2025 Best Picture Rankings

After keeping up a clean streak for over a decade, I managed to miss doing my annual rankings of Best Picture nominees for films that came out in 2024.  Honestly, I just wasn't crazy about the slate of films that year, had zero interest in viewing some of the nominees, and was lukewarm at best for many of the films I did watch.  And honestly, I was quite busy -- life has a habit of intervening at times.  In the end, while I couldn't argue with Anora being one of the better films on that year's Best Picture slate (though I might have gone with Conclave instead), it was a highly underwhelming Best Picture winner, reflecting a very underwhelming set of nominees to begin with. 

This year I'm more bullish once again about the slate of nominees, though that does not mean I'll be heaping praise on all of them. Note that my practice is to rank each Best Picture nominee after a single viewing based on my assessment of how worthy they are for the ultimate Oscar category.  Note that this is not a prediction of who will win, but rather a statement of how I would vote if I could, along with how I'd rank the also-rans.

As evidenced by 2024, every year is a little different in terms of the collective quality of the films.  Sometimes there's a film that is clearly head and shoulders above the rest (think 2023's victory march by Oppenheimer).  Sometimes there's a battle royale of multiple highly deserving works, and those are the best years (think Boyhood and Birdman in 2013).  Sometimes there's a wide swath of worthy films, but no clear standouts that are going to live in our collective memory forever (think 2014, for which Spotlight captured Best Picture but isn't mentioned much today, but neither are any of its major competition, though The Big Short had arguably the best legs of any of the competitors when it comes to recollections of high cinema from that year and The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road provided highly rewatchable films).

This year definitely had a stronger slate than last year, but not as uniformly excellent as some past years. I'm not certain that this year will produce any lasting classics.  As such, there were just three films I thought were truly great examples of modern cinema, a small middle tier of very well crafted but ultimately lacking nominees, and a sizeable raft of flawed films that I'm unsure will live long in our memories past this year's Oscars ceremony.

10 F1

F1 is an auto racing movie revolving around a lead character who used to be at the top of his sport until having a horrible accident, which pushed him out of high profile racing.  No, this isn't Ford v Ferrari, this is that other racing movie.  He is sought out by an old friend to join his racing team to mentor a young hotshot driver who holds a lot of promise but is still learning how to both be a racing professional and win.  No, this isn't Driven, this is that other racing movie.  The relationship between the two teammates deteriorates and ends up with one driver sabotaging the other in a key race.  No, this isn't Days of Thunder, this is that other racing movie.  There's even a horrible crash that leaves one of the rivals badly burned.  No, this isn't Rush, this is that other racing movie.  Still, they are able to overcome all obstacles, including sabotage from their own investors, to garner a team win.  No, this still isn't Ford v Ferrari.  Welcome to the modern world of cinema where many films are pastiches of a combination of prior films, such as how the plot for Top Gun: Maverick is essentially a co-mingling of the main plot elements of the original Top Gun, Star Wars, and Iron Eagle.  Unsurprisingly, the screenwriter for TG:M was also the screenwriter for F1.

Both films feature lots of cockpit scenes too.

There's apparently a limit to the variety of plot points that can happen in a racing movie, but this is not to say that F1 is a bad movie.  It's very competently made, well acted, and possessing some great racing footage (though for some reason the crashes pale in comparison to some of its peers in the racing genre).  It's a perfectly fine movie that makes for a fine watch.  The problem is that's not sufficient for a film to be a serious Best Picture nominee.  F1 does not tell an important story -- as noted, it tells a story that has been told many times before in different forms.  It is well-acted, but there is no tour-de-force performance to make this film truly memorable.  There were some well-thought out production techniques used to make the racing pop off the screen as much as possible, but the result did not feel particularly revolutionary.  Overall, it feels like a good movie that somehow got a nomination and doesn't stand out in any productive way from its fellow nominees.

Not that it was all fluff.  The decision to include lots of coverage of the support crew throughout the race was a nice added element.

9 Sentimental Value

I really wanted to put Sentimental Value higher in this list.  It tells a powerful story about family relationships, depression, and suicide, and it features one of my favorite actors, the legendary Stellan Skarsgard.  But there are too many issues with its execution holding this film back.

For starters, it meanders.  Some directors use filler scenes to create spacing in time or highlight evolution of the situation or create tension.  This film does not appear to do any of those, or if it was, its purpose was lost on me. Instead, I found myself mentally re-editing the film to tighten it up and make it flow more, which is not something I'd argue a film should evoke in its audience.

These two interact exactly once in the film, and never again.  There was zero impact from this scene.  And yet the film's extensive running time includes several minutes of this.

In addition, the film periodically inserts other mechanisms that pulls it away from its ongoing feel of realism, whether its introducing a narrator in two spots or a sequence in which three of the characters are continuously overlaid upon each other such that they seem to constantly morph from one to another.  That's not to say these mechanisms are bad to use, but since they are infrequent and don't match the feeling of the rest of the film, it's jarring.  

But it's still a worthwhile film that deserved consideration, even if I don't think it's close to being Best Picture for the year.  Sentimental Value examines issues of depression and suicide and how they impact and are impacted by our relationships with each other.  This is told through a story featuring Hollywood's favorite subjects: movie making and theater.  Skarsgard plays a famed auteur director while one of his daughters is an acclaimed actress on both tv and the stage.  He's penned his latest (and potentially last) movie script about a character that seems suspiciously like his mother, and he hopes his daughter will play her.  Things of course aren't that clean, and other elements become involved.  The story itself is great, and the messages it relays are important.  It just needed a little better storytelling to be worth a higher ranking.

Additional uncomfortable interactions between the two primary characters would have been a good first step.

8 One Battle After Another

I knew nothing about One Battle After Another outside of the initial ads, which sold the film as a taut thriller.  Instead, the movie is an absurdist tale based vaguely on a Thomas Pynchon satirical novel.  This is, unfortunately, much to its detriment.  When it starts with an infiltration and liberation of an immigrant detention center along the border, it seems the film will be a rallying point for exploration or at least catharsis from these turbulent times.  The cracks start showing quickly, with the revolutionaries seeming more to be adrenaline junkies than true ideological warriors.  Then comes the sado-sexual elements of the plot surrounding French 75 leader Perfidia Beverly Hills and Colonel Lockjaw.  From there, any seriousness regarding the plot flies out the window with the introduction of a racist cabal of Santa Claus cultists secretly running things behind the scenes.  By the time the film's hero, Pat/Bob, shows he is too stoned to remember key pass phrases and offends the delicate sensibilities of a revolutionary communications officer, any hope of there being meaningful discourse from this film is gone. Not that it's necessary for every Best Picture nominee to have something important to say, but coming fresh off the headlines from Minnesota this year into watching this, I felt it was too tone deaf to really be of the moment and otherwise ill-timed to present a spoof of anti-government resistance.

The film really would have benefitted from making Chase Infiniti's Willa/Charlene the main character of the film instead of Leonardo DiCaprio's Pat/Bob.  Willa/Charlene has the most interesting arc, learning about what her mother actually was like, discovering key secrets about her father, and figuring out a direction in life.  However, much of this takes place in secondary scenes that serve as intermissions between Pat/Bob's often inept attempts to escape pursuit and track down where his daughter is being kept.  DiCaprio would have benefitted from this shift as much as the film, as his character is not terribly deep and doesn't get much chance to grow, but a Supporting Actor nominee needs those elements a lot less than an Actor in a Leading Role nominee.  It's not DiCaprio's fault that this is not among his top ten performances in his illustrious career -- there was ultimately just not much there to the role to work with.

He really did make the most of what was an unsatisfying script.

One who perhaps did earn an Oscar statue with their performance this film was Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw.  He manages to be depraved, malevolent, and pathetic all at the same time, which is difficult to pull off.  His Lockjaw is a chaos agent thrown into an already volatile mix, and it is his actions that really drives the plot as he pursues his own ambitions and base needs, often in contradiction with each other.  Penn makes Lockjaw repugnant and repulsive, yet his scenes are by far the most interesting in the entire film.  Without his work, I might have ranked One Battle After Another even lower, and frankly, it would have deserved it.

Benicio del Toro has gotten a lot of buzz for playing the movie's coolest character, and indeed Sensei Sergio is very cool.  But without Penn as Lockjaw, there is simply no reason to even watch this movie.

7 Marty Supreme

So this is what would have happened if Ayn Rand had ever written a sports novel.  There are many things to like about Marty Supreme, including some (but definitely not all) of its performances, its cinematography, and its willingness to experiment a little, but ultimately, I had to put this in the bottom half of the rankings because the story is so awfully static, with as flat an arc for the main character as is theoretically possible, and a cast of characters that show the least amount of human goodness I've potentially ever seen outside of an exploitation film.  There is not a character in this film with redeeming qualities, least of all the protagonist, Marty Mauser.  

Mauser is an ideal example of the objectivist perspective Rand put into her writing, and I have to wonder whether she would have felt proud of what the film makers achieved or slightly put off by someone stealing her slant.  Mauser is a single-minded individual obsessed with having the entire world recognize his greatness in his chosen sport of table tennis.  Nothing and no one is as important to Marty as achieving that recognition.  In pursuing this goal, he lies, he he steals, he cons people, he gets people injured and/or killed, he causes pain.  But to whatever degree he might regret any of this, it pales in comparison to his goal of being recognized as the top table tennis, and to Marty, everyone else is either an aid in that mission or an obstacle to be bypassed or removed.  Thanos obliterates half of all life forms in the universe and yet ends Avengers: Infinity War with a higher moral standing than Marty Mauser.

And certainly Mauser has many obstacles to overcome.  His complete disinterest in being consistent for the people on whom he depends gets him into trouble over and over again, either because they turn on him directly or they get themselves into trouble either to help him or to make up for his lack of help in addressing their needs.  From that sense, there's a certain amount of satisfaction in watching his aims get constantly thwarted.  Even in the end when he proves his supremacy to himself, it's a pyrrhic victory that will leave him in obscurity after he has managed to alienate almost everyone in his life.  That ending is well earned.  He also finds connections with a few individuals for the first time the entire film, an ending that is not at all earned.

Yeah, congratulations you prick.

But the story structure of Marty Supreme is not its only problem.  At 2 hours and 30 minutes, it's overly long, with the ongoing obstacle course that is Marty's quest getting just a bit too repetitive.  How often does he need to screw up or be screwed over for the film makers to be satisfied?  Apparently a lot.  The casting is also at times a bit questionable, as someone thought it was a good idea to have Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary play a major role in the film, no idea what percentage of the box office he negotiated for.  And the film uses a soundtrack that's just confusing, sometimes using period music and sometimes using songs from the modern rock era.  A Knight's Tale's mixture of medieval fife instrumentals and arena rock anthems was far more cohesive.  

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

If it seems I hated this movie, that's not completely true.  I fully recognize why it was nominated.  I just don't think Marty Supreme deserves to win.

6 Train Dreams

Train Dreams is Marty Supreme's spiritual opposite.  While Marty Mauser is an awful human being devoting his life to his selfish goal, Train Dreams' Robert Grainier is a good man living his life wondering what his purpose is.  It is one of those small films that demonstrates clean precision in craft while telling a small, intimate story that makes it onto the Best Picture slate every year and that I end up loving as a result of its near flawless execution and the personal scope of its story.

Robert Grainier is an orphan who, as many orphans have throughout history, grown up directionless without a default path in life to take or rebel against.  Robert just moves through life until he meets the great love of his life, Gladys.  The home and family they build gives Robert the start of a sense of purpose, that of a father and husband and all-around provider for his family.  But it's really Gladys who gives him purpose, proposing ideas of what they might make of themselves.  That comes to an end though when Robert comes home from one of his extended trips making money as a logger to find his home engulfed in a wildfire and his wife and daughter missing.  

Felicity Jones has a talent for playing women who chart the course of their loves' lives.

From there, any sure path in life ends for Robert.  He rebuilds the home and never moves on for fear his family may still be alive and wouldn't be able to find him.  He continues to log to earn a living, but finds the men who take to his line of work are getting rougher with each passing year, the old hands dying or otherwise giving up the work due to frailty.  The country continues to change around him as well, into something that couldn't have seemed possible in his early days at the turn of the century, now watching John Glenn fly into space and he himself buying a ride in what was by then a vintage biplane.  

Our greatest living character actor, William H. Macy is the perfect choice to serve as a guide to the perils of growing old.

I'm spoiling the story here, but the point to Train Dreams isn't its narrative.  It's the journey it takes through that narrative, the sensations and feelings it invokes during that journey, and the common ground it develops for all of us who have ever felt alone while surrounded by people or pondered our destiny while drifting within the currents of life. In its conclusions, Train Dreams doesn't offer any profound statements about life or fate, but the fact that it provides a canvas for asking questions about them is valuable nonetheless.  And providing that canvas as beautiful a backdrop as Train Dreams does makes for a worthwhile film watching experience. 

5 Bugonia

The film world is richer and more interesting for the existence of Yorgos Lanthimos, who continues to make the most insanely imaginative movies of anyone in the industry, this time aided by the fact that he took over for Jang Joon-hwan in making an English-language adaptation of Jang's Korean film Save the Green Planet! after the original director developed health concerns.  It is the perfect marriage between film and substitute director, as it fits Lanthimos' style and sensibility perfectly.

Bugonia follows the planning, execution, and inevitable downfall of conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz's plan to kidnap pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller, who he's convinced is a member of a secret race of aliens, the Andromedans (presumably from one of the billions of planets in the Andromeda Galaxy).  Teddy is aided by his cousin Don, who's on the spectrum.  It's an incredibly small cast, with only a deputy sheriff who is Teddy's former babysitter and holds a shameful secret, and the great Alicia Silverstone as Teddy's mother who was poisoned by Michelle's company serving as significant characters beyond the core three.

Emma Stone is perfect for these types of films, as shown by her continued appearances and success in Lanthimos-directed pictures.  She combines a type of artistic fearlessness along with an acute accessibility that allows her to slip into her roles in these otherwise surreal films effortlessly.  Whether she's playing things straight or embracing the bizarre, it feels completely natural, and Stone has to show a lot of range in this particular performance.  A task that would be hard to pull off for many actresses she makes look easy here.

It will be interesting to see how film historians try to summarize Emma Stone's career in few words.

Similarly, Jesse Plemons shows that he was the answer Hollywood needed for the untimely passing of the great Philip Seymour Hoffman. They both have that ability to just be like, “yep, this mess of oddities is my character — let me slide right in and disappear into him so you can’t tell I’m even acting.” There were so many roles that it seemed only Hoffman could pull off, but I think Plemons could swap in without skipping a beat on many of them.  Here he shows those same skills, making Teddy feel simultaneously imbalanced, rationale, and beleaguered.  You feel Teddy is taking completely off base and taking things too far (until, it seems, he isn't) yet at the same time is overwhelmingly vulnerable and in need of protection.  In other hands, Teddy could have seemed a single note maniac or a malevolent force in the movie, but Plemons makes him that friend you are worried about but hope for the best on his behalf.

You keep doing you, Jesse.  We need you to.

Through all of this chaos, Bugonia asks questions and makes statements about our handling of our responsibilities to this world and its inhabitants (of all species, phyla, and kingdoms).  As you can imagine, the film finds us lacking.  But perhaps not always in the ways you might expect.  

4 Frankenstein

I will admit I was not excited about yet another Frankenstein remake.  I have a soft spot for the old Universal pantheon of monsters, but their basic stories were told -- and told well -- decades ago.  Every modern retelling has attempted to put some unfortunate new spin on the classic tales, which is rarely a good idea. These stories are, despite their origins in individually authored works, essentially modern folklore at this point, and changing folklore to fit a new auteur's fancy tends to ignore the great value of folklore being tales that grow and age with a people and not just at the whim of one person.  Thankfully, Guillermo del Toro sticks to the heart and spirit of Frankenstein's tale (for the most part), even if bringing a modern sensibility to the storytelling structure itself.

In bringing his own style to Frankenstein, del Toro imbues the world with a certain gothic beauty and level of energy.  Despite a two and a half hour runtime, it never feels weighted down or stagnant.  The stunning cinematography of Dan Laustsen, paired with the atmospheric score by Alexandre Desplat, heightens that dark and foreboding feeling.  Scenes featuring death and the reanimation of the human corpse are affecting without being repulsive.  Overall, it is a masterful example of del Toro's ability to put together a strong team of film makers and coordinate all their output into a cohesive whole.

I don't think its cinematography will win the Oscar, but it's a beautifully shot film.

Even with all the craftsmanship put into this film, it is the strong cast that really brings it to life.  Oscar Isaac plays tortured, brooding demi-villains as well as anyone in Hollywood, and his Dr. Frankenstein makes all too many mistakes and lapses in moral judgement, but in ways that are accessible and understandable to the audience.  Similarly, Jacob Elordi plays a Creature that is simultaneously inhuman and all too human at the same time.  His portrayal is engaging enough that del Toro didn't need to change how Elizabeth dies to make the Creature sympathetic, though I suppose given the director's decision to end with a slightly more hopeful ending than the clear tragedy of the novel, some amount of redemption was needed.  

Nothing says an Oscar Isaac role like an off-center moral core and a haunting past.

All in all, while I would still lean toward watching the original Boris Karloff films for my Frankenstein fix, I can recommend this version for my friends who would prefer to see modern film making techniques on display.

3 Sinners

I always pause when I hear about a genre film getting significant buzz as a Best Picture candidate.  There have been some incredible genre films that have merited nomination, especially in the last few decades since taking genre films seriously became cool.  My reticence is not because a genre film can't be worthy of this top honor.  It's because it's very difficult to navigate the structural requirements of a given genre to be both a great genre movie and a great piece of cinematic art that bridges all interests and backgrounds to connect with any audience member anywhere, as that is what great films do.  The Godfather films (both the original and Part II) are not just masterwork crime stories, they construct a family saga that speaks to the moral downfall of a man that made a choice toward villainy despite feeling he didn't have one.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and in particular The Return of the King) is not just a fantasy epic, it tells a universal tale of friendship, duty, and the will to conquer the longest odds, resulting in even the viewers who are the least excited by elves and dragons tearing up at the "You bow to no one" scene.  Sinners does extremely well in its attempt to transcend its genre roots, and almost succeeds perfectly.

I don't think it's much of a spoiler at this point to note that at its genre core, Sinners is a vampire movie.  What sets it apart is that while there are lots of vampires baring fangs and victims who fight back (with varying degrees of success), the film invokes a tie to the folklore of the people.  Despite the lead actor being Michael B. Jordan as the Smoke/Stack twins, the real key to the plot is their cousin, the burgeoning blues guitarist Sammie.  Sammie has a gift with his guitar, and there's a fascinating scene where Sammie plays a blues song that enraptures the entire crowd in the twins' juke joint and pulls on the eternal threads connecting the people with their ancestors as well as with their eventual descendants.  It's a fascinating scene and one I looked forward to seeing followed upon, especially once the fore-mentioned vampires show up, noting they were drawn by Sammie's song and performing as a hive mind an Irish folksong of their own, reflecting the origins of their vampire lord.  I was prepared for this confrontation to build on its discussion of the importance of stories and culminate in a resolution to the film based in that concept.  Sadly, from there, Sinners launches into combat between the humans and the vampires in a mass fight scene straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So close to a unique take on the vampire legend, but unfortunately the film makers turned to the traditional genre tropes.

This scene is by far the most important not just in Sinners, but possibly among all of the films in 2025.

Not that this makes Sinners unworthy of its nomination.  Modify the last half hour of the film to better follow up its established theme and it's at least battling it out with my number one film for the imaginary statue I hand out.   It deserves all of its technical craft nominations, and I agree with most of its acting nominations (I'll admit I'd have preferred a Miles Caton nod over the one the great Delroy Lindo received).  It's a beautiful, well thought out, well acted, well crafted, and well directed film, and I continue to look forward to finding out what's next from director Ryan Coogler, as always.

I mean, just look at that.  Gorgeous!

2 The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is the political thriller and contemporary commentary that One Battle After Another privately wishes it could be.  Despite being a historical movie set 50 years ago in a completely different country, The Secret Agent has more to tell us about the current state of the United States (and many other countries) than any other 2025 film.  This movie features wealthy captains of industry using political sway to enrich themselves and punish those that oppose them.  Corrupt officials use their office for personal gain and to maintain power.  Public funding is twisted away from goals of education and public good toward personal gain for those who are already rich enough to invest in development themselves.  Personal resistance is met with at times extreme peril despite attempting to follow all the rules of law.  It is a story that could seem quite frightful to someone looking at it with today's lens, but the film also provides a statement about the importance of confronting (safely, though art) those things that frighten us the most.

Nothing like being an innocent man surrounded by corrupt cops who "just want to talk".

A common complaint I have about many of the nominees is that they're overly long and could benefit from some tightening up.  For example, some scenes or dialogue in One Battle After Another are simply there to tell a joke.  Despite its 161 minute running time, The Secret Agent does not have any superfluous scenes.  Every single one seems crafted to be important in world building, plot development, establishing atmosphere, or messaging.  Take, for example, the scenes involving a human leg first discovered in the maw of a dead shark, then stolen and dumped by corrupt authorities, and then magically coming back to life and attacking the city's gay population at night (or so the local newspapers say).  While the minutes devoted to this surreal scene do have a comedic element to them, they actually provide a means of highlighting the lengths the corrupt government will take to distract the population from the things they really should be worried about.  In addition, the scene brings together the residents of the refuge house our on-the-run protagonist resides within so that everyone can start talking, leading to the sharing of past stories and future hopes, driving the plot forward.  Comedic scenes are not just comedy in this film.  Violence and action are not there just to thrill the audience.  Every element serves multiple purposes building a cohesive and taut whole.  This is film making in its advanced state.

The violence is at least tastefully done as well.

The film is also helped from some strong acting from its principal, Wagner Moura, who plays a haunted refugee being hunted by agents of a wealthy industrialist, as well as another surprise part.  Also of note is Tania Maria as the woman who runs the safe house where the various dissidents live their new lives while waiting for a chance to escape.  Moura received a deserved nomination for Best Actor.  Maria sadly did not receive a similar nod for Supporting Actress, and honestly I'd support her over most of the actresses who were nominated.  Given it was filmed in Portuguese with a little German dialogue mixed in, I'm unsure how many people will actually watch The Secret Agent, but it is deserving of any attention it will get.

1 Hamnet

I think it's in everyone's best interest to just forget that Chloe Zhao made Eternals, because when not saddled with a movie universe's continuity and the need to somehow bring Z-level villains to the screen for what is otherwise a family-dynamic film, she really knows how to make masterwork films.  I don't know that Hamnet will win her a second Best Director statue any more than I know it will win her another Best Picture statue, but I will be cheering on if it does, because this is a perfectly made film that reaches the viewer in ways no other nominee does this year.  This is movie making and storytelling at its finest.

Zhao starts this film off slowly, as it takes its time defining and deepening the relationship between Anne Hathaway (called Agnes throughout) and her husband William Shakespeare, introducing the pagan magic elements of the plot, and establishing the dynamics of the Shakespeare's children, including the dark prediction Agnes has that one of them will not survive to see her on her deathbed.  The film pauses for moments of foreboding and dread of that eventual day, but otherwise presents us a loving family, of a mother who is fiercely independent and protective of her children, of a father who is a tortured artist who finds his work far away from his family, and the lively, creative children who take after their father and are adored by both parents.  By the time the film amps up the drama leading up to and following the horrible night when illness takes her child, the characters are not only fully familiar but deeply embraced by the viewer, which is important given the emotions of this tragedy are what make the movie effective and serve as the point the film makes about art.

The film also establishes and maintains a motif of dark doorways leading to mystery and often tragedy, and even at the best of times they are presented with a foreboding feeling.  Great visual symbolism.

When young Hamnet dies from the plague, it is portrayed heroically and lovingly, as he lies next to his extremely ill sister, telling her that he will stay beside her and trick death into taking him instead.  The pain of William and Agnes is palpable with real conflict arising from the very different ways they process their grief.  William pours his grief into his work as so many artists do, while the more pragmatic Agnes grieves in the more traditional sense and is offended by her husband writing and staging a play with their son's name.  The emotional climax of the film, when Agnes attends the play and realizes William wrote it not only to honor their son (providing him the moment on stage he'd seen in his dreams) but also to make the world mourn him like they themselves do, is the kind of payoff that every drama attempts to achieve but so few succeed.

This entire scene was so beautifully shot and acted.

I do not know if Hamnet will achieve any kind of lasting recognition as a modern classic or important film, which is what you hope any Best Picture winner will  attain.  But I do know it will be making its audience members cry long after so many of its rivals will have faded from collective memory.

Ranking the 2025 Best Animated Feature Nominees

I haven't done a back to front assessment of the Animated Feature nominees since 2015, but for this 10th anniversary, I'm bringing it back.

During that initial walkthrough of the category, I listed three themes that I derived from examining the thirteen year prior history of the category back then.  These themes are:

1. A nominee should be widely seen.  Niche critical darlings rarely fare well.
2. Innovation helps.  Many winners make significant strides in technical advances that help improve storytelling.
3. Story matters.  The best animated features are often the ones that, if shot as live action (along with any necessary visual effects) would still have significant merit as a film.  Saying that doesn't give the recent spate of live action adaptations of Disney animated classics any more reason to exist (because they don't have any other than to make more money for their corporate masters), but the fact that Disney was able to make actual functioning live action films from these animated features gives an indication of the quality of their stories.

With that context, let's walk through my rankings of this year's nominees.

5. Memoir of a Snail

Memoir of a Snail is an interesting film that tells an engaging story, but doesn't tell it in the most engaging way.  I found my mind wandering a number of times, and I couldn't help but think that this would have done much better if it were shortened and tightened, then released for the Animated Short category.  This seems draconian, as it would require shrinking the run time from 94 minutes to 40.  But there were just too many elements that weren't critical to the central plot or theme of the film, so that kind of extreme editing could be a realistic possibility.

The film follows Grace as she loses both her parents, gets separated from her twin brother, goes through two foster homes, goes through a relationship that has its extreme ups and downs, and loses her final parental figure, all while dealing with the isolation caused by her shyness and depression.  The story is interesting, but a little decompressed.  In addition, the film at times tells rather than shows, which always bothers me.  Still, I appreciated the 90 minutes I spent with the film, even if I came away with thoughts on how to potentially edit it.  It deserves its nomination, but also deserves its fifth place standing on my list.

4. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

I love Wallace & Gromit.  They are a jewel of modern animation, and come from a pantheon-level animation house.  Vengeance Most Fowl is a fun, engaging film that gives all the usual gags and character quirks of both protagonists while building off of The Wrong Trousers, an animated classic.  What's not to like?

The problem is there's nothing particularly special or novel about this particular entry in the Wallace & Gromit library.     Feathers McGraw was a memorable villain in The Wrong Trousers, but here he just comes off as a lazy Lex Luthor.  His criminal plot is based on Wallace having programmed an evil mode into his helper robots (if the robots have that, what about the rest of his inventions? Could the toaster turn evil?) and assumes a number of key events just happen.  There's nothing really fresh or noteworthy here.

3. The Wild Robot

I had The Wild Robot really built up for me by people who had seen it before me, and I have to say, it was underwhelming.  Never tell me a film is easily the best of its kind this year, because when it turns out to not be true, I'm going to take it personally. It's a perfectly fine animated movie, but it reminds me more of Over the Hedge than it does, say, Rango.  

The story itself is quite good, though not without its holes (for example, Roz conveniently knows little about life outside modern human helping to serve up easy comedy yet knows about nature just enough to keep the plot going.  Later, Roz leaves to take action to protect her adopted island home, yet months later appears to have not done anything).  But it is presented in a pedestrian way, with the usual animated dialogue and out loud moralizing.  I can't help but think the film would have been better served by taking a page from the next film on this list, keeping the animals nonverbal and letting expressions and actions carry the storytelling.   That would have been a much more profound experience without changing the plot whatsoever.

2. Flow

Flow is a pretty amazing film.  The first animated feature to be completely rendered in Blender, it's a great piece of film making.  The animal characters are very expressive without the use of dialogue (The Wild Robot film makers, take note) and it feels like a living, breathing world.  The animals largely felt like animals (though see below), and the terrain they cross has a real feel of foreboding mystery.

It's not perfect, however.  While the animals largely behave like the animals they are, it's odd that everyone knows instinctively how to pilot a boat. I don't mind them exhibiting a surprising amount of collaboration because it seems central to the themes of the film, but the boat expertise pulled  me out of the story frequently if briefly.  The appearance of a UFO was similarly jarring, and I think the film would have benefitted keeping its plot more grounded than that.  And I'm somewhat disappointed that the film never explains where all the people have gone or why the flooding occurs or where the waters run off to.  These flaws are slight compared to its achievements, putting it just below my number one pick on this list.

1. Inside Out 2

It is meant as a compliment when I say that immediately after finishing my viewing of Inside Out 2, I looked to see if Pete Docter wrote and/or directed this installment.  I looked because Docter is responsible for some of the finest films Pixar has put out, and Inside Out 2 belongs in that pantheon, sitting beside its predecessor.  But no, it was the result of first time feature director Kelsey Mann and incredible writer Meg LeFauve.  LeFauve brings that lineage from those other fine Pixar films and, based on this first foray into feature directing, Mann is someone to watch.

Following up a masterpiece is a difficult task.  You have to develop a story that can stand on its own and not be too repetitive while remaining faithful to the core ethos of the original.  Inside Out 2 does a stellar job of doing just that.  The complexity of emotions that puberty so frequently brings on is the perfect setting for this second film.  The realization that just maintaining the simpler set of emotions from youth is not a winning proposition for growing up and the struggle one experiences if allowing anxiety to rule over all are fantastic themes to explore, and the script executes this with great precision.  The acting, as usual, is at a high level, and overall, it left me highly satisfied and looking forward to a potential third film that explores the more adult emotions that arise when one gets out on their own.  It's a great job done by all involved, and deserving of any and all kudos it receives from the various award giving organizations.

2024 Oscar Picks

Every year, I pick my winners among categories where I've seen the majority of nominees.  These reflect only who I'd vote to give the Oscar to if I could, and not an attempt to predict who will win (though I may talk a little bit about predictions as well).  In the past my picks sometimes coincided with the Academy's selections, but they can easily diverge.  Last year, my picks matched the Academy's in 9 of 16 categories.  In other words, they got a lot of things wrong.

This year is going to be pretty interesting.  It brought the usual mixed bag of Best Picture nominees, but I have one clear favorite and that has filtered into a number of the other categories.  In the acting categories, there are a couple of strong runners up to the clear favorite in Best Actor, Best Actress appears to be a close race between two nominees, and then the Supporting categories both look fairly messy.  Both screenplay categories are fairly cloudy for me.  Of the other categories, only Best Original Song is a no-brainer.  This was a tough year to pick overall, even if a few of the big categories were quite easy.

Best Picture

If you read my Best Picture rankings of 2023 films, you know that Oppenheimer was the runaway winner for me.  It told an important story, showcased a significant amount of craft from its creators, and featured strong acting from pretty much everyone in its cast, as evidenced by its representation in three out of the four acting categories. Both American Fiction and Poor Things were worthy in their own manner, and I wouldn't be disappointed if either of them upset Oppenheimer. Even Past Lives and, to an extent, Anatomy of a Fall, have aspects that lend themselves to being truly Oscar-worthy.  But Oppenheimer has that trifecta of importance, craft, and innovation that Best Picture should really reward. 

Best Director

Could this really be Christopher Nolan's year finally?  I think so.  He learned to tone down some of his stylistic excesses without sacrificing having his own style and filmmaking language.  He elicited strong performances from a very large cast.  And he kept what could have been a very dry biopic fresh and interesting without delving too much into cheap melodrama.  All of his previous snubs and losses can hopefully be forgotten with this accomplishment.

Of his competitors, I'd point at Poor Things' Yorgos Lanthimos, who crafted a wonderful surreal film that was still somehow grounded, and Anatomy of a Fall's Justine Triet, who provided us a film that I actually marveled at the direction mid-watch.  Martin Scorsese deserves some recognition for reining in some of his own excesses in Killers of the Flower Moon (though not completely).  Jonathan Glazer is the only head scratcher here, though I do think some of the artier aspects he put into his The Sims: Nazi Concentration Camp movie can be appreciated even if you think, like I do, that it should have been a completely different film.

Best Actor

This just obviously has to be Cillian Murphy, right?  I didn't get the chance to see Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin, but of the four performances I did see, Murphy's was far and away the most like a well-selected Best Actor performance.  It was poignant, his Oppenheimer was deeply human, even in that aloof-genius kind of way, and he commanded the screen every time he was on it.  This is the kind of performance that Gary Oldman put in for Darkest Hour or that Daniel Day-Lewis did in most of his films, most notably Lincoln.  For Murphy not to win, I'd think we'd be looking at the same kind of mistake as Al Pacino ("Hoo-ah") getting the statue over Denzel Washington's Malcolm X.

Not to say the other performances were without merit.  Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti are always great, and they displayed their craft in their roles.  Even Bradley Cooper, who as a producer and director cranked out a complete fluff piece of a biopic, actually did a great job making it seem like he was Leonard Bernstein leading a life of little drama or interesting conflict.

Best Actress

To me, this was really a two-actress race, and it was really close.  I loved Emma Stone in Poor Things, and she absolutely ran with a strange yet powerful character in Bella Baxter.  She'd be my clear favorite if Lily Gladstone didn't do such a superb job carrying the heft of Killers of the Flower Moon.  Her Mollie Burkhart had to be strong, vulnerable, feisty, compliant, maintain her dignity while being abased by the racist system put up around her existence, and she was believable and compelling through all happiness and suffering.  I hope this opens up more starring opportunities for her, because she's the real deal.

Aside from those two, it was kind of a weak year.  Sandra Hüller was great in Anatomy of a Fall, but her reserved performance as a very German writer was not going to overcome the star turns of Gladstone and Stone. Carey Mulligan really shouldn't have merited a nomination in a stronger year in this category, and Annette Bening was downright annoying in her portrayal as Diana Nyad, resulting in Nyad being a film I actually turned off midway through because it was not making me want to root for its protagonist.  Margot Robbie really was robbed by not getting a nomination out of her portrayal of Barbie with competition like that.

Best Supporting Actor

This was another close race for me between Killers of the Flower Moon's Robert De Niro and Oppenheimer's Robert Downey Jr.  In the end, I went with Downey's slightly more nuanced Lewis Strauss than De Niro's King Hale given that Hale was such a one sided role, a villain from beginning to end, but without the overwhelming menace that some villains have brought to the Best Supporting Actor category, like Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh.  As Strauss, Downey got to play the neutral collaborator recruiting Oppenheimer to Princeton, the villain orchestrating Oppenheimer's downfall, and the embarrassed victim of his own comeuppance as a failed Cabinet nominee.  I won't be surprised or upset if De Niro sneaks out a win though.

Of the other nominees, Mark Ruffalo was appropriately pitiful as the rakish lawyer who fell powerless to Emma Stone's charms in Poor Things and Sterling K. Brown did a great job as Jeffrey Wright's brother and frequent source of family drama.  Ryan Gosling also did fine as Barbie's Ken, but should probably be satisfied with the nomination.

Best Supporting Actress

This makes three close races for me, and this was probably the most even.  Emily Blunt held her own acting opposite Cillian Murphy and really shone a light on the strength of Kitty Oppenheimer in her excellent hearing scenes.  Da'Vine Joy Randolph was excellent herself, having been given a role that had both wit and pathos as grieving mother/cafeteria manager Mary Lamb in The Holdovers.  I like both of their performances very much, to the point that I was going back and forth between them even while typing this paragraph.  But when in doubt, go with the meatier role, and given that, Randolph must receive the deserved nod.  I won't be disappointed if Blunt pulls the upset, though.

Of the others, I did not get the chance to see Danielle Brooks in The Color Purple.  America Ferrera was perfectly good in Barbie, but I wonder if some of the buzz she received was over how much people liked her character's speech about the difficulties of being [an American middle class] woman. Jodie Foster was fine as Bonnie Stoll, Diana Nyad's coach, but was somewhat handicapped playing the understated role opposite Annette Bening.

Best Production Design

This one was not close for me.  The team behind designing and decorating the world of Poor Things created an interesting world that was almost its own character in the film. In every single scene, you know what movie you're watching.  The other nominees did great jobs too, and I hesitate to name a runner-up from among them because it's difficult to separate them.

Best Cinematography

A category filled with strong performances (though I have not seen El Conde yet), this has to go to Hoyte van Hoytema for his incredible work shooting Oppenheimer.  I mean look at the challenges he had to take on. He had to shoot large amounts of the film in both color and black and white. He had significant dark internal scenes as well as shooting the desert surrounding Los Alamos. And he had to film all of the practical effects Nolan used in recreating the atomic bomb blast.  Hoyte met all these challenges and produced an absolutely beautiful film.

Best Original Screenplay

This was, frankly, not the most exciting category this year.  It's not that the nominees weren't deserving (note: I have not watched May December as of this writing), it's that none of them really made big pushes to stand out compared to each other or to previous winners.  I mean, when you look at the unbridled creativity of Everything Everywhere All at Once or the deeply personal story of Belfast, the two most recent winners, these were films based on scripts that really separated themselves.  Very much less so this year, where I could easily see Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, or Past Lives each winning this category.  I think I would put Anatomy of a Fall just past the other two, but honestly, I'd be just as fine with a (two-way or three-way) tie here.  For me, Anatomy gets the bump over the other two because the twists of the murder trial have to be considered, and while the film did not make me want to ever be in court in France, it did make for a compelling story.

Best Adapted Screenplay

It's easy to winnow down this category, at least at first.  Barbie was nominated "based on characters created by Ruth Handler", meaning the dolls themselves.  Considering the dolls came with nothing like the story told in Barbie, I'm not buying it as an "adapted" screenplay.  Similarly, The Zone of Interest took the setting of Auschwitz and jettisoned the entirety of the novel's story, so it gets no credit here as "adapting" the book.

That leaves three very interesting films that populated my top three Best Picture picks.  There are substantial differences between the three films and the books they adapted, but each are understandable.  Poor Things simplified the story somewhat to allow for a palatable ending.  Oppenheimer adds to its source material with dramatization of Lewis Strauss's confirmation hearing to drive the nested recollections, which allows the film to toy with unreliable narrators.  American Fiction simplifies the structure of the novel on which it's based, Erasure, and replaces the direct questioning of the reader's perspective with a more traditional narrative.  I'd be happy with any of these three screenplays winning, but for me the winner is American Fiction, which manages to be clever, funny, poignant, and so many other things in its layered approach, complete with highly relatable, likeable characters.

Best Animated Feature

I barely qualified to have an opinion on this category, as I missed both The Boy and the Heron and Robot Dreams when they were in the theaters and both of them annoyingly are not available via home video or streaming.  That only leaves three films to choose from, and that's my bare minimum per category.

Of these, I'm not terribly excited about nominating any of them.  They were all entertaining and had great elements to them. Elemental was a heartfelt story (what else would you expect from Pixar?) that was held back a bit by how much they stretched the immigrant analogy at times, as well as falling back on developing stereotypes for their elements (the water beings cry easily, the fire beings are easily angered). Nimona was sharply animated and told a good story, but the actual point of the story wasn't revealed until nearly the end of the film, a zigzag that was clever, yet kind of made me wish I'd had the chance to watch the film from the beginning with that new perspective. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is just as strong narratively and visually as its predecessor, as both make you wonder why live action superhero films can't be this cool, but has the small problem of ending on a cliffhanger.  

That cliffhanger element really had me hung up on whether or not to give it my Oscar vote, but then I realized that this middle film of the trilogy is really the story of Gwen, and by focusing on her as the protagonist, actually provides a complete story arc and narrative.  The fact that this leads into resolving Miles Morales's longer character arc is fine, and hopefully that third movie will be just as great. So my Best Animated Feature is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Best Live Action Short Film

First, let me just state that this year was a first in that I chose not to review the Animated Short Films to make my pick there.  None of them are available in video or streaming form, and after watching their trailers, I didn't really feel like dragging myself into the city to watch them.  The Live Action Short Films, though, are all available via various streaming services, and they're mostly quite good.

The one exception is Invincible, a rather run of the mill story of a troubled teen that doesn't bother to make the troubled teen likeable whatsoever.  In contrast, Knight of Fortune is a heartfelt and funny story regarding grief and our need to share it, even if we want to bottle it up. Grief is also the subject of The After, which provides a brilliant performance by David Oyelowo as a father struggling to move on from the loss of his family to a tragic event. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a wonderful adaptation of the Roald Dahl short story, told by an all-star cast in a way that only Wes Anderson could write and direct.

I was struggling to decide between those last two films when I watched Red, White and Blue and realized it was a non-issue.  Red, White and Blue is a powerful short film that highlights the inhumane implications of current abortion bans in some US states.  It's when the key twist of the film is sprung near the end of the film that you experience the gut punch the movie has been setting you up for all along. It's incredibly well done and is easily my pick as the best live action short film for this year.

Best Visual Effects

I wanted to catch The Creator before making this pick and failed to, which is okay because I never pick this in agreement with the Academy so if it's the winner, my hearty congratulations to their team.  Of the films I did see, I have to give this to Godzilla Minus One, which did an incredible job bridging the rubber suit days of yore with the CGI monsters of today in a way that was still compelling.  The film has many dramatic scenes set among the carnage of Godzilla's rampage, and the film does a great job making it feel real but in a way that doesn't distract from the character work of the actors and director. It's also helped by the fact that I didn't really like any of the other three nominees in this category I've seen as films, which makes it harder to appreciate their technical craft when I didn't enjoy their art.

I'm ready for the Academy to disagree with me, and that's fine.  I'll keep making my own picks and calling them wrong until I learn how to agree with them, or they with me.

Best Original Score

I came really close to giving my vote to the late, great Robbie Robertson for his score to Killers of the Flower Moon, and won't be upset if it wins. But for me, the score that really stands out, both dramatically and musically, is Ludwig Göransson for his score for Oppenheimer. To me, the measure of a score is whether or not I can listen to it by itself and have it still call up the same feelings as when it was accompanied by visuals.  It's already won at both the Golden Globe and Grammy Awards, and I don't expect anything different on Oscar night. It's amazing to realize this was the work of the same man who won all the accolades for Black Panther as well.  Ludwig Göransson does not limit himself to one narrow style.

Best Original Song

Let's not even pretend this is a contest. "What Was I Made For?" has been in heavy rotation for me ever since I first heard it.  Not only does it play an integral role in Barbie, where it powers a pivotal scene beautifully, it's also an incredible song in and of itself, one that can reach people not only with the message of the film but also with the meaning that the listener themself brings to the experience.  Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell winning their second Oscar at such a young age is remarkable.  One wonders how many statuettes they'll be able to amass before all is said and done.