 By Jacob Barlow-Jones Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Back in January, just after the 2026 Oscar Nominations were announced, I published a piece detailing where you could watch every single one (or at least every single one we could personally find). Given that it’s now been just over a month and a half, that piece has now been updated to its latest iteration as some contenders moved from relative theatrical and VOD obscurity onto streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, so if you’re still looking to catch up on as many nominees as possible before Sunday, now is a perfect time for an Oscars movie marathon. Speaking of movie marathons, I’ve more or less been running my own for this year’s Academy Awards over the past few weeks, and for the first time since 2021, I have actually managed to see every single one of the nominees for this year’s Oscars, a grand total of 50 films. It was not an easy task to accomplish, as some of these nominees are still largely inaccessible to the general public, but for those of us obsessed with all cinema has to offer, it’s nice to know that it can in fact be done, even without a pandemic forcing studios to provide wider availability for more obscure titles. With all that in mind, I thought it would be a fun pre-ceremony exercise to rank all 50 of this year’s nominees, one by one, from worst to best, leaving a few brief thoughts on each. (These blurbs should not be considered official reviews of any film; if I have reviewed any nominees in an official capacity, I will link those reviews to the titles below.) There’s not really an easy way to segue into the rest of this piece, so without further ado, let’s get started!  50. Viva Verdi! Nominated For: Best Original Song (“Sweet Dreams of Joy”) It always ends up that some of the least inspired nominations come Oscar time hail straight from the Best Original Song category, and this year, the bottom two slots are once more occupied by relatively obscure titles whose only purpose seems to be to garner said nominations. Viva Verdi! – which follows a group of senior musicians living at the historic Casa Verdi in Milan, built by the incomparable opera legend of the same name – wouldn’t be a bad film for a Sunday afternoon educational program, but as a film and especially as an Oscar nominee, it’s painfully, dreadfully boring. What makes its nomination worse is the fact that “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” the song for which the film is nominated, isn’t even an especially good song when compared to many of the other songs that were shortlisted for the category. Sure, some songs had no shot in hell of making the cut, but when the better of the two Wicked: For Good songs, as well as “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” “Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” and “Highest 2 Lowest” are all passed over in favor of this, a film which was released back in 2024 but only had its original song released and attached to it this year, it’s hard not to be dismayed at the state of the category. Something had to occupy the bottom slot, and unfortunately, Viva Verdi! drew the short straw this time around.  49. Diane Warren: Relentless Nominated For: Best Original Song (“Dear Me”) Ah, Diane Warren, the Best Original Song category mainstay that just won’t quit until she wins a competitive Oscar (the honorary ones don’t count). Every year, people make their predictions in the Original Song category too early, leaving Diane Warren out of their lineup, and every year, she managed to sneak right back in. Unfortunately, the film about her “relentless” pursuit (no pun intended) of Oscar glory can’t possibly live up to some of the genuinely impressive work she’s turned in over the years, thanks in no small part to the film’s very existence being an obvious play for an Oscar in itself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting an Oscar – anyone who works in movies and says they don’t care about it is usually just being dishonest with either the audience or themselves – but to create an entire documentary with awful lighting setups (which Warren herself acknowledges), no true exploration of the artist’s psyche, and a Wikipedia surface-level skimming of her greatest hits just to garner a nomination is absurd (but not as absurd as Warren claiming the nominated song is the “best she’s ever written” when its lyrics as a self-help ballad feel shallow and ten years out of date).  48. Jurassic World Rebirth Nominated For: Best Visual Effects Credit where credit is due: Jurassic World Rebirth does contain some pretty great visual effects at a massive scale. It’s easily the best-looking of the Jurassic World films from a purely visual standpoint, thanks in no small part to a close collaboration with Gareth Edwards, whose directorial credits include such films as Rogue One and The Creator; whatever one thinks of those films narratively, there’s no denying their production quality, especially vis-à-vis their VFX. Where Rebirth falls short is…basically everywhere else. Apart from the Mosasaurus attack on the water and the river raft sequence (which was directly adapted from the original Jurassic Park book), there’s very little to glean from the film’s narrative and even less from its two-dimensional characters. The script even manages to take the much-hyped D-Rex – supposedly the ultimate threat – and do absolutely nothing interesting or even all that terrifying with it. This franchise has never lived up to the highs of its first entrant, but even after four failed Worlds in a row, its box office success seems to practically guarantee we’ll continue to see pale imitators like this for decades.  47. The Three Sisters Nominated For: Best Animated Short The first of the short films on this list across three categories, The Three Sisters seems at first blush like a cleverly animated story of sisterhood, but soon devolves into a tongue-in-cheek comedy about them all fighting over a man (of all things) who happens to show up on their island. To say that this was a disappointing watch undersells just how childishly it handles the material it’s working with, but as a nominee over other, more worthy contenders, it feels like an even larger mistake. I really don’t see what the point of this one was at all.  46. Butcher’s Stain Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short The first of two short films from Israel to acknowledge Palestinian personhood, Butcher’s Stain gets so close to actually saying something meaningful about how Israelis post-October 7 have come to see Palestinians as lesser than them, but stops just short offering any genuine critique of the specific kinds of racism Palestinians face day to day. The film instead puts the burden on its lead character to “remain dignified” and just walk away from the coworker that slanders him to his superiors, rather than fight for actual justice for himself or in any way demonstrate how such slander has real-world consequences; it walks right up the point, and then walks away.  45. Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud Nominated For: Best Documentary Short For all the good Brent Renaud did the world with his commitment to journalism in the world’s most dangerous spaces, Armed Only with a Camera seems more interested in playing back his greatest hits than it does actually letting us get to know Renaud as a person. As impressive as those hits are, we don’t really get to know who Renaud was outside of his work, except through the words of those who attended his funeral. The film does attempt to gets its arms around the impact Renaud has left on the world both as journalist and filmmaker, and features some harrowing footage as he is on the ground gathering stories, but try as he might, Craig Renaud – who had to finish the film following his brother’s death – just doesn’t quite have the filmmaking instinct his brother did; at least, not yet.  44. Elio Nominated For: Best Animated Feature There’s a distinct feeling that Elio could have been one of Pixar’s great underrated gems were it to follow through on its familial themes and not devolve into a fairly wrote alien adventure film. It’s hardly a dud, and is certainly more entertaining than some other B-tier Pixar films, but its unfulfilled potential weighs it down in such a way that it only reminds me of how Disney Animation has either stolen or driven off a lot of the company’s great storytellers, and how it’s now the Pixar name, not the quality of their films, which feels like a staple of the Best Animated Feature category. At least Hoppers, for the faults it has, maintained its thematic structure throughout.  43. The Lost Bus Nominated For: Best Visual Effects There’s no one like Paul Greengrass to direct an on-the-ground thriller about real-life heroes facing impossible – and occasionally insurmountable – odds. Even with some thinly-written characters at its center, The Lost Bus manages to recreate the tragic circumstances of the 2018 Paradise fires with harrowing intensity, making the rescue of 22 people from Ponderosa elementary feel like a genuine life-or-death race as one watches the story play out. The visual effects for which the film garnered its nomination blend in seamlessly, and every minute in the heart of the fires showcases that even when Greengrass is working with lesser material, he’s still the best there is at exactly this sort of film.  42. Song Sung Blue Nominated For: Best Actress (Kate Hudson) The SAG slingshot heard around the world, Kate Hudson’s nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role was more or less a sixth-or-seventh place longshot right up until the Screen Actors Guild unveiled their nominations and left every international contender off the list. To be fair, Hudson is very good in Song Sung Blue, as is co-lead Hugh Jackman, but the film itself is largely so-so compared to many of the other nominees included here. Even with the mistake of spoiling the twist in the film’s marketing, it had so many opportunities to be more than just a run-of-the-mill musician biopic, and instead settled for the safest route at (almost) every turn.  41. The Smashing Machine Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling I feel like we’ve all done a disservice to Benny Safdie’s UFC drama about one of the sport’s ultimate icons by simply dismissing it as not very good narratively. Of course, the film doesn’t do much to make Mark Kerr’s life more interesting than it would already be to those familiar with his story, but the Dwayne Johnson performance at its center, as well as the naturalistic makeup he has to wear over the course of the film, offer a lot for viewers who are looking for something interesting to hold onto. Johnson plays Kerr as this giant, hulking mass whose softness juxtaposes brilliantly with Johnson’s insane physique; it’s the type of part I’ve missed seeing the actor play, and I hope – somewhat against hope – that Johnson continues on this kind of trajectory, challenging himself to non-typecast roles in the future.  40. Jane Austen’s Period Drama Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short As funny as Jane Austen’s Period Drama is, it never really goes for anything other than being an easy-to-swallow farce; it’s absolutely entertaining, and there’s lots of clever wordplay amongst a range of different comic styles in each performance, but what holds it back is the lack of a larger point, a theme to tie the whole thing together beyond being what amounts to a 12-minute Funny or Die sketch. Truthfully, there’s nothing especially wrong with it as a concept, but just because one could do significantly worse in terms of live-action nominees doesn’t mean asking for better should be out of the question. As it stands, this one is just…fine.  39. Forevergreen Nominated For: Best Animated Short If I had a nickel for every time there was a cute animated short centered on a bear experiencing personal growth and loss that was shortlisted for this year’s Oscars, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right? All joking aside, while I do ultimately prefer Snow Bear as the hand-drawn counterpart to this film, Forevergreen is nothing to sneeze at, and would’ve fit right at home amongst the old shorts that Pixar used to put in front of its theatrically-released movies (an unfortunate casualty of the Disney+ era). Much like the previous nominee, however, it doesn’t quite go beyond being a well-made version of something we’ve all seen before.  38. Avatar: Fire and Ash Nominated For: Best Visual Effects For all the hate that the Avatar films get for having “no cultural impact” (which in itself is demonstrably not true being that it’s simply not the kind of cultural impact one associates with large-scale blockbusters of the modern era), their box office numbers would suggest people across the world still love spending time on Pandora, and Fire and Ash is no different. The third of James Cameron’s films centered on the adventures of Jake Sully and his family’s life amongst the Na’vi people, the thing that holds this entrant back from reaching greater heights – apart from an underuse of the Ash tribe led by a terrific Oona Chaplin – is its status as the originally-conceived second half of The Way of Water, which means it has to spend a lot more time wrapping up the second film’s loose threads than it’s able to telling its own story. That said, it still features what are somehow the best visual effects of any Avatar film, some of the best performances from its returning leads that the series has ever had, and action sequences with such clear geography and momentum that only a filmmaker of James Cameron’s skill could have ever pulled them off. Hopefully the imminent fourth film the director has now confirmed as “very likely to happen” is able to push the Sully family in a genuinely new direction, and perhaps we’ll even get to see more of Oona Chaplin’s Varang once it’s ready to be unveiled.  37. Children No More: “Were and Are Gone” Nominated For: Best Documentary Short The most difficult of the documentary shorts to see if one wasn’t able to catch it in theaters, Children No More follows a group of Israeli citizens opposed to the genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli government and military that come together to protest their government’s actions by holding up photos in public spaces of children who have been killed by this ongoing conflict. This one has aged a bit given that it was all filmed prior to the Israeli hostages all being returned to their home country, so the segments of the film during which the former hostages are brought up feel like a moot point each time the group says they care about both the hostages and the loss of Palestinian life, but it can be nice to be reminded that there are a not insignificant number Israeli citizens who oppose their governments abhorrent actions and aren’t afraid to say so. Then again, much like the aforementioned Butcher’s Stain, the film doesn’t really go anywhere beyond showing the viewer that groups like this exist without actually examining the racism of its people or government at a larger scale, making it feel less like an acknowledgement of the very real harms Palestinians have endured for decades and more like a hand-washing or brand management exercise for Israel because “see? There are good people in here too,” especially since the short itself comes from that nation. Still, at least it is attempting to say something, even if its imperfections and the nature of where it comes from holds it back from being what could have been an extremely powerful examination of how the genocide came to be.  36. Perfectly a Strangeness Nominated For: Best Documentary Short Do you ever want to just hang out with your donkey friends and explore an abandoned astronomical observatory in Chile together? If your answer was yes, you may be entitled to financial compensation…or you could just enjoy Perfectly a Strangeness, an indie documentary short that’s way more immersive (thanks to stunning cinematography) than it would otherwise have any right to be. How director Alison McAlpine managed to craft a beautiful, silent story of animal friendship and wonder at the cosmos in just 15 minutes, I’ll never know, but I felt enamored by it all the same. (That shot of the stars in one of the donkey’s eye? Goosebump-inducing.) The only thing that holds the film back from being higher on the list is that it, too, has very little to offer beyond its surface-level awe, but I’ll still take it over a short that only pretends to have a larger point.  35. Cutting Through Rocks Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature Out of the entire Documentary Feature category, Cutting Through Rocks is perhaps only the second-most conventional nominee, and yet, for me, it’s the least interesting. Granted, current socio-political development in Iran have shifted dramatically since this film was shot, but nonetheless, the film itself still feels as though it’s just scratching the surface of who its central subject is. As Sara (the Iranian woman at the center who seeks to challenge the patriarchal standards by which most of the country lives their lives) ascends, we’re invited to watch her struggle and triumph all the while, yet the story still feels a tad incomplete, likely due to the lack of anywhere else for it to go until perhaps a decade or so from now. As a documentary, the entertainment factor is there, and it’s mercifully on the shorter end, but overall, it’s a rather plain work when all is said and done.  34. A Friend of Dorothy Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short This is the most easily palatable of the live-action shorts for general audiences, and it’s not hard to see why when one watches it, but part of me wishes it had been bold enough to dive deeper into the concept of what a “friend of Dorothy” actually represents, rather than simply telling the audience that the two leads have a specific connection point through theater that drives their friendship and then leaving it at that. The short is well-made, though, and I would have been perfectly fine with a feature-length version of it should the filmmakers elect to expand the story, which could fix the above issue. With such little time to say something deeper, this short is barely able to dig an inch before it ends.  33. All the Empty Rooms Nominated For: Best Documentary Short When I first saw All the Empty Rooms, I was floored. Of course, not knowing what it was about – even if I suspected which direction it would go – helped that feeling lift off. The second time I saw it, however, it didn’t hold the same emotional impact, though its mission is as admirable as ever: offer some form of closure to parents whose children were victims of the horrific school-based gun violence that permeates the United States, which has heartbreakingly become not just a staple of life in America, but one of its defining features. Each room visited yields new pain, and new catharsis as we see these families be given a chance to say something meaningful not about the violence itself but about who that person in their family outside of the scope of said violence. Yet, as great as the film’s mission is in practice, there exists yet again this nagging feeling in the back of one’s head that there’s so much more to this idea that hasn’t yet been examined with the patience and care it deserves, and this short only scratches the surface of a deeply-rooted problem which has gone continuously unaddressed.  32. The Ugly Stepsister Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Kudos to writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt for managing to actually do something interesting with the Cinderella narrative beyond just making the villain a misunderstood protagonist we need to feel sympathy for. That’s not entirely off-base from what the film is on paper, but setting the tale of one of the princess’s step-sisters inside a body horror film focused the idea of a young girl changing and even mutilating her body in pursuit of what she believes are better circumstances for both herself and her family is an inspired stroke. I’m not personally sure the film’s makeup nomination is enough to make up for the fact that something like 28 Years Later was left off the shortlist for this category entirely, but it’s nice to see the branch taking major swings outside of putting an actor in a Churchill prosthetic and calling it a day. Also, not for nothing, this is the fourth 2025 film in which a character named Agnes encounters adversarial circumstances in a major way.  31. Kokuho Nominated For: Best Makeup and Hairstyling For all the Tom Cruise hype behind Kokuho, the film gets off to a fairly slow start, but eventually morphs into a quiet tribute to the Japanese theater art of Kabuki. I found the film’s first act to be rather slow, but once the second act gets going and it becomes clear that the film is more or less a Japanese Amadeus, I was willing to go along for the ride. There is some truly beautiful makeup work here, as well as stellar wig work for the Kabuki actors, rendering the film’s nomination well-deserved, but I was surprised in watching it that it didn’t make the shortlist for Cinematography at all. All that to say, if you have the patience for a nearly 3-hour film about an ancient art form that only a few highly skilled people in the world still know how to do, Kokuho is worth at least a cursory glance.  30. Come See Me in the Good Light Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature One of the buzziest debuts out of this past year’s Sundance Film Festival was Ryan White’s documentary chronicling non-binary poet Andrea Gibson’s emotionally fraught battle with cancer (Gibson passed away on July 14) and the ways in which it affected both their own life and their life in conjunction with their spouse, Megan Falley. Come See Me in the Good Light was was acquired by Apple and released over the summer, quietly gaining notoriety over a period of several months, though it was unclear whether it would make the cut for nominations once January came around. The film is a beautiful, even if rather plain, examination of what life with cancer can sometimes look like, buoyed by Gibson’s often stunning poetry as the viewer follows along their journey. Those who have had loved ones struggle with cancer may find it difficult to parse the film’s beauty with the realities of the disease itself, but if there were any film this year that managed to thread the ideas of finality and eternity together better than any other, it’s this one.  29. Retirement Plan Nominated For: Best Animated Short The shortest of the animated short film nominees, Retirement Plan clocks in at just 7 minutes, and manages in that time to tell a complete story of a life lived and hope for the future. Narrated by Domhnall Gleeson, the film’s brevity makes it an ideal candidate for the “short” part of the category name, and would be a worthy winner given how it embodies that name fully, even if there are others I personally enjoyed just a bit more.  28. Two People Exchanging Saliva Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short This was the first of the live-action short films I watched, as it was streaming on YouTube for free well before most others had been made available, and boy, did it leave a lasting impression. Two People Exchanging Saliva is a fascinating viewing experience, not at all what one might expect given its title, occupying something closer to a Yorgos Lanthimos-esque world than anything resembling our own reality. The performances are excellent, the writing is endlessly clever, and while some characters run an unfortunate risk of nearly turning into caricatures, the small interactions between others are some of my favorites in any film this year, short-form or otherwise. Plus, it helps that it’s easily the best-shot of the live-action shorts, with stunning black and white photography that immerses the viewer in its world without feeling like a gimmick.  27. The Singers Nominated For: Best Live-Action Short While the previous film on this ranking may be my favorite live-action short on a personal level, there’s no denying that – much like Retirement Plan does for its own category – The Singers embodies the very definition of “Best Live-Action Short” more than anything else in this category. Sure, the ending perhaps doesn’t leave things off as cathartically as I might have hoped, but it does make for a rather comedic touch to what is otherwise a fairly somber tale. As the group in the bar all tries to out-sing one another in pursuit of a miniscule amount of money, the ensemble graces us with a variety of different styles of music, vocal intonation, and performance, and the way it all caps off is sure to leave first-time watchers with fond memories of the experience.  26. Sirāt Nominated For: Best International Feature (Spain) Is Sirāt good? Is it a film made purely for shock value tragedy or is there some deeper meaning behind its multiple upsetting turns and twists? I’m not sure I have a definitive answer to any of those questions, but I do know that once I saw it, I would never forget the experience of having watched it. The film’s presence on multiple Oscars shortlists briefly tricked some pundits (including myself for a short while) into thinking that Neon may actually be able to propel four of their international contenders to Best Picture nominations rather than three (of course, this was before It Was Just an Accident lost a lot of its momentum in the race, so the notion of only two Neon films getting in wasn’t yet likely). Following a father searching for his missing daughter by joining ravers in a journey across the desert, the film has become quite divisive over the past few months; those that like it seem to think it’s one of 2025’s absolute best, while those that don’t put it towards the bottom of their ratings pool. For myself, a rewatch is likely in order if I’m to determine exactly where on the in-between scale I fall.  25. The Devil is Busy Nominated For: Best Documentary Short I was surprised to see The Devil is Busy – easily the best of the documentary short films in my view – in first place for many Oscar predictions lists as what’s most likely to win the category. It’s not that it’s not worthy or even that it’s unlikely, but this category has burned me before, most recently when the Netflix doc The Only Girl in the Orchestra beat out Instruments of a Beating Heart for the gold last year. (Netflix is very good at campaigning in this particular category, so a win for All the Empty Rooms could very easily dash any chances this film has at a win. Then again, the issue-oriented short docs last year weren’t especially good, and this year has at least two excellent candidates.) The film follows the director of operations at an Atlanta-based abortion clinic as she deals with security, protestors, staffing, and challenges within the legal system, all to help her patients remain safe as they come in for their appointments. Of course, it helps that Geeta Gandbhir, one of the film’s co-directors, also has feature experience given that she directed The Perfect Neighbor, which leads the documentary feature category this year, so the edit for this film is as clean as they come, telling a complete story over the course of a single day. If this is to be the winner of this category, I’ll personally be very pleased.  24. The Girl Who Cried Pearls Nominated For: Best Animated Short Stop-motion animation is so difficult to pull off that most studios outside of those working in short-form filmmaking don’t even attempt it anymore, but when it works, the results can be a real treat. The Girl Who Cried Pearls is stunning to look at, and while its narrative can sometimes feel a bit lackluster in terms of its supporting characters, the story itself is one that would fit right in with classic stop-motion fair like Coraline or Frankenweenie (though it may use a more optimistic lens). The narration can sometimes get in the way of what the film is attempting to accomplish, but if one can briefly brush past its constant presence, the results are well worth the time.  23. KPop Demon Hunters Nominated For: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song (“Golden”) With such a banger of a soundtrack and some beautiful animation, it can be difficult to remember that the story of KPop Demon Hunters leaves a lot of missed opportunities on the table with its story in favor of being more digestible kids fair (perhaps the inevitable sequel can answer a lot of those questions). Then again, those animation qualities – and especially that soundtrack – do a lot of heavy lifting most animated films this year just haven’t been able to come close to. Golden is such a mainstream pop hit from a soundtrack full of great songs, it’s an undeniable Best Original Song winner (even if another film to be mentioned later features the better song in the category), and the film’s status as Netflix’s most watched original film ever more or less guarantees that it takes the Animated Feature Oscar as well, making it the streamer’s second win in that category. There’s really not much else to say about this one that anyone with kids wouldn’t already know, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.  22. Mr. Nobody Against Putin Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature While My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow occupies the documentary epic space, covering Russia’s systemic suppression of independent journalism at a macro scale, Mr. Nobody Against Putin instead takes a micro approach to the Putin regime’s attacks on education through the lens of one teacher who documents the slow descent of his school from a place which teaches the usual curriculums into a mouthpiece for Russian military propaganda. As a film, it’s an interesting document to see, but the ethical concerns around how it was made – the lack of blurred faces (both adults and children), the use of real names, etc – does keep it from being an essential piece of journalism regardless of the subject at hand. As necessary as it is to tell this story, the film’s approach feels a bit sloppy and a tad-self serving for its lead subject, who positions himself as a sacrificial hero by simply getting this documentary out into the world. Still, to have a more honed-in look at what the Russian government is doing at a personal scale is valuable; what viewers have to reckon with is whether that value is worth the cost of what said government could do in retaliation to those involved.  21. Blue Moon Nominated For: Best Actor (Ethan Hawke), Best Original Screenplay Every year there’s at least one “bottle” movie that gets some Oscar love, even if it doesn’t ultimately make the nominations cut, but for this year, Blue Moon garnered not just a Best Actor nomination for Ethan Hawke, but also an Original Screenplay nod for writer Robert Kaplow. Of Richard Linklater’s two films released last year, this is easily the better one in my opinion. The film features Hawke as Lorenz Hart and the whole thing takes place over one night in a bar during the opening of the musical Oklahoma!, which followed the split between Hart and Richard Rogers as a musical writing duo. The script is extremely talky, so if you can’t vibe with films that are light on action and heavy on dialogue, it might not be something I could recommend, but every once in a while, a film comes along that could have been a play and demonstrates an actor’s skill in keeping us engaged with the film anyway. This really is the Ethan Hawke show, and it’s one of his absolute best performances since he last worked with Linklater on Boyhood back in 2014, and easily his best lead part since First Reformed in 2017. That said, if one isn’t already open to what is essentially a capital A acting showcase for Hawke, the experience is likely pretty draining.  20. Butterfly Nominated For: Best Animated Short “Every frame a painting” has never been more applicable to a short film than it is to this year’s most powerful animated short, Butterfly, which sees a man swim in the sea, each surfacing resurrecting a memory from his life, all of them linked to water in some form or fashion. The film’s art style is stunning to look at, and pairing it with a touching story about past traumas and triumphs just adds a little extra weight to the whole thing that, while it didn’t actually need it, makes the film all the better. This one is also streaming on YouTube I believe, so check it out if you get the chance.  19. Frankenstein Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Jacob Elordi), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound I’m slightly on the lower end of Frankenstein than most of my peers are, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t aspects of the film I still thoroughly enjoyed. The film is a bit slow in its first half as Oscar Isaac recounts his story to the boat captain that opens the film, but once Jacob Elordi shows up as The Creature, it really starts to sing. It’s also beautifully-designed top to bottom, from costumes to makeup to set design, even if the photography makes a lot of it look more like a digital effect than it should given how practical all the sets actually are. All in all, the film is good if one sticks with it, but feels closer to a more formal exercise in adapting a classic work than a truly emotionally-grounded story.  18. Zootopia 2 Nominated For: Best Animated Feature There are some detractors out there who don’t consider Zootopia 2 to be especially good – and it notably pales in comparison to its predecessor – but I had a lot of fun with it. The continuing adventures of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are a delight to watch, even when some of the jokes and many, many other film references don’t quite land as well, and the film’s ultimate twist manages to work extremely well without needing to drop a bunch of not-so-subtle hints along the way. Succession with a lynx family? Now that’s a genius-level idea.  17. Arco Nominated For: Best Animated Feature For my money, Arco is easily the most unique of the animated features released this year, and that makes it one of the two films I personally think should be winning the Oscar over KPop Demon Hunters, but it’ll probably have to settle for a third or fourth place finish when all is said and done. Set in the year 2075, the film sees a boy from a time-traveling family accidentally launch himself and his rainbow flight suit into a wildly different past, eventually meeting up with a young girl who shelters him and vows to help him return to his time. The film more or less follows the trajectory one might expect for a story like it, but it’s all of the imaginative concepts within that trajectory that make it worth watching; it’s also not afraid to take some risks with its characters, which is refreshing to see given how most animated films refuse to do so for fear of alienating their core audiences. Of the films nominated in this category – even if there is at least one better one – this is my personal favorite.  16. The Voice of Hind Rajab Nominated For: Best International Feature (Tunisia) Buckle up: this is a heavy one. The Voice of Hind Rajab follows a group of workers at the Red Crescent as they attempt to rescue the titular 6-year-old Palestinian girl from a car that’s under attack by the IOF by trying to keep her on the line until they can get to her. The film’s real world ties to the ongoing Palestinian genocide make it an urgent watch all on its own, but given that the film blends its semi-fictional emergency call center story with the real-life audio recordings from the day this all took place, including those of Hind Rajab herself, the docu-drama takes on an even more devastating double meaning as one watches it. If you already know the story of Hind Rajab and what happened to her, you’ll be familiar with the basic story of how everything went down, so there’s little included in the film that you wouldn’t already know, but if for whatever reason you haven’t heard her story before, this film is an excellent, respectfully-crafted recap of that tragic day’s horrible events.  15. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Nominated For: Best Actress (Rose Byrne) The screenplay categories this year are so stacked that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein’s tale of a mother in crisis – probably wasn’t even close to making the cut in Original Screenplay, but that doesn’t make the film any less worthy, especially given how it straddles the line between pseudo-horror and stress-inducing drama. Rose Byrne is excellent in this movie, which refuses to fall back on the old “isn’t motherhood still worth it” trope seen in so many of these types of films and instead focuses on all the ways the world at large makes it difficult to even be a mother or be understood as one in the first place. It’s a fairly thorny performance in a pretty thorny movie, and while I’m reticent to give anything else about it away, the way in which the ending plays out is one of the great film endings of 2025.  14. The Secret Agent Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Actor (Wagner Moura), Best International Feature (Brazil), Best Casting I owe The Secret Agent another watch I’m sure, especially given how many pundits have described their experience with it as a multi-watch unraveling of all its many tendrils of meaning, but for the time being I’ll have to settle for loving the Wagner Moura performance at its center while feeling as though it never quite got me there emotionally speaking. Still, the aesthetics of it are gorgeous, and the supporting cast for the film all really bring their A game, especially Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana.  13. The Alabama Solution Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature Whatever Alabama governor Kay Ivey is up to, I hope she’s having a miserable time. The Alabama Solution – which follows the lives of inmates in Alabama’s royally messed up prison system as they experience awful conditions, brutal violence, and scorching heat – is perhaps the most traditionally-rendered documentary in its category, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful or important to watch. Much of the footage smuggled out of the prison system comes from the inmates themselves (one of whom dies during the film), and to watch the cover-up of these horrific abuses play out – knowing nothing will be done about it by the state government – is enraging, especially given the governor’s solution to the prison problem is just to build three brand new larger prisons without addressing any present issues in a meaningful way. This would be the lead contender for the category in any other year; for now, it just has to settle for being yet another great HBO documentary in a very long line of them.  12. Weapons Nominated For: Best Supporting Actress (Amy Madigan) When Jordan Peele couldn’t acquire Zach Cregger’s follow-up to the bonkers horror of Barbarian, he fired his entire team, and having seen Weapons, it’s not hard to see why losing that acquisition would cause a director of his caliber to make that decision. As far as horror films go, Weapons has the most singular vision of any released this past year, and the Aunt Gladys character for which Amy Madigan received her Best Supporting Actress nomination – as well as a recent major win at the Actor Awards – is an instant icon, so much so that she was the subject of many Halloween costumes following the film’s release. The script is often quite funny, the performances are all top-notch, and while I do feel the film’s larger scale gets away from itself at times, it’s hard to complain when a film is this much fun to watch (especially with a crowd).  11. Bugonia Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score Whether you’re more of a Dogtooth and Killing of a Sacred Deer person or more of a The Favourite and Poor Things person will likely determine your enjoyment level when it comes to Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest release, as it steers well away from the period-centric aesthetics of the latter two in favor of the strangely disquieting nature of the former two (I find myself leaning more towards the period piece films, personally). That said, Bugonia is still an excellent watch, wrongfooting its audience to the very end while all the while engaging in a farce about the corporate world, conspiracy culture, and bees of all things. I haven’t seen the Korean film Save the Green Planet from which this film is adapted, so I can’t comment on its strength or lack thereof as a translation of the source material, but as its own film, it’s just the same level of weird and uncomfortably comic that I’ve come to expect from a Lanthimos movie. Emma Stone is so excellent in the film, per usual, one feels she could do a part like this in her sleep, but it’s Jesse Plemons who truly steals the spotlight here with what may be his best performance to date (personally I would’ve nominated him or another lead actor contender I’ll mention later over Ethan Hawke).  10. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain Nominated For: Best Animated Feature While Arco may be my personal favorite, there is simply no denying how Little Amélie or the Character of Rain outshines every other animated feature in its category by a longshot. The art style is stunning to look at, the storytelling is just unconventional enough to holds ones attention while being familiar enough that such attention doesn’t feel like a chore, and the emotional core of the film as the two-year-old titular character comes of age is as affecting as they come. There may be a few too many big ideas in the film for it to completely succeed in every way it wants to, but if the Oscars were going to pull one genuinely major upset this year, the animated feature category would be the place to do it, and this would be the film to choose.  9. Hamnet Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Chloé Zhao), Best Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Casting, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score Having read the book beforehand, I knew what was coming in Hamnet from a mile away, and was surprised when the film opened with a text card that reveals the central driving force of the film right away; and yet, even knowing all of that ahead of time, I was still so struck by the force in question, I couldn’t keep my eyes dry even if I wanted to. As an adaptation, the film is imperfect – there’s a great deal about Agnes’ step-family that’s left out which I think would have helped flesh out her story more fully – but it does pull off some brilliant ideas, especially where it concerns the ending and its expansion to include the whole Hamlet play, rather than stopping before it finishes in the way the book does. Even the use of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” which has become somewhat of an annoyance to some viewers, seemed to fit for me, though I would have liked to hear a more original piece of music at the film’s climax. Chloé Zhao’s return to small-scale filmmaking after her Marvel excursion didn’t quite work out could not have vindicated her more as a director with unique skills in accessing the emotion and catharsis at the intersections of art and grief than it does here, and even with its imperfections, this remains one of my favorite films of 2025, top ten or not.  8. F1 Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Yeah, yeah, F1 is the one in Best Picture that doesn’t seem like it ultimately fits in there the same way Top Gun: Maverick did, and It Was Just an Accident should have been in that spot, but that doesn’t make it a less good movie when one looks at it on its own terms. As flat as some of the Brad Pitt performance at the center of the film feels, Joseph Kosinski is still one of the best directors in the business at capturing fast vehicles in extremely cool ways with large-scale filmmaking techniques and high budgets. This is a capital M sports movie through and through, and it’s hard not to get sucked into everything when watching it, especially in a theatrical setting where the cars are loud, the action is fast, and most of the needle-drops are so hype inducing one wants to jump out of their chair. Damson Idris is excellent in the film, as are Kerry Condon (who they wisely did not ask to switch accents for this one) and a perfectly-placed Javier Bardem, and the film’s rewatchability is up there with the likes of Creed and yes, Top Gun: Maverick. If Kosinski is going to keep making movies like this with all manner of different transportation vessels, I’ll take ten more.  7. The Perfect Neighbor Nominated For: Best Documentary Feature While I still prefer My Undesirable Friends in terms of documentary features from last year overall, this film was so close to making the cut for my top ten that I almost put it back in at the last minute. The Perfect Neighbor is a devastating watch but a nonetheless essential document about the kinds of insidious, implicit racial biases that continues to exist all around the United States and the ways in which legislation like “stand your ground” laws can have very real, harmful effects on the communities in which they’re implemented. Told primarily through police bodycam footage, the film chronicles in just an hour and a half, beat for beat, how the specific type of “neighborly” racism Susan Lorincz engages in throughout slowly escalates until that implicit bias turns it into outright racially-motivated violence that infects everything around it. The fact that this is just one of many stories like this in the United States is infuriating and disheartening, made more so by the fact that the justice reached at the film’s end is almost forced to act as a catharsis for the victims, highlighting the ways in which these systems often continually perpetuate harm against those they’re meant to protect.  6. Train Dreams Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (“Train Dreams”) Although Frankenstein is the more lauded movie from a technical standpoint, Train Dreams is easily Netflix’s best movie released last year, and it’s not close. Though some take issue with specific changes made from the Dennis Johnson novella as it regards the lead character (personally I was fine with the change), there’s no denying the film’s innate beauty in how it captures the natural world, thanks in no small part to stunning digital cinematography by Adolpho Veloso. Joel Edgerton turns in what might be a career-best performance in the film, subtle and layered in such quietly devastating ways once could swear he’s played parts like this all his life (unfortunately I suppose it was too quiet for the Academy to give him the Best Actor nomination he deserves), and William H. Macy turns in some of the best work of his career as well. Director Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the adaptation with fellow director Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing) is quickly becoming a director I’ll always return to when he puts something new out, and I can’t wait to see what this writing duo gets up to next.  5. It Was Just an Accident Nominated For: Best International Feature (France), Best Original Screenplay While It Was Just an Accident wasn’t my first Jafar Panahi film, it is the first one where I finally began to click with what it was he wanted to do. Filmed entirely in secret, the Palme d’Or winner deserved a lot better than the Oscar package it received in my opinion, especially with an ending shot as showstopping as this one. The script for this thing is razor sharp, every performance shines bright (especially that of Miriam Afshari), and the fact that, once again, this was all filmed in secret due to Panahi’s continuous struggles with the Iranian government – including serving a one-year jail sentence upon his return to the country for having made the film in the first place – makes the film’s excellence all the more stunning to experience. It’s also, not for nothing, quite funny at many of its most unexpected moments.  4. Sinners Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Ryan Coogler), Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku), Best Supporting Actor (Delroy Lindo), Best Casting, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Original Song (“I Lied to You”), Best Visual Effects, Best Sound The record-break heard round the world, Sinners’ status as the top dog of the Oscar nomination pool is a well-deserved title, as Ryan Coogler crafted not just one of the best vampire movies ever made, not just one of the best “all in one night” movies ever made, not just one of the best pseudo-musical movies ever made, but all three of them wrapped into one incredible package. Sure, scene geography is not exactly Coogler’s strong suit when action sequences involve more than two people in a boxing ring, but the film is so strong with everything else that the action feels incidental to the larger narrative and the film’s themes of cultural vampirism and Black self-determination and prosperity. There are so many layers to the film’s script that I uncover more on every subsequent rewatch, the performances and the filmmaking get deeper and deeper the more I learn about them, and the “I Lied to You” scene will go down as not just the defining movie scene of 2025, but one of the greatest set-pieces in Coogler’s entire filmography.  3. Marty Supreme Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Josh Safdie), Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet), Best Casting, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design Controversy on opera/ballet aside (not that it should be much of one given how those comments were resurfaced from a 2019 conversation and taken wildly out of context at large), Marty Supreme is a whirlwind of a film from director Josh Safdie (who has his own controversy to worry about) from director Josh Safdie (who has his own, far more concerning controversy) that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its radically unconventional casting and its lead star, Timothée Chalamet, who turns in his best performance to date as Marty Mauser, a young hotshot ping pong player with ambitions to be known as the best player in the world. Not a single ounce of the film has any sympathy for Mauser, but just like the people in the film who continually get screwed over by him, it can’t help but be drawn in by his sheer charisma and blind self-belief, even when it’s clear that he’s operating more under self-delusion than anything else. The ending is also already incredible before Marty flies back home, but those final moments with the particular needle drop are as stunning an ending as many movie last year ever had.  2. One Battle After Another Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actress (Teyana Taylor) Best Supporting Actor x2 (Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn), Best Casting, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound There were exactly two defining films of 2025, which subsequently became the two defining films of awards season; the first one was Sinners – this is the other one. One Battle After Another is a stunner from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the director’s absolute best amongst a sea of great works, and easily his biggest from a budget and scale perspective. Partially adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film follows former French 75 revolutionary Bob Ferguson as he seeks out his missing daughter following an attack from a former adversary. If by some miracle you haven’t heard of the film yet, I’d be impressed, but not as impressed as I was during the film’s many stellar set-pieces, from the opening camp liberation to the forty-minute escape sequence following Lockjaw’s attack to the road chase that caps off the film’s third act to some of PTA’s best dialogue ever to some of the best performances of their careers from the entire cast. Though I can understand some of the recent criticisms levied against the film, for me, it’s pretty damn close to perfect, and if I had to pick a “best” movie of 2025, this would be it without question. For me, everything about it works.  1. Sentimental Value Nominated For: Best Picture, Best Director (Joachim Trier), Best Actress (Renate Reinsve), Best Supporting Actress x2 (Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Best Supporting Actor (Stellan Skarsgård), Best International Feature (Norway), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing If you read my Top 10 piece for this past year, you already know why this is ranked number 1 here, but suffice it to say, this is still my favorite movie from last year, not necessarily because I would consider it pound for pound the year’s best (though it’s nothing to sneeze at in that department either), but because of all the way in which I can personally relate to many of its specificities in the storytelling and the characters, and how I can see so many of the people around me in each of them. All this to say, I chose to (mostly) prioritize this list in terms of personal preference, rather than trying to parse out whether one film was “objectively” better as a nominee than another, and that means Sentimental Value sits atop them all. I won’t wax poetic about it here too much, but somehow Joachim Trier made a film that I can so specifically see the margins of all around my own life, and that is a rare skill indeed. I’ll be at least partially devastated if this goes home empty handed on Sunday night. And that’s my ranking of every single 2026 Oscar nominee! How would you personally rank these nominees? Anything you’re surprised is ranked higher? Lower? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading. Next up: The Friendly Film Fan Award Winner and our FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions!
- The Friendly Film Fan
0 Comments
 By Jacob Barlow-Jones Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! It’s been a long time coming, and it’s finally time for me to reveal my Top 10 Best Movies of 2025! This was kind of a crazy year for me, especially in the back half. Among other things, I worked more than I ever have, took a hit in my overall movie watching (making this the lowest-count movie year I’ve had since 2015), got another cat, got engaged, and less than a month later, got married (hence the last name change). While all of that took a lot of time, I still managed to see enough films during both the calendar year and the extended awards season window of January up to now that I feel confident I can present a Top 10 without worrying if I’ve seen enough to even list a decent Top 50. And now, I get to present them all to you. So, without further ado, here are my selections for the Top 10 Best Movies of 2025!  10. Eephus Easily the smallest movie on this list (but by no means less worthy of inclusion), Eephus is an indie comedy that sees two recreational baseball teams in a small New England town come together one last time to play their final game before the field is plowed over and a school is built on top of the grounds. One wouldn’t think that such a small film – seemingly about nothing, the way many great hangout movies are – could leave such an enormous impact on the viewer, but somehow director Carson Lund makes you feel connected to the sense of loss each player feels as something they knew and relied on comes to an end. As the film progresses, the viewer feels that they know these people – you’ve met them at the grocery store, or at church, or through a job – and Lund’s brilliant, lived-in approach to their characterizations gives particular weight to the film’s closing moments, which leave a quiet but bittersweet impact that’s sure to last long after its credits close.  9. Train Dreams I remember watching Clint Bentley’s previous film, Jockey, and thinking that he was on the path to being an indie director I’d return to again and again over the years; flash forward to Sing Sing – which Bentley returned to scribe with his writing partner Greg Kwedar, who directed the film – and I was bowled over by the soulfulness of its script and the empathy of its direction. With the duo’s return in adapting Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams, Bentley again returned to the director’s chair, and boy, did he bring his homework with him. Train Dreams is far bigger than Jockey ever was, but it retains the same soulfulness of Bentley and Kwedar’s previous works turned up to eleven. I don’t know a single person who’s watched this film and not been at least a little bit emotionally moved, or who can’t appreciate its incredible ending sequence. Beautifully shot by Adolpho Veloso with a look that is incredibly difficult to achieve using digital photography, the film is anchored by what might well be Joel Edgerton’s best on-screen performance to date (and William H. Macy’s best work in years) as he quietly seeps his way into your heart as only his kind of lonely railroad man can. Some have taken issue with the adaptation of the Edgerton character as it strays a bit from the novella’s text, but one wouldn’t know if it was any less impactful to see Edgerton’s quiet power radiate through the eyes.  8. My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow Inevitably, at least one documentary tends to make it into the running for my top ten, but only in the past two years have there been any that felt big enough – whether in scope or in their ideas – to actually crack the field; last year was the ideas doc. This year, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, with a whopping runtime of five hours and twenty-two minutes, more than makes up for the scope spot as we witness in real time Putin’s crackdown on independent Russian journalists leading up to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The branding of journalists as “foreign agents,” the government requiring they include the branding in news bumpers, the drift towards state control of all media in Russia; it’s all here, and it feels especially prescient to witness given how long ago all of it was filmed and how vital all of that filming feels to the state of our country right now. Julia Loktev takes you on what feels like a slow but spiraling journey deep into the pit of what authoritarianism looks like for those on the ground, and if one can muster the patience or the time to commit to watching it in full, the film must be considered an essential document. I am eagerly awaiting Part II – Exile, despite my dread at the necessity of its existence.  7. It Was Just an Accident Filmed entirely in secret due to the Iranian government’s banning of writer/director Jafar Panahi from making films in the country, It Was Just an Accident feels like witnessing a miracle come together before one’s very eyes. True, all movies are miracles, and each one made represents the journey of thousands of efforts, but this one in particular is a revelation when considering the efforts Panahi had to make to not get caught (he currently faces a one-year prison sentence upon his return to Iran just for making the damn thing). Beyond that, however, It Was Just an Accident is a damn good movie with an excellent script and an ensemble of performances all worthy of their own awards, especially Miriam Afshari’s supporting turn. I’m reticent to say too much regarding the film’s plot, as even the setup to the film – which I went into blind – does not go as expected, but suffice it to say, if you’re curious about whether this year’s Palme d’Or winner was as or more worthy of a Best Picture nomination than F1 (which I liked!), go rent it on digital and let the results speak for themselves.  6. Sorry, Baby Unfortunately, there are more than a few excellent films released every year which simply can’t crack the Academy’s five-film nominations pool, and this year’s biggest victim of that limited space is Eva Victor’s incredible directorial debut, Sorry, Baby, which they also wrote and starred in. Victor’s script is among the great debuts of any year, navigating its subject matter with nuance, grace, and a precision so sharp that the tightrope walk it does would spell certain death in less talented hands. Equally impressive is their performance in the film, which sees them sharing poignant scenes with John Caroll Lynch and Lucas Hedges as they navigate what life looks like for them following a traumatic event closely tied to academic structures of power. The film examines not just what those power structures look like, but the insidious cracks they can often hide for those brave enough to be vulnerable or who dare to open their hearts within university walls. That’s a tough subject to do well, and Victor does it so brilliantly I can’t imagine anyone else having held the pen. Plus, it does sport the only movie poster of 2025 in which a woman holds up a tiny little kitten, so y’know, the little things also count.  5. Sinners Freshly-minted the most Oscar-nominated film of all time, you won’t find a more talked-about or defining film of 2025 than Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Premiering to rave reception and then kicking ass at the box office, it’s easy to see why the film was such a massive success for Coogler and Warner Bros. Yes, every level of craftsmanship in the film is top-of-the-line, from the costumes to the sound design to the cinematography and editing, to yet another best-of-the-year score from composer Ludwig Göransson, but underneath all of that is a profound belief and reliance on the idea of cultural individuality. The film’s Jim Crow-era Mississippi setting, multi-national character chart, blues-based musical sequences having the ability to summon spirits, and its main villains being literal cultural vampires who were themselves victims of English colonization don’t simply demonstrate the idea that evil permeates across cultural boundaries; they reinforce it. Add in what is perhaps Ryan Coogler’s best script to date, as well as reference points to a wealth of history across a multitude of cultures and disciplines, and you have yourself a film that only gets deeper the more it’s studied, and more entertaining with each passing watch. Keeping the expanding aspect ratios for both the digital and physical release? That’s icing on a fantastic-tasting cake. 4. Marty Supreme It took all the way until Christmas Eve before I got a chance to see which Safdie brother has the sauce, but hot damn, Josh’s films are gonna be easy to get lost in. Starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet as a New York hustler who wants nothing more than to be the best ping-pong player in the world (or at least to be considered that), the film tracks his endless ambition and drive to succeed at the cost of all else with the same chaotic Safdie energy that made Uncut Gems feel like a heart attack on celluloid, but adds in a showstopping central performance from Chalamet and fills in his world with a wealth of talent. The Safdies have always been good at filling in the margins of their films with the most perfectly cast performers imaginable, even if they’ve never acted before, and it’s like a magic trick watching it all come together. Odessa A’zion, Gwenyth Paltrow, Tyler the Creator, Abel Ferrera, and even Kevin O’Leary all turn in brilliant work, and those are just the billed names on the poster. (Special credit also must go to the film’s music supervisor Gabe Hilfer; the needle-drops in this thing are note-perfect.) But what sets Marty Supreme apart – besides Daniel Lopatin’s egregiously snubbed original score – truly is the Chalamet performance as we watch Marty make all the worst decisions yet still find ourselves rooting for him to succeed. That’s the power of a great lead performance, and if he loses Best Actor this year, anyone near me should be prepared for a world record crash-out.  3. One Battle After Another Back in January of last year, I had Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another on my list of most anticipated films, and I’m delighted to say that not only did it meet all my expectations of what a PTA film starring Leonardo DiCaprio would look like, it exceeded them and then some. What PTA does here is incredible, from demonstrating what modern revolution looks like to anchoring the whole film on a sincere story about a father who will stop at nothing to find his daughter, even if he is kind of an idiot about it (Leo does fantastic work here). There are extended sequences in this film that rank with not only some of the best work PTA has ever done, but some of the best film work ever done, period: the liberation of the migrant detention center, the way Sean Penn acts super gross towards Perfidia, the invasion of Baktan cross leading to the protest leading to the rooftop escape which leads to capture and then another escape, the way Sean Penn walks, looking so stupid while thinking he looks so macho, the white nationalist Christmas Adventurer’s club, the road chase sequence, the way Sean Penn’s pathetic yearning for club inclusion gets him nowhere, the film’s ending handing off a hopeful message to the next generation that “we failed, but maybe you will not,” the way Sean Penn’s best performance in at least a decade is also the year’s most terrifying villain by how closely he resembles an ICE officer. There’s a lot to appreciate here. And to top it all off, the film gave us a Golden Globe winning Teyana Taylor performance and the film debut of Chase Infiniti without ever wasting either one or feeling a hair over two hours despite being closer to three. What more could one want?  2. Resurrection My final watch in the calendar year of 2025 also happened to be one of the year’s absolute best. I had kept hearing about Bi Gan’s latest film through online chatter and had even seen the most stunning stills from the film as more critics and pundits were given a chance to see it; I simply couldn’t wait until late this month for the film to come to my home state of Kentucky. So the second I learned it would be showing in Cincinnati, I bought a ticket and booked the day to go and see it, and I am not exaggerating when I see you haven’t seen this film the way you should unless it’s on the biggest screen available to you (but you need to make the journey). On purely a craft level, Resurrection is what movies have been building to since their inception; not one element of technical work in this film was imperfect. The cinematography, the sound, the score, the production design, everything was note-perfect down to the last detail. Told across five chapters which all tie together with the same idea – where an ostracized creature has become an outlaw for having dreams, and is slowly dying as he shows them to someone, one by one – the film is an astounding experience to behold, an extraordinary monument to dreams fully formed in its presentation that feels like watching Rome be built. I have no doubt that years down the line, this will be considered one of the great works of Chinese cinema, and as far as what I might consider the best movie of the year? This is it. And yet, there was another that got deeper under my skin, even if I didn’t know just how deeply until well after having seen it…  1. Sentimental Value To witness something that understands you at your core, but especially understands your own shortcomings in ways you can’t explain or vocalize even if you wouldn’t sound certifiably insane by trying is a rare thing in any storytelling medium, but film seems to get there for me more often than most. If you’ve ever struggled to express yourself or your feelings except for through the art you consume, participate in, or advocate for, this film is for you. If you’ve ever struggled to connect with a parent, or wondered why you found yourself unable to hold onto an emotional connection without some form of drama attached to it, this is for you. If you have a sibling you owe everything to who’s distanced themselves from the family for their own mental stability and safety, this film is for you. If you find yourself consumed by your work because you don’t know how else to move through life without a deep emotional pain following you all the while, this film is for you. If you find yourself still hurt by past transgressions despite trying with everything in you not to be, this film is for you. If you’ve ever known that a dream you held onto for so long, that you wanted so badly, wasn’t right, and you knew you had to give it up for things to be right, this film is for you. And if you can only find catharsis for some of your deepest hurts through the art of storytelling and the power it holds, especially through movies, this film is for you. This film was for me. And those are my picks for the Top 10 Best Movies of 2025! What movies did you like best this year? Anything I need to catch up to? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! While 2025 has already begun, and most of last year’s films have wrapped their openings, there’s still a lot of ground to cover before the year in cinema can take on even half a shape. There have only been a few new releases to cinemas nationwide thus far, and 2024 still has a few expansions opening at some point next month, so there’s plenty left to look forward to as the year progresses and we move ever onward towards the 2026 awards season (even writing those words gets me excited about it). To that end, while much of that season’s contenders have yet to emerge from the woodwork, as so often happens with these things, a decent chunk of film has already been unveiled, and it’s looking like the year in movies will have cinephiles all over eating well for a good long while. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2025!  10. Wicked: For Good Wicked Part One’s sensational box office success was almost a foregone conclusion, considering the ubiquitous nature of the Broadway musical’s titanic popularity amongst the theater world, and the cultural foothold of the material as it related to the source texts and Wizard of Oz film. But if the movie adaptation from John M. Chu didn’t take great care to show real work and genuine effort went into making it, that box office success could have come with a much lower price tag. Luckily for Universal, the film received loads of critical acclaim for its use of practical sets, masterful makeup and costume design, and the quality of its two central performances, making it by far 2024’s biggest success story in terms of both having a cultural footprint and making a ton of money right as the holiday season began. Part Two, re-titled Wicked: For Good for entirely unnecessary and frankly rather stupid reasons, looks to replicate that success at the same time this year, concluding the story of Wicked with a genuine Part Two as its closer. Wicked was one of my favorite surprises of 2024, giving me the same feeling I had when I walked out of Dune (2021) for the first time in that I couldn’t believe they had actually managed to pull off the adaptation successfully with only a few hiccups along the way. If For Good can manage the same heights as its predecessor – and that is a BIG if – we can expect another major hit for Universal, and for the soundtrack to be blaring through young and gay households for months to come.  9. Marty Supreme While I have yet to revisit Uncut Gems or Good Time since finding them to be a little bit less baked than the impression I was given at first, I am fully aware of the cultural chokehold the Safdie brothers have on movie fandom as a whole, and with Timothée Chalamet on one of the all-time young movie star runs right now, I’m inclined to think that this is yet another inspired choice for the advancement of his already incredible career. While plot details are being kept under wraps, the idea seems to be that Chalamet is playing some sort of ping pong expert, co-starring alongside Gwenyth Paltrow, Fran Drescher, and even Tyler the Creator. Josh Safdie is directing solo on this one as Benny has leaned more into his acting work over the last few years, but with a Christmas Day release date and A24 distributing, we can certainly expect this one to be something very special.  8. One Battle After Another You may not have known it if you’re not deep into the movie-sphere the way a lot of us cinephilic sickos are, but Paul Thomas Anderson has a new movie opening this year, and who’s his star but the one and only Leo. Yes, that Leo. DiCaprio is joined by Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and returning PTA alum Alana Haim in a new film, the plot details of which remain under wraps, just like the last entry on this list. Licorice Pizza, for all the controversy that surrounded the age gap between its two lead characters, was one of my favorite movies released in 2021, and given PTA’s nearly impeccable track record, this one makes the top 10 on cast and director alone.  7. Mickey 17 After continuous delays and release date resets, including the most recent one which saw the film move back onto March 7, swapping dates with Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners, Bong Joon Ho’s first movie after the sensational Parasite is finally (maybe) coming to the big screen. Starring Robert Pattinson as a man who volunteers to be what is essentially a death test dummy because his life on Earth sucks, the trailer indicated a wildly different tone than we’re used to from the Korean writer/director, but after Parasite’s historic Oscar wins all the way back in 2020, I’m fairly sure any fan of that film will show up for whatever he wants to make now. Of course, it does help that the supporting cast includes Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo, who all seem like they’re having as much of a blast as the movie looks to be.  6. F1 Here’s my only concern when it comes to F1, which stars Brad Pitt and is directed by Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski: despite the incredible racing footage and the sense of practicality involved in every element, plus the involvement of Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, and Tobias Menzies in the film, and the mid-summer release date placing everyone’s eyes on the project (which shows faith in its ability to succeed), Kosinski doesn’t have the best track record as a director when it comes to original stories. Maverick was as much a success because of its star – if not more so – than because of its director. While this new “in the actual vehicle”…vehicle is not produced by Tom Cruise, however, who has an incredible track record as a producer in choosing which stories he tells and getting movies made, it is partly produced by Brad Pitt, who has nearly as strong a track record. Given all that, plus the film’s first trailer boasting that amazing racing footage, there’s reason enough to be especially excited for the mere experience of watching F1 on the big screen.  5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning With a first trailer full of exciting imagery, a remixed version of the now classic theme, and a few tidbits of vague but epic sounding dialogue the way this franchise knows how to do, the ostensibly final Mission: Impossible movie – formerly titled Dead Reckoning – Part 2, as it largely deals with the fallout (wink wink) of its predecessor’s plot – looks to be packing in and wrapping up the entire series and everything it’s represented to movies since 1996 in one last epic ride. It’s clear that between Top Gun: Maverick and this, plus the actor and producer’s new collaboration with Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu, Tom Cruise is thinking about his legacy, his age, and how he wants this era of his stardom to be remembered. We see glimpses of the original Mission: Impossible film, what looks to be the rabbit’s foot from Mission: Impossible III, and a lot of adrenaline-pumping footage of Cruise hanging out of planes, being at the bottom of the ocean, doing shirtless close-quarters knife fights, and finally, asking his team to trust him “one last time.” I doubt this one reaches the highs of Fallout – itself one of the best examples of action filmmaking in modern history – but if it even comes close to something like Rogue Nation or even Ghost Protocol, Cruise and company will be sending this franchise off on an all-too-rare ending high note.  4. Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein In the perfect marriages of directors and ideas, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard one as perfect as Guillermo Del Toro and Frankenstein. Starring Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, as well as Mia Goth, Ralph Ineson, Christoph Waltz, Burn Gorman, Charles Dance, Lars Mikkelsen, and Jacob Elordi as The Monster, the film is due to be released later this year, and while no official date has been set, the presence of a set photo from the production having been released does lead me to believe a 2025 release is very much in the cards. According to IMDb, the plot concerns Christoph Waltz' Dr. Pretorius, who tracks down Frankenstein's monster, believed to have died in a fire forty years prior to this film’s start, in order to continue Frankenstein’s experiments. With that premise, and one of the most visionary and artistic directors cinema has to offer behind the camera fresh off an Oscar win for his Pinocchio adaptation, there’s more than enough reason to include this one in the top five.  3. Avatar: Fire and Ash Is it now considered basic to have one of the Avatar movies on one’s most anticipated list? Or to have them on the list for every year they’re due to release, regardless of the length between them or the supposed plot details not always being the most original ideas, functioning primarily as allegories for environmentalism in the modern age? If so, I guess I’m just a regular basic bitch. The fact is, James Cameron is one of the most sure-fire hit makers in the business, claiming both the number one, three, and four spots for the highest-grossing movies of all time with both his Avatar films and Titanic (the second-highest is Avengers: Endgame). People love to claim that the Avatar films have no cultural footprint, but consistently forget what an international phenomenon they are every time they hit theaters, even on re-releases. Cameron is a visual storyteller through and through, showing moviegoers things they’ve either never seen before, or never seen before in quite that way, and has become the gold standard for blockbuster storytelling on a massive scale. It’s true that The Way of Water felt narratively more stretched and had more pacing issues than the first Avatar, but so much of that excess was dedicated to the most stunning visual effects I’ve ever seen that it was far from bothersome. And with a whole new world to explore and develop as the title suggests, following Jake Sully and his family through the rest of Pandora is sure to be yet another billion dollar roller coaster ride. In fact, the only reason this movie isn’t higher up on the list is because of exactly two movies that I can hardly contain my excitement for.  2. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery The third film in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out Mystery series (and second Netflix collaboration), which features an ensemble cast as packed and loaded with talent as the last two, already has an air of intrigue around it so thick that it would make Benoit Blanc’s mouth water. The plot – like many of these films – is currently under wraps, but suffice it to say, with nothing more than a black-and-white photo of Daniel Craig with an entirely different hair style than he had in the previous films, I’m more than ready for a new murder mystery from the man who practically resurrected the genre from an Agatha Christie-less grave.  1. Superman To absolutely no one’s surprise, my most anticipated movie of 2025 is the one that brings back the man of steel in his own solo movie that has nothing to do with Man of Steel, a film that I have a light amount of affection towards for its efforts to take a different approach, but which nonetheless utterly fails in making that approach compelling or even worth continuing for the character. What Superman – my favorite superhero character of all time – needed was someone who understood both the super and the man, and if the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy taught us anything, James Gunn understands duality within characters better than most comic book movie storytellers. But more than simply understanding Clark Kent and Superman, Gunn’s approach looks to be an answer not simply to all the ideas of what people assume Superman has to be but what comic book storytelling over the past twenty years has had to be. If the fantastic teaser trailer is any indication, gone is the cynicism of the DCEU, gone are the sarcastic wit-driven machinations of the MCU, and here is hope, sincerity, the big blue boy scout as he was always meant to be understood: a new, better way forward, for a better tomorrow. That’s something both superhero movies and superhero media over the past decade or so has been sorely missing in terms of plot or thematic resonance, and although the plot of Superman itself is nowhere to be found in the teaser, the iconic John Williams theme is, as are the red trunks that the character wears specifically to make him less intimidating to children. If Superman is truly meant to be a savior figure in superhero storytelling, then showing him saving someone, or showing people asking to be saved by him, shouldn’t be that novel of an idea, and yet when it happens, all I can think is what a relief that the darkness of Zack Snyder’s version of the character is nowhere to be found here. There’s a very large asterisk around whether or not this movie is a success, leading to a footnote that says “box office success and artistic success are two entirely different things,” but if this works as well as it could, it would be a meta event that could shake the foundations of this kind of storytelling for the next twenty years – as Superman saves the DCU from cynicism, James Gunn will be saving Warner Bros. and DC as a filmmaking studio from eating their own tails. And if that happens, we may just have hope again for the future of superhero movies. For all of that and so many other reasons – not the least of which is the debut of Krypto the Superdog – James Gunn’s Superman is my most anticipated movie of year. And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2025! What are you most excited for this year? See anything in the Honorable Mentions you think should be on the list? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Well, it’s finally that time: time to reveal our Top 10 Movies of 2024. It’s been a long and often uneven journey. We weren’t always able to review everything we liked, but we made a concerted effort to focus on what we loved as much as we possibly could. We also didn’t get to see absolutely everything we’d hoped to get to before the release of this list, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with 2024 movies once this list is public; there’s still a good deal to catch up on, and still a lot of quality cinema left to discover as we charge headlong into 2025. 2024 was a tough year for movies in some respects, with the SAG and WGA strikes affecting much of the intended release slate through the calendar year, forcing studios to delay major projects, films to shift release dates back, then forward, then back again, and generally gutting the summer release slate for tentpole projects, leaving a few films like Longlegs, Inside Out 2, Twisters, and Deadpool & Wolverine to hoist theaters aloft on their own shoulders and keep things moving as best they could (unintentionally allowing studios like A24 to fumble hard with release plans for otherwise immense awards-season undertakings like the botched rollout of Sing Sing). But if anything stays consistent in the big, beautiful world of cinema, it’s that nothing is certain, including the future. As we’re thrust into a new era in U.S. politics, Hollywood seems more poised than ever to become a target of the Trump machine, a machine that hates and fears stories that stand up for, celebrate, and acknowledge all different kinds of people while examining what makes humanity turn on itself in the way it has now and excavating how such vitriol and gleeful evil can propel itself to power. Who knows where movies will be four years from now, if indeed this nightmare is to end at that time? And who knows if movies will even be permitted to exist in the same way? In any case, we had 2024, and hopefully, later down the line, we’ll have those years of movies to look back on too. A few notes before we begin. These are not full reviews of the films included; for those films for which we did full reviews, we will link them next to the titles so as to make them easier to find. Secondly, these are not selections for what we believe are the objective ten “best” films of the year – no one can watch literally every single film released in a calendar year to accurately make that kind of judgement, no matter how objective they attempt to be – but rather a list of our ten favorites overall, ranked according to a blend of overall quality and personal taste. If readers would keep those two things in mind, they might understand why certain films which frequently appear on other Top 10 lists do not make appearances here. And now, it’s time. Here, at last, are our Top 10 Movies of 2024!  10. A Different Man Aaron Schimberg’s black-as-night comedy about self-image and insecurity is one of 2024’s most unconventionally entertaining movie experiences. Featuring Sebastian Stan as a man living with a facial deformity, the film turns after he gets a highly experimental surgery, leading him to look like…well, like Sebastian Stan. The face removing sequence in the film is one of the year’s most immediately memorable and genuinely upsetting moments as the audience is forced to sit with it as though a monster is being created rather than “defeated.” The real kicker comes in with the introduction of Adam Pearson to the film, who (both in the film and in real life) possesses the same facial deformity as Stan’s character, but whose life seems entirely driven by the upside of all he’s still able to do. Schimberg’s script and astute direction allow the film to walk an impossible tightrope, never veering into outright comedy but never letting go of its sense of humor about the whole situation. Stan and Pearson both are excellent in their parts, perfectly pairing off each other as Pearson’s charm only seems to drive Stan’s insecurity and deep-seated need for people to like him no matter what he looks like. The first of a few different A24 films on this list, it’s another in a long line of interesting projects for the studio, and a siren call to anyone unaware of Aaron Schimberg to keep a sharp eye out for whatever he does next.  9. Nosferatu Robert Eggers has become one of the great auteurs in movies, a director with a command of craft and dedication to authenticity in period storytelling not often found even through the storytelling medium’s centuries of existence, so when it was announced that he would direct a remake of the classic Nosferatu story, I stayed my mind’s reflexive disappointment that he wouldn’t be doing something original this time around, and allowed myself to look forward to his take on the material. While I don’t ultimately think it is his best work to date, however (that still belongs to The Lighthouse), it is by far his largest project with the most stunning attention to craft that I’ve seen in a film in quite some time. Eggers is not typically a jump-scare enthusiast, but the one time he utilizes the trick in Nosferatu is unexpectedly terrifying, and the implications of the titular character’s mission are not only gross but deeply uncomfortable. Where the film finds its great strength beyond crafts, though, is in the performances of Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult, particularly Depp, whose work in the film should – in any just world – immediately thrust her into the Best Actress conversation. Depp’s performance doesn’t simply underscore the idea of women’s sexual desires in this time period being understood as manifestation of disease but accentuates it with a performance at once attracted to Count Orlok’s power and terrified by that same attraction. And speaking of Orlok, Bill Skarsgård is entirely unrecognizable as the iconic vampire, in both sight and sound. The makeup team did remarkable work, but credit should be given to Skarsgård as well for his terrific voice work. I’m sure there will be thing I notice and re-examine upon the home release of the film, especially in relation to the 1922 original, but for the time being, I can’t think of a better period horror film in recent memory than this.  8. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat The only documentary to make it onto this Top 10, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a remarkable combination of sound and image to tell a story many of 2024’s films aren’t bold enough to tell in such explicit terms. The film focuses on the political machinations of The film focuses on the 1961 assassination of Congolese civil rights leader Patrice Lumumba and all the political machinations that led to it, including and especially the involvement of the CIA in recruiting Black American musicians to infiltrate Lumumba’s inner circle. While the film itself can be overwhelming at first blush, throwing information at the viewer left and right to the point where one occasionally has to pause and rewind just to re-orient themselves in the narrative (if one even has that ability), the sheer level of editing and archival collecting it must have taken to put the whole thing together could land it on this list by itself. As it happens, it’s also incredibly engaging on a narrative level, and a wildly fascinating look into a seldom-discussed yet critical turning point in world events.  7. The Substance The fact that a hard-genre body horror film from the director of Revenge is openly competing for above-the-line Oscars is an amazing indication of just how far the Academy has come the last several years in its embrace of different kinds of storytelling, and Coralie Fargeat’s fast and furious rage-fest against the beauty standards women are held to as they age is more than worthy of whatever nominations AMPAS gives it come Thursday morning. Demi Moore turns in her best performance to date as Elizabeth Sparkle, able to meaningfully connect her own career having done many parts centering on her own body, and bringing all the fury of having dealt with casting directors, costumers, producers, executives, and gross men in positions of immense power to the fore. Meanwhile, Margaret Qualley ascends to superstardom as Sue, cementing herself as an essential actress to watch in whatever she chooses to do, and playing a perfectly self-involved foil to Elizabeth’s self-loathing. Beyond all of that, though, this is a body horror movie, and the second the viewer thinks they’ve seen a relatively tame effect, the film rachets up the makeup by a thousand, somehow topping itself scene after scene, though never getting more disgusting than Dennis Quaid loudly and messily eating shrimp at a lunch table. The makeup work in this movie is on a whole other level, with its wild third act serving as a both a capstone to the film’s ideas and a hard swerve into genre territory. If Coralie Fargeat is nominated for Best Director, it will be a historic moment for genre horror in movie history. Full Review Here  6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Following up an action movie as perfect and unexpectedly masterful as Mad Max: Fury Road would be an impossible task for any other director, so credit given where credit is due; Furiosa may not be as perfect a film as Fury Road was on the whole, but it’s also aiming for something quite different, an epic revenge odyssey spread across decades which is much more character-focused than plot based. Magnificently directed by George Miller, the film is yet another example of how no one in the world understands the Mad Max universe, or indeed the balls it takes to really do this kind of action filmmaking, quite like he does. At 79 years old, Miller is directing sequences like the War Rig chase and the Bullet Farm escape better than even the most skilled people could at less than half his age, and to witness someone so in command of their craft that a nearly three-hour revenge odyssey remains as engaging as this one does is a privilege it’s a shame more people didn’t opt into when the film was in theaters. Anya-Taylor Joy shines as the film’s titular character, able to communicate so much in her face without speaking a word, but it’s Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus who ends up stealing the show in the actor’s finest performance to date, and the final showdown between the two will go down as one of the best endings in all of action filmmaking. Full Review Here  5. Challengers Between this and at the risk of spoiling our number four selection, there was seldom a better time to be a movie fan than this past spring, especially for those with particular admiration for Tom Holland’s new fiancée. Luca Guadagnino’s steamy sports drama starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist as a trio embroiled in a lust triangle in which tennis plays the central cog on which it all turns is not simply the sexiest movie of the year by far, but also the only one without an outright sex scene in its entire runtime. Guadagnino understands the raw excitement of desire better than just about any director working today, and is able to use his skill to thrill his audience by turning the very idea of love and connection into its own tennis match, culminating the whole thing in what is easily the best ending in movies from the whole past year. Almost everyone in this movie is giving career-best performances, and are directed at the perfect pitch for the story being told as Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ best score since The Social Network blares across the speakers. Zendaya and Mike Faist both turn in some of their best work yet as Tashi Duncan and Art Donaldson respectively, but it’s Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig who ends up stealing the show as the devious little shit-heel throwing a wrench into what would otherwise be a normal, healthy relationship dynamic. Between all of that and a crackling script chock-full of great dialogue (“you have a better shot with a handgun in your mouth” is an all-timer) and fully realized characters, it’s no wonder Challengers was easily one of the best movie theater experiences of 2024. If only the Academy felt the same way. Full Review Here  4. Dune: Part Two I’m already planning to crash out if the Academy refuses to recognize Denis Villeneuve’s efforts in directing once again, and the growing likelihood of Villeneuve being passed over – despite making an even better movie than he did with the first Dune – in favor of someone like Jacques Audiard makes it all the more infuriating that AMPAS wouldn’t consider Dune: Part Two one of year’s greatest directorial acheivements; after all, it’s not like some of them haven’t seen the movie or finished it, right?...Right?! In any case, Villeneuve’s second half adaptation of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novel (which I’m currently reading) is a masterful step up from where Part One left off, increasing the world-building, the story stakes, the character depth, and the level of artistry to such a degree that the film joins the conversation easily as one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. Villeneuve’s understanding of the source material is second to none, and there are more than a few action sequences in this film that made my jaw drop in the theater for how masterfully they were handled. But it’s not only the sound, the VFX, the costuming, the makeup, the editing, the cinematography, and Hans Zimmer’s new score that are improved upon from the last film; the expansions made to Chani's character in adapting the book only serve to further enhance the compelling story, which acts as a warning against the idea of charismatic leaders who would sooner burn the world down than bypass a chance at revenge (now where have we encountered that before?). The entire ensemble is giving it everything they’ve got, including and especially Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, who turn in even better performances here with more interesting stuff to do, but no one outsteps Austin Butler’s magnificent introduction as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, and once he’s on screen, almost every actor finds it difficult to match his freak no matter how good they are, try as Javier Bardem’s deceptively funny Stilgar might. To say much more would be spoiling the film for those who haven’t caught up to it somehow despite its $714 million gross at the box office, but in the shortest terms I can think to put it in, this is essential viewing for all sci-fi, movie, and Denis Villeneuve fans.  3. I Saw the TV Glow Now more than ever, it’s important that trans kids and trans people are seen, heard, and loved by those around them, and the first step in making sure all of those things happen is by recognizing the dysphoria that comes with questioning one’s sexual identity as a queer person in an environment where such things are frowned upon. Jane Schoenbrun’s masterful excavation of that dysphoria is what gives I Saw the TV Glow its power, especially as it relates to trans youth, as we’re shown what burying ourselves out of fear ultimately leads to. The ending of the film in the “Fun Zone” is one of the year’s most outright heartbreaking, shattering with intention the idea that one can truly live not being their full selves without ultimately suffocating themselves in the process. Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine are fantastic in this gorgeous-looking film with frames that will stop your heart, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call it an especially “scary” watch in the traditional or even indie sense, it belongs every bit to the horror genre for the queer community as The Substance or Nosferatu would for those outside of it. Looking at the whole of movies in 2024, there’s still nothing out there quite like this, and I hope sincerely that every person struggling with their sexual or gender identities gets a chance to see this film and feel as though they are not only understood, but cared for. Full Review Here  2. Sing Sing A24’s botched rollout of Sing Sing is the stuff of legend amongst cinephiles, as the film was meant to have a nationwide release over the summer following its TIFF premiere in 2023, which got turned into a limited release as the eventual nationwide date of August 2 only saw the film play a select number of theaters before a planned re-release to only 500 theaters on January 17. Suffice it to say, let’s hope those Academy screenings went off like gangbusters, because the lack of transparency around releasing the film to a wide audience that would have loved to actually get a chance to see it may have just cost it some key awards nominations, including Best Picture, if the PGA ten is anything to trust in that regard. (Amazon’s botched rollout of Nickel Boys is in the same boat.) Regardless of rollout though, Sing Sing is still one of the three best movies released at all in 2024, a film that revels in the fact that humanity needs art in order to be human, and to remind ourselves how we're all capable of dignity. Greg Kwedar’s drama about incarcerated persons at the Sing Sing correctional facility participating in an acting program for rehabilitation is the year’s most soulful and deeply felt film of the entire year, a film that revels in the fact that humanity needs art in order to be human, while art needs a human component to make it come to life, and to remind ourselves how we're all capable of royal dignity. It’s a miraculous achievement for everyone involved, especially those incarcerated who played themselves in the film. Colman Domingo turns in his best work to date, and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin is the acting discovery of the year, immediately ingratiating himself to the audience as the supporting performance of 2024. If and when you do get a chance to see this film in theaters, I would urge you to go immediately; you don’t want to miss how special this one is. Full Review Here  1. The Brutalist While it does seem the AI controversy for which the film received enormous backlash was blown way out of proportion, and despite my having put it at #1 when I was first drafting this ranking, I found myself struggling to justify keeping The Brutalist in this spot in the wake of such news. But then, I considered how I felt when I first saw the film all the way back in December, before anyone knew any of this, and well before director Brady Corbet had to set the record straight on the film’s minimalistic and (it would appear) quite industry-wide use of the tools at their disposal. For my own reasons, I find I cannot deny that experience, and the sheer power with which the film overtook my every waking thought for the week afterwards. The Brutalist remains, to put it bluntly, a monumental achievement of a film, an entirely new cinematic language in itself, harkening back to the epics of old like The Godfather or the ones of yester-year like There Will Be Blood, while simultaneously charting its own unique path forward, all to the sounds of Daniel Blumberg’s immediately iconic score, the best parts of which can all be found in the overture of the film. The epic three-and-a-half hour runtime – punctuated smartly by a 15-minute intermission – flies by in the viewing, and by the time it’s all over, one realizes that they’ve not felt a minute pass that didn’t absolutely need to be there. Personally, I love an epic that knows to embrace its length, rather than fear how many sales it will lose for lack of showtimes, and Brady Corbet is clearly not shy about how expansive his vision for the film – gorgeously shot by director of photography Lol Crawley on VistaVision – needed to be in order to tell this story. Adrien Brody turns in his best performance in the better part of twenty years as László Tóth, a Hungarian architect fleeing Europe post-WWII to come find a better life in America, only to discover that the mythical promise of the American dream is built by rich men on the backs of other people’s work, while Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. is not simply one of 2024’s most despicable characters, but maybe Pearce’s best ever. Special attention must be paid, too, to Felicity Jones as Erzsebet, who doesn’t really show up until the second half, but afterwards becomes the humanitarian focal point as László begins to slowly erode before our eyes. Even Joe Alwyn – while never matching these three – turns in great work here under Corbet’s direction, and while some may find his character a bit exaggerated, I never saw that exaggeration as anything but intentional on behalf of the character himself. There will be a lot to say about The Brutalist in the coming months leading up to the Oscars on March 2 (much of it bad-faith complaints rather than actual criticism, such is the way of film twitter), so I won’t spend too long on it here, but if I could urge readers one point of caution: do not let your first time seeing this be at home on your couch. Different viewing experiences can alter one’s perception of just about any movie, but to fully feel the power of certain films, they need to be experienced on the biggest screen with the best possible sound, and this is one of those films. As I did at my first viewing, I could sit in the corner of the front row again, and still feel amazed at what I was seeing and hearing, such is the sheer power and might of it all, which is just one of so many reasons why The Brutalist is my favorite movie of 2024. Full Review Here And those are our picks for the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024! What movies did you like best this year? Anything you’d recommend we catch up on? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we wind down this journey to our Top 10 Movies of 2024, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the almost best in movies for the calendar year. Many of these films were some of our favorites of the whole year, but as there are only so many spots to fill out even within the shortlisted titles being considered for the Top 10, more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films , more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films that made us laugh, cry, scared us, moved us, impressed us, and challenged us, but just couldn’t make it over the finish line and out of longlist placement. (It’s important to note that this list does not act as a stand-in for the official Honorable Mentions of 2024, which is included with our Top 10 piece as a signifier of what else was included in the shortlist from which we found our choices.) This will be our final list before we unveil our Top 10 Movies of 2024, and there are more films included here than on most other lists, meaning our reflections on them may run a little more brief than usual. So, let’s not waste any more time in giving these films the recognition they deserve as well as we are able. These are the Pre-Honorable Mentions of 2024!  Alien: Romulus When it was announced that director Fede Alvarez would be helming a new Alien project under the 20th Century Studios banner (i.e. under Disney), I instantly began looking forward to it – albeit with some healthy trepidation – and while the final product does feature imperfections in some fan service over-reliance that ultimately brings the overall product down a peg, that overall product was well worth the wait. Alvarez both understands the horror of Alien and the action sensibilities of Aliens better than almost any other director the franchise has yet brought in, though the horror elements in Romulus work stronger than the action elements overall. Between Alvarez’ confident pitching of the tones this movie walks, the great performances of its cast (especially David Jonsson), and the film’s fantastic set-pieces buoyed by stellar practical effects, Alien: Romulus is a long-sought victory for Alien sequels that manages to both honor the franchise’s roots while charting a new path forward.  The Apprentice I’ve already written about this one in my Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2024, so I won’t spend too much time on it here, but suffice it to say, The Apprentice just might be the only piece of media about Donald Trump to release since his first Presidential term to actually examine the heart of his unconventional origins and the events ultimately responsible for his rise to power. Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the (unfortunately) President-elect became who we know him to be, and places its focus squarely on the relationship between Trump and his infamously mysterious lawyer, the late Roy Cohn. The question alone makes Abassi’s biopic worth watching, but it’s the world-class performances of Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Trump that ultimately put it a step above any other recent piece of Trump-centered media.  A Complete Unknown The greatest magic trick that director James Mangold pulls in his biopic about the life of Bob Dylan as the folk icon came up through the 60’s into the start of his electric era is that he doesn’t really make it a biopic about Dylan’s life at all. Dylan by nature has always been a somewhat unknowable figure, and Mangold makes the wise decision not to attempt to figure him out but to showcase just how impossible it was, is, and always shall be to ever accomplish that task, this particular time period in Dylan’s career being the most openly reflective of that notion. Timothée Chalamet, of course, excels as Dylan, never imitating and always trusting the writing from James Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks to carry the character, with Edward Norton turning in what might be his most low-key performance to date, as well as Boyd Holdbrook rivaling Joaquin Phoenix for the best on-screen Johnny Cash in a James Mangold film. Special attention must be paid, though, to Monica Barbaro, who not only learned to sing for the part of Joan Baez, but learned to sing exactly like Baez herself, one of the most iconic voices in music history. She’s really excellent in the film, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her show up with an Oscar nomination to her name come Thursday.  Dahomey Clocking in at barely over an hour, Mati Diop’s Dahomey is among the most beloved documentaries of the year, and it’s not hard to see why. Chronicling the return of 26 artifacts plundered by French colonialism to their original home in Benin, Diop’s urgent call for repatriation is as captivating as it is digestible, partly told through narration via one of the artifacts, partly through a meeting of Benin leaders and citizens concerning the events of the film and what they mean to both the plundered and the plunderer. The sound design is shockingly underrated even from those whom I’m aware have seen the film, and while I can’t say much both due to the film’s brevity and its relatively simple framework, the journey of watching it is one of the most moving one can have in any year it’s viewed.  Didi Coming-of-age stories from indie studios are nothing new, but coming-of-age in the digital age is an especially tricky feeling to pull off well without seeming either condescending or simply too inexperienced to tackle such a delicate subject. Luckily, Sean Wang throws Didi into the mix at exactly the right pitch, capturing the adolescent anxiety of growing up in a time where everything around you is now being immortalized, and every decision you make feels like your social life literally depends on it. Joan Chen gives an Oscar-worthy turn as Wang Wang’s mother, and while it’s not an especially revolutionary character for her to be playing, she plays it with such grace and poise that one could be forgiven for forgetting that it’s a performance at all. For YouTubers especially, this movie is a different kind of special.  Evil Does Not Exist Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was among the most celebrated films of 2021, going so far as to earn Oscar nominations for both Best Picture and Best Director, so why is it that his existentially reflective follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, seems to have passed so many would-be enthusiasts by? One could asset that this is due to Japan’s passing it up as their submission for Best International Feature this year, opting instead to back Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (which recently announced a summer 2025 release date in the U.S.). Or, as in many cases with smaller films such as this, it could be that the summer 2024 release was so limited that the film simply didn’t gain enough traction for Japan to push a filmmaker whose work has already been widely recognized on the world stage. But if I were to tell it, to really, honestly tell it, I would say that believe it or not, Evil Does Not Exist is simply a much more low-key film than Drive My Car, and without a three-hour runtime to sustain its subtleties, its unassuming, ambiguous narrative could pass people by if they don’t examine it with the same vigor. There’s little risk of spoilers for this one because so little happens in it narratively speaking, but its thematic implications pack a significant amount of weight. It was recently issued on blu-ray through Criterion’s Janus Contemporaries label, so if – like me – you’re a regular collector of physical media, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot.  Hit Man Between Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and now Twisters, there’s no denying the theatrical appetite for Glen Powell’s movie star charm, but it’s in Richard Linklater’s Netflix crime comedy Hit Man where he turns in his best work to date in that regard. Based on a real-life Texas Monthly story written by Skip Hollandsworth, the film stars Powell (who co-wrote the script with Linklater) as a college professor who moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, essentially setting up anyone looking to hire so they can be arrested and taken off the streets. Regardless of how casually the film seems to treat entrapment law in general, the ride itself is a blast, and Powell is clearly having the time of his life, especially when paired with Adria Arjona, with whom he has an unbelievable amount of on-screen chemistry. (I mean, I don’t know who wouldn’t have chemistry with Glen Powell, but still.) It’s a real shame this one never got a theatrical release; it would play exceedingly well with a crowd.  Kill Of all the action movies to come out in 2024, Kill was not the best (and no, I have not seen Shadow Strays yet), but it was by far the gnarliest. How confident do you have to be in how good your movie is to drop the title card halfway through, knowing you’ve saved almost all of the best stuff for after that happens? Sure, you could call this John Wick on a moving train, but the truth is the violence enacted here is of a largely different variety. There are kills in this film I have never seen before, including one with a thrown lighter that readers will know when they see it as one of the coolest takedowns in any action movie. Lakshya Lalwani excels in the lead part, and the stunt work is some of the best than Indian cinema has to offer.  Kinds of Kindness Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to the multi-Oscar-winning Poor Things may not be touching the same gold even given how unpredictable the current field is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, and it turns out I seemed to enjoy it more than most. The first of the short films within this themed collection is easily its best, touting a Jesse Plemons performance that absolutely could compete for Best Actor in a slightly weaker year (and in fact won him the same award at last year’s Cannes film festival), but the latter two are also just as off-kilter and unpredictably chaotic as that one. If you’re a Lanthimos fan, even if you consider this one of his weaker entries, it’s still an undeniable good deal of fun.  Longlegs The most viral marketing campaign of 2024 prior to Wicked’s complete domination in the fourth quarter belonged to none other than Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, and while it is an imperfect film to be sure, I haven’t yet encountered a film whose marketing so perfectly encapsulated just how creepy it actually turned out to be. No, it’s not outright scary or terrifying in a studio horror sort of way, but everything that creeped me out as a child was on full display here, pitched straight at the old 70s shag carpets and windowless basements I used to encounter all the time, and drenched in an atmosphere of dread we could only be carried through by two vastly underrated performances from Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood. The talk of the town for this one, though, is Nicolas Cage as the titular character, able to turn the things that usually make him entertaining or annoying to the opposite side of his fandom into the very things that make his under-your-skin creepiness so effective here. If you’re a horror fan, but somehow missed this over the summer, do yourself a favor and watch it in complete darkness.  Memoir of a Snail I came late to the game on Memoir of a Snail, as I wasn’t able to watch it until it finally hit VOD, but once I finally was able to view it, I found myself completely unable to resist its myriad charms. The animation is incredible creative, the story is moving in ways I didn’t expect, and it’s often quite funny, though parents be warned, this is not an animated movie for kids. All told, this is probably the most underrated animated movie of the year without Transformers in the title, and one of the medium’s few genuine successes in 2024.  Rebel Ridge Carry-On might well end up being the most popular movie in Netflix history, but it’s far from its best, even within the calendar year of 2024, and while I still have a few of their originals left to catch up on (which unfortunately won’t be considered for my Top 10 due to time constraints), it’s gonna be tough to beat Rebel Ridge, director Jeremy Saulnier’s revenge thriller about a former marine who gets caught up in small-town corruption when the police department enacts a civil asset forfeiture on the money he’s meant to use to bail out his cousin. It’s not exactly the most high-minded concept, but it’s handled in exactly the right way for a movie of its type, and once Emory Cohen yells at Don Johnson’s police chief to put some distance between himself and Aaron Pierre’s hulking frame, the film turns up to eleven and seldom comes back down. This is the movie future movie historians will point to (if they can find it without a physical edition) when they indicate where Aaron Pierre became an action star, and as perfectly pitched three-star rides go, this one is 2024’s absolute best.  Sugarcane Watching Sugarcane directly after having finished “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead in preparation for that film left me with an eerie, unsettled feeling, so similar are the two stories in setting and tone. tone. This documentary from National Geographic, which is available to watch now on Disney+ and Hulu, centers on a group of Canadian natives who endured years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse at an Indian residential school on the Sugarcane reserve where many of the natives went missing and were never found again. The film is an investigation into the events surrounding the disappearances, as well as a search for any possible mass grave wherein the native dead are buried. It’s far from an easy watch, but in some small way, its existence offers some justice in telling the story of these Canadian Indians, reckoning with their past and acknowledging the hurt and loss they’ve suffered, even when the responsible parties seem unable to do even as little as that.  Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story You can read my full review for all my thoughts on this documentary, but suffice it to say, while it missing the Oscar shortlist for this category is disappointing, its presence at almost every other awards body’s events is a heartening thing to see. It may not do anything especially new to the documentary format, or even give us information on the titular Reeve that wouldn’t be easily available in public record, but it’s the way that directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui manage to tell Reeve’s story that makes the film so moving. Able to both excavate the super and celebrate the man, The Christopher Reeve Story deftly demonstrates to us all that, at least for a short while, we really did believe a man could fly.  The Wild Robot As animated movies go, 2024 was not an especially strong year, and I don’t think it’s an unpopular notion amongst cinephiles that even within the cream of the crop, there were no outright masterpieces that rose to the top of the pack, no matter how charming or moving they were. What most people did seem to agree on is that neither of the best animated films of the year belonged to Disney or Pixar, and one of those two was Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot, which came to us from director Chris Sanders as he adapted the beloved children’s book with co-writer Peter Brown. The animation in Wild Robot is stunning, painterly without ever betraying the use of CG effects, but not so anti-CG that it looks truncated or any less smooth than it’s meant to. The story itself lacks a little emotional elevation, for my part (even if I do quite like Lupita N’yongo’s vocal performance), but so much of what makes this movie special is about the craft, including Kris Bowers’ excellent score which could Bowers himself an Oscar nomination. If you’re looking for an animated movie to watch with your kids, or even just for yourself, this is the best dialogue-inclusive one of the year. And those are our Pre-Honorable Mentions for 2024! Have you seen any of these films? Any guesses as to what triumphed over them in the Top 10? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! (Next up: The Top 10 Best Movies of 2024!)
- The Friendly Film Fan  by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we wind down our last days to the Top 10 Movies of 2024, we wanted to take this opportunity to show some love to the films that unfortunately did not make the cut for either the top ten themselves or the Pre-Honorable Mentions list that we do each year. Whether these films just didn’t quite live up to what they could’ve been, or we simply liked some others more, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t worth watching, examining, or spending time with along with everything else; there’s just only so many slots available, and only so many films that have the ability to fill those slots. With that in mind, we’d like to recommend to viewers the films below. You may see some entries on this list that we didn’t initially give positive reviews to, or even some that we’ve not mentioned up to now; those films are on this list due to the artistic merit we still believe they possess, worthy of discussion and examination regardless of whether we liked them or not. We also didn’t include any movies that could be found on other rankings based on titles, so if you don’t see any here you’d swear we liked, check out our Most Underrated list or – in the event you’re reading this later on – our Pre-Honorable Mentions list (Top 5 Scenes & Movie Moments entrants may still be included). In any case, we think all of the films listed are worth at least one watch, even if you never see them again afterwards. We won’t do you the disservice of breaking them all down one by one (that would make this piece excessively long), so in the spirit of brevity with which this list was made, let's get started! Underlined titles will feature links to our full reviews of those titles. Here are our Recommended Movies of 2024!
And those are our recommended movies of 2024! We’ll update the list once or twice as we round out the rest of what we wanted to see for the year (those Oscar shortlists can take a bit to get through), but for now, what do you think of these films? Any we missed that you would have included? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan  by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! We’re mere days away from revealing our picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2024, but before that, I wanted to shout out some of my favorite scenes and sequences throughout the year. Whether they were watched in the theater or re-watched them at home, the five scenes listed here continued to impress and delight, and occasionally, even got a little scary; in any case, I just couldn’t wait to talk about them with everyone I knew that shared those experiences. To that end, and in case you haven’t read one of these before, the very nature of this list acts as its own SPOILER WARNING, as I’ll be going over these scenes in great detail so as to examine what makes them so remarkable. I also limited these choices to one scene per film, so at the risk of spoiling part of the list, the Harkonnen Spice Harvester sequence from Dune: Part Two will not be making an appearance among the five finalists. We’ve only selected one scene per film, so at the risk of spoiling part of the list, and as much as we would consider it one of the best single movie scenes of 2024, the Spice Harvester attack scene from Dune: Part Two unfortunately will not make an appearance among the Top 5. Also, while there were a great many films released in 2024 that I thoroughly enjoyed, those films are greater successes as the sum of their parts than they are as highlight reels for particular scenes or set-pieces; it’s for this reason that some of the films listed here won’t be found in our Top 10 of the year, and likewise, some of the films that are included in the Top 10 will not include any particular stand-out sequences by which to call attention to themselves. And now, with all of these disclaimers in mind, let’s take a look back at The Friendly Film Fan’s picks for the Top 5 Best Scenes & Movie Moments of 2024!  5. Gas Station Birth – We Live in Time While I wasn’t personally as high on John Crowley’s decades-spanning romance as a lot of people seemed to be, We Live in Time is still a lovely movie that any fan of romance stories should would enjoy watching, regardless of how many tissues they end up going through in the process. With stellar performances from Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, the film’s stand-out sequence sees Almut (Pugh) and Tobias (Garfield) stuck at a petrol station en route to the hospital as Almut is going into labor with their daughter. Unfortunately for both of them, and for the station employees who appear ready to close for the evening, the labor process is well underway and moving too fast for either Tobias or Almut to go anywhere else. The resulting birth sequence – which takes place in the station’s ladies restroom – is not the best sequence in the film, but one of the best sequences of 2024. Gross, hysterical, stressful, and magical all at the same time as the station attendants assist Tobias in delivering he and Almut’s child, it’s a true highlight of the film watching these two individuals bring a new life into the world they share, and the four people all stuck in the bathroom together feel like their own little family. It’s an inspiring picture of how, even in the most unusual of circumstances, people from all different walks of life can come together and facilitate the happening of a genuine miracle. 4. D.C. Raid – Civil War There was a lot written about Alex Garland’s Civil War when it opened in April of last year to largely positive reviews and some divisive letterboxd takes. Everyone wanted to see whether A24 could pull off supporting a movie of this budget scale, and how Alex Garland would follow-up his even more divisive Men with what would turn out to be his final directing project (at least for now) in an era where the U.S. seems poised to make its title a reality every other minute. What side would Garland take? What does a modern civil war in the United States even look like? What would the film say to audiences who were fearful of the plot in front of them being made manifest? Would the film capture the same nervous energy as its exceptional set of trailers? While the answers to those first questions vary from person to person as the film is more interested in excavating photo-journalistic responsibility amongst dramatically divisive political moments, that final question was met with a resounding “yes,” and in no sequence more so is the energy of the film felt than the arresting raid on Washington D.C. that begins the film’s terrifically intense finale. With gunfire everywhere, helicopters flying through the city streets as bombs topple monuments, and the team inching ever closer to the White House – where it’s rumored the sitting three-term President (Nick Offerman) is shored up – the sequence lasts right up to the minute the President is finally shot dead by the Western Forces military, ending his reign – and the film – on a note of ambiguity the viewer will never shake. It’s this sequence that cements Garland as one of the best filmmakers to ever do it from a craft perspective, and it’s likely to be the one that solidifies the film’s eventual Best Visual Effects nomination at the Oscars (even though it really should be in Best Sound too). 3. War Rig – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga One has to give massive props to George Miller for not making Furiosa just a re-skin of the incredible Mad Max: Fury Road, but there is at least one 15-minute action sequence reminiscent of the franchise’s previous entry so epic that according to the actors and those involved with the production, it had to be shot over a 78-day period. The sequence in question shows viewers the birth of the iconic War Rig vehicle which Furiosa uses in Fury Road to transport the five wives of Immortan Joe across the desert. In Furiosa’s case, it’s the first time we see Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character in action, as well as her companion Pretorian Jack, one of the coolest characters George Miller has yet introduced to this world, even if he is essentially a stand-in for Max prior to Fury Road. The scene itself is a mini-epic inside the greater revenge epic of the film, demonstrating Miller’s ability at 79 years old to still craft and execute on the most insane action set pieces one’s ever seen committed to film. It’s so epic, in fact, we had to get the whole thing from a YouTube video split into two parts. You can check it out above (Part One on top). 2. Match Point – Challengers The back-and-forth between this and my number one spot was almost as intense and uncertain as the volley between Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as they trade tennis racket blows for victory in the New Rochelle challenger match. At one point during a set, Patrick reveals to Art in the most telling of ways between the two that he and Tashi (Zendaya) slept together during a time when she and Art – her husband – were at a crossroads of conscience. Art becomes furious, but the sequence may not play out exactly as one might expect. Every bit of craft in the film reaches its apex here. The score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, the direction from Luca Guadagnino, the editing from Marco Costa. It is, no pun intended, the climax of the sexiest film of the year at its tail end, a release of all the frustration and games played between the two men, a game that Tashi has both orchestrated and participated in since the three met all those years prior. It was in that fateful meeting where Tashi mentioned the film’s ultimate thesis as she and an opponent of hers shared what she called a really beautiful moment together, both understanding the game and each other on a level no one in the crowd could, and it’s in this final match that Art and Patrick finally share that same feeling, at once understanding each other and the game in the fullest sense of each. Even as the number two movie scene on this list, it claims the top spot as the most electrifying ending of the year in movies. 1. Worm Ride – Dune: Part Two Although the Harvester attack sequence will go down as one of the finest sci-fi action sequences ever put to film and is a highlight of the movie in its own right, it’s Dune: Part Two’s masterwork of a centerpiece that sets itself apart from all other set-pieces to be the defining moment in movies of 2024. Having immersed himself in Fremen culture and taken up arms against the Harkonnens who slaughtered his family and attempted to wipe out his bloodline, Paul Atreides must face his final test to become a member of the Fremen clan by riding the great sandworm, what the Fremen call Shai-Hulud. It is the most dangerous task any Fremen can perform, and the way the sequence is shot and edited together, paired with Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score and sound design that likens the sandworm to a space shuttle taking off, practically lifts the viewer of their chair and ascends them to the heavens themselves. Dune: Part Two is a miracle of adaptation, one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, and this is the singular jeweled moment inlaid in its 2024 movie moments crown. The fact that moments from both Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two landed atop my list of the best movie moments of their respective years should be reason enough for the DGA to re-evaluate their choice not to nominate Denis Villeneuve, and a stern warning to the Academy not to make the same mistake. And those were my picks for the Top 5 Best Scenes & Movie Moments of 2024! What scenes did you like best this year? How would you rank these five? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we rapidly approach the day upon which I will unveil my Top 10 Movies of 2024, I wanted to make sure I gave a special shout to some of the year’s more underrated films. While it wasn’t the strongest overall year for movies, there were plenty of them to celebrate, and a particular few that seemed to get passed over, whether by awards bodies or by critics – including myself – who perhaps don’t recognize their full value beyond the potential they provide for the filmmakers to improve with future projects. As is the case with every year, I haven’t seen everything that might qualify for placement on this list, so for those of you hoping to see things like Sasquatch Sunset or Snack Shack amongst the mentions may end up, this may be a disappointing journey; nevertheless, I do hope that the presence of these titles might prompt some of you to finally check them out or inspire you to give them a second look. After all, art is about constant evaluation and re-evaluation; maybe a few of these will mean something different to you now than they did when you first saw them! In either case, whether you’ve seen these films or not, I’m of the mind that perhaps they deserve a little more love than they’ve been given. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2024!  10. Nightbitch Marielle Heller’s part genre, part drama tale of a woman being driven so crazy by motherhood that she things she’s turning into a dog may not sound like the basis for a successful project, and in some senses, that might be true – the harder genre bits don’t work as well when paired with the other half of the film, and a few of its supporting elements lack enough cohesion or development to really justify their inclusions – but on the whole, Nightbitch is far better than its marketing would lead one to believe. Amy Adams’ committed performance is among her best work to date, and could certainly be counted as her best in several years, to the point where I wondered considerably if she had a legitimate shot at a SAG nomination. The film itself also deals with the trials of early motherhood and raising a (way-too-well-behaved) toddler in a way that a lot of other films about the subject can’t seem to parse, at least not with the nuance this carries.  9. Juror #2 We are in serious danger of forgetting just how good a director Clint Eastwood can be when films like Juror #2 are unceremoniously released to only 50 theaters and then shuttered off to streaming as a Max Original (I will never forgive David Zaslav for that). The film is imperfect, absolutely, but it’s still a far better film than anything with this much hockiness and sincere faith in the American justice system has any right to be. This is one of Eastwood’s best movies in years, and it’s unfortunate to think that it very well could be his last. I go back and forth on whether the ending is good or not, but it’s everything before – including Nicholas Hoult’s incredible leading performance – that makes the film so consistently engaging and worth spending time on. The scene in the garage in particular is among my favorite acting moments in all of 2024, and Hoult nails every subtle expression required in that sequence to both make you empathize with him and believe him a coward, with no clear lean toward either end. If you haven’t checked this one out yet, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot.  8. Cuckoo Sometimes all one needs is a deeply weird, odd-feeling horror movie to remind you that the genre can still surprise you with just how strange it can still be, and Tillman Singer’s Cuckoo is exactly the right kind of odd-ball horror that the genre needs to stay interesting. The film may not succeed at every turn, but the always-engaging Hunter Schafer holds it all together with a central performance essentially confirming what anyone who’s seen her act before already knew: she has real star power, capably carrying the film largely on her own shoulders. Of course, it helps that she has Dan Stevens to play off of, who looks like he’s having the time of his life getting to sink his teeth into such a weird, off-putting character. The thing that makes Cuckoo so underrated, though, is that even when it misses amongst all the shots it takes, the miss leads to somewhere interesting, a new avenue to explore or idea to consider. Even if the whole thing doesn’t ultimately land the plane, at least it’s a memorable flight.  7. Transformers One Shame, shame, shame on all organizations and awards groups with animation categories that passed by the far better than it had any right to be Transformers One. While I won’t contend that it would’ve actually stood a chance at winning the category for any awards body or critics group, it being left off the list for almost all of them – even the Globes, who had six slots available – is completely unjustifiable. Josh Cooley’s origin story for the iconic rivalry of Optimus Prime and Megatron isn’t just far from the disaster its trailers made it look like, it’s actually a genuinely heartfelt story of betrayal, division, and what it looks like when the truth is more than meets the eye. The voice performances from Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry carry some beautiful animation over the finish line, and the film’s final moments deserve to be answered by a sequel that unfortunately is unlikely to ever occur. This one deserves a lot more respect. 6. The Apprentice Trying to unpack the enigma of Donald Trump would be an impossible task even for the most seasoned of filmmakers. How do you even begin to understand someone so notoriously buffoonish that he wants to take over Canada, rename the gulf of Mexico, and keeps Elon Musk of all people close to the chest? How do you interrogate the character of someone so cartoonishly evil that he inspired a whole mob of people to attempt an insurrection after he lost his initial attempt at a second term as President? Well, as hard as he tries to convince us otherwise, Trump is a human being, and all human beings come from somewhere. Whether circumstantially or deliberately, he is the way he is for a reason. Ali Abbasi's biopic about Trump’s early life – and chiefly regarding his relationship with Roy Cohn, pitched here as the man who essentially created the Trump we know – doesn’t simply probe these uncomfortable questions, but refuses to give clear answers to them. It really is one of the most accomplished studies of a somewhat unknowable individual. It really is one of the most accomplished studies of a somewhat unknowable individual to come out in recent years, and major credit should go to star Sebastian Stan for keeping this movie in the cultural conversation regardless of how difficult the questions is asks are to face. Between Stan and co-star Jeremy Strong, there should be two guaranteed Oscar nominations, and all those publicists that refused to pair their stars with Stan for Variety’s Actors on Actors series should feel a deep shame in avoiding the elephant in the room – the exact opposite of what the best art does.  5. Between the Temples Starring Jason Schwartzman as a cantor in the midst of a crisis of faith whose former grade school music teacher approaches him to inquire about having her own Bat Mitzvah, Between the Temples is just as crazy, funny, discomforting, charming, strange, and deeply endearing as its plot can manage to allow. The chemistry between Schwartzman and his co-star Carol Kane is off the charts, the latter of the two absolutely radiating a bouncy energy that perfectly compliments Schwartzman’s trepidation around just about everything he does. The film also features some of the year’s most daring filmmaking moments, and resolves in a way that both enriches itself and leaves viewers to wonder: where do these characters even go from here?  4. Thelma No, this is not the International Feature contender from 2017 directed by Joachim Trier; this Thelma is hoping to steal Tom Cruise’s stunt crown and become the new Queen of Stunts. At 93 years old, June Squibb – whom most readers would probably know from her work in the film Nebraska – does all her own stunts in one of the year’s sweetest films with a sincere sense of humor about itself. Thelma is an absolute joy, boasting not only one of my favorite lead performances of the year from Squibb, but one of the most underrated supporting turns as well from the late Richard Roundtree in what would turn out to be his final part. Almost every joke lands, and any movie that joins Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Fred Hechinger together to make up the family taking care of June Squibb deserves not only a lot more respect, but a lot more attention.  3. Wicked Little Letters It came out relatively early in the year, so one could be forgiven for forgetting that it even released this year at all, but Wicked Little Letters – which had its U.S. release in March – is one of 2024’s most charmingly naughty tales. Starring Jessie Buckley as a woman accused of writing a series of heinous letters in a pious community, and Olivia Colman as the letters’ recipient, the film is a great deal of fun, especially in the back and forth between its leading stars. Give two of the U.K.’s best actresses working today a shot at a small-time script, and they’ll milk it for all its worth. The film is streaming on Netflix for those inclined to take a watch.  2. Strange Darling One of the things that excites me most as I grow as a critic and branch out through all different kinds of filmmaking is the discovery of a new voice I hadn’t yet known. That’s exactly what happened when I saw Strange Darling, a new horror film from J.T. Mollner that feels like the director – along with cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, who shot the gorgeous-looking movie on 35mm film – emerging as a new voice in the horror space, and an exciting one to discover at that. Of course, it helps that scream king Kyle Gallner is involved to offer the project the notoriety it needs to get it off the ground, but its Willa Fitzgerald’s multi-layered lead performance that ended up taking me completely by surprise. Even in seeing the trailers for the film, I had no idea where it was supposed to go, and if you think you might wanna take a chance on it, I’d recommend – at the risk of spoiling an element of the plot – that you go in as blind as possible. The next film on the list might be more underrated overall, but this by far was my favorite surprise of the year.  1. Daddio Over the summer, in June, a little movie released nationwide called Daddio. It wasn’t a large release, and in fact I didn’t get to see it until much later, but I couldn’t believe how few people were talking about it. Dakota Johnson stars as a woman coming back home from a family visit, with Sean Penn giving his best performance in years as her cab driver. The whole movie, right up to its ending, takes place inside this New York taxi cab, a simple conversation between two people that becomes far deeper and more meaningful than any conversation between a cab driver and passenger has any right to be, let alone a conversation that lasts almost 90 minutes. Both characters unveil layers to themselves throughout that surprise in small ways, and yet we know both of them completely from minute one; they’re fully realized, but never fully evolved. Frankly, there’s not a lot else to say about Daddio because there’s not much to the filmmaking itself, but if readers are looking for a good, solid bottle movie that won’t eat at their time and will leave them feeling good at the end of the day, I can’t think of a more underrated film experience from 2024 than this one. And those are my picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of the 2024! What movies did you think were undervalued this year? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Well, ladies and gentlemen, that time has finally come – the time to reflect on the year’s end and celebrate all the cinematic gifts 2024 had to offer, and of course this means the beginning of the 2024 end-of-year Top 10 lists. While it hasn’t been the strongest movie year overall, there were plenty of films deserving of celebration (which we will get to in due time), and plenty of film marketing worthy of that very same praise. To that end, it’s time to unveil the first of these lists, and begin the countdown all the way to the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024. Whether the films on this list ultimately lived up to their advertising or not is another conversation altogether, but the participants in this particular countdown demonstrated once more that the craft of making advertisements in the first place is an art form in itself. Without further ado, here are our picks for the Top 10 Movie Trailers of 2024! 10. Superman | Official Teaser Trailer The production of James Gunn’s Superman (formerly titled Superman: Legacy) has been extensively covered by just about every entertainment news outlet on the planet, sometimes daily. Perhaps the most anticipated film of this year relative to box office expectations and tone-setting for an entirely new brand of DC films under Gunn’s new leadership, the pressure has never been more on to make a film which honors the titular character’s core faculties while also delivering on something entirely new. To that end, the trailer doesn’t give much of the film’s plot away at all; in fact, the title for the movie itself isn’t even included with all the footage we’re shown, so understood is the film’s subject and remix of John Williams’ iconic theme (perhaps the greatest singular piece of music the maestro has ever made). What we are shown are a lot of soon-to-be iconic images in brief flashes – a seemingly buffoon-ish Clark Kent towering over the other citizenry of Metropolis, a no-nonsense Lois Lane kissing both Superman and Clark, a never-balder Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, Krypto the Superdog coming to rescue his owner after what’s clearly been a rough fight – as well as an establishment of tone as Superman puts himself between danger and a little girl walking the streets, and a young boy in an unknown warzone holds up a flag, willing the Man of Steel to come and save them. Given the gravity of its subject, the trailer’s placement may seem a bit low on this list, but with such limited footage and only vague glimpses at things we haven’t seen before, there’s not a whole lot higher a mere teaser for a film still seven months from release can fly. 9. Sinners | Official Trailer Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan are a match made in movie heaven, much like Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya, but as those latter two don’t have a film releasing until 2026 (at least on Peele’s part), the old south vampire thriller Sinners from the former team will have to do. The trailer – again merely a teaser for a film still months from release – went against many expectations viewers had for the film, chiefly by revealing the story’s setting and the fact that Jordan himself would be playing twin brothers in a dual performance alongside some terrific IMAX photography and a never-more-popular Hailee Steinfeld. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss MBJ’s canon arms mowing down whatever’s on the other end of those final bullets in theaters. 8. Trap | Official Trailer As with the previous two entries on this list, the most exciting thing the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap revealed was the premise of the film: a man named Cooper attends a concert with his daughter in tow, only to be told that all the extra security present at the venue – and the concert itself – is an elaborate set-up to catch a notorious serial killer known only as The Butcher. The kicker? Cooper is that very same Butcher. Unfortunately, the film itself – while underrated in its own right as a meta commentary on involving one’s own family in your work – failed to live up to the expectations of its stellar marketing run, but that first trailer nonetheless was a bolt of lightning for exciting new thrillers in an otherwise rather underwhelming summer blockbuster season. 7. Saturday Night – Official Trailer (HD) Speaking of bolts of lightning, while I enjoyed Saturday Night a good bit, there’s no question that its first trailer captured the manic energy of producing never-before-attempted live television glory better than even the movie did. That may seem like harsher criticism than it’s meant to, but without a trailer as fast-paced as this, full of young stars and mounting complications in every second, and driven by a literal ticking clock as the first episode of SNL struggles to make it to air, the film would have been a total flop at the box office. The film is good, to be sure, but nothing in it can match the heights this trailer took us to on the silver screen. You can read my full review of the film here. 6. Juror #2 | Official Trailer Clint Eastwood is 94 years old and still churning out some of the most thrilling premises – and trailers – any fan of movies could ever ask for. The trailer begins with Nicholas Hoult, the protagonist of this story, recounting to a lawyer what happened a year before when he may have accidentally hit a deer during a rainy drive home from a local bar; the intrigue of the film is that he’s also one of the selected jurors in a murder trial, and may have hit the victim instead of an animal. That’s not only a great premise for moral conflict in a movie, it’s a built-in thriller ripe for theaters, which is what makes it so perplexing and frankly maddening that WB CEO David Zaslav opted to only put the film in 50 theaters before shoving onto the Max streaming service at the tail end of the year. Still, the trailer was an impressive one, and made us all wonder whether Eastwood had one more Oscar juggernaut in him before he left us for good. 5. Megalopolis – Teaser Trailer A project over 20 years in the making, Megalopolis is a fascinating misfire of a film for Francis Ford Coppola, but for a long time, people wondered if it was ever coming out at all. Produced by Coppola using his own money from decades of sales and doing other projects to pay debts accrued during previous productions, the ludicrously expensive film lacked distribution despite its stacked cast and well-regarded director. So when the teaser trailer for the film finally dropped on Coppola’s own YouTube channel, it felt like an old master declaring his return to once more to the silver screen, a triumphant comeback for one of the best to ever do it. It’s still one of my favorite trailers released in 2024, and if the film had lived up to all the glories it promised within those first minutes of footage we received, we might have been talking about one of the best films not only of the year, but of the decade to date. 4. Conclave – Official Trailer [HD] Coming off of All Quiet on the Western Front’s enormous Oscar success, Edward Berger had something to prove with his next feature. Was his success the result of his own talents or the product of adapting one of the great novels of all time for the modern age? And what was he going to do next? It could have been another grand-scale epic with large ideas and larger-than-life action sequences, but instead Berger turned his eye toward adapting an airport thriller like a lengthy toxic workplace episode, and Conclave is all the better for it. The trailer for the film lays it all out: Edward Berger directing, Ralph Fiennes starring, score by Volker Bertelmann, and a premise based on electoral politics during an election year – the timing could not have been more appropriate. That the film largely lives up to the expectations set by its initial unveiling is a miracle worthy of praise in itself. You can read my full review of the film here. 3. Monkey Man | Official Trailer In the early days of the year – January specifically – the first trailer for Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man, dropped like a lit stick of dynamite and quickly became one of the favorite trailers of cinephiles the world over. The bone-crunching action, cut to the sounds of Panjabi MC and Jay-Z’s “Beware of the Boys,” echoed through the theater speakers and every. single. cut. counted for something. The trailer sent a jolt of anticipatory energy into the stratosphere of moviegoers’ worlds, and with Dev Patel in the lead part, having produced the film so hard that stories about him apparently breaking his hand during a take began to surface around the same time the trailer released, there was no way Monkey Man was going to be anything less than something special. The film itself doesn’t quite live up to the trailer’s revelatory editing, but there’s still some incredible work within it, including a dining room fight that still ranks among my favorite action sequences this year. You can read my full review of the film here. 2. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story | Official Trailer To understand why Superman means so much even to people who didn’t grow up reading comics, such as myself, one has to understand Christopher Reeve’s embodiment of the character. Able to play both the shy and book-ish Clark Kent and the strong, towering personality of Superman simply by changing his voice and posture within a single scene, there was no one – and there’s likely to be no one ever again – who so thoroughly understood the dichotomy of the Super and the Man. What’s underscored by this film’s marketing is that Reeve in particular understood both his own iconography and how important it was for him to project his humanity to the world so that they might all feel super in their own ways, particularly with his work in paraplegic spaces following his tragic accident. The trailer for Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, despite some text cutaways that seemed a tad generic for a documentary about a well-known celebrity, is a triumph of editing and musical composition as the Kryptonian and Superman themes comes together to celebrate the life of the original man of steel, at least in movie history. There’s a reason it inspired grown men to cry in reacting to it, and it's because of how much people still value Christopher Reeve as a person and Superman as an icon of hope. You can read my full review of the film here. 1. 28 Years Later – Official Trailer (HD) I have something of a confession to make: I’ve never seen Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (rectifying that soon), nor have I seen 28 Weeks Later, its purportedly less successful and less beloved sequel, though the latter does appear to have its defenders. That said, if anything was going to get me to watch them as soon as they were available and I found myself with a few hours to spare, it’s the stellar first trailer to the franchise’s third entry, 28 Years Later, which is once more directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. While the initial moments of the trailer harken back to the series’ previous entries, the bulk of it is made of a cacophony of stunning images, set against the sounds of Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots,” a poem published in 1903, which is being recited in a 1915 recording by Taylor Holmes. The recitation of the poem has an incredibly eerie effect on the viewer, almost forcing them to reckon with the terror about to unfold, and if the accompanying imagery is anything to go by, this new trilogy starter could well be one of the most haunting moviegoing experiences of 2025. And those are my picks for the Top 10 Movie Trailers of 2024! What were some of your favorite trailers this year? Anything I missed in the Honorable Mentions? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Jones Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! In our last Oscars piece, we went over all this season’s major Oscar contenders, but they are not the only films vying for gold this season. There are still plenty of films outside of the major contenders that have a solid chance at sneaking into some nomination fields, whether below-the-line or above, the only differences being they’re unlikely to be competitive across a wide spectrum of Oscar categories, or they’re simply not as big of releases as those discussed in the other piece. As with last time, this is not a fully comprehensive list of everything competing for Oscar glory, but more of a guide as to where things could be heading. There’s still plenty of time for momentums to rise and drop, category shifts to take place, and things to change dramatically throughout the awards season regarding what constitutes a major or minor contender. With all that said, let’s dive right in. Here are this season’s minor Oscar contenders! WHAT’S ALREADY HERE The Apprentice Despite having released nationwide over the October 11 weekend, it’s still unclear just how strong this Donald Trump/Roy Cohn biopic really is in terms of awards contention. For my own part, I found it to be tremendously entertaining, buoyed by two fantastic central performances from Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Stan is the most obvious contender here, having played the former President immaculately (and as unfortunate as it is, it’s more likely that the Academy nominates him for this than for his career-best turn in A Different Man), but with such an uncertain race ahead in the Supporting Actor category, don’t be surprised if Strong slips in as well. After all, the film hinges on the idea that Roy Cohn was at least partially – if not entirely – responsible for creating Donald Trump as we know him today, so if voters feel that nominating the lead actor also means connecting that nomination to the supporting part the performance bounces off of, it would be entirely likely that Strong lands that coveted 5th spot. The Academy also loves subtle makeup effects, particularly in biopics, so an Apprentice appearance in that category shouldn’t shock anyone, were it to happen. Best Chances: Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong), Best Makeup & Hairstyling  Civil War Alex Garland’s Civil War – divisive as it was upon release – was a barn-burner for A24, becoming their second-highest-grossing film to date (only behind Everything Everywhere All at Once), and stayed in theaters for a good while. The studio’s gambit to open themselves up to more I.P. and spectacle-driven storytelling only has this one success story thus far, but it’s an undeniable success. To that end, while the film is unlikely to compete above-the-line, there are at least two tech categories in which it stands a fighting chance. Chief among these categories is Best Sound, which – regardless of how one feels about the narrative or pacing thereof – remains the film’s standout element by a wide margin. The whiz of sniper bullets, the sharpness of the gunfire, the ferocity of every explosion follows the viewer everywhere, especially during the film’s masterfully-crafted third act raid on Washington D.C. One other category, however, that awards enthusiasts may not be considering hard enough is Best Visual Effects. As 2019 showed us with 1917’s win in the category, war films can contain a great deal more visual effects than one might expect, and it’s the seamless blending of these effects that the Academy pays attention to. That said, Civil War would still face a tough uphill battle in that department, so if you’re set on just giving it one shot, Sound should be it. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Didi It’s a real shame this Sundance darling about a young Vietnamese boy named Wang-Wang growing up through the dawn of the digital age doesn’t have as large of an awards reputation as some of its contemporaries in the genre, but then again, Bo Burnham’s near-perfect Eighth Grade may be its closest contemporary, and that didn’t get any awards love either. Didi’s one and only hope – apart from a miracle break into the original Screenplay category – is in Joan Chen’s endearing turn as the lead character’s mother. Chen is genuinely fantastic in the film, anchoring all of Wang-Wang’s anxiety with a steely vulnerability, and a well-deserved nomination in Best Supporting Actress is not out of the question as a surprise spoiler in the category. Unfortunately, with all of Focus Features’ awards attention fixed on Conclave, it’s highly unlikely for that spoiler to gain enough momentum by the time nominations are announced. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Joan Chen) A Different Man As mentioned above, most of Sebastian Stan’s award attention is likely to be focused on The Apprentice for obvious reasons, but in my not-so-humble opinion, if he is to land a Best Actor nomination, it should be for this performance instead. A Different Man is an incredible look at the idea of self-hatred, internal insecurities, and identity that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Stan’s towering turn, but also happens to feature Adam Pearson as one of the film’s funniest characters. While the script may be darkly comic and unendingly clever though, the limited amount of collective watch time amongst audiences and Academy voters (plus the crowded fields in both Screenplay categories and most other above-the-line slots for which it would have competed) likely means that beyond the Makeup & Hairstyling category, it basically only has one other shot, if A24 and Stan want to campaign for his performance. Best Chances: Best Makeup & Hairstyling  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga In case any of you were wondering, no, I will not be forgiving everyone who let this movie go DOA and flop so hard at the box office that director George Miller had to pull back on his certainty that he would be doing another Mad Max movie at all. There simply is no one better at making this kind of movie than him, and it will be a black mark on all movie-goers if he dies being taken for granted as a director. Furiosa is no Fury Road, to be sure, but to even make a post-apocalyptic revenge epic this well more than deserves all the praise anyone could throw at it. Fury Road took home 6 Oscars (all in tech categories) the year that it competed, so it’s not out of the question that some of those techs could repeat nominations as long as the movie is shown to Academy members in time for voting. Here’s hoping. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound  Joker: Folie À Deux My oh my, how the mighty have fallen. Joker: Folie À Deux certainly has its defenders – even I admired Todd Phillips’ “screw your fantasy sequel” approach to putting it out there – but there’s no denying the film just doesn’t work, buried underneath layers of poorly-staged musical covers and lacking the conviction that comes with being allowed to rip off two of Scorsese’s best works. This was meant to be Warner Bros’ big fall season awards push; now, the studio could consider themselves lucky to land a few tech nominations. What happened?! Well, apart from the film’s myriad of issues like a repetitive narrative, lack of development for most non-Joker characters, and twist ending that essentially means the film before it meant nothing, it also didn’t make any money. Box office isn’t necessarily an indicator of awards consideration, but having a sequel to one of your most successful movies of all time flop, and having your star drop out of an upcoming Todd Haynes film just days before shooting, thus ruining his nomination chances for the same part he won Best Actor for last time, burns a lot of good will the movie may otherwise have kept even with the drop in quality. As it stands, Folie À Deux still has the slimmest of chances to repeat some of its old techs, but don’t expect it to go any further than that. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling  The Substance Something is happening with The Substance amongst awards pundits, who seem to consider the film stronger than ever as awards season is in full swing and Oscar voting approaches. Many have still kept it out of the above-the-categories (save for one), but even with the Academy’s understood bias against the horror genre, the momentum for it seems to only be building, especially where it concerns the towering Demi Moore performance at its center. Personally, I doubt that it competes in many categories apart from the obvious due to that Academy bias, but if this thing somehow lands a Best Picture nomination, I will be shocked and delighted. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Makeup & Hairstyling WHAT’S TO COME  Hard Truths Each year in one of the acting categories and in the screenplay category, there’s always one wildcard selection that has the potential to throw every would-be 5-for-5 predictions list out the window. This year, that’s Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, a film containing a Marianne Jean-Baptiste performance every critic who’s seen the film raves about. It’s not hard to imagine Jean-Baptiste as an included fifth contestant, especially if the Academy refuses to nominate Demi Moore, and Mike Leigh is beloved enough by movie enthusiasts that there’s some good will towards his landing a nomination for an original script, regardless of how far the film could go after those considerations. This early in the race, it’s too difficult to tell how certain these nominations would be, but if the potential for dark horse candidates is in play, so is the dark horse movie of this season. Best Chances: Best Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Best Original Screenplay Nightbitch Following a disastrously bad first trailer, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch received mixed-positive reviews, with many pundits singling out Amy Adams starring turn as mother who thinks she’s turning into a dog as proof that she’s still got it. Coming off a historically bad run following her Best Actress snub in 2016 for Arrival, this movie could be seen as a comeback vehicle for Adams, even if it’s unlikely to appear anywhere else that matters. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters on December 6 just how competitive Adams is likely to be, if at all. Best Chances: Best Actress (Amy Adams)  The Piano Lesson August Wilson adaptations have done well at the Oscars in the past, with both Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom racking up nominations above-the-line left and right, although the latter did miss out on Picture and Director. Both received Adapted Screenplay nominations, and both had their lead and supporting performances recognized by the Academy, so it stands to reason that The Piano Lesson won’t be much different except with respect to the fact that John David Washington, who leads this movie, may not be able to crack this crowded of a Best Actor field, and Samuel L. Jackson – whom many pundits originally predicted to win the Best Supporting Actor category – apparently isn’t in the movie very much. That said, everyone who’s seen the movie thus far has raved about Ray Fisher’s performance, so Best Supporting Actor could still happen, and almost all of them also have Danielle Deadwyler’s supporting turn – as well as the screenplay – still locked into a nomination position, with the latter looking the most wobbly if something else were to take its place. The film is being put out by Netflix, which is also platforming Emilia Pérez and Maria this season, so it’s entirely likely that some of the larger categories don’t feature it as heavily. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Danielle Deadwyler), Best Supporting Actor (Ray Fisher), Best Adapted Screenplay  The Room Next Door Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film has received a bit of a mixed reception from those who have seen it, with many citing the magic he’s able to conjure in the Spanish language not translating correctly to English, leaving the script feeling clunkier than it’s likely meant to. That said, it does still have many defenders, including people who still believe it has a chance to make its mark in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress with Tilda Swinton, even if a Supporting bid for her would have worked out better for a competitive win. Stars Julianne Moore and Swinton are both campaigning in Lead Actress, but given Swinton is the one everyone talks about regarding this film, it’s most likely the nod goes to her or neither, leaving a more dark horse candidate to fill up that fifth spot. Both Pain and Glory and Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s last two films, managed to score some surprise nominations along the way, so we’ll see if that streak of surprises continues here. Best Chances: Best Actress (Tilda Swinton), Best Adapted Screenplay  The Seed of the Sacred Fig A thriller apparently made in secret in Iran, Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig has been burning up the minds of those who’ve seen it ever since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year. The film is Germany’s official selection for the International Feature Oscar race, but also seems to be nomination-competitive in at least one other category (Original Screenplay), and some are predicting it to break into Picture and Director as well. I’ll have to see the movie myself before I consider adding it to my predictions in those latter two categories, but International Feature is all but a certainty, and Original Screenplay is very much in play, so don’t count it out of your predictions just yet. Best Chances: Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay  September 5 A film about the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, September 5 is told entirely from the perspective of the ABC newsroom who covered the story at the time. Bottle movies about journalism tend to fare well with the Academy, in at least the Editing category, and the studio is campaigning its cast for Supporting considerations given the ensemble nature of the piece, Peter Sarsgaard being the most obvious contender amongst the group. The predictions betting site GoldDerby has listed September 5 amongst its ten predicted nominations for Best Picture, but without having seen the film, and with much of the awards release slate still to come, the lack of certainty surrounding such a prediction is why I’m hesitant to throw it that bone just yet. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it sneak into the #10 spot, especially with such a wide-open Best Picture race only seeming to be getting wider. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Sarsgaard), Best Film Editing And with that, we’ve covered most (if not all) of the major and minor Oscar contenders this awards season! Which of these films are you looking forward to the most? Do you foresee any of these minor contenders making the switch to major? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan |