For the last seven years, you could count on the eventual winner of the best picture Oscar to emerge from the three big film festivals that unofficially mark the start of award season.

And to be sure, the crop of movies that premiered over the last two and a half weeks in Venice, Telluride and Toronto — including Noah Baumbach’s divorce dramedy “Marriage Story,” the comic-book character study “Joker” and Taika Waititi’s irreverent Hitler comedy “Jojo Rabbit” — will all shake up the Oscar race in a major way.

I’m just not sure that any of them can beat Quentin Tarantino.

After the festivals, Tarantino’s summer hit “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” still looks like our best-picture front-runner. A big-budget, big-screen movie with big stars, “Once Upon a Time” is a love letter to the art of moviemaking — the sort of thing Oscar voters typically trip over themselves to reward — and its current $135 million gross plants it right alongside best-picture winners like “Argo” and “The Departed.”

Though he’s won two Academy Awards for screenwriting, Tarantino has never taken the best director or best picture Oscar, and with a long-promised retirement from feature filmmaking on the horizon, voters may decide this is the best chance to give the 56-year-old director his due. It’s the right movie at the right time, and unless late-breaking releases like “The Irishman” and “Little Women” come on strong, this should be Tarantino’s year.