Academy Awards – 3/15/26

98TH ACADEMY AWARDS

Nominations Announced: January 22, 2026
Awards Ceremony: March 15, 2026

Ninety-seven years of Oscar history, and somehow the Academy still finds new ways to break my heart. Last year's ceremony denied Demi Moore the crowning moment of her The Substance comeback while handing Best Picture to Anora, a perfectly fine film that I guarantee nobody has thought about since. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with just 270 attendees and a fifteen-minute presentation. Wings took Best Picture. Emil Jannings won Best Actor. The whole thing cost five dollars to attend. Nearly a century later, it's become the most-watched non-sporting event in television history, a global phenomenon that still shapes careers and cements legacies. And yet here I am, not sure I'm ready to get hurt again.

This year's race lacks the variety that makes award season genuinely exciting. Looking across the precursors, you'd think maybe twenty movies came out in 2025. Nobody's taking risks. Where's the challenger? The scrappy indie that sneaks into the conversation? The performance that comes out of nowhere and scrambles everyone's predictions? The nominations feel locked before a single ballot is cast, and several of the "sure things" leave me scratching my head. Benicio del Toro in One Battle After Another is perfectly fine, but a Supporting Actor nomination? There are at least four men delivering stronger work who aren't even in the conversation. The buzz on Wicked: For Good has cooled considerably, and I think we give Ariana Grande the year off to let Wunmi Mosaku's devastating work in Sinners claim the recognition it deserves.

And then there's The Testament of Ann Lee, a film being ignored on a truly striking scale. A gorgeous production made for just ten million dollars, it's exactly the kind of craft-driven, talent-forward filmmaking the Academy claims to champion. Daniel Blumberg's haunting songs deserve Original Song consideration, but instead we'll get Diane Warren's latest bland ballad from her own biopic as a guaranteed nominee. Warren has written some forgettable tunes that secured nominations over the years, but you'd think she'd deliver something undeniably good for a movie about her own life to triumphantly claim an Oscar in competition. Apparently not. The odds favor One Battle After Another to win it all, but that film has been far overhyped for my taste. Sinners represents where filmmaking is right now, but the Academy would never go for it. So even before nominations drop, I'm sticking with what I predicted months ago: Hamnet is the dark horse to win Best Picture while Paul Thomas Anderson takes the directing prize for One Battle After Another.

The one bright spot? Amy Madigan in Weapons. If she secures the nomination (still a hurdle, but I think she makes it), conventional wisdom says she'll win. And then the Demi comparisons will start. Our hopes will rise. The narrative will write itself: veteran actress, long overdue, delivering career-best work. Oscar night will arrive, and I'll sit there knowing exactly what's coming but still foolish enough to believe. The Academy has ninety-seven years of history. In that time, they've crowned unexpected champions (Moonlight over La La Land after that unforgettable envelope disaster), rewarded long-suffering legends (Peter O'Toole waited forty years for his honorary Oscar), and made choices that aged like milk (Crash over Brokeback Mountain still stings twenty years later). Whatever happens on March 15, it'll add another chapter to that complicated legacy. I just hope this year's chapter doesn't leave me heartbroken again.

FILM

Best Picture