“Sinners” should win, but always bet on the Oscars to disappoint

Time is a tricky concept. We have horological tools to measure it and chronological methods to give it order, yet in other respects, time is entirely subject to human whim. Equity and justice are guaranteed to some people over others, who hear over decades and centuries that, eventually, time’s passage will magically set the world right. Meanwhile, other people’s golden hours arrive because of some arbitrary determination that they are due.

Those tracking expert predictions leading up to the 98th Academy Awards know the competition to watch is between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” going toe-to-toe in 11 categories. Some races have been deemed toss-ups, others are foregone conclusions. Less often spoken of is the role that Hollywood’s cultural politics play in determining the winners.

In the vague clockwork of industry deservedness, the odds have always favored Paul Thomas Anderson. The Academy has been jonesing so hard to hand the man an Oscar that it nominated the dreadful “Licorice Pizza” a couple of years ago. “One Battle After Another,” an action-heavy tale about revolutionaries confronting a system rigged against Black and brown people, is at least superior to that. It’s also better than the 78th Academy Awards’ best picture winner “Crash” — a tortured go at race relations that’s still viewed as one of Oscar’s greatest blunders.

“Sinners” is almost universally lauded as a triumph. It’s consistently executed, balancing history and layered metaphor with sweeping cinematography and a score that contributes as much to its electrifying storytelling as Ryan Coogler’s writing and directing. The passion and sweat that the cast poured into their performances leap off the screen. Yes, I am proudly biased in favor of this movie.

Coogler’s period piece-meets-horror parable heads into Sunday’s awards ceremony with a record-breaking 16 nominations to Anderson’s 13 nods for “One Battle.” Comparing their individual awards track records, Coogler’s best director Oscar nod for “Sinners” is his career first versus Anderson’s fourth. This is also the fourth Anderson-directed film to score a best picture nomination, and Coogler’s second.

Anderson’s adapted screenplay spotlights extraordinary performances by Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti and best actress nominee and Globe winner Teyana Taylor, while placing bright flares around the white male tendency to erotically fetishize the Black women they simultaneously wish to destroy.

Sean Penn’s Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a military officer obsessed with Taylor’s revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills, overtly embodies this contradiction. But some of Anderson’s messaging about white supremacy is subtextual, like the mention of a medal named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Noticing that requires a familiarity with history that most lack.

The clever humor in casting “Scandal” star Tony Goldwyn, who famously played a white president in love with a Black woman, as a member of the racist Christmas Adventurer’s Club, is easier to spot. But that’s a blip in comparison to Oscar-worthy casting for “Sinners,” placing best actor nominee Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as twins called Smoke and Stack. Jordan had to do twice the work as everyone else in this category, yet his victory is not guaranteed.

“Sinners” earned more than $369 million worldwide compared to the $209.4 million for “One Battle.” Mainly, this matters in the realm of cinematic and box office achievement, for which “Sinners” won a 2026 Golden Globe. But the impression driving an alleged late-season vibe shift among voters is that the movie deserves better. Not many people watched “One Battle” multiple times at theaters, simply for the joy of it.

“Sinners” is a meditation on how the past’s crimes and terrors bleed into the present, rendered by a Black artist using a popular genre, horror, as half of his canvas. “One Battle” is a well-meaning white man endeavoring to say something about white America’s fear of immigrants and Black power using simple and modern signifiers. “Sinners” centers the Black American experience through history, art and spirituality, while “One Battle” speaks to the white liberal male’s ineffectual navigation of weaponized racial grievance. Perhaps Anderson does this with some knowing, since he has four children with longtime partner Maya Rudolph, a Black woman.

Who do you think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ voters are more comfortable with applauding?

Look, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m also a realist when it comes to award show politics and their intersection with societal attitudes, and I have seen this movie before.

Hollywood embraces very specific stories about race and Blackness in America — hence the Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” — while tipping its hat at others like “BlacKkKlansman,” “Black Panther,” “Judas and the Black Messiah”. . . perhaps you’ve noticed a theme. Oscar voters picked “Moonlight” over “La La Land” one year only to give “Green Book” the top Oscar two years later, rewinding to the cringeworthy, maudlin nostalgia peddled by fellow best picture winner “Driving Miss Daisy.”

Standard analysis divined from the usual awards season augury skews in favor of Anderson and “One Battle,” too. Pretty much every single professional critics’ organization honored him. Most professional film critics are also, what a surprise, white and male.

Anderson won best director at the BAFTA Awards and the Golden Globes. The Directors Guild of America awarded him with its best theatrical feature accolade, all but securing his Oscar frontrunner status.

Meanwhile, Jordan’s Actor Award changed the calculus in his individual category that favored “Marty Supreme” star Timothée Chalamet back in January, when he beat “One Battle” star Leonardo DiCaprio in the best actor musical or comedy race. Then he said a few things out loud and, well, now it’s just nice that he’s nominated.

If Entertainment Weekly’s anonymous voter panel (now available with reduced bigotry!) is to be believed, the best actor category is Jordan’s to lose. If he does, “The Secret Agent” star Wagner Moura is most likely to unseat him, a possible impact of the 22% of AMPAS voters living outside the United States.

The EW panel also leans heavily toward “Sentimental Value” star Stellan Skarsgård over “Sinners”’ Delroy Lindo in the supporting actor race, with two out of four throwing their weight behind Coogler for best director.

Even so, Variety’s chief awards editor Clayton Davis agrees with me that it should be Coogler’s time, pointing out that in the awards’ 98-year history, not a single Black director has won. Seven have been nominated, including Spike Lee, John Singleton, Steve McQueen, Lee Daniel, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and Coogler.

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But Oscar cares little about being overdue and less about making that kind of history. It took its sweet time to tap an Asian performer, Michelle Yeoh, to win best actress. That happened in 2023 for her work in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Voters awarding South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho best director, best screenplay, and best picture Oscars for 2019’s “Parasite” was viewed as a miracle.

More recently, the Academy had an opportunity to make Lily Gladstone the first Indigenous actor to win best actress for her excellent performance in 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but honored Emma Stone’s work in “Poor Things” instead. It was Stone’s time, you see. Since she’s up for another best actress Oscar for “Bugonia,” her time may come yet again, along with a repeat for two-time Academy Award winner Penn.

It’s right to hope for “Sinners” to rack up a few gold men, and wise to remember that disappointment is awards season’s sackcloth-clad handmaiden. The entertainment industry and its attendant army of PR departments, stylists and jewelers would like us to believe otherwise, of course. Hollywood’s biggest night of the year sets fashion forecasts for the rest of the year. But 98 years of Academy Awards ceremonies consistently prove that some trends rarely expire.

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