The Bride! Reactions + Oscars 2026: Can Sinners Upset One Battle After Another?

8:05Ryan Lattanzio:But they're meaningless. They're just sort of pasted on. I don't really know what they're trying to achieve.

8:10Anne Thompson:And Jesse Buckley might have had a prayer of creating a character if she wasn't being inhabited by this Mary Shelley thing. That's where it all goes crazy and never works.

8:20Ryan Lattanzio:And her performance, it's not my favorite Jesse Buckley performance. It's kind of careening between either screaming into the void or maniacally laughing when there's not really, she's unsure of what else to be doing. We're beating this to death.

8:31Anne Thompson:We're beating this to death. So let's get to the Oscar predictions. I will write something more exhaustive later next week, I guess. We have a race for once.

8:42Ryan Lattanzio:We do, yeah. It's actually exciting and unpredictable.

8:45Anne Thompson:Which is nice.

8:47Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah.

8:47Anne Thompson:It's not the usual snowball down the hill where you know what's going to win in every category. Jesse Buckley is about the only one that we can actually count on. I mean, we can get the crafts fairly solid.

8:57Ryan Lattanzio:It's funny. There was something this week about Jesse Buckley, about how she hates cats. I don't know if you saw that.

9:02Anne Thompson:Oh, no. Is that going to kill her? No, it's too late. Well, I don't know.

9:04Ryan Lattanzio:It's like when you're a man, you can be like a pedophile and a rapist and still win an Oscar. But if a woman, you don't like cats. Actually, though, I think not liking cats is kind of a red flag. But she basically said in an interview that she asked her boyfriend to rehome one of his cats before they moved in together. And, of course, now they're married. So people are upset about that. No, it's not going to take her chances. No, she definitely seems like the surest bet of anybody here.

9:29Anne Thompson:Yeah. And so you've got the two movies that are going against each other, one battle after another, which everybody thought was the frontrunner and could not be denied. But after the Screen Actors Awards, Sinners suddenly became a viable option because it had that feel in the room. And, you know, they went wild when Michael B. Jordan won. They went wild when Sinners won in the room. And it reminded me of Parasite. That was the thing where it won SAG and then it surprised everybody. It was supposed to win international. It was supposed to win writing. I wasn't supposed to go on and win picture direct because 1917 won the PGA.

10:091917 won the Directors Guild.

10:12Anne Thompson:So this is the comparison where you have the precursors heading in one direction and maybe a surge of sentiment going in the other.

10:22Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, no, I mean, the sentiment seems veering towards sinners at the moment, especially after the SAG Awards. And I don't know if I should say this, but I also feel like probably what happened at the BAFTAs has probably scored it at a few votes. I mean, Sinners deserves to win on its own terms, but this is political campaigning in the end. And I do feel like that might have had a little bit of influence.

10:45Anne Thompson:We are referring to the Tourette's sufferer who laid out the N-word when Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting, and they handled it with dignity and grace.

10:58Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, and now they're being forced to relive it in all of their energy.

11:01Anne Thompson:I know Delroy had to talk about it. I saw that on that part. Yeah, yeah.

11:05Ryan Lattanzio:Well, let's lay out what do we think Sinners is going to win, and what do we think one battle after another is going to win?

11:11Anne Thompson:You go first.

11:11Ryan Lattanzio:I'm pretty positive that Sinners, this period horror musical that we basically all saw a year ago and have been talking about since, so we're kind of ready to turn the page, is definitely going to win Best Original Screenplay. It's going to be Ludwig Goranson's third Best Original Score winner, no question. And I think Francine Mazur is going to win the first Best Casting Award. and also it definitely has a shot at winning cinematography because people, you know, Oscar voters love making a record and Autumn Gerald Archipel will be the first woman to win. And then, of course, we can also talk about Ryan Coogler potentially being the first black best director to win.

11:51Ryan Lattanzio:Anne, what do you think Sinners has a shot at?

11:53Anne Thompson:Okay, so I'm agreeing with you on everything you just said and I'm going to go, let's look at best picture and Best Actor later, because those are iffier. They're true contests, and we don't know for sure who's going to win. So I'm going to say that one battle after another is going to win Best Picture. Cinematography could go to one battle after another, because Michael Bauman won the BAFTAs and the BSC. We don't know who won the ASC. That's going to help us figure out what's going to win cinematography. A lot of people think it's Train Dreams, which I would love to have happen. Yeah, of course.

12:32Anne Thompson:So that it could win something. But I don't think it will.

12:35Ryan Lattanzio:Train Dreams won some Critics Awards for cinematography in the beginning, but the momentum... Spirits. Oh, that's true. Spirits, Train Dreams did very well.

12:43Anne Thompson:Yes, yes, it did. Yeah, but that's not the... I mean, there is some overlap with the Academy. But I'm confident that Paul Thomas Anderson, who has 11 Oscar nominations and no wins, he's long overdue. He's really respected and admired. and he will win Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for sure.

13:02Ryan Lattanzio:I'm very confident in Best Director as well.

13:05Anne Thompson:Yeah, and also editing.

13:08Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, that's true.

13:09Anne Thompson:People always say it, yeah, that the editing, they all talk about that last sequence. That's the thing that kills them.

13:16Ryan Lattanzio:The sequence of the daughter. Oh, yes, the car chase, the car chase in the hills. I thought you meant the sequence of Chase Infinity running off to be a revolutionary, which we can talk about that another day, but I actually think that scene was very unnecessary.

13:28Anne Thompson:No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about the hills. The hills, the hills. But this movie has won so many of the right precursors. We've got PGA, DGA, Scripter Awards, which is predictive, BAFTA and ACE. So I think it will win Best Picture. I do.

13:45Ryan Lattanzio:I, just to make things interesting for myself, I'm going to say Sinners is going to win Best Picture. I mean, it was really, I know that the Academy is, what, 11 ,000 people. SAG is a very different body, But you really felt the love and the room for that at SAG. I mean, part of that had to do with the sort of strategic selection of Michael, I'm sorry, Samuel L. Jackson and Viola Davis as presenters.

14:07Anne Thompson:Viola Davis delivered.

14:08Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. But, you know, I was kind of going through recent Oscar history. There's things like La La Land, which was winning every precursor award and then did a win Best Picture. Moonlight wasn't really winning a lot of awards at the time. These are different scale movies, of course. Then something like Spotlight, which didn't win the PGA for best film, and that went to the big short of all things. And then there were other movies like The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby. And then you mentioned Parasite. We're going really way back. But the precursor of it all wasn't consistent with these.

14:40Anne Thompson:It's possible. And the other thing that really strikes me this year is that because we have this prolonged voting period and the Olympics are responsible for that, it isn't always in March like this. March 15th is very late for the Oscars. It's usually late February or early March.

15:00Ryan Lattanzio:I remember 2020. It was February 9th. That was nice. Yeah, that was nice. We'd be done.

15:05Anne Thompson:Oh, we'd be long gone. But what it means is that there was time for all these front runners to slack. to peak. There was time for other things to happen, like these awards having an impact during the voting period. And I have this weird feeling that Sinners could happen because of this. Yeah, I mean... And Timothee Chalamet could lose his lead.

15:26Ryan Lattanzio:Well, all right. Well, let's talk about the acting.

15:29Anne Thompson:So Chalamet, a lot of the people who are out there predicting still think he has a good chance. I think that he that everything we were talking about all season hurt him because people are talking about that. They're saying they didn't like the way he behaved. They're saying they don't like him.

15:48Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, people really turned on him. And I think he was too thirsty. He read as being kind of desperate for it. And he's young. People will see him as like if he doesn't win this, it's like a Leonardo DiCaprio situation. He will get it eventually. He's very young now. It may not happen now. I mean, I think the distaste feelings for him kind of started to curdle when he said at the SAG Awards last year, I want to be one of the greats. You know, that kind of pomposity, I think, read people wrong. And it's been interesting to see he's really out there now.

16:21Anne Thompson:He's been trying to pull it back. I mean, the interview with McConaughey was quite lovely, actually. I liked him in that interview. But it was interesting to me. He like he was questioning his performance, his choice of Wonka, even though it did really well. It wasn't cool.

16:40Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah.

16:41Anne Thompson:He's a little too worried about being cool.

16:43Ryan Lattanzio:It is. It's not going to be questioning your choices like that. It's I remember at the New York Film Festival after party of the secret screening. He just stayed at a table with Kylie Jenner the whole time. He wasn't working the room. And now, of course, now you kind of see him like I heard at the luncheon. and he was taking all kinds of selfies with people. But no, but he did all of these kind of publicity stunts, like getting whatever that... The Sphere. On The Sphere, yeah. I keep calling it The Dome, The Sphere, or it's like this rap video that he posted. And now, of course, you see him in very demure wares.

17:14Anne Thompson:Yes, he completely changed his persona and in effect became inauthentic, I think.

17:20Ryan Lattanzio:He looked deflated when he did not win the SAG Award. And I feel like that moment when the camera is on you and you lose, that's when you really need to bring out The acting skills.

17:30Anne Thompson:It's a very important skill. Very important skill. So Michael B. Jordan, it would be very unusual for him to win, you know, because he hasn't won anything else except SAG. So I really feel, though, that there is so much love for Sinners that this is the award they're going to give it.

17:50Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I just don't see a world where there's going to be four white acting winners also. though, especially with the diversity that we've seen all year and the strength of centers. Because if Timothee Chalamet wins, that's kind of what we would be looking at.

18:04Anne Thompson:That's true. Jesse Buckley. And all right. Well, let's see what happens in the supporting categories. I'm betting on sentimental value still. And there's reasons for this. OK. So Salon Skarsgård, he won at the Globes. He lost at the Critics' Choice to Jacob Elordi, which is a mainstream group. I'm a member, and I know who they are, okay?

18:31Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. I'm not a member. I don't know if I intend to be one.

18:37Anne Thompson:And then you have the SAG Awards, where he wasn't even nominated. The BAFTAs, he lost to Sean Penn. Sean had never won at the BAFTAs, and they loved him, and they gave him the award. But we can count on the Academy seeing sentimental values. They gave it nine Oscar nominations. I think it could. Four of them actors.

18:58Ryan Lattanzio:I think it could lose all of them. Oh, so you don't think Stellan has a chance? No, I think he has a chance. It's probably between Stellan and Sean Penn. It's funny, like, I can't think of the precedent for this at the Oscars, but in terms of Sean Penn, it's just like. He won twice already. Yeah, these movies where it's like someone who's like a racist or abuser, it's like the person playing that always wins rather than the actress playing the people that he's oppressing, which I find really interesting. But yeah, no, he already has two. It's just hard to imagine that Sean Penn's going to join the three-time winners club.

19:31Anne Thompson:Because people don't like him. No. They respect him. They know what a great actor he is. And you're right. He gives the showiest scene-chewing performance you could hope for. Actors love that. And actors are the main group in the Academy. But I think that Stellan Skarsgård has been around for a long time. I mean, a lot of people have worked with him. Dune, a lot of the television work that he's done that's extraordinary, like Chernobyl. You know, he's really, he's been in so many different things from the beginning of his career with Lars von Trier all the way through. You know, he's, I mean, think about that Dune villain.

20:10Anne Thompson:I mean, that was scary stuff.

20:12Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, he should have been nominated for that. Park Conan. Yeah.

20:15Anne Thompson:Anyway, I think he's been around and it's not like people don't know him. Does he have the heat right now? No, he doesn't. But that doesn't mean they won't vote for him.

20:28Ryan Lattanzio:All right. Well, I accept that. You're going to go with Penn. I'm going to go with Penn.

20:31Anne Thompson:You're probably right.

20:32Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah.

20:33Anne Thompson:Okay. And then we have...

20:35Ryan Lattanzio:Supporting actress.

20:36Anne Thompson:Okay. What's your bet?

20:38Ryan Lattanzio:I'm going to say Amy Madigan. You know, her speech at the SAG Awards was really charming. you know she was nominated in 1985 so she's almost years ago she's almost a record holder for the longest period yeah exactly one thing maybe working against her I don't know it's kind of an underseen movie and it's the only nomination for weapons but I didn't even get makeup no it didn't and or screenplay which you kind of saw that pop up in some other places but I pulled some winners of movies where it was the only nomination that they also won which was That's Julianne Moore for Still Alice. Of course, that's Julianne Moore.

21:13Ryan Lattanzio:And that was just actors. Christopher Plummer for Beginners. Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina of Barcelona. Forrest Whitaker for Last King of Scotland. And Marissa Tomei also for My Cousin Vinny.

21:22Anne Thompson:That was one of the great shockers. Yeah. Yeah, at the time. Yeah. No, I think Amy Madigan won. She won at Critics' Choice and she won at SAG. And I think that this is a winning momentum that will continue. And I agree with you. I think she'll take it. And the reason for that is that Tiana Taylor hasn't happened. And maybe the maybe the coattails that we all expected are going to lend themselves to Sean Penn. I have a theory about Tiana Taylor that is extraordinary as she is in the movie as iconic. I think that word is overused, but it might be appropriate for her. Do you agree? I agree.

21:57Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. And that's a word I overuse all the time.

22:00Anne Thompson:We shouldn't use it. Either of us.

22:01Ryan Lattanzio:No, but I do. And I need to.

22:03Anne Thompson:But there's something that people are, about her character, the great perfidia Beverly Hills, that make people uncomfortable. It's a sexualized character.

22:15Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, well, she's kind of explained that in some interviews and, you know, kind of recontextualized it, but it may have been too late. The other thing is, is that her character obviously is only in the beginning of the movie, and she peeks in the beginning of the movie. And then, you know, she gives this voiceover in terms of this letter that's shared with her daughter at the end. but she's not in very much of the film.

22:35Anne Thompson:It may be that this is a Paul Thomas Anderson show, more than anything, and not the actors from one battle after another, which is a sign of weakness, which could lead to sinners. So is Wonmi Misaka's win at BAFTA as a local win, and it didn't repeat at SAG. Do you think it could repeat at the Oscars?

23:01Ryan Lattanzio:I don't think so.

23:02Anne Thompson:Okay, so we're going with Amy Madigan. Okay, we're both agreed on that. Okay, so for the rest of the crafts, you can basically go down the line with the BAFTAs. Frankenstein should take hair and makeup, costume, and production design. Do you agree with that?

23:16Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I don't have much interesting to say about the craft races, which are going to, other than cinematography and editing, I think are going to be really predictable. Obviously, sound, I think that's going to be F1.

23:28Anne Thompson:I agree with that.

23:29Ryan Lattanzio:What do you think? VFX, the aperture.

23:30Anne Thompson:Surat is a shot. There are people who like Surat, but I don't think it's enough.

23:34Ryan Lattanzio:No, that would be really interesting if it won. Visual effects, both Avatar movies have won this category. I expect that to repeat. Do you agree with that?

23:43Anne Thompson:I agree with that. No question. That's going to be the one win for Fire and Ash. The thing about sound, though, is that you can have a whiplash or a sound of metal or a sound of interest winning in that category, even though they're smaller and not as... Usually it's the big noisy movie, and that's what we're thinking of with F1, the big noisy movie. That's a good point. It's a very good point. So Surat is a possibility if enough people saw it. I doubt that they did, honestly, because that's an international film. But so is Zone of Interest.

24:17Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. And Sound of Metal is a very small movie also, even though it was Amazon.

24:22Anne Thompson:Yeah, so that covers most of the... so international. Sentimental value? I don't know. I think the secret agent.

24:33Ryan Lattanzio:I do. Okay, well, there's a world where also it could be it was just an accident due to recent events. You don't think so?

24:39Anne Thompson:I can tell you from the beginning, I felt, even though it won the Palme d 'Or and people admire him and he's extraordinary and the stories he has to tell are horrifying and the situation in Iran is horrifying, obviously. We're very upset. He's very upset. He probably is happy that the Ayatollah got killed. There are a lot of people who are rejoicing in that particular. Yeah.

25:04Ryan Lattanzio:And the feelings are very complex about that. Absolutely.

25:07Anne Thompson:But the bottom line is, did they like the movie? And I think they admired the movie. Yeah.

25:12Ryan Lattanzio:It's not a warm film. And the way that I would say that, obviously, sentimental value kind of envelops you in good feelings in the end. And even The Secret Agent, which is very sad, also does that as well, just by virtue of Wagner Moore's presence. And don't forget, he's nominated. But then, of course, Sentimental Value has multiple nominees. Yeah, and four acting nominees.

25:35Anne Thompson:And then Sentimental Value and Secret Agent are the two, as opposed to It Was Just an Accident, that are nominated for Best Picture. Right. So that's a big deal. And Secret Agent also was nominated for casting, which is also a big deal. I think.

25:49Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I don't know the makeup of Brazilians in the academy, but I'm just going off of the fervor around I'm still here, which I know some of that had to do with the fall of Emilia Perez. But Brazilians know how to help mount a grassroots Oscar campaign. Not that Neon didn't know what it had on its hands.

26:06Anne Thompson:I've been told that this grows into more of a Latin American thing, or it extends to Spanish speakers everywhere. It isn't just Brazil. I've been told that there's a big block that could be voting for secret agent, and it's very popular. But at the same time, it's a quieter, more ruminative, thoughtful movie. They don't always go that way.

26:32Ryan Lattanzio:And even a little experimental, I would say. I agree. There's a lot of cinematic references. There's a lot of stylistic flourishes and different modes and genres that Kleber Mendonca Filho is kind of speaking in, whereas sentiment of value, it's like it aims for the heart and it's very accessible.

26:46Anne Thompson:It's a family drama and it's a father-daughter drama. And it's also about a filmmaker, you know, trying to come back. There's a lot of things for people to relate to there. And it's just extraordinary filmmaking.

26:58Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, you've got a lot of hope in sentiment of value. So I admire that. I'm going with Secret Agent.

27:03Anne Thompson:All right. I know that there's a surge for secret agent, but part of why that is is recency bias. I think a lot of people are catching up with it at the end of the day. So we'll see if enough of them saw it. Right?

27:16Ryan Lattanzio:Finally, we've got best documentary. It's going to be The Perfect Neighbor. It's going to be The Perfect Neighbor. No question.

27:22Anne Thompson:If there was one movie that would catch up with it? Mr. Nobody Against Putin.

27:26Ryan Lattanzio:Oh, sure. Yeah.

27:27Anne Thompson:Which won the BAFTA. Right, right. Is wonderful and lovely.

27:30Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, fair enough. yeah no this will be one of the handful of Netflix wins and the first documentary of theirs that's won since My Octopus Teacher which if there's ever an Oscar that should be rescinded can be that one

27:44Anne Thompson:it was so popular I remember everyone was talking about it that year it was funny

27:50Ryan Lattanzio:people had pandemic goggles on

27:51Anne Thompson:I think there was a backlash after that it was like no more Netflix for a long time but this is beyond Netflix this is about Gita Gambier and the extraordinary police cam approach.

28:04Ryan Lattanzio:The filmmaking and the editing and the compilation.

28:07Anne Thompson:Everything is in its favor. And it got an enormous bump. Even though it was hugely popular already, after the nomination, it soared on Netflix in terms of popularity.

28:17Ryan Lattanzio:And it's always done really well on Netflix because, and Gita Gunbir talks about this, there's a bit of a bait and switch of the movie in that these true crime documentaries are extremely popular on Netflix. I watch a great number of them. They're mostly just slop, and a lot of them employ AI even lately in this disturbing way.

28:33Anne Thompson:Oh, they do these recreations of people's voices that I think are really scary.

28:38Ryan Lattanzio:Really scary. But this movie is not really a true crime documentary. It's something else. It's more of a social justice documentary and an interrogation of police work. And that bait and swish that they achieved very effectively, and it worked because it's been really popular on the streaming platform.

28:55Anne Thompson:So did we do all the categories?

28:56Ryan Lattanzio:I think we did it all. All right. Next week we'll do the shorts.

28:59Anne Thompson:So the elephant in the room is the impact of the new voting rules. And I'm hearing that especially older voters. So what it is is that they go in to make their ballot. And also the Academy has been sending people alerts that they haven't seen all the movies in a given category. Like, hey, you haven't seen all the documentaries yet. So in a way, I think that's great. I do. I want them. I know from doing all these anonymous ballots how many people do not see all the films in a cat. They see one movie and vote for it. It's terrible. And so so now there's a little bit of an awareness that that's what they're supposed to do.

29:39Anne Thompson:But they don't have to tell the truth.

29:42Ryan Lattanzio:No. And so basically their ballot, that category is grayed out, right, if they haven't watched everything. Is that how it works?

29:48Anne Thompson:They put in a claim that they've seen the movie in a specific place. They have to say where they saw it. And is that - So that's online. That's a ballot thing. So they have to qualify for each category. This is at least how I understand it. And it gets complicated. They go in and out. They go in and out. It's a little bit technological. Even someone I know who's very tech savvy, who's a member, had trouble with it. And then another member of mine who had no trouble with it at all.

30:17Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. How do you corroborate that on the academy side? You really don't. And you can just put it on the portal and play it. As I'm saying, go wash the dishes. Just put the brutalist on or come back in three and a half hours.

30:29Anne Thompson:Well, that's the situation. But some people are saying that there are going to be fewer older voters voting, which could be bad.

30:40Ryan Lattanzio:And aren't these older voters, these are the ones that maybe they're not watching everything to begin with. They see one movie and they're voting for it.

30:45Anne Thompson:These are the ones who have time to see everything. I don't know. I don't want to. Let me put it another way. A lot of people are suggesting that given the complexity of the balloting this year, the voters may skew younger.

31:00Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I'm heartened by a few months ago Oscar also ran. Ariana Grande said that she, of course, watches every movie on the platform because she is a voting member of the Academy. So I'm hoping that the young voters like her are as fastidious about it.

31:16Anne Thompson:I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. I want everybody to take it seriously. Many people do. Many people do. But many people don't. I heard one guy voted for best picture and was so flummoxed by the whole thing that he just tossed out the rest. He voted for one cat quarry.

31:34Ryan Lattanzio:It's very unfortunate.

31:35Anne Thompson:All right, Ryan, we'll do the shorts next week. And next week we're going to get into the so far embargoed Project Hail Mary.

31:43Ryan Lattanzio:Which I saw this week. And Hoppers. Which I haven't seen, but I will catch up with in time for next week. See you then. Okay. Thank you.