Best Picture Nominees 2025
We've seen four of them so far, and here are some thoughts.
The Nickel Boys is so brilliant and transcendent that of course it didn't win. A staggering adaptation of an equally brilliant book. It manages to be both lyrical and incredibly uncomfortable at the same time. When has anyone ever managed to do that? Also, if you haven't read the book, please do. Colson Whitehead is a ridiculous, fantastic writer.
Anora was a worthy Best Picture winner (if the Nickel Boys couldn't win), and Mikey Madison was an even more deserving Best Actress winner. She was riveting. This movie is so darkly funny that it can be a bit of an adjustment, at first, but it was a brilliant script.
Emilia Perez is a level below the previous two, but still very, very good. It's a musical, but the film itself tells a story that might have been better served without the musical numbers (even though they're very clever).
The Substance is a campy B-movie with no original ideas whatsoever and it's a crime it was nominated instead of far more deserving movies (like A Real Pain). This movie is two hours and twenty minutes of cymbals clashing together. It's a quilt of ideas taken from far better films with body horror thrown in. The entire script reads like it was written by AI after feeding in every cynical popularity algorithm currently existing in cinema.
Not that I have a strong opinion about it or anything.
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