Summer blockbusters followed by fall contenders and holiday hopefuls all have one goal: to score an Oscar nomination. The Academy screening room, available as a streaming channel for Academy members, was full to overflowing with contenders, from the realistically viable like “Hamnet” to the vanity hopefuls like “Anaconda.” Now that the nominations have been announced, the detritus has been removed and only the contenders are available.
Although both sides would deny it, the timing of the Golden Globes broadcast on Jan. 11 announcing its winners is, no doubt, designed to influence Oscar voters, whose nomination ballots were due on Jan. 16. The Globes especially like to point out their prescience because many of their award winners will also walk away with the golden trophy on March 15. Year in and year out there is a great deal of overlap, helped by the fact that the Globes give contenders two shots at the Best Picture and Actor top prizes because they have two categories: “Best Motion Picture (Actor) Drama” and “Best Motion Picture (Actor) Comedy or Musical.” The Golden Globe winner in Drama was “Hamnet,” for Best Musical or Comedy, it was “One Battle After Another” (a comedy?). Best Actor and Actress in a Drama were, respectively, Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent” and Jessie Buckley for “Hamnet.” Best Actor and Actress in a Musical or Comedy were Timothée Chalamet for “Marty Supreme” and Rose Byrne for “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” (very few if any yucks in that one). Voting for the Oscars has just begun and ends Feb. 18.
Although Box Office receipts for most of the Best Picture nominees were not stellar, the few exceptions were for “F-1” and “Sinners,” although the late 2025 premieres of “Marty Supreme” and “Hamnet” are showing strength in the early 2026 returns. And…the Award for best Box Office and Commercial Appeal should go to “F-1” and “Sinners.”
“Sinners” definitely deserves its place at the table. To call it a horror film or zombie movie is to diminish the actual artistry of this innovative film starring Michael B. Jordan (nominated in the Best Actor category) as twin brothers trying to build a business in an unfriendly (to say the least) environment. Character development, dramatic twists and turns in a story that is as much about prejudice as it is about perseverance, and outstanding acting make “Sinners” one of the front-runners for Best Picture. Director Ryan Coogler, nominated for Best Director, uses metaphor in a way that makes this film transcend its so-called “horror” genre. I never saw any of it coming and if you haven’t seen it, catch up with it on MAX.
“One Battle After Another,” like “Sinners,” takes an innovative approach to the oft-told “apocalypse” genre and finds ways to make it new. With a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio (nominated in the Best Actor category), Sean Penn (nominated for Best Supporting Actor) as a slimy villain just this side of V from “V for Vendetta” and Benicio del Toro (also nominated for Best Supporting Actor) as a low key but heroic counterpoint to Penn’s character. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (nominated for Best Director), he tells a complex story of the fight against man’s inhumanity to man with humor and depth. It probably has a marginal lead over “Sinners” for Best Picture, although both are deserving. Watch it on MAX.
“Sentimental Value” is a sleeper. A Norwegian movie (also nominated for Best International Film), it tells the story of an actress, Nora, at a crossroads with her career, her family and her life in general. It’s all complicated. Her father, Gustav, a famous film director, abandoned the family after his divorce from his psychotherapist wife. Their two daughters continued to live in his family home with their mother, a home that had been in his family for generations. With the death of his ex-wife and his career in decline, he returns to claim the house, evicting daughter Agnes and rekindling all the resentments that Nora had held in check. Ulterior motives abound because Gustav has a script and he needs Nora to play the lead role, one based on their family dynamics and his hidden demons. Directed flawlessly by Joachim Trier (nominated for Best Director), who proves that no matter how familiar the story, there’s always a new approach and his approach is filled with complexity and character development. Starring the incomparable Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav, nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Renate Reinsve, Nora, nominated for Best Actress, with Elle Fanning, as an American actress and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, playing Nora’s sister Agnes, both nominated for Best Supporting Actress. This small, thoroughly engaging and thoughtful film garnered five major nominations, the same number of major nominations as “One Battle After Another,” and both were nominated in their respective writing categories.
“Marty Supreme” was a real surprise and very worthy of its spot on this roster. Who could ever have imagined that a movie about a professional ping pong player and conman would find its way to the Oscars? The script is inventive, the directing by Josh Safdie, Oscar-nominated for Best Director, is fast-paced, and the acting, oh the acting. Timothée Chalamet is nothing short of brilliant in the role of Marty Mauser and was rewarded with a nomination for Best Actor. He makes the film positively soar with his Machiavellian antics. His Marty goes well beyond misrepresentation into the realm of amoral deception all in the name of getting to that next international tournament. Aided ably by Gwyneth Paltrow as a jaded ex-movie star caged by her captain of industry husband, played by a brilliant and absolutely chilling Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian businessman and “Shark Tank” producer. Odessa A’zian is Rachel, who will stop at nothing to trap Marty for herself. Watch for a very subdued and effective Fran Drescher as Marty’s mother. This is Timothée Chalamet at his zenith and illustrating, once again, his ability to melt seamlessly into a role, bringing us with him. If I had a vote, it would be for him.
I was very much looking forward to “Hamnet,” one of my favorite books of the last several years. I broke my hard and fast rule to judge a film on its own and not on its underlying material and was disappointed. The setting of Elizabethan England was lush but the story was somewhat flat. Shakespeare, played by Paul Mescal, was thunderstruck by the beauty and free spirit of Agnes when he first saw her. He was the Latin tutor of her brothers and she was the Cinderella daughter of her father’s first wife, unbeloved by his second. Director Chloé Zhao, nominated for Best Director, focuses almost the entire story on Agnes, Oscar-nominated Jessie Buckley. Shakespeare is often the missing ingredient in the story of his wife raising their children on her own as he goes off to direct his plays in London. Uninterested in his life, she focuses on the day- to-day difficulties of their hard scrapple life. Losing their son, Hamnet, to the plague is devastating, and it is only this that seemingly brings them together. As bland and plodding as the film was throughout most of the runtime, it makes up for it in the last sequence when Agnes finally goes to London to see the play that bears their dead son’s name, “Hamlet.” It proves again that a spectacular ending can resurrect a moribund film.
Nobody could have been more surprised than I was to find “Bugonia” an engaging and remarkable movie. Having sworn off the films of Yorgos Lanthimos after “Kinds of Kindnesses,” I realized it was the only one of the 10 nominations for Best Picture that I hadn’t seen. Starring his muses Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, staples in his previous films, they tell the story of a bedraggled duo of conspiracy theorists who are convinced that a Pharma CEO, the Oscar-nominated Stone, is part of an alien network hell bent on subjecting and then destroying the population of earth. Kidnapping her, it is a battle of wills and brains between the outmatched Teddy (Plemons) and the brilliant Michelle (Stone). Not an easy film to follow, Lanthimos’ signature hyperreality and supersaturated colors do end up with a surprise, killer finish, one that, if not out of thin air, is definitely out of this world.
“Secret Agent,” like “Sentimental Value,” is also nominated for Best International Film. Telling the story of a heroic individual, marked for death because he disrespected a corrupt businessman with powerful governmental ties, he decides it’s time for him to return home to Recife and reconnect with his son. Together they will leave Brazil for a safe haven elsewhere, or at least that is the plan. Anchored by the stunning performance of Wagner Moura, nominated for Best Actor and winner of both the Golden Globe and the Cannes Film Festival for Best Actor, his Marcello takes us into the clandestine world of others trying to escape the injustice about to be meted out for spurious reasons. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho drags you slowly into a spiderweb from which the characters cannot escape. It is a film very much for today when thin-skinned politicians target political rivals, seek retribution and misuse the judiciary. Yes, this is a film of and about Brazil but sadly it’s no longer just Brazil.
Part II will highlight Best Film nominations that puzzled me or were not up to the level of those discussed in Part I, as well as Best Actor nominations that were not part of movies nominated in the top categories. And then, there are the surprises and snubs, because there are always some, although everyone has their own opinions of what they were. You get my opinion.
Neely Swanson spent most of her professional career in the television industry, almost all of it working for David E. Kelley. In her last full-time position as Executive Vice President of Development, she reviewed writer submissions and targeted content for adaptation. As she has often said, she did book reports for a living. For several years she was a freelance writer for “Written By,” the magazine of the WGA West, and was adjunct faculty at USC in the writing division of the School of Cinematic Arts. Neely has been writing film and television reviews for the “Easy Reader” for more than 10 years. Her past reviews can be read on Rotten Tomatoes where she is a tomatometer-approved critic.
