I wrote all of the below on the day/night of the Oscars but didn’t post until a few months late.
Forgive the rushed nature of my analysis here. The core content of this list is something I work on (that’s a stretch) from January through to Oscars night but I’m tossing this actual blog post together as I watch the awards ceremony, so my plan is to make analysis brief and simply get these preferences of mine down on the eternal paper of the internet.
I’ve obviously watched a lot less movies this year than is possible, and hopefully a lot less than the Oscar voters, so there will be blind spots. My total tally this year was a measly 24 films, largely because the last 2 months (normally the best time to catch up on the awards favourites) I have been distracted by a child.
Best Casting: Hamnet (Nina Gold)
Other nominees: Affeksjonsverdi, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Weapons
It’s the first time casting has been recognised at the Oscars, so it’s hard to know how they will play this. Affeksjonsverdi would probably win an ensemble award – Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning are all nominated in this list and in the actual Oscars – and One Battle After Another and Sinners have an even larger group of key performers. But aside from the attention-grabbing hiring of Paul Mescal, Hamnet has Jessie Buckley giving one of the performances of the decade and an assortment of supports doing wonderful work. Emily Watson, Noah Jupe and Joe Alwyn are recognisable names but not obvious picks. But the thing that impressed me most was the performances of all three Shakespeare children. Jacobi Jupe has rightly had a lot of plaudits for his portrayal as the titular Hamnet but Bodhi Rae Breathnach and Olivia Lynes are equally as good but with less of a crucial part to play. Pulling three kids seemingly from nowhere to deliver really important performances is to me what good casting is about.
Best Visual Effects: F1 (Ryan Tudhope, Nicolas Chavallier, Robert Harrington and Keith Dawson)
Other nominees: Bugonia, Sinners, Weapons, Wicked: For Good
Since I didn’t see Avatar: Fire and Ash there weren’t really any standout options in this category but even if the story of F1 left a lot to be desired, it was remarkable that they were able to make those racing sequences feel so realistic and also so immersive. The visual effects were half of that…
Best Film Editing: One Battle After Another (Andy Jurgensen)
Other nominees: Affeksjonsverdi, F1, No Other Choice, Weapons
One Battle After Another is somehow 2 hours and 42 minutes long, but managed to feel so much neater. After an exhilarating prologue, the whole movie almost operates as one long action sequence and works incredibly. We have Andy Jurgensen to thank for that.
Best Costume Design: Frankenstein (Kate Hawley)
Other nominees: Bugonia, Sinners, Train Dreams, Wicked: For Good
Frankenstein was not a movie I found particularly easy to love but this was the one category where it stood above the rest. As is often the case with the costume design award there was a solid contingent of period-specific outfits in Frankenstein, all with a reasonable level of artistic flair. But it was Mia Goth’s wardrobe as Elizabeth that really caught the eye.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Sinners (Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry)
Other nominees: Bugonia, Dossier 137, Frankenstein, Weapons
This award quite often goes to a movie with 1 single standout work in the makeup department, as is the case with Jacob Elordi’s transformation into The Monster in Frankenstein. I’ve heard it took him 11 hours in the makeup chair every day which to me seems unnecessary (it looked good but not incredible) and inefficient. Surely that has ridiculous knock-on effects for the rest of production. Anyhow, in the absence of knowledge of how long the cast spent in the chair, I’ve gone with Sinners on the basis that a lot of relatively varied makeup on a range of actors was required, and it totally holds up.
Best Cinematography: No Other Choice (Kim Woo-hyung)
Other nominees: Affeksjonsverdi, Bugonia, One Battle After Another, Train Dreams
3 years ago I gave this award to Park Chan-wook’s last movie, Decision to Leave. My mind was blown to find that his follow-up No Other Choice was shot by someone different because not only is the cinematography just as great but it’s also a remarkably similar style across the 2 movies. And this time it’s better. Kim manages to produce such beautifully clean images throughout the movie and his work alongside Park is the chief reason I remained so enticed by No Other Choice. In particular, there are a bunch of near-miraculous zooms, pans and angles in this thing that make the movie an absolute joy to watch.
Best Production Design: Bugonia (James Price and Prue Howard)
Other nominees: Affeksjonsverdi, Hamnet, One Battle After Another, Sinners
I would normally lean towards the period pieces in this category but those on offer this year just didn’t make their sets feel lived-in as much as they should. Hamnet and Sinners were better but still only did it within relatively small sets. Bugonia is a movie I greatly appreciated on first viewing and have only felt better about it as time has passed. The main location of the movie is a home with impeccable attention to detail. I think it’s really hard to make somewhere look genuinely cluttered and dirty, not just as though someone has tried to make it look cluttered and dirty, if you follow my point. That home also works in direct contrast to another home and office space we briefly visit during the runtime. But if that realism wasn’t enough, Bugonia also takes us somewhere completely different and tops things off with more intricate detail in numerous scenes from across the globe.
Best Sound: F1 (Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta)
Other nominees: One Battle After Another, Sinners, Stranger Things 5: The Finale, Weapons
…and the sound was the other half. As a fan of the sport, seeing F1 in the cinema was an experience like no other, the growl of the fastest cars in the world vibrating in my chest and widening my eyes. It’s achievements like this that make awards shows like the Oscars more bearable. F1 isn’t a great movie but deserves some recognition for doing a couple of things really really well rather than just being left languishing way down on people’s end of year lists.
Best Original Song: I Lied to You from Sinners (Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson)
Other nominees: D.A.N.C.E. from F1, Don’t Let Me Drown from F1, Train Dreams from Train Dreams, Zoo from Zootropolis 2
This year’s actual Academy Awards were pretty unsurprising and without any rogue choices. Even if the two front-runners weren’t my favourite flicks of the year, I appreciate them and can see why they had the success they did. But for me, the awarding of the best original song to K-pop Demon Hunters track Golden was the biggest miss of the night. I haven’t seen that movie but I’ve heard the song and I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t have made my list of nominees either way (I only allow myself to nominate songs if I’ve seen the movie they’re from). F1 had the best all-round soundtrack and Nick Cave’s Train Dreams might be my favourite song in isolation, but for the sheer craft and its importance to the movie it’s in, the winner here simply has to be I Lied to You. Miles Caton delivers the blues melody wonderfully, but the song steps up and up as it incorporates a host of genres across centuries. Many people have rightfully cited that scene as pivotal for the success of Sinners, but as impressive as the visuals are, it doesn’t blow my mind because I can comprehend how that can be meticulously choreographed. What I struggle to comprehend as an amateur musician is the ability of Saadiq and Göransson to blend all those styles and pull it off.
Best Original Score: One Battle After Another (Jonny Greenwood)
Other nominees: Bugonia, F1, Sinners, Weapons
Ludwig Göransson’s score for Sinners is really good but its high point is in that I Lied to You scene, so I have no qualms handing him that Oscar and tearing this one away from him. Jonny Greenwood’s One Battle After Another offering is the best of the year though. A little like Robbie Robertson’s score for Killers of the Flower Moon a couple of years back, Greenwood manages to seamlessly build bridges between action sequence after action sequence to keep the tempo up and the attention locked in a long movie, but without ever tipping us over the edge into frenzy or panic with its pulsating tension and flashes of pizzazz.
Best Animated Short Film: Forevergreen (Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears)
The only 2025 animated short I saw this year is a pretty cheesy but has plenty of heart. New to fatherhood myself, I felt a pang more emotion watching this than I would’ve done last year for sure.
Best Live Action Short Film: *No qualifying films watched*
Best Documentary Short Subject: What They Found (Sam Mendes and Simon Chinn)
Other nominees: We Were the Scenery
What They Found is not an enjoyable watch. I’m fairly sure I wept at these images captured by British soldiers arriving at Nazi concentration camps. It doesn’t do much as far as craft is concerned, but it’s vital that these kinds of films exist to ensure we never forget the atrocities committed during World War II. Please, God, end all wars tonight.
Best Documentary Feature: Hill (Alex Holmes, Victoria Barrell, Simon Lazenby, Cora Palfrey, Luc Roeg)
Another winner without any competition, I saw Hill at Glasgow Film Festival last year with the biographee, 1996 Formula 1 World Champion Damon Hill present. No doubt those viewing conditions improved my experience. It’s not going to set the world alight but Hill is a solid documentary and, for an F1 fan, a joy to see and hear on a big screen with big speakers in a packed cinema.
Best International Feature Film: Affeksjonsverdi (Joachim Trier)
Other nominees: Dossier 137, No Other Choice
Director Joachim Trier’s last movie Verdens Verste Menneske is currently my favourite of the decade so far so I was full of anticipation for this follow-up. Affeksjonsverdi is nowhere near as fun as Verdens Verste Menneske but carries across a tremendous screenplay and once again marries it with gorgeously alluring yet simplistic visuals and another raft of astounding performances. I don’t know how Trier manages to draw out such grounded but poignant moments over and over again in this movie. Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning are both known quantities and Renate Reinsve has made a name for herself since Verdens Verste Menneske too, but Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is a real revelation as the most down-to-earth of that quartet and as a result, the most relatable. More on this one shortly.
Best Animated Feature Film: Zootropolis 2 (Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Yvette Merino)
Hey, I know I’ve not seen any others but this was a real good time. I’m confident that there were some other animated features with more unique artistic styles, but the Zootropolis 2 team still did a wonderful job with the visuals and, as with the first movie, delivered a genuinely thrilling police procedural for all ages to enjoy. I’ll rewatch at some point but I don’t think it quite has the same status as its predecessor. But the box office achievements are pretty staggering.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Bugonia (Will Tracy; based on the film Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan)
Other nominees: No Other Choice, One Battle After Another, Wake Up Dead Man, Train Dreams
Bugonia is one of my favourite movies of this year and even though I’m giving it three awards, it feels like there are a few categories where it narrowly misses out. There are three main areas where I think this screenplay excels. The first is essentially the setup: the commentary on rich vs poor, the problems with our overly-capitalist culture, the people who stand to benefit from that, the woman in the ivory tower, and the people who seem to be stuck on the receiving end. The second is the dialogue. Most of it comes out of the mouths of two characters and comes as a war between the two, power dynamics flipped on their head and an hour or so of both trying to break the other, predominantly through their words. And the third is where it goes. I’ll avoid spoilers but I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of being shown certain things and the extra dressing of those elements, and I loved the very end.
Best Original Screenplay: Affeksjonsverdi (Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier)
Other nominees: Dossier 137, Roofman, Sorry, Baby, Weapons
I’ve heard many people praise Affeksjonsverdi for its ability to be about so many things – family, art, home, trauma, depression, facism – all at once and do it all well. Some movies do make the mistake of trying to be about too many things, but I think that is often a problem of blending genres, or of genuine indecision by writers, directors, producers or studios. I get the impression that director Joachim Trier and his writing partner Eskil Vogt just set out to write about life and it’s complexities and confusions, and somehow they have a gift of doing that so effectively. It’s a dialogue-heavy movie with voiceovers and flashbacks and it all works beautifully.
Best Supporting Actress: Elle Fanning – Affeksjonsverdi (as Rachel Kemp)
Other nominees: Emily Watson – Hamnet, Kirsten Dunst – Roofman, Regina Hall – One Battle After Another, Son Ye-jin – No Other Choice
A couple of quirks in this category: Aside from Fanning, none of the actual Oscar nominees made my top 5 even though I’ve seen all of their films. But Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, also nominated in real life as a supporting actress for Affeksjonsverdi is in my list of leads, rightly or wrongly. She would’ve beaten Fanning if I had her in this category. But I don’t. I’ve heard a few (including my wife) saying that Fanning didn’t deserve a nomination and that she’s essentially playing herself in Affeksjonsverdi, Rachel Kemp being a successful American actress. But I think that suggestion greatly undermines the subtlety of Fanning’s performance here. For starters, Kemp is more of Margot Robbie, global superstar type but seems quietly out of her comfort zone when she agrees to shoot a feature with Norwegian auteur Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) at his family home in Oslo. She hides behind the veil of her confident stardom at first, but in script read-throughs, background research and comedically bad attempts at Norwegian accents, slowly shows herself to be unable to perform the task expected of her. Not only is her own micro-story believable and interesting culminating in a terrific empty-theatre scene with Renate Reinsve’s Nora, but she is an essential part of the viewer’s peering into the Borg family dynamic as the only outsider that we really spend any time with and are expected to care about. And through her own exploration of Gustav’s script and the familial trauma at play amongst the Borgs, and her quiet realisation that no one but Nora can do what Gustav wants from the role, she opens the door for the three leads to reconsider their situation. It’s a surprisingly crucial role in the story (the depth of which is more proof that Vogt and Trier deserve the original screenplay award) and Fanning delivers it wonderfully.
Best Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro – One Battle After Another (as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos)
Other nominees: Alden Ehrenreich – Weapons, Noah Jupe – Hamnet, Scott Ellis Watson – I Swear, Sean Penn – One Battle After Another
On reflection, Sean Penn’s performance as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is a better display of acting prowess than del Toro in the same movie. But I found Lockjaw to be too much of a jarring character, his confusing relationship with Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hill perhaps the main thing that took me out of what was mostly a great movie. I think Penn did exactly what he was trying to do, and maybe exactly what Paul Thomas Anderson asked him to do, but in my old age I think I’m starting to care less about perfection and more about what makes me feel good. Del Toro made me feel good. Anytime he was on screen, he was a joy. He knew when you exert control and he knew when to play dumb, and the balance of those made for a wonderful character, the kind that most people would happily follow for a spinoff.
Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet (as Agnes Shakespeare)
Other nominees: Emma Stone – Bugonia, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas – Affeksjonsverdi, Julia Garner – Weapons, Renate Reinsve – Affeksjonsverdi
There’s not much to say about Buckley’s performance in Hamnet that hasn’t been said. The biggest lock on Oscars night, she delivered an absolute powerhouse turn as a headstrong, nature-loving young woman, a coy romantic interest, a joyful wife and mother (her wonder in the scene where William and the kids perform a back garden play for her is blissful), an authoritative head of the household in the absence of her travelling husband, a devastated trauma-sufferer, and an entranced, reborn theatre punter. Hamnet’s unconventional story structure can give the impression that not a lot happens but when you lay it out like that, you realise how effortlessly the journey such a windy has been traversed, and Buckley’s central performance is a big reason it works. Toss in multiple visceral childbirth scenes and, without spoiling, two other extremely powerful sequences and it really is close to impossible to argue with her delivering the best of the year, male or female.
Best Actor: Robert Aramayo – I Swear (as John Davidson)
Other nominees: Jesse Plemons – Bugonia, Josh O’Connor – Wake Up Dead Man, Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another, Stellan Skarsgård – Affeksjonsverdi
The race for best lead actor was one of the most hotly contested during this year’s awards season. I didn’t get around to seeing Marty Supreme but despite appreciating Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B. Jordan’s performances I found my two favourite male performances absent from the nominees. Jesse Plemons was incredible in Bugonia as he so often is. He might be my favourite actor working today, but he doesn’t quite have the same draw as the moviestars nominated, or his two-time winner co-star Emma Stone. Robert Aramayo, winner of the equivalent BAFTA, wasn’t eligible for the US awards because I Swear is still to get a release across the pond. It’s a shame because I think he would’ve had a chance at a nomination, but next year will be far too late, such is the nature of Oscar campaigns and media buzz. From the little I know about Tourettes, Aramayo’s performance of Scottish icon Davidson was pretty remarkable. Crucial to the tics is the unavoidable nature, the suddenness that can’t be stopped. That’s really hard to manufacture, and as if to prove to us that he’s nailing it, there are a couple of scenes towards the end that feature real people with Tourettes and Aramayo blends in perfectly. But the uncontrollable tics, sometimes a source of comedy in the movie, Aramayo is equally brilliant in carrying the emotional weight of Davidson’s story. He so brilliantly taught me how physically exhausting Tourettes can be and how taxing it can be to immediately know the seriousness of the consequences of the tics. There is one hugely emotional scene in the back end where the horrors of this and the effects on Davidson are clear to see. Often painful to watch, but still uplifting, Aramayo deserves all the plaudits this year ahead of all the big names.
Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos – Bugonia
Other nominees: Chloé Zhao – Hamnet, Joachim Trier – Affeksjonsverdi, Park Chan-wook – No Other Choice, Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another
Chloé Zhao and Joachim Trier deserve praise for the impeccable performances they drew out of their casts this year. Park Chan-wook and Paul Thomas Anderson deserve praise for the tension and drama they created through the action in their movies. Yorgos Lanthimos does it all. His two leads, Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, deliver two of the best performances of the year (nothing new for Lanthimos’ stars – Olivia Colman and Stone both won the big one in his movies), totally, unblinkingly dialled in for every word, every extreme close up on their sweaty faces. And beside two of his favourite collaborators he directed two men (Aidan Delbis and Stavros Halkias) who are new to this big movie game to give uncomfortable performances which slotted perfectly into his off-kilter style. And on top of that there’s the already-famous, comically unprofessional kidnapping sequence in Michelle Fuller’s serene garden, the heartracing dinner scene which culminates in a scruffy scrap between the leads, and the sight of a panicked Plemons frantically pedalling his pushbike like his life depends on it. All creating the ideal combination of the naturalism of this world and the ludicrous scenario his characters find themselves in. Again, I won’t spoil, but the final two scenes might be my favourite of the year and they are almost polar opposites from one another: laughably weird followed by achingly peaceful. He’s a master and we can’t be sleeping on his work when the hit rate is astounding right now.
Best Picture: Hamnet (Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes)
Other nominees: Affeksjonsverdi, Bugonia, Dossier 137, No Other Choice, One Battle After Another, Sorry, Baby, Train Dreams, Wake Up Dead Man, Weapons
And there we have it. It was tight, with Affeksjonsverdi and Bugonia close behind, but Hamnet is for now at least my favourite movie of 2025. It’s admittedly not a terribly enjoyable watch. In fact, it’s the most I’ve cried in a cinema and definitely one of my top three cries watching movies (The Passion of the Christ and A Ghost Story if you’re wondering), and most of those weren’t happy tears. But for a movie to have such an effect is surely a mark of its success. Some critics have suggested Hamnet glorifies the trauma, prodding at an uncloseable wound and presenting a scenario that has no benefit. I disagree, obviously. For starters I believe in the role of movies to show and touch all elements of human life (and possibly beyond). Everything depicted in Hamnet happens across the globe, only with different outcomes. And sure, there’s a way to show these events that minimises the emotional impact, but what would the point in that be. Art in general, but especially movies in their combining of artforms, are supposed to make us feel. I’m thankful not every movie is as heartwrenching as Hamnet. Heck, I’m thankful only 3 movies out of the hundreds I’ve seen have produced that kind of reaction in me. But when something is pieced together so perfectly that it generates such an emotional response in so many viewers, we must applaud the craft. The world created in Hamnet is a believable, identifiable one and is the ideal foundation for director Chloé Zhao to guide the phenomenal ensemble performance that we have here. And beyond the misery felt in Hamnet, I never had the sense that it would end like that. I watched knowing that things could move on, not knowing if I was ready for that yet. And in that wonderful final sequence, some release came, the art offering healing within the art offering healing.
Prince of Listenstein 