Awards Season 2026: Tez's Official Oscar Predictions

Tonight's the night. The 98th Academy Awards. What's felt like a long awards season (thanks in part to the Winter Olympics) reaches the grand finale this evening at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Conan O'Brien's returning to host for the second year running; once he settled into the role last year, he did well. Hopefully he'll have shed the first time nerves and do just as well tonight. 

As regular readers will know, it has become a tradition for me to predict the nominations and the winners in the main six categories (the four acting categories, Best Director and Best Picture). I've done this since 2003 with varying degrees of success. 

Last year, I slightly underestimated the Academy's love for Anora and got 4/6 (missing Best Actress [Mikey Madison] and Best Director [Sean Baker]). It's been a wide-open awards season in some categories this year, so I don't expect to do as well tonight. But stranger things have happened...

So, without further ado, here are my predictions for who will win.

Best Supporting Actress: Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)

Because the supporting acting categories have been so wide open this year, I've focused on seeing those films which contain the nominated performances (I try and see as many nominated films as I can but I don't always manage it). But, this year, I've managed to see them all, and- for me- Teyana Taylor's fierce, ferocious turn as compromised revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills just squeaks it over Amy Madigan's performance in Weapons (although I won't be mad if Madigan wins; she is great, even if the film surrounding her isn't). The first part of One Battle After Another positively crackles with Taylor's kinetic, livewire performance and, for me, the movie loses something once her character steps out of the frame. 

Best Supporting Actor: Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value)

I've got a feeling this one is just going to be wishful thinking on my part, although Skarsgård did win the corresponding award at the Golden Globes. He gives a considered and measured performance as lauded movie director Gustav Borg, attempting to make his most personal film yet. Borg's not a nice guy: he's an emotionally distant father, a borderline alcoholic, and utterly selfish but, crucially, there's a charm and charisma that helps you overlook some of those worst excesses. Josh Safdie could have taken a leaf our of Joachim Trier's book for that, but I'll get onto Marty Supreme in a bit. It's also the only one of this year's Supporting Actor nominees which feels the most grounded and the most "real" (Penn and del Toro play their characters very broad; Elordi and Lindo are in genre movies where their characters are heightened anyway). This feels unlikely (Sean Penn's BAFTA and Actor Award wins could see him take the gold) but I'm still holding our for it. Fun fact: if he does win, Skarsgård will be the first Supporting Actor Oscar winner in a foreign-language/international film. 

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)

Groucho Marx is said to have called Judy Garland not winning Best Actress for A Star Is Born (1954) "the biggest robbery since Brink's". I mean absolutely no disrespect to the other four actresses in this category with my next statement, but if- by some strange turn of events- Jessie Buckley doesn't win tonight, you can apply that comment here. Not only has she been the runaway winner throughout the awards season (the only consistent acting winner across all awards) but her performance as Agnes Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao's beautiful meditation on grief and loss is utterly tremendous. Buckley grounds the movie; her anguish at the loss of her son is emotionally affecting and I'm not afraid to say I cried several times throughout. There's been some claims that the movie is emotionally manipulative but I didn't feel that way about it. Unsurprisingly, for those who know me, Hamnet has been my favourite film of this awards season and it will be entirely fitting to have it honoured at the Oscars with Buckley's win.  

Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme)

Full disclosure here, folks: I did not care for Marty Supreme. Two and a bit hours of unpleasant, amoral people doing unpleasant and amoral things to each other isn't my idea of a good time. And they don't come more unpleasant and amoral as the lead character, played by Timothée Chalamet. Marty Mauser is brash, unapologetically self-centred, possessed with an unshakable self-belief that he's the next best thing in table tennis and pretty much steps on, manipulates and cons those around him to make this dream a reality. The last act attempt to redeem this irredeemable arsehole felt emotionally hollow and manipulative and, crucially for me, didn't work- but that's more a problem with the script and less to do with the performance. Did I like the film? No. Did I like Chalamet's performance? Ish. He's given better performances elsewhere. But he's definitely committed to the bit here, and I think that might see him through, despite awards love cooling from him recently (see BAFTAs and Actor Awards). Personally, were I a voting member of the Academy, I would have put my vote in for Michael B. Jordan for his stellar work in Sinners; and there's still a chance (given his win at the Actor Awards) that this might happen. 

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

From the get-go of this awards season, One Battle After Another has been the runaway winner. Nabbing Best Picture from the Critics' Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the Producers Guild, it really has stood tall against the other nominees. A strangely timely movie, there's no way that anyone involved in its production could have predicted exactly how close to home its themes of revolution and resistance against authoritarianism would get. It's a film that meets the moment we find ourselves in, whether by accident or design, and- whilst I might have personally resonated with other nominees better- it's an undeniable triumph.

And no small part of that triumph comes at the hands of its director, Paul Thomas Anderson. He gets superb performances from his ensemble cast, balances comedy and drama expertly, and also pulls off one of the most tense and technically accomplished car chases I've seen on film in years. Again, Anderson has won all the major precursor awards so he seems fairly nailed on for tonight.

Whilst these aren't official predictions, I think Sinners and One Battle After Another will get the Original and Adapted Screenplay awards respectively (as they did at the Writers Guild Awards earlier in the month), Frankenstein will get a lot of technical love (I'm expecting to see it get Production Design and Hair & Make-Up at the very least), and KPop Demon Hunters will win Best Original Song for "Golden". 

So there are my predictions. What do you think?

For the third year, ITV and ITVX will be broadcasting the telecast in the UK, starting at 10:15PM GMT with the ceremony due to start at 11:00PM (as the U.S. has already swapped to Daylight Saving Time whilst the clocks don't go forward here until the end of the month). 

I'll be watching. Will you? 

A full write-up of my thoughts on the ceremony, plus a full list of the winners, will follow as soon as possible once the ceremony finishes. 

Review: The Railway Man (UK Cert 15)

There are plenty of war films as well as its many sub-genres out there, but out of all of them I would pick the Prisoner of War film as the most difficult to make, largely because what can be said about the atrocities that prisoners experienced has already been skilfully done, leaving little room to add anything new. For me, not just the very best Prisoner of War film, but one of the finest war films ever made, is Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.

Jonathan Teplitzky’s adaptation of the memoirs of Japanese prisoner of war, Eric Lomax, gives us something different in that Lomax forgave his tormentor, Takashi Nagase, who, while Nagase did not physically torture Lomax, he did something arguably worse: he stood by and did nothing.

The Railway Man ticks all the boxes for awards glory, critical and commercial success, and ending up in a large number of DVD collections. While the film is a decent enough way to spend two hours, it does feel like a waste. Instead of being a good film, this could have been a highlight in Firth and Teplitzky’s careers.

The problem lies first and foremost with Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Andy Paterson’s script, which jumps wildly between Lomax in the eighties (Colin Firth) and his time in the prisoner of war camp (played by Jeremy Irvine), rushing at breakneck speed towards the credits. For a film that centres on purgatory and redemption, The Railway Man spends little time exploring these themes.

Considering the acting talent involved, no one is given all that much to work with. Firth fares best, doing a convincing job portraying a man who is plagued by traumas of the past, but at no point is he stretched. The film would have been far more interesting if we were shown more of Lomax’s day-to-day life as he struggles with his demons, distancing himself from his wife, their marriage at breaking point. Instead, apart from a powerful moment when Lomax wakes from one of his nightmares, traumatised, and a handful of scenes where Lomax shuts himself away, we never get a full understanding of how Lomax’s experiences as a prisoner affected him. As Nicole Kidman explains, whenever she asks her husband about his experiences in Japan, “He changes the subject,” which more or less sums up The Railway Man and how it treats its protagonist: it changes subject, hurriedly moves on from one scene to the next.

Jeremy Irvine is first-rate as the younger Lomax, mimicking Firth’s diction and mannerisms. Sadly, Irvine gets lumbered with a clichéd role as the shy, frightened soldier who stands up to his captors; he is not given the chance to do anything else. The only reason we sympathise with the young Lomax is because we witness the terrible ways he is tortured. It feels like a cheap trick to side with a character just because we see them get beaten black and blue.

Hiroyuki Sanada holds your attention during what little time he has onscreen. As an older Nagase, he also has his scars, spending his life trying to atone for the past. Despite Firth appearing virtually throughout the film, it is Sanada’s scenes that pack the biggest emotional punch. While The Railway Man has its fair share of problems, it is impossible not to be moved in the film’s climactic scene.

While the trailer for The Railway Man had the acting credits as Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, Kidman has very little to do in the film except look concerned for her husband; there are long stretches in the film where she does not even appear. While Kidman’s role is solely as a narrative device – Lomax still has something to live for – Patricia could have been far more fleshed out. She is a devoted wife, struggling to cope as her husband becomes more and more introverted, none of which is shown in any great detail. Scarcely any screen time is invested in Patricia which, when you have an actress as peerless as Kidman, is a real waste.

Stellan Skarsgård as the older Finlay is the most short-changed, acting-wise. Like Patricia, he is another narrative device. Finlay would rather bury his trauma, live his life in silence, than try and deal with it. He is a living, breathing ghost, with no trace of a life, and is what Lomax will become if he does not confront his demons. Yet the older Finlay appears on screen for all of five minutes, his dialogue largely exposition or pushing the narrative along. An actor as consistently outstanding as Skarsgård deserves better than this (see Marius Holst’s King of Devil’s Island for one of Skarsgård’s stand-out performances), having been given a role he can scarcely do anything with.

Considering this is a film largely set in Japan and tells the story of a man obsessed with the world’s most scenic railways, the cinematography and editing is nothing special. The visuals in the film tell the story, no more, no less. Personally, I can forgive a film that visually does nothing new if a director has paid more attention to the actors and storytelling, but Teplitzky does none of this. The Railway Man is in too much of a rush, never taking the time to explain anything or get inside the heads of its characters.

Despite all of this, The Railway Man is a decent watch, thanks largely to Firth and Sanada. The film hurries towards Lomax confronting Nagase and these scenes are, for the most part, well handled. There is real tension as Lomax interrogates Nagase, followed by moments that are genuinely moving, Lomax realising that Nagase is not the same man who mistreated him all those years ago. The script does not explore these characters, how they have both suffered, as much as it should, but Firth and Sanada make their scenes together immensely powerful. The last twenty minutes of The Railway Man feels like a different film entirely; it is gentle, thoughtful, and takes its time. When dealing with a story as moving and profound as Lomax’s, this is how Teplitzky should have structured his film, but instead he is in a mad rush, covering as much ground as he can, giving few of the film’s scenes the depth they deserve.

The Railway Man is a passable war film, when, considering the source material and the talent on board, it should have been one of the greatest.

3 out of 5

Matt