Oscar predictions for 2026

One Battle After Another and Sinners find themselves in a battle for best picture.

   Yeah, I know. It's almost mid-March, and we're still talking about 2025 -- at least when it comes to movie awards. Oscars will be handed out on Sunday evening. If you search for Oscar predictions online, you'll find no shortage of guess work, intuitive hunches, and analytical explanations for what’s likely to transpire. 

   I've always approached the prediction game with reservations, prompted this year in part by a lack of strong rooting interests on my part. Jessie Buckley seems a shoo-in for best actress, but I wouldn't be upset if Rose Byrne won for her performance in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. 

   I prefer Sinners to One Battle After Another, but either movie would make a decent best picture winner.

   Sure, Sean Penn is the favorite in the best supporting actor category for playing a right-wing nut job in One Battle After Another, but if Stellan Skarsgard pulled off a major upset by winning in this category for his performance as a film director in Sentimental Value, my life -- and probably yours -- will remain unaffected.

   Moreover, the awards season has become so long, so televised, and so covered by the press that by the time Oscar rolls around, I'm well past ready to move on.

   Still, Oscar remains the big prize, so I'll offer predictions in some of the major categories.

Best Picture: One Battle After Another.  

     This one boils down to a two-picture race pitting One Battle After Another against Sinners, which received a major boost when Sinners’ star Michael B. Jordan won best actor at the Screen Actors Guild awards. Other professional groups have gone for One Battle. 

      Here's a stray thought. What if the two frontrunners wind up providing another movie with a window of possibility. In the old days, I'd have speculated that Hamnet --a more traditional choice for best picture -- might have emerged victorious.  This year: Not likely.

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. I don't regard One Battle as Anderson's best movie; it’s not as good as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master, or Phantom Thread. But Anderson is a strong stylist, a sometime visionary, and a director with a clear, idiosyncratic sensibility that’s woven into all his work. He's had 14 nominations and has never won. He's a major director who’s past due.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel, Vineland. Anderson updated the story but kept Pynchon's raucous spirit alive throughout his movie. There's no real competition in this category.

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler for Sinners. Coogler brought sharp relevance to a genre mashup of a movie that employed an expansive cinema vocabulary but spoke in a distinctive voice. 

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan. Jordan played twins who moved back to their Mississippi hometown to start a juke joint. Magnetic in dual roles, Jordan likely will beat out Timothee Chalamet's uber-driven performance in Marty Supreme. Why? Because Marty Supreme isn't likely to receive big love in other categories.

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet. There's simply no competition in the only category on which everyone seems to agree. 

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another. If not Penn, Delroy Lindo of Sinners might provide one of the evening's surprises. 

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan's supporting performance made the horror movie Weapons a hit. Even if you don't like horror, you'd have to acknowledge that an unrecognizable Madigan stole the movie. If not Madigan, keep an eye on Wunmi Mosaku, who played hoodoo healer Annie in a role that gave Sinners a soulful boost.

Some bonus picks: Best International Feature, Sentimental Value. Best Animated Feature, Kpop Demon Hunters. Best Documentary, The Perfect Neighbor. Best cinematography, One Battle After Another.

Another Colleen Hoover romance

  Reminders of Him, the latest adaptation of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, takes us to Laramie, Wyoming, but the film could have been shot anywhere, a clue that we might have wandered into formula territory.

  The characters in Reminders of Him don't seem rooted in any specific landscape or location; they spring from a blueprint built around romance and obstacles, ingredients that have been seasoned with tragedy.

  Maika Monroe (Longlegs) gives a credible performance as Kenna, a young woman who, at the film's start, is released from prison after serving five years for vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence. Kenna's boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), was killed in the accident. 

  Guilt-ridden and shaken, Kenna pleaded guilty -- even though the situation turned out to be more complicated than initially suspected. 

   The newly released Kenna has one goal. She wants to see her daughter (Zoe Kosovic), a girl who was born in prison and taken from her. She has never held the child, who’s being raised by Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), Scotty’s unforgiving parents. They've structured a legal arrangement to keep Kenna away from her daughter Diem. 

    That's plenty of dramatic fodder. But what’s a movie such as this without romance? Enter Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a childhood friend of Scotty’s who owns a local bar. Ledger didn’t know Kenna previously because when Scotty was courting her, he was trying to launch a career with the Denver Broncos. When he blew out a shoulder, his athletic career crashed. By the time he returned home, Scotty already was dead.

    All drama hinges on some sort of contrivance; in Reminders of Him, they're awfully transparent. For five years, Ledger has been developing a close relationship with Diem, serving as a kind of surrogate father — at least that’s how he sees it.

     Kenna and Ledger know their relationship will threaten Ledger’s bond with Scotty’s parents and with Diem, who’s as cute as the kitten Kenna's landlady gives her when she moves into the low-rent but  ironically named Paradise apartments.

      At various times, Kenna narrates the film, reading excerpts from the notebooks she began to fill in prison. These consist of letters written to her late boyfriend.

     The supporting characters include a charmingly blunt young woman with Down’s syndrome (Monika Meyers) who Kenna meets when she lands a job bagging groceries.

   The story unfolds in predictably delivered slices that don’t grate on the nerves but unfold smoothly in the hands of director Vanessa Caswill, working from a screenplay by Hoover and Lauren Levine.

     Neither offensive nor deep, Reminders of Him glides past complexities that might have made for a more involving story. The movie follows on the heels of two other Hoover adaptations, It Ends with Us and Regretting You. It improves on the latter but isn't as strong as the former. 

     Hoover’s fans evidently are devoted enough to propel these movies into the profit column, even when they feel, as this one does, more anemic than any melodrama should.

       

A horror movie relies on sound

 Canadian director Ian Tuason makes his directorial debut with Undertone, a narrowly focused horror movie that concentrates on a podcaster who, with a partner, devotes her time to debunking paranormal claims. 

 Evy (Nina Kiri) spends most of the movie alone, preparing or recording her podcast while her mother (Michele Duquet) is dying in an upstairs bedroom. Evy has temporarily moved into her mother’s home for what amounts to a prolonged death watch.

  Evy’s podcast partner, Justin — a heard but not seen Adam DiMarco — believes that a series of disturbing recordings he has received might be authentic. Evy agrees to listen but plays her customary role as the pair's resident skeptic.

   Tuason's camera often isolates Evy in a darkened corner of a house that's filled with her mother’s Catholic paraphernalia — small statues of Mary, a picture of the Last Supper, crosses, and other cliches that usually turn up in films about possession.

    As the two partners listen to the audio files — 10 in all — tension mounts, and Tuason suggests a few psychological possibilities. Evy learns that she’s pregnant; she backslides on her sobriety, and she’s increasingly spooked by noises in the house. Lights  turn on and off by themselves. Faucets mysteriously begin running. Old stuff indeed, but wrapped in a minimalist package.

   The major question involves whether Evy is slipping into a state of psychological distortion or whether a demon — in this case, one responsible for mothers who kill their children — could have been summoned when the tapes were played. Eerie nursery rhymes -- Baa Baa Black Sheep, for example -- are repetitively employed.

    Tuason's audio-orientation relies on suggestive sound design, which includes snippets from the audio files that Justin receives. He sometimes plays them backward as he searches for hidden meanings.

     Films such as Undertone depend heavily on their finales. Tuason cloaks his with mostly darkened images and heightened sound, a maneuver suggested by preceding developments, but which seems too gimmicky to be entirely satisfying.

     Credit Kiri with holding the screen. And at its creepiest, Undertone casts a creepy spell. When it's all said and done, though, the movie doesn't dig deeply enough into what increasingly seems like an accumulation of familiar genre tropes.

A coda to the 'Peaky Blinders' series

    Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man serves as a sufficiently honorable coda to a series created by Steven Knight and starring Cillian Murphy. The series spread over 36 episodes, beginning in 2012 and concluding in 2022. 

   During its run, the series found deep and surprising moments for a cast that created indelible characters, even when the stories began to feel a bit repetitive.

    Before watching the one-hour and 52-minute movie version now playing in select theaters and bowing on Netflix on March 20, I viewed the entire series. It definitely helps to have some of the Peaky Blinders details in mind when you see this movie version. 

   Another caution: You'll probably miss some of the characters who made the series so memorable. Too bad many of them had the misfortune of dying before The Immortal Man begins.

     I'm not sure how director Tom Harper, a series  veteran, and show creator Knight, who wrote The Immortal Man, could have topped the brilliant conclusion to the sixth season. What they offer echoes past achievements more than it surpasses them.

    So where does The Immortal Man begin? Tommy has withdrawn into rural isolation with his loyal associate, Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee), serving as a helpmate. Essentially, Tommy has given up on the world.

    The world, however, has moved on. The story has entered the 1940s. Britain is embroiled in World War II, and Tommy's recently discovered son, Duke (Barry Keoghan), who entered the series during its final year, runs the Peaky Blinders gang with little regard for any gangster ethos.

   Untamed and reckless, Duke must be saved from himself, which means Tommy needs to put aside the biography he's writing and return to Birmingham to reestablish the sense of family that has all but vanished from the gang.

   Tommy initially resists the call to return, even when his sister (Sophie Rundle) pleads for a comeback. He changes his mind when Kaulo (Rebecca Ferguson), the twin sister of Duke's late mother and a Romani Gypsy seer, visits. Tommy, as immersed in his belief in the power of curses as ever, must meet his destiny. 

   One of the problems with a movie version of Peaky Blinders is that the characters can't develop the novelistic complexity the longer format not only allowed but often used to maximum effect. We really got to know the characters, even those we came to fear or despise.

    The plot builds on a trend established in the final season. Fascists in Britain pose a threat to a country that's already under bombardment. Tim Roth portrays Beckett, a Nazi sympathizer involved in a German counterfeit currency scheme that's meant to undermine Britain's already shaky economy and lead to the country's collapse.

    The third act resolution of Tommy's efforts to thwart the plot deftly build tension and excitement. At times, though, the movie overdoes things. A fight between Tommy and Duke finds them wallowing in the mud of a pigsty, for example. 

   During the final season, Tommy's ambition had already begun to curdle into resignation. His inner torment intensified. Now, Tommy is a bit of a dead man walking, a depleted husk of a man who lives among ghosts but has been denied the peace of joining them. He eventually dons his trademark cap and long overcoat, but much of the old juice has drained away.

     Beyond that, the key idea of family connection, with all its tests, contortions and possible betrayals, was stronger in the series, partly because the theme here is more stated than deeply felt.  

     A familiar question arises. Can Tommy find redemption? Tommy's attempts to foil a Nazi plot offers him an opportunity to do something good in the world, the best a man such as Tommy, who has accumulated a large body count, can hope to achieve.

   Whatever you think about this addition to the Peaky Blinders catalog, I can't imagine that devotees -- even those who wind up being mildly disappointed -- won't want to see it. 

    When a graying Tommy rides into Small Heath on a black horse, the movie offers a mix of nostalgia and stirring imagery: A lone savior comes to the rescue of those who lack the will to get the job done. Sure we've seen it before, but this, after all, is Tommy Shelby.

     As a series fan, I'm glad to have seen The Immortal Man, primarily because Tommy Shelby has earned his place in gangster lore as a keenly intelligent but brutal man whose thoughts remain hidden but whose eyes reveal the echoes of the poetry that haunts his damaged soul. 

'The Bride!' celebrates its excesses

  It's unlikely anyone will accuse Maggie Gyllenhaal of stinting on ambition in The Bride!,  a wild farrago of a movie that resists classification. 

  Is The Bride! a horror movie or a Gothic romance? Is it a feminist reimagining of movies of the 1930s, particularly James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein? Is it a comedy that pays homage to Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein with a rousing rendition of Puttin' on the Ritz?

  Or, is it a showcase for an uninhibited display of ferocity from Jessie Buckley in another fearless performance?

  As it turns out, The Bride! is all those things, a movie that makes no bones about celebrating its excesses, of which there are too many.

   Gyllenhaal's big-screen gamble doesn't entirely, but her  approach yields intermittent payoffs. Perhaps the genre it mostly resembles is one in which two crazy outcasts tear across the American landscape, eventually finding love.

    Buckley appears in two roles, occasionally interrupting the narrative for portentous speeches delivered by Frankenstein's 19th-century author, Mary Shelley, who inspires a manic outburst by Ida, also Buckley, a Chicago moll who winds up dead in the movie's prologue.

    Enter Christian Bale's Frankenstein, a.k.a. "Frank," who visits Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a scientist who has been experimenting with reanimating the dead. Poor Frank. He's lonely and craves the companionship of a woman who, like him, was created, not born. He yearns for a soulmate.

     Though she expresses reservations, Euphronious helps Frank dig up the recently deceased  Ida. Employing whizzing, flashing equipment that's heavy on old-fashioned dials and gauges, Euphronious jolts Ida back to life. 

     Initially, Ida, who can't remember her past, hardly seems an ideal partner for Frankenstein, played by Bale with a mixture of sincerity and goofiness, punctuated by occasional bursts of violence, mostly to protect Ida.

    Nothing if not loyal, Frank sticks to his lovelorn mission. He and Ida wend their way across the country, making stops at a roaring Chicago party, a sophisticated New York City black-tie event, and a rural drive-in theater.

    The wandering duo frequently attends movies, all of which star romantic lead Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). As we all once did, Frank learned about romance from the movies.

    Irate Chicago mobsters and a detective duo (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) pursue the fleeing renegades, as images of Bonnie and Clyde flash through our collective heads.

   Despite efforts to mask his appearance, Frankenstein can't always hide his stitched-together face, and Ida's tousled blonde hair and blood-red lips are accompanied by an ever-present stain on her right cheek, a souvenir from her reanimation. When it's popularized on tabloid front pages, her look turns into a fashion statement.

      I can't say that Gyllenhaal blends the movie's cornucopia of ingredients into a satisfying whole. She creates a mixed-bag of a movie that dashes across the screen, dazzling with its theatricality, amusing with its satiric fillips, and repelling with splashes of body horror. 

    Eclectic to the max, The Bride! practically drowns itself in movie love as it tries to match Buckley's expressions of unrestrained wildness. Say this, though: The Bride! earns the exclamation point in its title.

       

       

     

'Hoppers': fun with a message

  Mabel's journey isn't exactly standard issue -- at least not for a 19-year-old college student.

    During the course of Pixar's animated feature, Hoppers, Mabel (Piper Curda) projects herself into an artificially created creature that looks exactly like a beaver, so much so that she fools real beavers. 

   Mabel has a cause, but don't prep for a lecture; Mabel's story delivers an environmentally oriented message without short-changing fun.

 A resident of the small town of Beaverton, Mabel is a staunch environmentalist who balks when the town's mayor (Jon Hamm) destroys  the natural habitat where beavers and other creatures mingle. 

  A nearly completed thruway threatens her beloved glade. 

  Mabel's appreciation for nature began with her grandmother (Karen Huie). Grandma told Mabel that nature provides sanctuary and balance. Sitting quietly in the glade, Mabel could feel as if she belonged to something bigger than herself, and all would be well.

   As is often the case with animated features, the supporting characters add color and, in this case, a bit of human and creature chaos. Kathy Najimy voices Dr. Sam, the scientist who has invented the machine that transfers human brains into animal droids. The machine allows Mabel to  become a trusted advisor to King George (Bobby Moynihan), a beaver who has learned the art of accommodation with human ambitions. A major supporter of the Pond Rules that govern the animals, George needs to have his rebellious spark reignited.

   Meryl Streep provides the voice for Insect Queen, an imperious character that's more interested in fighting than persuasion. 

  A diverse array of creatures enters without too much concern for verisimilitude, particularly in the movie’s third act. Director Daniel Chong even finds a way to add a giant shark named Diane (Vanessa Bayer) to the mix.

   Toward the end, the movie probably overindulges its action inclinations, but not enough to spoil a mostly enjoyable hunk of animation. 

    What's missing? Some of the pop-cultural sizzle that the best Pixar features have captured. Still, Hoppers entertains while delivering a hopeful message that suggests we do better when we work together.

   I know that feels like a greeting card bromide, but, hey, we are talking an animated feature that may not be fully grown up, even if it avoids being infantile.

   For the record: The movie acknowledges that when nature functions properly, some of its characters might have to feed on their companions. A last-minute rescue saves Loaf, a beaver voiced by Eduardo Franco, from Ellen, a mostly friendly bear (Melissa Villasenor).

    Not to worry. Life in the glade may have its dangers, but they beat the disasters represented by thoughtless human intrusions.

A family story with gender twists

 Strong currents of gender fluidity run through Jimpa, a movie from Australian director Sophie Hyde. Relying on heavyweight casting centering on Olivia Colman and John Lithgow, Hyde tells a family story about characters struggling with multigenerational issues and fragmented family ties.

    Hannah (Colman) decides that her family should visit her gay father (Lithgow) who the family calls Jimpa. Jimpa and his former wife tried to make their marriage work in Australia, but Jimpa left Australia to become a gay activist in Amsterdam, where he has lived for years.

    Jimpa's grandchild, Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), a nonbinary transgender 17-year-old, idolizes Grandpa, regarding him as a hero who fought for gay rights. Hannah decides it's time to expose her child to the kind of diverse "queer" community available in Amsterdam. It's almost as if she wants Frances to peruse a menu of gender options.

    Hyde takes the drama back and forth in time, including snippets that illuminate Hanna and Jimpa's backgrounds. 

    A charismatic gay man, Lithgow's Jimpa isn't entirely at ease with the younger queer generation: He struggles with pronouns and loathes bisexuality, deeming it a cover-up for the gayness he has fought so hard to bring into the open. Still, he has a generous attitude toward the grandchild he clearly loves. 

   Hyde creates an easy-going ambiance around Jimpa whose gay friends have known each other for years and who've lived through the AIDS plague. Jimpa is an AIDS-positive survivor, but a recent stroke has left his family worried about his future.

    Early on, Frances propose to live with Jimpa for a year, a choice Hannah greets with trepidation. Still, she does her best to negotiate emotionally volatile terrain while allowing Frances as much freedom as possible. 

    A filmmaker by trade, Hanna believes -- or wants to believe -- that it's possible to make a film without conflict. She's working on a film about her father.

    The third act turns into a bit of a "right-to-die" drama when Hannah's sister (Kate Box) shows up. She disagrees with Hannah about how to deal with Jimpa's physical decline.

      Gently assembled, Jimpa tackles difficult issues and avoids drawing harsh lines in the sand, but it never finds a solid core around which the confusion of its characters can swirl. That's another way of saying the movie can't quite decide whose story it's telling, or maybe it tries to tell too many, doing none of them full justice.

An Iraqi childhood under Saddam

  Engaging as it is disturbing, The President’s Cake follows the adventures of Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), an Iraqi third-grader whose life is upended by a draconian school requirement. Lamia is assigned the task of bringing a cake to class as part of the national celebration of Saddam Hussein’s 50th birthday. 

 A major problem immediately arises. Lamia, who lives with her grandmother in the country’s Mesopotamian Marshes, can't find the ingredients for even a simple cake, partly because prices have soared due to a UN-imposed embargo.

   Early on, Lamia’s grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) takes the child to the city to live with someone who has agreed to take the child in. Too old and ill to cope with a nine-year-old, Grandma panics when Lamia flees, traveling through Baghdad's streets and markets in search of ingredients for her cake.

    Lamia doesn't lack for motivation. Her teacher (Ahmad Qasem Saywan) is a martinet who acts as a loyal surrogate for Hussein, treating his students as servants to his dictatorial demands.  

   During Lamia’s urban quest, she’s joined by Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), a schoolmate and the son of a disabled beggar. Lamia carries her pet rooster, Hindi, on her journey, her way of clinging to something familiar from home.

   Most of the people Lamia encounters aren’t eager to help. A mailman (Rahim Al Haj) proves an exception. He enters the picture when he gives a ride to Grandma and Lamia on their way to Baghdad.

   At the time, the mailman is accompanied by a soldier  traveling to his wedding. Gravely wounded by an American bomb attack, the prospective groom has lost his eyesight. “If she’s ugly, I won’t know it,’’ suggesting there's little left for him but residues of rueful humor.

   For his part, Saeed has been assigned the task of procuring fresh fruit for the birthday celebration, a task that’s as far beyond his reach as is Lamia’s pursuit of a cake.

  The two kids struggle to achieve their goals while Grandma hectors the uncooperative local police in hopes that they will locate Lamia.

  Lamia’s naïveté and resourcefulness make her an endearing character. Her mission-oriented focus contrasts with Saeed’s more improvisational efforts, augmented by Saeed's skill at theft. The two sometimes engage in staring contests to see who’ll blink first, a reminder that we’re watching kids who are ill-prepared for the tasks at hand.

   The President’s Cake reveals the harsh realities of a society in which scarcity and cruelty have been normalized. At one point, a seedy chicken merchant with perverse intentions tries to take Lamia to a porn theater in exchange for the baking soda she needs. Occasionally, bombers roar overhead, another sign of the hardships faced by the country’s beleaguered population. 

  Working mostly with non-professional actors and benefiting greatly from Iraqi locations, first-time director Hasan Hadi plays the indifferent bustle of everyday life against the personality of a plucky nine-year-old who, like many other Iraqi kids, deserved better.

    

    

A touching film from Colombia

 Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios) published two books of poetry as a young man and hasn't written anything since. Hapless and ill-kempt Oscar -- the main character in the Colombian movie A Poet -- lives with his mother, drinks excessively, and rants about Colombian poetry. When he's invited to read at a Medellin school devoted to poetry, he shows up too drunk to do anything but embarrass himself. As a last resort, Oscar, with a major assist from his sister, lands a job teaching at a high school. When one of his students -- Rebeca Andrade's Yurlady -- shows promise, Oscar presents her as a promising poet who deserves admission to the school where he, too, once was considered to have potential. As it turns out, the people who run the school view Yurlady as a representative of impoverished youth who'll help them raise funds and enable the school to tell a story about how it provides opportunities to young people who might otherwise fall through the cracks. Slowly, Oscar and Yurlady develop a trusting relationship, which  -- for Oscar -- may be a substitute for the estranged relationship he has with his own daughter (Alisson Correa), who's understandably wary about her alcoholic dad. Shot in 16 mm by director Simón Mesa Soto, A Poet leans heavily on Rios's shambling performance, which captures Oscar's mix of desperation and drunken bravado, but keeps the character a couple of degrees away from being pathetic. Not surprisingly, Yurlady is more interested in being an ordinary  teenager than in serving as a surrogate for Oscar's unrealized ambitions, and Oscar eventually outrages the girl's family. Soto's small-scale realism suits material about someone whose life can't, and probably never will, match the way he sees himself, but it lands gently enough to be touching.