95th Academy Award (2022) Nominations Predictions
The time has come yet again for the next set of Oscar nominations to be released on Tuesday, January 24th. The goal—as always—is to predict 20 of the 23 categories for this year’s 95th Academy Awards, leaving out the “Shorts” categories (Animated, Documentary, and Live Action) as I have seen none of the qualified candidates. I’m hoping to get a few more right than I have the last few years—maybe this is the year I break past 80% correct!
94th Academy Award (2021) Nomination Predictions: 78/105 (74.2%)
93rd Academy Award (2020) Nomination Predictions: 72/103 (69.9%)
92nd Academy Award (2019) Nomination Predictions: 82/108 (75.9%)
Last year, I got two categories exactly correct (Animated Film and Cinematography) so hopefully this year is an improvement there as well. I’ll write out my reasoning for the top eight categories, then make my guesses for the other twelve categories below that. In any case, let’s get down to it!
BEST PICTURE
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Women Talking
For the second year in a row, the Academy has opened up the Best Picture category to 10 guaranteed nominations, as opposed to their old method of nominating between 5-10 films (which always ended up with either 8 or 9). There are five locks here are The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, and Top Gun Maverick, all of which showed up nominated in the crucial precursor awards, including the highly influential Directors’ Guild Awards (or DGAs) where one of the five nominees has not missed a best picture nomination since 2011, when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo missed out. All five of these films also ended up nominated at the Producers’ Guild Awards (or PGAs), which last year, included 8 of the 10 final Oscar nominees. Elvis, the over-the-top biopic from Baz Luhrmann, also scored with the PGAs, and was included in the British Academy Awards (or BAFTAs) five Best Picture nominees as well (along with Banshees, Everything Everywhere, and Tár), so Elvis should be the sixth lock here.
So what to do with the last four slots? The fifth film in the BAFTAs slot was the German World War I movie All Quiet on the Western Front, which received a leading 14 nominations for the British awards, but found no love in any of the American guilds. The Screen Actors’ Guild nominated Banshees, Everything Everywhere, and The Fabelmans from our locks, but also included the more divisive three-hour early Hollywood epic Babylon and the star-studded drama film Women Talking in their last two slots. The PGAs rounded out their ten nominations with three huge hits—Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery—and one much smaller piece, the critically-mixed play-turned-movie The Whale. Other contenders included on various lists—including the National Board of Review’s top ten films of the year, and the American Film Institute’s top ten—are the small British film Aftersun, Jordan Peele’s sci-fi thriller Nope, the journalism “Me-Too” drama She Said, the Indian epic hit RRR, the Palme d’Or (best film at the Cannes Film Festival)-winning satire Triangle of Sadness, and the African historical epic The Woman King.
Usually, there’s a little more consensus going into the nominations than there is here, but I’m using historical precedent to move forward here and help inform some choices. The PGAs are typically very reliable in determining nominations for Best Picture, though they have a tendency to skew toward bigger hits, since—as the name shows—it is producers voting on these awards. Last year, the Producer’s Guild correctly predicted 8 of the 10 nominees, and I think it will be similarly predictive this year. Thus, I think Avatar: The Way of Water (a behemoth at the box office) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (a major success for Netflix and a very buzzy movie overall) both make the cut, as they were included in various other lists this year. Meanwhile, the two films that were only nominated by the PGAs—The Whale and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever—I think just miss out.
Then there are the last two slots. In this case, I think one has to go to the BAFTA-leading All Quiet on the Western Front. In recent years, there have been many instances in which an international movie breaches this category—including 2019’s Parasite and last year’s Drive My Car—as the Academy includes more and more members in its voting body. Due to its success in Britain, and because of the overlap between the voting bodies, I think All Quiet makes the final lineup. And then for the final slot, I think the ensemble film Women Talking just barely makes the final cut. The actors are the biggest branch of the Academy, and thus, Women Talking’s critical success—along with its nomination at the SAG Awards for their main prize—makes me think this has enough support to push it over the final line. However, if you’re looking for spoilers, I’d say The Whale, Aftersun, or The Woman King are the most likely candidates.
BEST DIRECTOR
Edward Berger, All Quiet on the Western Front
Todd Field, Tár
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Over the last few years, something strangely predictive has happened in this category, where four of the five DGA nominees show up nominated here, while one person is left out in the cold. Two years ago, Thomas Vinterberg and his black comedy Another Round replaced Aaron Sorkin for The Trial of the Chicago 7. And last year, Denis Villenueve’s Dune (which took home the most Oscars of the night) was replaced by Drive My Car’s auteur director Ryusake Hamaguchi. This—along with the increasingly international make up of the branch—gives us a good idea of what might happen in this category this year. The hard part, however, is figuring out which of the five DGA nominees misses here, and who replaces them. This year, I think that Top Gun: Maverick’s director Joseph Kosinski will miss out here and be replaced by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger, who—similar to Hamaguchi last year and Vinterberg two years ago—showed up in the BAFTA line-up before hitting big at the Oscars.
BEST ACTOR
Austin Butler, Elvis
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living
Four of the five of these should be absolute locks. Butler, Farrell, Fraser, and Nighy have shown up in this category at all the important precursors, including the SAG awards, the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice awards, and the BAFTAs. This leaves the fifth slot, however, entirely wide open. Paul Mescal for the critically-acclaimed indie film Aftersun showed up in this slot at the BAFTAs. Surprisingly, fan-favorite and perennial funnyman Adam Sandler nabbed the fifth slot at the SAG Awards for his role as a Philadelphia 76ers scout in the sports drama Hustle, though he has been busy on the awards circuit this year. Jeremy Pope has received raves for his turn in the film The Inspection about a gay Marine, but I’m not sure enough people have seen it to garner him the award. And of course, you can never count out a big star like Tom Cruise, who has won much critical acclaim for his role in the blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. Cruise hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since 2000 for Magnolia, so it could be a great story to see him nominated this year for the massive hit that Top Gun was. However, I think that the Oscars go with Mescal, a rising star best known for his Emmy-nominated role in Hulu’s Normal People and who is currently onstage in London as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. It would also mean that all five nominees in this category would be first time Oscar nominees for the first time since the 1930s.
BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, Tár
Viola Davis, The Woman King
Danielle Deadwyler, Till
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Right now the race seems firmly between Cate Blanchett for her titanic performance in the film Tár (which was so convincing that some moviegoers believed her character was a real person) and Michelle Yeoh for her magnetic and genre-defying performance as a woman trapped between multiple universes Everything Everywhere All at Once. Both have been nominated across the board for their performances and are locks here. Nominated alongside Yeoh and Blanchett throughout the awards season has been Viola Davis for her turn as a Dahomeyan warrior in The Woman King, so she should turn up here as well. That leaves open the last two slots, which are slightly less straightforward. Ana de Armas has been lauded and nominated by BAFTA and SAG for her performance in the Netflix biopic Blonde as Marilyn Monroe, but the movie was not well-received by audiences or critics. Danielle Deadwyler has had similar plaudits and also scored BAFTA and SAG nominations for playing Emmett Till’s mother in the film Till. Perhaps most surprisingly, Michelle Williams has somewhat fallen off for her role as Steven Spielberg’s somewhat off-the-wall mother in The Fabelmans after the studio decided to campaign her in leading actress rather than supporting, missing out on both BAFTA and SAG. However, this category always has surprises up its sleeve, such as last year when Kristen Stewart got in with neither of those nominations and Lady Gaga (who had both) did not. This year, I’m predicting something similar. I think Deadwyler and Williams both make the cut (Williams getting by on the strength of The Fabelman’s presumed success with the Academy), while de Armas will have to wait for a better received movie to break into the Oscars club.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Paul Dano, The Fabelmans
Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brad Pitt, Babylon
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Another category where the precursor awards give us a lot of information on who gets in here. Ke Huy Quan is no doubt the front runner for his performance as Michelle Yeoh’s husband and partner in many universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once. His story is even better as he left the industry after much success as a child actor, finding that the roles for Asian actors was left severely wanting, and came back to acting specifically to do this role. Also locks to be nominated are Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan for their roles in The Banshees of Inisherin, who have similarly showed up at the SAGs, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice Awards. That leaves two slots, for which there has been little consensus. Eddie Redmayne has continually showed up for his turn in the little-seen Netflix drama The Good Nurse, but at the same time, could go the way of Jared Leto the last two years who was nominated for SAG awards (for The Little Things and House of Gucci but was Oscar nominated for neither). Paul Dano was nominated at SAG for his turn as Spielberg’s academic father in The Fabelmans, but missed out at BAFTA. Dano’s co-star Judd Hirsch only shows up for one scene in The Fabelmans, but it is quite a memorable one and it could land him here even if the guilds have largely ignored his performance. Brad Pitt was nominated at the Golden Globes for Babylon, but has largely missed everywhere else. And while Ben Whishaw at one point was eyeing a nomination for the lone male role in Women Talking, his performance has largely gone unnoticed by the awards guilds. That makes me think that Dano on the strength of his SAG nomination and Pitt, on the strength of his celebrity, will fill the final two slots in this category.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
It’s hard to know exactly what’ll happen in this category, as there’s been a lot of different people that have been nominated across the different precursors in this category. The strongest three have been Angela Bassett, for her emotional performance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (and would make her the first actor nominated from a Marvel movie), Kerry Condon for her strong turn as Colin Farrell’s beleaguered sister in The Banshees of Inisherin, and Jamie Lee Curtis for her frumpy and incredibly fun role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The last two slots have always had the possibility of going a number of ways. Curtis’s co-star Stephanie Hsu—who arguably owns the heart of Everything Everywhere All at Once—was recognized by SAG. Meanwhile, Triangle of Sadness’s best candidate is Dolly De Leon who scored a nomination at BAFTA. Hong Chau has also been widely recognized for her role as Brendan Fraser’s caretaker and friend in The Whale, having scored SAG and BAFTA nominations. Carey Mulligan has also hung around for her portrayal of New York Times journalist Megan Twohey in her article about Harvey Weinstein in She Said, receiving a Golden Globe and BAFTA nod. Of all the above, I think Hsu has the strongest chance to get in, considering how strong the movie has been this awards season. I’m also banking on this category for a total surprise, as has been seen in the supporting categories in years past. Last year, Judi Dench cracked this category for her role in Belfast despite not having any prior nominations, and the same happened with LaKeith Stanfield two years ago for Judas and the Black Messiah. So my total surprise this year is Jessie Buckley in Women Talking. Since I have that movie cracking the Best Picture race, I think it also appears in an actor category, and given Buckley’s surprise nomination last year for The Lost Daughter, I think she can be shown more Oscar love this year despite the lack of precursors.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale
Kazuo Ishiguro, Living
Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rebecca Lenkiewicz, She Said
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Another difficult category, made trickier by the fact that the Writers’ Guild of America nominations don’t come out until after the Oscar nominations are released. None of the films in this category have shown up in every possible precursor, so it’s a mixed bag on what will make it here. One of the screenplays that has done the best so far has been Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s for She Said, which emotionally tells how the journalists put together the story that ultimately caused Harvey Weinstein’s downfall. She Said was nominated at BAFTA and by the USC Scripter awards, which every year recognizes the best adapted screenplays of the year. Also showing up at USC and BAFTA was Living by Kazuo Ishiguro, an adaptation of an Akira Kurosawa film. Sarah Polley has received much acclaim for Women Talking, which landed at USC but not at BAFTA. Meanwhile, if Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion is going to land in the Best Picture race, I think it also has to show up in screenplay, which was the only category Johnson’s original Knives Out movie showed up in. For the last slot, I think Samuel D. Hunter’s adaptation of his play The Whale will show up here, despite the divided nature of the reception to the film. If not The Whale, look for Top Gun: Maverick’s screenplay (written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie with a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks) to show up here, which would preview a strong day for the Tom Cruise blockbuster.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Todd Field, Tár
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Ruben Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness
Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, The Fabelmans
Original screenplay has been much more consistent in this category than in the adapted category, as four of the above movies has shown up across the board: Tár, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Fabelmans. It’s hard to see any of these not making it at this point given their strength throughout the season. That leaves one slot left for another movie to join, and I think the likeliest option is Ruben Ostlund’s satirical Palme d’Or winning film Triangle of Sadness. The other movie that could show up here is Elvis, especially if the Academy responds strongly to that film, but many have noted the weakness of the script and dialogue of the movie, which makes me think that showing up here is unlikely.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Turning Red
Wendell and Wild
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
Grieg Frasier, The Batman
Janusz Kaminski, The Fabelmans
Claudio Miranda, Top Gun: Maverick
Mandy Walker, Elvis
BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
All That Breathes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song
Moonage Daydream
Navalny
BEST EDITING
Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick
Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, The Banshees of Inisherin
Paul Rogers, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Stephen Rivkin , David Brenner, John Refoua, James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water
Matt Villa, Jonathan Redmond, Elvis
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
The Whale
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
All Quiet on the Western Front - Germany
Argentina, 1985 - Argentina
Close - Belgium
Decision to Leave - South Korea
EO - Poland
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Carter Burwell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Alexandre Desplat, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
Hildur Gudnadottir, Women Talking
Justin Hurwitz, Babylon
John Williams, The Fabelmans
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Applause” - Tell It Like a Woman
“Carolina” - Where the Crawdads Sing
“Hold My Hand” - Top Gun: Maverick
“Lift Me Up” - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“Naatu Naatu” - RRR
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Babylon
The Batman
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
BEST SOUND
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Top Gun: Maverick
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Nope
Top Gun: Maverick