The Wandering Review: Oscar Predictions 2024

By Laurie Baron

SAN DIEGO — It’s that time of year again, and rather than prognosticate about who will win the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, I will go with something easier to predict: Oscar winners.  As I’ve written before, these are not necessarily the films I would choose if my favorite films won, but the ones that seem most likely to win based on monitoring Hollywood trade publications.

Best Picture: Oppenheimer — If ever there was a film that had a lock on this award and the best director award, it’s Oppenheimer.  I usually list a second film that is likely to win if my pick doesn’t, but that seems like a waste of time this year.

Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer  — The Academy doesn’t always give this award to the director of the Best Picture, but this year it looks like a sweep unless the voters of the academy want to confer it on Martin Scorsese for his epic movie Killers of the Flower Moon .

Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer — Although Murphy is favored to win, this could go to veteran actor Paul Giamatti for his performance in The Holdovers.  He has never won an Oscar and has not been in a hit movie for a while having appeared more on television series like Billions.                                                                      

Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon — Not only was Gladstone’s performance moving, but she has an advantage over Emma Stone from Poor Things as the first Native American woman who would win the Best Actress Award. The precedent was set last year when the Academy bestowed this Oscar on Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once, making her the first Asian woman to win it for Best Actress.  I should note Sandra Hüller’s remarkable acting in Anatomy of a Fall merits this Oscar too though she is a longshot.

Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer  — Downey is the overwhelming favorite in this category.  He’s been nominated twice before and lost.  How he played his role in Oppenheimer was as riveting as Murphy’s performance.

Best Supporting Actress: Da’ Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers — Randolph is another strong favorite whose only serious challengers are either Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer or Jody Foster in Nyad.

Best International film: The Zone of Interest — Making a compelling film about how the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife lived a “normal” life acutely aware that thousands of people were being gassed, shot, tortured, and worked to death just steps away from their house was no easy feat.  Jonathan Glazer creatively accomplished it without minimizing the culpability of both respectively perpetrating and countenancing the mass murders and suffering of the Jews and other prisoners of Auschwitz.

Best Animated Feature Film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — Although a sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, critics have praised the most recent animated film in this franchise as being more inventive than its predecessor by employing several new animating technologies. If it loses, it will be to The Boy and the Heron which brought master animator Hayao Miyazaki out of retirement.

Best Feature Documentary Film: 20 Days in Mariupol — This is a harrowing chronicle of the Russian siege of the Ukrainian city Mariupol which resonates with the widespread Hollywood sympathy for the plight of Ukraine. If it doesn’t garner the gold statuette, Four Daughters might.  It examines the relationships and struggles of a Tunisian mother and two of her daughters coping with the radicalization of two other daughters who disappear into Libya to join a branch of the Islamic State there.

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Laurie Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University.