Your Oscars Guide

I know only one person who has watched all 10 films nominated for best picture at the Oscars: my au pair. He’s 22, an aspiring filmmaker and the most dedicated cinema nerd I know.

As for me, I try and fail every year. This year my score is a sorry five out of 10 (though I have seen all the international nominees!). Luckily, my colleague Tom Wright-Piersanti, from our sister newsletter, The Morning, understands. (His score is also a five out of 10.)

Tom has written a guide to this weekend’s Oscars ceremony for those of us who, as he put it, are part of “the silent majority — the ones who loved ‘Sinners,’ who watched ‘F1’ because it was there, who considered going to an art house theater but never got past the Google phase of the plan.” Do you also need some hand-holding? We’re sharing the guide below.

Get ready for the Oscars

By Tom Wright-Piersanti

If you’re coming into these Academy Awards cold, here’s the one thing you should know: Two movies, “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” have dominated this awards season.

“Sinners,” directed by Ryan Coogler, set an Oscars record with 16 nominations. It’s as good as advertised — a tale of twin gangsters in Jim Crow-era Mississippi returning home to open a juke joint. Oh, and it’s a rollicking vampire flick.

“One Battle After Another,” a darkly comic thriller directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, about radical activists, received 13 nominations. Both movies are artistic blockbusters, films with big ideas and directorial vision that nevertheless brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.

And there’s a new category this year: best casting. To mark the award’s debut, The Times made a game that lets you vote on the worst casting choices in recent cinema history.

Who should win?

I’ll tag in Manohla Dargis, The Times’s chief film critic, who spoke about the performances and the movies she thought were most deserving on a recent episode of The Daily. Some of her picks:

Renate Reinsve in “Sentimental Value” for best actress: “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.”
Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon” for best actor: “Hawke 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.”

“Sinners” or “One Battle After Another” for best picture: Both movies, she says, “are speaking to the American experience in a way that American cinema doesn’t necessarily do, particularly from the big studios — these movies feel urgent to us.”

OK, but who will win?

Do you really want to know? Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers the awards season beat for The Times, makes predictions every year, and he’s really good at it. Last year, he nailed seven of the eight big awards. His picks for this year are here; given his track record, consider it a possible spoiler alert.

Kyle thinks there’s a clear favorite in the best picture category, and that the same film will probably win for best director. (I won’t say which.) He says the race for best actress isn’t even close. But he’s unsure about the best actor race. The academy has a bias against handsome younger A-listers, and that could hinder the chances of two front-runners — Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”) and Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”).

What about the international films?

We’re in a golden era of global film at the Oscars. The best picture nominees have included at least one foreign-language film every year since 2020, when “Parasite” won the top prize. This year, there are two: “Sentimental Value” from Norway and “The Secret Agent” from Brazil.

Both films are also nominated for best international picture, along with “It Was Just an Accident” from France, “Sirat” from Spain and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” from Tunisia.

Kalle Oskari Mattila, a writer from Finland, noted the trend in a recent story for The Times Magazine. It’s not just because Oscar voters are more international than they used to be, he argues, but because directors abroad — keenly aware of U.S. audiences — now put more nuanced American characters into their films.

I still can’t decide what to watch before Sunday!

Listen, I hear you. Time is finite. I have one last tip: Try out our Anatomy of a Scene video series (each video is minutes, not hours, long). In every installment, a director offers commentary over a scene, explaining how it was made and why it’s important to the film. We have scenes from eight of the 10 best picture contenders. Think of it as an Oscars tasting menu.

Your Oscars reading list

Tânia Maria, 79, has a modest role in “The Secret Agent.” But her cigarette-puffing performance has made her a star in Brazil.
A school employee in Russia filmed students following the country’s wartime curriculum. His footage is the basis of a nominated documentary, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.”
Chloé Zhao, the director of “Hamnet,” spoke to The Times about filmmaking and training to become a death doula.
The Oscars have a unique method for choosing best picture, akin to a ranked-choice ballot. Our reporter explains how it works in this video.

MORE TOP NEWS

Iran’s new leader vowed to keep blockading oil

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, vowed to keep blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most vital route for oil and natural gas, in his first public statement since taking power. Iraq and Oman closed their oil terminals after two tankers were attacked and left burning off the Iraqi coast.

Oil prices again climbed above $100 a barrel despite plans by more than 30 countries to release a record amount of oil from emergency reserves. (My colleague Rebecca Elliott explains in the video above why oil matters so much to the global economy.)

Israel also launched a new wave of strikes in Beirut, expanding its campaign against Hezbollah. Follow our live updates.

Other developments in the war:

Up to 3.2 million people are now displaced inside Iran, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Lebanon is engulfed in its second major war in less than two years, and the loyalty of Hezbollah’s base is being tested as never before.

OTHER NEWS

China approved a new “ethnic unity” law that makes Mandarin Chinese the language of instruction for all minorities in schools.
A driver rammed a truck into a synagogue outside of Detroit, Michigan, and later died after an exchange of gunfire with security guards.
A Moscow court handed down life sentences to 15 men in connection with a 2024 massacre at a concert hall that killed at least 149 people.
Israel’s military dropped a case against five reserve soldiers charged with brutalizing a Palestinian detainee, citing difficulties with the evidence.
Smiljan Radic of Santiago, Chile, won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.
The chef René Redzepi stepped down from Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant he led to international acclaim, after a Times report on his abuse of employees.
One-third of Americans have cut back on expenses like driving, meals and vacations to pay for medical care, according to a new survey.

Top of The World

The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about how China has cut military flights near Taiwan.

SPORTS

Paralympics: Ukraine accused the International Paralympic Committee of mistreating its athletes and displaying pro-Russia bias.

Tennis: These are the players who have stood out so far at Indian Wells.

OBITS OF THE DAY

For International Women’s Day this week, The Times revisited the legacies of notable women across the generations. Not to rank them, but to re-examine them with the benefit of distance — to see what was emphasized, what was minimized, what might have been left unsaid.

They include:

Jiang Qing, Mao’s widow, who helped carry out the Cultural Revolution in China

Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken voice in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal
Hannah Arendt, an incendiary political philosopher who escaped Hitler’s Germany
Madame Nhu, the glamorous hostess who gained political power during the Vietnam War

MORNING READ

Strip mall restaurants serving dishes from around the world are a staple of multicultural Canada. Deep in Mississauga, just outside Toronto, a huge plaza called Ridgeway has become a hub for nightlife, dining and culinary tourism.

In the three years since it opened, Ridgeway has ballooned to include some 120 restaurants, mainly Middle Eastern and South Asian. But the plaza’s popularity has created problems, mostly because of crowds and noise. Read more about the suburb that never sleeps.

AROUND THE WORLD

Same pubs, fewer hangovers

Pubs have long held a near-hallowed status in Ireland. But in Dublin these days, more of the golden lagers and creamy stouts they’re pouring are alcohol free.

There’s a dip in alcohol consumption nationwide, particularly among younger people, according to industry figures. For many, going alcohol free is now part of a normal night out. It helps that non-alcoholic options, once relegated to the margins of menus, are now abundant at most bars.

“You’re still getting that Friday night vibe,” one pubgoer said, “without the Saturday morning hangover.” Read more.

RECIPE

This large tarte Tatin is nontraditional. It’s made almost entirely on a sheet pan in the oven, rather than in a skillet on the stovetop. But its flavors of caramel, apples and buttery pastry are classic.

WHERE IS THIS?

Which city is this?

BEFORE YOU GO …

During Oscar season, I tend to gravitate toward the international films. (Very on brand, I know.) This year is no different.

My personal favorite from this year’s crop is still “It Was Just an Accident,” by the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. I’ve written about it before. A group of former political prisoners kidnap a man they believe is their former torturer. What does justice look like? Revenge? Closure? At its core this is a moral thriller. But what makes the film great is its wild moments of laugh-out-loud levity.

A close second is “The Secret Agent,” which I just saw this week. I loved its combination of a wacky plotline (a disembodied leg wreaks havoc in the red light district) and allegorical depth (a German Jew pretends to be a Nazi to stay in the good books of a corrupt policeman). But it also features what a friend called a stunning cast of “strong faces.” Such strong faces!

The Oscars are ultimately American awards. But if you’ve ever wondered why so many great films don’t even make the list of nominees for best international feature film, watch this video by my colleague Alissa Wilkinson. Turns out that the reason often lies not with Hollywood, but with the countries of origin.

To play us off, here’s one of my favorite tunes (which helped Prince win best original song score at the 1985 Oscars): “Purple Rain.”

Have the best weekend! — Katrin