Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars—this year there are 35 features plus 15 short films (exactly the same as last year). Usually, I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why), but I'm also going to do myself a favor and skip the live-action short films. As a group they tend to be terrible every single year, and then for some reason the worst one usually manages to win.
This year with the enormous amount of political turmoil in our country and the ascendance of fascism in the U.S., it feels so stupid to be posting about movies. And for that I apologize. The state is murdering its own citizens in the streets, and I'm here to talk about Diane Warren... it's frivolous; I admit. But I write about politics in other places—I write about state violence, prison, racism, homophobia, and torture—and we all need an occasional break from thinking about the end of US American democracy. (Fucking gerrymandering, by the way, is anti-democratic; the fact that we just accept it as a political exigency is totally absurd. People should be represented in the government. The United States purports to be a government by the people and for the people. I live in a district that has been so viciously and cynically gerrymandered that I have no representation in Congress. It's a helpless state of affairs that serves the self interest of a political ruling class instead of the people.)
In any case, I'm gonna post about the Oscars as usual. It makes me feel less alone, and crossing these movies off my list makes me feel like I can accomplish something in a state where I am nearly powerless because of the corruption of my government.
This is a good year. I will have more to say about this as we go through the nominees, but the Academy did really well this year, I think. My top ten for 2025 looks much closer to the Academy's than last year, and part of the reason for that is that the Academy's nominees look much more international than usual. This is due to the much more international Academy—an excellent state of affairs. My own list is always going to veer more international than the Academy's, and it's always going to be a good deal gayer, too, but that's a whole other story.
One thing I fundamentally believe, however, is that the Oscars are a jumping-off point for discussion rather than the final word on anything... So let's discuss!
I will go film by film discussing each movie individually rather than by category—beginning with the movies most beloved by the Academy this year. If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, their previous nominations will be listed next to their name in parentheses. This year's nominees are:
16 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Ryan Coogler (1st time nominee)
- Actor: Michael B. Jordan (1st time nominee)
- Original Screenplay: Coogler (1st time nominee)
- Supporting Actor: Delroy Lindo (1st time nominee)
- Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku (1st time nominee)
- Film Editing: Michael P. Shawver (1st time nominee)
- Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw (1st time nominee)
- Production Design: Hannah Beachler (Black Panther) & Monique Champagne (1st time nominee)
- Original Score: Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer, Black Panther)
- Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Black Panther, Amistad, Malcolm X)
- Casting
- Sound
- Visual Effects
- Makeup & Hairstyling
- Original Song – "I Lied to You": Göransson (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) & Raphael Saadiq (Mudbound)
Cast: Jordan, Miles Caton, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Lindo, Li Jun Li, Yao, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis
This is a record-breaking number of nominations, as I'm sure you've heard by now. Part of the reason for this is the new Oscar category for casting, but more important is that Sinners garnered nominations in all the below the line categories as well as its three acting nominations. This is is an unusual state of affairs. More typically, a film that everyone loves will do great below the line (think Avatar or The Fellowship of the Ring) without having any real support from the acting branch. In fact, this is what most everyone expected of Sinners but then here we are, and it crushed the competition on the morning of the nominations. I loved this movie, and I think it deserves all of its accolades. It's a bit of an unusual fit for Oscar, but I think what Ryan Coogler has proved so beautifully is how rich a genre picture can be. This is a full-out vampire revenge adventure–suspense thing. It's a delight from start to finish, and yet it feels like a prestige picture, even though its main goal is entertainment. This is is Coogler's incredible strength as a filmmaker, and I'm here for it. Most of the film's nominees are first-timers—including Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan, and Coogler himself. The old-timers here are Ruth Carter and Ludwig Göransson, both winning previously for another Coogler film. I can't say enough good things about this movie. It's not the Academy's normal fare, but I'm so glad it's here. For this reason, and because of this enormous, record-breaking shakeup, I think this movie is going to pull ahead and win Best Picture.
Will win: Picture, Original Screenplay, Score, Costume Design
Could win: Director, Actor, Editing, Casting
My rating: #5 out of 88
13 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza, Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood)
- Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (Once upon a Time... in Hollywood, The Revenant, The Wolf of Wall Street, Blood Diamond, The Aviator, What's Eating Gilbert Grape)
- Adapted Screenplay: Anderson (Licorice Pizza, Inherent Vice, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights)
- Supporting Actor: Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River, I Am Sam, Sweet and Lowdown, Dead Man Walking)
- Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro (21 Grams, Traffic)
- Supporting Actress: Teyana Taylor (1st time nominee)
- Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen (1st time nominee)
- Cinematography: Michael Bauman (1st time nominee)
- Production Design: Anthony Carlino (Babylon) & Florencia Martin (Babylon)
- Original Score: Jonny Greenwood (The Power of the Dog, Phantom Thread)
- Casting
- Sound
Cast: DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Penn, Del Toro, Taylor, Regina Hall, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn, D.W. Moffett
This has been the frontrunner for many months, and it probably still is the frontrunner—the love it received from the acting branch is evidence of that. It's also just flat out great, though this film, like Sinners, is also basically a genre picture. This is a shoot out, action–comedy thing that feels very unlike, in the first place, a film that the Academy would normally like and, in the second place, unlike a typical Paul Thomas Anderson film. (The truth is, though, that Anderson surprises us constantly, switching without any seeming effort between comedies and very serious art-house fare.) This is one of my favorite movies of the year, and I think its timeliness (the fascist cops on the street rounding up protestors and trying to find immigrants) makes this movie feel like it just understood the year 2025 in a way that doesn't usual seem possible in the cinema. My main gripe about this film is that the white supremacists in it are too silly. It is true that white supremacists are absurd, of course, but they're also deadly, and because Anderson's film is a comedy with a very silly group of white supremacists as its chief antagonists, it feels like it doesn't quite take this fascist agenda quite as seriously as it ought to. I expect this to do very well on Oscar night. I don't think it will win Best Picture anymore, but I think Anderson will and should win Best Director. It's his fourth nomination, and he's earned it.
Will win: Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress
Could win: Picture, Actor, Film Editing, Score, Casting
My rating: #3 out of 88
9 nominations
- Picture
- Director: Joachim Trier (1st time nominee)
- Actress: Renate Reinsve (1st time nominee)
- Original Screenplay: Trier (The Worst Person in the World) & Eskil Vogt (The Worst Person in the World)
- Supporting Actor: Stellan Skarsgård (1st time nominee)
- Supporting Actress: Elle Fanning (1st time nominee)
- Supporting Actress: Inga Ibsdotter Illeaas (1st time nominee)
- Film Editing: Olivier Bugge Coutté (1st time nominee)
- International Picture: Norway (The Worst Person in the World, Kon-Tiki, Elling, The Other Side of Sunday, Pathfinder, Nine Lives: the Story of Jan Baalsrud)
Cast: Reinsve, Skarsgård, Illeaas, Fanning, Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud, Øyvind Hesjedal Loven, Anders Danielsen Lie, Cory Michael Smith, Catherine Cohen
This movie is so good. It’s about family in a way that is decidedly unsentimental, despite its title, and it gets at ties between family members that don’t really make sense but repeat or resurface. It’s about trying to tell a story or find the words for feelings or intuitions that don’t have words for them. In many ways, it's also a movie about a house, or at least it tells its story from the perspective of the house. It's a brilliant stroke of writing. I am sorry that Joachim Trier standby Anders Danielsen Lie's part was too small to sneak him a Best Supporting Actor nomination (and Stellan Skarsgård is decidedly committing category fraud running as a supporting actor). The fact that this did so well with the Academy is wonderful Trier has been making excellent (maybe even perfect) movies for a long time, and it's great that people are catching up to that! I don't think this can win anything on the big night except Supporting Actor (although it may also get International Feature). But almost everyone here is a first-time nominee, and they're all gonna just be happy to be there.
Will win: Supporting Actor
Could win: Original Screenplay, Editing, International Feature
My rating: #10 out of 88
All 2025 Oscar posts:
