WHO WILL STRIKE GOLD AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS?

If you're looking to win your friends' pool, here are our favorites to take home the trophies

- BY KYLE MCGOVERN AND LAUREN GIELLA

Best Picture

We don’t mean to kill the suspense, but the top race appears to be all but locked up. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was almost immediately canonized upon release and is heavily tipped as the favorite this awards season. Timely themes (like the sacrifices and shortcomings inherent to resistance politics) lend the film an urgency that critics and awards voters can’t resist; it also doesn’t hurt to have a high-wattage cast and a potent mix of nervy comedy and chase-movie suspense. -K.M.

Best Director

After decades spent as a critics’ darling, and helming a string of masterpieces—Boogie Nights (1997), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Phantom Thread (2017) among them—Anderson is positioned to win his first-ever Oscar. Well, make that his first three: If One Battle After Another takes Best Picture, he’ll be honored as a producer; his work as a screenwriter, taking inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, is all but assured to earn Best Adapted Screenplay; and then there’s Best Director. The onetime Gen-X movie-brat is finally being recognized as a master. Viva la revolución! -K.M.

Best Actor

Already onto his third Best Actor nomination to date, Timothée Chalamet is on track to become “one of the greats” with his presumptive win for Marty Supreme, which would make the 30-year-old the youngest winner in the category since Adrien Brody's coronation in 2003. -L.G.