It seems we’ve been inundated with voting opportunities these past few weeks. While able to elect a new representative for Alexandria in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, as well as candidates for a seat on City Council and voting on a Virginia constitutional amendment impacting congressional districting, we unfortunately don’t have a vote on Oscar ballots.
Many of the Academy Award categories are uncontested. Slam dunks almost all around from Jesse Buckley’s plaintive performance in Hamnet for Best Actress to K-Pop Demon Hunter’s Best Animated Feature and Best Song sweep.
What would Oscar season be without drama and upset? The 98th annual Academy Awards has come down to a flip-flopping mano-a-mano between contemporary American anti-establishment insurrectionists and 1932 Jim Crow South clan-combating vampires.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another has laid waste to the competition in all the dominant award scenarios. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has proved to be the underestimated little horror picture that could, earning a record-setting 16 Academy Award nominations.
Team OBAA versus Team Sinners?
Team Anderson v. Team Coogler?
What’s a film critic to do?
Predicting the Best Picture win this year was believed to be a no-brainer. Then Sinners won the Best Casting accolade at the Actors Award (formerly SAG-AFTRA) on March 1. The SAG award for outstanding performance by a cast has been seen as the bellwether for Best Picture Oscar since its inception in 1995.
In the past 24 years, 12 films winning the SAG cast award coincided with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Only three films that went on to win the Best Picture Oscar were not even nominated for the SAG cast award: Braveheart (1995), The Shape of Water (2027), and Green Book (2018). With the addition of the new Academy Award for Best Cast, all bets are off. Will the best cast award necessarily belong to the best picture?
And then there’s the Chalamet fall from grace. Leading the awards prognostications all season for his performance in Marty Supreme, and for co-producing, Timothée is one of only 10 actors to be a contender for both Best Actor and Best Picture in the same film: Bradley Cooper (three times, actually), Cillian Murphy, Frances McDormand, Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Warren Beatty, and Laurence Olivier. None of them, however, was barely 30 years old.
The wiry wunderkind, who in all fairness should have won Best Actor last year for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, seemingly had the Oscar in the bag. A recent encore viewing of the film reminded me that you are soon forgetting that you aren’t in fact watching Dylan himself.
Chalamet’s overly-expansive campaign for the gold statuette, followed by the Actor Award for Best Male Performance going to Michael B. Jordan’s double-great delivery as the demon-defender twin brothers in Sinners, moved the odds in favor of sinfully sexy Smoke and Stack over Chalamet’s supremely over-the-top Marty
So who will go home with the gold? Remember Academy voters are eligible to vote within their working category as well as for Best Picture. And it’s a preferential ballot using ranked choice voting and requiring over 50 percent of the votes to win.
The one battle after another for Best Picture ain’t over until the final Oscar award is presented. Even then anything can and will happen. Remember when Bonnie and Clyde stole the Best Picture Oscar in 2017? Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty inadvertently announced La La Land had won when in fact it was Moonlight.
Here are the AT Z MovieZ 2026 Oscar Predictions:
BEST PICTURE…. Sinners
BEST DIRECTOR….. Paul Thomas Anderson
BEST ACTOR…. Michael B. Jordan
BEST ACTRESS…. Jessie Buckley
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR….. Delroy Lindo (Sean Penn and Stellan Skarsgård will cancel each other out.)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS…. Amy Madigan (Wunmi Mosaku and Teyana Taylor will cancel each other out. Besides, actresses love it when a nominee makes herself look completely unfortunate for the role.)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE…. K-Pop Demon Hunter
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM… The Girl Who Cried Pearls
BEST CASTING….. Sinners
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY… One Battle After Another
BEST COSTUME DESIGN… Frankenstein
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE…. The Perfect Neighbor
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT…. All the Empty Rooms
BEST FILM EDITING…. One Battle After Another
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE…. Sentimental Value
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT…. Two People Exchanging Saliva
BEST MAKEUP and HAIRSTYLING…. Frankenstein
BEST MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)… Sinners
BEST MUSIC ( ORIGINAL SONG)…. Golden (from K-Pop Demon Hunters)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN…. Frankenstein
BEST SOUND….F-1
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS…. Avatar: Fire and Ash
BEST WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)… One Battle After Another
BEST WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) …. Sinners
Enjoy the Really Big Show tonight at 7pm and See All Y’all at Z MovieZ!!!
