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It’s a great Oscar year, not only for grownup movie fans but actors over 50, who nabbed nine out of 20 acting nominations. Better yet, several are getting their first honors at an age when Hollywood used to put actors out to pasture.
Who does our critic predict will win big Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards? And who should win? Check out all the top award predictions below, and let us know your predictions in the comments!
Best picture
What will win: Everything Everywhere All at Once
The smart money is on Everything, since it won the most precursor awards this season, and everybody everywhere is in love with the late-in-life success stories of stars Michelle Yeoh (60), Ke Huy Quan (51) and Jamie Lee Curtis (64). Dark horse mention: All Quiet on the Western Front is getting late-blooming buzz, but it will probably have to be content with winning best international feature and adapted screenplay.
What should win: Top Gun: Maverick
All 10 best picture nominees are perfectly deserving of a grownup’s vote — and all owe their success considerably to older audiences and their good taste. But at the Oscar nominees luncheon, even Steven Spielberg, director of rival best picture nominee The Fabelmans, told Top Gun star Tom Cruise that his massive, exhilarating hit “saved Hollywood’s [derriere],” luring viewers (particularly older ones) back to theaters. It won AARP’s Movies for Grownups Award for best picture.

Best actor
Who will win: Austin Butler, the world’s unimaginably greatest Elvis impersonator, in Elvis, which became a hit largely thanks to older viewers — 29 percent of its audience was over 55.
Who should win: It’s a toss-up. Brendan Fraser (54) sears the soul in an utterly fearless performance as a tormented writing teacher in The Whale, and he could win the Oscar. But in Living, Bill Nighy (73), breaking out from character actor to lead, is still more impressive as another dying man — a repressed 1950s London bureaucrat — trying to put his life right before it’s all over.
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