Will La La Land match or exceed the record of 14 Oscar nominations currently shared by All About Eve and Titanic? (Matching, maybe; exceeding, no.) Will this be yet another year of #OscarsSoWhite? (Not by a long shot.) Will Mel Gibson be welcomed back into the open arms of Hollywood’s elite? (As we’ve been frequently reminded this past year, anything’s possible.)

These and other questions will be answered on the morning of Tuesday, January 24. But until then, there’s no harm – except, eventually, to my ego – in predicting nominations for the 89th annual Academy Awards.

I don’t know about you, but I love watching car chases in movies set in the 1920s, because you know that despite sharp editing and camera angles giving the impression of astounding speed, those vehicles were probably scooting around at 40 miles per hour tops. Live by Night, director/writer/star Ben Affleck’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s 2012 novel, is similarly deceptive. Telling of a petty Boston crook who, between the ’20s and ’40s, becomes a Florida-based rum entrepreneur and bona-fide gangster, the film has a breadth and look and quality performers suggesting an epic tale of venality and greed, like The Godfather with fewer Sicilians and heavier humidity. In truth, however, it’s a dawdling, unsatisfying attempt at an epic, and it is slow. Forget 40 miles per hour; this thing doesn’t have a heart rate of even 40 beats per minute.

Considering it’s more than three hours long, I’ve seen Philip Kaufman’s space-program epic The Right Stuff an almost unseemly number of times. Yet as strong as my recollections of the film are, I don’t recall a single person of color with a speaking role, which makes the new Hidden Figures an important, necessary corrective – and a terrifically enjoyable one, to boot. I’m due for another viewing of Kaufman’s 1983 Oscar winner, and probably soon, but I’m not sure I’ll ever again be able to watch all those earnest white NASA guys hard at work without thinking, “Hey ... where the hell is Taraji P. Henson?!”