Oscar Winner Predictions: Best Original Screenplay

The competition: Knives Out (Rian Johnson), Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach), 1917 (Sam Mendes and Kristy Wilson-Cairns), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino), Parasite (Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won)

Previous winners: Green Book, Get Out, Manchester by the Sea, Spotlight, Birdman, Her, Django Unchained
My winner: Parasite
The facts: Tarantino has won this prize twice, for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994 and “Django Unchained” in 2012. He was also nominated in 2009 for “Inglourious Basterds.” Baumbach was nominated in 2005 for “The Squid and the Whale.” Mendes won Best Director for “American Beauty” in 1999, and is nominated in that race this year alongside Tarantino and Bong. Only five foreign-language entries have ever won this award, the most recent of which was “Talk to Her” in 2002. Four films in the past twenty years have triumphed without a corresponding Best Picture nomination, and the last of those was “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” That would apply only to “Knives Out” this year, with this bid serving as its only nomination. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” has won most precursor awards, but it lost out to “Parasite,” which also won the WGA where Tarantino wasn’t eligible, at the BAFTA Awards.

Who should win: I’m all for “Parasite” taking this.
Who will win: It’s unknown if “Parasite” will muster the strength to win in this category and others on Oscar night, and so I think predicting a third victory for Tarantino and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is probably safest.