Best Picture:

Though the Best Picture field was expanded from its standard five to a possible ten nominees for the 2009 ceremony, nearly every lineup since has failed to fill up every possible slot. Now, with a mandate to ensure ten nominees every year (until they change it again), the Academy has taken the opportunity to honor a more diverse set of nominees than ever before, and used it to nominate almost the exact same set of films as the Golden Globes. Ah well. Still, this year has one of the stronger lineups in recent memory and features a good mix of longtime Academy darlings and first time nominees.

Seemingly the most likely winner, The Power of the Dog, sees Jane Campion netting a slew of nominations for the first time in decades with her new take on the Western. It’s Netflix’s most recent bid for the top prize (though not their only contender this year) and may finally be the one that breaks the bias the Academy has held against the streaming giant, though the same was predicted of Roma only a few years ago and a number of other seemingly strong contenders have come and gone in the years since. Another director who has gone quite a while without a nomination, Kenneth Branagh, whose more recent films like Thor, Artemis Fowl, and Murder on the Orient Express, haven’t played as well to the Academy as his earlier Shakespearian work, is back with Belfast, a look at The Troubles which Branagh lived through as a child that has pushed him to having been nominated in more categories than anyone else in history and is the clearest stopping block for The Power of the Dog sweeping.

Also returning to the ranks of nominees, though with less time away, is Guillermo del Toro, who won the prize with his last film, The Shape of Water, and was one of the more surprising nominees this year when his remake of the classic noir Nightmare Alley beat out some of the seemingly more likely nominees like tick, tick… Boom!. With Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson also reenters the fold, following a career long snub by the Academy with his eight nominations through five previous films receiving no wins. This 70s set coming of age film sees PTA getting his most personal nominations since There Will Be Blood and seems destined to finally bring him a win somewhere, but with so many overdue narratives, his luck may be tested once again. Steven Spielberg also returns this year with another remake, this time of an earlier Best Picture winner, West Side Story, giving him his twelfth Best Picture nomination, the second most of any director in Academy history.

Continuing a recent tradition of nominating science fiction films, Dune has certainly surpassed the David Lynch version in its acclaim and became the highest grossing of the year’s nominees (despite a simultaneous streaming launch) while seeming poised to launch a full franchise with the announcement of a sequel following soon after its release. CODA, a remake of a French film about a young girl from a deaf family, made waves early on as the most expensive acquisition in the history of the Sundance Film Festival and has since paid off for Apple TV+ as the streaming service’s meteoric rise on awards circuits has continued with a Best Picture nomination and a slew of Emmy’s within barely two years of launch. Also from the streaming world is Don’t Look Up, the star studded climate change satire that continues Adam McKay‘s controversial shift from goofy comedies to more serious, message oriented filmmaking. Perhaps the most exciting of the nominees is Drive My Car, a true surprise on nomination day that proved the power of critics groups and word of mouth as the widely acclaimed Japanese drama got in for Director, Screenplay, and Picture, alongside the presumed Best International Feature Film nomination. Much has been said recently of the Academy’s changing and more international membership and films like Drive My Car are an exciting testament to the potential for greater movement away from the traditional winners and towards more recognition of all filmmaking.

The last of the nominees, King Richard, is the first Oscar nominated film from director Reinaldo Marcus Green and seems to have been carried through to nominations by the Academy and various other groups almost entirely by Will Smith‘s powerhouse performance as Richard Williams, father of legendary tennis players Venus and Serena Williams. The biopic has long been an Academy staple and its inclusion feels like a reminder the old guard membership is still a huge, if waning, force that can’t be forgotten just yet.

Prediction: The Power of the Dog

Best Director:

This year marks several distinct firsts for the Best Director category. Steven Spielberg has become the first and only director to be nominated for Best Director in six sequential decades. Jane Campion is the first woman to be nominated for more than one Academy Award in direction. The apparently most surprising first was Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car, though for anyone following the awards circuit, especially the critics’ awards, this nomination wouldn’t have seemed too surprising, considering how many wins Drive My Car has been racking up.

Kenneth Branagh with Belfast and Paul Thomas Anderson with Licorice Pizza have directed movies that fall into categories that Academy voters tend to love. Both are films about nostalgia from well-established auteurs. Belfast is also a historical epic, despite its relatively small scope. Licorice Pizza also has the benefit of being about show business, which the Academy tends to gravitate towards as well (The Artist, La La Land, Birdman). Spielberg with West Side Story is also appealing into nostalgia with his reimagining of West Side Story, which, despite its many updates, remains true to the vision of the acclaimed film adaptation from 1961.

Yet the surprise success story of this awards season has been Jane Campion with The Power of the Dog. Netflix reported that in its debut weekend, The Power of the Dog was watched by 1.2 million households. The film has been popular enough to even give birth to memes about Bronco Henry, not something you would expect from the work of a director who gave us The Piano and Bright Star. This unexpected hold on pop culture plus The Power of the Dog’s staggering ten other nominations, including Best Picture, put Jane Campion in a particularly advantageous performance to take Oscar gold.

Prediction: Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Best Cinematography:

When the news broke that some categories, including Best Cinematography, were not going to be screened live as part of the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, we were baffled by the news. Not often has it been thought of as a headline category like acting and directing, but for us, Best Cinematography has always been one of our favourite categories. Not giving these artists the full recognition they deserve is a disservice to them and their craft, especially when the nominees for this year are as diverse as their work.

For the first time since 2017, a woman is one of the nominees. The Power of the Dog has been receiving a lot of praise since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, and part of that adoration is due to Ari Wegner‘s cinematography. She is also one of two Australians nominated this year, with Greig Fraser being the other for his work on Dune. Unlike Wegner, he is no stranger to the big occasion, receiving a nomination once before and serving as a cinematographer on films like Rogue One and the highly anticipated The Batman. Both films received nominations in multiple categories, and this is one of many where they’re in direct competition. All the other nominees are European. Dan Lausten‘s second nomination is for Nightmare Alley, and Janusz Kamiński receives his seventh for West Side Story, with him having won twice previously. Six-time nominee Bruno Delbonnel is the fourth cinematographer in as many years to receive recognition for a black and white film for his work on The Tragedy of Macbeth. Last year, Erik Messerschmidt walked away with the Oscar for his work on Mank, another black and white film. It would be very unexpected if Delbonnel were to repeat this given the competition.

Prediction: Greg Fraser (Dune)