The Schindler's List Anti-War Drama

• The Pianist. The winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or, it was criticized by some festival reviewers for its old-fashioned straight-on narrative. Director Roman Polanski tapped into his own Kraków ghetto childhood to enrich this harrowing, true story of a Warsaw Holocaust survivor (Adrien Brody). Plus: The Focus Features marketing team delivered multiple nominations for Traffic and Gosford Park. Minus: The Academy may shun the exile Polanski, who refuses to return to the States to face an outstanding statutory-rape charge.

• The Quiet American. Michael Caine has the role of a lifetime as Graham Greene's boozily corrupt Vietnam foreign correspondent, who loses his Vietnamese girlfriend (Do Thi Hai Yen) to CIA zealot Brendan Fraser. Plus: Australian director Phillip Noyce gets extra points for ditching the Tom Clancy franchise to make back-to-back art films, The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence.

• Max. Writer Menno Meyjes (The Color Purple) makes his directing debut with this chilling portrait of the Führer as a young artist in the improbable but real-life story of the relationship between two German World War I vets: decadent Jewish art dealer Max Rothman (John Cusack) and impoverished Aryan artist Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor). Plus: Lions Gate Films has done remarkably well, with eleven Oscar nominations and four wins for such films as Amores Perros and Monster's Ball.

  Which of these has what it takes to win? Throughout December and January, Oscar promoters will flood the trade papers with quote ads, mail out piles of videos and DVDs, and screen their movies at holiday film series in Aspen and Maui, where some of the wealthiest players among the Academy's 5,700 mostly middle-aged, liberal, white male voters spend the holidays. And they'll try to nail every win from every possible critics' group and awards ceremony on the road to the Oscar nominations February 11. But as a nervous country recovers from a shattering assault and prepares for war, one movie will conjure that elusive but powerful blend of escape and catharsis. The movie that perfectly fulfills that need will win the big prize, the Best Picture Oscar.