Best Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Will Win: I would probably say No Country for Old Men, given that it's literally all anyone talked about between November and December of 2007, and Javier Bardem, and the evocativeness and the scariness and the moral ambiguity. Yeah, that stuff is all there, and good for the Coens. But I think that between now and late February, more and more people will see There Will Be Blood - the more weird and the more ambitious of the two movies - as a more sophisticated iteration of what No Country for Old Men is trying to say about the degradation of twenty-first century America. Opening so late and only expanding now, There Will Be Blood has the air of freshness about it, and not the weird, constructed, so-this-is-how-the-kids-talk-nowadays "freshness" of Juno. (I've never heard a movie so widely described as "delightful," a red flag in and of itself.)

Should Win: I mean, I like Cormac McCarthy and I love the Coen brothers (Barton Fink is my third-favorite movie ever). And I think Atonement was far better than did everyone I respect, although teenage Briony's sassy bowl cut needed some work [picture of Romola Garai.] But I'd give the Oscar to the man who made my first-favorite movie ever (Boogie Nights) and who has crafted a portrait of a man's obsession whose style matches its substance.

Robbed: I really thought The Diving Bell and the Butterfly would be nominated in place of Atonement, and it would have been a totally worthy nominee. Go see it! But the best movie not on this list was Zodiac, which takes There Will Be Blood's obsessiveness about obsession to a new, almost freakishly auteurish place.