Oscar Predictions 2026

 After years of correctly predicting sevenish Oscar winners out of the 10 categories I pick here, I took it on the chin last year by only getting four correct. My picks came too early to catch the Anora surge, and I whiffed on Kieran Culkin's domination of the supporting actor awards. And this was in a year where I saw more movies than usual! 

Bloodied but unbowed, I'm back to make my picks for 2026. I've seen exactly one nominated film - Hamnet - so let's see if that helps me get back to my perfectly cromulent ways.

As usual, some random observations before the picks:

* I expected to say that I've seen two nominated movies, but did not expect Wicked: For Good to get shut out. I figured it would at least get nominations in categories like costume and hair and makeup. I find it interesting that Avatar: Fire and Ash got a costume nod (not sure where the intersection of costume and animation lies), and I'm assuming The Smashing Machine got a hair and makeup nod strictly on the power of The Rock's coif.

* Paul Mescal went without a nomination for Hamnet, I think because there's not a category for best leadish actor. 

* Dianne Warren is nominated again for best original song, this time from a documentary about herself. I still don't think she'll win.

* Kate Hudson's nomination for best actress was, I think, at the expense of Amanda Seyfreid in The Testament of Ann Lee. Proving that voters prefer Neil Diamond to songs in the style of 18th century religious sects. The voters are old, but not that old.

* Sinners set a record with 16 nominations, and managed to do this without doubling up in the acting categories (and not even getting a nod for best actress, Chase Infiniti also getting passed over for Kate Hudson).

* I mulled over adding best casting to my predictions, in recognition of its addition as a category this year. I've opted not to, mostly to keep at an even ten predictions. But also because I'm chicken. For what it's worth, I would have gone with Sinners.

Finally, my annual warning that these picks are provided for entertainment purposes only. To paraphrase David Letterman, this is only an exhibition. Please, no wagering.

Best International Feature Film - once again the easy road to picking this is blocked by multiple nominees also getting nominated for Best Film. With apologies to all of my Scandinavian friends, I am going to go with Brazil's The Secret Agent. 

Best Animated Feature - am I really going to have to go with KPop Demon Hunters? *sigh* KPop Demon Hunters it is.

Best Original Screenplay - I have a hard time thinking that Sinners is going to get passed over here, especially as the other potential Best Picture winners are in the other category. 

Best Adapted Screenplay - it's probably wrong, but I'm going with Hamnet here, based at least in part of my often-discredited theory that this award is a sort of Miss Congeniality prize for a film that was nominated for Best Picture but won't win. I'm also going off of having read the book and being suitably impressed at how the story was brought to the screen.

Rapid fire acting awards, as usual:

Best Actor - Timothee Chalamet for Marty Supreme

Best Actress - Jessie Buckley for Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor - Stellan Skarsgard for Sentimental Value

Best Supporting Actress - Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another

Jessie Buckley is about as much of a lock for her award as any actor ever. I think Timothee is a pretty safe bet, though it's a strong field. I'm less sure of the supporting awards. Amy Madigan could win for Weapons, and there are two other veteran actors who could take the supporting actor prize (Benicio Del Toro for One Battle After Another and Delroy Lindo for Sinners). 

Best Director - I'm not going to try to think like the voters here, I'm just going to go with Paul Thomas Anderson based as much on his body of work as for One Battle After Another.

Best Picture - I'm going to go with Sinners for the split. It's been a few years since we've had one, and based on recent history it's about time (the last five splits were in 2021, 2018, 2016, 2015, and 2013). That's about as much analysis as I'm going to put into this, as past attempts at thinking things out haven't been particularly successful.

And as I did last year, here's a handy table of other award winners, which I'll update as we go so we can all see where my picks went wrong.

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To Ham or Not to Ham

After not seeing it as part of Moviepalooza, we went and saw Hamnet last weekend. We wound up seeing it at the Coolidge Corner Theater, a venerable Boston-area independent movie house. Our local megaplex only had it opening weekend, as far as I can tell.

I'm glad we made the trip, as this was a pretty impressive bit of filmmaking. It's been a while since I read the book, but I feel like the adaptation was able to get all of the important parts right while not making it feel like things were missing (I think the book had more on Shakespeare's life in London and on Agnes's relationship with her brother, but I never felt like I needed more of either in the movie). It helps when the novelist is one of the co-adaptors.

It also helps to have a cast with this sort of depth. Lots of (deserved) Oscar talk for Jessie Buckley's portrayal of Agnes, while Paul Mescal gets more mileage out of Shakespeare's semi-absent father than most actors could. I also liked Emily Watson's performance as Shakespeare's mother and Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet.

There are a few reviews that have used the term "grief porn" or something similar to describe the anguish that Agnes exhibits on (spoiler alert?) Hamnet's death, but I didn't find it excessive, especially given Agnes's experience with her own mother. I think it's also important to have Agnes be that grief-stricken as it makes the revelation she has at the theater about how and why Shakespeare wrote Hamlet that much stronger.

Where we were at an independent theater we did not get Nicole Kidman, but we did get some classic bumpers (including "Let's all go to the lobby" sung by the concessions who apparently want to be eaten). We also only got two previews, one for The Testament of Ann Lee (seen previously, and which we'll probably have to go back to the Coolidge to see) and one for No Other Choice, a Korean film where an unemployed paper executive decides to ensure his hiring for a new job by eliminating the competition... literally. It looks pretty good, honestly.

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