaker than he did at the beginning of the season after missing with BAFTA and SAG, but I think he squeaks onto the list ahead of Colman Domingo for Rustin (which I predict to get one lone nomination, in Original Song for “Road to Freedom”). Further down the list, Killers is looking like a shoe-in for Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Production Design, and Score. Where it’s on the bubble is in Makeup and Hairstyling and Sound. I think it gets into the former – edging out Netflix’s surefire International Feature nominee from Spain, Society of the Snow – and gets bumped out of the latter by Barbie. 

Next up – and similarly looking to impress in its total tally – is Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, the Greek iconoclast’s follow up to beloved 2018 Oscars hit The Favourite. Again, Picture and Director are certain, as are Emma Stone in Actress and Mark Ruffalo in Supporting Actor. Willem Dafoe could round out Supporting Actor, but I think he’s going to get pushed out by the groundswell of support for Todd Haynes’s May December, and in particular Charles Melton. Other than Dafoe, Poor Things isn’t looking weak in any of its potential categories, with likely nominations in Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Score, and Visual Effects.

Speaking of May December, despite an impressive showing on year-end critics’ lists this Netflix hit hasn’t really broken through on the awards circuit other than Melton and an all-but certain Original Screenplay nom. Unsettling, career-best work from Natalie Portman will likely go unrecognized, and Julianne Moore’s exceptional performance sits on the bubble in Supporting Actress. Moore hasn’t been nominated since her Actress win for 2014’s Still Alice, and I’m willing to bet a picnic’s worth of hot dogs that she makes it in here over Penelope Cruz’s work in Ferrari (which will otherwise settle for a Sound nomination). 

The TIFF People’s Choice Award winner has gotten a Best Picture nomination every year since 2012, and in all but one of those years (2014) so did one of the runners-up. That streak will continue this year with Picture nominations for The Holdovers and American Fiction. This year’s TIFF winner, American Fiction, is quite likely to earn Jeffrey Wright his first Oscar nomination, and an Adapted Screenplay nomination seems to be in the cards. This arthouse hit will have to settle for those three big above-the-line noms, but TIFF runner-up The Holdovers should fare a bit better. Alexander Payne’s hit dark holiday comedy could earn him his fourth Director nomination, but I think it’s unlikely and have him sitting in seventh as the annual Directors Guild miss with the Academy. That said, Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph are right at the top of the heap in Actor and Supporting Actress, and Dominic Sessa is sitting just off the list in Supporting Actor. Original Screenplay and Film Editing nominations should round out the haul for The Holdovers. 

TIFF’s second runner-up, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest swan song The Boy and the Heron, is expected to take a spot on the Animated Feature slate, but prospects are a bit disappointing from there. Much as I’d love to see this living master get a Director or Original Screenplay nomination (to say nothing of Picture!), it seems that Hollywood still isn’t there yet when it comes to animated films. If it gets a second nomination, it’s a ridiculously long-overdue one for Joe Hisaishi in Score. This is one spot where I’m predicting with my heart and trying to will it into existence: I’m putting in Hisaishi over Mica Levi’s work on The Zone of Interest. Jonathan Glazer’s critically-acclaimed meditation on the banality of evil from Oscar wunderkind A24 is looking like it’ll make the cut in Picture, and I have Glazer as my alternate in Director. Sandra Hüller probably isn’t strong enough to make it into Supporting Actress, especially with her lead work in Anatomy of a Fall garnering more attention as the season goes on. Screenplay nominations for foreign language films remain a rarity, leaving Zone on the bubble behind Barbie. I’m more confident in nominations for Cinematography, Sound, and of course International Feature. 

Returning to Anatomy of a Fall, France blundered a bit in overlooking the Cannes winner (though they instead picked likely nominee The Taste of Things, so you can’t really fault them – especially with Anatomy spending close to half of its runtime in English). That said, NEON has had a good run with the Oscars of late (and the Palme d’Or, for that matter), and the arthouse hit should make it into Picture. In fact, I think Anatomy will have just about the best possible Tuesday morning it could have and make it into Director (Justine Triet), Actress (Hüller), Original Screenplay, and Film Editing. There has been a tendency for an International Feature nominee to jump onto the Director shortlist in recent years, and I have a hard time putting Glazer above Triet here.

This year’s little engine that could, Past Lives, has been in the conversation since its Sundance premiere way back in January 2023. It’ll definitely make it into the expanded Picture field as well as Original Screenplay, but the only other real possibility is Greta Lee in Actress. I have her as an alternate to Robbie, much as I’d love to see her make it in (to say nothing of Teo Yoo in Supporting Actor and Celine Song in Director!). 

Rounding out the Picture list we have Bradley Cooper’s latest plea for Academy recognition, Netflix’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. Cooper won’t earn his first Director nomination, but he’ll more likely than not get his fifth acting nom (and tenth overall) in Actor. Carey Mulligan seems like a sure thing in Actress, and Cinematography, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Sound nominations are definitely in the offing. Smart money would peg this as an Original Screenplay nominee, but I’m putting it as my alternate, instead giving the final slot in the category to Prime’s meme-worthy hit Saltburn. I have a hard time imagining Emerald Fennell’s follow up to Promising Young Woman getting totally blanked, and Original Screenplay is by far its best chance (it’s also my alternate in Cinematography, though if I were playing it safe I’d go for Pablo Larrain’s black and white vampire historical drama El Conde). 

I mentioned The Color Purple and Napoleon at the beginning of this treatise, and it’s about time I revisit them! The former is my alternate in Picture, and breakout Danielle Brooks is a certainty in Supporting Actress. Production Design is probably happening (speaking of, my alternate in the category is Asteroid City, which hasn’t had a particularly strong awards performance but did surge on year-end lists and will otherwise go empty-handed), but I think the massive box office underperformance keeps this one out of Costume Design (my alternate: Wonka) and Original Song. Napoleon will settle for a Costume Design nomination and Apple will be happy it didn’t get completely ignored.

Okay, time to bring it home with some quick hits!

• Annette Bening is a possibility in Actress for Nyad, but after the film more or less fizzled out I think it settles for a Jodie Foster nod in Supporting Actress.
• All of Us Strangers looked like it could have a strong run, but it never took off with the guilds or critics and is probably missing in Actor (Andrew Scott) and Adapted Screenplay.
• Golda was already a bit tone-deaf before current Israeli actions started dominating headlines, but the Academy will do as it pleases and continue making the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category into the Most Makeup and Hairstyling.
• Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse is a certainty in Animated Feature, and very likely will make it into Score and Visual Effects as well.
• Awards shows love Jon Batiste, and he’ll probably round out Song with “It Never Went Away,” from Netflix’s American Symphony, which also has a clear shot at Documentary Feature.
• Visual Effects will get rounded out by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Creator, and Godzilla Minus One,with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as my alternate.
• Animated Feature shouldn’t hold too many surprises. Expect to see Elemental, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and Nimona to round it out, with Suzume as my alternate.
• Documentary Feature is always a crapshoot; this year I think the category gets filled out with 20 Days in Mariupol – also likely to show up in International Feature – Beyond Utopia, Four Daughters, and The Eternal Memory, with Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie as my alternate.
• International Feature will likely wrap up with Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, leaving all of us to wonder if Japan made a mistake selecting Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (still my alternate) over The Boy and the Heron.

Okay, there we have it! Want to make your own picks? Dissect mine? See this year’s random picks in the Shorts categories? Hop on down to the comments! And don’t forget to come back tomorrow morning for the annual nominations liveblog!

You can find more of my reviews and musings on the Oscars here on The Avocado and on Letterboxd.