Oscars 2026: Who Will Win, and Who Should Win?

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I've always wanted to ask you this question.

“Do film critics like yourself actually get excited about the Oscars?”

I have a love hate relationship with the Oscars. I mean, I've watched, I think probably almost every single Oscar since I was a child. I often spend the entire time cursing at the screen and speed dialing friends and then cheering wildly when one of my favorite movies wins something. So the Oscars are terrible unless the right, which means let's take my movies, you know?

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is the Daily On Sunday. The 98th Annual Academy Awards are one week from today. Of the untold hundreds of films that were released in the United States last year, some 50 years soon are nominated for Oscars.

And according to critics and industry insiders, those movies are uncommonly good. Despite all the forces are raided against Hollywood, it was kind of a magical year. Great movies were made and audiences found them. Mostly. So, with one week to go before the Oscars, we asked Manola Darkas the Times Chief movie critic

to come in and talk about 20, 20, 5's un-missable performances and unskippable movies. So take notes, even if you're just mental notes, and plan you're watching very wisely for the next seven days. It's Sunday, March 8th. Manola, welcome to the Sunday Daily.

Thank you, Michael. It's nice to be here.

This is our first ever conversation, you and I.

What took us so long? Great question. So if you had to pick a single word to describe this year's Oscar nominees, what would that word be? One word?

That's the exercise here. Surprising. Hmm. You know? And why it's surprising on some level is that there are so many good movies that are up

for awards. I mean, two of the movies are the top of my top 10, you know, centers in one battle after

“another, you know, and I think you and the Oscars in sync this year.”

What happened? I mean, yes. So despite all of the dire warnings in broadcasts and articles that are out there, the movie industry is not dead and movie making and movies are certainly not dead. It's kind of like think of the ending of Carrie when the hand pops out of the grave.

That is American cinema. No, it's, it's back, baby. The industry might be completely a mess, but the movies are there and they're wonderful. Okay. So Manolo, we're here to talk about some of the movies, our listeners should definitely

plan to watch before the Oscars ceremony next Sunday. I was thinking that the way we could do that is to talk about some of the front runners for Oscars and then some of the actors and the performances you personally loved this year.

So basically the will win versus should win, tension.

So let's start with the actresses competing for best actress in a leading role. Who do you think is likely to win there?

“Well, I think the consensus is that Jesse Buckley, who plays Agnes, William Shakespeare's”

wife in Hamlet that she is going to win. I think it would be very shocking, it would be probably the major upset of the evening if she did not win. What is it about her performance in Hamlet that you think makes her the front runner? Well, it's a kind of classic role, it's about the woman behind the man. In this case, the man is William Shakespeare.

What are you writing? Nothing, I'm not saying. Usually the women are introduced in a movie classically and then they wave at their husband as their husband goes off and has adventure. In this case, we are seeing him through her and they fall in love.

They have children, they build a home. Part of the richness of the character is the character goes through all the feelings.

Mother Love, and then we have Marital Drama, and then we have Tragedy.

“So as an actress, Buckley really has to go through every single thing and she has to bring”

us along and she is really the character who is bringing us through all of the different emotional registers. There's a harrowing birth scene where she's giving birth to her twins and the scene takes you through every possible motion, where you're like, "Oh, someone's going to give birth!" And what's happening is stouting again.

You're having twins, my girl, and the birth is very, very difficult and it seems like it may end in tragedy. Why is she not crying? And she takes us through every single moment, as her face is contorting, but there is love, and there is also serenity in there.

And that is really beautiful to see.

“And then of course, there is the tragedy you alluded to just a little bit ago, the grief”

that she embodies, and it's almost animalistic. What the tragedy, which I will address and if people don't want to listen to it, they can know. But their fingers in their ears for a moment, is that one of their twins, their only son, that dies while will is in London, working on a play, an Agnes resent him for being

away, even though she was the one who encouraged him to go away. And just remember, the Academy loves big performances. They like really, really big emotions, and they like watching other actors go through it. Right.

The Academy roots for Shirley McClain in terms of Endearment and it always will.

Yes, as you know, if there's not running down your face, you probably will get an Oscar. Okay. So is Jesse Buckley your favorite of the nominated performances or is there somebody else who is perhaps more deserving?

I'm very fond of Renata Rensvei, who is a Norwegian actress, and she's in a movie called "Centimental Value".

“It's a more subtle and I think a more complicated performance than Buckley's, because”

the character is more complicated. Well, we'll tell you about the character and the film. The movie is focused on a family, the father is a filmmaker played by Stone Scar's Guard.

The camera's here, on her, and this is crucial, the expression she has here.

And his daughter Nora, played by Renata Rensvei, is an up-and-coming theater actress. He wants to make a new movie, and he wants her to start it, and she does not, because they have a very fraught relationship. So instead, he hires an American actress played by Elfanning, and over the course of the movie, the Elfanning character basically tries to turn herself into a version of the

daughter. And her character should have a Norwegian accent, like, ingrid, I don't have an accent. What? And Renata Rensvei is a, uh, just a, it's a toy-to-force performance, but it is a quiet-to-art force.

Hmm. Talk us through one of these quiet moments that makes this a toy-to-force performance. Uh, there's a great scene when Elfanning's character goes to visit Renata Rensvei at the theater where she's doing a play. Hi.

Hi. The two women are seated in the auditorium of the theater, so it's, it's pretty intimate. But the director does something really interesting. He puts Elfanning in the foreground, the shots, so she's really close to us, yet she's out of focus, slightly out of focus, but the other woman, the Renata Rensvei character,

she's really crisp, and she is listening to Elfanning talk. Just keep thinking that he made it. He made a mistake. And she's talking about her struggles with the role that the Renata Rensvei character should have taken, but turned down.

As an actress, Renata Rensvei has, what I think of as like great emotional transparency, and

“we are watching her face ripple with emotions as she listens to the other woman.”

So you see her curiosity, her wonder, her difficulty, and because the filmmaker is not telling us what to think and how to feel, we come to that ourselves. It's a very beautiful moment, a very emotionally honest moment. Oh he's a very difficult person. So in the particulars, these two roles have a lot in common, both films have this overlapping

focus on the theater, they both have some real tragedy, but these are two very different from what you're saying, performances. Right, I mean, if I was going to, you know, to use an analogy, one is a kind of thundering storm

of her performance, then the other one is a kind of gentle, you know, missed, and sometimes

the ring gets a little heavy, but it's not, there's no lightning and thunder, it's a slow reveal of a performance. Well Manola, we are going to take a very quick break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about who is likely to win, and who should win when it comes to best actor. I'm Wesley Morris, I'm a critic for the New York Times, and I'm the host of a podcast called

Cannonball. We're going to talk about that song you can't get out of your head, that TV show you watched and can't stop thinking about, and the movie that you saw when you were kid that made you who you are, whether you like it or not. I was so embarrassed the whole time because it's a bad film, and I still love it.

You can find Cannonball on YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Dominola, best actors, best lead performance by a man in the last year, who is likely to win that Oscar. Uh, this is such a hard one because it's a really unusually great slate. I like all of the performance.

Um, however, if I had to be forced to narrow it down, I would say that could be Timothy Shalame and Marty Supreme, Michael B. Jordan for his dual roles in sinners, or Ethan Hawk in Blue Moon. Okay, so what you're telling us is that perhaps our will win framework might implode a little bit here, but if that's the case, let's just talk about all three of these.

“Actors, and their performances, and where do you want to start with?”

Well, let's start with Timothy Shalame, and I have tremendous respect for your money, and I know it's hard to believe that I'm telling you this game, it feels stadiums overseas. And it's only a matter of time before Phil stadiums in the United States, too. Before I'm staring at you from the cover of a Weedys box. Keys, uh, in this movie called Marty Supreme, which is about a table tennis champion,

uh, it's after World War II, takes mainly takes place in New York. It's very much about someone who is really racing toward his American dream, and he's doing it through table tennis.

He's an amazing, amazing table tennis player, and he hustles on the side for money.

He works in the shoe store. He's nice boy, but he also hustles, and he's completely ruthless. How could you walk people do this to me? The way I treat you? How could I do this to you?

“Yes, how could you know how could I do this to you?”

How about what you're going to me? I mean, nice boy who impregnates a woman in the basement of the shoe store while he's supposed to be getting an old woman a pair of shoe store. You have stress, man. You've got to put it with asbestos, I was like, he's a disreputable character, as some

of the most interesting characters are. I mean, it's a very aggressive performance, um, and I don't know where we are in this stage of American movie going, but people just seem to have a really hard time with characters who are spiky and barbed. This is a complicated, interesting movie about what is the American dream for this very

specific person? Mm-hmm. And in one of my favorite sequences, it goes after the ultimate Chicksa, I mean, you know, when a cultural, I mean, it's just like, like, I don't even know, like, what her, what her identity is, but she's less like, she's definitely not doing this movie.

She's playing some, you know, retired actress who's married a extremely wealthy, a disgusting man, and Timothy Xiaomi sees her in a hotel and just zeros in on her.

Speaking. Hey, it's Marty Mouser.

“In the royal suite, I saw even a lobby yesterday.”

Okay.

Yeah, we made eye contact as being interviewed.

And this great scene, he's checked himself into a hotel. He cannot afford. He's trying to get someone else to pay for it, and he calls her up. He just cold calls her and starts fast talking. You know, something in the performer, too.

Are you? Yeah, you don't believe me. And we see him, and he just looks absurd. He's standing on his bed in his room, wearing a bathrobe, in his box or shorts, and socks.

This is you. Yeah, the chosen one. It's a nice picture, right? Okay.

Well, I play table tennis here.

Yeah, he's just talking a mile a minute. It's trying to seduce this woman, and she hangs up on him. He calls back, and he manages to convince her. I do. You know, to meet up.

You're just gonna have it. I'm gonna make an apple appearing that ball, and if I do, you'll blow off your little rendezvous. No, no, no. I'm not agreeing to anything.

I don't know. I don't agree to anything. And they do. Do they ever? I'll even take your food in the box office.

It's a very exuberant out there, roll, and exuberant out there performance. It's a hard thing to play a character that's unlikable, and not make the movie totally unlikable. Exactly right. You really need to bring in some warmth, what they call relatability, and charm.

And I actually think that Shalame does do all of that. We're just not used to such a brace of heroes in American movies at this point.

“But I think that he's absolutely charming in this film as well.”

I have to agree with you. Let us now turn to Michael B. Jordan, and his performance, Insiders. More time I've spent with y'all, unless you're I am you boys as serious about it. Ain't no boys here. I've just grown me, grown me and money, and grown me and bullies.

Insiders Michael B. Jordan plays identical twins through the magic of cinema, one name smoke, and the other one name stack. It really is you. We've been going a long time. That seven years ain't long enough to forget about us.

It's very seamlessly done and very beautiful. Love you. Love you too. Be careful. How will you?

And they are basically gangsters, and they've returned to their hometown in the Mississippi Delta, and they opened a Duke joint. There's a lot happening in this movie. It's a horror movie specifically. There's a vampire rug, an Irish, an ancient Irish vampire, and that vampire is really

embodies kind of a white exploitation of black culture, black cultural history, everything. And so the movie is incredibly ambitious. And one of the things I really love about Jordan's performance, beyond the fact that he actually is able to create two very distinct characters, and make them work in a very complementary fashion, is that he really inhabits each one and gives each very specific personality.

And smoke, there's this great scene where smoke visits his wife, and they haven't seen each other for a while and they have really very painful tragic history.

I never saw no roots, no demons, no ghosts, no magic, just power.

And it's basically you're watching two people rediscover each other. How you know I am pretty, I work every root, my grandma taught me to keep you in that crazy brother you're safe, every day since you've been gone. And so what you're watching is a kind of renewed courtship, you know, you're watching two people refined each other and fall in love again and then fall into each other's arms.

“And then it gets, well, smoke and hot, I mean this name is smoke, I guess you know?”

Yeah, they have quite a profound amorous encounter. Yes, it's beautifully done. And just to say, that is one half of the performance because there's literally two performances in this one actor's performance in this movie. Absolutely.

Okay, the last person in our potential likely to win best actor category and he's only playing one role is Ethan Hawke in the film Blue Moon.

Oh, nobody ever loved me that much isn't that magnificent?

“Six words, nobody ever loved me that much and really who's ever been loved enough?”

Who's ever been loved half enough, which he gave me a shot? So talk about that performance. Well, this is a movie takes largely takes place on one night, very, very important evening. It's March 31, 1943 and we are with the lyricist Lorenz Hart, who with the composer Richard Rodgers wrote a bunch of important musicals like Powell, Joey, as well as the title song, Blue

Moon. At this point though, Hart is a wreck. He's an alcoholic and Rodgers has a new partner named Oscar Hammerstein II and they have a new musical that Hart has just walked out of a little thing called Oklahoma. With an exclamation point, as he repeated these times throughout the film.

In fact, any title that feels the need for an exclamation point, you want to steer clearer. There's a lack of vanity here that I love in the performance because Ethan Hawke has been made to look very sad. He has a tragic comb over. He's very short.

They cheat his height all the time. He looks like he's in a suit that it looks too big for him. He looks like he at times is literally shrinking before our eyes. And that actually really almost seems to happen when he has a confrontation. It's friendly, but it's very needy and needling with Richard Rodgers played by Andrew Scott.

“I remember when I first heard about you, you had just morty Rogers little rather, but you had 17, 16, I was 23, well, John.”

Yeah, you were the wise woman in the middle, but when I first heard you play your stuff, I knew you had it.

I wasn't entirely. We were just basically watching Hart kind of did base himself, groveling and yet he's so proud. Oh, I'm right here, right now, ready to work. And you see these warring emotions in Hawke's performance and in his face. I don't need to be back to talk to someone else, but now I don't need it, so I just either.

Thank you very much, who's we. You see it, the face hardened, softened, almost collapse in the night itself. I'm sorry, I don't care if somebody attacks me, he doesn't mean anything to me, but nobody can attack my work. It is all right. It's really quite remarkable, right?

It is such a profoundly sad performance because you're watching someone who believe themselves to be so great and to have such an enduring legacy, recognize that he's been bested and it's very, very tragic. It is, yet at the same time, there is a lovely kind of restraint where you're not hit over the head with the tragedy, you know, Hart is very funny.

He has a last rating wit, he is an entertainer, he wants to entertain and seduce, so he is leading with a kind of enthusiasm and a brio, and at the same time we can see the neediness

and the desperation, so all of that, that little war is always there.

Sure, and hey, fellas, just for the record, the corn is as high as an elephant's eye is. The stupidest lyric in the history of American song writing. Yes, it makes perfect. You know, Hart is a much greater and much more interesting actor than he was when he was cute and didn't have as many lines on his face.

Some of us, you know, we improve with age, you know, his history is in his face, the lines, the age, what he's been through as a human being, Huck is basically tapping into all that and then adding his interpretation of this man who is soon going to depart the earth. Well, because I would like to maintain some version of the will versus should construct here, who do you think should win of these three?

I really would like, it's more about what I like, would be Ethan Hawke.

“I think it's a, I think it's a magnificent performance.”

But I also think that Michael B. Jordan is wonderful. I don't, you know, it's one of these times which just, again, because it's such a rich group of performances that, you know, it's very, very difficult to do our usual binary with, you know, let's take a break and when we come back, we will talk about the main events, the last award or the

second to last award of what is always it incredibly long-eventing, which is best picture.

earlier that this was a year when big studios took some big risks and two of those risky films,

which you had mentioned, one battle after another and sinners ended up being films that you really like as a critic, which is pretty great on top of the fact that both did quite well at the box office. So let's talk about these two films as best picture contenders.

“And I think because we already talked about sinners, let's start with one battle after another.”

This is a Paul Thomas Anderson experience. It follows a group of would-be revolutionaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio, who's actually wonderful in this movie and he plays Bob. Bob is a total burnout.

You know, he's just basically drinking and getting stoned on his couch while he's raising his daughter.

Willa, how did you get home? Well with my car. You drove. So what would he, my babysitter, what, what, what? Yeah. I know how to drink and drive on a, I know what I'm doing. He has an emesis played also a wonderful performance, Sean Penn, who basically goes after them. And we follow Leonardo DiCaprio's character as he basically goes underground and tries to rescue his daughter, who's been taken and he doesn't know where his daughter is.

Is that you ever phone on my man? No. Everybody knows she has a phone. Everybody knows she doesn't. Why didn't she tell me she has a phone? Maybe she's not allowed to have a goddamn phone. Well, maybe she didn't want you to get mad. I don't get mad about anything anymore. It's a really shocking movie in some ways because it is about people who believe that there is a better America and are fighting for it, but they're actually

some people would characterize them as terrorists. Right.

“People would just call them as revolutionaries. And I think that one of the reasons that”

it really kind of grabbed audiences is that seem to be speaking to conflicts that we are all reading about. Yes, it is about 222 and 75 people in that, it's hard to talk about. It's hard to count who we need to be. The opening sequence you find, it begins with a bunch of

revolutionaries basically rescuing some people who have been seized by the United States military.

And I just remember when I first saw the movie, everyone got really, really quiet in the audience. I think everyone shocked because it felt like you were almost watching a dramatization of something that had just happened yesterday. But for all that, serious is it's also a rather goofy movie at times. Oh, gloriously so. I mean, it is not a solemn, you're vegetable's movie, you know?

It is a movie that is kind of suggesting that the other side of tragedy is comedy, that however tragic this conceme, it's also goofy. There's a great scene where the Capro's character is now on the run. He is trying to connect with his old comrades and he makes a phone call. There's a series of codes and he forgets what he's supposed to tell the other

“person. What time is it? Fuck. You know, I don't, I don't remember that part, right? Let's just”

not nitpick over the password. Look, this is Bob. You can't remember, man. It's been so long, I don't remember half edition and this stupid fucking hot night, which is a fucking miracle. So stop fucking with me and give me the fucking rendezvous point. Well, maybe you should've been. I just can't remember, I just need. And it's gloriously funny. You call it back when you have the time. You just, you just, you just fucking hang up on me, fucking little fucking prick.

Okay, so that's one battle after another. When it comes to sinners, Manola, since you've already extored its virtues through the performance of Michael B. Jordan, I wonder if you can talk us through a scene or a dimension of the film beyond that performance that helps people understand why it may win best picture. There is a scene in the middle of the movie that I think is a masterpiece. And I think it really displays Cooley's cinematic genius. It's a couple from

some flower plantation. And part of what makes this movie so moving because it's not just that

It's a scene where we're now the juke joint is open and there's a young bluesman named Sammy

“and he starts to play a song. And the camera starts moving around the room as he is singing.”

And suddenly you hear a little bit of electric guitar. And then you see somebody who looks like he could be out of a 1970s funk band. And then the camera just keeps on going. As this blues song is playing and you see B-boys, you see a DJ with it at a turn table. You actually see a modern ballerina. Time and space kind of collapse and you get a sense of the great arc of history that takes us from Africa to Mississippi and all of the culture and all the people that have

led us to this moment and are pointing us toward the future where a young filmmaker named Ryan Cooley will pick up a camera and make one of the great American movies. It's part of what's so interesting is that sinners and one battle after another are two movies are speaking to the American experience in a way that American cinema doesn't necessarily do people from the big studios. These movies feel urgent to us, you know? I mean, they feel really

urgent to me and they really seem to be speaking about what it is to be an American at this moment

“time. And I think that's part of why audiences have been so receptive to them as well.”

Right. So in both sinners and one battle after another, we've been talking about films that a lot of people saw. I wonder to end our best picture conversation if there is a nominee that maybe wasn't as big of a hit, but something that you think our listeners really should see and understand. Oh, well, it's the secret agent, which is a Brazilian film from one of my favorite directors and also I just want to say former film critic, Leber, Mendoza, Filjo.

This is a movie that opens in 1977 during the military dictatorship and we are following a former professor who has basically gone underground. One of the absolute delights of this movie

is that I can guarantee you will never know what is going to happen next, which is just absolutely

so welcome. It goes from moments of outrageous, almost kind of burlesque comedy. There is literally a severed leg jumping around and kicking people in this movie. But it's also about what is it like to live under oppression, political oppression. And it's about coming together with like-minded souls in order to survive. It's very moving on that level. He is a wonderful filmmaker and people should really check this movie out. So Mendoza, when you look at this later movies, and particularly

these movies like sinners and one battle after another, one of they leave you feeling exactly

about the always in jeopardy future of Hollywood. Well, I think, you know, one of the things that I

would hope is that movie executives would look at this lineup and look at the success of these movies and say, "She was, actually. Maybe people want movies that are very well-made and say something about the world that we live in. Maybe actually we don't want to watch movies that are completely divorced from reality the way that so many American, you know, big- the big blockbusters often are. I think it would be really nice if the movie executives got in line with the movie audiences at some

point. I feel like this is going to be the first Oscars in a very long time where you may not actually

“be screaming at the television. I can always call you Michael and start yelling if you need to.”

I am available for speed dial anger, you know? Well, I really can't wait for that. Thank you so very much. This was a real treat. Today's episode was produced by Alex Barron, with help from Luke Vanderplug and Tina Antelini.

Pat McCusker and Marianne Luzonico. Our production manager is Franny Kartoff. That's it for the Daily On Sunday. I'm Michael Barro. See you tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]