Best Adapted Screenplay:

The screenplay categories tend to be the categories where smaller films can get acclaim. For Best Adapted, this would be Women Talking, which did manage to get a Best Picture nomination. Living had the burden of being based on one of Akira Kurosawa’s most celebrated films, but Kazuo Ishiguro’s screenplay is beautifully precise in its language and its characterization. All Quiet on the Western Front received relatively little mainstream acclaim but it has become a strong contender due to the nine nominations it has received, and it may benefit from the newfound focus on it and with the influx of Academy voters catching up with it.

Netflix also managed to strike twice with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which manages to balance complicated plot machinations with arch dialogue and characters. The biggest surprise nominee was Top Gun: Maverick, which confused many people since the film was not adapted from a preexisting story but rather was eligible because it was a sequel (the same rule applied to Glass Onion). Up until now, Top Gun: Maverick had the largest box office out of any American movie and hardly needs its accolades, but its screenplay is essential in how it tells a familiar story with a lot of beats taken from the first Top Gun film yet manages to create a film that people could still respond to.

Prediction: Sarah Polley (Women Talking)

Best Animated Feature Film:

Once again, two studios well-known for animated films have gained nominations in the Best Animated Feature category. Pixar picked up its seventeenth nomination in this category with the coming-of-age story Turning Red, and Dreamworks garnered its fourteenth with the Shrek franchise spinoff sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

Netflix is also becoming a big player in this category scoring two nominations this year, with another computer-generated offering with The Sea Beast. It is the stop-motion feature helmed by an Oscar-winning director that is making waves this year with Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. If it were to win, it would become only the second stop-motion animation to win the award and the first since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005. However, another stop-motion film receiving strong recognition is Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, an adaptation of the charming series of short films by Dean Fleischer Camp.

Prediction: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Animated Short Film:

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Best Animated Short category does not feature a film produced by Aardman, Disney or Pixar. There is more of a recognition of traditional and stop-motion animation than possibly in previous years. There are also some films featuring mature or absurd content. The Flying Sailor focuses on the existential voyage of a sailor in a near-death encounter, and Pamela Ribon‘s My Year of Dicks, focuses on the filmmaker’s self-discovery as she attempts to lose her virginity, which is an adaptation of her 2017 memoir.

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It is the only stop-motion animation film about an office worker who believes he is living in a fake world. The final two films perhaps have the broadest appeal. Ice Merchants focuses on a father and son story, and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, an adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s book, explores themes like empathy and kindness through the journey of its characters.

Prediction: The Flying Sailor