Welcome to Oscar 2026. It’s finally time to kick off our Oscar analysis phase now that the fall festival season is upon us. It’s about time too because, aside from maybe Neon’s Sentimental Value and Warner’s Sinners, we really don’t have a solidified Oscar frontrunner yet. That all could change this week. Or it could become even muddier.
Let’s find out.
Bugonia
Our Oscar 2026 coverage started with the Venice Film Festival where our own Frank J. Avella weighed in on some big titles. Check out his reviews of Bugonia, Jay Kelly, and After the Hunt plus other international titles here on the site. Of the three, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia emerged the strongest from the initial round of festival reviews. And that makes sense because Lanthimos’s films typically fall squarely within the tastes of Film Twitter and the early festival goers. The film maintained a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes until TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek weighed in with a disappointed review, saying basically the film doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. But starting at 96% is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.
Given The Academy’s recent trend to wholly embrace Lanthimos’s films, it seems a safe bet to proclaim Bugonia to be fully in the conversation. Will it reach the heights of The Favourite or Poor Things? Both of those films’ nomination hauls were obviously padded by excellent period craftsmanship, which Bugonia doesn’t appear to have given its more modern setting. We’ll be seeing it here in Telluride tomorrow night at a very late night screening with a hopefully wild audience. One thing seems crystal clear: Emma Stone is headed for another nomination as does Jesse Plemons. Can this role win Stone a third Oscar? That seems difficult to imagine, but stranger things…
Jay Kelly
If you solely looked online (Twitter or Letterbox), then you’d think Jay Kelly was the title to crash and burn at Venice. There’s even a tweet (which I won’t repeat here because it would be mean) that refers to an Oscar video blogger who removed the film completely from their predictions after the first screening. All of a sudden, this single voice seemed to initiate a flood of anti-Jay Kelly sentiment. I’ll be seeing the film tomorrow as well, but I can tell you based on the trailer that this film appears squarely within The Academy’s wheelhouse. A lot of those online disappointed reactions seem to come from the same players that proclaimed it the Oscar frontrunner, which it never was. To me, Jay Kelly always appeared to be an acting play for stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler. Maybe a screenplay run for writer-director Noah Baumbach. But a Best Picture frontrunner? As Nicole Kidman would say, “NAUR.”
This is what a season without an Oscar frontrunner does to films. One good trailer drops, and everyone proclaims the film to be The One. When it doesn’t meet those expectations, then it’s some kind of failure. Again, I haven’t seen the film (that’s tomorrow), but I know what Netflix can do with titles in which they believe. Just look at last year. Online fans HATED Emilia Pérez, and Netflix got it to 13 Oscar nominations and two wins. Granted, I don’t think Jay Kelly has the same gravitas and social importance that Emilia Pérez did. One very negative review from The Guardian dinged it for its “Cine-narcissism,” and that’s something for which I’ve been on the lookout. Can audiences or The Academy stomach a Clooney mid-life crisis film when he’s literally George Clooney (sinus infection or not). Still, it’s not out of the race at this stage. Not at all.
After the Hunt
That brings me to my personal biggest surprise out of the Venice Film Festival: the near-vitriolic reaction to Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt. For a bit, given the players (older/newer Hollywood stars, respected director, hot button subject matter), I’d thought maybe, possibly, potentially this could be The One, our Oscar frontrunner. From the first trailer, it looked like the kind of film The Academy would cuddle up to and engage their social justice sensibilities. But all that ended when the curtain came up at the Venice Film Festival premiere. Critics have largely praised the world of Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Andrew Garfield, but something’s amiss with the film itself. Critics are tossing around words like “dour,” “airless,” “numb,” and “muddled.”
After the Hunt isn’t playing at Telluride, so I won’t see it for a while to judge for myself. Yet, after that initial reaction (the critics average on RT did bump up slightly from a 46% to a 53%), I’m not at all confident that even Roberts can escape this. She was. in many corners, believed to be a Best Actress frontrunner. Now, it doesn’t look like she’ll even be nominated. This could, of course, all change as the film migrates away from its festival birth into a more mainstream environment, but it has its work cut out for it.
Telluride
Here at Telluride, Megan, Joey, and I will report on premieres and other screenings throughout the weekend. We’ve only been here a day, but it’s already been incredibly fun. This marks the first time the three of us have been together since Oscar 2017. It always amazes me how people who only interact online can be such close friends when we meet in person. The gorgeous scenery of Telluride certainly doesn’t hurt. And we’re, of course, playing our little clandestine celeb hunting game. Margot Robbie has been our biggest sighting so far.
Tonight, we’ll finally get to see one of our most anticipated films of the year: Hamnet. We’ll also see world premieres of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player. We’ll also catch many other Venice-launched titles, including one top secret screening that isn’t on the agenda but will definitely screen here. We are very excited about this one.
So, will the end of the festival weekend deliver us from a frontrunner-less season? Or will the Oscar prognosticator community finally settle on an Oscar frontrunner? Check back with me on Monday to sort it all out.
Until then, we’ll be posting and podcasting as much as humanly possible. We have a very aggressive agenda laid out for ourselves. Rather, the festival programmers have laid out a very aggressive agenda. We’re here for it though.
