The Oscars are around the corner, which means it's once again time for me to ramble about my favorite movies of the previous year. To kick things off, I think I'll use the same approach I did for my favorite music post and see how things stand here at the midpoint of the 2020s. Absolute shit decade overall (we very well might be in the early stages of World War III right now), but, hey, there have been some pretty damn great movies. Here's a quick, back-of-the-envelope attempt at a way-too-early top 10 (roughly in order):
Wrath of Man
The Iron Claw
Tár
Palm Springs
One Battle After Another
Aftersun
Dune
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Yep, I really do think Sinners is the best movie of the decade so far. (Sorry if that ruins the suspense of these Fake Oscars.) But considering the list as a whole, one thing jumps out at me right away: most of these movies are original stories not based on existing IP. Sinners, Tenet, The Iron Claw, Tár, Palm Springs, and Aftersun all fit the bill—stories made specifically for the screen. Of the rest, Wrath is a remake of a little-seen French action movie (which I still need to see), OBAA is a very loose adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, Dune is an adaptation of Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi novel that was once thought to be unfilmable (and if you've seen the David Lynch adaptation, you know what I mean), and Spider-Verse is a sequel based on existing IP, yes, but it's also an original screen story itself. More on original screen stories in a bit.
The other thing that jumps out at me is that not only are two 2025 movies on the list—Sinners and OBAA—but they're also the unquestioned Best Picture frontrunners here about two weeks before the ceremony. Whichever movie wins, I'll be happy for it, as it'll be the fourth straight year a movie in my top 5 has won the Oscar. (The less said about the CODA year, the better.)
Looking at the Best Picture field as a whole, it strikes me how much "of the moment" some of the films are. Sinners may take place in the 1930s, but, gee, do you think a movie about the Black experience in America is relevant today? OBAA and Bugonia explicitly touch on our current political state of affairs, and The Secret Agent shows the disastrous effects of a military dictatorship (like the one we could be heading for!).
Comparing the Oscar slate to the year's top 10 box office earners (slightly down from last year), it's pretty clear that Americans were mostly looking for a distraction at the cinema. (Same as it ever was.) Sinners did break through at #7, but other than that you have four kids movies, including two unasked-for "live action remakes," two mediocre superhero movies, the Wicked sequel, a submediocre Jurassic Park movie, and the third Avatar movie. The burgeoning overlap between box office and awards bodies I commented on a couple years ago seems to be disappearing. That's probably a bad thing, especially in this ever-changing (for the worse) entertainment landscape.
But enough doom and gloom. This past year was a great year for movies, up there with the Barbenheimer year of 2023. Let's celebrate my favorite movies of the year. As usual, we'll start with the supporting categories, with nominees listed in alphabetical order until Best Picture.
Miles Caton – Sinners
Delroy Lindo Sinners^
Josh O'Connor – Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Sean Penn – One Battle After Another^
Stellan Skarsgård – Sentimental Value^
Honorable mentions: Benicio del Toro – One Battle After Another^, Alden Ehrenreich – Weapons, Ralph Fiennes – 28 Years Later, Paul Rudd – Friendship, the Warfare crew (Joseph Quinn, Cosmo Jarvis, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai)
The Oscar field is a strong one, even if I have a couple quibbles. For one, I didn't quite see it with Elordi's Frankenstein performance—but then, I don't typically go for CGI/prosthetics/makeup–augmented performances in general. (This comes up again in the next category.) And then I think the Academy picked the wrong movie for two nominations—give me two from Sinners and one from OBAA, please. While I very much enjoyed del Toro's Sensei character, it's not the most... technically challenging performance. He's relegated to the HMs here, along with one of the year's most underrated comedic performances (Ehrenreich), a typically excellent performance from one of our best working actors (Fiennes, who may be up here for Best Actor next year for the same character), one of the best comic actors around kind of weirdly interrogating his own on-screen persona (Rudd), and, cheating a bit, several members of the excellent Warfare ensemble, a movie that blew me away but never got any kind of critical traction. Anyway, onto the nominees.
- You can argue that Miles Caton is actually a lead in Sinners—the movie opens and closes with his POV, and he has almost as much screentime as the Michaels B. Jordan. But he's not even the biggest category fraud here, and the SAG put in him supporting, so that's where I'm putting him. Regardless—what a revelation of a screen debut(!). His playing/singing is obviously incredible, and he more than holds his own opposite three actual Oscar nominees. I walked out of the theater totally blown away by Sinners, and Caton's performance was a big reason why. You very rarely see someone command the screen as confidently as he does in a debut.
- Seeing Delroy Lindo's name was one of the happiest surprises of Oscar nomination morning. (Right up there with Wicked: For Good missing out on any noms.) Lindo was previously passed over by the Academy in 2020 for still-underappreciated Da Five Bloods (but not here!) and it looked like he'd be left out of the field yet again. But, thankfully, he broke through for his first-ever nomination after a career that stretches back five decades. It was well deserved—the sequence where his character, Delta Slim, is recruited by Jordan's Stack and Caton's Sammie, capped by his monologue about the lynching of his friend, is a true highlight. He's absolutely a contender here and he seems to have a shot at the real thing, too.
- Here's the most blatant instance of category fraud of them all: Josh O'Connor in the latest Benoit Blanc joint. Blanc doesn't show up until at least 30 minutes in, and then O'Connor and Daniel Craig co-lead from that point on. But... Blanc is the clear franchise lead, so I opted to slot O'Conner (a Best Actor nominee for Challengers last year) here because it's my blog and I can do what I want to. Dead Man, like Glass Onion before it, pales a bit compared to the OG Knives Out, but O'Connor's fidgety, conflicted, devout Father Jud is one of the most memorable characters in the whole franchise. I definitely preferred this performance to his other 2025 movie (the so-so The Mastermind), and will certainly be keeping an eye out for what he does next.
- I think the superior OBAA supporting actor performance, if not character, is Sean Penn's Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, who is almost as indelible as fellow Oscar nominee Teyana Taylor's Perfidia Beverly Hills. Their scenes together in the first thirty minutes are absolutely dynamite. While the limp and haircut might seem a bit schtick-y, Penn is actually doing some really great work as Lockjaw. He's a bit of a chameleon from scene to scene, a slave to his conflicting desires for Black women and white supremacy, and Penn really makes it work. Lockjaw is just so fucking slimy, and is one of the most memorable characters—and performances—of the year.
- The third and final real Oscar nominee in my field is the estimable Stellan Skarsgård, who is finally getting his due after decades of memorable screen roles great and small in everything from Lars von Trier to Pirates of the Caribbean to Christopher Nolan to the MCU. But it's another Trier—Joachim—who delivered the role that snagged him his first Oscar nom at 74. His Gustav Borg is a renowned auteur trying to reconnect with his daughters after decades of being a shitty father. Skarsgård plays the role with a wounded brusqueness. He knows he's at fault for his daughters' trauma but tries to make up for it the only way he knows how—through movies. He's funny and charming and acerbic and mean, but Skarsgård always keeps you rooting for him.
This was a tough one to call, and—as it likely will at the actual Oscars—it came down to Sinners versus OBAA. The deciding factor was who had the strongest individual scene. In that case, it's no surprise that the the winner here is Delroy Lindo. His lynching monologue—as well as his magnificent comedic timing in other scenes—puts him over the top. The win also, I think, makes him the first person to win Fake Oscars in two different years. We've had a few win two in the same year, but no repeats in another year. Fuck yeah, Delta Slim!
The ballot: 1) Lindo, 2) Penn, 3) Caton, 4) Skarsgård, 5) O'Connor
This category looks a lot like Supporting Actor with three actual Oscar nominees making my field, one of the frontrunners relegated to HMs, and one missing the cut entirely. The latter here is Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value—I'm a fan but she just wasn't quite on the same level as her castmates, all of whom earned noms. As far as Madigan goes, Aunt Gladys is absolutely a memorable character, but some of that is due to costuming and makeup, and the role isn't exactly replete with emotional depth. Don't get me wrong—I'd be fine with her winning the Oscar; more horror movie noms, please!—but I felt there were at least five stronger performances last year. Joining her in the HMs are Comer and her affecting work in 28 Years Later, Ferguson's typically excellent work in the overhated Dynamite, and two outstanding performances in Park Chan-wook's latest. On to the nominees.
- Category placement can be tough sometimes. Chase Infiniti was in the Best Actress... chase in the leadup to the Oscar nominations but missed out. I wonder if it's because some voters—more accurately, in my opinion—instead slotted her in Best Supporting Actress as I've done here. Her role is on about the same level as Penn's, who (probably?) has more screentime, with both pretty clearly supporting Leo. Regardless, she gets a deserved Supporting nomination here for a debut almost as impressive as Caton's. Like Caton, she manages to stand out amongst a star-studded cast, and the scene where she finally reconnects with Leo's character is one of the very best of the year. She's someone to keep an eye on for sure.
- Sneaking into this field with three real Oscar nominees and one would-be nominee is Diane Kruger from David Cronenberg's latest. I hadn't seen her in much since Inglourious Basterds (maybe her best-known role?) but was very glad to see her pop up in a very Cronenbergian triple role: dead wife, dead wife's sister, AI assistant. It might sound a bit ridiculous on the surface, but Cronenberg really explores his grief over his wife's recent passing (filtered of course through his usual obsessions), and Kruger is phenomenal as the emotional and sexual crux of the movie.
- The remaining three nominees are also all up for the real prize, starting with the least familiar name (to me), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. She plays the sister to Renate Reinsve's character and is every bit as essential to the weighty emotional wallop the film packs. Her character has a decidedly different, but no less complex, relationship with Skarsgård's character—especially given that she has a son. The scenes of the three of them together are very affecting, but there might not be a more affecting scene in any movie last year than the one with the two sisters finally mutually acknowledging each other's struggles. Lilleaas is every bit as transcendent as Reinsve, and it's a bit of a shame neither seems to have a real shot at an Oscar.
- The final two nominees are the true heavyweights of this category, and the chief competition for Madigan on Oscar Sunday. Wunmi Mosaku is more of a longshot, but Sinners has a ton of momentum right now and she did just win the BAFTA (although Madigan wasn't nominated). She's an absolute powerhouse as Annie in Ryan Coogler's masterpiece—warm, tender, sexy, ferocious, defiant. I was mostly familiar with her TV work before this (very good in Lovecraft Country, not terribly impressive in Loki) but she totally blew me away in Sinners. I knew she'd be a nominee here on the first viewing, and recent rewatches confirmed her as a frontrunner.
- Of course, she has one-time Oscar frontrunner Teyana Taylor's equally impressive work in OBAA to contend with. Once thought a shoo-in after the Golden Globes, she'll likely be watching Madigan give her acceptance speech after the latter's "Actor Award" (formerly SAG). But I digress. Taylor's fearless work in PTA's banger is absolutely a contender here. Although she only appears in the film's first 30 minutes, her Perfidia Beverly Hills is absolutely unforgettable—a machine-gun toting, sexually aggressive, postpartum-suffering revolutionary with more personality than many characters you spend entire films watching. Unforgettable stuff.
Impressive as Infiniti, Kruger, and Lilleaas were, this really came down to Mosaku versus Taylor. I'll be honest—this was the toughest category of them all to pick this year. They're both so, so fucking good, and such powerful anchors of their respective movies. Mosaku's Hoodoo matron or Taylor's fierce radical. How to choose? Ultimately, through no fault of her own, Taylor disappearing from the movie after 30 minutes worked against her, and she didn't have a scene quite as powerful as Annie's reunion with Smoke, so Wunmi Mosaku takes an incredibly close race, making Sinners two for two. I just hope one of these two badasses wins on Oscar Sunday. (But, again, I won't be mad if Madigan wins.)
The ballot: 1) Mosaku, 2) Taylor, 3) Lilleaas, 4) Infiniti, 5) Kruger
The Supporting fields were obviously great, but this is a field—what a crop! All five Oscar nominees show up, albeit three in the HMs. Chalamet, Hawke, and Moura could all have made the field, especially given that Chalamet and Hawke are previous nominees here, with Hawke winning in 2018 for First Reformed (which is still one of the best performances of the past decade). Moura was also considered for Supporting last year for Civil War. But they're also-rans this year. Joining them are Lee, one of South Korea's finest actors who was brilliant as the center of Park's dark comedy, and R-Patz (who almost certainly has a win here and/or in the real thing in his future) in Bong Joon-ho's oft-flummoxing Parasite follow-up. So, yeah, strong year. Let's dive in.
- I think there was about five minutes there not long after OBAA was released when Leonardo DiCaprio was the frontrunner for a second Best Actor Oscar. (How funny is it that his only win is for fucking The Revenant?) He's a two-time nominee here previously (Revenant and OUATIH), and would 100% have won Best Actor for The Departed in 2007 if I was doing the Fake Oscars thing then. Anyway, he's almost as good here as he was in his OUATIH, his last Oscar-nominated performance, and the characters aren't so different: well-intentioned, substance-addled ne'er-do-wells with a big ol' beating heart. Bob Ferguson is a funny character on the page brought to vivid life by Leo's committed work totally lacking in Hollywood vanity.
- Like Best Actress above, this category has four nominees who were very much in the real-life conversation and one left-field choice from an underappreciated sci-fi-adjacent flick. Here, we have David Jonsson, last seen by me as the best part of an otherwise so-so Alien: Romulus in one of two Stephen King adaptations last year. (The new Running Man was fun but rather frivolous.) He's nothing short of astonishing co-leading with Cooper Hoffman (also very good; made the longlist) in The Long Walk. It's equal parts swagger and sadness, with as many gut-busting quips as heart-wrenching line readings. See it if you haven't yet (just don't expect much from the ending).
- Next up is the surprise SAG ("Actor Award") winner, Michael B. Jordan. He was last seen here as a Best Actor nominee in 2015 for Creed (and he probably would have gotten a nom for Fruitvale Station if I did these Fake Oscars in 2013.) This time around, he plays a dual lead role in Sinners as the Smokestack twins: the more serious-minded Smoke and the fun-loving Stack. His work as Smoke is a bit stronger—that first scene with Mosaku, and, hell, the final one as well, WOW—but he absolutely pulls off the duality of the twins. I'm admittedly a sucker for dual roles, but the subtle change in Jordan's chemistry with Mosaku as Smoke and Hailee Steinfeld as Stack is just sensational. He's got a real shot here and on Oscar Sunday.
- Although Jesse Plemons just missed out on a real Oscar nom (most prognosticators would tell you he finished 6th), he pretty easily made my field as the last performance of the nominees I saw, knocking out Timmy for his Howard Ratner origin story (only kind of kidding). His sheer force of personality as Teddy knocked me out. Plemons really captured that unwavering and irrational confidence we've all seen from people who have been brainwashed by Fox News or conspiracy theories or whatever while also tapping into the empathy/pity that you can't help but feel for people that far down the rabbit hole. He's actually a first-time nominee here but will assuredly be back soon, both here and at the Oscars themselves.
- Rounding out the field is Joaquin Phoenix, who very well could be our best working actor today. He's a two-time previous Best Actor nominee here: in 2021 for C'mon C'mon (new Mike Mills movie when??) and 2023 for, yep, Beau Is Afraid. He just missed out on a nom for his actual Oscar-winning Joker performance and would have had a slew of nominations and at least one win (for The Master, which is probably the single best performance from the 2010s) from the pre–Fake Oscars days. This year, Eddington was my single favorite film that failed to receive almost any awards buzz. I mean, I get it—it's VERY 2025—but Phoenix does exceptional work as the weary, conflicted, pathetic Sheriff Joe Cross, a performance only he could have pulled off, the latest in a long line of pitiable, grotesque men in Phoenix's oeuvre.
I was pretty sure Michael B. Jordan was gonna win this when I first walked out of Sinners and I never really wavered. Leo gave him a helluva run—he makes it look so dang easy—and the other three gave performances that could have won in a weaker year, but Smoke and Stack wouldn't be denied for Sinners's third win in a row. I mean, he did TWICE AS MUCH acting as the others, right? Seriously though, Jordan is just so magnetic as both characters, and I'll be rooting for him at the Oscars to make it three years in a row where the winner of this category also won the real statue.
The ballot: 1) Jordan, 2) DiCaprio, 3) Jonsson, 4) Plemons, 5) Phoenix
I'll just say it: this was one of the weaker years for leading actress performances in recent years, especially after last year's amazing field led by Demi Moore (my winner), Mikey Madison (Oscar winner), and Zendaya (Oscar snub). I had to really stretch to fill out this field of five, much less the HMs. Of the HMs, Stone was the closest to making the field—I actually flip-flopped on her a few times. She's good but it's more of a minor performance compared to her recent work with Lanthimos. Brie also got a bit of consideration—she's emphatically committed. Pugh almost certainly wouldn't have been mentioned in a stronger year, but she really elevates the material. Finally, I didn't actually think real Oscar nominees Buckley (tastefully named) or Hudson were all that impressive, but there was just a dearth of options. Now, on to my actual field.
- While Jessie Buckley is the clear Oscar frontrunner, Rose Byrne is her closest competition. I have to say I don't particularly care for either movie. And while I admit I don't really get it with the love for Buckley's performance—every scene is played in the same high key and the final scene at the play is laughable—I absolutely do get it with Byrne. She walks an emotional highwire in every scene and easily manages to explore more facets of motherhood in most single scenes than Buckley does in the entire Hamnet movie. Byrne is a longtime favorite (Sunshine like a motherfucker) and give a career-best performance in her most challenging and complex role yet.
- Speaking of movies I didn't care for, we have Bring Her Back, the latest from YouTubers-turned-filmmakers the Philippou brothers. I was a fan of their debut, 2022's Talk to Me and was relatively excited for Bring Her Back. While the premise was strong and there were several memorable scenes, the movie as a whole was mostly just trauma/torture porn without anything interesting at its core. But don't let that take anything away from Sally Hawkins's (a previous winner back in 2017 for The Shape of Water) completely unhinged performance as a grieving mother who takes in two orphans for... nefarious purposes. She ricochets from, ahem, happy-go-lucky to utterly terrifying instantly. She takes to the character with a level of commitment that deserved better than the script she was given.
- Because this is MY Fake Oscars, we get not one but two performances from horror movies. Just about everyone went gaga for Amy Madigan in Zach Cregger's Barbarian follow-up, Weapons, but I thought that Julia Garner (previously nominated in 2020 for The Assistant) actually gave the better performance. After the credits rolled, I found myself thinking about her Justine Gandy far more than I thought about Aunt Gladys. Garner expertly conveys Justine as a great teacher and very flawed human—there's much more depth and dimension in her character and performance than Madigan/Gladys. Her performance is a revelatory peek behind the curtain at the inner life of the seemingly sweet third grade teacher we've all had.
- Our next nominee here, Renate Reinsve, is a previous winner here in 2021 for The Worst Person in the World. She was somehow not nominated for an actual Oscar that year, when we saw Jessica Chastain win for a brutally bad performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (usually love her) and forgettable performances from Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos) and Kristen Stewart (Spencer). At least she was nominated this year for her follow-up with Trier to Worst Person. She's probably not *quite* as good this time around, but it's hard to follow-up an all-timer like that. The opening sequence in which she struggles with a bout of stage fright sets the, uh, stage for an oft-manic performance that never crosses the line to histrionics or melodrama. It's very fine-tuned work from an actress who might have it in her to go down among the greats.
- Speaking of all-time greats, we have Julia Roberts, who was actually the final name in this field, bumping Emma Stone (speaking of all-time greats) at the last minute. I generally don't have much of an opinion on Roberts—I'm not a big romcom guy and I actually haven't seen many of her major performances (Steel Magnolias, Pretty Woman, Erin Brockovich... should probably rectify that). But while I didn't care for her movie as a whole (maybe the first Luca G miss for me), she nonetheless owns the screen every second she's on it in. Sure, stories about alcoholic academics are right in my wheelhouse, but Roberts feasts on the overwrought dialogue like it's a divine delicacy and, like Hawkins, makes you wish she was in a better movie.
This was also kind of a tough category to pick a winner, but not for the same reason as Supporting Actress. I don't think most of these performances would have been nominated in a stronger year, and I don't think any of them will go down in the annals—or at least, my annals. But ultimately, I think you gotta give it to Rose Byrne. Hawkins and Reinsve, the two previous winners, were her closest competition but Byrne's performance was the higher degree of difficulty—seriously, she's in almost every frame, with the camera hovering directly in front of her face for a good chunk of the runtime. Buckley seems to have the actual Oscar in the bag, but I think Byrne's performance will be remembered as the superior one in time.
The ballot: 1) Byrne, 2) Reinsve, 3) Hawkins, 4) Garner, 5) Roberts
Remember when I was talking about original screen stories earlier in the preamble? This category really shows what I mean. Between the five nominees and five HMs, seven of them were written directly for the screen, including three of five Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominees (haven't seen It Was Just an Accident yet and Blue Moon was good but not really my thing). The other three—Best Adapted Screenplay nominees OBAA and Bugonia plus the snubbed No Other Choice—took enough liberties with the source material to be much more original stories than your typical adapted screenplays. (Like Frankenstein, which is a pretty straight retelling.) So shoutout to guys like Cregger for creating bold new horror stories, DeYoung for bringing Tim Robinson to a wider audience, and Kruger for doing more with the mere concept of Formula One racing than you'd think possible. Plus, of course, the actual nominees below.
- Somehow, Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't have an Oscar—nor a Fake Oscar. His only two movies since we started this Fake Oscar game were Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, neither of which garnered any noms around here. I know it's practically sacrilege, especially regarding the former, but those are both minor PTA to me. Not so OBAA, which is not only one of the year's best movies, but also one of PTA's best, maybe only behind Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood. PTA's previous experience adapting Pynchon (Inherent Vice) no doubt helped him translate Pynchon's ideas about counterculture, revolutionaries, and government conspiracies to the screen and coherently adapt them for our Trumpian times. He'll almost certainly win Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars and is a major contender here.
- For as buzzy a filmmaker as Ari Aster is, he doesn't have a single Oscar nomination to his name—not a major surprise given the horror milieu he's mostly known for. He does, however, have a trio of Fake Oscars to his name, as he won all three major awards in 2018 for Hereditary—still, to me, one of the defining works of the previous decade. He hasn't quite been able to reach the same highs as his debut, but Eddington probably comes closest. I won't try to argue that they're inherently similar movies, but both are horrifying in their own way. Instead of exploring handed-down generational trauma through the demon Paimon, Eddington explores the real demons wreaking havoc on our society here in the 2020s: money, power, technology, social media, ideology. It's nowhere near as subtle as Hereditary but is no less effective.
- Like PTA, Ryan Coogler is a first-time Fake Oscar nominee. Fruitvale Station was in the before times, and while I liked his franchise movies (Creed and both Black Panthers), none of them were able to break through in the writing/directing categories. That has obviously changed with Sinners, which landed him noms in both categories. Sinners is such an impressive feat of worldbuilding, with Coogler tapping into both the fascinating mythology and the brutal reality of the American South, all while making it keenly relatable for contemporary audiences. His tale of Smoke and Stack and Preacherboy and Annie and Mary is so assured and fully realized, you might almost think it had to be based on a novel. There's no higher compliment for an original screen story.
- Will Tracy only has two screenwriting credits to his name (The Menu and now Bugonia) but has some impressive credentials: he's a former editor-in-chief of The Onion and has written for both John Oliver and Succession. Those influences all shine through in Bugonia, which itself almost sounds like it was ripped from an Onion headline: "Pharma CEO Kidnapped By Chemically Castrated Conspiracy Theorists Who Think She's An Alien." It's deeply researched like a John Oliver episode, incredibly funny like most Onion articles, and shows a flair for corporate satire like Succession. (It's also much sharper and more coherent than The Menu.) Bugonia was one of the last big 2025 movies I saw, and it rocketed directly into my top 5 of the year.
- The Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt duo were also nominated here for The Worst Person in the World back in 2021. I said that I thought Reisnve's performance was stronger in that movie, but I think the opposite is true here: the Trier and Vogt's script is even stronger this time around. It feels more finely honed and crafted around a stronger idea—there that "generational trauma" buzzword (well, buzzterm) is again. In Sentimental Value, the trauma stems from the Nazi occupation of Norway and the impact of its fallout on a husband, on two daughters, even on a house. I've seen the film get pooh-pooh'd a bit of late, but I truly think it's one of the most poignant films of the year.
The showdown here—between PTA and Coogler—isn't possible at the Oscars since they're nominated in different categories. (I really wish they'd do what most awards bodies have done and just have a single screenplay award). Like Best Supporting Actress above, the race between OBAA and Sinners is almost too close to call. But just like that category, I'm going with Sinners and Ryan Coogler here for now four wins in five categories (and, spoilers, Sinners ain't done yet!). While both masterfully execute their emotional and thematic throughlines, Sinners just feels a little more sturdily constructed, somehow even more novelistic than the movie actually based on a novel. Now, let's hope both men win the real thing come Sunday.
The ballot: 1) Coogler, 2) Anderson, 3) Aster, 4) Trier and Vogt, 5) Tracy
Our final category before Best Picture has the least crossover with the actual Oscars yet, with just two shared nominees and not a one in the HMs. All three of Josh Safdie, Joachim Trier, and Chloé Zhao were worthy of nomination, but Safdie already did his movie better with Uncut Gems, I felt Sentimental Value was better written than directed, and Hamnet simply Wasn't For Me. All three missed out on HMs in favor of Boden and Fleck for the joyously, earnestly, alive Freaky Tales, Boyle and Cregger for their visually striking and thematically deep horror flicks, Kosinski for his latest summer blockbuster nonpareil, and Mendoza and Garland for the best war movie in several years. I wish I could have found room for some of them in the actual nominees, but it's a very strong field, as you'll see below.
- The first three names are all double nominees in Best Screenplay, so let's take a minute to talk about Paul Thomas Anderson, the director, rather than Paul Thomas Anderson, the writer. Like Inherent Vice before it, OBAA is somewhat shaggily constructed with an extended prologue, then a time jump, and various narratives/characters to juggle. Everything comes together beautifully in two extended sequences around the halfway point and near the end: Sensei helping Bob escape Baktan Cross and then the highway chase scene (that was truly magnificent in IMAX). Truly some of the finest filmmaking of the year—and PTA's career. To say nothing of the exquisite "Dirty Work" and "American Girl" needle drops (among others). It might very well win PTA his first Oscar on Sunday.
- Also double nominated is Ari Aster for his first appearance here since those Hereditary wins. He came close for Midsommar in 2019 (didn't do HMs back then; he was probably #6 or #7), and Florence Pugh and Joaquin Phoenix both snagged noms as leads for that and Beau Is Afraid, so he wasn't completely off the radar. But Eddington marks a return to these Fake Oscars for its big, bold swing at distilling *gestures around broadly* all this into a bleak, smart, grimly hilarious 149-minute slice of neo-Americana. Aster deftly balances POVs, tones, genres, and even worldviews, culminating in one of the most visceral, creative final shootouts in recent memory. It doesn't always "work" but it's always—always—interesting at worst to intensely compelling at best.
- Our third of three double nominees is, obviously, Ryan Coogler for Sinners. (Gee, you think the director of the movie I already called the best of the decade so far would be nominated?) While Fruitvale Station announced him as an ascendant talent to watch, and Creed and the Black Panther movies vaulted him into Hollywood stardom, Sinners heralds Coogler as a major American auteur. It's a masterpiece, full stop, with Coogler orchestrating every element of filmmaking in perfect unison, from the casting and performances to the visuals and sets/costumes to the sounds and music (he was apparently intimately involved in the score/soundtrack). The Oscar race between him and PTA is so fascinating, with both more than deserving—but there does have to be a winner and a loser.
- There is a little bit of a gap between the first three names and these final two, who have both made appearances here before. Yorgos Lanthimos has always been a bit hit or miss with me, but he's been more hit lately. He snagged a Best Original Screenplay nom back in 2017 (with regular collaborator Efthimis Filippou) for The Killing of a Sacred Deer (still my favorite of his), then an HM for Best Director in 2023 for Poor Things. This year, Bugonia landed him his first proper Best Director nomination. For most of the film, Lanthimos seems to back away a bit from his oft-stylized approach and lets his leads, Plemons and Stone, cook. He always keeps the audience guessing at the movie's central mystery and really pushes the tension when he needs to. Then he lets his Greek freak flag fly in the final 5-10 minutes with That Montage, one of the wildest—and best—scenes of the year.
- The final nominee is a previous winner, as Park Chan-wook previous won here for The Handmaiden, my #1 film back in 2016. (His only other film in the Fake Oscars era, 2022's Decision to Leave, was more like than love for me, although I need to revisit it.) His latest, No Other Choice, an adaptation of a 1997 Donald Westlake pulp novel, is a pitch-black comedy about a man who loses his job and the lengths he goes to to eliminate the competition for the new job he desires. You could view it as Park's version of Parasite—they're tonally and thematically quite similar, although this leans into the comedy a bit more, especially the almost slapstick-esque scene early on with the unfaithful wife. Park marries his typically wryly grim sensibility to a pronounced anticapitalist streak, and the result is as unpredictable as it is satisfying.
Just like in the previous four categories in which they squared off, this was very much a competition between Sinners and OBAA. And just like in those other categories, Sinners triumphs here as well, with Ryan Coogler taking the fake statue. At least for me, 2025's cinematic slate will be remembered for Sinners, first and foremost, as evidenced by its now six wins in seven categories. Coogler might never make a movie this good again (most don't) but I can't think of any project I'll be more excited for than whatever he does next.
The ballot: 1) Coogler, 2) Anderson, 3) Aster, 4) Park, 5) Lanthimos
I know, you're shocked—after winning six of the first seven categories, Sinners obviously triumphs here as well. Its seven Fake Oscar wins is easily a record, well surpassing the previous record of four shared by Hereditary (2018), Parasite (2019), and Tár (2022). That record will almost certainly never be broken—unless The Beekeeper 2 becomes the generation-defining masterpiece we all know it can be.
Given the above 6,000+ plus words (this is already longer than last year's post...), it should come as no surprise that OBAA, Eddington, Bugonia, and Sentimental Value (it was close with No Other Choice) round out the top 5. I've said enough about them all above, but feel free to read the linked Letterboxd reviews if you'd like more of my rambling. (They're mostly pretty short.)
The others in my top 10 were all included in at least the HM section in a category or two, with the exception of the new Avatar, which was another audiovisual tour de force that did recycle a few too many beats/plot points from the second one. Oh, and if you want to have a blast, check out Freaky Tales if you can. It basically opens with an Op Ivy needle drop, has punks beating up Nazis, and ends with NBA All-Star Sleepy Floyd massacring even more Nazis. Its one of the best times I had watching a movie in 2025.
And that's, in the parlance of filmmaking lingo, a wrap on the movies of 2025. (For now—my Oscar predictions post is forthcoming in the next few days.) I'll leave you (whoever you are) with a link to my Letterboxd list ranking of all the movies I saw in 2025, all reviewed with at least a short paragraph. (Don't take the rankings too seriously outside the top 10-15 or so.) Join me there if you're a movie buff and/or obsessive listmaker like me! Until next year. Can't wait to see what cinematic treasures await in the rest of 2026!
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