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Oppenheimer is the favourite 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)

5. Best supporting actor

This is another category that is beginning to feel like a foregone conclusion. Robert Downey Jr brings all of his usual intensity and charisma to the role of Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, but there’s subtlety and depth there, too. Rather than just being a spiteful antagonist, Strauss seethes with fear and insecurity. Besides, when Downey Jr played Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was one of Hollywood’s most valuable assets: just look at how Marvel has wobbled since he left the team. An Academy Award would be a thank-you for all the billions of dollars he has helped to generate, as well as an acknowledgement that there is more to him than Tony Stark’s fast-talking bravado. Personally, I’d be tempted to give the prize to Ryan Gosling, who is so hilarious in Barbie – although, as I’ve said before, he’s really the film’s co-lead, so by rights he shouldn’t be in this category at all. (NB)

This category is loaded with strong performances, but it’s also one of the easiest to call. Robert Downey Jr, who has been picking up awards all season as Oppenheimer’s antagonist, will win. It’s hard to argue against that when his performance is so unflinching and strong. But Robert De Niro does some of his best work in years in Killers of the Flower Moon, and deserves it just as much. And Ryan Gosling is as funny as they come in Barbie, but comedy has a hard time competing with drama. Gosling will sing I’m Just Ken in the show, though, which is all I’ve really wanted from this year’s Oscars. (CJ)

6. Best supporting actress

This category is the easiest to call. Da’Vine Joy Randolph has won every major award so far – the prestigious Bafta, the less prestigious Golden Globe, the SAG Award. Every. Single. One. And she should win. Her performance in The Holdovers as Mary, a grieving mother who works as a cook at a private school, is heartfelt yet unsentimental, laced with comedy as her character tangles with Paul Giamatti’s. The film wouldn’t be the same without her. It doesn’t hurt her chances that she has given some modest and inspiring acceptance speeches. (CJ)

Emily Blunt, Danielle Brooks, America Ferrara and Jodie Foster can all relax and enjoy their champagne on Oscar night, because they won’t have to worry about making a speech. Throughout awards season, one thing that everyone has agreed on is that the Oscar for best supporting actress belongs to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for her tender performance as the bereaved school cook in The Holdovers. She has already won countless prizes for the role, including a Golden Globe, a Bafta and a Screen Actors Guild award, and she has managed to make a moving and funny speech every time. I wouldn’t be surprised if her name was engraved on the trophy weeks ago. (NB)

7. Best adapted screenplay

The five contenders for best adapted screenplay are Oppenheimer, Barbie, Poor Things, The Zone of Interest and American Fiction – and the least impressive of them all will probably win. American Fiction is an enjoyable, grown-up adaptation of Erasure, a novel by Percival Everett. But the film’s writer-director, Cord Jefferson, made the satire broad and obvious, and he didn’t intertwine that satire with the main character’s various family troubles. Meanwhile, all four of the other screenplays on the shortlist did astoundingly bold and difficult things with their source material, assuming that they used the source material at all: Barbie counts as “adapted” for no other reason than that Barbie and Ken dolls already existed, while Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest took nothing from Martin Amis’s novel except the title. I’d be delighted if Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach won for their bravely bonkers Barbie script, because, despite being last year’s biggest film, it doesn’t look as if it’s going to do too well at the Oscars. (NB)

The Baftas rarely predict the Oscars, but Cord Jefferson’s win for adapted screenplay there, along with his Independent Spirit Award, suggests the kind of momentum that puts him in the lead. Voters obviously like American Fiction, which earned nominations for best Picture, best actor for Jeffrey Wright and an unexpected best supporting actor for Sterling K Brown. It won’t win in those categories, so rewarding Jefferson’s screenplay is a way of recognising the film. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach also deserve an Oscar for their creative and triumphant take on Barbie, but I’m guessing that the sheer lunacy of the Academy putting that screenplay in the adapted category will work against it. (CJ)

8. Best original screenplay

Anatomy of a Fall is almost certain to win this one easily. As in the adapted category, it has strong voter support – a best picture nomination and best director for Justine Triet – that will trickle down from the categories the film won’t win, and give it a boost here. Celine Song’s delicate Past Lives is also a wonder of a screenplay, and if there’s an upset, that would be it. But between these two gem-like screenplays, without a single extraneous scene, the bracing Anatomy of a Fall will come through. (CJ)

Anatomy of a Fall was the winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last May, and since then it’s won numerous prizes in numerous categories, but its screenplay has been especially well received. No wonder. The film is both a gripping mystery and a searing portrait of an ailing marriage, with dialogue that crackles in the domestic scenes and the courtroom scenes alike. What’s more, it crackles in three different languages. Another frontrunner in this category is David Hemingson’s screenplay for The Holdovers, a highly polished, life-affirming work that glitters with colourful details. Either of them could win – and Celine Song’s spellbinding screenplay for Past Lives is in with a chance – but the warmth of The Holdovers might just give it the edge. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking as I’m so fond of it myself. (NB)

9. Best international film

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is an extraordinary work of art that approaches the horrors of the Holocaust from a startlingly original angle. It’s my own film of the year, and I’d be pleased if it somehow won the best picture prize, but I know that’s not very likely. What is likely, though, is that it will win the Oscar for best international film; none of the other contenders has generated the same buzz. The quirk here is that each country chooses which film to enter in this category, and France went for The Taste of Things – a film that, ultimately, didn’t make it on to the Academy’s shortlist. If France had entered Anatomy of a Fall instead, it might well have beaten The Zone of Interest; after all, it has five Oscar nominations, including one for best picture. But as it is, Glazer’s film is sure to triumph. I certainly hope so, anyway. (NB)

By now, the French committee that submitted The Taste of Things instead of Anatomy of a Fall must realise what a mistake that was. The Taste of Things didn’t even get nominated, and Anatomy of a Fall might have won, or at least given The Zone of Interest some real competition. As it is, Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama, which takes us inside the banal evil of a Nazi family, is the sure winner here. If I were a voter, though, I’d choose Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano, the piercingly beautiful and timely migrant story of a teenager trying desperately to make his way from Senegal to Italy. (CJ)