by Riley Glover
Ever since the first Academy Awards happened in 1929, the little golden man has become not only the major representative of film as an American artform on the international stage but also a way for the industry to express power over what is worth seeing. Flashy “For Your Consideration” marketing campaigns, late in the year release dates, the devaluation of animation, and never-ending conversations of representation continue to paint the portrait of the Oscars not as a conversation about the meaning of art, but the power of art.
Within the films being nominated for Best Picture for 2025’s ceremony, itself an award dealing with constant change and fluctuation of what it even should be over the past 20 years. It has expanded from 5 nominees to 10 in 2009, questioned whether to segregate a separate award to placate the people’s needs, and created a voting process based more on broad consensus that deliberately weeds out the weird and controversial for a winner.
It’s difficult to not view this selection of movies as reflecting major political angst after a traumatic election in America and the wish to escape and maybe even change brutal political systems.
10. Emilia Pérez
It’s impossible to take this film seriously, as both director Jacques Audiard and lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón have shot themself in the foot repeatedly in the public eye in the worst Oscar campaign of recent memory. Now to be devil’s advocate here, a musical exploring a trans woman’s attempts to find forgiveness for her sins in her pre-transition life as a cartel leader in Mexico isn’t the worst idea ever. It’s clear that Jacques has strong fundamentals with a lot of ideas about the nature of identity around the film. And that’s really it. After a first hour that fetishizes the medical transitioning process, the film seems to lose momentum and scatter shots itself across multiple different storylines that seems to take forever in connecting back to a central point. Emilia Pérez develops this awkward space that only highlights flat cinematography and lighting that doesn’t know what to do with on screen faces clashing with ugly, dry musical numbers. Emilia Pérez is just a boring film without much strong interiority beyond the lead who gets thrown into an aggravatingly cheap ending.
What Also to Watch: JI Saw the TV Glow, The People’s Joker, and Annette
9. A Complete Unknown
In trying to retell the rise of Bob Dylan from his faithful visits with Woody Guthrie all the way to the notorious 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he went completely electric instrumentation, director and co-writer James Mangold seems unable to find a strong thesis onto its explorations Dylan as an evasive personality floating on his own terms than on others, never really clarifying why Bobby would alienate most of his contemporaries and mentors in rejecting the acoustic folk tradition. In the process, the fetishistic recreation of Bob Dylan by Timothée Chalamet ends up looking like a hollow noncommittal jerk who wrecks the friendships of everyone he knows simply because he wants to be free. As someone who does find the persona of Dylan fascinating in his unwillingness to be defined, the invasiveness of the film to define what was going on in the culture at the time turns it into a bland landscape.
What Also to Watch: I’m Not Here
8. Conclave
Due to the rather sudden death of the Pope, a conclave with all Cardinals to elect a new Pope begins. Much of the runtime is about the struggle to fight for ideals in political systems designed around compromise, personality, and ego; and how such selfish obstacles can blind us in doing the right thing. Very clean in style with the only issue being the cinematography and music often feel like it’s trying to insist upon itself as being a “serious” work in the same way most high-end streaming shows do, while the script loves divinely weird plot twists and smack talk. It doesn’t scream like a film needing a Best Adapted Screenplay.
What Also to Watch:The Young Pope
7. Wicked
The adaptation of the musical adapted from the book that is a reinterpretation of “The Wizard of Oz,” Wicked explores the rise and fall of Elphaba Thropp, a person we have grown up to understand as “The Wicked Witch of the West” but is recontextualized here as a socially ostracized woman rejected for her green skin who becomes a controversial political force. Quite interesting as a full-throated musical with glorious dance numbers and big, show stopping special effects while still expressing a real angst towards fascism and bigotry. My only complaint is that I wish the film looked much more Technicolor, having this slight gray muting everything on screen which feels contradictory given the film legacy of Oz.
What Also to Watch: The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret
6. Dune Part Two
Timothée Chalamet plays lead in this one as Paul Atreides, the Duke of the fallen House Atreides, trying to pick up the pieces of his family’s legacy and power destroyed by House Harkonnen. Left on the planet Arrakis with his pregnant mother, Paul begins to fulfill the destiny that was laid out before him as the “Lisan al-Gaib” that will lead the people of Arrakis into paradise. “Dune Part 2” is an extremely impressive work of blockbuster sci-fi given its origins come from a long piece of philosophical sci-fi. I was impressed by the usage of sophisticated visual language conveying ideas about the white savior narrative; as well as the question of centralizing power to individuals rather than collectives that always feels clear but never feels boring. Once again though, the original “Dune” author Frank Herbert raised the shadow for many viewers over Denis Villeneuve and co’s decision to not directly cast people from proper cultures in key roles in the story. For much of the runtime, we see a very light skinned to outright white cast being centralized and contrasted by the dark-skinned natives looking in skepticism, something that the film wants us to do and does quite successfully, but at the same time a story like this is still is centralizing the white perspective. It’s a movie that makes more sense in 2023, where movies like “Oppenheimer” were critiquing people’s complicity with international violence while still centering the white gaze. While it’s clear that this is designed as a trilogy that seems willing to subvert even further the ideas of a white savior, it keeps the question of representation as a major issue.
What Also to Watch: Until the End of the World
5. Anora
Sean Baker is a writer, director, and editor with an impressive filmography. But this one can throw watchers for a loop in how both funny and upsetting it is. You could describe “Anora” as an anti-Cinderella story about stripper/escort Ani (short for Anora) getting involved with a Russian oligarch’s spoiled brat son. But that disregards the elements of slapstick comedy and quasi-tragedy that are core to the work. Bringing back the conversation about representation given that the economic and gender disparity of sex workers is a major subtext of the work and a recurring obsession with Sean Baker’s filmography. A lot of conversation has been centralized on whether the lead character is an empathetic or offensive exploration of the subject. Generally, some can agree with both sides. There is some legitimately offensive language that could be considered homophobic and racist, and bizarre tonal decisions that has the threat of sexual assault against sex workers deliberately contrasted tables slapstick. Ani is genuinely interesting who is willing to set limits on her work and try to keep power in a conversation whilst genuinely believing this rich client actually loves her and marries him. Sean might not be the best artist to tackle these subjects, but he’s absolutely a genius when it comes to storytelling and pacing when compared to most other filmmakers working today and worth watching.
What Also to Watch: The comedies of Howard Hawks
4. The Brutalist
The writing and filmmaking team of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold fascinate deeply as two modern filmmakers who make the most overtly pretentious movies you could ever imagine. A three-and-a-half-hour-long epic exploring the life of Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth as he attempts the American dream across over a decade. As he begins to get more settled into the ups and downs of America, he ends up getting stuck around rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren who wishes to finance László’s Community Center. It’s a film that questions the idea of representation as the film was written by two non-Jewish writers trying to make a work about Judaism in relation to immigration, including the topic of Zionism as a major plot point. The duo are more focused upon both reflecting their own angst as artists who spent nearly a decade trying to make the film; as much as making a complex portrait of how America exploits and assimilates immigrants in ways that are shown in questioning what the dream of success is. These choices reflect perhaps their biggest flaws as writers in that a large amount of their work feels more influenced by literature than actual life experience, leading to their films that have a very academic, stuffy quality that expresses their emotions through complex articulation. In comparison to other films, Judaism was meant to be the artists trying to say that their issues are comparable to the cultural trauma Jewish people went through during World War 2.g.
What Also to Watch: Malcom X
3. I’m Still Here
For 30 minutes, we get to experience what true love feels like. Not just the romantic kind but of the familial love of a large family“I’m Still Here” opens with the sort of sequence designed to be an instant feel-good art-house classic about the nature of family over an early ‘70s timeframe. But there’s something just under the surface, mainly a totalitarian Brazilian government who took over in the mid ‘60s wishing to purge the remains of anyone politically left leaning.. Government officials harass teenagers and force them up against the wall. Giant military trucks with dozens of soldiers wandered the streets. Military prisons where people disappear once they go in. It’s when that opening act is up that the father, the real life former left wing politician Rubens Paiva, is forcefully abducted by the government and disappeared overnight, leaving his wife Eunice Paiva to find out why this government regime is terrorizing them. Fernanda Torres is the centerpiece of this whole thing, having to perform the role of a mother trying to keep her children safe and trying to keep dignity in the face of a government wishing to destroy her. Director Walter Salles pulls off here a quiet masterpiece that turns stories of government abuse of power into a humanist tale that’s able to keep attention during its over two-hour runtime.
What Also to Watch: Roma; Pride
2. The Substance
Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” is the sort of movie that hopefully becomes an instant classic for those everywhere alienated by some of the stuff that goes on in the movie. Coralie’s satire of the male gaze and restrictive female body standards might be best for Best Director just for the laser sharp precision in what it wants to be, with Demi Moore in such a vulnerable role that she is just as worthy for “Best Actress” just for the audacity, let alone how much of herself seems to slip right though the screen. As much as “The Substance” has a sledgehammer mentality to its message, the methodology used ends up pulling out so much raw feminine imagery going back centuries to help solidify one of the few purely visual achievements of the film form in the 21st century.
What Also to Watch: Titane; Society
1. Nickle Boys
A horrifying act of long-term violence that haunts the core of “Nickle Boys,” RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel. The story of two young men, Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner, sent to the analogous Nickle academy which reflects many of the allegations of abuse mentioned in real life. The audacity of the project comes from its formal conceit; the entire film is shot mainly within the first-person perspective of the two leads meaning that we only see what they see. What could have been a cheap gimmick is elevated greatly, giving the perspective a weight that few pieces of historical fiction and even biopic has ever really had before. For RaMell, the need to showcase day by day of the boy’s lives is centered first rather than showing the violence. This is a story about living with trauma, not showcasing imagery seemingly in fear of fetishizing racialized violence. Of all the films that were nominated for Best Picture, this is the one most deserving of a win; an emotionally considerate look at some of the worst aspects of American politics and violence and rather than shying away from it, directly confronting the trauma and trying to find a way to stop it.
What Also to Watch: Hale County This Morning, This Evening<
