Film Obsessive Predicts the 97th Academy Award Winners

Each year, one of our most venerable institutions draws together upon the collective wisdom of its members to determine who and what shall be the recipients of the industry’s most treasured awards. That’s right, I am talking about the staff of Film Obsessive, meeting once again as they do every year, to predict the 97th Academy Award winners. We’ve pooled our resources, picked over the nominees, vented our complaints, and determined our prognostications. With the Awards ceremony just around the corner—March 2nd—here’s who and what we predict to take home the coveted statuettes.

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain 

Since co-starring with big brother Macaulay Culkin way back in 1990’s Home Alone, Kieran Culkin has successfully made the transition to a mature character actor. After a decorated run on HBO’s hit show Succession—for which he was awarded with wins at the Emmys and Golden Globes—he is now poised for an Oscar win, after already picking up the Golden Globe, for his dynamic performance in 2024’s A Real Pain. While writer/director Jesse Eisenberg plays the calmer straight man, Culkin adds his skilled range to A Real Pain, juxtaposing his comedic charm with bursts of dramatic intensity.

Cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Culkin) embark on a European tour to Poland after the death of their grandmother, dissecting their own family tension and traumatic past as Jewish-Americans. Eisenberg and Culkin play well off of each other, but Culkin gets the room to execute his sarcastic barbs and sprinkles in small doses of devastating grief to ground the film emotionally.  As our favorite to win Best Supporting Actor at the 97th Academy Awards, Kieran Culkin can look forward to a bountiful awards season that would make him one of the most decorated television and film actors of the decade. — Seth Lamey

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Perez

How does one talk about Emilia Pérez? The Jacques Audiard crime musical trans drama went from Oscar frontrunner to toxic mess in what seemed like a matter of mere days. It was a divisive movie even before all of the drama emerged. Here at Film Obsessive, we, like others, reviewed it positively and ranked it among the year’s best. However, like many, I personally found it a vile and ugly picture. What remains generally agreed upon is Zoe Saldaña’s impressive performance as the attorney Rita Moro Castro

Saldaña neatly channels Emilia Perez‘s silliness and introspection. During her performance of “El Mal,” a song that feels otherwise tepid and uninteresting, Saldaña breaks her back to make it an engaging musical number. Whatever ridiculous tone or theme Emilia Perez tries to establish on a scene-to-scene basis, Saldaña matches it. The Academy will reward Saldaña more for her career contributions than the actual film itself. Plus, the film’s defenders inside the Academy would probably like to give it some hardware. While enough voters could swing the Actress in A Supporting Role for Ariana Grande’s turn in Wicked, I think there will be enough support for Saldaña, who has gone largely unscathed from the nasty controversy around Emilia Perez. — Henry O’Brien

ANIMATED FEATURE: The Wild Robot

In this day and age, everyone wants a “message movie,” especially here at the Academy Awards. The movies and performances being awarded can’t just be recognized as the best of their discipline. Affluent voters, film historians, and cinephiles want big statements that shout to the state of the world that given year or moment in time. When you look at the most-nominated films this year, you’ll see that extra emphasis all over. Too often, voting with that in mind invites too much biased over-projection of external agendas and, honestly, dates the winners into time capsules. Sometimes, the best and most important messages remain the simplest and most timeless ones, and that’s where The Wild Robot comes into play as the deserved winner of Best Animated Feature. 

For the headier crowd, Chris Sanders’s hit film adapted from the children’s novel does speak to reliance on artificial intelligence and a proposed future of reduced humanity due to climate change. That’s all well and good, but, at its core, The Wild Robot sheds that metallic sheen and champions the rustic devotion of substitute parents, supportive neighbors, and good old-fashioned kindness. It does so with whimsical animation, a soaring musical score (which deserves to win that under-the-title Oscar as well), and heart-tugging vocal performances. You can have your other firebrands, pitchforks, and torches. Wholesome still has a place to win its share Academy Awards, and it’s right here with The Wild Robot. — Don Shanahan

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Sean Baker, Anora

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Peter Straughan, Conclave

While Edward Berger’s Conclave has been nominated for eight awards at this year’s Oscars, one among them seems most likely—Best Adapted Screenplay, written by Peter Straughan and based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel of the same title. It’s a fitting accolade for a film that charts the scandals among the Cardinals vying for a now-empty papal seat with riveting pacing and attention to detail. More, its relevance as an election thriller also resonates with a United States suffering from the fascist ruin of our latest election. Berger and Straughan imagine a world where justice via democracy is an aspirational possibility, where all truths that need to be revealed are destined to come to light, where faith in its most generous forms hold strong, and where change within traditionalist systems can set the beginnings to a more progressive world order. Some might view this film’s optimism as a delusional pipe dream—and while it’s certainly still anodyne in places, the hope this film’s script contains, all while elegantly balancing an ensemble of characters, motivations, and mysteries, may very well prove to be what draws voters to cast their own ballots for Conclave‘s eventual Oscars victory.  —  James Y. Lee

DIRECTOR: Sean Baker, Anora

What does it mean to be loved? More importantly, what does it mean to love someone else? In Sean Baker’s Anora, we see our title character on a personal journey with these two questions in mind. Visually, Anora’s story is full of the glitz and glamour to which Hollywood audiences are no strangers; it’s when you look deeper into the characters’ psyches that you find the tragedy. Baker is able to balance this alluring lifestyle with the reality of what it means to live it as an outsider. He paints a perfect picture of seduction, putting us into Ani’s shoes for the whole runtime. Bad decisions are telegraphed well before she makes them, but you never blame her.

Mikey Madison’s performance deserves plenty of credit, but without Baker’s directorial choices in navigating this emotional landmine, Anora could’ve fallen short. From slapstick comedy to tear-jerking moments to in-your-face sex scenes, it’s hard to predict where Anora is going from scene to scene. A tonal imbalance like this could lead to a film being a total disaster. However, Baker never loses focus of the story he’s telling: No matter what’s on the screen, you know what Anora’s thinking at every moment. Behind all of the wacky shenanigans and funny line deliveries is a young woman discovering love, self respect, and, more importantly, herself. Baker’s eye for the intimate and mundane situations of everyday life make him a deserving winner for the Academy Award for Directing. — Matthew Percefull

ACTOR: Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

With his performance in 2016’s Call Me by Your Name, Timothée Chalamet’s understated onscreen physicality, complemented by his quiet voice, distinguished him from his peers. Nearly ten years after that turn, the young actor demonstrated his quiescent power as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, as the prince transforms into a dominant force. And then came his take on Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, which confirms his dramatic power as an actor. As a 19-year-old Dylan just starting his remarkable career, Chalamet channels his own confidence to embark on a journey of becoming the singer-songwriter-poet who, unapologetically, shocked, surprised, and entertained those who thought they controlled over the singer’s future.

Having benefited from a long, pandemic-related delay to learn the nuances of Dylan’s simple-but-idiosyncratic guitar playing and singing, Chalamet demonstrates his relentlessness in the pursuit of a quiet truth, in the process achieving his own excellence, just as the person he portrayed did some sixty-odd years ago. Cinema is exceptionally fortunate to have someone of Chalamet’s talent as a positive example of grace, cool and, charisma on the silver screen, exemplified by this Oscar-worthy performance in A Complete Unknown. — Ben Calahmer

ACTRESS: Demi Moore, The Substance

Everyone loves a good comeback story, but Demi Moore’s journey from Razzie winner to Oscar nominee is not merely a story of a woman returning to the spotlight. It’s more so that the spotlight has caught up to Moore’s body of work with her performance in Coralie Fargeat’s instant body-horror classic, The Substance. Moore’s portrayal of an aging exercise star, Elisabeth Sparkle, desperate to cling to her youth is fearless and unencumbered.

There must have been a feeling of freedom for Moore in taking this role. The Substance is essentially pouring gasoline on a fire that has likely been burning in Moore’s mind for her entire career about the industry’s treatment of women. Her performance is whole-bodied physicality mixed with a tenderness that makes Elisabeth Sparkle both larger-than-life and familiar. Should Moore take home the statuette, she’ll join the small group of first-time nominees turned first-time winners. And if she doesn’t win, the audience better hope the Oscars doesn’t end the same way as The Substance. — Tina Kakadelis

PICTURE: Anora