The Nominees: Train Dreams, Sinners, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, Hamnet, Frankenstein, F1: The Movie, Bugonia

In 1952, the Best Picture race was widely predicted as a close one between Paramount’s A Place in the Sun and Warner Bros’ A Streetcar Named Desire. However, in a shocker, the winner was MGM’s earlier-in-the-year release, An American in Paris. MGM even took out a trade ad the next day showing a drawing of their logo Leo the Lion with the caption: “Honestly I Was Just Standing in the Sun Waiting For a Streetcar.”

File this under you don’t always know what might happen, and with the Academy’s preferential ballot in play only for this category — where voters must list their 10 choices by preference in order to get a “consensus” — well, surprises pop up (Moonlight, anyone?). This year, like 1952, there are two films considered to be top of the heap: One Battle After Another and Sinners, both from Warner Bros. But from the Gotham Awards onward, One Battle has dominated the conversation and become unquestioned front-runner. In fact, it has had a run of the precursor awards like I have rarely seen, a complete sweep until just a week ago, when Sinners beat it for the Outstanding Cast at the Actor Awards (SAG-AFTRA’s version of Best Picture). The room erupted, and suddenly some pundits were smelling upset, especially since Sinners also handily broke the all-time Oscar nominations record with a whopping 16. One Battle has a more down-to-earth 13. Are we looking at another battle of two titans as in 1952, with a possible sleeper lurking in wait to take it all?

Calm down. The safe bet, if there is one, remains Paul Thomas Anderson’s instant classic, as it has been since that official Academy screening before the film opened in September. The packed house of members at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater that night went wild, unlike I have ever witnessed there. I thought it already had it won then, and I see no reason to change that prediction. Still, momentum can mean a lot, and Sinners certainly has it. All we have to do for a note of caution is remember 2006, when Brokeback Mountain had all those precursor wins, only to lose the big one to Crash, which surged after a SAG Cast win followed by WGA, just as Sinners has done. However, like One Battle After Another, Brokeback also won at WGA, plus PGA, DGA, BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, etc. Will history repeat itself? I doubt it.

THE WINNER: One Battle After Another