Let’s be honest, the past two Oscar best picture races were hardly races at all: the equivalent of Usain Bolt versus, well, me. This time two years ago Everything Everywhere All At Once already had one blood-stained hand on the prize, having built up a strong headwind of industry buzz since its premiere the previous March. And last year, Oppenheimer was on a similar glide path to glory, after its gigantic showing at the box office in July and August.
This year, though, feels different – and that’s not just me saying that to gin up a bit of jeopardy in this newsletter. The Oscar best picture race is wide open, with bookmakers, critics and industry insiders all torn over which film will be carting home that little featureless gold statuette next March. Already we’ve had a couple of best picture contenders released: Dune: Part Two, playing the Oppenheimer role of gigantic blockbuster with some actual imagination behind it; Luca Guadagnino’s much-admired sexy tennis tryst Challengers; and Sing Sing, a prison drama that ticks all the right prestige boxes but with real artistry at its core.
But this autumn and winter is when things really get spicy. By my count there are at least 10 films on the way with genuine best picture prospects, and that’s not counting some big films hovering on the margins (Joker: Folie à Deux, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, Almodóvar’s Venice winner The Room Next Door, Toronto People’s Choice award winner The Life of Chuck, Guadagnino’s other film this year, Queer).
Granted, this talk of the “most wide open Oscar race in years” might seem a little premature in a few months time, when consensus has coalesced around one of these films, or one that hasn’t been on anyone’s radar. But for now we’re in that glorious speculative period, when all that the contenders possess is pure potential. So start getting excited about this lot.
Anora
Beloved by critics, Sean Baker’s scrappy, naturalistic films (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket) don’t tend to get the same level of attention from awards bodies. That looks set to change with this drama about a lap dancer (Mikey Madison, pictured above right) and her entanglement with the son of a Russian oligarch, which has already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
In UK cinemas 1 Nov; US 18 Oct; Aus 26 Dec
A Complete Unknown
A complete unknown not just in name: this James Mangold biopic is the wildcard of the Oscar race, at none of the festivals and not released until Christmas Day in the US. You’ll know it as the Timothée Chalamet Bob Dylan movie, following the furore around Dylan’s decision to go electric at the 1965 Newport folk festival. Can Chalamet channel that most cantankerous of rockers?
In UK cinemas 17 Jan; US 25 Dec; Aus 23 Jan
Conclave
This looks a hoot: an adaptation of Robert Harris’s page-turner about the selection of a new pope, with Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal tasked with stage-managing the affair, and considering whether to put his thumb on the scales for his chosen candidate. It’s directed by Edward Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front gatecrashed the best picture list a few years back – expect something similar here.
In US cinemas 25 Oct; UK 15 Nov; Aus 9 Jan
Blitz
He’s tackled The Troubles, slavery, sex addiction, occupation-era Amsterdam and several generations’ worth of black British stories: now Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen broadens his range further with this Saoirse Ronan-starring drama set in second world war London. The trailer suggests a sturdy historical epic, but there will surely be some McQueen-ish flourishes along the way.
In UK and US cinemas 1 Nov; available on Apple 22 Nov
The Brutalist
This is the “big, swaggering American epic” of this awards season: Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour, generations-spanning tale (pictured above) of a Holocaust survivor architect grappling with the limitations of the American Dream, which comes complete with a 15-minute intermission. Comparisons are already being made to The Godfather and There Will Be Blood.
In UK cinemas 24 Jan; US date TBC; Aus cinemas 23 Jan
Emilia Perez
Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t the only prestige musical on the way this awards season – there’s also nuclear bunker-based sing-along The End, and this intriguing effort from Jacques Audiard. A Mexican cartel leader wants to transition and retire in peace, and so hires a lawyer to help fake her own death. Its leads – Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz – are being tipped for acting noms.
In UK cinemas 25 Oct; US 1 Nov; Aus 16 Jan
Gladiator II
We had Ridley Scott’s Napoleon as an awards contender on last year’s list, only for it to be stranded in the awards season equivalent of St Helena … might another Scott historical epic do any better? Much will depend on how Paul Mescal fares as a blockbuster lead, and whether some of the daffier elements of the trailer – rhino fights, CGI-laden naval battles, Denzel hamming it up – fit into the finished product.
In UK cinemas 15 Nov; US 22 Nov; Aus 14 Nov
Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel (featuring Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse, pictured above) about life in a Jim Crow-era reform school exists on a different plane to everything else on this list: shot entirely in the first person and interspersed with snatches of archive footage, its closer to a tone poem than historical drama. You could imagine its formal daring chiming with the Academy’s younger, more international-leaning recent inductees.
In UK cinemas 8 Nov; US 25 Oct; Aus TBC
A Real Pain
This affecting buddy comedy drama stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins – one a repressed family man, the other a charismatic manchild (guess who plays which!) – on a journey together through Poland to remember their late grandmother and learn more about their Jewish heritage. Culkin is being tipped for best supporting actor, and the film’s easy charms seem well suited to a best picture nom.
In UK cinemas 10 Jan; US 1 Nov; Aus 26 Dec
Saturday Night
Jason Reitman’s re-enactment of the frenetic first night of SNL was expected to be the real crowd-pleaser of awards season, but instead has proved to be an audience-divider: some critics have vibed with its frenetic energy and note-perfect casting; others, like the Guardian’s Ben Lee, have found it extremely grating. Still, Hollywood usually loves a film about the industry, so it’s a hard one to rule out.
In US cinemas 4 Oct; UK 31 Jan; Aus 31 Oct
