In many ways, 2025 has left us with a lot to be desired. Geopolitically, the planet is in a huge mess. Musically, few years have left us with drearier hits. Yes, sports-wise the Toronto Blue Jays gave us a lot to cheer for, but I would offer that the year’s true thrills were to be found in our cinemas.
This awards season has been the best in many years. My efforts throughout the winter to catch up with potential Oscar darlings yielded gem after gem. Now that we’re more than halfway through the 20s, this decade is shaping up to be a pivotal period for cinematic arts. If only film distributors, streaming services, and, yes, audiences gave the medium the respect it deserves.
This is my eighth consecutive year watching every Best Picture nominee for the Academy Awards, followed with typing my thoughts about each one on this spot on the world wide web. Before typing about my least favourite nominee, I always mention a few movies I feel would have made the year’s Oscar race more interesting. Traditionally I have mentioned Wes Anderson’s movies. Because I feel The Phoenician Scheme left much to be desired, I shall not be doing so this year. (It’s not all bad, just not up to Anderson’s usual standards.) Instead, let me direct your attention to another Oscar category: Best International Feature Film. France’s nominee this year is It Was Just an Accident. In truth, that movie comes from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, filmed in his home country without a permit, and crafted in utter defiance against his country’s authoritarian regime. In my book, that makes Panahi one of the true heroes of 2025, and It Was Just an Accident one of the year’s must-see films.
But I also have to shine some light on Park Chan-wook’s latest masterpiece No Other Choice. I have no idea how this masterfully suspenseful, insightful and funny movie managed to roll snake eyes on Oscar nomination morning. Certainly Chan-wook should have found a home in the Best Director category, and Lee Byung-hun would have added to this year’s Oscar proceedings in a positive way if he had gotten a Best Actor nomination.
And let me sneak one more gripe in before we really get going. Songwriter Diane Warren has received her seventeenth nomination for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures. Her song, “Dear Me,” comes from a documentary called Diane Warren: Relentless. This is the tenth of her nominations in this category, and it represents the sole nomination for that production. Long ago it became clear that the voting body of this category looks for any excuse to nominate Warren whether her offering that year is worthy or not, and it has long since become embarrassing. Remember the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony when Becky G hit the stage to perform “The Fire Inside” from the movie Flamin’ Hot, about the invention of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, to the bewilderment of everyone in the audience? That’s where these relentless Diane Warren nominations have gotten us. And if we had deprived Warren of her nomination this year, it would have allowed us to nominate “Let Us Be Devoured,” Andrea Datzman’s charmingly kooky folk offering at the end of Fantastic Four: First Steps. So, if Kesha strolls on stage to warble Warren’s latest torpid ditty from the songwriter’s own docudrama, remember what could have been.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with it. Let me remind you, these aren’t predictions. I don’t find that interesting. These are my own feelings about this year’s ten Best Picture nominees, ranked from least deserving in my eyes to most. Here we go!
10. F1: The Movie
In case there was any confusion out there, this movie isn’t about the first function key on your personal computer. I know I’m being silly; this was the ninth highest-grossing movie worldwide of 2025, pulling in more than $633 million. Its mass appeal is evident; Brad Pitt is in full movie star mode here, and director Joseph Kosinski has attached a bunch of cameras to a bunch of fast-moving vehicles, just like he did three years ago for Top Gun: Maverick. And it’s all happening to a slew of well-loved rock and pop songs, ranging from oldies like “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin and “The Stroke” by Billy Squier to new offerings like “Drive” by Ed Sheeran and “Bad as I Used to Be” by Chris Stapleton. (I hope Sheeran and Stapleton are at the same Oscar party as Datzman when Kesha hits the stage. If they are, I want a picture of their reaction.)
I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t enjoy F1: The Movie. I did. It’s a well-constructed thrill ride. It deserves some kudos for making me care, because I entered the movie with zero appreciation for Formula 1 racing, but I came to respect the strategy coming into play when a driver elects to enter or skip the pit stop. As summer blockbusters go, F1 is solid.
Does it deserve to be part of this year’s Oscar conversation? Outside of some technical categories, I don’t think so. Especially when movies like No Other Choice and It Was Just an Accident are on the outside looking in.
There is nothing wrong with a movie like F1, just like there is nothing wrong with Disneyland rides like Space Mountain. The race scenes are thrilling. Brad Pitt is handsome. Those things work in F1’s favour, and Warner Brothers raked in more than $633 million because of that. But if box office receipts are what the Oscars are about, why not nominate that Minecraft movie, which made more money for Warner last year than F1 did? I don’t care about box office, and I don’t find much to care about in F1.
It all boils down to the screenplay and the characters. Pitt plays Sonny, a rebellious drifter with a troubled past, who can’t be pinned down. Of course, he’s one of the most talented race car drivers to ever grace our planet. An old friend (played by Javier Bardem) reacquaints with him in a laundromat, and asks him to join his Formula One team, and Sonny acts all non-committal. But he eventually shows up, and he has an immediate adverse effect on the young, cocky, upstart driver played by Damson Idris. Can they learn to work together, and raise Bardem’s Formula One team out of the toilet?
SPOILER ALERT. Of course they do. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be much of a movie.
As effective as Pitt is at doing his movie star thing in F1, there’s not a lot to his Sonny character. Kosinski and his screenwriting partner Ehren Kruger try to make it seem like there is, but it never amounts to much. Yes, he suffered a serious accident racing thirty years prior. Yes, he has three failed marriages, and is a recovering gambling addict. But those are only things we’re told about Sonny. As viewers we’re never shown those things. Upon the movie’s conclusion I was convinced that Sonny was unchanged from who he was at the beginning of F1. The events of the story provoked zero growth in the man, and if that’s the case, how good of a story could it have been?
I suppose I have to congratulate Kosinski for being able to attach cameras to fast-moving vehicles as well as he does, but are the race scenes in F1 that much more thrilling than those in another recent auto-racing Best Picture nominee, Ford v Ferrari? That movie also had its storytelling flaws, with major events happening off-camera, but I think Matt Damon and Christian Bale’s characters had more substance and were less clichéd than any in F1. I would much sooner give Ford v Ferrari a second look than F1.
Also, thank you Warner for specifying that this is F1: The Movie. When I clicked on this on AppleTV+, I was relieved I didn’t get F1: The Stage Musical or F1: The Puppet Show. You really saved us all a boatload of confusion.
9. Marty Supreme
I wanted to enjoy this movie more than I did. I still want to like this movie more than I do. Filmmakers I admire laud this movie to the high heavens. Both Paul Thomas Anderson and Paul Schrader proclaim this as one of the greatest of 2025. And, as far as craftmanship, I can see from where they’re coming.
Josh Safdie is a filmmaker who came to my attention just before the pandemic that began this decade. I had heard about Good Time, a movie he made with his brother Benny, and they reteamed for 2019’s Uncut Gems. I bought a ticket for that movie starring Adam Sandler, and I was treated to one of the most stress-inducing cinematic experiences I had ever endured. If that comes across as a criticism, it’s not. By having Sandler’s character make the exact wrong choice in every scene over and over again, it’s clear that stress was the reaction the Safdie brothers were trying to provoke, and they succeeded brilliantly. Half a dozen years later, there are scenes from Uncut Gems that still inhabit a place in my brain. With that movie, the Safdie brothers earned my respect, but that marked the end of their partnership, choosing to make their own movies. This year, Benny released The Smashing Machine, and Josh released the far bigger hit film, Marty Supreme – the highest grossing movie in the history of A24.
I can see Josh trying to recreate the magic he and his brother wove in Uncut Gems. This new movie stars Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a gifted table tennis player who does awful things in scene after scene after scene. The difference, as I see it, is that Sandler’s character is a gambling addict who can’t help but choose the dopamine hit of the longshot over the tedium of a safer choice. There’s a larger insidious force governing his actions, almost making his mistakes not entirely his fault. Conversely, Mauser is an irredeemable little shit who uses everyone around him to further his own ends. He is an absolutely infuriating character, and I’m sure that’s by Safdie’s own design.
My problem is similar to one I had with last year’s Best Picture winner, Anora, another film with whose characters I didn’t enjoy spending time. There were limits to how much I could care what happened to Ani or Vanya last year, and as hard as Mauser is working to achieve his goals – at everyone else’s expense – this year in Marty Supreme, he is someone with whom it’s so difficult to empathize. And I don’t think it’s impossible to make a good movie with an asshole for a protagonist. One of Martin Scorsese’s most revered movies is Raging Bull, which saw Robert De Niro deliver an Oscar-winning performance as a toxic boxer wielding violence and terror over everyone around him, but that character undergoes an arc where he learns a lesson, albeit too late. There isn’t much of an arc for Mauser.
There is another thing about Marty Supreme that puzzles me. Even though the story is set in 1952, Safdie has peppered the film with iconic tunes from such 80s mainstays as Tears For Fears, Alphaville, New Order, Peter Gabriel, Public Image Ltd. and more. Obviously, this is an anachronism that Safdie chose, but I’m still here, months after seeing this movie (at the time I type this), wracking my brain trying to figure out what was gained through this audio mismatch. You can call it a stylistic choice, and I’m all for it if it leads to somewhere interesting, but it’s 2026 and we’re drowning in 80s musical nostalgia. Do we really need another movie to feature “Forever Young” on its soundtrack?
As many problems as I have with Marty Supreme, I think Chalamet does an amazing job portraying Mauser, carrying this movie on his shoulders. (He is a favourite to win Best Actor.) Darius Khondji earned his Oscar nomination for his cinematography. Safdie himself is nominated for Best Director, and while I have problems with some of his choices, I have to respect him for committing to his choices, and executing them as strongly as he did, making Marty Supreme a movie I respect more than I enjoy.
8. Train Dreams
The nominee with arguably the lowest profile, Train Dreams surprised many by snagging four Oscar nods. After all, it doesn’t boast a splashy, attention-getting acting performance; Joel Edgerton gives a very subdued and quiet portrayal of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker making his way through life in the United States’ Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. But director and writer Clint Bentley has captured a tranquil beauty, not only in the sumptuous shots of the forests, rivers, valleys and mountains, but through the exploration of one of the most endless themes in all of art: loss.
Robert is the hub around which this movie spins, beginning at the start of his work life as a logger. The omniscient third-person narrator informs us that he doesn’t have a purpose or ambition. That seems to change when he meets Gladys at church. The two quickly fall in love, and Robert buys an acre of land on which he builds a cabin. When their daughter Katy is born, it seems Robert has found an ideal life, save for his months away logging and building railroads so they have enough money to live. It’s during one of these away periods when disaster strikes.
Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso may be Train Dream’s most valuable player. The way he moves the camera through the numerous natural settings throughout this narrative, displaying both the beauty and harshness of Robert’s environment, Veloso has more than earned his nomination in Best Achievement in Cinematography. While this year’s category is stacked, I think he has an outside chance of taking home the Oscar. He’s already made history as the first Brazilian ever nominated in this category.
I have two hangups holding this film back from being higher on this list; the first being the character of Robert. While I have no qualms with the way Edgerton plays him, I find it difficult to connect with him. He begins the film being described as lost and purposeless. Then it seems like his wife and daughter are his only joys in life. When he suffers the enormous loss signalling this movie’s big pivot point, Robert doesn’t seem to do much more than just exist. I realize that is how existence feels for many in real life after suffering a big loss, but with such a vaguely-drawn character as Robert, it’s easy for a viewer to doubt that this story is headed anywhere of substance.
The second is the omniscient third-person narrator, brought to us by the voiceover stylings of Will Patton. Bentley says his choice to employ this device was influenced by classic films like Jules and Jim and Y Tu Mamá También, but I constantly wondered what Train Dreams would have been like with much less narration, or even none at all. I didn’t think the narration was performed badly, but maybe I’m orthodox in my own way about film. I suppose I believe movies are a visual medium, and therefore as much of the story should be told in visual language. Still, Bentley’s choices don’t have to jive with my own, and I think other audience members would appreciate the narration to break the silence in what is largely a very quiet movie. I just can’t help but wonder if there was another way.
Still, I think Train Dream’s inclusion has made this a more interesting Oscar race, if only for the depth and beauty captured by Bentley and Veloso, and I appreciate awards season for bringing this movie to my attention.
7. Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s latest blockbuster made history by surpassing films like All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land as the most nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards, amassing 16 nominations total. It was clearly a passion project for the celebrated director, delving into the music, culture and struggles of his ancestors in a fantastical tale set in Clarksdale, Mississippi during the Jim Crow era.
Devotees to this blog will recall that, had I the power, I would have awarded Black Panther with the 2019 Oscar for Best Picture, so I have previously fallen hard underneath Coogler’s filmmaking spell. I greatly enjoyed Sinners, and I admire the passion and care Coogler has injected into every frame of this movie. Some of my favourite parts of Sinners were the ones that I didn’t see coming.
One of the biggest discoveries for me came in the character of Annie, the ladylove of Smoke, one of the twin brothers played by Michael B. Jordan. Annie is played by Wunmi Mosaku, and I was amazed with her performance. The first moment the camera hits her, she infuses the movie with a gravitas, strength and calmness. I had never heard of Mosaku before Sinners, and I’m excited to see what projects she works on in the future.
The other discovery is a single scene. Sinners’ entire premise is that there are people who make music so true it pierces the veil between the living and the dead, conjuring spirits from the past and the future. So, when a blues guitar prodigy named Sammie (played by Miles Caton) performs a song called “I Lied to You,” what follows is a scene so intricately crafted, it will surely live on in every viewer’s mind long after they see the movie. (There’s a reason “I Lied to You” is nominated for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures.) Sammie’s voice soars upward, and the ceiling of the juke joint appears to burn, allowing visions of musicians from not just ancient societies, but future societies to appear and join in with his song. We see West African drummers, delta blues musicians, a Peking opera dancer dressed as Sun Wukong, ballerinas, gospel singers, all the way to hip-hop musicians and twerking dancers. What makes this sequence all the more impressive is the fact that it was filmed on 65 mm film for IMAX screens. That forced the sequence to be filmed in sections since the magazine for the camera that could be mounted on the Steadicam rig could only hold enough film for approximately 90 seconds. The camera department worked with the visual effects team to pre-plan the sequence, and figured out there were four “stitch points” where they could weave in the otherworldly musicians. And what we see is the actual burning of the juke joint; the ceiling was lit on fire on the final day of production so the camera could push through with burning embers floating through the starry night sky. Considering the enormous amount of work put into that sequence, it’s staggering that it works as beautifully as it does.
Of course, Michael B. Jordan deserves an enormous amount of credit playing the dual role of the Smoke/Stack twins. Naturally this netted him his first Oscar nomination, which was long overdue. (I still think he was owed a Best Supporting Actor nod for Black Panther seven years ago.) Both twins have very distinct personalities, and you can tell which one is which without seeing any clothing; Jordan does it all with his vocal intonations, or by changing his swagger. He has truly earned his status one of the true movie stars of the 20s.
With so much going for it, why haven’t I placed Sinners higher up on this list? While I admire the passion and ambition Coogler brought to this project, it often feels too chaotic for me. One of the many works Coogler has cited as influences for Sinners is a horror movie from the 90s by director Robert Rodriguez: From Dusk Till Dawn. Never a personal favourite of mine, my main complaint about it is the film’s careless tonal change once the vampires enter the picture. While I think Sinners is a much stronger film, I have similar criticisms of its shift in tone. I admire the balancing act the film is attempting with its horror, musical and historical elements; I’m just not sure it succeeds throughout its running time.
Sinners was one of the biggest box office successes of 2025, and it feels good that audiences really took to a project that meant so much to its filmmaker. Sinners deserves each of its sixteen nominations, and is one of the reasons 2025 was such a great year for film.
6. Bugonia
The same year I selected Black Panther as most deserving of that year’s Best Picture trophy, I placed a little film called The Favourite in the runner-up position. That not only was the film that marked my introduction to director Yorgos Lanthimos, but it’s the same project that began his incredibly fruitful working relationship with Emma Stone. This year gave us their fourth collaboration, and they’re still bringing out the best in each other.
Of the four Stone/Lanthimos offerings, Bugonia possesses the clearest allegory to the toxic political landscape of the current day. Jesse Plemons plays Teddy Gatz, an intensely driven but clearly troubled young man stuck in a low-paying job while saddled with the care of his dying mother and his developmentally-challenged younger brother, Don (played by Aidan Delbis). As quickly becomes obvious, Teddy is way too online, ingesting the craziest conspiracy theories, accepting them as fact, and imparting his craziness to his younger brother who believes everything Teddy preaches. Teddy is convinced that the CEO of the biomedical company for which he works is an alien from outer space, and that he and Don have to kidnap her, shave her head, and chain her up in their basement to prevent the takeover of the planet.
It’s the type of nutty premise towards which Lanthimos would be drawn. What he and screenwriters Will Tracy and Jang Joon-hwan accomplish so masterfully is keeping the audience off kilter. How deranged is Teddy really? Is there something a little off about the Michelle Fuller, the kidnapped CEO played to yet another Oscar nomination by Stone? As the tension ratchets up further and further, our preconceptions about these characters become increasingly challenged.
It goes without saying that this is an ideal time for a movie like this. With so many people growing so cynical in traditional news media resulting in a turn towards disreputable websites filled with conspiracy theories designed to validate their imagined victimhood and their need to feel power, Teddy Gatz doesn’t feel like as much of outlandish character as he should. That’s probably why out of the four Stone/Lanthimos films, this may feel the most grounded in our world. That’s not to say that Lanthimos refrains completely from exercising his weirdest impulses. (Who knew he was such a Friends fan?)
I’m really enjoying the Stone/Lanthimos partnership, and I hope it continues for a good while. It’s hard to judge whether this is the strangest of the movies to score a Best Picture nod this year. Regardless, I’m happy that Academy members saw fit to cast their votes in favour of such a playfully subversive movie – another reason why I found this year’s Oscar race such a pleasure.
5. Frankenstein
Full disclosure: I worked a single day on the set of Frankenstein. I shook director Guillermo del Toro’s hand, and I held a door open for Jacob Elordi while he was in full monster make-up. Partly for this reason, it was such a peculiarly transcendent experience to see Frankenstein on the big screen.
Del Toro is a director with as distinctive a style as Lanthimos. His last three feature films have been nominated for Best Picture, with The Shape of Water taking the prize in 2018. I think his films are of such a grand scale that it’s a shame to not see them in a proper cinema, which makes his current working relationship with Netflix such a frustration for me. Frankenstein received such a short theatrical run that I felt like I had to jump through hoops just for the chance to view it properly. I’m very glad I did.
By now, Mary Shelley’s novel on which Frankenstein is based is 208 years old. The story has been told and retold so many times in so many media, with varying levels of faithfulness. When I took my seat in the cinema, I wasn’t concerned with how closely del Toro’s film followed Shelley’s narrative. I was more curious with how he would infuse his style into the story we all know so well. I was happy to find that Frankenstein held the same mixture of creepiness and heart that made The Shape of Water so memorable.
Del Toro may not have received a Best Director nomination this time out, but there are others connected to this movie who have that I think have an excellent chance of taking home a trophy. First, Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey worked wonders in Frankenstein’s make-up department. They covered Elordi’s entire being from head to toe in scars, decomposing flesh and unruly hair in sessions that would take as long as ten hours.
Secondly, production designer Tamara Deverell and set decorator Shane Vieau have created some of the most sumptuous sets in any film this year. Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and Captain Anderson’s ship alone were both fully constructed from nothing, with the ship “docked” in the studio’s parking lot. This was all to del Toro’s demands. “I want real sets,” he says. “I don’t want digital, I don’t want AI, I don’t want simulation. I want old-fashioned craftsmanship: people painting, building, hammering, plastering.”
Then, of course, there is Elordi’s performance as The Creature. It’s hard to imagine any other actor giving us this performance. He combined his 6-foot five frame with a tremendous dedication to the role, studying both Mongolian throat singing and Japanese butoh dance (involving both undignified poses and dark themes). Between his time in the make-up chair and his time on set performing as The Creature, del Toro came to believe Elordi was superhuman, often putting in twenty hour days. Fortunately, it ended up being Elordi’s happiest experience so far making a film. “It’s the most I’ve felt at home, ever, playing a character and shooting a movie,” he says. “It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever been.”
Which is ironic, since, when the ingredients all come together, the effect is unnerving. Elordi’s creature never asked to be given life, and now that he seemingly can not die, his immortality seems like a cruel joke. Towards the latter part of the film when Oscar Isaac’s Dr. Frankenstein seeks to extinguish the life from the hulking monster he created, a being bent on revenge for both abusing him and giving him unending life, it is particularly disquieting to see how much The Creature actually wants to die, and how much it pains him to never get his wish. Del Toro’s screenplay lends more intelligence and soul to The Creature than previous iterations of this story have, and it’s that intelligence that has become another element in his filmmaking career.
Will I ever get on another of del Toro’s sets? Who’s to say? I do, however, know that I’ll be in the cinema watching his next outing (if Netflix allows me).
4. The Secret Agent
One of the best things about cinema is how it allows you to spend time in far flung places you may never visit. For the second awards season in a row, a film from Brazil is nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (last year we were given I’m Still Here), and, once again, we are flung into the country’s fraught history.
The Secret Agent is set in 1977, around the mid-point of a 21-year military dictatorship. As the film opens, director Kleber Mendonça Filho makes it clear that all is not well in his home country. We’re introduced to our main character, who we’re told is named Marcelo, as he drives his yellow Volkswagen Beetle into a gas station. He sees that a dead body is sprawled underneath a piece of cardboard, and he asks the attendant about it. It turns out that the now dead man was trying to steal to cans of oil, and the night attendant shot him, and he’s been lying dead for three days. After Marcelo’s gas tank is filled up, a police cruiser pulls into the station, not to deal with the dead body, but to ask for Marcelo’s ID. The cops treat the corpse as if it’s a mere annoyance.
That’s the climate in which The Secret Agent is set. Marcelo is driving to Recife where his young son lives, and is taking shelter at the home of 77-year-old Dona Sebastiana, who is also giving shelter to others whose lives have been tragically altered by the regime they live under. As we find out more and more about Marcelo, we find out more and more about the people looking for him. Marcelo is racing to find out the truth about his family, but will the truth appear before he’s found?
It’s obvious that Filho feels a powerful connection to his home country of Brazil, both the ugly and the beautiful sides of it. He’s done an amazingly thorough job restoring Recife to its 70s antiquity, right down to rotary-dial telephone booths. The photographs of President Ernesto Geisel on the walls of various buildings show the looming presence of the authoritarian state bearing down on everyone’s lives. How do you survive under a regime like that? Do you resist it in your quiet way, like Marcelo, or do you submit to it like so many in The Secret Agent?
The climactic moment in this movie is boldly staged. Marcelo has taken a job at a government-issued ID office to which he has been tracked. He realizes he’s been found when he hears someone call out the name he used before he came to Recife. Filho has his camera follow Marcelo through the building’s snaking hallways as he tries to evade those who aim to do him wrong. Then the action spills out of the building and through the town, all through these elaborate tracking shots. It’s magnificent.
Wagner Moura, who plays Marcelo, has been a bona fide star in Brazil for close to twenty years, and now he’s an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor. His powerful presence grounds this film in Marcelo’s search for truth, and his desire to ensure his son’s safety. He’s a major reason why this film struck such a chord in Brazil last year, drawing more than a million moviegoers to the cinema in less than a month and becoming the highest grossing Brazilian release of the year.
The Secret Agent shows what film can achieve. A movie can thrill, but it can also exorcise a nation’s historic demons at the same time. And it’s clear that Brazil’s film community, with figures like Filho and Walter Salles, are up to that challenge, inspiring more rising filmmakers to follow their example.
3. Sentimental Value
As we’ve experienced the fruitfulness on Yorgos Lanthimos’ partnership with Emma Stone for close to a decade, so too do we have a similar working relationship between writer/director Joachim Trier and actress Renate Reinsve. Sentimental Value marks the third collaboration for the Norwegian artists. I saw their previous collaboration, The Worst Person in the World, five years ago, and while I enjoyed it, it did not prepare me for how hard their next effort would hit me.
Sentimental Value opens with our introduction to Reinsve’s character Nora, and it’s quite an introduction. It’s opening night for the latest stage play in which she’s starring, and she’s a bundle of nerves. The house is full, and the lights are lowered. The opening sound and light cues go into effect, yet backstage we see Nora tearing off her costume, and trying to leave the theatre. Several people try to corral her back to her appropriate place. With much effort, Nora is collected, and the opening sound and light cues are played again. This time Nora walks on stage, and she is electric. Her skill, talent and charisma are off the charts. Why is she such a basket case?
Recently Nora’s mother passed away. When Nora and her sister were young, their parents divorced. Their father, Gustav, went away to become a renowned filmmaker, and their mother raised them in a house in Oslo that had long been in Gustav’s family. Now that she’s gone, Gustav has returned to Oslo to reclaim the house. He also wants to meet with Nora. He has written a screenplay about his own mother, and he wants Nora to play her. Nora refuses to even read the screenplay, clearly never having forgiven him for abandoning not only her mother, but her sister and herself.
Trier, along with editor Olivier Bugge Couté, have enabled Sentimental Value to shift seamlessly between Gustav and Nora’s narratives in some truly creative ways. Probably the most dramatic edit was the sudden cut to a pair of children running down a hill, chased by some soldiers. In the foreground is a train, doing its final boarding. The young girl manages to get on the train as it takes off, but not the young boy, who is apprehended by the soldiers. The young girl takes a seat and dares not to look out the window. The screen goes dark, and an audience applauds. It turns out this is a scene, all shown in a single tracking shot, is from one of Gustav’s most acclaimed films. They’re showing it because he’s being celebrated in a career retrospective at the Deauville American Film Festival. Also, the young actress in that scene was Nora’s sister, Agnes, who abandoned acting not long after that film was shot.
It’s such moments that, apart from being gorgeous, add depth and tissue to the characters in this disassembling family. As Gustav proceeds with his latest film project, he delves further into his own twisted family history. As talented and as visionary as he is, he knows he has hurt people around him. His shame is buried deep beneath him, and he has been carrying it for a long time, just like the anger Nora has been carrying.
I probably connected with this movie so profoundly because I had a very fraught relationship with my own father, and I’m very fortunate to have been advised to forgive him for the ways he hurt me before he passed away, rather than carry resentment for the rest of my days. Reinsve plays that anger and neurosis beautifully, and has more than earned her nomination for Best Actress. Stellan Skarsgård has earned his long-overdue first ever Oscar nomination for his turn as Gustav. Trier is up for Best Director, and Couté is rightfully nominated for Best Achievement in Film Editing. And those are only four of the movie’s nine Oscar nominations!
I’m very thankful Sentimental Value has been so celebrated this awards season. In a less stacked year, I would likely have it at the top of this list, simply for showing how families can fall apart if those ties are neglected, and how rewarding it is to invest the effort to mend those ties.
2. Hamnet
I typed about the theme of loss earlier on during my thoughts about Train Dreams. I can’t think of many films that have explored this theme as powerfully as Hamnet.
Adapted from a historical fiction novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet opens by introducing us to a woman named Agnes, magnificently portrayed by Jessie Buckley. Agnes is deeply connected to nature. She wakes up comfortably nestled amongst the roots of a massive tree. She engages in falconry. She scours the forest floor for ingredients for her homemade tinctures and balms she uses to cure every malady. These behaviours cause the townspeople to view her as unusual at the least, some going so far as to call her a witch.
Regardless of her reputation, Agnes attracts the attention of a tutor (played by Paul Mescal) who often sees her walking with her falcon outside his classroom window. When the two meet, there’s an immediate attraction. They marry, and start a family.
Director Chloé Zhao collaborated on the screenplay with O’Farrell herself, and the choice to open at the start of the love affair is a wise move. As the tutor’s literary and dramatic career blossoms, he is away from the family more and more. The children grow older attracting the unique devotion of both parents. In particular, the boy, Hamnet, shows passion for the playhouse where his father works. But it’s during one of his father’s absences when the family is struck by the bubonic plague, and Agnes’s efforts and knowledge as a healer are stretched beyond their limits. She is inconsolable after failing to prevent a loss, and her love for her husband is threatened by her resentment for his absence.
Hamnet didn’t just affect me because of the loss of the family member, but because of the dissolution of the family itself. We have grown to care about Agnes and her husband, and all the things she saw in him upon first meeting. But Buckley does such a marvelous job showing Agnes’ grief and distress, that we can’t help but understand why her heart is now closed.
The final scene will go down in history as a classic. Agnes reluctantly attends a play her husband wrote, but her attitude shifts upon realizing he was inspired to write it about the loss their family suffered. When we see Buckley recognize the playwright’s expression of grief, and grow more enthralled with the drama on the stage, it might be the most beautiful scene of any film from 2025.
The common wisdom is that Buckley has a lock on the Best Actress Oscar this year, and that very well may be true. There is a reason for that, but she’s only one of the gifts Hamnet has to bestow. Casting director Nina Gold is singled out in the brand-new category Best Casting, and I think it’s well deserved, not only for giving Buckley the role of her career, but for casting Mescal, Olivia Lynes and the Jupe brothers, both Jacobi and Noah – who both do astounding work.
Hamnet is going to stay with me for a long time, especially that final scene. I’m not ashamed to admit that tears spilled out of both my eyes, which is proof that everyone who had a hand in bringing Hamnet to the screen did their job amazingly well.
And, if it were up to Dimetre, the Oscar would go to…
One Battle After Another
Let me state that it has taken me a while to decide which film would top this list. That’s a great problem to have. Again, 2025 gave us a fantastic roster of movies, and this list could have easily been topped by Sentimental Value or Hamnet. In the end, I decided to go with One Battle After Another simply because of the wide variety of ways it achieves its status as a great movie.
First, this is easily one of the best films Paul Thomas Anderson has ever made, and that’s saying something. This is the same filmmaker that gave us Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master and Licorice Pizza, the latter which I’m on record declaring as the most deserving recipient of the 2022 Best Picture Oscar. Over the past thirty years he has proven himself as one of the most fearless and adventurous filmmakers working today. He is able to navigate between many different tones, from meditative, to absurd, to surreal, to violent… all while never missing a step.
One Battle After Another hits all those notes, and it feels like Anderson is operating on his largest stage yet. That’s because he is. With a budget of $130 million, this is the most expensive of Anderson’s movies. It’s also the first of his movies to be screened in IMAX, and is already the director’s highest-grossing movie. None of those are the reason why I placed One Battle After Another at the top of this list, but I’m happy that Anderson has reached a new height of success this far into his career.
Perhaps the biggest reason why I would give One Battle After Another the big prize is because, out of these ten movies, this is the one that most needs to be seen at this moment in time. Right now, there are regimes in countries all over the world that are growing increasingly authoritarian. One Battle After Another is about the French 75, a far-left revolutionary group that shows no qualms about crossing legal boundaries in fulfilling their objectives, whether they’re breaking their detained colleagues out from prison, or robbing banks. Opposing the French 75 is Stephen J. Lockjaw, played by two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn, earning a Supporting Actor nomination for this part. Lockjaw is depraved in many ways – one being sexually. This is made clear when he encounters Perfidia, played to sizzling perfection by Teyana Taylor, who has also scored an Oscar nomination for her work here. The first encounter between these two involves Perfidia sexually humiliating Lockjaw, and his obsession with her is white hot ever after. The next time Lockjaw catches Perfidia breaking the law, he agrees to release her in exchange for having sex with him.
All the while, Perfidia is married to Bob, played to a Best Actor nomination by Leonardo DiCaprio. When Perfidia becomes pregnant, resulting in the birth of Willa, she continues her activity with the French 75 while Bob increasingly withdraws from it, spending more time looking after Willa. Eventually Perfidia disappears from the lives of both Bob and Lockjaw, her absence affecting both men in unique ways.
Lockjaw, reaching new levels of depravity, is invited to join the Christmas Adventurers Club, a white-supremacist secret society, and this possibility of membership is something he wants desperately. In order to ensure his eligibility, Lockjaw sets about hunting for Willa, the daughter of the African-American Perfidia, to make sure she isn’t his offspring. If she is, she’ll have to be killed.
The ensuing mayhem is beautifully executed by Anderson, in collaboration with Director of Photography Michael Bauman. The car chases in the desert are probably the highlight of the movie. Anderson has cited classics like Bullitt, The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, The Vanishing Point, Sugarland Express and Ronin as influences, but I don’t think I’ve seen car chases shot like the ones in One Battle After Another before. Anderson takes advantage of the rising and falling hills in the California highways to momentarily obscure the positions of the cars involved in the chase, ratcheting up the suspense. This isn’t the type of filmmaker I thought Anderson was, and I’m happy to see new sides of this guy this deep into his career.
At a time when despots are growing less shy about how full of hate and bile they are, the general population has to decide how much fascism they are willing to stomach. Revolutions involve sacrifice and defiance, including defiance of the laws authoritarian governments uphold. While One Battle After Another qualifies as top notch entertainment, with its thrills, spills and laughs, it’s the cast of revolutionaries that makes it a vital offering in our movie houses right now. And that’s why I want it to be rewarded with the Best Picture Oscar this year.