Oscars 2023: our critics make their Best Picture predictions

From the The Banshees of Inisherin to Top Gun: Maverick and Tár, our reviewers dissect the nominees for the best picture Oscar — and predict the winner | CAST YOUR VOTE

This year’s Best Picture Oscars contenders. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

The Australian's film critic David Stratton says The Banshees of Inisherin is a very dark movie.

I’m notoriously bad at predicting winners and losers at award ceremonies like the Oscars but I’d like The Banshees of Inisherin to make it to the top. Martin McDonagh’s beautifully scripted, wonderfully acted Irish drama has attracted a few brickbats, perhaps because it has been wrongly described as a comedy (the Golden Globes mysteriously placed it in their Comedy and Musical category). Though there’s plenty of mordant humour, this film about the breakdown of a longstanding friendship and the impact it has on the other inhabitants of the small island of Inisherin in 1923, is, like In Bruges, McDonagh’s earlier film with the same two exceptional actors, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, a very dark yet memorable movie.

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WOMEN TALKING

The Deal editor Helen Trinca says it is a mystery Women Talking made it to the top 10.

Not even three big stars — Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy — can save Women Talking from the mess it is. The trio do a terrific job as victims trying to strike back against the men in their Mennonite community, but this is a dreary, heavy-handed allegory, over-engineered for its #MeToo audience. The script, by director Sarah Polley, is repetitive, the lack of action eventually frustrating: you wish they’d get a gun and shoot the blokes who raped them. The visuals are good, as is the desire to unpack coercive control, and there are insights into the willingness of generations of women to be silent in the face of abuse. Even so, it’s a mystery Women Talking made it to the top 10.

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THE FABELMANS

Culture writer Hannah-Rose Yee calls The Fabelmans a triumph.

That the Oscars race contains a Steven Spielberg movie that represents the most honest and reflective work of his career and that won the top award at the Toronto Film Festival … and it’s still not considered the frontrunner goes to show just how strange this race is. The Fabelmans proves that at 76 there is still nobody quite like Spielberg for knowing exactly where to put the camera. Yes, the film is a little about the magic of the movies, which is usually the kind of thing the ever self-congratulatory Oscars love, but it’s more about the unique trauma of being an artist, which is what makes it so sublime. It’s shockingly vulnerable and bittersweet. It’s a triumph.

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AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

The Australian's film critic Stephen Romei explains why Avatar can win.

Can it win best picture? Yes. With cinema earnings down, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may play to the crowd and reward movies that boost the box office rather that high-art ones that no-one sees such as Tár. James Cameron’s sequel to Avatar is a visual extravaganza that must be watched on the big screen. It’s made $US2.4bn ($3.6bn) and counting. Its technical accomplishments, especially the underwater scenes, are outstanding. Its acting, script, plot, character development and so on are not. The bookies have it at 100-1. If it does cause an upset will it be the worst film to win best picture? No. Cameron already has an Oscar for Titanic. Joking! Shakespeare in Love is far worse.

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EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

The Australian's senior writer Megan Lehmann says Everything Everywhere All at Once lets the freak flag fly.

There’s a universe in which Everything Everywhere All at Once doesn’t win Best Picture. Another where it’s announced as the Best Picture winner but, oops, there’s been a mix-up with the envelopes and the statue really belongs to Top Gun: Maverick. There’s one in which Jennifer Coolidge declares the film’s won the award for Best Documentary Short but she’s just joking. Then there’s the so-called “real” universe — this one, where we desperately needed this maximalist blast of multiverse-jumping creativity and hope — and that’s where this film gets the gong. Thank you in advance, conservative Academy voters, for letting your freak flag fly. For rewarding diversity and originality and riotous imagination and a big beating heart. For finally bringing sci-fi into the fold.

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ELVIS

Deputy editor of Review Bridget Cormack says Elvis is a film that doesn’t leave you.

Even Austin Butler’s quivering performance in the trailer to Elvis is enough to give you butterflies. As for the film itself, the star’s embodiment of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is so visceral you begin to identify with the women screaming with euphoria in the front row. This is a magnificent achievement given Elvis’s music is so familiar; by today’s standards it’s hardly revolutionary — and his pelvis is no match for TikTok dance routines. Baz Luhrmann and his collaborators, aided by wonderfully unreliable narrator Tom Hanks as Elvis Presley’s manager, succeed in capturing just how dangerous the singer was when he burst onto the stage in 1950s post-war America by making you feel as though you are right there with him. And all the heightened emotion of Elvis’s meteoric rise allows the story arc to capitalise on his devastating fall. This is a film that won’t leave you.

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ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

The Australian's commentary editor Nick Jensen says All Quiet on the Western Front will be watched for generations.

Like making cars or brewing beer, the Germans have a certain talent for producing good war films. Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot is one of the great naval epics of the past century. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall is masterful on Hitler’s final days below Berlin. And now Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel of 1929 marks another milestone. All the hellish motifs of the Western Front are deployed to astonishing effect. The howling shells, the rotting corpses, the feckless generals, the loss of innocence. We’ve read about it and seen it all before. But not like this. Berger’s film cuts through the grim anonymity of modern trench warfare and delivers a portrait of a soldier, a country and a conflict that will be watched for generations.

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TOP GUN: MAVERICK

Journalist Charlie Calver says Top Gun: Maverick is the most important film of the year.

At last week’s Oscar Nominees luncheon, Steven Spielberg was reportedly overheard telling Tom Cruise, “Seriously, Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry”. And who are we to disagree with the master himself? No, Top Gun: Maverick might not be the most artistic or prestigious film of this year’s Best Picture nominees, but it is the most important. No film last year was more widely adored or, critically, more widely watched than Maverick. When Spielberg says it might have saved cinema, he’s not being hyperbolic. If the Academy wants to regain any semblance of the relevance it had when Cruise made the first Top Gun, it needs to recognise that.

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TÁR

The Australian's arts and culture writer Geordie Gray says Cate Blanchett gives her best performance yet in Tár.

All the “cancel culture” discourse surrounding this film gave the impression it would be a po-faced, lofty, humourless two-and-a-half-hour vindication of identity politics. Which works in its favour, because you go in totally unprepared for just how funny it is. Lydia Tár, with affirmation from the world’s leading tastemakers, fancies herself a genius. A genius that threatens small children, crash-tackles a Berliner Philharmoniker conductor, sobs alone watching Leonard Bernstein videos, and appears on the Alec Baldwin podcast. The ending, when Tár gets her just desserts, is a punchline so brutal it will blindside you. Cate Blanchett goes hell for leather in probably her best performance yet, but her supporting cast — specifically Nina Hoss and Noémie Merlant — meet her beat for beat. Lydia Tár may already have EGOT status, but give her another gong for her woes.

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TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

The Australian's social media editor Bianca Farmakis says Triangle of Sadness should win Best Picture for its twisted plot.

All aboard the Triangle of Sadness in which celebrity models, the obnoxiously rich and overworked staff collide on an ill-fated cruise helmed by an unhinged captain (appropriately played by Woody Harrelson). The Palme d’Or-winning satire by Swedish director Ruben Östlund examines the social capital of the wealthy and beautiful, a quality rendered useless when a storm leaves the characters shipwrecked and fighting for survival. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you’ve likely heard about its extended montage of violent sea sickness featuring projectile vomit and influencers smothered in sewage. Following an “eat the rich” entertainment trend sweeping award ceremonies (see: The White Lotus), Triangle Of Sadness should win Best Picture for its twisted plot alone — or for the irony of A-list judges awarding a film that so blatantly lampoons them.

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Disagree with the reviews above? Vote for your favourite Best Picture nominee in our poll, and tell our authors how you feel in the comments below.