The longest and strangest film awards season in history is finally reaching its end with this evening’s presentation of the 93rd Annual Academy Awards! Honoring the best in film from 2020 (plus the first few months of 2021), this year’s batch of mostly excellent nominees proved the global pandemic didn’t stop great cinema from reaching our homes - even if it did prevent us all from viewing them from the comfort/discomfort of movie theaters. While the Academy needed a few more months leeway to put everything together, here at CineMunch we need even more time before we can definitively announce our favorites from the year (though we’re both rooting for Nomadland among the Best Picture nominees). In any case, the show must go on, so it's time to double down on some final predictions.

Last year’s Oscars, which feels like an entire lifetime ago, saw the historic crowning of Parasite, the first foreign language film to be awarded Best Picture. A number of narratives are at play among this year’s contenders — after 7 loses, might this finally be Glenn Close’s year? will Chadwick Boseman become just the second posthumous Best Actor winner? how many of the Academy’s 9,000+ members actually cast ballots this year?— but one milestone seems guaranteed as Nomadland director Chloé Zhao looks set to become just the second woman, and first woman of color, to take home the Best Director statue.

As always, there’s a healthy mix of sure-things (Soul has Score all sewn up and, unsurprisingly, Sound of Metal is a lock for Best Sound), tight battles (will it be Promising Young Woman or The Trial of the Chicago 7 in Original Screenplay?), and wide-open question marks (the Best Actress contest is excitingly all over the map).

So settle in, mix yourself a cocktail or two (in lieu of our traditional Oscar Menu, we’ll be sipping Old Fashioneds and snacking on whatever is laying around), and follow along with our predictions below!

The nominations for the 93rd Annual Academy Awards were (finally) unveiled March 15th with David Fincher’s Mank leading the way with 10 nominations. In a true sign of spreading the wealth, the next most nominated films are Mank’s fellow Best Picture contenders (The Father, Judas & the Black Messiah, Minari, Nomadland, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7) all nabbing 6 mentions, with the final top category nominee (Promising Young Woman) netting 5. Though this season has been far from business as usual given the ongoing pandemic, the nominations announcement featured the typical highs (yay “Husavik”!), lows (how does anyone pass on nominating Delroy Lindo in Da 5 Bloods?!), and head-scratchers (wait, who is the lead of Judas & the Black Messiah if both titular roles are nominated in supporting?).

I correctly predicted 95/118 of this year's nominees (about 80.5%), which was good enough for a 106th place finish of 9,329 participants at GoldDerby - top 1.1%! Though having finished 12th, 1st, 8th, and 4th in years past, it wasn’t my best showing. It also wasn’t my worst percentage, so, much like the Academy’s choices, there were some positives to balance the negatives.

Read on for a list of the nominations and my predictions results.