Mark Kermode
Best picture – my shortlist (my winner first)
Aftersun
Elvis
The Banshees of Inisherin
Gangubai Kathiawadi
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Indian epic RRR was a box-office sensation, but Gangubai Kathiawadi was the most excitingly radical Indian release of 2022. I also loved Irish drama The Quiet Girl, which has its best shot at international feature. Aftersun, my favourite film of the year, is eligible for best picture but clearly not a contender. A nod for Top Gun: Maverick would remind us that Wings won top honours at the first ever Oscars in 1929.
Best director
Charlotte Wells – Aftersun
Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin
Baz Luhrmann – Elvis
Sarah Polley – Women Talking
SS Rajamouli – RRR
There’s no chance that Charlotte Wells will be nominated (sadly!) but Sarah Polley may well make the cut, and Gina Prince-Bythewood is also a long shot for The Woman King. Both would be worthy nominees, as would SS Rajamouli for corralling the riotously entertaining RRR. Steven Spielberg is the bookies’ favourite for The Fabelmans, but Martin McDonagh might just clinch it.
Best actress
Alia Bhatt – Gangubai Kathiawadi
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Viola Davis – The Woman King
Danielle Deadwyler – Till
Catherine Clinch – The Quiet Girl
Alia Bhatt dominates the screen as a woman sold to a brothel-owner who becomes a local hero and an outspoken advocate of the rights of sex workers in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s terrific Hindi-language drama. Sadly she won’t be nominated, with the current Oscar race is looking like a title-fight between Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh. Here’s hoping Danielle Deadwyler bags her first nomination.
Best actor
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Austin Butler – Elvis
Paul Mescal – Aftersun
Daniel Kaluuya – Nope
Bill Nighy – Living
Bookies and critics alike have Brendan Fraser tagged as pack leader for his starring role in The Whale, something which leaves me utterly baffled. Personally, I’d be happy with either Colin Farrell or Austin Butler taking home the trophy – two very different performances, both superbly nuanced and affecting. It’s astonishing to think that Bill Nighy has never been Oscar-nominated, so a nod for Living would be welcome.
Best supporting actress
Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin
Dolly De Leon – Triangle of Sadness
Aimee Lou Wood – Living
Keke Palmer – Nope
Lashana Lynch – The Woman King
The “supporting” categories are always strange – one could easily argue that Kerry Condon’s Siobhán is at the very heart of The Banshees of Inisherin. Angela Bassett is currently a favourite for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – she was previously nominated for best actress for What’s Love Got to Do With It in 1994. I’d love to see rising star Aimee Lou Wood get some recognition for Living.
Best supporting actor
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Bryan Tyree Henry – Causeway
Paul Dano – The Fabelmans
Has Barry Keoghan ever been less than brilliant? From The Killing of a Sacred Deer through Calm With Horses and The Green Knight, he’s one of the screen’s most versatile presences. Meanwhile, with Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans now a major awards contender, it would be great to see Ke Huy Quan (who rose to fame as Short Round in Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) make the list.
Best original score
Hildur Guðnadóttir – Women Talking
Terence Blanchard – The Woman King
Volker Bertelmann – All Quiet on the Western Front
Son Lux – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Alexandre Desplat – Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir won for Joker in 2020, and is a contender again this year, although John Williams’s tinkly score for The Fabelmans is getting a lot of love. Terence Blanchard, who was nominated for BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods, may triumph with his stirring score for The Woman King. Meanwhile, my own favourite score (Aska Matsumiya’s sublime ambient music for After Yang) was never on the Academy’s radar.
Wendy Ide
Best picture
Tár
All Quiet on the Western Front
Decision to Leave
The Woman King
Women Talking
There’s an invigorating lack of consensus about best picture this year; the competition could throw up some real surprises. The current momentum behind the German-language first world war drama All Quiet on the Western Front is one early curveball, a rare example of merit rather than marketing propelling a film into awards conversation. My pick, however, is Tár: one of the few contenders this year that feels genuinely and thrillingly original.
Best director
Park Chan-wook – Decision to Leave
Edward Berger – All Quiet on the Western Front
Gina Prince-Bythewood – The Woman King
Sarah Polley – Women Talking
Todd Field – Tár
I would be delighted to see Gina Prince-Bythewood take home a prize for her epic, bracingly kinetic approach to The Woman King. And at the other end of the spectrum, I adored the intimacy and sensitivity of Sarah Polley’s direction of Women Talking. But my winner is Park Chan-wook, who combines playfulness and precision in his handling of the sinuous Korean neo-noir Decision to Leave.
Best actress
Alia Bhatt – Gangubai Kathiawadi
Cate Blanchett – Tár
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Tang Wei – Decision to Leave
Vicky Krieps – Corsage
The most competitive category of the year – I could have easily doubled this list – has clear frontrunners in Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh. Either would be deserving. Vicky Krieps in Corsage and Tang Wei in Decision to Leave are equally impressive. My winner, however, is Alia Bhatt, whose magnetic performance takes a sweeping arc from trafficked teenager to brothel madam to campaigner in Gangubai Kathiawadi.
Best actor
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Eden Dambrine – Close
Park Hae-il – Decision to Leave
Paul Mescal – Aftersun
Ricardo Darín – Argentina, 1985
Paul Mescal in Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun and teenager Eden Dambrine in Lukas Dhont’s Close are two of the most emotionally devastating performances of the year; both would be deserving winners. The consistently excellent Ricardo Darín is at the top of his game in Argentina, 1985. However, my pick is Colin Farrell, for his deft balance of tragedy and comedy in The Banshees of Inisherin.
Supporting actress
Guslagie Malanda – Saint Omer
Claire Foy – Women Talking
Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin
Lashana Lynch – The Woman King
Rachel Sennott – Bodies Bodies Bodies
Every line-reading that Rachel Sennott delivers in Bodies Bodies Bodies is delicious; Claire Foy is a forceful, furious stand out in an excellent cast in Women Talking. My winner, however, is the remarkable Guslagie Malanda in Alice Diop’s Saint Omer. It’s a supporting performance, but it is so integral and essential for the film’s success that I can’t imagine it without her.
Supporting actor
Brian Tyree Henry – Causeway
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin
Eddie Redmayne – The Good Nurse
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Ke Huy Quan is a likely winner in this category for his bravura multicharacter role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. But I prefer to fly the flag for the smaller, more contained performances: Eddie Redmayne’s fascinating, uncomfortable physicality in The Good Nurse has really stayed with me. But my winner is Brian Tyree Henry’s achingly empathetic turn in the underrated Causeway.
Best international film
The Quiet Girl
All Quiet on the Western Front
Corsage
Decision to Leave
Saint Omer
It’s another exceptionally strong year in the international category, with at least one film, All Quiet on the Western Front, looking likely to earn a clutch of nominations across other categories. Decision to Leave still has the potential to triumph, and I would be delighted if it did. But the win that would make my heart sing would be for the exquisite Irish-language picture The Quiet Girl.
Jonathan Romney
Best picture
Saint Omer
EO
Tár
Aftersun
The Banshees of Inisherin
Despite concerns about cinema’s real-world survival prospects, in 2022 the art form itself has continued to show a vigorous capacity for reinvention. One healthy sign is a renewed interest in intimacy over bombast – witness the widespread enthusiasm for Aftersun. Hence too my choice of Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, an ostensibly small-scale courtroom drama that nevertheless makes a resonant statement about race, gender and history.
Best director
Jafar Panahi – No Bears
Alice Diop – Saint Omer
Jerzy Skolimowski – EO
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne – Tori and Lokita
Carla Simón – Alcarràs
My choice of Jafar Panahi is partly a vote for the political heroism that has led to his imprisonment by the Iranian regime. But his audacity and playfulness are absolutely manifest in No Bears, a teasing proposition about the perils of making fictions in a fraught real world. Also in the real world, Belgium’s Dardennes offered a gripping depiction of young migrants’ struggle to survive.
Best actress
Kayije Kajiye and Guslagie Malanda – Saint Omer
Cate Blanchett – Tár
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Taylor Russell – Bones and All
Vicky Krieps – Corsage
I’m perhaps cheating by going for two leads, but Saint Omer is built around two extraordinary complementary performances – watcher and watched, speaker and listener – and the interplay is mesmerising. On the night, I suspect Cate Blanchett will be the obvious frontrunner, in a dazzling performance that’s not just one of maestria and flamboyant contradictions, but that is very knowingly about those qualities.
Best actor
Bill Nighy – Living
Ricardo Darín – Argentina, 1985
Park Hae-il – Decision to Leave
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Ralph Fiennes – The Menu
Cinema has long been at a loss to know what to do with the finer subtleties of Bill Nighy’s presence. Living at last gives him a role he can go to town on, in his ineffably muted way. In more traditional Academy-friendly barnstorming mode, Ricardo Darín delivers a famous historical speech in Argentina, 1985, and it’s only the capper on a genial, mischievous performance.
Supporting actress
Janelle Monáe – Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Jamie Lee Curtis – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin
Aimee Lou Wood – Living
Sadie Sink – The Whale
You expect the “supporting” categories to give a spotlight to eccentric character playing, and this year provided a feast. In Glass Onion, Janelle Monáe proved the outstanding asset of an otherwise overwrought entertainment – rising to the spirit of the occasion with a self-reflexive variation on her own protean pop glamour. Jamie Lee Curtis also went broad, not to say downright cartoonish, as befitted a shamelessly cartoonish movie.
Supporting actor
Mark Rylance – Bones and All
Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Zlatko Buric – Triangle of Sadness
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin
Mark Rylance has often been a reassuring, friendly screen figure, all the better to disconcert (eg in this year’s intriguing The Outfit). But there’s nothing reassuring about him in Bones and All, where his veteran cannibal is the year’s most unsettling presence. Meanwhile, Judd Hirsch’s featured role in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama brought jovial blood and thunder to an otherwise placid movie.
Best original screenplay
Todd Field – Tár
Alice Diop, Amrita David, Marie NDiaye – Saint Omer
Park Chan-wook, Chung Seo-kyung – Decision to Leave
Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once
David Cronenberg – Crimes of the Future
We tend to assume that this category rewards finely spun dialogue, but great screenplays are also about structure, hence my votes for the gloriously perplexing artifices of Decision to Leave and Everything Everywhere… Meanwhile, Todd Field’s Tár may have struck some as a somewhat literary construction, but it was so rich in astutely pitched ideas that it’s fairer to call it novelistic, in the best way.
Ellen E Jones
Best film
Top Gun: Maverick
Till
Tár
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Holy Spider
This year Top Gun: Maverick flew in under the critical radar and pushed through the cheesy barrier, creating a sonic boom of pure cinematic emotion that left me awestruck and partially deaf in one ear. And only Tom Cruise could have made that landing. So if the Academy will insist on rewarding Movies-with-a-capital-M over artistic achievement, this choice makes sense.
Best director
Chinonye Chukwu – Till
Gina Prince-Bythewood – The Woman King
Park Chan-wook – Decision to Leave
Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans
Charlotte Wells – Aftersun
Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is a romantic thriller as finely wrought as a Swiss timepiece, each shot achieving Hitchcockian perfection. And speaking of the big guy, with Till, Chinonye Chukwu exemplifies the new generation of directors who are eschewing auteur-autocrat behaviour, by instead demonstrating that compassionate collaboration is also a route to artistic excellence. She gets my vote.
Best actress
Danielle Deadwyler – Till
Cate Blanchett – Tár
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Aubrey Plaza – Emily the Criminal
Michelle Williams – The Fabelmans
In a hugely competitive year, Cate Blanchett’s Tár tour de force is undoubtedly award-worthy. Still, it would be nice to see the two-time winner step aside for a less lauded talent. Maybe Michelle Williams’s period-detailed performance in The Fabelmans? Or, even better, Danielle Deadwyler, who expressed more in a single Till closeup than many actors manage over their entire careers.
Best actor
Paul Mescal – Aftersun
Harris Dickinson – Triangle of Sadness
Will Smith – Emancipation
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Mehdi Bajestani – Holy Spider
After last year’s hoo-ha, Will Smith is probably still banished from the Greater Los Angeles area, but that only makes the notion of provoking his pious detractors with a best actor nomination more delectable. Just imagine! (And his Emancipation performance isn’t bad either.) More seriously, Irish heart-throb Paul Mescal pulls off a miracle of naturalism in Aftersun, and deserves to be propelled into the movie-star major leagues.
Best supporting actress
Samantha Morton – The Whale and She Said
Keke Palmer – Nope
Dolly De Leon – Triangle of Sadness
Janelle Monáe – Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin
It’s ironic that brazen scene-stealing counts as “supportive” in Hollywood, but Samantha Morton is this year’s proof, with two single-scene performances that threaten to blow the top-billed talent off screen. Meanwhile, Keke Palmer remains a charisma catherine wheel, at last in a role that showcases her star quality; and Dolly De Leon single-handedly justifies Triangle of Sadness’s otherwise disposable third act.
Best supporting actor
Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin
Andre Braugher – She Said
Eddie Redmayne – The Good Nurse
Ke Huy Quan is on an unstoppable path to glory, but I’d rather see the gold go to 87-year-old Judd Hirsch. As The Fabelmans’s Uncle Boris, he arrives just in time to clasp a flagging 151-minute movie to his hirsute, surprisingly muscular chest, and deliver a brusquely reviving, Yiddish-enhanced pep talk on family, art and everything else that matters.
Best costume design
Jenny Eagan – Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Kasia Walicka-Maimone – The Pale Blue Eye
Ruth E Carter – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Catherine Martin – Elvis
Shirley Kurata – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Costume design deserves more credit for elevating otherwise average films (The Pale Blue Eye), illuminating peripheral characters (Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s pencil skirts and purple streaks in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), or simply adding to our general amusement (all Daniel Craig’s get-ups as Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion; my favourite). And that’s before we even get to red-carpet looks and their crucial importance to the whole awards-show enterprise.
