2022 Oscar Nomination Predictions

After the delays and pivots of the last couple years, we sort of felt like the Academy Awards were still a couple months away, and that movies that aren’t even released yet would be eligible this year, as titles like Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah were eligible last time around. Nonetheless, with the snubs from the ever more controversial BAFTA nominations still leaving blood trails across Film Twitter (or, more accurately, Awards Twitter), it’s once again the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s moment to show what side of history they want to be on. And odds seem as good as ever that Oscar is going to appease few of the anti-wokesters howling that they’re racing toward “irrelevance.” It’s as ever merely a question of whose definition of relevance we’re working from.

Best Picture

With the Academy once again opting for a rigid 10-film lineup instead of the sliding scale that’s been in effect the last decade (which, in the end, always yielded eight or nine nominations every single time), everyone’s pretty sure that no fewer than seven films are locked and loaded: the five movies nominated by the DGA—Belfast, Dune, Licorice Pizza, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story—plus guild powerhouses CODA and King Richard. And up until the BAFTA nominations were released, everyone was nearly as certain that Drive My Car was going to get shut out of all but Best International Feature, despite its runaway status as the thinking cinephile’s title of choice this year. That leaves two slots in play, and though many are feeling the inevitability of another Aaron Sorkin project crashing the gates, and others think Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hyperactive feature film directorial debut is as ascendant as Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story is fading, we’re all in on the dominance of Netflix, in both superstar chartbuster and old-school prestige modes (or Don’t Look Up and The Lost Daughter, respectively). Unless, of course, Hollywood buys into the hype that House of Gucci is somehow some sort of blockbuster in these dark box-office times.

Will Be Nominated: Belfast; CODA; Don’t Look Up; Drive My Car; Dune; King Richard; Licorice Pizza; The Lost Daughter; The Power of the Dog; West Side Story

Closest Runners-Up: Being the Ricardos; House of Gucci; tick, tick… BOOM!

Best Director

BAFTA finally gave everyone bending over backwards to justify predicting a Kenneth Branagh snub some hope. But we’re not convinced, because Oscar just ain’t that kind. To be clear, we definitely think that the director’s branch’s prominent international bent will usher the eminently deserving Hamaguchi Ryûsuke into contention here. It’s just not going to come so much at Branagh’s expense, as Oscar seems likely to knock Steven Spielberg out of the running. Unless Adam McKay manages to make it three for three in sellout-serious mode.

Will Be Nominated: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast; Hamaguchi Ryûsuke, Drive My Car; Denis Villeneuve, Dune; Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza; Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Closest Runners-Up: Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up; Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Best Actress

The performance of the year has been from those declaring the Best Actress race over while, week after week, swapping in a new name to applaud as this year’s winner-elect. Congrats, Kirsten Stewart! Alms, Nicole Kidman! Yaaaaas, Gaga! That shameless ongoing performance aside, it has been a uniquely volatile and full-throated contest this year, a race that’s arguably more interesting than most of the performances involved, given the sheer number of mimic-by-numbers biopic simulations in the mix. With one major exception. The SAG nominations were the first signs of alarm for the KStew crew, a situation that’s only devolved into full-bore panic ever since. It’s frankly beyond us how anyone could regard Nicole Kidman’s contemplative Lucy or Jessica Chastain’s borderline brain-damaged Tammy Faye as that obviously superior to Stewart’s Princess Di in another Pablo Larraín chore, but nonetheless, Stewart seems down for the count. Call us optimistic, but we feel that the extra month or so Oscar voters have been given to assess the field will see them opting instead for the fully lived-in likes of Penélope Cruz, Alana Haim, Olivia Colman, and perhaps even Renate Reinsve.

Will Be Nominated: Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter; Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers; Alana Haim, Licorice Pizza; Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos; Lady Gaga, House of Gucci

Closest Runners-Up: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye; Jennifer Hudson, Respect; Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World; Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Best Actor

And in this infinitely less volatile race, if Kidman’s in, we think so is Javier Bardem, and very likely at the expense of Denzel Washington, whose BAFTA snub feels less like another chapter in that organization’s ongoing ignorance of the actor’s gifts and more like an overall failure for Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth to capture the collective imagination. Elsewhere, if Don’t Look Up is shaping up to be a bigger player than we could’ve feared, it’s hard not to see the movie’s mad-as-hell center of conscience Leonardo DiCaprio failing to break through, unless the coattails of Drive My Car reach beyond even our own wildest imaginations.

Will Be Nominated: Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos; Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog; Leonardo DiCaprio, Don’t Look Up; Andrew Garfield, tick, tick … BOOM!; Will Smith, King Richard

Closest Runners-Up: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Drive My Car; Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Supporting Actress

Seemingly the most settled acting slate, so much so that we’re not going to argue against the common wisdom even though it sure feels like performances as meaty as Jessie Buckley’s or Ann Dowd’s really ought to usurp the slot currently held by Caitríona Balfe, who in Belfast is mainly asked to perform different levels of pissed off. If anyone falters from this lineup, we’re of the opinion that it could actually be CODA’s Marlee Matlin as the beneficiary, as much so for what she did behind the scenes to get the movie made as for what she did on screen.

Will Be Nominated: Caitríona Balfe, Belfast; Ariana DeBose, West Side Story; Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog; Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard; Ruth Negga, Passing

Closest Runners-Up: Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter; Ann Dowd, Mass; Marlee Matlin, CODA

Best Supporting Actor

It took the BAFTAs to say what we’ve been thinking the whole time: Why just one supporting actor from The Power of the Dog when you can easily nominate two? Of course, the logic would also hold: Why nominate just one supporting actor from Belfast when you can easily nominate two? True to that, we’re not entirely sure that Jamie Dornan won’t slip in past Bradley Cooper’s indelible but, yes, extremely brief turn in Licorice Pizza. But better Dornan than Jared Letonio flinging strips of prosciutto everywhere throughout House of Gucci.

Will Be Nominated: Bradley Cooper, Licorice Pizza; Ciarán Hinds, Belfast; Troy Kotsur, CODA; Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog; Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog

Closest Runners-Up: Ben Affleck, The Tender Bar; Jamie Dornan, Belfast; Mike Faist, West Side Story; Jared Leto, House of Gucci

Best Original Screenplay

It shouldn’t be too hard for the increasingly less international-seeming screenwriters’ branch to keep Asghar Farhadi and Pedro Almodóvar out of the mix here. But if any of the frontrunners are on shakier ground than the precursors would indicate, expect one of those two perennials to slide in, unless writers give Paul Schrader bonus points for also penning the year’s most unintentionally compelling social media feed.

Will Be Nominated: Being the Ricardos; Belfast; Don’t Look Up; King Richard; Licorice Pizza

Closest Runners-Up: A Hero; Parallel Mothers

Best Adapted Screenplay

Conversely, we feel confident that Drive My Car will most definitely clear a spot for itself here, despite the aforementioned screenwriters’ branch iffy recent track record for international contenders. If not, the sound you hear will be that of the awards prognosticating world’s reactionary wing popping corks at the defeat of the film that dared sweep the major critics’ awards over…Spider-Man, I guess?

Will Be Nominated: CODA; Drive My Car; Dune; The Lost Daughter; The Power of the Dog

Closest Runners-Up: Passing; West Side Story

Best International Feature

Of course, if Drive My Car somehow missed out on all the above categories and also got snubbed here, the aforementioned reactionaries might spontaneously combust with excitement. But don’t expect that to happen, even though the 15 shortlisted films still in contention represent one of the strongest fields in many years. We’re going mostly with conventional wisdom here, but sticking our necks out for Playground, which is absolutely riveting in a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-it kind of way, and also weirdly feels like a (probably unintentional) rebuke of the latter-day schematic nature of the Dardenne brothers’ work.

Will Be Nominated: Playground (Belgium); A Hero (Iran); The Hand of God (Italy); Drive My Car (Japan); The Worst Person in the World (Norway)

Closest Runners-Up: Flee (Denmark); Lamb (Iceland); Hive (Kosovo)

Best Documentary Feature

One of the seeming effects of the pandemic lockdowns is that documentaries are as high profile of late as feature films, maybe more so. So it’s no surprise that this might be one of the most competitive races of year, even if the two shortlisted docs explicitly dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic—The First Wave and In the Same Breath—might hit too close to home to actually land the necessary votes. With Netflix behind the film, Procession is for sure in, as is The Rescue, from previous winners Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. If you ask us, Flee seems a better bet here than in Best International Feature, if not as solid as in Best Animated Feature. And we think the visuals of Ascension and the music of Summer of Soul will complete the lineup over the furies of Attica and vibes of Faya Dayi.

Will Be Nominated: Ascension; Flee; Procession; The Rescue; Summer of Soul

Closest Runners-Up: Attica; Faya Dayi; The First Wave

Best Animated Feature

We don’t have kids, so we’re going to lean on the precursors pretty heavily, as adults tend to get, at most, one slot here, and Flee has it pretty well locked up over Cryptozoo. And, again, Netflix. Despite Belle’s solid notices, we’re going to presume that Vivo, which has a Lin-Manuel Miranda connection, or The Summit of the Gods gets that fifth spot.

Will Be Nominated: Encanto; Flee; Luca; The Mitchells vs. The Machines; Vivo

Closest Runners-Up: Belle; The Summit of the Gods