Two days after the Toronto Film Festival debut of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, it seems obvious if not inescapable that Tom Hanks‘ performance as Fred Rogers will be campaigned as a Best Actor thang. If this happens David Poland would be “surprised”, but he’s nonetheless convinced that Hanks can’t win against Joker‘s Joaquin Pheonix and Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver. Perhaps not but by the calculus of the Poland curse, this is almost a dead-to-rights guarantee that Hanks will collect his third Best Actor Oscar.

Past Poland Curse victims: Rachel Getting Married (which Poland called “the best American film of the last 15 years“), Munich, Dreamgirls, Phantom of the Opera, Quills, Finding Forrester and the Reverse Poland Curse trio of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood (all of which Poland panned as “the trilogy of Critical Onanism,” and therefore provided an awards-season headwind).