Once again, we’re at the end of the awards season, with the Academy Awards taking place on Sunday!

2021 was another strange year for the movie industry, with the pandemic still affecting it. Many of the nominated movies are from streaming services and almost all of them had weak box office numbers. Moreover, they are not particularly exciting or extraordinary, with some nominations boggling my mind. You can see my overview of best picture nominees here.

As we get closer to the ceremony, some categories are getting harder to predict, with CODA (the Best Picture contender with the fewest number of nominations) surging as a favorite in the last couple of weeks, after months of The Power of the Dog (the one with the most nominations) dominating the conversation.

The Best Actress race is still wide open, with Jessica Chastain being named the favorite after winning the SAG Awards.

The screenplay categories are the toughest races, with many predicting Licorice Pizza as the favorite for Original Screenplay, despite Belfast‘s originally being ahead. The Worst Person in the World is also a serious contender. Something similar is going on with the Adapted Screenplay category, with CODA and The Power of the Dog facing-off.

Here are our predictions for the main categories:

	Who Should Win	Who Will Win
Best Picture	West Side Story	The Power of the Dog (with CODA being the next favorite)
Best Director	Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)	Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Best Actor	Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)	Will Smith (King Richard)
Best Actress	Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)	Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
Best Supporting Actor	Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)	Troy Kotsur (CODA)
Best Supporting Actress	Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)	Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
Best Original Screenplay	Belfast	Belfast
Best Adapted Screenplay	The Power of the Dog	CODA

You can see the full list of nominees here. The Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 27th!