By Cody Dericks 

It's mid-January. Critics awards continue to roll in and nearly all of the contenders have been seen by the public. At this stage of the awards season, there's not much more we pundits can do besides wait. Within the next two weeks, we will have heard from the National Board of Review and the Independent Spirit Award nominations, and we'll be on the cusp of the Golden Globes and SAG nominations. At that point, things should start to shift around to reflect what those awards bodies favor. But until then, let's take a look at where the Next Best Picture's below-the-line predictions stand at the end of this phase.

By Michael Schwartz 

As we continue to approach the delayed Golden Globe ceremony honoring film and television of 2020, I have always found it helpful to preview who the presumptive nominees may be. The musical/comedy category offers a mix of Emmy darlings and new breakouts on the television side. Given previous trends with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, below are a handful of series worth keeping an eye on for nominations.

By Tom O'Brien 

Unlike the race for Best International Film, where many of the leading contenders are difficult to locate and screen, the nomination contest for Best Documentary Feature offers films that can easily be found since most of the major streaming services have one serious documentary in the hunt. Still, in a category where the leading contenders include an exposé of voter suppression, a profile of truffle-hunting dogs, and even a fanciful look at death, the apples-and-oranges nature of the competition makes it very challenging to predict which 15 films will make the documentary feature shortlist, much less the final five nominees.

But, as always, let's try. Here are ten very different documentary features that I suspect will be given serious consideration by Oscar voters and stand the best shot of being included in the shortlisted 15.

By Matt Neglia 

​Reactions have now gone out for the last remaining films of this year's awards season (with official reviews still to come). So now that we know the initial word on all of the films involved in this year's Oscar race, how did that change up our predictions? Take a look down below to see in all of the above-the-line categories.

If you want to see our predictions broken down individually, category by category, click here.

By Amanda Spears ​

​By combining two things he's known for, politics and courtroom drama, Aaron Sorkin delivers "The Trial of the Chicago 7." With a predominantly male cast, they've strategically all decided to campaign for Best Supporting Actor. Should three actors for "The Trial of the Chicago 7" receive a nomination, it would only be the sixth time in Oscar history that this has ever happened.

By Daniel Howat 

Best Original Song is always one of the most hit-or-miss categories at the Academy Awards. Some years, narrowing down a strong list of contenders is a tough task, with incredible songs eventually missing the cut. Other years, it's a little harder to imagine which five songs the Academy will even be passionate about. 2020 seems like it might be a weaker year for the category. That said, there are still some great songs and some solid contenders. Let's take a look at where Best Original Song stands now.​

By Robert Dougherty 

​For the first and hopefully last time in modern times, a New Year has come without bringing the Oscar submission deadline with it. As such, 2021 begins with a few mysteries left this season, chief among them "Judas and the Black Messiah" Suspicions are abound that this last-minute entry could seriously shake up the Best Picture race, along with the growing sense that this race really needs it to.

By Cody Dericks 

2020 is officially over. However, not only is the Oscar race still underway, but we haven't even seen all the films that will qualify for the 2020 Oscars. As buzz continues to circulate and the season tightens up, let's take a look at the Next Best Picture team's current below-the-line predictions and see how they rank.

By Robert Dougherty 
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The Best Supporting Actress Oscar race is among the most confounding Oscar categories this year, for one reason or another. Even if pundits are convinced Glenn Close will steamroll to victory no matter what "Hillbilly Elegy's" Tomatometer is, they are scrambling to find enough names to fill out the field against her. But whether the field is too thin or just too wide open, the general consensus is there hasn't been a Supporting Actress race like this in a while. In truth, however, the field is perhaps far more familiar than that.

By Tom O'Brien 
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Where did all of our guideposts go?

As this past year has become a challenging one for people worldwide, Oscar prognostication would have to rank pretty low on any list of what's important to humanity at this time. Still, it provides one stabilizing bit of normalcy for many of us during an abnormal time. Yet, even the Oscar season has been affected by the worldwide shutdown. For example, the landscape for one Oscar category, Best International Feature, has been arguably the most altered for award prognosticators. By this time in any typical Oscar year, we would have gotten reactions to the year's crop of foreign-language films from festivals like Cannes, Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York, among others and have a pretty good idea on where to place our money toward this category's nominations.

By Matt Neglia 

​The precursors have started to chime in as we heard the results of this year's New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) and many more (with a lot more than that still to come). This is the phase where our long list starts to get more narrow as the critics help us to understand where the consensus is. However, and I must stress this...critics are not Academy voters. So, while the critics do help, they re not the be all end all of Oscar predicting. We still have a long way to go. As we close out 2020 and say hello to 2021, let's take a look at where the Next Best Picture team stands with their rankings as of today. If you want to see our predictions broken down individually, category by category, click here.

By Robert Pius 

For some unknown reason in recent Oscar history, the judgment on how good or bad a performance an individual actor gave seems to be tied up in the film's reception as a whole. In the past, it was quite common for an actor (especially in the supporting categories) to give a standout performance in a film that critics found less than stellar and still be able to achieve a nomination based on their work and not the movie as a whole. One could almost say that these performers had more difficult tasks than their peers in highly regarded films. It is likely that when you are acting with a good script, adept direction and added help from all the other below-the-line workers on a strong production, it is probably easier to do your best work. But what about those people who found themselves with rotten material or in films that were ripped apart to no one's liking in the editing room, but yet one actor somehow managed to rise above the problem and do outstanding work? Now that's a real achievement when you have to hold it together while everything else is falling apart around you. 

By Cody Dericks 

Two weeks ago, I went through the Next Best Picture team's below-the-line Oscar predictions and averaged them together to see what our consensus predictions looked like. I'll once again be taking a look at the below-the-line categories outside of the above-the-line categories, which Matt covered last week. Now that critics groups have begun handing out their end-of-year awards, let's take a look at our current collective predictions and see what's up, what's down, and what's stayed the same in the past two weeks.

By Ryan C. Showers 

​"Promising Young Woman" is the best film of the year. Unlike stories already told in the new genre of #MeToo-influenced features, Emerald Fennell's directorial debut is an entity made for this generation of moviegoers. The film colors a portrait of the millennial experience and is based in an ideology about sexuality, gender roles, and consent in ways we understand. All the while, the movie manages to entertain with euphoric cleverness and turn the audience on their heads in visceral pain. As social criticism, it's powerful. As a cinematic experience, it's piled full of love for "the movies" that you would expect from film styles best exhibited by directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and David O. Russell. Both harsh and heartbreaking, "Promising Young Woman" will go down in history for its achievements, and I hope the Academy chooses to go along for the ride. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that tears into your soul.

By Ryan C. Showers 

​The latest Oscar hopeful to be released and face the chorus of film critics and awards pundits is "News of the World" from director Paul Greengrass. "News of the World" is expected to be one of the core movies campaigned by Universal for this cycle of award season. As an epic adventure tale with technical gravitas and star power from Tom Hanks, it has the ingredients to be a Hollywood hit – despite skipping the film festivals that typically establish movies as legitimate contenders for the industry, press, and critics' prizes at the end of the year. Several of us at Next Best Picture who have seen the film have formed a small consensus on "News of the World": A solid feature with handsome aesthetics and qualified technical elements, even if the narrative feels especially familiar. ​

By Robert Dougherty 

At this time last year, Joaquin Phoenix wasn't the clear favorite to win Best Actor for "Joker," though the signs were building for him to be. Yet when the dust settled, detractors could easily argue that if "Joker" wasn't connected to a superhero universe, didn't make a billion dollars, wasn't directed by a bankable male director and wasn't backed by a big studio, Phoenix would have had a much harder time winning or even factoring into the race at all. As it turns out, it looks like we'll find out if those theories were correct just one year later.

"Promising Young Woman" is a far different kind of story about a toxic society driving a traumatized person to revenge, with a far different point of view, a far different writer and director, and a far different lead in Carey Mulligan. Yet take all of that away, and the blueprint for Mulligan to take the same route as Phoenix did to Oscar glory is right there – which would make it all the more revealing if roadblocks aren't cleared for her like they were for Phoenix.

By Matt Neglia 

​It's the beginning of December. Soon the precursors for what has been the most bizarre year of most of our lives will start to chime in with their picks for the best of 2020 (see our Awards Calendar here). As the Oscar race takes shape and more contenders reveal themselves to the general public through limited releases and streaming, we still find ourselves in "wait and see" mode. Nobody knows what will happen, and we still have Sundance to look forward to next month as a potential disruptor in our Oscar predictions.

Since this is the second time we've gathered the whole team's Oscar predictions in one place, we have included indicators to compare the rankings to last time. If you want to see our predictions broken down individually, category by category, click here. Let's take a look at where things stand...

By Robert Dougherty 
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It took a few weeks later than usual, but the critic awards part of Oscar season is ready to launch in full force, starting with the Boston Society Of Film Critics awards this weekend on December 13th. When the rest of the critic organizations slowly weigh in over the next 2-3 months, we will have a slightly better idea of the pecking order in the major races and whom to defend when and if the industry awards circuit ignores it anyway. Nonetheless, when it comes to the Best Picture race, it seems easier than usual to make an educated guess on where the majority of critics will land.

By Cody Dericks 

By mid-December, we usually have a decent idea of where the Oscar race is heading. However, as 2020 lurches to an ungraceful end, we still have no clear consensus in virtually any of the categories, owing to the fact that the Oscars are still over four months away. But as more films are seen by critics and races keep shifting, it's helpful to take a look at where our predictions currently stand here at Next Best Picture. I'll be taking a look at the below-the-line categories outside of the "Big Eight," which Matt covered last week. I've gathered all of our team's collective nominations together to see what our averaged predictions look like.

By Jed Wells ​

In 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced an award to honor the Best Animated Feature of the year. The award would celebrate the best animated films each given year and the inaugural winner was "Shrek." Before this award, animated movies had been recognized by the Oscars in the form of Special Achievement Awards, given to films such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Toy Story." However, as the rise of animation in the film industry continued, so too did pressure on the Academy to formally recognize these films. While the Academy eventually created this category, the 19 years since this first award has shown an undeniable truth: The Academy has a Pixar problem.

By Michael Schwartz 

It seemed as if the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race was all locked and ready to go for a while. Knowing that Chadwick Boseman’s final performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was set to premiere this season, a posthumous win in the vein of Heath Ledger seemed all but certain. However, Netflix surprised Oscar prognosticators two months ago when they revealed that Boseman’s performance would be submitted for Best Actor. That switch put a category in flux that was once assumed to be complete. What does a category look like when the presumed frontrunner switches categories? With several unique contenders, Supporting Actor now has endless possibilities. As we begin to get a clearer sense of what the 93rd Academy Awards can look like, let’s breakdown the current state of the race.

By Amanda Spears 

​​Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. A sentiment used to describe perennial Awards also-rans Susan Lucci (Daytime Emmys), Kelly O’Hara (Tony Awards), Jon Hamm (Primetime Emmys) and cinematographer Roger Deakins or sound mixer Kevin O’Connell (Academy Awards). Each respectively finally won the award they long coveted. This year, Diane Warren will once again compete for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards for the song “lo si” (Seen) for the Italian film “The Life Ahead.” Will her 12th nomination prove to be the lucky one?

By Matt Neglia 

​It's the beginning of December. Soon the precursors for what has been the most bizarre year of most of our lives will start to chime in with their picks for the best of 2020 (see our Awards Calendar here). As the Oscar race takes shape and more contenders reveal themselves to the general public through limited releases and streaming, we still find ourselves in "wait and see" mode. Nobody knows what will happen, and we still have Sundance to look forward to next month as a potential disruptor in our Oscar predictions.

Take a look below at where the Next Best Picture team collectively sees the race as of today.

By Will Mavity 

After two years of International Feature Oscar races that felt locked up from the word go due to the presence of Best Picture Nominees "Roma" and "Parasite," this year presents an unpredictable and wide-open Oscar field. And with the submission deadline ending today, we now know our entries in this year's race.

By Ryan C. Showers 
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If you have had the feeling that this year’s contest for Best Picture is a bit lackluster, you are not alone. This Best Picture race has led many of us to the same conclusion: Films that would be “on the bubble” to be nominated in other years will likely occupy allotted slots in the Oscar Best Picture lineup. A side effect of the financial hit the entertainment industry has endured due to the global pandemic is that this awards season cycle is less complete than past years. This has made it difficult to separate the race between feasible frontrunners, apathetic horses in the running for a nomination but not a win, and passion projects that are most fantasy than reality in an Academy Awards Best Picture competition. This has left many of us wondering what is to come in the race with no undeniable frontrunner to win thus far.