A global pandemic closed theaters, shut down productions and pushed back release dates. “Big” films became a lot smaller, streamed on laptops, TV screens or even phones. And some movies that were supposed to be box-office goldmines in 2020—well, we’re still waiting on those mines to open. But, even in the craziness, it was still a terrific year for the films: Some absolutely wonderful movies made their way to screens of all sizes. And they ran the gamut, from tiny sparkling indie gems to sprawling, superstar epics. There were movies that featured some of our most dependable veteran troupers, as well as bumper crops of exciting fresh up-and-comers. Even in a time when, it seemed, creativity was stifled like never before, expression found colorful new ways to bloom. And to cap off this most unique movie year, on Sunday, April 25, the 93rd annual Oscars ceremony will—as usual—bestow its top honors to the film industry’s best and brightest (7 p.m. ET on ABC). The Academy Awards are not only the oldest of all the movie honors, they are by far the most prestigious. The Oscars are nominated and voted by more nearly 10,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a super-secretive group made up of people who make and work on the movies—actors, animators, directors, casting agents, cinematographers, costume designers, engineers, executives, film editors, makeup artists, hairstylists, press agents, musicians, producers and writers. As such, an Oscar is considered the ultimate movie award, a career achievement like no other, a pinnacle of cinematic achievement bestowed by Hollywood’s most selective group of insiders. All the other movie honors and awards shows, earlier accolades leading up to the Oscars, become tea leaves and bellwethers for predicting how well a film, an actor or a category might fare when it gets to the big event, the Academy Awards. An individual or a film that’s previously received a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice trophy or an honor from one of the specialized organizations that hand out their own awards might be looking good to take home another honor at the Oscars. And there a lot of organizations that hand out other awards, including “guilds” for movie writers, producers, costume designers, directors, makeup and hair stylists, art directors, film and sound editors, and cinematographers (e.g., the Screen Actors Guild, the Independent Spirit Award, the BAFTAs). All those awards events take place ahead of Oscar night, and they all contribute to the building drumbeat of awareness and momentum that crescendos at the Academy Awards. Because there’s a lot of voter overlap, especially in the guilds and Academy, wins, losses and snubs at any of those other awards events can often be precursors of what’s going to happen at the Oscars. But not always. Oscar night has seen its share of wild cards, anarchic upsets and shockers. That’s what makes it such fun to watch. So as Parade’s entertainment editor and resident film critic, let me take a look at those tea leaves—and get a reading on my own gut feelings—and guide you through some of the Oscar’s top categories with some bold predictions about who will go home with one (or more) of the evening’s iconic statuettes.
Oscar 2021 winner predictions
Best Picture Winner Prediction
The Father Judas and the Black Messiah Mank Minari Nomadland Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7 Over its 25-year history, more than half of the winners of the Critics Choice Awards Best Picture have gone on to win the Oscars’ top category as well. Not last year, though—or the year before that. So there’s never a sure road to the Oscars. Minari, about a Korean family that relocates to Arkansas to put down roots and start a farm in the 1980s, has been capturing hearts for months, winning all sorts of critics’ awards and gleaning dozens of nominations, including seven from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which will be awarded April 11. This has been a banner year for movies about the Black experience in America, but only one of those films—Judas and the Black Messiah—rose to the top with a nomination here (with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami, Da 5 Bloods and The United States vs. Billie Holiday getting their nods in other categories). We were transported back to a seminal flashpoint moment of the 1960s, one with a message that shoots through the decades into the heart of today, in The Trial of the Chicago 7, writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s multi-layer movie opus, which has been building strength as it moves ahead in awards season. And the caustically clever revenge parable Promising Young Woman hooked critics from the get-go with its dynamite #MeToo twist. Mank masterfully recreates a bygone era of Hollywood and an insider’s tale of one of its greatest cinematic milestones; the movie leads this year’s Oscar nominations overall (with ten), but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will come out a winner. Originally a theatrical play, The Father gave the great Anthony Hopkins another great, Oscar-nominated role, as a man battling with the demons of dementia. Anyone who saw Sound of Metal, with Riz Ahmed as a hard-hitting rock drummer losing his hearing, knew they were seeing something unique and special. But the clear choice for the night’s big award—and this year’s winner of both the Critics Choice and the Golden Globe trophy for Best Picture of the year—has an edge that feels like a clear-cut winner to me. Parade Predicts:Nomadland has been a frontrunner from the beginning, and its gorgeously-rendered, elegiac portrait of wanderers on the highways of a broken, bruised America resonates deep and wide. If anything looks like it’s headed straight for Oscarville, it’s the sublime, sensational Nomadland.
Best Director Winner Prediction
Lee Isaac Chung, Minari Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman David Fincher, Mank Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round Chloé Zhao, Nomadland Thomas who? Thomas Vinterberg is a young Danish filmmaker who’s definitely the dark horse in this category. His—rightfully acclaimed—film, Another Round, about a university professor (Mads Mikkelsen) who drinks himself into a stupor, has previously been mostly eligible only in “international” or foreign-film categories. If it wins an Oscar, well, some long-odds betters will be very happy. David Fincher worked a bit of wonder with Mank, making every rich detail of his thoroughly modern movie look, feel and even sound like something from the past. Aaron Sorkin masterfully juggled a star-studded ensemble cast, more than a dozen characters and a tinderbox of a storyline in The Trial of the Chicago 7. Actress-turned-director (and former Killing Eve TV showrunner) Emerald Fennell took the edgy message of Promising Young Woman, about a woman’s vengeful mission against everyone involved in an incident that ruined the life of her best friend, to the very edge—and then made jaws drop when she went over it. Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao won the Golden Globe for directing back in February, making her look pretty good for a win in this category. But the last time a female director won a Golden Globe (Barbra Streisand, for Yentl, in 1983), she didn’t even get nominated for an Oscar later that year. (That likely says a lot about how women have for decades been under-represented in Hollywood, and at the Oscars—something the Academy Awards has been working hard to remedy in recent years. Last year, there were howls over the snub when Greta Gerwig didn’t get a nod for Little Women.) An Oscar for Zhao (who also won the Critics Choice Award this year) would make history—but even her nomination is one for the history books. She and fellow nominee Lee Isaac Chung (for Minari) are the Academy’s first two nominated directors of Asian descent. As warm and wonderful as Minari is, however, it feels small in scope and stature next to Nomadland, especially in this category. A win for Zhao would make her only the second female, ever, to receive a directing Oscar (Katherine Bigelow got the award for The Hurt Locker in 2010.) So get ready. Parade Predicts:Nomadland and Zhao have the buzz, the momentum and the lead going into the final stretch. And this year, the Academy may demonstrate that it’s now time to shed even more of its creaky, white patriarchal starch. I predict Nomadland and Zhao will ride the wave all the way to the end, and into a new chapter in Oscars history.
Best Actor Winner Prediction
Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Anthony Hopkins, The Father Gary Oldman, Mank Steven Yeun, Minari Anthony Hopkins is awesome in The Father as an elderly British man waging a Shakespearean battle with an unseen enemy taking away his memory. But with five previous Oscar nominations and one win (for The Silence of the Lambs), his track record isn’t great in the home stretch, and he’s batting .000 so far in all the other awards this season. As a heavy-metal drummer going deaf—and facing the loss of his livelihood—in Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed gives one of the year’s most passionate, nuanced performances. But he sort of gets lost in the star shuffle here. Gary Oldman was presumed an early favorite for his flamboyant portrayal of Hollywood screenwriter Howard J. Mankiewicz, who helped filmmaker/auteur Orson Welles writes his masterpiece, Citizen Kane, in Mank. But so far, no awards have come his way. Minari’s Steven Yeun, as a young father and aspiring farmer who risks everything to transplant his family from Korea to America, is one of the year’s most exciting discoveries, but I think he’s a real wild-card choice. Parade Predicts: This category looks like it’s an easy posthumous grab for ChadwickBoseman; and a win—to shore up his Best Actor trophies in the Golden Globes and Critic Choice Awards—will secure his legacy forever. And it will all but certainly happen, not just to honor his untimely death from colon cancer last year, but as a proper recognition of his remarkable performance as the fiery young, tortured, ambitious trumpet player who gives Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom its tragic grace notes. In this movie girded with galvanizing acting, in a year filled with standout performances, and in this category specifically, no one stands out more than him.
Best Actress Winner Prediction
Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman Frances McDormand, Nomadland Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman One of the most competitive of all the categories this year, this one is very tough to call and could hold the night’s biggest surprise. Carey Mulligan, coming off her recent Critics Choice win, has been a critics’ darling all along in the pastel-colored, date-rape dark-comedy revenge thriller Promising Young Woman. But her failure to land a Best Actress nod for the April 11 BAFTAs might take a little wind out her sail heading into the Oscars. Frances McDormandhas the critical-mass heft of Nomadland behind her. Running close behind her is Viola Davis—she also missed out on a BAFTA nomination—who transformed into an honest-to-god force of nature as the brassy, bossy bandleader at the swirling center of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Grammy-winning singer Andra Day won the Golden Globe, surprising almost everyone, for her breakout film role in The United States vs. Billie Holiday; will she pull another surprise for the Oscars? In Pieces of a Woman, British actress Vanessa Kirby’s searing performance as a young woman bravely moving ahead as life crumbles around her made everyone snap to attention. Parade Predicts: Given the Academy’s recent moves to make its membership younger and hipper, more diverse and more “woke,” I’m still giving the edge to Mulligan and the punchiest, buzziest role of her entire career, in a #MeToo, #TimesUp tale to which today’s Hollywood certainly can relate.
Best Supporting Actor Winner Prediction
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7 Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah Leslie Odom, Jr., One Night in Miami Paul Raci, Sound of Metal LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah So much great work represented here, all in the “shadows” of the main stars of the show. Sacha Baron Cohen had a great year, as the star of his own movie (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) but also as a standout, as yippie activist Abbie Hoffman, in the ensemble cast of The Trial of the Chicago 7. Longtime journeyman actor Paul Raci was outstanding in Sound of Metal as a guru-like leader of a recovery house for the deaf—a role given even more poignance as Raci, who can hear, is the child of two deaf parents. Leslie Odom Jr. gives a spot-on acting-singing portrayal of conflicted 1960s crooner Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami. Two actors from the same film are going head to head here, which makes this category doubly interesting: Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield split the duties in Judas and the Black Messiah, about Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), the controversial chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, and how he was betrayed by a troubled FBI informant (Stanfield) in the 1960s. Both actors do great jobs, and the film really revolves around Stanfield’s character—but Kaluuya’s explosive performance has already netted him a Critics Choice and a Golden Globe. Parade Picks: It’s a meaty, significant role in a strong, stirring movie for the Get Out and Queen & Slim star, and Kaluuya should probably start clearing another spot in his trophy case.
Best Supporting Actress Winner Prediction
Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy Olivia Colman, The Father Amanda Seyfried, Mank Youn Yuh-jung, Minari Another close-call category. Olivia Colman is still relatively young, but she’s already a veteran actress, having won an Oscar previously (for The Favourite, 2018), and voters certainly know her from her superb TV work as Queen Elizabeth on The Crown. She does acting with a capital A, and that’s certainly the case for her outstanding performance here, as the adult daughter—and caregiver—of Anthony Hopkins’ volatile character in The Father. Glenn Close, another Oscars vet, is a seven-time nominee but has never won—and here she is again, for her hammy role in the roundly derided Hillbilly Elegy. (Close’s performance also earned her a Razzie, for the year’s Worst Supporting Actress performance—marking only the third time ever an actor has received both an Oscar nomination and a Razzie for the same role.) The buzz has been building for Youn Yuh-jung, who practically steals the show as the immigrant grandma in the critically-lauded Minari; she recently became the first South Korean actress to score a Supporting Role nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. The support everyone thought would coalesce for Amanda Seyfried, as 1930s comedic actress Marion Davies in Mank, has so far failed to materialize. And even though Maria Bakalova received a Critics Choice trophy for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, that could turn out to be more of an asterisk than an arrow pointing toward an Oscar. (She should receive some kind of honorary award, at the very least, for getting Rudy Giuliani on-camera, and into a hotel bedroom, to stick his hands down his pants.) Parade Predicts: This one could be a real squeaker, but I’m calling it for Colman.
Best Animated Feature Film Winner Prediction
Onward Over the Moon Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Soul Wolfwalkers Not even close. Soul’s director, Pete Docter, already has eight previous Oscar nominations and a pair of wins (for Up and Inside Out), and Soul has swept up every animated-feature award so far this year. As usual, this category represents the cream of the crop in contemporary animation—a stylish spectrum of techniques and technologies. Onward is a fanciful, computer-graphic adventure about teenage elves (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt). Wolfwalkers uses modern methods but looks old-school and is about a young Irish hunter and a legend about people who can turn into wolves overnight. Over the Moon, about a Chinese girl who attempts to prove that an ancient myth is real, is the first major feature film by director Glen Keane, a former Disney animator. The only “sequel” of the batch, Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, is a spin-off of the acclaimed 2015 Shaun the Sheep Movie, which was based on a claymation TV series. Parade Predicts: But Disney-Pixar’s sweet, deep, music-filled contemporary fable about the meaning and the melody of life, Soul, featuring voices by Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton and Angela Bassett, strikes all the right chords. It’s the shoo-in here.
Best Original Song Winner Prediction
“Fight For You,” Judas and the Black Messiah “Hear My Voice,” The Trial of the Chicago 7 “Husavik,” Eurovision Song Contest “Io Si (Seen),” The Life Ahead “Speak Now,” One Night in Miami Unlike other Oscar years, there’s not a big “hit” song in the whole bunch here. Nothing you’ll be humming or singing the day after it wins, or for years to come. No “Over the Rainbow,” “The Way We Were,” “Let It Go,” “Shallow” or “Take My Breath Away.” Jason Derulo’s “Fight For You” does sample a big hit, Toto’s “Africa,” from 1982—in Judas and the Black Messiah, which is set in the late 1960s. The British singer Celeste performs the rousing anthem “Hear My Voice,” the end-title song for The Trial of the Chicago 7. Translating “My Hometown, “Husavik” is a kinda-real song in a mostly-joke movie, performed by Will Ferrell (playing an Icelandic singer) and actual Swedish pop singer Molly My Marianne Sandén, in the musical comedy film Eurovision Song Contest—about a real international song competition, that’s been going on since the 1950s. The strongest contender is probably Speak Now, which has the unusual distinction of being written and sung by Leslie Odom Jr., the bona fide Hamilton Broadway singer-actor who stars in One Night in Miami as real-life hitmaker Sam Cooke, who rode the charts in the ‘60s with “You Send Me,” “Chain Gang,” “Cupid,” “Wonderful World” and his anthem of social awareness, “A Change is Gonna Come.” (Odom’s nomination makes him the Oscars’ first male double nominee for singing and acting, joining the elite previous company of Cynthia Erivo, for Harriet and Mary J. Blige, for Mudbound.) But Diane Warren—now a 12-time Oscar nominee—just won the Golden Globe for “Io Si (Seen),” from the Italian drama The Life Ahead, starring the legendary Sophia Loren, which could bode well for a possible long-overdue first Oscar for the prolific singer-songwriter. Parade Predicts: I’m betting, though, on One Night in Miami and Odom’s “Speak Now,” and that song’s moving, uplifting lyrics about how “children will grow in the seeds that we sew.” It’s a song with a message that feels like one we need right now, and it feels like an Oscar-night winner.
Best Cinematography Winner Prediction
Judas and the Black Messiah Mank News of the World Nomadland Trial of the Chicago 7 Cinematography is the Holly-word for camerawork—the art of filming a movie, creating the “look” of a film. And make no mistake about it: It is an art. That’s why there’s a whole awards category just for that. Often the cinematography of a film is tethered to the director, and at the Oscars, a film that wins one category can frequently win both—it happened with Roma, La La Land, The Revenant, Gravity and Life of Pi. Could it happen again? Sure, maybe! Nomadland looks great, in more ways than one; director Chloé Zhao and cinematographer Joshua James Richard have already been lauded for giving that movie its gorgeous, almost mystical “glow,” shooting much of the movie in the “magic hour” of perfect natural light at sunrise or just before sunset. Erik Messerschmidt and director David Fincher achieved an authentic, black-and-white retro patina of Hollywood’s go-go 1930s for Mank, about the glitzy, glamorous era in which the movie Citizen Kane went from concept to cinema screen. Darius Wolski brought Paul Greengrass’ vision of the gritty Old West to life in News of the World, providing an authentic backdrop for Tom Hanks as a world-weary Civil War veteran on the frontier. Phedon Papamichael, an acclaimed director of photography—whose other films include 3:10 to Yuma, The Descendants, Ford v. Ferrari and Nebraska—brought writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s dramatically-rendered upheaval of protests and rioting at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago into crisp focus in The Trail of the Chicago 7. The turbulence and turmoil of the late 1960s were also made vivid by Sean Bobbitt in director Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah. Parade Predicts: But I predict the Academy will be swayed to go another direction—toward the quiet, contemplative grace and gravity of Nomadland, which will lead the way to the trophy, and first-ever Oscars for both its director and cinematographer.
Best Costume Design Winner Prediction
Emma. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Mank Mulan Pinocchio The clothes make the man, as the saying goes—and they can also make the movie. This year’s film fashion stretches across the decades. Mank was swanky in olden, golden Hollywood. The poofy wardrobe-ery of 1800s England rarely looked so yummy as it did in Emma., a crisp new re-telling of Jane Austen’s oft-told comedy of manners. Mulan took us back to the might and majesty of ancient imperial Japan, swaddled in palace finery and battlefield armor. Pinocchio returned the iconic character to his roots—in an Italian novel—in an Italian-made film that plunged the “puppet boy” with a lie-detector schnozz into an ornate fantasy world. Parade Predicts: But veteran costumer designer Ann Roth (a previous Oscar winner for The English Patient) worked real material marvels in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, outfitting Ma (Viola Davis) and her musicians in clothes that speak to the time of the story, and become vital, vibrant extensions of the characters themselves. This one’s for you, Ma.
Best Visual Effects Winner Prediction
Love and Monsters The Midnight Sky Mulan The One and Only Ivan Tenet In a year mostly without the use of theaters and mega screens, there weren’t a lot of movies that went to the effort to make big, splashy effects. But still, there were a few films with impressive visuals. Tenet, the one film that did dare to go big—and open in theaters, and IMAX at that, back in September 2020—had some absolutely eye-popping effects, including a spectacular plane crash, a backward car catastrophe and a building that somehow implodes and explodes at the same time. The genre-smashing Love and Monsters—starring Dylan O’Brien from TV’s Teen Wolf—was a post-apocalyptic, teenage boy-and-his-dog love story, with monsters…and you certainly don’t see all that every day. The Midnight Sky takes place on two special-effect worlds, one in the void of outer space and the other alongside George Clooney on a frozen tundra, on a planet running fast out of hope. Disney’s Mulan brought the splendor and the spectacle of Chinese legend to resplendent, live-action life. And The Only and Only Ivan (another Disney feature) quite inventively used a mix of computer animation and live-action to tell the family-friendly story of a gorilla (voiced by Sam Rockwell) who tries to escape from his captivity at a shopping mall. Parade Predicts: But you can’t ignore the sheer spectacle of Tenet, an audaciously expensive roll of the dice. Released during a time when many moviegoers weren’t quite ready to go back to the movies, it was director Christopher Nolan’s priciest movie ever at a cost of $200 million. For those kinds of bucks, you should get some kind of bang. Why not give it the Oscar, too. Next, see how Beyoncé broke records at the 2021 Grammys.
