2025 Oscars

As I do annually, this post reviews Academy Award nominees in major categories and provides my rankings within them. I am not predicting winners and only rank the films I have seen. This year, I have not seen very many of the movies, so much more than normal I will be updating this post and noting the edits with yellow highlights. 

You can find my post about last year's Oscars here and work backward if you want. 

Best Picture

Conclave  

Dune: Part Two  

I really liked Conclave even though I was not really expecting much. It features great acting performances and an intriguing storyline. 

Dune 2 has a complicated storyline and the acting is fine, but it is overly long and more of a technical achievement than anything else. Green Borders was a better film last year and I'm sure there were many other more deserving candidates for an Oscar nomination. 

Anora  

The Brutalist  

A Complete Unknown  

Dune: Part Two  

Emilia Pérez  

I’m Still Here  

Nickel Boys 

The Substance  

Wicked  

Directing

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez

Sean Baker, Anora

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

Actor in a Leading Role

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Fiennes does a great job, though it is probably not the best performance of his career. That Nazi he played for Spielberg is difficult to shake all these years later. 

I saw Chalamet in Dune 2 and Stan in A Different Man so I have a feel for their work. Both are quite talented but this year I'd go for Fiennes among the 3 of them. 

 

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Actress in a Leading Role

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez

Mikey Madison, Anora

Demi Moore, The Substance

Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Actor in a Supporting Role

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

I watched A Real Pain instead of the Oscars. It was a very good performance, but grating. 

Yura Borisov, Anora

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Actress in a Supporting Role

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

I don't believe Rossellini will win as this is a surprisingly small part. She is more seen than heard, perhaps predictably in a film about the selection of a new Pope. 

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Animated Feature Film

Flow

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot 

This is unusual. In many years I don't see any of the animated features prior to the Oscars -- and may never see them. This year, I caught one because my wife wanted to see it (she usually has almost no interest in animation) and another because I teach climate change. A third was on a streaming service I'm accessing right now.

I really enjoyed Flow though I freely admit that the dog was my favorite character in a film mostly about the journey of a cat. The flooding and lack of people (and dialogue) makes this seem like a tale about climate change from the point of view of the natural world. 

W&G was fine, but not spectacular. The Wild Robot was too much of a kid movie for my tastes. 

Inside Out 2 

Memoir of a Snail 

Documentary Feature Film

Black Box Diaries 

No Other Land 

Porcelain War

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat 

Sugarcane 

International Feature Film

Flow 

This was a very good film, but I suspect there are stronger contenders for the award. It's amazing to me that Green Borders is not on this list -- apparently a decision marred by government pressure. 

I’m Still Here 

The Girl With the Needle

Emilia Pérez 

The Seed of the Sacred Fig 

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Best Films of 2024

The graphic below identifies the top 25 films from 2024 that critics ranked on their end-of-year "best of" lists. The full list goes to 100 and if you are interested in seeing it, I'm sourcing the list from the same website as I used last year. The methodology for compilation is ostensibly the same. Here's the detail from last year:

Films are sorted by the percentage of lists they are included on.* This is typically the same as sorting by number of lists included, but can vary when films make lists across multiple years.  For example, if one film makes 10 lists in a year with 100 lists available, it’s ranking will be higher than a film that makes 15 lists when 200 lists are available.  The times a film appears at the top of a list is used as a tie-breaker.

*punctuation errors corrected 

Basically, this is an annual best films comment that I'm posting for 2024. This is the post about the best films of 2023. Below this graphic, you'll find my rankings of these films (by tiers) with a list of the ones I still need to see. As I watch them over time, I'll edit the post but note the changes with yellow highlighting.  

This "best of" comment is distinct from both the annual post on "films of 2024," which is my end-of-year musing about all the films I saw in a calendar year, and my annual Oscar post, which concerns that year's Academy Award nominees. 

Top-tier films. These are very serious Oscar contenders:

TBD.

Conclave

I did not have particularly high expectations, but Conclave is excellent film-making. A thriller about selecting a new Pope!

Second-tier films. These are very good and could garner Oscar support:

A Different Man

A Real Pain

Janet Planet

Juror #2

Civil War

Third-tier films. These are entertaining but flawed films:

Love Lies Bleeding

The Wild Robot

Fourth-tier films. I found these to be disappointing and do not recommend (if necessary, could remain blank):

TBD

Films yet to see (20 of 25 as of today):

Anora

Challengers

The Substance

The Brutalist

I Saw the TV Glow

Dune: Part Two

Nickel Boys

All We Imagine as Light

Wicked Part One

Sing Sing

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Hard Truths

The Beast

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Nosferatu

Evil Does Not Exist

No Other Land

Glancing through the rest of the top 100, I've seen the following films already and rank them roughly in this order:

Best of the rest

Green Border (#45) (I'd put this in the first tier above)

Between the Temples (42)

Thelma (61) 

Rebel Ridge (50)

Kneecap (60)

These were all about the same

Saturday Night (73)

Will & Harper (96)

Problemista (82)

Hit Man (31)

Flow (30)

Less enjoyable

Trap (44)

Nearly all of these films would be in my second or third tier above. 

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