2025 - An Interesting Year at the Oscars

 

Welcome back to the 2025 Oscars blog! Today I wondered how long I have been doing this, and I was shocked to discover that this is my 12th year reviewing every film and giving you a guide to which are the ones you MUST see, and which are the ones you MUST skip. I hope I've helped, and with this year's smaller batch of 50 nominated films, I have a lot to say. (Shocking!)

For today, I always like to begin with some of my reflections on the year's nominees, snubs, movies not to miss which had no noms, and the occasional fist in the air for nominations that utterly don't deserve it. Tomorrow we get to the films! 

The Snubs:

The Double Snub (a dub? a snubble?): Two excellent Lin Manuel Miranda works, first for Moana 2 (animated) and next for Mufasa: The Lion King for Visual Effects - and both for potential Best Song nominees. Do we ever see LMM fail to be nominated? I bear no outrage for either - I think the Animated Feature category got it about right, though the Visual Effects for Mufasa surely are as impressive as anything that Alien: Romulus or Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes haven't produced in their earlier thirty cabillion iterations.

The Double Washington snub: First for Denzel in Gladiator 2 (woof, G2 had a lot of snubs) and the complete shutout of The Piano Lesson - an August Wilson film adaptation filled with powerhouse performances (WHERE is Danielle Detwyler, AGAIN) and superb direction. The former may be attributed to DW's consistent high level of delivery that it may not be shocking people anymore with each spectacular performance (though comparing to Meryl Streep who sometimes gets noms for good because it's MERYL STREEP), one wonders what the difference between them might be in their accolades? Hmmmm. The latter can be attributed to a poor campaign by Netflix, and that's a shame because this was a magnificent work.

The Singing Snubs: I saw the film Maria and said, she's quite good but to be fair it's all lip sync. WRONG. AJ actually performed some of the opera pieces herself as Maria Callas, arguably one of the best opera singers of all time. You won't like my "replace" option, but surely this performance was far superior to Demi Moore's in The Substance. Then there's the Selina Gomez snub in the Supporting Actress category which ironically has a record THREE singing movie nominees. I don't know that much about Selina Gomez but I have to tell you, she was superb in Emilia Perez and her snub kept Emilia Perez from tying three other films for the all time nomination record of 14.

The only other real disappointment for me was in the International Feature category. There were some really fantastic films on the short list this year but by far the best of the ones I've seen was Kneecap from Ireland and mostly in the Irish language. Starring the actual members of the subversive band of the same name, this is an incredible film about embracing one's historic language, rejecting British occupiers (the one film this year that features ACTUAL occupiers without historic ties to the land, but that's a different disappointment from the same category), and making some pretty freakin' fantastic music, as well.

The Faves:

There are also some pretty fantastic nominees this year!

Triple Hoorays: I just absolutely have to celebrate every single nomination garnered by Sing Sing. Coleman Domingo (Best Actor), Adapted Screenplay, Best Song.  Yes, yes, yes. I'll bet that at least half of you reading this never even knew about this film before right this moment. SEE IT. Wait for the review. You'll see.

Diane Warren... again: "The Journey" is another home run (The Six Triple Eight on Netflix, see it) from my beloved song writer and talent, Diane Warren. This is her 16th nomination for Original Song, she holds the record for 15 nominations and no wins (and will probably extend that this year, maybe?), and guess how many years IN A ROW she has had a song nominated? EIGHT. You read that right, Diane Warren has had a nominated song every year for the last eight years. She's won an Honorary Oscar but seriously, what does this woman have to do???? Diane, you deserved to win for "Til It Happens to You" from The Hunting Ground and so many times over (look up the list, it's a who's who of fantastic songs from movies), and I'm rooting for ya.

The World Cared About Hostages: Finally, I'll mention my delight that September 5 received a nomination. It was a tight and beautifully executed film, and it made me happy to be reminded that there was a time in our history that the world cared about Jews being taken hostage (and killed) by violent extremists, and people in the world were clear eyed about terrorists being the bad guys. Those were the days...

Ok, that's all you get today, tune in starting tomorrow where I'll take you through the list day by day. What a light in the darkness that I so needed - I can't breathe because of the fires, my family is displaced because of the fires, there are still nearly 100 hostages still being held captives by the terrorist organization Hamas (with idiot college students cheering them on), but among all of that... we still have the movies, we still have the Oscars. 

Welcome back old friend, I needed you.

Welcome back to another glorious year for movies!

 

I love the smell of Oscar announcements in the morning! (Yes, I was up at 5:15 a.m. waking from a dream that I was having that I had missed the announcements and couldn't find the list online anywhere...)

This year, we have 53 films with nominations - savvy readers will notice that it's a bit lower than in prior years, but that's what happens when 3 movies each capture double digit nominations, as happened with Oppenheimer (in the lead with 13), Poor Things (with 11), and Killers of the Flower Moon (with 8). With 265 total nominations (5 nominees in 23 categories), the Best Picture list of 10 captured 71, that's just over 25% of the nominations.

I've done pretty well in the lead up to the Oscars, with just a small handful left to see before the big night in March.  Thanks for indulging my moment of bragging, but in fact, it's the lowest number I've needed to see ever.  That's a tribute to my amazing husband who is literally the Oscar films logistics Director, constantly researching what's playing where and making sure I find every nominee.  Enough about us, back to the nominees!

Snubs and Surprises

I thought Bradley Cooper was a shoo in for a Director nomination for Maestro, what everyone is referring to as his Magnum Opus. Though nominated for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, and Best Picture (as a producer), I have to assume that he is still disappointed.  Cooper has a total of 12 career nominations which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

John Williams earned his 54th Oscars nomination. Walt Disney is the single person who has had more nominations with 59, and Williams has said that he has reached the end of his career so won't be adding any more noms. Still, I think we could argue he is unrivaled in his accomplishments, ironically beating by far Leonard Bernstein who only had one for On the Waterfront.

As usual, the costume, production design, and makeup and hairstyling branch voters baffle me. Nothing for the Hunger Games prequel Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, nothing for Wonka. Only the latter had some buzz for the Oscars, but please go back and look at these projects and explain to me how they were completely overlooked in these categories.

We had a chance of up to 4 women being nominated in the Directing category and shockingly, the one who made her way in is Justine Trier for Anatomy of a Fall. No Greta Gerwig for Barbie, no Emerald Fennell for Saltburn (ACTUALLY NOTHING FOR SALTBURN - sorry Barry Keoghan and Rosamund Pike), no Celine Song for Past Lives.  Still, one of my favorites, Yorgos Lanthimos scored yet another nomination for directing (6 career nominations, 2 for directing) and I loved his film which will surely win for costume and possibly others.

American Symphony, the brilliant documentary on Netflix about Jon Batiste navigating fame and his wife's cancer was nominated for song but not for Best Documentary.  This is shocking because I thought it would win the category altogether, and I highly recommend you watch it.

And the biggest snub of all, Ava Duvernay's magnificent film Origin received no Oscar buzz, not for directing, not for screenplay (which I understand to be the greatest feat of taking a dense book and turning it into an incredible story), and not for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor who frankly gave the performance of a lifetime. Duvernay self-financed the film and had no big studio to put in money to conduct an Oscars campaign (sorry guys, it's true... no campaign, very unlikely to get nominations). Nonetheless, a wonderful and important film.

There are certainly more snubs and surprises, but this is where I'll leave you for today.  Tomorrow we begin the real work, friends, reviewing each and every one of the 53 films nominated, and most importantly, telling you which ones to see and which ones to skip.

Happy Oscars Day!