Oscar Puzzle Part II: The Acting Categories That Have Pundits On Edge
Plus: What to read into the Gotham Awards noms
Today, I’ve got part two of my deep dive into our Prestige Junkie pundits’ predictions (read part one here), but first: We have some actual awards nominations to talk about! And yes, it’s not even Halloween yet. That’s just how the Gotham Awards like to keep us on our toes.
Voted on by small juries of critics, journalists and film programmers, some of whom vote in critics’ groups but none of whom are Oscar voters, the Gotham Awards can be hit-or-miss as significant Academy Awards predictors. To me, that’s a great thing. Even though the group eliminated its budget cap a few years ago, clearing the way for studio movies like Warner Bros.’ One Battle After Another and Netflix’s Frankenstein to rack up nominations, the Gothams are still wonderfully idiosyncratic and largely independent of Oscar buzz.
That’s not to say I don’t hope they at least cause some Oscar buzz. The six nominations for One Battle After Another, for example, tell me that Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie has its expected strong critical support — something that ought to get even more apparent when critics’ groups start announcing their winners next month. The Gotham nominees for best feature include some tiny indies that won’t likely be major awards players — take a bow, East of Wall, Familiar Touch and Lurker — but I was thrilled to see both The Testament of Ann Lee and Train Dreams make it in; both are contenders from studios — Searchlight Pictures and Netflix, respectively — with more heavy-hitting players. But each movie would fully deserve a spot on Oscar’s best picture 10 if I were voting.
Christopher Rosen and I will be digging deeper into the Gothams’ nominations exclusively for Prestige Junkie After Party subscribers on Substack Live this Friday at 8 a.m. PT (bring your coffee). If you haven’t joined us yet, now is a great time to sign up. But one last thing I’ll say is that the 20 acting nominees, divided between lead and supporting, are a fantastic mix of total discoveries (I guess I should see Sopé Dìrísù in My Father’s Shadow!), clear Oscar frontrunners (Jessie Buckley in Hamnet remains unstoppable) and longer shot contenders who really get a boost here (Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon and Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, I am rooting for you!).
It won’t be until after Thanksgiving that we start getting more nominations from critics groups and the Golden Globes, so these will have to hold us tight for now. Luckily for all of us, the Prestige Junkie pundits are still busily making their Oscar predictions and giving us plenty more to discuss. Let’s see what they have to say!
Where the Race Is This Week
When I asked some of our pundits to tell me more about what’s going into their picks, I got some category-specific insights, as well as broader glimpses into the sometimes agonizing decision-making at work.
“I make my picks mostly on vibes, and I’m not quick to change something after a new development, whether that be reviews, an awards result, seeing a film, or convos with people,” Joyce Eng of Entertainment Weekly, and a favorite guest on Prestige Junkie After Party, tells me. “That might bore anyone following my predictions — please find a better use of your time! — but I like some distance from the thing to think about it before doing anything... and sometimes I do nothing. And other times, I don’t think much at all if I need to fill out a category and the pickings are slim. My placeholders are just holding space.”
Meanwhile, Letterboxd’s Brian Formo gave me an intriguing preview of how the Governors Awards in a few weeks might force all of us to adjust our thinking. “That’s always the early tip-off for me to see who Academy members really want to talk to, especially if the film has an ensemble there.” Last year, it was attendees biding their time to approach Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn and Yura Borisov from Anora, and Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin from A Real Pain. Combined, those movies won six Oscars — including best picture for Anora, best actress for Madison and best supporting actor for Culkin — and received eight nominations.
“Will Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor be circled by voting sharks this year?” Brian wonders. “Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal? How much of the ensemble does A24 send for Marty Supreme? The more that studios send the whole ensemble and the energy around those ensembles is the most telling to me.”
The Governors Awards are on Nov. 16, so I’ll be checking in afterwards to reveal exactly whom the sharks were circling. For now, let’s get back to some category deep-dives.
Best Supporting Actor Predictions
There’s a lot of gray hair lingering near the top of the pundit picks in best supporting actor, with Sean Penn (One Battle After Another), 65, and Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value), 74, holding the top two positions. (Hamnet star Paul Mescal is the only other contender with multiple people ranking him first.) Penn has the unique challenge of another contender from the same movie — a lot of us are also picking Benicio del Toro for a One Battle After Another nomination, since his Sensei Sergio is the heart and meme favorite of the movie. Still, despite the Gothams — where del Toro got nominated and Penn did not — I’m not surprised that people are giving Penn the edge right now. His intense, maybe a little over-the-top performance as the vicious Col. Lockjaw comes up over and over again in conversations with industry insiders and voters.
Like me, Ryan McQuade of AwardsWatch can’t quite figure out whether to fit Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi into the race, even though Ryan has a compelling theory for how Elordi could eventually get in. “I don’t totally know what to do with Elordi, but I sided with the idea that he would get in if that film is our makeup and hairstyling winner,” Ryan tells me. It’s a solid theory — since 2016, every makeup and hairstyling winner has been paired with an acting nomination and often a winner, from Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour to Emma Stone in Poor Things. If the makeup team behind Elordi’s Frankenstein creature is being celebrated, shouldn’t the performance that brought it to life be there too?
Some other contenders our pundits currently have rounding out the category, all of whom seem to be competing with Elordi for just one remaining slot: Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly (currently in fifth), Delroy Lindo in Sinners, Jeremy Strong in Deliver Me From Nowhere, and my favorite longshot, Josh O’Connor in Wake Up Dead Man. Vulture’s Joe Reid is one of three pundits with O’Connor represented in their picks alongside AwardsWatch’s Erik Anderson and The Ringer’s Joanna Robinson. But only Joe has Josh in first place (live to dream!).
“I predicted all long shots because I am constitutionally opposed to calcifying the acting races too early,” Joe tells me. “Consider William H. Macy’s quietly devastating performance in Train Dreams! Throw your support behind Nicky Hoult’s hate-filled Lex Luthor if you think (as I do) that he was a huge part of why Superman succeeded. And even though he’s a co-lead of the movie, please consider Josh O’Connor’s nimbly funny and resonantly soulful performance in Wake Up Dead Man. Yeah, he’s in kinda everything these days, but that’s only more reason to get that first Oscar nomination out of the way.”
Best Supporting Actress Predictions
Yes, there’s plenty of pundit consensus around many of the ironclad strongest contenders in this category. Ariana Grande will almost certainly be back in the mix for Wicked: For Good. Teyana Taylor’s ferocious performance in One Battle After Another makes nearly every list, and most pundits have either Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas or Elle Fanning for Sentimental Value — some even have both!
But there’s also a big push for someone who isn't guaranteed a nomination but who seemingly everyone wants to see in the mix. As Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark put it to me, “I’m always torn between what I think will get nominated and what I think should get nominated. As such, I’ve decided to try to manifest Amy Madigan getting a best supporting actress nomination for Weapons,” he says. “Just repeating to myself: She should AND will, she should AND will. Let’s make it happen, folks.”
At the Prestige Junkie pundits page, we’re sure doing our best. Madigan appears on 78 percent of our predictions, alongside 55 percent of us predicting a corresponding makeup and hairstyling nomination — remember what I said above about those categories going hand in hand? I would have loved to see Madigan land on the Gotham Awards nominations list to confirm that this groundswell could really happen. Still, I’m keeping the faith that when critics’ awards start rolling in come December, the Madigan-mentum will truly begin.
Best Adapted Screenplay Predictions
After some initial confusion about just how much of the film was based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is officially running in the adapted screenplay race — and, if you ask our pundits, is poised to dominate it. It’s a packed field too, with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell’s adaptation of O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet, a new Knives Out film aiming to give Rian Johnson his third screenwriting nomination for the franchise and the bold adaptive choices of Bugonia, Frankenstein and Hedda also in the mix.
There’s not much consensus among our pundits beyond the view that both One Battle and Hamnet are locks, which makes me think some eventual surprises are in store. My long shot favorite of the season is, of course, Train Dreams, and I would love for Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar to follow their nomination in this category for last year’s Sing Sing with another one. I’m also enamored with the dark comic tone of Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, and given that the South Korean auteur is wildly overdue for his first Oscar nomination, this might be a great place to do it.
Best Original Screenplay Predictions
Much as they have at the Golden Globes, where their two biggest titles will be split between the comedy and drama categories, Warner Bros. awards strategists at least have one place where Sinners and One Battle After Another don’t have to compete against each other. That doesn’t mean Ryan Coogler’s Sinners script is a lock, though; pundits are also high on the odds for Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt), Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein), It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) and Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer), all of which are also major best picture contenders. (Ryan McQuade, meanwhile, is wondering if Jay Kelly might only get a screenplay nomination; sorry, Adam Sandler!)
It’s worth noting that this year is looking likely to continue an Oscar trend that can really set teeth on edge over at the WGA: nominations almost exclusively for directors who wrote their own scripts. Last year, just one nominated film across both screenplay Oscar categories was not written or co-written by its director (it was Conclave, and, hey, it won writer Peter Straughan an Oscar!). Compare that to the lineup 10 years ago, when just four of the 10 screenplays credited their directors as writers. It’s hard to identify a particular culprit for this trend — and, in general, we want the Oscars to award movies that are passion projects for their directors. But if you’ve been hoping career screenwriters will start getting their due again, this is probably not your year.