I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominee from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.
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Before I get to that though, I want to explain my methodology a bit. There are many, many awards given out before the Oscars. I don't use them all for my predictions. That's because some precursors are better than others. Critics are essentially useless. There's too many different critic groups giving out awards. They vary wildly in winners, nominees, and if they even bother to announce nominees. The Critics Choice Awards tries to combine all the citric groups into a single event. That ceremony has been far too inconsistent over the years. Categories change, split, or disappear far too often. Bigger picture though, critical consensus doesn't match the industry consensus very often. A movie (say, Boyhood) gobbling up critical awards gives the false impression that it's an Oscar favorite, when it often can be something else (Birdman, in this example), that takes home the Oscar. The National Board of Review only hands out wins, not nominations, which also isn't very helpful for how I do my examinations. I worked hard to sift through the Satellite Awards this year. Ultimately, they weren't consistent enough as predictors nor popular enough to be considered influencers. The Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards only focus on Independent movies. All of these awards certainly play into the conversation. Critical favorites often do indicate a general consensus and help point out sleepers. Certainly, if an indie movie is going to win an Oscar, losing out on the indie awards is a bad sign. I'll mention these things if they come up, but I'm mainly sticking with the list of awards I trust.
What is that list? Well, I'm including a glossary of the awards that matter for each category, but it's basically the Golden Globes, the BAFTA Awards, and the assorted guild awards. The Golden Globes are too visible to ignore. They aren't greatly predictive, but their influence is hard to ignore (Meryl Streep likely wouldn't've been nominated this year without her Golden Globes speech). The BAFTA Awards are about as thorough as the Oscars in terms of matching categories and have, especially in recent years, taken steps to match the Oscar results more often. The guilds are a great reflection of how the branches will vote. For example, who knows Sound Mixing better than the Sound Mixers guild? Many voters belong to both the guilds and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, so that's helpful. Also, I like following awards that list their nominees, not just the winners. That way, you know what a movie won against. If a film wins the BAFTA for Costume Design but none of the other nominees are nominated for the Oscar, it doesn't tell me very much. None of these are perfect. Nothing couldn've predicted the Ex Machina win for Visual Effects last year. However, you'll get more right than wrong by reading the award tea leaves beforehand. Lastly, I only look back 20 years for most awards. There's a couple reasons for that. One is that it's about how far back the SAG awards go, which relates to the categories most people care about. Another is that so much change happens in the Oscar voting and membership over time that there's diminishing returns the further back you go. 20 seems like a good place to stop.
Finally, you should be able to figure this out on your own, but when I refer to a year, I am speaking of the year being awarded. So, these predictions are for the 2016 Oscars. When I refer to 2015, I mean the 88th Academy Awards, which took place in February 2016, honoring the best films of 2015. I find it easier to talk like that because it's the films that matter.
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Previously:
Oscar Nomination Thoughts
Glossary:
Eddie - American Cinema Editors Award
PGA - Producers Guild of America Award
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
DGA - Director's Guild of America
The BAFTA Award is the newest precursor. This will be the sixth year they've had the Documentary Feature award. They've matched the Oscar winner in 3 of the last 4 years. The one year it missed (2013) was because the winner, Twenty Feet From Stardom, wasn't eligible until 2014 for the BAFTA. That will probably matter this year.
The PGA isn't great at all. This is their tenth year with a Documentary award. It has matched the Oscar winner only four times, normally when there is already a relative consensus. When they miss, they miss big too. In nine tries so far, they've nominated the Oscar winner just five times.
The DGA has been handing out a documentary award for at least two decades. You can entirely ignore it until 2003. It's at least nominated the Oscar winner 9 times since then. Of the two decades I tracked, the first time the Directors actually picked the Oscar winner was 2009. Since then, they've been 4-3. They were the only group who didn't have Amy winning last year, which is odd.
Lastly, there's the ACE award. That's for editing, which is a key part of documentary filmmaking. It's no surprise then, that the ACE award is the most useful Oscar predictor. They have picked the last four winners and 8 of the last 11 winners.
O.J: Made in America
ACE - Edited Documentary - Winner
DGA - Directed Documentary - Winner
PGA - Documentary Feature - Winner
I don't know why this failed to even get the BAFTA nomination. The four times that at least three of the precursor awards went to the same movie, it also won the Oscar. No reason to expect that trend to change now.
13th
BAFTA - Documentary Feature - Winner
ACE - Edited Documentary - Nominee
The BAFTA win means significantly less when you consider that it was the only Oscar nominee in the BAFTA field. Still, a win is a win. Maybe the Oscar voters would rather vote for the documentary about race relations in the U.S. that's 5 hours shorter than the front runner and from the highly respected director of Selma.
Life, Animated
DGA - Directed Documentary - Nominee
PGA - Documentary Feature - Nominee
It's the only other nominee with two precursor nods. It loses whenever it's against O.J. though.
I Am Not Your Negro
DGA - Directed Documentary - Nominee
I know it's not exactly the same as O.J. or 13th, but it's topically similar enough to those two, that I'm not sure who would be left to vote for this.
Fire at Sea
The only times a documentary with no precursor nomination wins this is when there is no clear front runner.
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