Zoe Saldana, left, has won over just about everyone with her recent awards show acceptance speeches for her role in Emilia Perez.Shanna Besson/The Associated Press
It was only three short years ago that the Academy Awards delivered “The Slap” – and just one year since Canada’s favourite Ryan (that’d be Gosling) rose up in the crowd to take the Dolby Theatre through a rousing rendition of I’m Just Ken. What unexpected moments will audiences wake up talking about after this Sunday’s Oscars? Only host Conan O’Brien might know.
But to even the odds just a little bit, here are my best guesses and greater hopes for who will take home a little golden man (the statue, not Gosling). And if this helps win your Oscars betting pool, don’t forget to send a little commission back my way in the form of a Globe and Mail subscription or two.
Best Picture
Will Win: Anora
Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed like the big prize of this year’s ceremony was Emilia Perez’s to lose. But then the film’s star, and best actress nominee, Karla Sofia Gascón revealed herself to be an equal-opportunity racist, with a series of unearthed tweets derailing not only her historic awards campaign (she’s the first openly trans performer to ever earn an Oscar nod) but her film’s chances in general. Enter: Anora, the little sex-work comedy that could, with Sean Baker’s film now hungrily eyeing that statuette like a Russian oligarch’s trust fund.
Should Win: The Brutalist
Across its 215 relentlessly engineered minutes, The Brutalist delivers the kind of sweeping, brazen and generation-altering cinema that makes you believe in the pure power of cinematic ingenuity. A victory for the film on Sunday night would be a victory for all those audiences who are craving something made outside the grinding gears of the rusty Hollywood machine.
Should’ve Been a Contender: Sing Sing
Based on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program that began at New York’s maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in which inmates stage theatre productions for their fellow prisoners, the new film from Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar is a captivating experiment in progressive docu-drama. This is as big, immersive and knock-down-drag-out impressive a drama as 2024 delivered.
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Best Director
Will Win: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
The math behind Corbet’s The Brutalist should not add up. You simply cannot shoot a 168-page screenplay over just 34 days with a budget less than $10-million, and expect anything less than a mess. And yet the 36-year-old Corbet has made the impossible numbers work in his favour, delivering the very best film of the year, even if he had to travel far away from Hollywood – Hungary, in fact – to make it. And considering the director’s reception on the awards circuit thus far, everyone else in the industry agrees.
Adrien Brody, left, and Felicity Jones in a scene from The Brutalist.The Associated Press
Should Win: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
This might be the rare Academy Awards category this year where my hopes and those of the Academy align.
Should’ve Been a Contender: Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two
If Dune: Part Two had kept its original release date of November, 2023, it might have triumphed at last year’s Academy Awards. But because of the dual Hollywood strikes, Warner Bros. moved the movie to the spring of 2024, where it overperformed at the box office but seems to have been wiped from the long-term memory of many Academy voters, especially when it comes to the Canadian director of the entire thing. Perhaps we can give Villeneuve an honorary Canadian Screen Award to compensate?
Best Actress
Will Win: Mikey Madison, Anora
Hollywood loves two things above all: a come-from-nowhere breakout, and a comeback. So which one will triumph this time around? There’s an argument that The Substance star Demi Moore has the edge in this category, given how closely her film speaks to her own career – even if the two elements diverge sharply once all the gnarly body-horror stuff arrives. But my money’s on the fresh-faced Mikey Madison pulling ahead here, given how strongly the Anora ingénue has played the festival and awards circuit.
Should Win: Mikey Madison, Anora
While hardly a newcomer – she was a regular on the FX series Better Things and popped up in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Mikey Madison breaks through in Anora in a profound way. As sharp and dangerous as broken glass, but with the metaphorical shards also revealing a natural fragility, Madison’s performance anchors Sean Baker’s sometimes surreal comedy with something painful and real.
Mark Eydelshteyn, left, and Mikey Madison star in sex-work comedy Anora.The Associated Press
Should’ve Been a Contender: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
The curdled heart and soul of Mike Leigh’s shrewd new drama Hard Truths, Jean-Baptiste’s absence from Sunday night smacks of unforgivable Academy ignorance.
Best Actor
Will Win: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
The argument against Brody winning is that he already has an Oscar – and for a not entirely dissimilar film, at least in its backdrop and era. Yet just because the actor has knocked it out of the park once doesn’t disqualify him from doing so again, and every minor awards gala leading up to Sunday seems to have paved his way for another big win. Just keep your lips away from whomever is presenting you that statuette this time, Brody.
Should Win: Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
In 2024, Domingo earned his first ever Oscar nomination for the lightweight and flawed drama Rustin. But it is Sing Sing – which neatly premiered at the same edition of TIFF that Rustin made it debut – which truly stirs the soul, highlighting just how powerful a presence Domingo can be.
Should’ve Been a Contender: Aaron Pierre, Rebel Ridge
The British actor, who made a massive impression in Clement Virgo’s 2022 Canadian drama Brother, is the absolute perfect star of Jeremy Saulnier’s tightly wound thriller. There is one moment in particular – a slow-boil confrontation between Pierre’s lead ex-military hero and a crooked small-town sheriff – that rests entirely on the actor’s sturdy shoulders. And he pulls off the trick with remarkable, almost frightening ease. If the Academy wasn’t so afraid of genre thrillers, then maybe Pierre would’ve had a chance.
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win: Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez
As badly as her co-star has scuffed Emilia Perez’s Oscar shine, there’s a better-than-good chance that Saldana will still emerge triumphant on Sunday night. Her acceptance speeches at various other awards shows (including the Golden Globes) have won over just about everyone, while those more skeptical of Emilia Perez’s alleged charms can think of Saldana’s win as recognition for a solid career, rather than one role.
Should Win: Ariana Grande, Wicked
Ariana Grande, left, is perhaps the only saving grace of Wicked with her high-energy performance.Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures/Supplied
Drained of colour and egregiously choreographed, Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Broadway’s Wicked musical should, mostly, have been kept far away from any awards show. Yet whenever she’s on-screen, Grande keeps the energy so deliriously high that you almost believe the entire misbegotten production works.
Should’ve Been a Contender: Margaret Qualley, The Substance
As The Substance reminds audiences – over and over – there is no separation between Demi Moore’s character and that of her younger counterpart/clone, played by Margaret Qualley. And so, just as much as the gory gonzo feature belongs to Moore’s performance as a Hollywood star on the wane, then it also rests on the performance of Qualley as her younger, smoother-skinned, maniacally determined self.
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
If there is a single 100-per-cent sure bet in this awards race, it is Culkin ascending to the stage Sunday night and rattling off a faux-improvised acceptance speech for his role as an abrasive ne’er-do-well. On the one hand, the actor deserves the recognition, if for nothing else than transferring his Succession character to a different canvas. On the other, I’m secretly rooting for Culkin to be usurped by his one-time HBO co-star, Jeremy Strong, who is up for his role as devilish lawyer Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice.
Should Win: Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
But as much as it would be fun to see Strong leap ahead of Culkin, I’m really rooting for Pearce, who has never been better than he is in The Brutalist, playing an arrogant industrialist who barks out dialogue like a rabid Charles Foster Kane.
Should’ve Been a Contender: Denzel Washington, Gladiator II
Very little in Ridley Scott’s decades-later sequel works – oh my god, I just had a flashback to the sharks swimming inside the Colosseum. And those CGI monkeys! Yet every time that Washington swishes onto the screen as a string-pulling Roman striver – the actor flashing his mile-wide grin and popping his eyes like a Looney Tunes character – the movie comes alive.