| Hello! I'm Esther Zuckerman, and I write about movies for Pursuits. Which means I watch a lot of them. In 2024, for instance, I watched 220 new movies. The Oscars are tomorrow and that means I'll finally have answers to questions I've been thinking about for the last nine months. Yes, I start thinking about awards season as early as May, around the time of the Cannes Film Festival, which I typically attend. Last year's installment of the glitzy affair in the South of France was where I first saw some of this year's major contenders including Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez. At that point if you'd asked me which of those would be nominated for top prizes I would have definitely said Anora—which blew me away and took home the Palme d'Or—and argued there's no way that the Oscars would go for The Substance considering how absolutely gross it is. I would have been only half right! Demi Moore is probably going to win best actress for The Substance, and it's up for best picture and best director, too. Turns out the Academy doesn't mind a little gore, as long as it has something to say about the difficulties of aging in showbiz.  Mikey Madison is nominated for best actress for her work in Anora. Source: Festival de Cannes That just goes to show how wildly unpredictable this awards season has been—chaotic, messy and, to be frank, very fun. The length of campaigns these days means that narratives get solidified very early, and once a train like Oppenheimer or Everything Everywhere All at Once starts rolling it's hard to stop the momentum. No one movie has had that kind of power this time around. There have been scandals, mini and major: The Brutalist, one of my favorite movies of the year, got dinged for using small amounts of AI. Anora was criticized for not employing an intimacy coordinator. The fans of Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez went to war over who was the better actress.  Best actor nom Adrien Brody (right) in The Brutalist. Source: A24 Nothing has compared to the Emilia Pérez disaster. Its star and top nominations getter, Karla Sofía Gascón, suddenly sank to the bottom of everyone's predictions after it was revealed she had posted a lot of racist tweets in her past. (Moore has carried her tiny dog Pilaf around to most major events, which been not at all controversial but instead utterly delightful.) I'll take an awards season like this one any day of the week over a boring one where we basically know who's going to win months in advance. It's been fascinating and stressful, keeping me and other Oscar obsessives guessing until the very end. So who's going to win? Here are my predictions. Best Picture Right now I'm putting my proverbial money on Anora. Yes, the pope drama Conclave has some heat after winning the SAG ensemble award and best picture at Bafta, but I think Anora is still your best bet. Remember best picture is decided on a preferential ballot—votes are weighted based on how a member ranks the titles—and that means a widely liked film like Anora will do very well on it. Even if it's not a person's number one it will easily end up in the two or three slot for many. Plus, this isn't the Academy of yore where a movie about a sex worker with copious nudity would be considered too risqué. Instead, the film's classic Hollywood screwball comedy magic combined with its indie spirit is just the kind of alchemy that can win.  Conclave's star Ralph Fiennes is also up for best actor. Source: Focus Features Best Director For some of those same reasons, I'm going with Anora's Sean Baker for best director. Baker is also a fierce defender of the cinematic experience, using his platform to advocate for, among other things, long theatrical releases before going to streaming. Even though he's something of an outsider with his low budget scrappiness, Hollywood loves a guy who stands up for the sanctity of the moviegoing experience.  Baker takes us backstage at the strip club in Anora. Source: Courtesy Neon Best Actor Adrien Brody has been the frontrunner all season, but I think ultimately Timothée Chalamet is going to take best actor for A Complete Unknown. The Oscars adore a performance in a biopic (see: Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer) and Chalamet pulls off a tough feat doing his own singing while transforming into Bob Dylan.  Chalamet at the 97th annual Academy Awards nominees dinner earlier this week. Photographer: Valerie Macon/Getty Images Best Actress The Demi Moore narrative is hard to beat. She laid it out herself in her Golden Globes speech: She's a movie star who's been consistently undervalued, finally getting a role that shows the breadth of her talent in a film about how aging women are discarded in this business. I don't think the Academy voters are going to be able to resist getting another great speech from her.  Moore in The Substance. Source: Mubi/Alamy Best Supporting Actor There is no way Kieran Culkin isn't winning this one for A Real Pain. He's swept basically every award. Chances are he'll be self-deprecating and funny when he accepts, too. Best Supporting Actress For a while pundits were wondering whether Gascón's missteps could hurt her Emilia costar Zoe Saldaña, leaving room for Grande from Wicked to claim this one. Yeah, probably not. Saldaña has this in the bag. Animated Feature Flow! No one can resist that cute Latvian kitty.  No Other Land. Photographer: Rachel Szor Documentary Feature No Other Land, an emotionally taxing but incredible documentary made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective. International Feature This for a while was Emilia Pérez's to lose, and while it might still win I'm going to go out on a limb and say Brazilian entry I'm Still Here takes it. Connect with Esther via Instagram. | 
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