This Sunday marks the 98th incarnation of the Academy Awards ceremony, with its mix of inevitability and intrigue — red-carpet pageantry, breathless predictions and the annual debate over what the Academy got right, wrong or bewilderingly sideways. There’ll be the usual takes on how the host (Conan O’Brien) did and if the pomp and pageantry actually entertained or was an exercise in smug self-congratulation. Beyond the spectacle, the Best Picture slate remains the bar of excellence and a useful cinematic snapshot of the year — a cross-section of what the industry financed, what audiences embraced and what artists pushed into the cultural bloodstream.
This year’s 10 nominees feel especially reflective of a film landscape still recalibrating as the theatrical experience continues its uneven rebound from COVID-19 and expansion of streaming. It’s a historic year, with “Sinners” up for a record 16 nods—the most previously had been 14 for “All About Eve” (1950), “Titanic” (1997) and “La La Land” (2016).
“Sinners” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” are the clear front runners for Best Picture, with Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” also in the mix. Expect “Sinners” to do well in the musical and design and look categories, and “F1” to pop through in visual editing and sound awards. The acting and directing categories are both strong from top to bottom — there should be little controversy in the aftermath, as all are deserving.
I was semi-surprised to see “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s love letter to the French New Wave shut out, and disappointed that Óliver Laxe’s excellent Moroccan set desert rave odyssey “Sirât” confined to Best International Feature. It should have made the Best Picture list along with “The Secret Agent” and “Sentimental Value,” which would make only the second time three films from abroad were tabbed for Best Picture. The first being 2019, when “Pain and Glory,” “Roma” and “Parasite” were nominated, and “Parasite” became the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Below’s a quick guide to the 10 movies competing for the industry’s top prize — what they are, why they matter, and what makes each a contender. They are encapsulations of previously run Day reviews and listed by our critics’ star ratings with some Oscar context added and links to a fuller feature review if available. All 10 films are available via streaming or On Demand.
Good luck, Conan, and may the best film win.
“One Battle After Another” (****)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” is without a doubt the movie of the moment, its tale of righteous revolutionaries battling fascist troops in American city streets perfectly attuned to the fraught tenor of 2025. Even if it had arrived in less troubled times, “One Battle” would stand as a furiously funny action masterpiece. Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor and Benicio del Toro all deliver career-best supporting turns (del Toro’s “few small beers” is an instant classic line read), and Anderson stages the mounting tension with laser precision, building to the best car chase since “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015). At the film’s heart is the tender relationship between Leonardo DiCaprio’s aging revolutionary wastoid and his tough-as-nails daughter (sparkling newcomer Chase Infiniti), at once an apologia for the elder generation’s failings and a call to keep fighting at all costs. To quote another line from del Toro: “No fear! Tom fuckin’ Cruise!” Reviewed Sept. 26, 2025. — Oscar Goff
“Marty Supreme” (***1/2)
The divorce of filmmaking wunderkinds the Safdie brothers, Boston University grads who cooked up the well-received crime curios “Good Time” (2017) and “Uncut Gems” (2019), has raised question without answers. Who cares? This year Benny dropped the MMA biopic flick “The Smashing Machine” with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, which didn’t quite go to mat the way many prognosticated. The one making this list is Josh’s tale about an egomaniacal table tennis player in the late 1950s — based loosely on the exploits of the flamboyant Marty Reisman and starringit-boy Timothée Chalamet as the ping pong supreme being of the title. Like Adam Sandler’s gambling-addicted hustler in “Gems,” Marty’s always hustling to finance his next tournament trip to Japan, and he’s got a million bad moves in between that are on the verge of blowing up, be it impregnating his neighbor’s wife, kidnapping a mafioso’s dog or having an affair with a Grace Kelly-like former Hollywood star (Gwyneth Paltrow, sliding into the role nicely). It’s a madcap turn that keeps amping up the tension in unexpected ways. The casting is devilish, with magician-funnyman Penn Jillette and gruff director Abel Ferrara (“Bad Lieutenant”) as shoot-first sociopaths and Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” as Paltrow’s rich and cocksure hubby. Point, Josh. Reviewed Dec. 24, 2025. — Tom Meek
“The Secret Agent” (***1/2)
A two-headed cat. A dead body lying casually outside a gas station, which neither employees nor police can be bothered to remove. A hopping, stop-motion disembodied leg wreaking havoc in a park full of late-night trysts. These are just a few of the unforgettable images in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s densely layered, magical realist political potboiler. Wagner Moura—up for Best Actor—plays a humble university professor turned reluctant dissident, trying desperately to arrange passage out of the authoritarian Brazil of the 1970s for himself and his young son. Every time you think you have a handle on where this story is going, however, Mendonça throws another narrative curveball or dizzyingly surreal visual. “The Secret Agent” captures both the horrors of the ’70s Brazilian regime and the delirium of Carnival in one of the smartest and most unclassifiable thrillers of the year. Reviewed Dec. 18, 2025. — Oscar Goff
“Sentimental Value” (***1/2)
As much as Stellan Skarsgård’s male egotist is the catalyst for all that happens in this story of grief, struggle and reconciliation, it is the feminine side of the house that gives “Sentimental Value” its heart and humanity. Skarsgård plays a filmmaker on the magnitude of Bergman – his name is Borg – looking to make one final picture and fix transgressions with his daughters in the wake of his ex-wife’s death. Art and the desire for legacy are at the fore, but the real heart is the connection between the sisters, played by Renate Reinsve, who worked with director Trier on the much heralded “Worst Person in the World” (2019), and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as they grapple with their sense of identity and familial truths. It’s very Bergman-esque. Complicating the picture is a famous American actor (Elle Fanning, great, and also wickedly funny in this year’s “Predator: Badlands”) who steps into a part of Borg’s endeavor written for his elder daughter (Reinsve), who, due to past deeds or misdeeds, declines. The script is from the heart, and the ensemble near untouchable. Reviewed Nov. 2, 2025. — Tom Meek
“Sinners” (***1/2)
The most pleasant surprise of the year was Ryan Coogler’s raucous, southern-fried tale of vampires, gangsters and the blues. A pair of fast-talking twins (Michael B. Jordan up for Best Actor in a magnetic dual role) returns home in 1930s Mississippi to open a juke joint, only to find their haven beset by white Irish vampires. “Sinners” is Coogler’s first original film in more than a decade following work on the “Black Panther” and “Creed” franchises, allowing him the freedom to pursue his own ideas and inspirations. The results are wildly entertaining and often breathtaking, and a time-slipping dance sequence in which revelers are joined by Black musical figures past and future is an easy contender for scene of the year. Coogler (up for Best Director) has assembled an ensemble for the ages, including Wunmi Mosaku (Best Supporting Actress nod) and Hailee Steinfeld as the twins’ love interests, Delroy Lindo as a wizened blues man and fresh face Miles Caton as a young guitar virtuoso. This is what blockbuster filmmaking should be. Reviewed April 17, 2025. — Oscar Goff
“F1: The Movie” (***)
An entertaining spectacle populated by the ever-whizzing whine of Formula One race cars zipping by at jet speeds and some tight editing that makes it feel like you’re in some next-gen, sensory-immersion experience at Universal Studios. The vrooming crescendos that rise and fade with such regularity linger in the ears when you leave the theater – so much so that if you close your eyes, you can practically play it back. The story behind “F1” is pretty lightweight stuff: Old, has-been lion (Brad Pitt) teams up with cocky prodigy (Damson Idris) who can’t get out of their own way as they seek pole position on the concourse of greatness. A better name for the flashy flick could have been “Pitt Stop,” because no Pitt, with his casual, cool can-do, no movie – nope. Also there’s plenty of pit action, which is edited so snappily by Stephen Mirrione (“Traffic,” “Birdman”) and Patrick J. Smith (they’re up for Best Editing and about the clearest thing to a shoe in Sunday) that it’s as invigorating and thrilling as what takes place on the speedway. Reviewed June 27, 2025. — Tom Meek
“Frankenstein” (***)
Guillermo del Toro’s he-said, they-said tale holds faithful to its Mary Shelley roots. In scope and success, it’s akin to Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 film with Robert De Niro as the Creature but won’t make anyone forget Boris Karloff and the 1931 James Whale classic. Del Toro gets his creepy-crawlies in early with a smattering of reanimation scenes as Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) plugs half-corpses into a battery and gets them to sputter to life before a board of London scientists who are both wowed and appalled. The narrative is told in two chapters: one from Victor’s “he” perspective and the other from the Creature’s “they” view — yes, pronouns back then mattered too, but in this case the “they” is a humanization of the Creature versus the “it” employed by Victor and others. The heart of the film lies in the Creature’s palpable loneliness and rage, brought to empathetic light by Jacob Elordi — up for Best Supporting Actor — with the most touching scenes coming between his incarnation and a blind man living alone in the woods (David Bradley) and Elizabeth (scream-queen Mia Goth), fiancée of Victor’s brother William (Felix Kammerer), whom both the Creature and Victor have strong sexual tensions with. Reviewed Nov. 2, 2025. — Tom Meek
“Train Dreams” (***)
Gorgeously shot by Adolpho Veloso, “Train Dreams” has the trippy, hypnotic aura of a Terrence Malick fever dream, and we get Joel Edgerton in his richest and most robust performance to date — should have been nominated — as the hermetic Robert Grainier wandering the Pacific Northwest. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson and adapted by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar (the team behind “Sing Sing”), “Train Dreams” is the telling of Grainier’s life in full; orphaned young, unknowing what befell his parents, and, as a quiet young man when we catch up with him, working as a logger and railway hand in the remote reaches of Idaho. His life as a drifter has him moving from one lumber camp to the next until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) at a church in Fry. It’s love at first pleasantry, and with Gladys game for the woods, the two wed, build a bungalow atop the crest of a dell and have a daughter. It’s an enchanting “Little House on the Prairie” existence until a wildfire sweeps through the valley. Under the weight of guilt Grainier struggles to make sense of his existence and the world in large and retreats inward and deeper into the woods. As a cinematic experience, “Train Dreams” is somber and reflective, and the acting, top tier. Reviewed Nov. 20, 2025. — Tom Meek
“Hamnet” (**1/2)
Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel imagines the grief that may have inspired Shakespeare’s play about the Dane king “Hamlet,” focusing less on the Bard himself than on the emotional life of his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley). Set in 16th-century England, the film traces the Shakespeares’ early courtship and rustic family life before tragedy strikes with the death of their young son, Hamnet — a loss that fractures the family and lingers like a fog over the story’s quiet countryside. Rightfully nominated in the Best Actress category, Buckley anchors the film with a performance of raw emotional gravity, while Paul Mescal’s Shakespeare — known only as “Will” — remains a more distant presence, consumed by work in London even as grief reshapes the family left behind. Zhao’s contemplative style favors atmosphere over narrative momentum: pastoral landscapes, hushed interiors and dreamlike passages of mourning create a film that is as much meditation as drama. The result is often haunting, though sometimes weighed down by its own solemnity. Still, the film’s emotional center — the devastation of parental loss and the mysterious alchemy by which grief becomes art — resonates deeply, leaving “Hamnet” less a conventional literary biopic than an elegy for a child and the family he left behind. Reviewed Nov, 27, 2025. — Tom Meek
“Bugonia” (**1/2)
What if the fate of the universe were to be decided between a podcast-pilled lone-wolf psycho and a soulless, out-of-touch CEO? That’s the question at the heart of Yorgos Lanthimos’ blackly comic chamber piece. Jesse Plemons plays a blue-collar serf who kidnaps and tortures his Fortune 500 boss (Emma Stone, up for Best Actress), convinced she’s an alien bent on world domination. “Bugonia” is a remake of the South Korean cult classic “Save the Green Planet!” (2003), but Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “Kinds of Kindness”) adapts the material keenly to contemporary America. Plemons and Stone are two of our most daring actors, and the scenes in which they face off in a basement allow both to shine (also great is newcomer Aidan Delbis, heartbreaking as Plemons’ neurodivergent cousin and accomplice). The humor comes from the characters’ utter inability to communicate, each encased as they are in their respective online bubbles. Whether or not there are aliens in our midst, we all might as well be from different planets. Reviewed Nov. 3, 2025. — Oscar Goff
A stronger
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