Well, it’s that time of year agin. 24 days until the Oscars. And if you’ve been following me for a while, you know what that means. Every day until the Oscars, I’ll be predicting who I think will win in each individual category.

Best Animated Feature is an interesting category, as they deliberately decided not to nominate the more consensus pictures like The Good Dinosaur and The Peanuts Movie, and instead went for lesser seen films like Boy & The World and When Marnie Was There. In fact, only one of the nominated films is CGI. So good on them for thinking outside the box.

5th Most Likely To Win: The Boy & The World

Still in theaters, but not playing anywhere near me. How many people have even heard of this film, let alone seen it? I appreciate the Academy for nominating smaller, more artsy films like this. But let’s be honest – this film has no chance at winning whatsoever. The nomination is the reward.

4th Most Likely To Win: When Marnie Was There

At least some people have actually seen this one. It has a small but devoted fanbase, and it came out early enough in the year for me to check it out from my local library. With that being said however, it was a big surprise when this film popped up on nomination morning. I’m glad it got the nomination, but it’s not going to win.

3rd Most Likely To Win: Shaun The Sheep Movie

Now this film won the Toronto Film Critics Award for Animated Film. Unfortunately, that was the sole award that it won. It’s a good movie that manages to tell a fun story without a single word of dialogue. A win here would be absolutely shocking, but not completely inconceivable.

2nd Most Likely To Win: Anomalisa

Everyone says that this is really, really good. I’ll try to see it as soon as I can. And if this film had more critics wins, then maybe, MAYBE we could look at this film as a possible upset win. Unfortunately, the film’s critics wins are few and far between. I’m sorry, Charlie Kaufman, but this race was over before it even began.

PREDICTED WINNER: Inside Out

This film has won basically every single Best Animated award of the year, and it totally deserves it. In my opinion, this is not only the best animated film of the year, but the best FILM of the year, period. In fact, it was probably very close to getting a nomination for Best Picture. If you’re filling out your Oscar Predictions sheet, this is one win that you can check off with 100% certainty.

“Take her to the Oscars for me, okay?”

I’ve currently seen three of the five nominees. My ranking:

1.) Inside Out
2.) Shaun The Sheep Movie
3.) When Marnie Was There