By Tyler Banark

With the Oscars two weeks away, the awards season has been heating up. Adding fuel to the fire, we have finally gotten the results for BAFTA, PGA, and SAG (now known as the Actor Awards). And must I say, boy…surprises have been running amok. While a clear picture has been painted for who’ll win Best Picture, Director, and Actress, the other above-the-line categories are still up for grabs. That being said, let’s recap what has happened in the past week.

Starting off with BAFTA, as expected, One Battle After Another took Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Editing. The most consistent award for that movie has been in those categories, but the movie did have some surprise wins. Taking home wins for Best Cinematography and Sean Penn for Supporting Actor came out of nowhere, but they have established that they are not names to be counted out over the next couple of weeks. However, wrenches were thrown in Supporting Actress and Lead Actor, with Wunmi Mosaku and Robert Aramayo winning, respectively. Mosaku could now be a strong contender for that race because of this win, which also gave Sinners another deserving win to celebrate. Meanwhile, Aramayo won for a British film called I Swear, which won’t reach American theaters until late April. His win has prevented Timothee Chalamet from possibly sweeping the category and weakening his status as a heavy contender. 

This past Saturday, the Producers Guild of America had their awards. Not much noise was made as the only takeaways were that One Battle After Another is a lock for Best Picture, and KPop Demon Hunters has a stronger grasp on the Best Animated Feature Film race. For the latter, KPop Demon Hunters faced a speed bump from the BAFTAs as it didn’t qualify due to its small/nonexistent theatrical window. Because of this, Zootopia 2 took home the prize. Although it felt contradictory to have Huntrix’s voices perform “Golden” during the ceremony. Regardless, KPop Demon Hunters will now be expected to take home the gold for animation on March 15th. 

Finally, the Actor Awards were on March 1st, and the results led to a shake-up about what could go down at the Dolby Theatre in a couple of weeks. Of course, Jessie Buckley took home Best Actress to the surprise of no one. In the meantime, the supporting categories gave us a better idea of who could take home the Oscar gold. Sean Penn takes another win for Supporting Actor, cementing himself as the possible person to beat. He’s still in the race, but there’s still competition. In my opinion, it’s now between him and Stellan Skarsgard for Sentimental Value, which is unfortunate because Jacob Elordi’s chances have vanished. He was my favorite supporting actor of last year, and the fact that his Oscar-winning chances have disappeared since his Critics’ Choice win has me bummed out. 

Amy Madigan took home the win for Best Supporting Actress, making another close race for the Oscar between her, Mosaku, and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another. Now, out of all the noise that came from the Actor Awards, it’s the big surprise of the night that went to Sinners. The film took home Best Ensemble, and Michael B. Jordan pulled off the biggest upset of the night in winning Best Actor. If those wins have provided any indications, it’s that Sinners is the likely winner for the new best casting category, and Jordan has made the lead actor category a three-horse race. At this point, it’s him, Chalamet, and Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent, and you can’t tell me otherwise. No one knows who the better man is going into the next couple of weeks, but everyone will have their eyes on this category on Oscar night.

This awards season has been anything but steady, as results have been all over the place in almost every major category. As of now, I’m predicting One Battle After Another to take home Best Picture, Director, and about three technical categories. Although I believe there are better movies nominated in those categories, One Battle After Another has been a consistently strong film all season, and nothing seems to slow it down anytime soon. I can live with it winning as I did enjoy it, but when you have movies like Sinners, Hamnet, and Marty Supreme (all movies I’ve enjoyed significantly more), it’s tough to look beyond it. For now, I’ll put my money where my mouth is for all of the categories, and we’ll see what goes down on March 15th.