Each week before the Oscars, which take place on 2 March, Guardian film reviewer Tom Shone breaks down the likely winners at this year’s Academy Awards. Today: best actor, best foreign language film, best visual effects, best cinematography, best sound editing, best sound mixing and best score.

Matthew McConaughey hasn’t had a “comeback” by the textbook definition of the term. He didn’t languish in movie jail like Mickey Rourke; he didn’t fall off the map for a decade like Dennis Hopper. Rather, like John Travolta, he sank in plain view – in the sunlit terrariums of romcom-land, where, if anything, he seemed even to be enjoying himself.

The resuscitation of his critical fortunes has, however, taken much the same course as Rourke’s: a scouring of the flesh, a purification of the body – “this old, broken down piece of meat”, in Rourke’s delicious phrase from The Wrestler. Playing the stricken Ron Woodruff, in Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey is reptilian, feverish and emaciated, containing just the element of trompe l’oeil the Academy has learned to consider “acting”.

Its members have decided to reward his role in Dallas Buyers Club but it could as easily have been for any of the roles that have marked out the McConaughaissence, starting in 2011 with The Lincoln Lawyer, in which he dirtied up the attorney role with which he made his name in 1996, in A Time to Kill. In Magic Mike, he deconstructed his own reputation as Cinema’s One Truly Objectified Male, whipping up the waves of female lust that buffeted the stage of the Xquisite like a conductor.

By last year, the fusillade of roles had become unignorable: Bernie, Killer Joe, Mud, Dallas Buyers Club, The Wolf of Wall Street, which he stole with a piece of improv designed to get him into character. People have won Oscars with far less. If McConaughey wins best actor on 2 March, as looks increasingly likely – with wins from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild and Broadcast Film Critics Association under his belt – it will be for one of the more protracted hot streaks in recent years.

His biggest competition is probably Chiwetel Ejiofor, who pulls off something very difficult in 12 Years a Slave, suggesting the fear of a man who must hide his intelligence at all costs or be beaten for it, and yet at the same time register the enraged consciousness of a free man. Ejiofor picked up a Bafta at the weekend, where McConaughey wasn’t nominated, but the performance feels a little too internalised for the Academy’s taste: it likes acting that shows its working, as my math teacher used to say.

Some are predicting a last-minute rally from Leonardo DiCaprio, whose Wolf of Wall Street is enjoying the mother of all last-minute promotional pushes (“HIS BEST PERFORMANCE EVER!” trumpet billboards in LA), but the undiluted spiritual toxicity of Jordan Belfort is a tough act for the Academy to swallow.

Others have Bruce Dern as their dark horse, for Nebraska, but I’m not feeling any vibrations on the tracks. If the old-geezer contingent couldn’t swing a nomination for Robert Redford, what chance a win for Dern?

Onto one of the harder nuts to crack this season is best foreign film. For years, anyone who wanted to vote in the foreign-language race needed to prove they had seen all the contenders. Not this year, when all 6,028 Academy members can vote without offering proof.

Does that further secure the path of Paolo Sorrentino’s sumptuous homage to Fellini, The Great Beauty? It’s the frontrunner, has the critics on its side and is certainly the Film to Tick Without Watching, but the academy have a track record of shotgun weddings with watchable wild cards in this category – see the wins for The Lives of Others and The Secret in Their Eyes.

So some are marking up the chances of Felix van Groeningen’s Broken Circle Breakdown, which features a Bluegrass-obsessed Dutch couple weathering the sickness of a child. With a Bafta win under its belt, though, I think The Great Beauty should still swing it.

Expect a sweep from Gravity in the technical categories – best visual effects for sure, but also best cinematography, best sound mixing, best editing and most likely best score – all making Alfonso Cuarón’s film the night’s winner in terms of Oscar tally. (I have it winning seven, 12 Years A Slave three, and American Hustle coming away empty-handed, but more of that next week).

Best score is the wobbliest of those, with Owen Pallett’s beautiful collaboration with Arcade Fire on the soundtrack of Her as a possible spoiler. If there’s one category the academy has been a little more adventurous of late, it’s this one, with a recent win for Trent Reznor’s ambient-electro score for The Social Network, but I think Stephen Price’s work on Gravity will win for the same reason the film is so secure in the sound categories: in a film which pays full heed to the silence of outer space, the soundtrack performs some extra heavy lifting. Price it is.

Best actor

Christian Bale, American Hustle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

Winner: Matthew McConaughey

Best foreign film

Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar (Palestine)

Winner: The Great Beauty

Best visual effects

Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness

Winner: Gravity

Best cinematography

The Grandmaster
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Prisoners

Winner: Gravity

Best sound editing

All Is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor

Winner: Gravity

Best sound mixing

Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor

Winner: Gravity

Best original score

The Book Thief
Gravity
Her
Philomena
Saving Mr Banks

Winner: Gravity