Oscars: who should win and who will win

• A take on the winners and losers in the annual race

Love them or hate them; naively believe that they’re the ultimate meritocratic arbitrators of taste; see them as a statement about the state and future of the industry; or an indicator of the populist mediocrity that you should avoid watching at all costs — the Academy Awards are still the biggest show in Tinsel Town.

The 2023 Oscar nominations, announced on Tuesday, have more surprises and snubs than usual. They leave an overall feeling that after a year of safe-bet mainstream releases by studios looking to avert risk — Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members are torn between wanting to recognise the contributions of old-fashioned bums on seat success and more interesting, finely crafted and acted films that offer new direction and hope for the future of the movies.

It’s an uneven nominations list that cannot quite make up its mind and says little about what direction the industry should be heading. Here are the nominations, snubs, frontrunners and dark horses for the four big categories ahead of the announcement of the winners on March 13.

● BEST PICTURE

Nominations: All Quiet on the Western Front; Avatar: The Way of Water; The Banshees of Inisherin; Elvis; Everything Everywhere All at Once;

The Fabelmans; Tár; Top Gun: Maverick; Triangle of Sadness; Women Talking. Biggest snub: The Woman King — Gina Prince-Bythewood’s all-female, historical action epic showed the ability of women of colour to kick ass, entertain, inform and provide solid old-school action thrills in a year of CGI superhero, franchise overload.

Who will win: Everything Everywhere All at Once. The Daniels — as co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are known — earned 11 nominations for their multiverse-jumping, genre-smashing, martial arts action comedy, making it the most nominated film overall. Who should win: Tár. Todd Field’s meticulously crafted drama about cancel culture and the pressures of the classical music world is a slowly unravelling, emotionally layered and timely classic tragedy of the hubris of its protagonist and her inevitable downfall anchored by a stellar performance from Cate Blanchett.

Who could win: The Fabelmans. Of the three big pictures of 2022 that looked to the magic of the movies as their subject — the other two are Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon — Steven Spielberg’s is the most measured and crowd-pleasing. It’s also the rare moment in the hugely successful director’s career when he’s revealed something about his personal history.

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BEST DIRECTOR Nominations: Martin

McDonagh — The Banshees of Inisherin; Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — Everything Everywhere All at Once; Steven Spielberg — The Fabelmans; Todd Field — Tár; Ruben Östlund — Triangle of Sadness.

Biggest snub: James Cameron. The box-office smashing director’s long-awaited sequel to his 2009 fantasy epic Avatar is an overlong, shallow and trite paean to the wonders of nature and the mystical powers of ancient belief systems, which shouldn’t be on the Best Picture nominations list. That said, there’s no denying the technical 3D wizardry of the film’s opening half-hour, which should have earned Cameron a nomination.

Who will win: Steven Spielberg for his deeply personal love letter to the movies and his soul-searching attempt to deal with what he sees as his inadvertent involvement in the break-up of his parents’ marriage.

Who should win: Ruben Östlund for his outrageous, bitterly funny dissection of the self-interested shallowness of the one-percenters in the dying days of late capitalism.

Who could win: The Daniels for the audacity and energetic imagination of their multiverse caper.

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BEST ACTOR

Nominations: Austin Butler

— Elvis; Colin Farrell —

The Banshees of Inisherin; Brendan Fraser — The Whale; Paul Mescal — Aftersun;

Bill Nighy — Living.

Biggest snub: Hate to say it but Tom Cruise probably deserved at least a nomination for his joyful, creepily ageless return as Maverick. It wasn’t the most complex performance of the year but it deserved recognition of Cruise’s alienlike, daredevil enthusiasm for taking on challenges that spook actors half his age.

Who will win: The most wideopen category in this year’s race, with all five nominees earning their first nominations but it’s looking like fan favourite Brendan Fraser will be the frontrunner for his morbidly obese transformation in Darren Aronofsky’s tearjerking The Whale.

Who should win: Newgeneration Irish heartthrob Paul Mescal for his tender and quietly devastating performance as a father looking for personal redemption on a road trip with his daughter in Charlotte Wells’ gently profound Aftersun.

Who could win: Bill Nighy. The 73-year-old British stalwart has enjoyed a career as one of the screen’s most charming and well-loved actors, but this is his first nomination for his moving performance in Living, SA director Oliver Hermanus’ film of Kazuo Ishiguro’s adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa’s classic about a dying bureaucrat looking to do one last, small, good thing for his community. Nighy may just have enough goodwill and popularity in the industry to push him onto the podium on Oscar night.

● BEST ACTRESS Nominations: Cate Blanchett

— Tár; Ana de Armas — Blonde; Andrea Riseborough —

To Leslie; Michelle Williams

— The Fabelmans; Michelle Yeoh — Everything Everywhere All At Once

Biggest Snub: It’s a tie as both Danielle Deadwyler’s iconic performance in Till and Viola Davis’s muscled warrior woman in The Woman King have been ignored by Academy voters this year, leaving black US performers out in the cold, in favour of nominations for Asian actors.

Who will win: It’s neck and neck between Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett who have both picked up most of the major pre-Oscar awards thus far. Odds are still high that one of them will take home the big prize.

Who should win: Andrea Riseborough whose gutwrenching performance as an addict mom at rock bottom looking to piece together a semblance of a life is the surprise nomination of the year. That’s thanks to the British actress’s quietly effective campaign of getting fellow actor and Academy member friends to make a significant online buzz to get her onto the nomination list.

Who could win: Michelle Williams, whose turn as the troubled mother in Spielberg’s family drama, was overlooked during the awards season but has now landed her a spot on the only list that really matters.