The 2025 Oscar Nominations and What Should Have Made the List
With the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations, the members of the Academy have, in effect, responded to the natural and political disasters of the moment in the name of solidarity. A remarkable consensus has crystallized among a small number of movies that, in one way or another—whether with bold artistry or conventional methods, realistic stories or fantasies—embody, display, or at least appear to celebrate the liberal values of pluralism, equality, and resistance to the arrogance of power, be it political or economic. This time around, the Oscars are circling the wagons.
The degree of apparent consensus is extraordinary, as seen in the ten Best Picture nominees, the subjects they address, and their concentration of nominations throughout: six nominations for “Anora,” about the oppressive footprint of Russian oligarchs; ten for “The Brutalist,” a Holocaust survivor’s confrontation with a predatory American tycoon; eight for “A Complete Unknown,” a bio-pic about an icon of generational revolt; eight for “Conclave,” in which a coalition unites behind a progressive to resist a narrow-minded reactionary; five for “Dune: Part Two,” about sand (and a revolt against tyranny); thirteen for “Emilia Pérez,” the story of a trans woman and of the cis woman who enables her transition; three for “I’m Still Here,” a drama of resistance to a rightist military dictatorship; two for “Nickel Boys” (the year’s actual best movie), based on the true story of a murderous segregated Florida reform school; five for “The Substance,” about the ageist exclusions that women endure, especially in Hollywood; and ten for “Wicked,” a story of racism and oppressive, illegitimate authority.
Though the range of artistic achievement here is widely varied, from the originality of “Nickel Boys” to the blandness of “Conclave,” the Academy’s membership is sending an unambiguous message regarding what it stands for, and what it won’t stand for. The gestures are symbolic—but then so are movies. They are commodities, too, of course, and Hollywood’s assertive stance is rendered all the more staunch by its embrace of “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked,” two of the year’s biggest box-office hits. Not all of these movies have made money, but all of them bask in the glow of success, heralding the notion that the business is confident of doing well while doing good.
It’s telling that one of the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, “No Other Land,” about the destruction of a Palestinian village by Israeli forces, has not yet been acquired by a U.S. distributor. So far, it’s been screened only independently, and will play at Film Forum starting January 31st; perhaps political principle in the business goes only so far. It’s also worth noting that two short films released by The New Yorker are among the nominees in their categories: the live-action film “I’m Not a Robot,” directed by Victoria Warmerdam, and the documentary “Incident,” directed by Bill Morrison, which reconstructs, through surveillance and body-cam footage, the killing of a Black civilian by police.
It’s inevitably the acting categories that are emblematic of the Oscars’ built-in nonpolitical prejudices—the ideas of professionalism and technique that only occasionally intersect with exemplary artistry. In one sense, it’s hard to make a wrong choice; actors at all levels of filmmaking put their bodies on the line, and display the fundamental mettle of being in control of themselves and in command of their art while a camera is trained on them. Yet control and command, which are all the more manifest in the higher reaches of the business, aren’t the heart of movie acting. Cameras see through virtuosity to reveal states of being. Great movie acting isn’t necessarily based on theatrical precision, but it does offer a different aspect of theatre: the emotional illusion of the actors’ presence. (That’s why great acting is usually found in exceptionally well-directed movies, ones with an original view of the relationship between actors and the very forms in which they’re presented.) This year’s acting nominations are no different—all of the selected actors are admirable, almost all in familiar modes.
The nomination of Demi Moore for “The Substance,” a stylized work of body-horror science fiction, is noteworthy. The fact that she hasn’t had major roles in recent years confirms the accuracy of the movie’s critique of Hollywood sexism; it’s also a sign that the venerable and central movie genre of melodrama, at which Moore excelled, has been left behind. It’s an inherently democratic genre, but current examples mostly proceed by inflation and deflection—“Anora” and “The Brutalist,” in their different ways, demonstrate both tendencies—with results that lack the spirit and the distinctive artistry of the genre’s classics.
Regarding international features, this year’s list offers a joltingly significant oddity: “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” an Iranian film directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, is a nominee officially attributed to Germany. The attribution is technically accurate (one of the production companies that made the movie is German) and perhaps morally, too: Rasoulof, facing a prison sentence in Iran after making the film there in secret, fled the country and now lives in Germany. Kudos to the German committee that picked the movie as Germany’s submission to the Oscars—but the Academy’s system of putting such choices in the hands of countries’ official film bodies is indefensible, because it gives oppressive regimes a veto against movies made in opposition. It’s urgent that the Academy—which has actively taken measures to broaden its membership internationally—assume control of its own processes and create a better system for the nomination of international features.
Because this is an unusual year with many underlying questions to consider (and a small batch of movies excelling in multiple ways), I’m sticking to fewer categories. My picks are in no particular order, except for the winners, which are first and in bold.
Best Picture
“Blitz”
The drop-off from the year’s best to the rest is relatively sharp. I wouldn’t read much into it—but, as it becomes increasingly tough to draw audiences for independent and international films, so it becomes harder for distributors to release them. (I’m noticing, for instance, that the first two months of 2025 have relatively little of the art-house counterprogramming that used to brighten the winter doldrums.) In any case, because there’s a big gap between this year’s handful of best movies and the rest, a relatively small number will weigh heavily in the various categories of movie work.
It’s with surprise and dismay that I note the scarcity of international films among the year’s best. This, too, isn’t a trend, just a blip: as I mentioned last month in my best-of roundup, several international films that I saw last year and that would have been high on my list were pushed to 2025 or haven’t even been picked up for distribution.
I’ve written at length about all ten of my Best Picture picks with one exception: Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” a picture that has been the victim of a critical misunderstanding. As a drama with an elemental emotional kick—a child alone, facing dangers while trying to find his way home—it has been wrongly disparaged as sentimental, conventional, or even compromised. The action is set in London during the Second World War. The child in question is Black, and the movie’s depiction of racist attitudes and acts, amid the city’s heroic efforts to cope with Nazi Germany’s bombing campaign, is part of a teeming, fine-grained, and wide-ranging historical reconstruction. Though its characters are brought to life in vivid and nuanced performances, it’s not a drama of personal psychology but of mentalities. McQueen distills societal attitudes and assumptions into action, in the form of a romantic Dickensian adventure. He also invests the film with a dash of Dickensian exaggeration, which, I think, accounts for its dismissal by some critics who’ve nonetheless embraced, say, the overt caricatures in “Wicked.” The blend of tones in McQueen’s film is a challenge, not a comfort.
