Updated 4/21

Belfast	The Power of the Dog	Dune	King Richard	Licorice Pizza
The biggest surprise of the early festivals. Some are saying a crowd-pleaser and others are saying the BP frontrunner	Jane Campion hasn’t had serious Oscar success since 1993, but with an acclaimed novel and a prime cast, this looks like it could be the one to bring her back.	The Oscars like one or two blockbusters and they love an auteur. There will be very vocal detractors	Coming out of Telluride and Venice, the biggest mover. It might be solidly in the top ten as soon as it debuts	Every Paul Thomas Anderson movie means something, and we’ll see how experimental he gets with Cooper and a largely unknown cast
CODA	Spencer	The Tragedy of Macbeth	The Last Duel	Nightmare Alley
The Sundance Audience winner debuted to rapturous praise and needs to keep momentum, but it looks like it’s in good shape right now	Pablo Larrian movies are their own animal, but if this film hits, you never know. Jackie might have been closer to a Best Picture nomination than we think	The Coen’s rarely miss, but we will see when it is just one of the Coen brothers, but the addition of McDormand and Denzel should help.	The first trailer finally gave it some hope, but Ridley Scott is doubling up this year and might be pushed aside for House of Gucci	Guillermo Del Toro will forever be on Oscar’s radar thanks to his Best Director win, but his films are either huge awards successes or complete misses with no in-between
		ALTERNATIVES
The House of Gucci	Cyrano		Mass	Passing
I have my doubts, but the film could be a big commercial hit and that might translate	Joe Wright hasn’t had any sort of success since Anna Karenina, but this adaptation has been up Oscar’s alley in the past		With American gun violence out of control, the timely message plus the positive buzz from Sundance could lead to big things for this indie	Sundance hit from a well-respected actress-turned-director with a poignantly topical story and striking visuals
		MORE ALTERNATIVES
The French Dispatch	Parallel Mothers	West Side Story	Don’t Look Up	The Hand of God
Wes Anderson couldn’t get arrested by the Academy for years until he finally broke through. Now, they won’t leave him alone. We just need to wait to see it.	Despite five Oscar nods including Best Director, Pedro Almodovar has never directed a Best Picture nominee. Surely, that will change eventually, right?	The quietest of buzzes before being seen, Spielberg and the Best Picture legacy is the only thing keeping it around	Besides a teaser trailer, there’s not much to go on, but the last two McKay movies have been BP nominated	Sorrentino is a mixed bag, but there have been rapturous raves coming out of Venice