Oscar 2020 predictions: Who will win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and the rest?

Ahead of this year's ceremony, Kyle Buchanan guesses the winner in every category

(Warner Brothers Entertainment/Fuji Film)

Best Picture

Will win: 1917

It would be remiss to predict any Best Picture winner besides 1917. The Sam Mendes-directed war movie has taken top honours from both the Producers and Directors guilds as well the director and drama prizes at the Golden Globes, and that’s the sort of awards season war chest no other contender can compete with. Though it debuted late last year, 1917 is cresting at just the right time: After six weeks of release, it’s made more than $120m (£93m) domestically, and it occupied the number two slot at the box office last weekend.

But.

I still can’t shake the feeling that Parasite could pull off an upset, in much the same way Moonlight vaulted over La La Land just three years ago. Bong Joon-ho’s widely loved South Korean thriller would be the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture, and by picking it, voters could help rehabilitate the academy’s reputation for being too insular and white. The film’s cast members garnered a standing ovation at the Screen Actors Guild Awards even before they won the top prize of the night. Parasite has passion, no doubt.

Is that enough? I’m playing it safe with 1917, but stay tuned: It’ll be close.

Best Director

Will win: Sam Mendes, 1917

Five of the last seven Oscar races have come down to a split in the top two categories, so is it possible that even if 1917 wins Best Picture, Bong could still be rewarded with the Best Director Oscar? Yes, though I wouldn’t bet on it: when such a split occurs, the directing winner usually hails from the bigger, more technically audacious film, and that describes Mendes and his long-take war movie to a T.

Best Actress

Will win: Renée Zellweger, Judy

Sixteen years after Zellweger was awarded her first Oscar, a Supporting Actress trophy for Cold Mountain, she will again return to the winner’s circle for playing a down-and-out Judy Garland in the last year of her life. None of the other contenders ever amassed enough momentum to truly compete with Zellweger, who’s been sitting pretty as the favourite all season. She’ll now become the 21st woman to win more than one Oscar for acting.

Best Actor

Will win: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Oscar voters are drawn to the tangible act of transformation, and though many of the nominees in this category are playing against type – including Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up actor and Antonio Banderas as a quiet artist wrestling with pain – there is no more ostentatious act of transformation than Phoenix’s wrenching, intensely physical performance as the Joker. Considered by many to be the best actor of his generation, Phoenix has never won an Oscar. That will change on Sunday.

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Dern has a clear path to victory here: the only Supporting Actress contender who had earned a comparable amount of buzz was the Hustlers star Jennifer Lopez, and she didn’t even make the list of five nominees. For voters who enjoyed Marriage Story, a vote for Dern ensures the movie won’t go home empty-handed, and the 52-year-old actor is an enormously well-liked figure enjoying the sort of career resurgence that Oscar is always eager to reward.

Best Supporting Actor

Will win: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Brad Pitt is strongly expected to win his first acting Oscar for 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' (Andrew Cooper/Sony-Columbia Pictures via AP)

Though the 56-year-old Pitt already possesses an Oscar for producing the best-picture winner 12 Years a Slave, he has never won an Academy Award for acting, and his confident performance in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood offers a full-throttle testimonial to his star power. After charming and unexpectedly funny acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards, there’s no way Pitt goes home on Oscar night empty-handed. Don’t you want to know what he’ll say?

Best Original Screenplay

Will win: Parasite, Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won

Tarantino has won the Original Screenplay Oscar twice before, so he can’t be counted out here. Still, the path to Best Picture almost always goes through one of the screenplay categories, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has lost much of its momentum for the top award. The Best Picture frontrunner 1917 is probably too sparse a screenplay to win in this category, so I expect the win will go to twisty Parasite, the night’s other big contender for the top Oscar.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will win: Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi

Oscar voters caught a lot of flak when Greta Gerwig failed to make the Best Director race, and they may be tempted to make it up to her here. Still, I’d give the slim edge to Waititi, who won the Writers Guild Award in this category and whose performance in his own movie – as a jokey Adolf Hitler, no less – only lends him further star power that should put him over the top.

Best International Feature

Will win: Parasite

Outside of the acting categories, this is one of the most foregone conclusions of the night: Parasite will surely prevail, giving South Korea its first victory in this Oscar race. The only question is whether some voters will deem this win sufficient, and then go on to choose a different movie in the Best Picture category.

Best Animated Feature

Will win: Toy Story 4

Toy Story 4 could win Best Animated Feature at the 2020 Oscars (Disney/Pixar via AP)

Oscar voters are loath to recognise a sequel in this category, and the last one to win was Toy Story 3, which may slow their enthusiasm for rewarding Pixar once more. Still, the field is scattered: Missing Link won the Golden Globe, Klaus swept the Annie awards, and Netflix’s I Lost My Body has highbrow fans, too. With votes all over the place and no singular, widely seen alternative to back, Toy Story 4 is well-positioned to win.

Best Documentary Feature

Will win: American Factory

Honeyland, about a beekeeper in North Macedonia, pulled off an impressive double nomination for documentary feature and international film. Still, this category is packed with powerhouse social-issues dramas, and the favourite has to be American Factory, which chronicles a culture clash between Chinese industrialists and hard-up American workers. The film has received a strong push from Netflix and counts no less than Barack and Michelle Obama among its backers.

Best Visual Effects

Will win: 1917

Best Picture contenders typically have the edge over tentpole fare in this category, so while The Lion King certainly boasts the most effects, the ultimate contest should come down to The Irishman and its de-ageing technology vs the more seamless wartime enhancements of 1917. Since Robert De Niro’s youthful CGI makeover came in for some criticism, I suspect voters will choose 1917.

Best Film Editing

Will win: Ford v Ferrari AKA Le Mans ‘66

Parasite could pull this out if voters remember all those masterful sequences that track multiple character arcs as the suspense builds and builds, and if the film wins in this category, that would be a boon for its Best Picture chances. But Ford v Ferrari is the obvious choice here, since its racing sequences would be nothing without fast and precise editing.

Best Original Score

Will win: Joker

Thomas Newman has been nominated in this category 14 times without a win, and though 1917 could earn the most Oscars of the night, I don’t think its score will triumph. At least Newman won’t lose to his cousin Randy, the composer for Marriage Story: instead, both Newmans will probably fall to the Golden Globe and BAFTA winner Hildur Gudnadottir, whose striking compositions for Joker give a voice to the main character’s madness.

Best Original Song

Will win: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again”, Rocketman

“Let It Go” triumphed in this category seven years ago, but can the new Idina Menzel power ballad from Frozen 2 win the same Oscar? It will face strong competition from Elton John’s end-credits Rocketman song, sung with the film’s star, Taron Egerton. Their duet, “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” has already won the Golden Globe, and the snub of Frozen 2 in the Animated Film category suggests that voters aren’t eager to rubber-stamp a retread. In a close race, I’d give this one to Elton.

Best Production Design

Will win: Parasite

This is one of the night’s trickiest three-way races. Parasite gave us the most memorable location of the year with the ultramodern Park house, but contemporary films only win in this category when they’re impressively futuristic (Black Panther) or self-consciously retro (La La Land). Once Upon a Time in Hollywood masterfully recreates 1969 Los Angeles, but the film seems to have lost awards momentum. 1917 turns every new location into a striking set piece and the camera’s constancy allows plenty of time to explore those sets, so that’s my pick, even though I hope Parasite can pull it off.

Best Cinematography

Will win: 1917

For more than two decades, Roger Deakins was one of Oscar’s most famous bridesmaids, but now that he’s in, he’s really in: after winning his first Academy Award, for Blade Runner 2049, just two years ago, the veteran cinematographer will earn a second statuette, for his fluid work on 1917” If all those complicated long takes weren’t enough to clinch it for Deakins, the bravura nighttime sequence halfway through the film surely would be.

Best Costume Design

Will win: Little Women

Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson in a scene from Little Women (AP)

With the recent exception of the world-building winners Black Panther and Mad Max: Fury Road, this Oscar almost always goes to a period film set in the distant past. That nixes Joker, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as films set in the 1960s and 1970s haven’t scored here since well, the 1960s and 1970s. In the face-off between the colourful Jojo Rabbit, which won with the Costume Designers Guild, and Bafta’s choice, Little Women, I’m picking the latter: When in doubt, go with the one that has the most frocks.

Best Makeup and Hair

Will win: Bombshell

It’s the first time that this category has expanded the number of nominees to five from the traditional three, but that hardly makes the contest any less of a blowout: Bombshell is guaranteed to win for its uncanny, prosthetics-aided transformation of Charlize Theron into the angular Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

Best Sound Mixing

Will win: 1917

1917 seeks to place the viewer in the same impossible situations as its protagonists, and all those you-are-there long takes wouldn’t work half as well without a top-tier soundscape. Whizzing bullets, roaring waterfalls, the fairway footsteps of a potential friend or foe: 1917 has everything it needs to succeed here. War films and Best Picture nominees are typically the best positioned in this category, and 1917 is both.

Best Sound Editing

Will win: 1917

An idea was recently floated within the academy to combine both sound categories because many voters still don’t understand the difference between them. For the record: sound editing has more to do with the creation of sounds, while sound mixing is about weaving those disparate sounds together. Whether voters know that or not, they will almost certainly pick 1917 to prevail in both races.

Best Animated Short

Will win: Hair Love

The two heaviest hitters here are Pixar’s Kitbull, which tracks an alley cat’s bond with an abused pit bull, and Sony’s Hair Love, about an African-American father struggling to do his young daughter’s hair. Kitbull benefits from being a little more rough around the edges than your usual Pixar short, but adorable animals are still a familiar sight in this category, and the specificity of Hair Love distinguishes it as a fresher pick.

Best Live-Action Short

Will win: The Neighbors’ Window

Last year’s winner in this category, Skin, was an English-language short with recognisable actors that culminated in an obvious but effective twist. That pretty much describes this year’s frontrunner, The Neighbors’ Window, which stars the Tony-nominee Maria Dizzia as a harried New York mum who envies the young, glamourous couple in the apartment across the way until… well, I won’t spoil it. Though I found the eventual twist rather trite, it’s exactly the sort of thing that clicks with Oscar voters, and Dizzia is so committed that you’re inclined to just go with it.

Best Documentary Short

Will win: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl)

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl) has the best title in the field and also the best odds: this charmer about a skating school for young girls in Afghanistan is politically relevant enough to score with Oscar voters, but even more crucially, it sends the viewer out with a smile.

© New York Times