Tarantino could be a winner, but Renee’s a shoo-in at this year’s Academy Awards

There’s one safe bet for awards night: that Renee Zellweger will win best actress for her performance as Judy Garland in Judy.

Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland in a scene from Judy.

The only thing you can safely predict with the Oscars is that there will be controversy. And this year, perhaps, there’s one more safe bet for awards night: that Renee Zellweger will win best actress for her performance as Judy Garland in Judy.

Garland herself couldn’t take home an Oscar, even at her career best in A Star is Born. Zellweger already has one (best supporting actress for Cold Mountain) and there is every indication that she will snag another. It’s a carefully observed performance, she does her own singing, it’s a comeback narrative: Oscar catnip.

READ MORE: Rise of the Phoenix | Imperfect symmetry | There’s something about Judy | Oscars 2020 nominations

In the best actor category, Joaquin Phoenix seems a good chance for Joker. Given that Academy members have passed up so many opportunities to reward or even nominate stronger or more interesting work (You Were Never Really Here, The Master, Two Lovers, to name but a few), it’s perversely appropriate that this is probably his best bet.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in a scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Voters belatedly recognised Martin Scorsese as best director for a very minor film, The Departed; are they ready to give him another for a masterful work, The Irishman? Perhaps. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t have a best director Oscar — he has two for screenwriting — so maybe it’s his time. Then there’s Bong Joon-ho for Parasite.

Todd Phillips’s Joker has 11 nominations but Phillips is considered the outsider for best director. Parasite has six: this is the first time a South Korean film has received any nominations, so a half-dozen nods is heady stuff. A best director win for Bong would be more than well deserved. But Sam Mendes for 1917, a cleverly conceived World War I drama, seems a frontrunner by the slenderest of margins.

Best picture? It would be great to see Parasite take this one out, but perhaps the Academy will content itself with giving it best international feature. The Irishman? 1917? Both contenders. With the preferential system that determines best picture, this may be the time for the deceptively nostalgic allure of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.