In some Oscar years, the winner surges forward over the long awards season on a tide of universal acclaim. This is not one of those years. About the only settled matters are the leading actor/actress categories and the specialty features: animation, documentary, foreign language. Everything else seems up in the air. Will Academy voters go for the message movie (“Spotlight’’), the grueling epic (“The Revenant’’), or the spunky comedy about the 2008 financial meltdown (“The Big Short’’)? Will this totally diverse crowd of old white men overlook their distaste for action, no matter how well done, and load up “Mad Max: Fury Road’’ with technical awards? Impossible to predict — the answer is whichever movie has the momentum at the moment that voters (or their gardeners) fill out the ballot. If that plays hell with your office Oscar pool chances, it may provide this year’s Academy Awards with a genuine novelty: suspense.