My Academy Awards banker? It’s the divine Ms Randolph...

WITH the 96th Academy Awards almost upon us, here is my annual set of predictions: the (probable) winners, and those that deserve to win (but likely won’t).

BEST PICTURE

WILL WIN: Oppenheimer. With the Golden Globes and BAFTAs already conquered, it will be a major surprise if Christopher Nolan’s thunderous epic about the career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’, is not anointed with an Oscar. SHOULD WIN: The Zone Of Interest. If another film does manage to pip Oppenheimer, it will be this one. And so it should. Jonathan Glazer’s engrossing depiction of the family life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss is unforgettably chilling.

BEST ACTOR

WILL WIN: Cillian Murphy, for his intense lead performance in Oppenheimer. I thought Bradley Cooper was wonderful in Maestro, but he won’t beat Murphy to the podium. SHOULD WIN: Cillian Murphy, although he’s not known for his love of the limelight, to put it mildly, so his acceptance speech will be interesting.

BEST ACTRESS

WILL WIN: Lily Gladstone, for Killers Of The Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s mighty drama about the oil-rich Osage tribe and the greedy white men who systematically murdered them. Gladstone is terrific, and she is herself a Native American, which the Academy will be unable to resist. SHOULD WIN: Emma Stone, for Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s off-the-wall period romp about a woman given her own baby’s brain. It’s a stunning, bold, hilarious performance.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

WILL WIN: Robert Downey Jr, who plays Rear Admiral Strauss, the nearest thing to a villain in Oppenheimer. Not only is he brilliant, but Hollywood loves a rehabilitation story, and after all his highly publicised addiction issues, Downey Jr’s is ongoing. SHOULD WIN: Downey Jr.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

WILL WIN: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (right), for The Holdovers, in which she plays, beautifully, the bereaved school cook who forms an unlikely alliance with Paul Giamatti’s grumpy schoolmaster and a recalcitrant pupil (Dominic Sessa). She has most of the season’s other awards under her belt, and it’s a virtual cert that she’ll top it off with the big one. SHOULD WIN: Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

BEST DIRECTOR

WILL WIN: Christopher Nolan, for Oppenheimer. I’ll be amazed, despite all the love for Scorsese, if the British director does not collect his first Oscar. SHOULD WIN: Yorgos Lanthimos, for Poor Things. I admired Oppenheimer enormously, but for sheer verve, originality and daring, Lanthimos deserves it more.