Heres Who Will Win at the 2018 Oscars
The 90th annual Academy Awards are upon us, and the evening promises to bring a mix of the boringly predictable and the totally impossible to call. It's been a long haul since the very first critics awards were doled out after Thanksgiving, but as the season wore on through the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Critics' Choice Awards, enough hints have been dropped for us to make some educated predictions as to which of the 2018 Oscar nominees will be taking home the gold Sunday night. Below are TIME's 2018 Oscar predictions, from Best Picture to Best Foreign Language Film. Call Me By Your Name  Darkest Hour  Dunkirk  Get Out  Lady Bird  Phantom Thread  The Post  The Shape of Water  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, This is, admittedly, a bold choice  perhaps even a foolish one for a betting person. The safe choice is certainly Three Billboards, or maybe The Shape of Water. But in a year in which so many of the big awards feel predictable, in which there's no Best Picture consensus, critical or otherwise, in which the category is decided not by a popular vote but by a preferential ballot, it's not unreasonable to expect the unexpected. Get Out should receive a boost from the Academy's younger, more diverse new ranks, and choosing it offers a chance for the Academy to say that their pick is, as it was last year, relevant and of the moment. MORE Jordan Peele on Get Out, His Fears and Cultural Hope, Timothe Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name  Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread  Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out  Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour  Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq. This one has been pretty much zipped up since Oldman appeared onscreen as Winston Churchill, with prosthetic jowls and a well-chewed cigar, at the Telluride Film Festival last September. In many ways it's a career win for the versatile actor, who's been nominated once before. There was some uncertainty early on as to whether some dark shadows from his past and the early awards season love for Timothe Chalamet might lead to an upset. Anything is possible, but it's pretty safe to say that Oldman can start practicing his "V for Victory.", MORE Gary Oldman on Winston Churchill, Populism and Harvey Weinstein Allegations, Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water  Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  Margot Robbie, I, Tonya  Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird  Meryl Streep, The Post, Like Oldman, McDormand has swept at every televised awards event this season, and then some. While Three Billboards has been mired in some controversy, none of it has touched McDormand's gritty performance as a bereaved mother seeking justice. She's pretty hard to touch here, and a win would be her first since 1997, when she won for Fargo. , MORE Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Is a Thin Portrait of Small-Town America, Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project  Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water  Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World  Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Rockwell's role in Three Billboards, unlike McDormand's, has been somewhat mixed up in critiques of the movie  namely, that the film humanizes his racist cop while drawing flat, hollow black characters in the margins. But the criticism has fallen largely on writer-director Martin McDonagh rather than on the talented, much loved and until now underappreciated Rockwell. His wins at the Golden Globes, SAG and Critics Choice awards  after what seemed like a promising early surge for Dafoe's easier to love performance in The Florida Project  suggest that this one's in the bag. , MORE Three Billboards Wins Big at the BAFTA Awards, Mary J. Blige, Mudbound  Allison Janney, I, Tonya  Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread  Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird  Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water, Like the other acting frontrunners, Janney has been indomitable this awards season. Between her popularity in Hollywood and the splashiness of the role  the woman spars with a parakeet, for crying out loud  it's a more obvious choice for voters than the closest contender, another very complicated albeit more nuanced mother played by Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird. Either way, we're pouring one out for Tiffany Haddish. MORE The True Story Behind the Movie I, Tonya, Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk  Jordan Peele, Get Out  Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird  Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread  Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water, This field is one of the most exciting of the 2018 Oscars it includes two directors nominated for their debut features Peele and Gerwig, one of whom would be the first black director to win and the other of whom would be the second woman. The remaining three are among the best established directors working today, and none of them has ever won the award. But del Toro is the likeliest candidate here, not least of all because he won the top honor at the Directors Guild of America Awards, and the Best Director Oscar has gone to the DGA winner all but seven times in the last 50 years. Del Toro is well respected by his peers and of all 13 nominations for The Shape of Water, this one feels like the likeliest win. MORE Five Came Backs Guillermo del Toro on World War II, Immigration and Real Monsters, Another Best Picture nominee with just a handful of other chances to win Sunday night, Call Me By Your Name has its best shot with James Ivory's adapted screenplay. Ivory, 89, was last nominated in 1994, for Remains of the Day. Though credit is also due to Andr Aciman, who wrote the novel from which Ivory adapted the screenplay, the film's climactic father-son pep talk is one of the most memorable, heartrending monologues of the year, and much deserving of an Oscar. MORE Call Me By Your Name and The Shape of Water Fearlessly Display Love, The Boss Baby  The Breadwinner  Coco  Ferdinand  Loving Vincent, Pixar's celebration of family, memory and music is quite possibly the surest bet of the night. Universally beloved, the film has collected victory after victory on its way to Oscar night. The rest of the choices are divided among two films too niche to gain enough steam, and two that didn't make enough of an impression on critics. And Coco  energetic, vivid and celebratory  is a feel-good choice regardless of the competition. MORE Pixar's Newest Star, Anthony Gonzalez, Can Do It AllAnd He's 12, This one is by no means a shoo-in. But A Fantastic Woman has made a star of lead actor Daniela Vega, who audience will meet on Sunday night  even if they haven't seen the film  when she becomes the first trans presenter ever to grace the stage at the awards show. Its story about a nightclub singer in the aftermath of her older boyfriend's death is a vibrant, humanizing portrait whose victory would be a satisfying conclusion to a close race. MORE This Oscar-Nominated Film Asks Viewers a Question What Are You Seeing in Me?, Abacus Small Enough to Jail  Faces Places  Icarus  Last Men in Aleppo  Strong Island, It's a delightful odd couple that's hard to resist 35-year-old street artist JR and 89-year-old French director Agns Varda. Among a field of documentaries that deal with difficult subjects  financial crisis, doping scandals, civil war, a murder with no justice  their film stands out for its lighthearted and optimistic but very often poignant portrait of humanity.