Oppenheimer is the favorite for several awards – but there are bound to be a few surprises. BBC Culture's film critics give their predictions for the big categories.
1. Best picture
You can never be quite sure which film will win the top prize at the Oscars: in recent years, both The Power of the Dog and La La Land seemed to have it in the bag, but both of them were beaten.
All the same, it would be a major upset if Oppenheimer wasn't named best picture this year.
It's a film with a heavyweight subject and a stellar cast, but it's also technically dazzling: Christopher Nolan's biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer is far more intricate than the average Hollywood "based on a true story" drama.
There are also the little matters of how phenomenally successful it's been at the global box office, how thoroughly it has dominated awards season, and how commandingly it leads the field in terms of Oscar nominations – 13 in total.
I can't honestly say that Oppenheimer is my own favourite of the best picture contenders, but it would (and will) be a worthy winner. (Nicholas Barber)
When the best picture category expanded from five to 10 nominated films in 2009, the change was spurred by backlash to the way Christopher Nolan's blockbuster The Dark Knight was snubbed the previous year. Now it's full-circle time.
Nolan's explosive yet character-driven epic Oppenheimer, with a perfect balance of art and commerce, is poised to win best picture.
Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things are also great in their different ways, but Oppenheimer's ambition and invention make it, deservedly, this year's best. (Caryn James).
2. Best director
Every film Christopher Nolan has made has deserved to put him in a best director race. OK, maybe not Insomnia or Interstellar, but almost every one, from Memento to Inception and this year's likely best picture winner Oppenheimer, which he also wrote. He has never won, but this is his year, and not only because he should win. He recently picked up the Directors Guild Award, usually a good predictor of how the Oscar will go. More than any other film this year, Oppenheimer is shaped by a singular director's vision. (CJ)
Christopher Nolan will win for directing Oppenheimer, of course. He directed Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and a Batman trilogy, and yet he's never won an Oscar, so it's undoubtedly his turn to take home a golden statuette or three.
(He could also take home one for writing the film, and another for producing it.) Besides, you don't have to know much about directing to recognise that overseeing an enterprise as complicated as Oppenheimer is a colossal achievement.
It gives you the sense that Nolan took every lesson he learnt from his other films and applied them to this, his most ambitious project to date.
Mind you, all of the other best director nominees did terrific jobs, too.
It wouldn't be unjust if Jonathan Glazer, Yorgos Lanthimos, Martin Scorsese or Justine Triet was handed the Oscar. But this is Nolan's moment. (NB).
3. Best actor
This category isn't done and dusted. Cillian Murphy has to be the favourite for his riveting performance in Oppenheimer, because he's just won the lead actor prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
But voters might prefer not to give every single Oscar to Oppenheimer, especially as there are a couple of well-loved American actors in contention. Neither Paul Giamatti nor Jeffrey Wright has ever won an Academy Award, as illustrious as their careers have been, so either one of them could be rewarded for their rich, humane characterisations in The Holdovers and American Fiction, respectively.
Murphy would be my choice for a role that required him to cover so many different moods in so many different time periods, but I wouldn't be too upset if Giamatti won instead. (NB)
Cillian Murphy is likely to win this award, as he should. His restrained yet stirring performance makes his character the tortured soul of Oppenheimer.
There's still an outside chance Paul Giamatti might win for his wry, touching performance in The Holdovers.
After all, Giamatti's role as a cranky teacher is flashier, the kind Oscar voters often go for over more nuanced performances.
But Murphy's recent win over Giamatti at the Screen Actors Guild Awards – with actors the largest block of Oscar voters – gives him the edge. (CJ).
4. Best actress
This was always a race between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone, two extraordinary and extraordinarily different performances, but it seems that Gladstone has pulled ahead, winning the SAG award.
She deserves to win for her beautiful, subtle performance as Molly Burkhart, the heart of Killers of the Flower Moon. As with the best actor race, this isn't entirely a sure thing, because Stone's flamboyant turn as the Frankensteinian feminist Bella Baxter is more conspicuous "Acting".
But Stone has won before, for La La Land, and Gladstone's win would be historic, making her the first Native American to win best actress, so the Oscar should go her way. (CJ)
Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon and Emma Stone for Poor Things are neck and neck.
To me, Gladstone is in more of a supporting role than a lead role, and the campaign to position her as the film's heroine has been slightly dishonest. (If the story of Killers of the Flower Moon had indeed been told from her character's perspective, it would have been a better film.) But Gladstone has spoken eloquently about the importance of seeing Native Americans on screen, and Stone has already won an Oscar, so voters might well feel that picking Gladstone would be the right thing to do.
My own choice would be Carey Mulligan, who was magnificent as Leonard Bernstein's wife in Maestro, but Bradley Cooper's film doesn't seem to be turning its nominations into wins this awards season. (NB)
