Whenever I sit down to write about the Oscars, I hear two tutelary figures speaking over my shoulder. On the right, the distinguished American film writer John Simon is telling me that the great thing about the Academy Awards is that seeing the judgments of professionals on their peers' work makes one realise the crucial value of independent critics. Whispering into my left ear is the late Lindsay Anderson, asking, as he frequently did as a moral test: 'You don't take the Oscars seriously, do you?'

The Oscars have been awarded since 1927 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the nominations made by the 13 arts and crafts divisions and the full 5,000 members all voting to produce the final results. Since 1943 the Hollywood Foreign Press Association - a group of reporters, columnists and photographers covering Tinseltown for the worldwide media - has been handing out Golden Globes. Recently, they've been taken seriously because of the accuracy with which they have been anticipating the Oscars.

The presentation ceremony, which takes place this year on 25 March, now rates peak-time TV attention and front- page coverage. Are these Foreign Press people so smart that they impress Academy voters? Do their hearts beat along with the great collective heart of Hollywood? Or are these outsiders trying to predict what the insiders will do? Who knows? I for one couldn't name a single member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Anyway, in the interval between the presentation of the Globes last Sunday and the announcement of the Oscar nominations on 13 February, I've been asked to make a personal choice of who or what I think should win the top six Academy Award categories. There's a problem here because I've yet to see several contenders, among them Almost Famous, Pollock, All the Pretty Horses, Chocolat and The Contender. Another problem is that at least five performers are competing in two movies and could cancel themselves out. Here, nevertheless, are my choices.

Best picture - Traffic
The Academy voters like prestige, financial success and spiritual uplift, which explains why comedies, musicals (unless they're about juvenile delinquency or nuns) and genre movies are very rarely rewarded.

Gladiator, which I greatly admire, does, however, have a good deal going for it. Ben Hur without the religion, it has restored the historical epic, won critical respect and made a fortune. It's a strong contender, but my own choice would be Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, a superbly crafted movie on an urgent topic.
Golden Globe: Gladiator

Best director - Steven Soderbergh for Traffic
Very rarely does the award for 'Best director' not go to the person who made the best film (though the latter award is picked up by its producer). So rarely in fact that when in 1989 the Best Film Oscar went to Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy and Oliver Stone was named best director for Born on the Fourth of July this was considered an insult to Beresford. My own choice for best director would be the British filmmaker Christopher Nolan for his dazzling thriller Memento, but despite its success in Britain it hasn't yet opened in Los Angeles, where it's set, and thus is not eligible this year. So I am torn between Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I have certain doubts about as a deal of its magic derives from the skills of its martial arts stunt director, and Steven Soderbergh for Traffic. The trouble is that another Soderbergh film, Erin Brockovich, is likely also to be nominated. Still I'll opt for Soderbergh and Traffic.
Golden Globe: Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Soderbergh's previous Oscar form: nominated for Best Screenplay for sex, lies and videotape in 1989

Best actor - Michael Douglas for Wonder Boys
Tom Hanks has everything going for him with Cast Away - previous success, public and professional popularity, and the fact that he endured pain and sacrifice in the interest of authenticity. Ever since Lon Chaney donned repulsive make-up and contorted his body for hours on end in the silent days, the Academy has loved actors who suffer for their art, putting on or losing weight, growing hair and/or beard, twisting their limbs, playing cripples and idiots (village or savant). Hence the Oscars for John Mills (Ryan's Daughter), Robert De Niro (Raging Bull), Daniel Day Lewis (My Left Foot), Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man) et al. Hanks has a great publicity machine behind his desert-island film, whereas back in 1954 Daniel O'Herlihy, star of Luis Buñuel's Robinson Crusoe, used his life savings to get a Hollywood Boulevard cinema to show the film once a day for a week and admit Academy members free so it would qualify. The happy result was that O'Herlihy was nominated as best actor for this low-budget Mexican production, though it lost out to Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront).

My choice, however, for best actor is Michael Douglas as the frazzled novelist and university lecturer in Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys, a really daring performance of considerable depth and integrity. Here again, Douglas could well be nominated for Traffic, though I think his earlier performance is richer.
Golden Globe: Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Michael Douglas's previous Oscar form: Best Actor for Wall Street (1987); Best Picture as producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Best supporting actor - Benicio Del Toro For Traffic
Supporting actors have been one of the great attractions of the cinema since the 1920s. Their recurrent appearances have helped create and populate a celluloid world as real as the one we actually inhabit.

Think of those faces that recur in the films of John Ford, Frank Capra and Sam Peckinpah; the heavies and comic losers who pop up in Warner Brothers melodramas; the actors typed as judges, bankers, barmen, servants, desk clerks, cops, moms and dads. This tradition goes on, though nowadays the younger character actors tend to be minor stars.

The four strongest contenders for my choice of Best Supporting Actor are particularly fine because they play off larger performances and have made two or three appearances over the past year. First is the Cuban-born Tomas Milian, who plays a hispanic businessman in The Yards and the Mexican general in Traffic. Then there's Benicio Del Toro, playing a professional criminal in The Way of the Gun and the honest Mexican cop in Traffic; Ben Stiller, as the Jewish suitor in Meet the Parents; and Robert Downey Jr, who appeared in three pictures, most memorably as Michael Douglas's spaced-out editor in Wonder Boys. All in all, I'd like to see the prize go to Benicio Del Toro.
Golden Globe: Benicio Del Toro, Traffic. Benicio Del Toro has twice won Best Supporting Male Actor at the Independent Spirit Awards for The Usual Suspects (1995) and Basquiat (1996)

Best actress - Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich
I've heard great things about Joan Allen in The Contender and she's done some fine work in the past decade. But I haven't seen her movie. For sheer sacrifice and disregard for ego, Ellen Burstyn, who won an Oscar in 1974 in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, makes a searingly painful impression as the addicted widow in Requiem For a Dream. But I think it too strong meat for the Academy.

Tracey Ullman is delightful in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, at first sensible, then sadly social climbing. She's sure to be nominated. But Julia Roberts's performance as the single mother and self-taught crusading lawyer in Erin Brockovich is a towering achievement that never strikes a false note. In this film you see a character and an actress grow. It's Roberts's best, and most ambitious work so far and she'll be pushed to surpass it.
Golden Globe: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich
Previous Oscar form: Nominated for Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1990); nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989)

Best supporting actress - Zhang Ziyi for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Numerous movies in contention for this year's Oscars either sideline women or provide them with no substantial roles - The Perfect Storm, Terms of Engagement, Gladiator, U-571, O Brother Where Art Thou among them. Of course, there was Charlie's Angels. In the supporting actress category, I have happy memories of Joan Cusack as the mutual friend of the the hero and heroine in Stephen Frears's High Fidelity. Catherine Zeta-Jones had a nice role in that film, but the part that would make her an Oscar contender this year would be that of the housewife in Traffic who discovers her husband's wealth derives from drug-dealing.

The supporting performance of the year for me was the Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi as the rebellious young aristocrat in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Apart from being beautiful, expressive and graceful, she plays an active role in some of the best martial arts sequences I've ever seen. Could the Academy give an Oscar to an actress speaking a foreign language? They did once, back in 1961, when Sophia Loren was named best actress in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, but she'd already established a reputation in Hollywood by then. It would be marvellous, however, to see Zhang Ziyi honoured by Hollywood.
Golden Globe: Kate Hudson for Almost Famous
Zhang Ziyi's previous Oscar form: None; recently won Best Supporting Actress from the Online Film Critics Society

Last year's oscar winners

Best picture American Beauty
Best director Sam Mendes (American Beauty)
Best actor Kevin Spacey (American Beauty)
Best supporting actor Michael Caine (Cider House Rules)
Best actress Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry)
Best supporting actress Angelina Jolie (Girl Interrupted)