1. Zootopia 2
2. A Minecraft Movie
3. Lilo & Stitch
4. Avatar: Fire and Ash
5. Superman
6. Wicked: For Good
7. Jurassic World: Rebirth
8. Sinners
9. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
10. How to Train Your Dragon
(Note: I will point out this is the current lineup as of the last writing. Avatar: Fire and Ash, specifically, is still making relatively decent domestic money, though likely not enough to outearn Lilo & Stitch and move onto the medal stand)
Of these 10 films, I've seen eight of them, skipping both of the live-action animated remakes because, as a general rule, I think these are terrible. I think it's notable, looking at this, how we have at least one truly original movie (Sinners becoming the highest-grossing totally original story since Gravity), and that the MCU truly just fell from grace here, with Thunderbolts not even crossing the $200M mark domestically and Captain America: Brave New World making $700M less than the last Captain America movie did at the box office (and only Fantastic Four making the Top 10). Looking down the box office list, most of the unseen movies that I haven't caught yet are horror movie sequels, though The Housemaid stands out as maybe the movie I should've caught and might try to sneak in before the My Ballot (I will definitely be seeing How to Train Your Dragon given so many people loved the visual effects).
But now, it's time to go back just a few months to a time we all were getting a crush on Zohran Mamdani, watching Taylor & Travis get engaged, and seeing the first American pope. And of course, let's remember the movies...
1. One Battle After Another
2. Hamnet
3. The Secret Agent
4. Sinners
5. Sentimental Value
6. Train Dreams
7. F1
8. Bugonia
9. Marty Supreme
10. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: This is a solid list in what was honestly a very good year for movies, maybe the best since 2021 or even 2017. But there's no competition for Paul Thomas Anderson here-One Battle After Another is a profound, challenging picture with universally good acting and writing. Hamnet is really special in second place, proving that Chloe Zhao is emerging as one of our most thoughtful and introspective directors, and I have a sincere enjoyment of the craftsmanship of something like The Secret Agent or Sinners, but One Battle is on another level, and as you'll see, is going to be batting really well this write-up.
1. Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
2. Chloe Zhao (Hamnet)
3. Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
4. Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
5. Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)
The Lowdown: A second showdown between Anderson & Zhao (both of whom are going to repeat when we get to the 2025 My Ballot), but I won't pretend this is a close race. I've actually been much kinder to PTA than Oscar has (his films have plenty of My Ballot statues), but I'm glad on some level that Oscar waited for (what I hope) will be a coronation here as this will become the defining work of his career. Also, I want to say for the record that Josh Safdie's personal troubles are not why he's in last...I just really did not like his movie.
1. Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)
2. Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)
3. Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent)
4. Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon)
5. Timothee Chalamet (Marty Supreme)
The Lowdown: Best Actor remains the best lineup of the 2025 acting races, and I will own that none of these (not even Timmy in a movie I didn't like) is a bad performance. In terms of a win, though, Leo's best work in years is really going to take it over Michael B. Jordan adding nuance to two different characters and Wagner Moura's steady, marked performance in The Secret Agent. Leo's so good here-a man that even in his prime was over-his-head but in love with ideals and a woman who wouldn't stay, having to reengage with life to save the only thing he truly cares about...this is the kind of star power electricity that Leo promised when he was in his Chalamet years.
1. Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)
2. Emma Stone (Bugonia)
3. Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)
4. Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue)
5. Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You)
The Lowdown: I will largely skate by the elephant in the room (I love Rose Byrne, I love Kate Hudson, but these performances are not ranked incorrectly...do with that what you will), and instead focus on the real competition: Jessie Buckley's spiritual work as a mother trying to connect with a man she loves but can't understand and a boy she knows but cannot grasp, and Emma Stone's terrifying girlboss incarnate, totally grasping on to Bugonia's bizarre (and oftentimes off-kilter) wavelength. I'm going with Buckley because I think she is able to connect more to the ending than Stone.
1. Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)
2. Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another)
3. Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value)
4. Delroy Lindo (Sinners)
5. Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)
The Lowdown: I like #3-5 in other things (truth be told, there is no acting performance of the 20 that I truly disliked even if there are movies that were cited that I disliked, which is rare), but for me it's a competition between the two Oscar-winning acting titans in One Battle After Another. I'm going with Penn not because he's the bigger performance, but because I think that big performances sometimes get a bad rap in modern acting (del Toro is certainly subtle), but you need them when you're playing a big character like he is, and he totally inhabits a unique type of weak toxicity that's rarely seen represented in the movies (but oftentimes on cable news).
1. Amy Madigan (Weapons)
2. Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)
3. Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value)
4. Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners)
5. Inga Ibsdotter Lileaas (Sentimental Value)
The Lowdown: Madigan gives one of the most unhinged supporting performances in recent years, channeling in many ways actors like Kathy Bates in Misery or Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby to give us something truly terrifying (and speaking of Trump, if you think the red-haired clown terrorizing a group of children isn't an allegory for the guy that has plagued the Epstein list, watch again). Taylor would be a really worthy winner too, and I love the imprint she made on this movie with only time in the first 40 minutes or so, but this is Madigan by the widest margin of the acting races.
1. One Battle After Another
2. Hamnet
3. Train Dreams
4. Bugonia
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: One Battle is not done with its wins yet, and takes another one for PTA. One Battle is honestly one of the rare one of Anderson's films that is more of a director's achievement than a writing or acting one, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have the oomph to best Hamnet, which is also a wonderful and deceptively strong screenplay (the way that it folds ideas of Shakespeare into the film, while also feeling vaguely universal). The rest of this category I'd probably upend, and will when we get to the My Ballot.
1. Sinners
2. Sentimental Value
3. Blue Moon
4. It Was Just an Accident
5. Marty Supreme
The Lowdown: I'll be honest, the writing categories are where a relatively decent Best Picture lineup (like I said, 2025 is one of the best years for movies so far this decade) shows some chinks in the armor, as you have films like Marty Supreme & Bugonia where I actively disliked the endings and felt they took down chunks of the movie. There is a touch of that with Sinners, so I will note that it is just barely beating out Sentimental Value (which nails its ending), but the inventive plotting and the way that it unfolds a closed door horror so well means I'm going to slightly favor the vampires over the Swedish introspection.
1. Elio
2. Little Amelie, or the Character of Rain
3. Zootopia 2
4. Arco
5. KPop Demon Hunters
The Lowdown: In what was otherwise a strong year for cinema, I'll own that animation was terrible. It's not even a case where we have a bunch of better films sitting around-KPop is good when the music is playing and Zootopia is good if you don't constantly compare it to the original and Arco is good if you pretend the melancholy ending was at all earned by the rest of the picture...but overall this is not an impressive list. If I have to pick a winner, it'd be Elio, a somewhat forgettable Pixar movie that nonetheless has gorgeous animation, beautiful music, and some really strong emotional plotting, but would stand out more if Pixar hadn't been using the same plot for every non-Toy Story film since Cars 3).
1. The Secret Agent (Brazil)
2. Sentimental Value (Norway)
3. It Was Just an Accident (France)
4. Sirat (Spain)
5. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia)
The Lowdown: The movies of this category used to, on very rare occasion, get nominations in other fields, but this year we have four of them nominated elsewhere and two nominated for Best Picture. Even with this category, the Academy is becoming entirely focused on the Best Picture field. Thankfully that's where this should be, as those are the two best movies of the bunch, with weirdly similar plots (both movies are essentially about how you can never know your parents). I prefer The Secret Agent, a subtler movie with a more sprawling historical look behind it (and the better central performance), but honestly either one here is a winner.
1. Hamnet
2. One Battle After Another
3. Sinners
4. Bugonia
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: I am a total sucker for Max Richter, whose soft melodies and gorgeous, romantic use of strings and swelling orchestras is a callback to the man I frequently confuse him with (Max Steiner). Hamnet earned him his first Academy Award nomination, and I struggle to find a reason not to give him this (the OVP is in a vacuum, as a reminder, so I'm not trying to make up for lost time-just noting that Richter has gotten multiple My Ballot nods at this point, and will get another one in 2025 from me when we get there later this month). One Battle After Another, by another favorite of mine (Jonny Greenwood) is really aces as well, even if it isn't quite as distinctive as we're used to from Greenwood's collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson.
1. "I Lied to You," Sinners
2. "Golden," KPop Demon Hunters
3. "Sweet Dreams of Joy," Viva Verdi!
4. "Train Dreams," Train Dreams
5. "Dear Me," Diane Warren: Relentless
The Lowdown: I sometimes struggle with how to grade this category, because I do feel that it should not just be about the quality of the song, but also about how it is incorporated into the movie. "Golden" is an ear worm that I have not stopped listening to since it came out (there's a reason this became a genuine pop hit), but the "I Lied to You" sequence in Sinners is easily one of the best scenes of the year, and in my opinion deserves this statue even if "Golden" might be a better piece of music outside the realm of the movie. Of the three also-rans (i.e. the songs you don't know), "Sweet Dreams of Joy" is much better than you'd expect, and sadly "Dear Me" is exactly what you'd expect (we really should've just given Diane Warren that Oscar for Burlesque and none of this would've happened).
1. F1
2. Sinners
3. One Battle After Another
4. Sirat
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: After watching Sirat, I realized why this was nominated (the sound work is on full-display throughout, and honestly is a supporting actor in how prominent it is), though unlike The Zone of Interest, I wasn't as impressed, and felt it bordered the line between best and most that sometimes tech categories can't distinguish. I was far more impressed with F1 and Sinners, the former a sea of zooming cars & "you're practically there" race scenes, the latter a wonderfully constructed semi-musical. I'm going to go with F1, a movie I think did both mixing & effects well (I'm old-school), but either would make a good winner.
1. Hamnet
2. Sinners
3. One Battle After Another
4. The Secret Agent
5. Marty Supreme
The Lowdown: The first year of this category, I also kind of need to set my own parameters of how I'm going to grade this, as (like editing) you don't entirely know what was left in the cutting process. For me, I think it comes down to how well the cast works together, how ingenious/inventive the casting process is (particularly if an actor isn't an obvious choice), and whether there are any clear standout good/bad casting decisions that elevate/demote it. For me, I have Hamnet over the next two-I don't think there's a bad choice in the casts here, which is saying something as there usually is, but Hamnet had the stunt casting of two actual brothers to underline one character and the character he inspired, and that on top of Mescal & Buckley being perfect for their parts puts it in the lead.
1. Train Dreams
2. One Battle After Another
3. Sinners
4. Marty Supreme
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: Sinners has, for my money, some of the best cinematography of the year. The Golden Hour shots are honestly breathtaking, but the night scenes suffer (by my personal tastes), with them trying to patch over some of the gaps in the visual effects (I liked the makeup, but the visual effects were more hit-or-miss for me), by making the screen too dark to see properly make it hard to judge overall as a success. As a result, I am all in on the beautiful Train Dreams, a gorgeous Lubezki-esque take on the passage of time with a camera. In a year where, in general, Cinematography was lacking (this is somehow going to be the weakest of my My Ballot lists in a few weeks), this is the one film that really embraced looking like a movie you'll remember forever.
1. Sinners
2. Hamnet
3. Marty Supreme
4. Avatar: Fire & Ash
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: It's possible I totally upend this entire list (looking like the only category I'll do that with), but for me it's all about the outfits specifically worn by Michael B. Jordan & Michael B. Jordan in the film. Part of Sinners ability to inspire is that you kind of need to be horny for the dual MBJ's (this is a very sexy movie, with an early sex scene and Jack O'Connell clearly meant to be both figuratively and literally carnal), and the gorgeous teal-and-red combo that Ruth E. Carter brings here is better than the peasant period fare in Hamnet or the out-of-this-world third spin on Avatar (the craziest nomination of 2025). I will note that the Mia Goth peacock outfit in this photo is so good it makes me forget that I was largely uninspired by the rest of Frankenstein.
1. One Battle After Another
2. Sinners
3. F1
4. Sentimental Value
5. Marty Supreme
The Lowdown: I mean, sometimes this category gets something a bit out-of-the-box (F1 was probably further along here than in the Best Picture race), but there are days I think "Oscar didn't try to think beyond his five favorite movies in the editing branch...should I even bother?" I will note that One Battle After Another's win here comes from the way it unfolds tension-the bank robbery scenes, the harrowing conversation late in the film between Sean Penn & Chase Infiniti...it's something to behold. Sinners might have had a better shot if it had had more consistent cinematography lighting, as well as had the good sense to cut that post-credits ending which feels nonsensical and totally unnecessary (but the building tension there is something else).
1. Kokuho
2. Sinners
3. Frankenstein
4. The Smashing Machine
5. The Ugly Stepsister
The Lowdown: Oscar has historically struggled with horror in his category even though it is very much the bread-and-butter of the genre, so it's weird to see a lineup where the majority of the nominees come from that world. I am not so apathetic (I nominate horror more regularly for the My Ballot), and while I was impressed with the violent deformity of Sinners and the albino care of Frankenstein, my heart belongs to the remarkable beauty and elegant aging of Kokuho, giving us a first-hand at the look of kabuki theater.
1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. One Battle After Another
4. Hamnet
5. Frankenstein
The Lowdown: We're going to give Sinners its final trophy here (genuinely curious how this compares to its count with Oscar-it ended up taking three statues from me), with the sets in this feeling so authentically barren. There's so much personality and touches in the dancehalls and railway stations in Coogler's work, and yet they feel appropriately isolated-there's nowhere to run. I'll note that most of this lineup is good, and this is Marty Supreme's worthiest nomination (I love the on-a-budget redesign of New York City that never feels like it's on a budget at all), but Sinners feels like it lives in the set the most, and adds the most to the story.
1. Avatar: Fire & Ash
2. F1
3. Jurassic World Rebirth
4. Sinners
5. The Lost Bus
The Lowdown: Putting Avatar in a lineup of Visual Effects always feels like you're playing on cheat mode. The latest round doesn't have the "how the hell did they do that?" impact that its predecessors had, but in an era where visual effects are increasingly sloppy, overdone, and clearly glossed over by darkened cinematography (looking at you, The Lost Bus), it has beauty and looks fantastic, and even against something as impressive as the technical virtuosity of F1, it's unbeatable.
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