Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 9 of 11 (Live-action Shorts)

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

I changed my mind and decided to watch the live-action shorts. I don't know why I did this, but I guess I was feeling hopeful. This year's Live-action Short Film nominees are:

A Friend of Dorothy

1 nomination

• Live-action Short

Director: Lee Knight

Cast: Miriam Margolyes, Alistair Nwachukwu, Stephen Fry, Oscar Lloyd

Miriam Margolyes is very cute in this, but this is schmaltzy. All three of the central characters are drawn in two dimensions, and Oscar Lloyd's performance is truly horrific. This is not a film about this particular woman at all, but "old people"; it's not a film about this young man but "aspiring young gay kids who want to be actors" or maybe just "how young people ought to be". Even its version of homosexuality is very silly—its chief references are Martin Sherman's Bent and Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance—a particular touch that could not be more on the nose. This overplays its hand in a big way, and this becomes decidedly tiresome by the time she tells the young man that she's never ever been seen by anyone in her whole life until he came along. Like... really? Who believes this? One thing: I adored a tiny sequence in the movie when the young man is in the shop and looks at the other gay stranger and then looks down at that tiny boy in a suit. That got a big laugh out of me in the theatre—none of the fifty elderly people in the theatre laughed, though, so I must have been the lone friend of Dorothy there. Anyway everyone else seems to love this. The Queer Cinema Archives instagram account just featured it, and you can watch it on YouTube. Smells like a winner to me.

Will win: Live-action Short

Could win: N/A

My rating: #5 out of 5

Jane Austen's Period Drama

1 nomination

• Live-action Short

Directors: Julia Aks, Steve Pinder

Cast: Aks, Ta'imua, Samantha Smart, Nicole Alyse Nelson, Hugo Armstrong, Marilyn Brett, Dustin Ingram

This made me laugh, but it's pretty dumb. It's an extended comedy sketch that became a short film. It works well for what it is, and the names of the women are legitimately hilarious. But... there's something weird for me about using the idealized Jane Austen narrative to do this. It seems also to be making fun of Jane Austen, and I am not specifically opposed to this, but it makes the film seem off to me. In any case, this is quite funny, and I had a good enough time with it. It just felt extravagantly silly.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Live-action Short

My rating: #4 out of 5

The Singers

1 nomination

• Live-action Short

Directors: Sam Davis

Cast: Michael Young, Chris Smither, Will Harrington, Judah Kelly, Matt Corcoran, Michael Keyes, Leroy Griffith, Daniel "Hutch" Hutchinson, David Scott "Muffin" McMurry, Luis "Tio Rigo" Rigoberto Amaya, Arthur "Roy" Farewell, Graham Mackie, Robert Broski, Jim Donnelly, David Jenner, Brian Coover, Jorge "Mr. George" Antonio Linares, Reuben L. "Rocket" Gonzales, Steve Corning

I liked this a lot. It moved nicely between different conversations without worrying too much about making sure we understood what was going on, and I liked the Russian-night-with-endless-snow of it all. This felt like something out of Turgenev or Chekhov (which of course it is), but by this I mean that it has a gentle humorous attitude toward its characters that is both mocking and loving, ironic and generous at the same time. I am especially fond of the scene where the young man leaves the bar quietly without telling anyone. For me, though, the hug was too much. This film is the one with Netflix money behind it. I don't think it can win because it's way too much of a monosexual all-male environment for voters—especially given the gay leanings of Dorothy and the feminist bent of Period Drama. But I do think this has a chance to spoil, and it is legitimately good, so that wouldn't be amiss.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Live-action short

My rating: #3 out of 5

Butcher's Stain (כתם קצבים)

1 nomination

• Live-action Short

Directors: Meyer Levinson-Blount

Cast: Omar Sameer, Rona Toledano, Levinson-Blount, Dror Marko, Sara Raed, Oron Caspi, Eilon Cohen, Hadi Salama

Butcher's Stain won 2nd place at the Student Academy Awards in October 2025 so it comes to this with some pedigree already—Academy voters like this. Unfortunately, I don't think this really does much of anything, though. It's a kind of analysis of a problem that sees the main issue is people who jump to conclusions too quickly. Which, isn't really analysis: it's more like a proposal for everyone to slow down. Not a terrible proposal, but not one with any teeth to it either. I did like the ending of this. I don't think I have much more to say, though. I think I've grown tired of films with strong moral points of view.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #2 out of 5

Deux Personnes Échangeant de la Salive 

(Two People Exchanging Saliva)

1 nomination

• Live-action Short

Directors: Natalie Musteata, Alexandre Singh

Cast: Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Luàna Bajrami, Aurélie Boquien, Vicky Krieps, Nicolas Bouchaud, Mitchell Jean, Mustapha Abourachid, Thibault De Lussy, Lucile Jaillant

This is my favorite of the five. It definitely goes on a bit too long, but it's intriguing and enjoyable, even if at times the prohibition on kissing in this world feels a bit, well... twee. I think perhaps I also just loved Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who is wonderful in this. And I adored the fashions (designed by Rezvan Farsijani) in this little film. They feel original and playful, and make this short film feel very expensive. The audience I was with did not care for this film at all. The over-sixty crowd I saw the movie with were actually incredulous. They thought it made no sense at all and was just weird for the sake of being weird. This is, in fact, a Greek Weird Wave film—even if the director isn't Greek—it's the kind of film Yorgos Lanthimos used to make, or that Christos Nikou and Athina Rachel Tsangari still make. It's designed to start us thinking about our own world by displacing a series of things that we take for granted and then studying its own characters. I found this film quite rich.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #1 out of 5

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

10. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

11. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Crime 101 (2026)

Crime 101 is a pleasure. Everyone in it is very nice, though, which is perhaps a sickness afflicting contemporary big-budget cinema (this was my friend Jason’s complaint about both last year's Superman and the recent Fantastic Four reboot). In any case, everyone’s niceness makes everything feel just a bit less dangerous than things ought to feel. 

I liked the Michael Mann of it all—this is very much in the vein of L.A. Takedown if not exactly Heat—and of course I loved how much Los Angeles was involved in this. And this is also an eighties movie in a lot of ways. The eighties are back: How to Make a Killing, which isn't even remotely as fun or good as Crime 101 also feels very '80s. 

We really should talk about how bad the title Crime 101 is, though. It's a pun on the 101 freeway, and you only really get that if you watch the film, and even then it's not a clever pun, more like a dad joke. And if you're gonna go generic, why not Grand Larceny or Million Dollar Heist. Ok, those are bad too. But Crime 101 makes it feel like we're here for Lessons in Crime, and that's just not what this movie is.

In any case, the highlight here are the car chases. There are two really excellent car sequences. The cast is great all around, with an especially weird and cool performance by Barry Keoghan, who always makes things feel more unpredictable and unhinged.

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 8 of 10 (Animated Shorts)

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

This year's Animated Short Film nominees are:

Papillon (Butterfly)

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Director: Florence Miailhe

Cast: Fayçal Zafi, Jessica Jaouiche, Yassine Mestaoui, Alexandre Liebe, Johannes Oliver Hamm, Hocine Ben, Olivier Peissel, Foued Kemeche

This is a beautifully animated film about a North African swimmer who swims for France at the Olympics but then is also imprisoned as a Jew during the genocide of European Jews under the Nazi regime. The film is dreamy and beautiful, and I quite liked it. I think it will be this year's winner. Because of the way this is animated, though, facial features, and indeed occasional entire human bodies lack a definition I wished for as I watched; I found this a bit frustrating, but as I say, I liked this.

Will win: Animated Short

Could win: N/A

My rating: #3 out of 5

Forevergreen

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Directors: Nathan Engelhardt, Jeremy Spears

My thoughts here involve spoilers, so be warned. The animation for this movie is cool—really cool, actually—but Forevergreen is trite. In the first place, it's about parenting, though it behaves as if it's about coming of age (in the tradition of any Pixar movie). In the second place, the film transposes the issues of the anthropocene onto a baby bear, as if this little bear cub's selfishness and youthful lack of care for the environment are somehow responsible for human damage to the forest. In the third place, the film seems to say that trees are like Jesus because they die and come back to life. Sure, I suppose that's true, but I might point out to the filmmakers of Evergreen that trees existed long before the Bible did, and so in fact, the idea of Jesus dying and coming back to life is actually modeled on plant life—not the other way around. The movie has a title card quoting the Biblical passage John 15.13 at the end: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (I can't remember if the directors use this translation or not.) But I don't actually understand what this quotation has to do with the film. It seems to make the film less trite and more meaningful by quoting the Christian scriptures, but it's not as if the film illustrates the passage in some way. What the Bible verse actually seems to do—and this is what annoys me about the whole thing—is to reimagine parenthood as "laying down one's life", which isn't actually what parenthood is, although of course it can sometimes be that. And even this is abstracted because the parent and child here are a tree and a bear. In short, I think this short is confused. I expect Academy voters will love it.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short

My rating: #5 out of 5

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Directors: Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski

Cast: Colm Feore, Gabrielle Dallaire

I really liked the animation in this, and the story is clever. It's nothing truly groundbreaking, but I liked it. What's sort of great about The Girl Who Cried Pearls is that this is a film about a con artist, and in a very clever move, this short uses the conceit of the fantasy–animated film to con the viewers with its story. It took me in, and I was glad it did. I think this probably deserves to win the Oscar, honestly, but I don't think it can. I think the animation itself is not beautiful enough to win the trophy. I'm a little sorry about that.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #2 out of 5

Retirement Plan

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Directors: John Kelly

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson

In this short, a man tells us what he will do when he retires. This is very funny. The script is witty and clever, and Domhnall Gleeson delivers it with perfect pitch. Retirement Plan was easily my favorite of the five animated shorts, although I know very well that this is territory that has been covered many times before—even by previously nominated animated short films—but I think a lot about retirement, and this film felt made for me. The animation is simple and unassuming, but that doesn't stop Retirement Plan from being emotionally powerful.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #1 out of 5

The Three Sisters

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Directors: Konstantin Bronzit

Cast: Bronzit

An ode to the virtues and redemptive powers of heterosexual sex. If I'm being generous I might say to sex in general—which would have made me like the film a whole lot better—but The Three Sisters reuses a whole series of tropes about sisters squabbling* over a man who isn't worth their time. Still, the animation is gorgeous, and the film itself isn't really objectionable; it's just a bit too easy. Konstantin Bronzit has been nominated in this category before for his absolutely gorgeous movie We Can't Live without Cosmos, and I really wanted him to win ten years ago—he was robbed—but I don't think he should win for The Three Sisters.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #4 out of 5

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 7 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

This year's remaining Animated Feature nominees are:

Arco

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Ugo Bienvenu

Cast: Margot Ringard, Oldra Oscar Tresanini, Nathanaël Perrot, Alma Jodorowsky, Swann Arlaud, Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel, William Lebghil, Sophie Mas, Frédérique Cantrel, Oxmo Puccino

This is wonderful. There's nothing like it this year, and it's imaginative and narratively innovative in a way that I wasn't expecting at all. This is—finally—a movie about kids that is not about the anxieties of parenting. Instead it's about friendship and the need to explore, and the desire to be allowed to make decisions for oneself as a young person. The film exists in two very different futures from our own, but they don't feel very far away at all, and this makes Arco also feel richly related to our own time despite being set in the distant future. What's more, Arco also continues a really powerful conversation about artificial intelligence, the humanity of robots, labor, and education. This just has a great deal going for it. Everyone else thinks so too because this film has won the "Best Animated Feature" award from nearly every critic group. I don't think it will win the Oscar, but it's a worthy contender for it, and it might surprise on Oscar night after all. Unfortunately, I had to see this in the theatre with the American cast—I know why they do this: it's really hard for kids to read subtitles, and this is definitely a movie for kids—but I really wanted to see it in the theatre. If you're watching at home, I recommend listening to the French cast.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #16 out of 95

Elio

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi

Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Remy Edgerly, Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Brandon Moon, Jameela Jamil, Young Dylan, Jake T. Getman, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ana de la Reguera, Atsuko Okatsuka, Shirley Henderson, Naomi Watanabe, Brendan Hunt, Anissa Borrego, Shelby Young, Bob Peterson, Kate Mulgrew, Tamara Tunie

I shared some of my thoughts on this movie here already. Elio is an absolute delight, and it's very funny. The two kids at the center of this movie, little Elio and little Glordon (a very sweet alien who just doesn't want to grow up and be mean and uncaring and violent), are truly adorable and I loved them both. I don't think a lot of people went to see this movie for some reason, but everyone is missing out. This is very fun and I laughed out loud numerous times. The animated features this year are pretty good, with only one that's middle of the road. I think this category is finally getting to a respectable place.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #23 out of 95

Zootopia 2

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard

Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson, Danny Trejo, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Michelle Gomez, David Fane, Joe Anoa'i, Phil Brooks, Stephanie Beatriz, Wilmer Valderrama, Jean Reno, Alan Tudyk, Macaulay Culkin, Brenda Song, John Leguizamo

This was unobjectionable and unremarkable. It even got a few laughs out of me! As it turns out, the people of Zootopia need to learn all of the same lessons in film 2 that they really ought to have learned in film 1. As with the first film, this Zootopia has a solid mystery to it, and it moves quickly with lots of fun action. It's way more sentimental than it needs to be. But I guess the makers of Zootopia believe that sentimentality is how one fights racism. In any case, this is mostly fine.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #67 out of 95

Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes

(Little Amélie or the Character of Rain)

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Directors: Han Liane-cho, Maïlys Vallade

Cast: Loïse Charpentier, Victoria Grobois, Yumi Fujimori, Cathy Cerda, Marc Arnaud, Laëtitia Coryn, Haylee Issembourg, Isaac Schoumsky

I read somewhere that critics have understood this movie to be about nostalgia, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes tries to do is give us the narcissism and wonder of a child. It’s a beautiful film drawn in gorgeous 2D animation in pastel hues with the character almost of pastels themselves. In no way is this about adults or looking back. Instead what we get is the perspective of the child herself. What I appreciated so much about Amélie is that it’s about the narcissism and entitlement with which we are born—and the realization that we must inevitably come to: that the world doesn’t exist for us alone. This realization, of course, comes with a feeling of loss, and by the end of the film what we have come to is a way to process that loss. It’s quite a beautiful little piece.. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #35 out of 95

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 6 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

This year's single-digit nominees are:

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

1 nomination

• Actress: Rose Byrne (1st time nominee)

Director: Mary Bronstein

Cast: Byrne, Conan O'Brien, A$AP Rocky, Danielle Macdonald, Delaney Quinn, Bronstein, Ivy Wolk, Mark Stolzenberg, Manu Narayan, Christian Slater

This is the third Safdie movie of the year. (Actually though. Josh was a producer.) It's structured just like a Safdie Brothers film—things just get worse and worse. But this is really strong! It’s a kind of feminist version of The Plot Against Harry, and it is filled with insight and terror about motherhood and being a woman in general. I was very into it. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You could only be the title of a comedy of course, and this is funny; it’s just a deeply bleak humor that is simultaneously terrifying and actually a film about existential dread. As I say, I was into it. I hadn't heard of this movie before Rose Byrne started getting end-of-year awards for her performance, but she absolutely deserves them, and she's be my pick to take home the statue this year. I don't think she can win, though. It feels to me like Jessie Buckley's year. (Kind of a shame—Rose Byrne is awesome in this.)

Will win: N/A

Could win: Actress

My rating: #31 out of 94

Song Sung Blue

1 nomination

• Actress: Kate Hudson (Almost Famous)

Director: Craig Brewer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi, Ella Anderson, King Princess, Mustafa Shakir, Hudson Hilbert Hensley, Shyaporn Theerakulstit

Kate Hudson's most recent nomination was 25 years ago! That seems crazy. I avoided watching this movie, betting that Hudson would not wind up in this fifth Best Actress slot, but I knew it was a losing bet all along, and I dragged myself to the theatre for a matinee of this on the day that the Academy Award nominations came out. I left the theatre crying, and the movie really is emotionally affecting. Which isn’t to say that Song Sung Blue is a good movie. It isn’t. But the whole thing is so intensely and insanely earnest and so deeply invested in making its audience cry that it’s hard not to just go along with it and fucking cry with them. Did I mention this is a kind of jukebox musical of covers that tells the story of a Neil Diamond impersonator and a Patsy Cline impersonator? It's also a true story that is so wild it feels completely unbelievable, though, I mean, why would anyone lie? Everyone seems so honest and polite and, well, midwestern in this. In actuality, Song Sung Blue (my god, that's a bad title) is way too long, and every single song wears out its welcome, but I think maybe that’s just the nature of the people at the film’s center. They want to be the focus, and they want to take up space and have your attention, but they never quite earn it.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #74 out of 94

Weapons

1 nomination

• Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan (Twice in a Lifetime)

Director: Zach Cregger

Cast: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, Madigan, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, June Diane Raphael, Scarlett Sher

This was fun. It's deeply fucked up, and I'm really not used to watching things like this, but my niece Hannah insisted, so we watched this together and covered our faces and cringed. This is a kind of horror-response to school shootings that deals with the senselessness and helplessness of parenthood when many children have been lost to violence at once. In my "Summing Up 2025" post, I said that Weapons is about the queer child, the mysteriousness at the heart of the child who is doing things we don't and can't understand; indeed another movie about children that got an Oscar nomination this year—the animated film Arco—has an identical scene to the one in Weapons, in which three children run away from home and toward certain danger while their parents remain mystified or unaware. This is scary, but it's also funny at times, and for me it manages the balance of terror and humor well. (Also, please more Alden Ehrenreich. He's so amazing in everything.) I'm delighted that Amy Madigan got an Oscar nomination for this. Her last nomination was in 1986—a full forty years ago, and I've always hated her awful character in Twice in a Lifetime, so I'm glad she can be nominated for another but very different horrible, hateful character. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #47 out of 94

The Voice of Hind Rajab (صوت هند رجب)

1 nomination

• International Feature: Tunisia (The Man Who Sold His Skin)

Director: Kaouther Ben Hania

Cast: Motaz Malhees, Saja Kilani, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury, Nesbat Serhan, Ramy Brahem

This is a chamber drama slash docu-fiction film that is built around a series of real phone calls and social media posts. The film pointedly tells us as it begins that the voice we will hear onscreen is the actual voice of Hind Rajab. The movie is about a six-year-old Palestinian girl who is in the backseat of a car at a gas station when the Israeli army fires at the car, killing everyone in it except the girl. She calls the Red Crescent, and speaks to rescue workers there who work to get a team out there in the middle of a militarized zone in order to save her life. The army is still out there with tanks, so the idea of an ambulance saving this girl in the middle of a warzone is nearly an impossible task, but the Red Crescent workers do their best to make it happen. This film is much, much better than I expected it to be. It’s a taut drama based on historical events that occasionally merges with the video and audio on which it is actually based. This makes for interesting filmmaking that—in this case—really works. The screenplay is great, and the film boasts an excellent cast with some truly moving scenes. The best thing about this is its real avoidance of cheap sentimentality. This is a hard hitting movie that doesn’t shy away from the story it needs to tell. I should say a few things, finally, about the International Feature nominees this year because it's an extraordinary group. I think I probably would have nominated South Korea's No Other Choice instead of this movie, but it's still an excellent group—as evidenced by the fact that The Voice of Hind Rajab is the only one of these films with only one nomination: all of the others have two or more. But do yourself a favor and check out some of the other films on the shortlist of this category. I recommend, especially, South Korea's No Other Choice, Chile's The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, The Dominican Republic's Pepe, and North Macedonia's The Tale of Silyan, but there are another five or ten that will come out in 2026 that I plan to see. I'm especially excited for Palestine's Palestine 36, The Philippines' Magellan, Germany's Sound of Falling, and Poland's Franz. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #26 out of 94

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 5 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

This year's nominees are:

Sirāt

2 nominations

• International Feature: Spain (Society of the Snow, Pain & Glory, The Sea Inside, All about My Mother, The Grandfather, Secrets of the Heart, The Age of Beauty, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Course Completed, Double Feature, Carmen, Begin the Beguine, The Nest, Mama Turns 100, That Obscure Object of Desire, My Dearest 'Señorita', Tristana, Bewitched Love, Los Tarantos, Placido, La Venganza)
• Sound

Director: Óliver Laxe

Cast: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Ahmed Abbou, Abdellilah Madrari, Mohamed Madrari

I loved this movie. As soon as it ended I wanted to start it over and watch it again, which isn’t to say it’s a fun watch at all. In fact, it’s harrowing, like a kind of 21st century insane Wages of Fear. But Óliver Laxe’s film also has a different kind of pulse, like fasting or being on drugs or some other kind of spiritual high. This film is a kind of madness. Sirāt is also fundamentally about loss, about grief and mourning for a lost child and about holding others close as you teeter on the edge. In a way, it tries to make you feel physically and emotionally the kind of loss or grief—that vertigo and emptiness—that a film like Hamnet is only about. In this way Sirāt is better than almost every film this year, and it has a firm spot in my top ten. It's worth saying, while we're here that four of the five International Feature nominees are in my top ten, and this is a sign to me that the Academy is making good choices this year. There were many more sentimental options for the International Feature award—Belén from Argentina, All That's Left of You from Jordan, and Late Shift from Switzerland were all on the shortlist—but the Academy chose much better films with more powerful punches to the gut for its five slots. This movie is simply not to be missed. I'm a little sad that Kangding Ray's pulsing score didn't make it into the Original Score nominees, but we all know the music branch is the most conservative (by which I mean insular and nepotistic) branch in the Academy, so I was not really expecting him to get in, even though he was shortlisted. Anyway, go see this movie. And if you see it at home, turn the sound up and pour yourself a whiskey.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Sound

My rating: #6 out of 94

Avatar: Fire and Ash

2 nominations

• Costume Design: Deborah Lynn Scott (Titanic)
• Visual Effects

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Jack Champion, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, David Thewlis, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss

This needed more fire and more ash. Here's the deal: I already saw this movie once when it was called Avatar: the Way of Water, and I loved that movie! But this movie is the same movie. Fire and Ash has lots of cool visuals, to be sure. But it also retreads every single emotional beat from the second film. I think I’m chiefly disappointed that there was no real world-building around the Na'vi clans who played with fire. This was such a missed opportunity. The water clans introduced us to an entire new world and way of being with water. The fire-folk don’t seem to harness the energy of the fire or dwell with it or learn from it in any real way; they just light their arrows on fire and seem to like torching shit. Like, what if they had developed cool fire technologies, or spoke the language of fire, or understood something wild and new about lava or tempering metal or surviving extreme heat. What I love about the first two Avatar movies is the insanely imaginative production design and true world-building. This one is just an extension of Way of Water. Cameron still crafts a cool final battle. And I mostly liked act three, but I can’t say it follows any real in-world logic. This is a good movie, but compared to the first two, it was decidedly a disappointment.

Will win: Visual Effects

Could win: N/A

My rating: #51 out of 94

K-Pop Demon Hunters

2 nominations

• Animated Feature
• Original Song - "Golden": EJAE & Jeong Hoon-seo & Joong Gyu-kwak & Yu Han Lee & Nam Hee-dong & Teddy Park & Mark Sonnenblick (all 1st time nominees)

Directors: Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang

Cast: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Ahn Hyo-seop, Yunjin Kim, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun, Daniel Dae Kim, Joel Kim Booster, Liza Koshy, Alan Lee, Rumi Oak, SungWon Cho

This was so much fuckin fun. I can’t wait for the sequel. And the soundtrack? Forget about it. I literally rewound “Free” during the movie and watched it again. And “Soda Pop” is a Soda Bop. I listened to this soundtrack for weeks and weeks after the movie came out. And everyone was listening to it! Students were popping into my office singing along with this soundtrack. I don't even think "Golden" is my favorite of the film's songs, but it doesn't matter. It's great. I want it to win, and I think it will win. I also think this is the best animated film of the year, so I think it should win that too. There is one animated film I haven't yet been able to see—Sylvain Chomet's A Magnificent Life—so I can't totally judge, but this movie is a blast.

Will win: Animated Feature, Original Song

Could win: N/A

My rating: #11 out of 94

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Kiss of the Spiderwoman (2025)

I’m really not sure why they made this Kiss of the Spider Woman. There's already a novel and a film and a musical. Did we really need this movie musical?

Jennifer Lopez is fabulous and perfect for this part, so no shade at all to JLo's magnificence. I adore her. 

But why bother doing the musical version of Kiss of the Spider Woman if you’re going to cut most of the songs that have emotional impact? There is just no point to a Kiss of the Spider Woman movie without “Over the Wall”, “You Could Never Shame Me”, “Dear One” (which is included in a tiny way but not in a way where it can affect anyone), and especially “The Day after That”, one of the most emotionally impactful songs Kander and Ebb ever wrote. 

Even "She's a Woman" is ruined because it takes place in the movie within the movie instead of being a song that Molina sings. He sings it "in character". It makes no sense, and so it has no emotional impact.

This musical cuts itself off at the knees because it forces all the songs to be diegetic. They can only be there if they exist in the fantasy/musical world. The most recent Color Purple had a similar issue. It’s just so stupid. It pretends the real world doesn't have music. The real world is supposed to be "real", "gritty", "serious". But this doesn't work either because there is only a minimally marked contrast between the art direction for the real world sequences and the art direction for the movie-musical sequences. So it isn’t as if one feels real and the other is marked as artificial. The “real world” in this Spider Woman still looks like a musical. 

I loved Jennifer Lopez in “Where You Are”. It’s the only good number in this movie. The rest of this… I have no idea why they bothered if they weren’t going to do the songs. We already have a movie version of Kiss of the Spider Woman; it came out forty years ago, and it's much better than this.

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 4 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

This year's nominees are:

F1

4 nominations

• Picture
• Film Editing: Stephen Mirrione (The Revenant, Babel, Traffic)
• Sound
• Visual Effects

Director: John Kosinski

Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick, Joseph Balderrama, Abdul Salis, Callie Cooke, Samson Kayo, Simon Kunz, Liz Kingsman

This is great. It hits every beat it needs to. The sound is amazing. The script is perfect Hollywood nonsense, but it cleverly avoids most of the worst traps. And this movie has Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon. So the acting is just fuckin stellar. All three are absolutely pitch perfect. Damson Idris is great in the Miles Teller part. Sarah Niles is wonderful. The whole thing just sings. And, sure, it’s a retread of Maverick. I mean, yeah fine: it’s mostly about the same thing and it’s mostly a similar script, and the director’s the same, and it’s giving older-guy-bucks-the-system-and-blesses-the-young-people-with-his-wisdom. But I didn’t care one bit. I saw this on a gigantic screen and it felt like I was on a ride the whole time, and this rocked. Great score, great soundtrack, great editing. I was into it. Now, I have heard a great many complaints about the fact that this got a Best Picture nomination. I am baffled by these complaints. In the first place, F1 is very good. In the second place, F1 is appreciably better than Frankenstein. I defy anyone to tell me that Guillermo del Toro's movie is better than Kosinski's, and yet no one is complaining that Frankenstein made it into one of the Best Picture slots because it's a drama and not a genre picture like this one is. (In fact, to my mind F1 is better than Bugonia and Hamnet, too.) In the third place, the reason we have ten Best Picture nominees is exactly for movies like this. The ten slots were designed so that the Academy would make room for genre movies like this one. The Dark Knight was the reason for the change back in 2009 when it missed out on a nomination; then they switched to ten and action movies have consistently benefited and been included. To give just a few examples: District 9 (2009), Inception (2010), Hell or High Water (2016), and most significantly Black Panther (2018). In any case, I'm kind of baffled by anyone saying this movie doesn't deserve its slot. It absolutely does. It's one of the most fun movies of the year. To my mind, Kosinki scored again.

Will win: Film Editing, Sound

Could win: N/A

My rating: #18 out of 91

Blue Moon

2 nominations

• Actor: Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, Training Day)
• Original Screenplay: Robert Kaplow (1st time nominee)

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott, Jonah Lees, Simon Delaney, Patrick Kennedy, Giles Surridge, John Doran

I am going to tell you right now that when I saw the trailer I said "Oh no. Absolutely not. This looks horrible." But then my friend Greg told me I needed to watch it, so I went to the theatre and... this is utterly surprising. It’s very, very theatrical and it’s mostly just lots and lots of talk, but it works its way under your skin and it winds up being quite moving. This movie will be especially poignant for theatre people, of course—since it’s about the opening night of Oklahoma! from the perspective of Lorenz Hart, the lyricist and former writing partner of Richard Rodgers who didn’t work on the show. But there is honestly a great deal to enjoy here, and Ethan Hawke is pretty wonderful. I want also to note that some gay men I know have complained about the way the film, in their view, transforms the gay Lorenz Hart into someone who spends the entirety of this movie trying to get close to Margaret Qualley's character. I guess this might have bothered me if I believed in such a thing as sexuality, but, well, I don't. Blue Moon is based on real correspondence between Hart and that character, and in any case the film is quite clear that Hart is gay. I say go see this movie. It's a mannered, overly talkie theatre thing, and it's great.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Actor

My rating: #27 out of 91

Un Simple Accident (یک تصادف ساده) 

It Was Just an Accident

2 nominations

• Original Screenplay: Mehdi Mahmoudian & Jafar Panahi & Shadmer Rastin & Nader Saïvar (all 1st time nominees)
• International Feature: France (Emilia Pérez, Les Misérables, Mustang, A Prophet, The Class, Joyeux Noël, Les Choristes, Amélie, The Taste of Others, East-West, Ridicule, Indochine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Camille Claudel, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Betty Blue, Three Men and a Cradle, Entre Nous, Clean Slate, The Last Metro, Une Histoire Simple, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Madame Rosa, Cousin Cousine, Lacombe Lucien, Day for Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Hoa-Binh, My Night at Maud's, Stolen Kisses, Live for Life, A Man and a Woman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sundays and Cybele, The Truth, Black Orpheus, Mon Oncle, Gates of Paris, Gervaise, Forbidden Games, The Walls of Malapaga, Monsieur Vincent)

Director: Panahi

Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, George Hashemzadeh, Delmaz Najafi, Afsaneh Najm Abadi

This is my favorite film of the year. It's absurdly funny and deadly serious at the same time. The ending is incredible. Mostly, though, I think I was struck by the film’s portrait of people living with difficult memories, of surviving violence and learning to do the next day’s activities—falling in love with someone, buying pastries, listening to your mom complain about you, helping a neighbor. Panahi's beautiful film manages this without sentiment and always with an eye on what these people have gone through at the hands of an unrepentant state. Un Simple Accident, of course, won the Palme d'Or, so I guess it doesn't need a Best Picture Oscar, Directing Oscar, or even an International Feature Oscar or a Screenplay Oscar. But it sure would have been well deserved. This movie is so good. In fact, while we're here we should say that the International Feature nominees this year are all stellar, with four of the five getting more than one Oscar nomination. It's really a banner year for the Academy's attention to international movies.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #1 out of 91

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 3 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

This year's nominees are:

Bugonia

4 nominations

• Picture
• Actress: Emma Stone (Poor Things, The Favourite, La La Land, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance))
• Adapted Screenplay: Will Tracy (1st time nominee)
• Original Score: Jerskin Fendrix (Poor Things)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone

Oof. This film is decidedly in conversation with Ari Aster's Eddington and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle after Another, and while I think Bugonia is interested in ideas similar to those films, it's not nearly as interesting as those movies. In fact, I thought this was weirdly boring—I guess rather like having a conversation with a conspiracy theorist… or an apologist for fascism. It felt to me like being forced to listen to a racist or a conspiracy theorist's opinions for two hours (an activity I decidedly do not enjoy). Bugonia goes around in circles tracing loop after loop, and we hear the same things over and over, watch the same scene again and again. I think maybe there’s supposed to be dramatic tension at certain points, or suspense, maybe? I didn’t feel any of that. Actually, I have a feeling this was supposed to be funny, but I didn't do any laughing. This was not pleasurable to watch. A man a few rows in front of me was snoring loudly. As a rule I also dislike Emma Stone, and this might have had a good deal to do with my antipathy toward this. She just never seems like a real human person in her movies—which, I suppose is perfect for both Lanthimos in general and this film in particular. But I do wonder if I would have liked this movie better with a different actress than Emma Stone as the lead. It's possible, but I doubt it. I think the screenplay is just really boring. So much talking! No Oscars for Bugonia on the big night. Stone just won two years ago (for the second time), but more importantly both Jesse Plemons and Yorgos Lanthimos missed out on nominations, so that means that this movie—despite its nomination for Best Picture—clearly didn't connect with Academy voters as much as other films, even some of the other films with four nominations.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #83 out of 91

O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent)

4 nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Wagner Moura (1st time nominee)
• International Feature: Brazil (I'm Still Here, Central Station, Four Days in September, O Qu4trilho, O Pagador de Promessas)
• Casting
  

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Cast: Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Roney Villela, Gabriel Leone, Alice Carvalho, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, Geane Albuquerque, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Thomás Aquino, Laura Lufési, Isadora Ruppert, Igor de Araújo, Ítalo Martins, Udo Kier

This is one of my favorite films of the year, and it almost was #1. It's a taut political thriller with a fantastic cast. Wagner Moura is wonderful. The best part of this, though, is Mendonça’s beautiful approach to memory and nostalgia. His shots are filled with ghosts (he has a great documentary called Pictures of Ghosts that functions as a companion piece to this), and his characters feel their histories pumping in their veins even if they can’t remember them or find their records. I love Mendonça's films, and I'm so glad that the Academy is finally recognizing his work. Go see this movie.

Will win: International Feature

Could win: N/A

My rating: #2 out of 91

Train Dreams

4 nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Clint Bentley (Sing Sing) & Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing)
• Cinematography: Adolph Veloso (1st time nominee)
• Original Song – "Train Dreams": Nick Cave & Bryce Dessner (both 1st time nominees)

Director: Bentley

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy, Will Patton, Alfred Hsing, David Paul Olsen, John Patrick Lowrie

This is so beautiful and simple and smart. It has a kind of Terrence Malick feel to it without the Malickian screenplay habits. And it's filled with memorable, gorgeous performances. In fact, I think Joel Edgerton only just missed out on his first (and long overdue) best actor nomination. Edgerton is a wonderful actor, and these awards bodies need to pay more attention to his excellent work. Most importantly for the big night, though, is the cinematography. Adolph Veloso really captures something here, and I think everyone expects him to take home the trophy. It's worth saying, also, that films like Train Dreams and F1 (we'll get to that in a day or two) are the reason we have ten slots for Best Picture these days. The point of having a category with ten nominees is so that a small picture that won't win best picture (and a big budget action movie that won't win best picture) can get recognized as one of the best movies of the year. And Train Dreams really is that.

Will win: Cinematography

Could win: N/A

My rating: #14 out of 91

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value
2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 2 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

This year's nominees are:

Marty Supreme

9 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Josh Safdie (1st time nominee)
• Actor: Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown, Call Me by Your Name)
• Original Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
• Film Editing: Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
• Cinematography: Darius Khondji (Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Evita)
• Production Design: Jack Fisk (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood) & Adam Willis (Killers of the Flower Moon)
• Costume Design: Miyako Bellizzi (1st time nominee)
• Casting

Director: Safdie

Cast: Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'Zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler the Creator, Emory Cohen, Fran Drescher, Géza Röhrig, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jilette, Sandra Bernhard

This is tons of fun. It's a non-stop ride of bad mistake after bad mistake (in the vein of the other Safdie Brothers movies). This one feels much more fun than Good Time, Uncut Gems, and The Smashing Machine, and I think a lot of that is the way that Chalamet is able to enjoy himself and project his own pleasure through the difficulties of the character. Marty is a fantastic character, and he's played beautifully here. Which is to say that I don't normally think we associate what Chalamet is doing in this movie with "acting" as such, but I think he's doing an incredible amount of work here that doesn't come across as "honesty" or "vulnerability" or whatever else we might associate with good acting. He's, well, a star. I hope he wins Best Actor. The film has stumbled in recent days with various negative campaigning aimed at it, so I think it is probably not winning any other Oscars, but I'd still like to see Timmy take this one. I also think it should win casting. This is a kind of genius casting job. I think putting Géza Röhrig in that orgy scene with the honey was flat out brilliant. Ok also... that honey scene. Can we talk about it?

Will win: Actor, Casting

Could win: Editing

My rating: #15 out of 89

Frankenstein

9 nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth)
• Supporting Actor: Jacob Elordi (1st time nominee)
• Cinematography: Dan Lausten (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Production Design: Tamara Deverell (Nightmare Alley) & Shane Vieau (Dune: Part Two, Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Original Score: Alexandre Desplat (Little Women, Isle of Dogs, The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
• Costume Design: Kate Hawley (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Del Toro

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley

Beautiful production design—or as a friend recently said "most" production design—and lots and lots of sumptuous, jewel-toned light. The costumes are gorgeous, the music is pretty, but this movie is fairly boring. I thought Oscar Isaac did good work in this, and David Bradley is great as the Creature’s friend, but the film itself just doesn’t have anything to add to the Frankenstein narratives we already have. Elordi is, of course, cheating by campaigning in the supporting actor category, but the Academy didn't seem to mind it here the way they minded Paul Mescal's category fraud (see below). Elordi is a rising star and everyone seems to love him. He's made a bunch of movies that have done well recently, and he's working hard, so I guess that pushed him over the edge here. I am a little baffled by this, but, then, I'm also baffled that anyone liked this movie. For something so shiny, it manages to be quite dull.

Will win: Production Design, Makeup & Hairsyling

Could win: Cinematography, Costume

My rating: #61 out of 89

Hamnet

8 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
• Actress: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
• Adapted Screenplay: Maggie O'Farrell (1st time nominee) & Zhao (Nomadland)
• Production Design: Fiona Crombie (The Favourite) & Alice Felton (The Favourite)
• Original Score: Max Richter (1st time nominee)
• Costume Design: Malgosia Turzanska (1st time nominee)
• Casting

Director: Zhao

Cast: Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, David Wilmot, Justine Mitchell

My friends Kody and Dayne have been dragging me for weeks for liking this movie as much as I did. But I found this to be a beautiful meditation on grief. I liked all of the early stuff with the Agnes and Will falling in love, too. I think the real issue for me is that I just love Hamlet, so I loved all the little touches of it throughout the script – goodbye, goodbye, goodbye and other small places where it appeared. The problem with Hamnet is that it is too committed to grief and mourning; it plays this same note way too long. And you might say, yes, well, that's how grief works, but Sirāt is a film that has a similar meditation on the losing of a child, and it works much better. And when I think about it more, Hamnet is doing something as silly as giving us an origin story for an intellectual property we all love—like this is Becoming Jane Austen or something like that. Will Shakespeare reciting "To be or not to be" was way overboard. (I say this as someone who still really liked the film!) And another thing. The film really stumbles at the end. Whoever decided to use “On the Nature of Daylight”, that same Max Richter song from Arrival and Shutter Island, is a fool. In fact, I'm surprised it didn't disqualify Richter from getting his first Oscar nomination. Using old music like that is a big no-no for the Academy. Having that song at the end of the movie immediately pulled me out of the film—it belongs to a wholly different world—and of course I already know it, so rather than the ending of Hamnet feeling unexpected and new, the film moves into familiar territory. Not smart. There’s so much good stuff in this movie, though, and once I bought into the fiction of it (this does not accord with theatre history at all), I enjoyed myself. I guess I should say one more thing about Paul Mescal standing just off the medal stand over there. He's pretty great in this movie—I think he's pretty great in everything, honestly—but he attempted true category fraud. He (or his management) thought the supporting actor race was less crowded than the best actor race, and he was right about that, but it's a hard sell to say that he wasn't the lead actor in this film no matter how good he is in it.

Will win: Actress

Could win: Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Casting

My rating: #30 out of 89

More Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

10. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!