If you want to be up-to-speed when the fire-delayed Academy Award nominations are released a week from today, you would be wise to start with “The Brutalist.” Because this nearly indescribable epic is expected to walk away with best picture, best director (Glenwood Springs’ Brady Corbet), best actor (Adrien Brody), best cinematography and best score. At least.

Just be sure to clear some time on your calendar. Corbet’s epic, now playing at the Mayan Theater and opening Friday at the Sie Film Center, lasts 3 hours and 35 minutes – not including a 15-minute intermission.

And it’s worth every second.

Corbet’s brutal masterpiece creates a vast and imposing portrait of an architect and Holocaust survivor starting over in the United States. The film has been met with near-universal acclaim. 

However, there are other films to consider. And you might start your annual movie-binge catch-up with all of the films that are most likely to produce our five best-actor nominees.

According to Gold Derby, a reliable Oscars predictor website, those five figure to be (in order of likelihood) Brody, Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”), Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”), Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”) and Daniel Craig (“Queer.”) A little on each:

Even as a lapsed Catholic, I was repulsed by “Conclave,” an unflattering revenge film that imagines what might happen behind all that Vatican City smoke as scandals are revealed and deals are made en route to determining who will be the next pope. The ending is egregiously unforgivable, but it is a foregone conclusion that Ralph Fiennes, as the cardinal given the thankless job of overseeing the papal conclave, will be nominated for best actor.

Craig will always be known as Bond … James Bond … but “Queer,” based on the late William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novella, is being celebrated as his career-defining performance.

Chalamet already has proven he can handle anything thrown his way, from Wonka to, now, Bob Dylan. That he not only got out of this assignment alive but is being feted for his understated and canny performance is easily worth a nomination.

Domingo’s performance in the tiny film “Sing Sing,” about a prison theater program, is worthy on its own merits. But his insistence that the film adopt a profit-sharing model where everyone who worked on the film got a stake in its earnings makes it impossible not to root for him – and “Sing Sing.”

Elsewhere, put “Anora” on your watch list. Haven’t heard of it? Neither had I – or so I thought, until I realized I’ve seen the trailer before every movie Denver Film has screened for seemingly for the past 32 years. This is the one about a young Brooklyn sex worker who meets and impulsively marries the party-boy son of a Russian billionaire, setting off a “Romeo and Juliet”-worthy parental chase to annul the marriage. It is No. 2 in the best-picture chase, and Mikey Madison (perhaps you saw her in the FX comedy series “Better Things”?) is presently the favorite to win for best actress.

That would be a bummer for me because my heart, blood and guts are all-in for Demi Moore’s audacious, brave (insert all the adjectives here) performance in “The Substance.” That’s a dystopian, cautionary tale that imagines a near-future where you can generate a younger, more beautiful you with a single shot. (What could go wrong?) I called the film part “Severance,” part “King Kong,” part “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” part “Faust,” part … you get the idea. All making for a completely original film unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s beautiful. Gross. Unflinching. Disturbing. Neither feminist nor misogynistic. (A little of both.) A brutal treatise on self-hatred and condemnation of disposable Hollywood. But, above all: Demi Moore is astonishing. Badass. Fearless. Horrifying. Incredible. I hated it. I loved it. I hated it. Give her the Oscar.

Also essential on your watch list should be “Emilia Pérez,” because everyone is calling  Zoe Saldaña the frontrunner for supporting actress. The film is described as a genre-defying fever dream that follows the journeys of four women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. Saldaña plays an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job who is enlisted by a fearsome cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) to help fake her death.

As for supporting actor, you should take in “A Real Pain” to catch Kieran Culkin in Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy about feuding cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their grandmother. Culkin is sitting pretty atop that Oscars leaderboard.

That’s 10. And while I may be the only person in the world who has yet to see “Wicked” (hey, I’ve been busy), you and I should probably both get off our broomsticks and see it already. Part 1 will be among the (up to) 10 best-picture nominees. It will almost certainly win for costume design and production design, and it should land at least nominations for Cynthia Erivo (lead actress), Ariana Grande (supporting actress), makeup and hairstyling, score and visual effects.

As for best picture: Gold Derby’s top 5, in order, going into next week’s nominations are “The Brutalist,” “Anora,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Pérez” and “Wicked,” followed by “Dune: Part Two,” “A Complete Unknown,” “The Substance,” “A Real Pain” and “Sing Sing.”

And here’s hoping for a little nomination love for Edward Norton, who uncannily played banjo-playing Pete Seeger in “A Complete Unknown” – but only after Benedict Cumberbatch dropped from the project.

Wrote Kate Mossman for The New Statesman: “Edward Norton is astonishing as Seeger, who gave Dylan a lot of early breaks and is painted as something of a father figure. You feel his soul in those kind but slightly wincey, paternal-but-rather-conflicted eyes.”

After the nominations are announced Jan. 23, the Academy will conduct final voting from Feb. 11-18. ABC will then broadcast the 97th Oscars starting at 5 p.m. Sunday, March 2.