Love ’em or loathe ’em, the 2022 Oscars are finally happening this Sunday. While many categories seem a foregone conclusion based on previous award shows this season—notably three of the acting awards—others are fully up in the air. And don’t forget the huge upsets and surprises at Oscars in recent years.
Recognizing that truly anything can—and does!—happen and in a hopeful future I-told-you-so spirit, here’s who Vogue staffers will be cheering on Sunday night.
Best Supporting Actress: Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
Few actors have been doing as little Oscar campaigning as Jessie Buckley—probably because up till this week she was busy doing eight shows a week as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in the West End. But she’ll be the one I’m rooting for the most on Sunday, even though West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose is a near lock in the category. For me she was the standout performance of The Lost Daughter, embodying the messiness and flawed humanity of the film’s protagonist, Leda, as an overwhelmed young mother and academic. There’s a magnetic aliveness to everything Buckley appears in, so I see this as an encouraging nod from the Academy toward a surefire future winner.—Lisa Wong Macabasco
Best Actress: Kristen Stewart, Spencer
The reviews for the Pablo Larraín–directed reimagining of Princess Diana’s 1991 Christmas at Sandringham starring Kristen Stewart as Lady Di were, well, to put it mildly…mixed. But I wholeheartedly feel that Stewart’s halting, downcast-eyed, alternately frail and fearsome portrayal of Diana was the highlight of the film. The choice to mine queer subtext—which quickly turns to outright text—from Diana’s relationship with her dresser Maggie felt both fresh and vital, particularly given that the film’s star is soon set to marry a woman. And I’ve written about Spencer’s portrayal of Diana’s real-life eating disorder and how the film doesn’t shy away from making it aggressively and unflinchingly physical; when it comes to a disease that is experienced in the mind but plays out on the battleground of the body, sometimes a little physicality goes a long way. Stewart truly shines. —Emma Specter
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Lost Daughter
I only got around to watching The Lost Daughter a few weeks ago, but it totally blew me away—in no small part thanks to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ingenious screenplay, which seamlessly adapted the complex structure of the Elena Ferrante novel for the screen in a way that was both gripping and packed a deep emotional punch. Given the film was snubbed in the best picture and best director categories, and I believe Maggie deserves to go home with at least one award for her masterful work, I’m rooting for her in the best adapted screenplay category. —Liam Hess
Best Original Screenplay: The Worst Person in the World
If I had things my way, I’d be making the case for Renate Reinsve in the best actress category (or for Anders Danielsen Lie as this year’s best supporting actor). As things have shaken out, though—and because I can’t pick between this and Drive My Car for best international feature—I’m stumping for Eskil Vogt and director Joachim Trier’s screenplay for The Worst Person in the World. The film speaks with piercing insight to a distinctly modern (and totally privileged) predicament: The paralyzing freedom to decide who you love, and what you look like, and what, exactly, it is that you want to do with your life as a twenty-something. That general conceit isn’t new, of course; it’s not even unique within the category. (See: Alana Haim’s character in Licorice Pizza.) But to me, Vogt and Tier’s script felt both searching and precise, happy and sad, hopeful and existentially dark—and what more could you ask for from a film right now? —Marley Marius
Best Animated Feature: The Mitchells vs. the Machines
The Mitchells vs. the Machines hyperkinetically smashes together multiple animation styles and shoutouts to internet memes and other movies while cramming in mile-a-minute jokes from its excellent voice cast (led by Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, and Olivia Colman). Plus it touches on a cornucopia of real-world issues, ranging from tech overdependence (note the greedy and morally dubious young CEO named Mark) to the mystery of feathered dinosaurs. But the engine driving this kitchen-sink approach is the film’s very big heart: It deftly celebrates neurodiversity and introduces the first openly queer protagonist in an all-ages animated feature. Sometimes more is more. —L.W.M.
Best Score: The Power of the Dog
One of the eight awards that will be not be handed out live in the televised show, best score is one of the toughest categories to predict on account of the music branch being particularly persnickety. Indeed, it disqualified Jonny Greenwood’s brilliant and blood-curdling score for 2007’s There Will Be Blood (his first collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson) for containing too much preexisting music. He went on to score Anderson’s The Master (2012), Phantom Thread (2018, a true score masterpiece), and Licorice Pizza (2021), and he found time to do Pablo Larraín’s Spencer this year. (He maintains that he doesn’t do a lot of film scores—bangers only, I guess.) The Power of the Dog score has him playing the cello like a banjo and going HAM with octatonic music and a computer-controlled player piano. Greenwood has already established himself in the film-composing firmament; give him an Oscar already. —L.W.M.
Best Costume Design: West Side Story
While I loved Jenny Beavan’s inventive riffs on British subcultural style in Cruella, for me, she’s narrowly pipped to the post by the ambitious and breathtakingly gorgeous work of Paul Tazewell for West Side Story. It matched the confident, masterful ease of Steven Spielberg’s direction perfectly, with touches of something more playful too—and I don’t think any dress has provided the same on-screen thrill this year quite like the swishy yellow-and-red confection worn by Ariana DeBose in the film’s “America” sequence. —L.H.
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