Mark Kermode
Best picture – my shortlist (favourite first)

• PARASITE
• Monos
• Rocketman
• For Sama
• Little Women
Many of my favourite films of 2019 – including Bait, The Souvenir, Only You and Ordinary Love – aren’t eligible for this year’s Oscars. Some weren’t released in the US in time; others (like The Souvenir) simply weren’t submitted for consideration. Of the titles that are in competition, Bong Joon-ho’s astonishing Parasite is both my own pick of the bunch and a current bookies’ favourite for both best film and the newly renamed international feature film’ category (formerly foreign language film). It would be a worthy winner in either category.

Best director

• BONG JOON-HO (Parasite)
• Alejandro Landes (Monos)
• Greta Gerwig (Little Women)
• Jordan Peele (Us)
• Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts (For Sama)
Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes and Quentin Tarantino are all in the running for Oscar nominations, alongside Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, who gets my vote. I’d also like to see a nomination for Greta Gerwig, who was shamefully overlooked at the reliably rubbish Golden Globes for her terrific work on Little Women. My other choices, sadly, all seem to have little chance of gaining due Oscar recognition in this category.

Best actor

• ANTONIO BANDERAS (Pain and Glory)
• Taron Egerton (Rocketman)
• Adam Driver (Marriage Story)
• Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
• Adam Sandler (Uncut Gems)
Joaquin Phoenix is the clear leader at the Oscars, with Adam Driver also a strong contender. My nominations would include Taron Egerton for his stand-out turn as Elton John in Rocketman, and Adam Sandler, who delivers his best work since Punch-Drunk Love in the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems. But Antonio Banderas edges it for me with a career-best performance, filled with vulnerability and longing, in Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory.

Best actress

• LUPITA NYONG’O (Us)
• Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
• Cynthia Erivo (Harriet)
• Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story)
• Charlize Theron (Bombshell)
Lesley Manville would get my vote if Ordinary Love was eligible – it isn’t. Renée Zellweger looks like an Academy favourite for Judy, although she has stiff competition from Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story. If Florence Pugh gets a nomination, it will be for supporting actress in Little Women, but I’d like to recognise her dynamite central role in Midsommar. Top of my list is Lupita Nyong’o, whose dual roles prove the key to Jordan Peele’s satirical Us.

Best supporting actor

• ZACK GOTTSAGEN (The Peanut Butter Falcon)
• Song Kang-ho (Parasite)
• Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse)
• Alan Alda (Marriage Story)
• Joe Pesci (The Irishman)
Supporting categories are always dogged by arguments about leading and secondary roles. Zack Gottsagen could be considered the central player for his wonderful performance in The Peanut Butter Falcon, as could Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, or Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse. Stephen Graham was a scene-stealer in both The Irishman and Rocketman, although he doesn’t look like a contender for a category in which Brad Pitt and Al Pacino are both hotly tipped.

Best supporting actress

• JENNIFER LOPEZ (Hustlers)
• Jamie Lee Curtis (Knives Out)
• Cho Yeo-jeong (Parasite)
• Laura Dern (Marriage Story)
• Margot Robbie (Bombshell)
Again, Jennifer Lopez (who is clearly the star of Hustlers) seems to be a frontrunner in the supporting category. She gets my vote. Margot Robbie could be nominated for either Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or Bombshell (the latter is my preferred choice), and it would be great to see Jamie Lee Curtis recognised for her fabulously imperious role in Rian Johnson’s ensemble whodunnit Knives Out.

Best score

• HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR (Joker)
• Michael Abels (Us)
• Alberto Iglesias (Pain and Glory)
• Alex Weston (The Farewell)
• Thomas Newman (1917)
Many of my own picks (Clint Mansell’s Out of Blue, Cavern of Anti-Matter’s In Fabric, Mica Levi’s Monos, Nainita Desai’s For Sama) were either ineligible or overlooked. Of the titles that did make the already-announced 15-strong shortlist, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for Joker is the clear winner – an astonishing musical odyssey that lends real depth and soul to Todd Phillips’s divisive anti-hero picture.

Wendy Ide
Best picture – my shortlist (favourite first)

• PARASITE
• Uncut Gems
• Little Women
• The Irishman
• The Farewell
Could this finally be the year that the Academy voters bite the bullet and hand the top prize to a foreign language film? Certainly, Bong Joon-ho’s brilliant, satirical sleight of hand Parasite is the strongest contender for a long time. It is the highest grossing foreign language film of the year in the US, and recently entered the all-time top 10 most successful foreign language US releases. And vindicating stats like these matter to the Academy voters.

Best director

• JOSH SAFDIE, BENNY SAFDIE (Uncut Gems)
• Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)
• Greta Gerwig (Little Women)
• Lulu Wang (The Farewell)
• Martin Scorsese (The Irishman)
Bong Joon-ho is a magician who has crafted a picture that is pretty much perfect; Greta Gerwig breathes spirit and life into a period literary adaptation; Lulu Wang weaves a complex tapestry of familial ties; Martin Scorsese eschews gangster glamour to focus on the grunt work of the low-level enforcer. But my choice would be the Safdie brothers, for the teeth-chattering, nerve-shredding intensity of Uncut Gems.

Best actor

• NOAH JUPE (Honey Boy)
• Adam Sandler (Uncut Gems)
• Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory)
• Adam Driver (Marriage Story)
• Matthew Rhys (A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood)
There’s a lot of finely observed suffering here. Antonio Banderas delivers a performance that aches with sadness while Adam Driver feels the breakdown of his marriage like a self-inflicted wound. And Matthew Rhys conveys muted anguish as a disillusioned journalist in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood. But the performance that floored me was a heartbreaking Noah Jupe, carrying a movie and capturing the incremental loss of childhood innocence in Honey Boy.

Best actress

• ELISABETH MOSS (Her Smell)
• Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story)
• Saoirse Ronan (Little Women)
• Awkwafina (The Farewell)
• Cynthia Erivo (Harriet)
I adored Saoirse Ronan’s boisterous Jo March and thought Cynthia Erivo’s Harriet Tubman had soul and strength. With The Farewell, Awkwafina shows a range that matches her considerable charm. And on the strength of the lawyer’s office monologue alone, Scarlett Johansson has to be a contender. But the rattling blitzkrieg of Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell is like nothing else this year. It locks us into the cacophonous chaos of her character’s messed up mind and doesn’t let us out.

Best supporting actor

• BILL CAMP (Dark Waters)
• Shia LaBeouf (The Peanut Butter Falcon)
• Joe Pesci (The Irishman)
• Lakeith Stanfield (Uncut Gems)
• Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse)
Shia LaBeouf is magnificent in both The Peanut Butter Falcon and Honey Boy but the two films might split the vote. Willem Dafoe is immensely enjoyable as a flatulent lighthouse keeper, wielding gloriously ornate dialogue and a noxious looking pipe to pleasing effect. However, Bill Camp tells a whole life story in his scenes in Dark Waters. His performance, full of unexpected textures and tics, is character acting at its most angular and interesting.

Best supporting actress

• FLORENCE PUGH (Little Women)
• Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (Give Me Liberty)
• Merritt Wever (Marriage Story)
• Octavia Spencer (Luce)
• Zhao Shuzhen (The Farewell)
The supporting performances are often where discoveries are made. Lauren “Lolo” Spencer is one: a disability advocate with ALS, she makes her acting debut in the excellent but underseen US indie Give Me Liberty. And she’s remarkable: forceful, furious, humorous and sexy. Zhao Shuzhen, magnetic as the ailing grandmother in The Farewell, is another new face. But my pick is Florence Pugh, who shines in Little Women, making the trickiest of the sisters sympathetic.

Best original screenplay

• BONG JOON-HO, HAN JIN-WON (Parasite)
• Lulu Wang (The Farewell)
• Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story)
• Robert Eggers, Max Eggers (The Lighthouse)
• Shia LaBeouf (Honey Boy)
There is a strand of introspection in many of the best original screenplays this year. Noah Baumbach picks at the scabs of his own failed relationship in Marriage Story. Lulu Wang’s own family dilemma – to tell or not to tell a beloved relative of their cancer diagnosis – is central to The Farewell. Shia LaBeouf channelled his childhood into a scaldingly public piece of therapy in Honey Boy. But the winner should be Parasite: there is nothing else of the same exquisite precision and artistry.

Simran Hans
Best picture – my shortlist (favourite first)

• FOR SAMA
• Atlantics
• Uncut Gems
• Parasite
• Little Women
In almost a century of Academy Awards, not one documentary has been nominated for best picture. In 2020 this doesn’t seem likely to change; nonfiction remains siphoned off into its own category. A pity, because Waad Al-Kateab’s first-person account of raising a daughter in Aleppo is as indelible, and as skilfully constructed, as any of the year’s best fiction films.

Best director

• MATI DIOP (Atlantics)
• Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems)
• Alma Har’el (Honey Boy)
• Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts (For Sama)
• Todd Haynes (Dark Waters)
Best director should recognise the flair a film-maker brings to their material. So: Diop (my favourite) adds a supernatural twist to a timely migrant story; the Safdies, madcap energy; Har’el applies her grounding in documentary to Shia LaBoeuf’s mythology. Al-Kateab and Watts are bravely direct in their storytelling, while Haynes brings moral clarity, elegance and rage to his environmental thriller.

Best actor

• ADAM SANDLER (Uncut Gems)
• Song Kang-ho (Parasite)
• Brad Pitt (Ad Astra)
• Noah Jupe (Honey Boy)
• Felix Maritaud (Sauvage)
Those who have seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 drama Punch-Drunk Love will know that Adam Sandler can really act. As New York jeweller and gambling addict Howard Ratner, Sandler avoids easy parody and instead achieves an acute sense of pathos as a character who is infuriating, unlikable and positively unstoppable in his bad decisions.

Best actress

• FLORENCE PUGH (Midsommar)
• Cynthia Enviro (Harriet)
• Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
• Sienna Miller (American Woman)
• Awkwafina (The Farewell)
Things the Academy often rewards: a noteworthy physical transformation; historical biopics of conservative women; blondes. Florence Pugh doesn’t exactly tick all of these boxes as a woman unravelling during the holiday from hell in Midsommar, or indeed as a plucky wrestler from Northampton (Fighting With My Family), or the youngest and most petulant March sister (Little Women, although this might be considered a supporting role). Still, what a year she’s had.

Best supporting actor

• JOE PESCI (The Irishman)
• Lakeith Stanfield (Uncut Gems)
• Amadou Mbow (Atlantics)
• Choi Woo-shik (Parasite)
• Evan Alex (Us)
The cold, commanding, inward-looking malice of Joe Pesci’s performance in The Irishman is a testament to acting. It’s perhaps unfair to pit him against four considerably lighter roles, but for me, Amadou Mbow’s baffled, sweating policeman in Atlantics, or Evan Alex’s creepy feral double in Us, are just as precisely drawn.

Best supporting actress

• JULIA FOX (Uncut Gems)
• Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers)
• Park So-dam (Parasite)
• Lee Jeong-eun (Parasite)
• Adele Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
This is my favourite category, and my favourite crop of performances; the roles might be smaller, but they’re richer, more textured. For me it’s a three-way tussle between three extremely wily and enterprising women: J.Lo’s fast-talking, fur-coated hustler, Park So-dam’s trickster tutor in Parasite, and real-life NYC “It girl” Julia Fox’s scene-stealing mistress in Uncut Gems.

Best international feature film

• ATLANTICS
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Parasite
• Transit
• Monos
Atlantics, one of the best films of 2019, might be in with a chance in the international film category: Senegalese-French film-maker Mati Diop’s fabulously smart and spooky feature debut is Senegal’s official Oscar submission. That it already won the Grand Prix at Cannes should boost it somewhat, though Academy voters may lean towards something more accessible, such as Korean crossover hit Parasite.

Guy Lodge
Best picture – my shortlist (favourite first)

• PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
• The Irishman
• Atlantics
• Transit
• Midsommar
In a year tediously dominated by the Scorsese v Marvel back-and-forth, the American master would have had egg on his face if his gangster opus had fallen short. It didn’t: muscular yet melancholy, consolidating all his thematic and aesthetic fixations in one, it’s a worthy frontrunner for an Oscar. That said, Scorsese already has one: allow me to dream of Céline Sciamma’s exquisite lesbian romance shaking up the Hollywood patriarchy.

Best director

• MARIELLE HELLER (A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood)
• Mati Diop (Atlantics)
• Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
• Todd Haynes (Dark Waters)
• Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)
In a field dominated by more obviously impassioned auteur projects, I was struck by what two US directors did with scripts they didn’t write. Haynes is a surprising fit for a legal procedural, but infuses Dark Waters with jittery malaise and moral urgency, while Heller’s quiet, formal audacity takes a strictly American icon – the children’s entertainer Mr Rogers – and articulates his presence more vividly than 2018’s standard-issue documentary.

Best actror

• FRANZ ROGOWSKI (Transit)
• Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
• Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory)
• Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse)
• Baykali Ganambarr (The Nightingale)
My two favourite male performances of the year are ineligible. Tom Burke should win it all for his devastating turn in The Souvenir, but its US distributor didn’t submit the film. Also not entered: Berlinale winner Synonyms, carried in anarchic, balletic style by Israeli newcomer Tom Mercier. Remember that the Oscars don’t start with a level playing field – or even all the players.

Best actress

• ALFRE WOODARD (Clemency)
• Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
• Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
• Elisabeth Moss (Her Smell)
• Trine Dyrholm (Queen of Hearts)
Sometimes our favourites are pipe dreams with clear barriers to Academy consideration. It’s harder, however, to say why Alfre Woodard’s staggering performance as a psychologically tormented death-row prison warden has been left out of the conversation: a revered Hollywood stalwart and past nominee, turning in career-best work in a film that won the top prize at Sundance, she ought to be bounding to an overdue win.

Best supporting actor

• BILL CAMP (Dark Waters)
• Will Poulter (Midsommar)
• Joe Pesci (The Irishman)
• Stephen Graham (The Irishman)
• Aldis Hodge (Clemency)
Supporting Oscars were introduced in 1936, after Hollywood’s character actors complained they didn’t stand a fair chance. Today, they’re too often hijacked by A-list stars in co-lead roles (Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I’m looking at you). How lovely it would be to see Bill Camp’s or Stephen Graham’s small but invaluable parts get their due instead.

Best supporting actress

• SOFIA BUENAVENTURA (Monos)
• Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers)
• Elizabeth Debicki (Vita and Virginia)
• Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)
• Agyness Deyn (Her Smell)
I’m rooting for J.Lo after 20 years of subpar films squandering her vital star voltage: her Ramona in Hustlers is a role that needs a larger-than-life presence to strut it into life. On the flipside, newcomer Sofia Buenaventura’s electrifying turn as burdened child soldier Rambo benefits from unfamiliarity: for much of Monos, even her gender is open to question. Stunning work at opposite ends of the star spectrum: how to choose?

Best documentary

• FOR SAMA
• Honeyland
• The Cave
• The Edge of Democracy
• American Factory
The Academy already announced its shortlist of 15 films for this category, and while some exciting work (Cold Case Hammarskjöld, The Hottest August) got left on the sidelines, the remaining field is strong. Gratifyingly, the majority of the films shortlisted have female directors, most of whom would be worthy winners — and while the choice may be an obvious one, it’s hard to deny Waad Al-Kateab’s heart-crushing Syria diary.