What to know
- The 98th Academy Awards will be broadcast Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on CTV and streamed on Crave.
- Film critic Alex Southey predicts Michael B. Jordan will win Best Actor, Jessie Buckley will win Best Actress, and Best Picture will go to One Battle After Another.
The 2026 awards season is coming to an end this Sunday with the 98th Academy Awards.
2025 was a monumental year for film both at the box office and with critics. Michael B. Jordan stole the show in horror-thriller Sinners, Timothee Chalamet wows as American table tennis legend Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme, and Leonardo DiCaprio saves his daughter as a far-left revolutionary in One Battle After Another. Indie flicks Hamnet and Bugonia are also in the running for the night’s top awards.
With so many strong contenders in this year’s Oscars race, Now Toronto is turning to Alex Southey, a featured critic at That Shelf to break down the biggest night in film’s top contenders.
Best Oscar nominated films
For Southey, Sinners, Hamnet and The Secret Agent are the Oscar nominated films that he recommends everyone watches.
He says Michael B. Jordan’s performance in Sinners features his best performance since Fruitvale Station, a 2013 crime thriller also directed by Ryan Coogler.
“The vampires, the music, the cinematography are all great, but it’s Jordan’s performance and his now-inimitable on-screen gravitas that takes it from a fun thriller to a film that will be remembered years down the line,” he elaborates.
Southey says Hamnet — a fictional retelling of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet — is a testament to the incredible work by Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and Jacobi Jupe, and the director and co-writer Chloé Zhao’s “sense of place, history, and emotion.”
“Sometimes history feels like stone. Here, Zhao unfreezes it and makes it as tangible as walking out one’s front door.”
Finally, Southey recommends Brazilian political thriller film The Secret Agent, which he says comes together as charming, informative, and quietly thrilling.
“[Narco’s Wagner] Moura does more with his eyes than most actors do with their whole bodies, and it often lends a contemplative subtext to even the most mundane of activities,” Southey explains.
Oscars predictions
Since Paul Thomas Anderson directed One Battle After Another has steamrolled through this awards season, Southey fully believes it’ll win Best Picture.
“Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is finally earning the accolades he already deserved for far better films.”
Southey says Anderson may also win Best Director for this exact reason.
He predicts Best Actor will go to Michael B. Jordan due to Sinners being a massive movie, with mass appeal that did well at the box office. He doesn’t think Chalamet will take Best Actor, despite winning both the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award. Although Marty Supreme is Chalamet’s best work, Southey believes his time will come in the future.
“Michael B. Jordan, [Leonardo] DiCaprio, and sleeper Wagner Moura all feel more of-the-moment picks, especially with Chalamet’s recent ballet and opera faux pas.”
In terms of Best Actress, Southey has his bets on Jessie Buckley winning for Hamnet as she has swept every award leading up to the Oscars. She’s won the Golden Globe, BAFTA, Critics Choice Awards and the Actor Awards (formerly known as the SAG Awards).
“Buckley lays bare for us everything in her quiver of talent. To imbue loss in such a way that makes 2026 audiences react is a feat.”
The Oscars will be broadcast Sunday, March 15 at 7 p.m. ET. on CTV and streamed on Crave. The red carpet pre-show starts at 6:30 p.m. ET.
