In Oscar best-picture race, an unprecedented nail biter

NEWYORK » Even supposing the right envelope is read at the end of Sunday night’s Oscars, the night’s final moment should be one of high drama.

Usually by now, a consensus favorite has emerged after months of guild and critics groups awards — or at least a front-runner along with one or two potential underdogs. But not this year. Five films have a legitimate shot at the night’s top award: “The Shape of Water,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “Get Out,” “Dunkirk” and “Lady Bird”

Rarely, if ever, has the Academy Awards seen such an open field of contenders for its top award. A year after Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” shattered the overwhelming projection that “La La Land” would win — along with many traditional ideas about what “Oscar bait” looks like — pundits are wary of making an emphatic best-picture prediction.

“It’s very, very, very unpredictable,” says Sasha Stone, the longtime Oscar blogger who runs Awards Daily . “This would be one year I wish I could just opt out of the whole thing. I have no idea what’s going to win.”

Most of the other major awards appear to be all sown up. Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards”), Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”) and Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards”) all look like locks in the acting categories. Guillermo del Toro (“Shape of Water”) is expected to win best director.

But in the night’s top category, chaos reigns.

Reasons for the pervasive uncertainly run from the statistical to the instinctual. But behind them all is the same development: No one really knows what an “Oscar movie” is anymore.

The Oscars, in their 90th year, may look much the same on the outside. But under the surface, everything is shifting. In just last two years, the film academy has added about a fifth of its membership, ushering in an influx of people of color, women and international voters. At the same time, the person most