Jessie Buckley doesn’t like cats. Timothee Chalamet thinks ballet and opera is uncool. These are relatively innocuous statements in isolation, but if one says them when you’re also in the final furlong of an Oscar race, they seem to hold a bit more weight. This week the two acting category frontrunners rubbed people up the wrong way with their seemingly harmless statements. Both Chalamet and Buckley were lucky, the voting closed before either were pulled up on the statements by cat lovers and diehard opera goers. But what really put the fear of God in Oscar pundits who thought the Best Actor race was all sewn up, was Michael B Jordan’s surprise win for Best Actor at the SAG awards, a key pre cursor to Oscar success. Jordan, usually a suave and calming presence was quite clearly shocked at the win, his speech a blundering mess, but a clear sign that he was the last person to suspect a win. Oscar pundits usually think everything is tied up nicely, and sometimes they are right. Jessie Buckley will 110% come away with a Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night, but the rest of the awards are genuinely up for grabs by anyone.
Jordan’s last minute win signals a potential that Sinners will have its Second Coming. It initially found box office redemption on Easter weekend last year. Word of mouth was the single biggest factor in a near perfect weekend-weekend hold in April 2025 as it became an unmissable, water cooler film that everyone was talking about. It was a spectacular commercial win for the 38 year old director, Ryan Coogler who is yet to miss, infusing each of his commercial box office hits with enough freshness and originality to make a mark on everyone who watches them. Fruitvale Station and Creed are spectacularly different films, but Coogler’s innovative, design-led style is all over the final products. The film has been hailed by critics and audiences, with a certified fresh rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes a full year after release. Sometimes an early release can be in your favour as you were first out of the traps or sometimes people can forget you entirely.
The Easter weekend release date was an excellent play for a film called Sinners. The marketing had a lot of money behind it no doubt, but the messaging was not stand out, but perhaps that was the point? It wasn’t marketed as a vampire flick, and that added to the mystery around it. It was genre-defying in the best way. This was exacerbated by the lengthy 2 hour and 20 minutes run time, the first hour of which is in exposition – the good kind. The tonal shift at the halfway mark therefore doesn’t matter because you’re strapped into the heroes journey. It’s so good that you care about the characters and unlike most horror films that jump straight into it, where you don’t care about the characters once they’re put in jeopardy you care about them less. The vampire lore was nice to see in that it didn’t spoonfeed the audience. Jordan’s portrayal as as two very different twin brothers seems to have stuck with voters and he may well get his flowers this evening.
Film for Thought Predictions:
BEST PICTURE – SINNERS
BEST DIRECTOR – ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
BEST ACTOR – MICHAEL B. JORDAN
BEST ACTRESS – JESSIE BUCKLEY
FILM FOR THOUGHT 