Here’s how I know my brain is a giant old warehouse full of contradictions: I hold space for the two competing thoughts that the Oscars are an out-of-touch racket that only celebrates films with marketing budgets in the tens of millions, while also obsessively theorizing for weeks over what will get nominated and then making guesses on what will actually win. I hate the Oscars and I love the Oscars, and never the twain shall meet.
Now that the nominations were announced in January, let’s talk about them and what one should try to see before the big show (the Oscars are March 15 this year). There were some snubs this year that I should have expected, but they still bother the hell out of me.
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice feels like the South Korean master leaning into his Coen Brothers period with a comedy so dark and suspenseful that one doesn’t know whether to laugh or call their therapist. Not to be nominated for Best Picture, Director, Production Design, Cinematography, International Feature Film or Lee Byung Hun for Best Actor is insane.
There is no world in which the forgettably entertaining F1 or the visually stunning but dramatically inert Frankenstein should take up space in the Best Picture race when films like No Other Choice; Eddington; The Life of Chuck; The Testament of Ann Lee; Sorry, Baby; On Becoming a Guinea Fowl; or Blue Moon exist.
I can complain about the snubs all day long, to no avail. Like the irony of finally adding a Best Casting category to the Oscars, but not nominating Yngvill Kolset Haga and Avy Kaufman, the casting directors for Sentimental Value. The four leads (Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning) were all nominated for acting awards. If that isn’t the objectively best casting of the year, then I guess I don’t understand the rules anymore.
What else? There should be recognition for William H. Macy, Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton for their acting in Train Dreams; Jafar Panahi’s direction of It Was Just an Accident; Paul Mescal’s work in Hamnet; the screenplays for Black Bag, Eddington and Nouvelle Vague; the production design for The Phoenician Scheme; Eva Victor’s acting/writing in Sorry, Baby; or the cinematography in Weapons and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, among many others.
Still, the Academy got quite a bit right. Ethan Hawke was a long shot to be nominated for Blue Moon (and has less-than-zero chance of winning), but his work is so heartbroken and tender that it deserves the spotlight. He’s in nearly every frame of the film, and he luxuriates in the brilliance of Robert Kaplow’s (also unlikely to win) crackling dialogue.
Sinners getting nominated for 16 awards is astonishing because, not only is it a great movie, but the Academy doesn’t usually recognize or reward genre films. Don’t quote me on this, but it feels like the last time something “fantastical” was given the respect it deserved by the Oscars was 2003’s Return of the King. The problem is because Sinners is nominated for so many awards, it’s unlikely to win very many of them. I think it’s guaranteed to win for score and cinematography, but everything else is up in the air.
If one is looking to catch as many of these films as they can before the Oscars, here are a few recommendations:
Even if one doesn’t like vampires, watch Sinners. This movie will only grow in esteem over the years and has more to say about race in America than one can catch in a single viewing.
Timothée Chalamet’s inability to hide his desperation to be considered a generationally great actor is off-putting, but his work in Marty Supreme is undeniable. The film (and his performance) is colossal and only grows the more one thinks about it, but I still don’t really want to watch it again and re-soak in that level of anxiety.
Benicio del Toro’s and Teyona Taylor’s effortless charisma in One Battle After Another; Rose Byrne’s astonishing deconstruction of motherhood in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You; the stunning animated short Retirement Plan; the singularly brilliant live action short Two People Exchanging Saliva; the poetry of the Pacific Northwest seen from Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography in Train Dreams; Ruth E. Carter’s immaculate period costuming and Ludwig Goransson’s all-time classic score in Sinners; and the deceptive brilliance of Brazil’s The Secret Agent are all genuinely great elements that have made 2025 one of the finest years for films of the century.
Watch what there’s time for, but don’t stress. These movies will last.
Even as I bemoan the things that I know will lose or didn’t even get nominated, I still love celebrating movies, an art form I’ve spent nearly half my life writing about. These artists and their films deserve to be recognized because, at the end of the day, making a movie is a minor miracle, and making a great one is something even more ephemeral and rare. They’re pieces of forever that we were lucky enough to experience in our all-too-brief lifetimes. Why am I even complaining?
