The 98th Academy Award Nominations

Well, here we go again. It’s that special time of year when I complain, celebrate, yell at my television, and generally lose my mind over the Academy Award nominations. The annual ritual continues.

This is the 98th Annual Academy Awards, coming up on March 15th, with Conan O’Brien returning as host, which is actually one of the things I’m genuinely excited about. He did a terrific job last year. He was funny, smart, self-aware, and the broadcast actually moved.

That alone puts this year’s ceremony ahead of the curve, and I’m looking forward to watching it again.

I’ve been following the Oscars pretty much my entire life. I’ve been a professional film critic for forty years now, and watching the Academy Awards is a necessary evil if you do what I do.

You have to pay attention. You have to comment. You have to react. And if you’re a movie fanatic like I am, someone who loves certain films, directors, actors, and performances passionately, you are also required by law to get angry about snubs, baffled by certain nominations, and mildly hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the Academy will get it right this time.

They usually don’t.

History tells us that the Oscars very rarely reward the best films, the best performances, or the most deserving artists of any given year.

Every once in a while, lightning strikes and the Academy actually nails it, but for the most part, these awards are shaped by politics, campaigning, timing, narratives, age, trends, and whatever the prevailing winds of pop culture happen to be at that moment. I’ve known that my entire adult life, and nothing about this year’s nominations changes that reality.

That said, this year brought its usual mix of surprises, snubs, head-scratchers, and outright madness.

Let’s start with the thing that absolutely baffles me.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners broke records this year with a staggering sixteen nominations, the most a film can receive, helped along by the introduction of the brand-new Best Casting category.

I do not understand the overwhelming praise for this movie. At all. For me, Sinners is an unoriginal, terribly derivative film that starts out with promise as a culturally rooted gangster story set in the 1930s and then collapses into a grab bag of lifted ideas from From Dusk Till Dawn, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Shining, Phantasm, and most blatantly Walter Hill’s Crossroads.

If you’ve never seen Crossroads, you should, because it tackles the same themes of blues mythology, African-American heritage, cursed guitars, and deals with the devil with far more intelligence and heart.

Coogler feels like he tossed a bunch of better movies into a blender and came out with something slick but empty. The fact that Sinners is being treated like a masterpiece is confounding to me.

If Sinners beats One Battle After Another for Best Picture, I will not be happy. And if Ryan Coogler beats Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director, people should probably stay a safe distance away from me that night.

Because One Battle After Another is the real deal. A Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece, and my favorite film of 2025, it received multiple nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

This is long overdue. PTA has been operating at the highest level for over thirty years and has somehow never won an Academy Award. That should change this year. If there is any justice in the universe, this is the movie that should walk away with the big prizes.

There were other surprises. I was shocked that Bugonia landed a Best Picture nomination, though I was thrilled to see Emma Stone recognized. Kate Hudson’s Best Actress nomination for Song Sung Blue was a huge surprise and a genuinely welcome one.

On the snub side, Wicked: For Good receiving zero nominations after the first part earned ten last year was astonishing, and a lot of people are going to be upset that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were completely ignored (I am not one of them).

Nearly all of the major performers from One Battle After Another were nominated, except for Chase Infiniti, which was a major snub. Paul Mescal missing out for Hamnet was another head-scratcher, especially given how many nominations the film received overall.

Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt were ignored for The Smashing Machine. George Clooney and Adam Sandler didn’t get any love for Jay Kelly. Delroy Lindo did get nominated for Sinners, and he absolutely deserves it. He’s one of the few things in that damn movie that truly works.

And then there’s F1. The fact that F1 got a Best Picture nomination is flat-out hilarious. It’s one of the worst movies of the year.

A soulless, assembly-line product built to sell things rather than say anything. A conveyor-belt movie with no heart, no personality, and no reason to exist beyond branding. Seeing it listed among the Best Picture nominees is comedy gold.

But the single happiest moment of the entire nomination morning, the one moment that made me audibly cheer, was when The Ugly Stepsister received an Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

This insane, twisted, gory, Norwegian body-horror reimagining of Cinderella was my third favorite film of 2025. Hardly anyone saw it. It’s not even in English. And now it is officially an Academy Award-nominated film.

Horror fans, this is a win. We can now forever refer to it as the Academy Award-nominated The Ugly Stepsister, and that alone made the entire morning worthwhile for me.

I’ll be watching the ceremony on March 15th like I do every year, and I’ll be doing a live simulcast on my Patreon page, where we’ll be chatting, reacting, giving away prizes, and riding the chaos together.

And I’ll say this right now, publicly and clearly: if Sinners wins Best Picture over One Battle After Another, or if Ryan Coogler beats Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director, you will hear me screaming “NO” from miles away.

But hey, at least The Ugly Stepsister got nominated.

Here is the complete list of nominees:

Best Picture

Bugonia

F1

Frankenstein

Hamnet

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

The Secret Agent

Sentimental Value

Sinners

Train Dreams

Best Director

Hamnet – Chloe Zhao

Marty Supreme – Josh Safdie

One Battle After Another – Paul Thomas Anderson

Sentimental Value – Joachim Trier

Sinners – Ryan Coogler

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme

Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another

Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon

Michael B. Jordan in Sinners

Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent

Best Actress

Jessie Buckley in Hamnet

Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue

Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value

Emma Stone in Bugonia

Best Supporting Actor

Benicio Del Toro in One Battle After Another

Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein

Delroy Lindo in Sinners

Sean Penn in One Battle After Another

Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value

Best Supporting Actress

Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value

Amy Madigan in Weapons

Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners

Teyana Taylor in One Battle After Another

Best Adapted Screenplay

Bugonia – Screenplay by Will Tracy

Frankenstein – Written for the Screen by Guillermo del Toro

Hamnet – Screenplay by Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell

One Battle After Another – Written by Paul Thomas Anderson

Train Dreams – Screenplay by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

Best Original Screenplay

Blue Moon – Written by Robert Kaplow

It Was Just an Accident – Written by Jafar Panahi

Marty Supreme – Written by Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie

Sentimental Value – Written by Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier

Sinners – Written by Ryan Coogler

Best Animated Feature

Arco

Elio

KPop Demon Hunters

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Zootopia 2

Best International Feature

Brazil – The Secret Agent

France – It Was Just an Accident

Norway – Sentimental Value

Spain – Sirât

Tunisia – The Voice of Hind Rajab

Best Documentary Feature

The Alabama Solution

Come See Me in the Good Light

Cutting Through Rocks

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

The Perfect Neighbor

Best Animated Short

Butterfly

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

Retirement Plan

The Three Sisters

Best Casting

Hamnet – Nina Gold

Marty Supreme – Jennifer Venditti

One Battle After Another – Cassandra Kulukundis

The Secret Agent – Gabriel Domingues

Sinners – Francine Maisler

Best Cinematography

Frankenstein – Dan Laustsen

Marty Supreme – Darius Khondji

One Battle After Another – Michael Bauman

Sinners – Autumn Durald Arkapaw

Train Dreams – Adolpho Veloso

Best Costume Design

Avatar: Fire and Ash – Deborah L. Scott

Frankenstein – Kate Hawley

Hamnet – Malgosia Turzanska

Marty Supreme – Miyako Bellizzi

Sinners – Ruth E. Carter

Best Documentary Short

All the Empty Rooms

Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud

Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”

The Devil Is Busy

Perfectly a Strangeness

Best Film Editing

F1 – Stephen Mirrione

Marty Supreme – Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie

One Battle After Another – Andy Jurgensen

Sentimental Value – Olivier Bugge Coutté

Sinners – Michael P. Shawver

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Frankenstein

Kokuho

Sinners

The Smashing Machine

The Ugly Stepsister

Best Original Score

Bugonia

Frankenstein

Hamnet

One Battle After Another

Sinners

Best Live-Action Short

Butcher’s Stain

A Friend of Dorothy

Jane Austen’s Period Drama

The Singers

Two People Exchanging Saliva

Best Original Song

“Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless

“Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters

“I Lied To You” from Sinners

“Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!

“Train Dreams” from Train Dreams

Best Production Design

Frankenstein – Tamara Deverell

Hamnet – Fiona Crombie

Marty Supreme – Jack Fisk

One Battle After Another – Florencia Martin

Sinners – Hannah Beachler; Set Decoration by Monique Champagne

Best Sound

F1

Frankenstein

One Battle After Another

Sinners

Sirât

Train Dreams

Best Visual Effects

Avatar: Fire and Ash

F1

Jurassic World Rebirth

The Lost Bus

Sinners

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