Song Sung Blue (2025)

Nominated for Best Actress   Welcome to this year's A Star is Born.

Mike "Lightning" Sardina (Hugh Jackman) is a musician struggling to make his mark.  He quits a gig of impersonators but meets Claire (Kate Hudson), a singer and single mom, who encourages him to start his own tribute to Neil Diamond.  The pair grow romantically but seem to falter right on the edge of success as tragedy on top of tragedy strikes.

I was surprised by how many Neil Diamond songs I recognized, despite never really paying attention.  Jackman and Hudson are both trained singers and this is probably one of the most fun nominees this year.  There's still a lot of death and tragedy in it, because the Academy hates joy, but nevertheless.  It's a musical biopic that you can sit and watch with your mom while she reminisces about bands from before you were born.  It verges on a little too sympathetic at times, especially with Mike but I understood why they did it that way.  Also, shoutout to Jim Belushi, who I did not even recognize as Tom.

There's also a documentary on the real couple, if you're interested in that. Song Sung Blue is currently streaming on Peacock.

Butcher's Stain (2025)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short    Catching at least one of the shorts this year.

Samir (Omar Sameer) works as a butcher in an Israeli grocery store until he is accused of tearing down posters of hostages in the breakroom.  He is told by the store manager (Roma Toledano) that someone saw him do it, and if he confesses they can move on with disciplinary actions.  Except Samir knows that he didn't do it and he's being unfairly targeted for being Palestinian.

This is less about Israel-Palestine than it is about toxic workplace cultures and the everpresent threat of poverty.  Samir gets by on the fringes but any kind of issue jeopardizes his entire life.  That's pretty universal.  

This is a moderately long short at 26 minutes and it's streaming on Kanopy with a library card.  It reminds me of the short about a stolen bicycle from a few years back (White Eye).

Elio (2025)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    

Elio (Yonus Kibreab) is sent to live with his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) after the death of his parents.  He becomes fixated on escaping on an alien ship and gets his wish when the Air Force base Aunt Olga works on intercepts a signal responding to the Voyager probe.  Elio is transported to the Communiverse, an intergalactic U.N. where he is mistaken for the supreme leader of Earth and offered the role of ambassador.  But the offer is contingent on removing the threat of the Hylurgians, a warlike race of aliens angry at being denied admission.  Elio is sent to negotiate but ends up kidnapping Glordon (Remy Edgerly), the son of the Hylurgian leader (Brad Garrett).  

This felt a little too much like a Lilo & Stitch clone for me, but it's at least a new character and not a reboot or sequel.  The animation is beautiful and the voice cast is great, as expected from a Pixar film.  I don't know if it's a winner because I haven't seen the competition yet but it's not my favorite.  It's currently streaming on Disney+

The Perfect Neighbor (2025)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature  Content warning:  racial slurs, gun violence

Susan Lorencs described herself as a perfect neighbor in one of her numerous nuisance calls to police.  She constantly complained about the neighbor kids playing near her apartment, escalating her verbal rhetoric over the course of a year until it reached an inevitably violent end, documented painstakingly through body cam footage of the police responding to her calls.

This was absolutely infuriating to watch.  It is a portrait of entitlement and racism.  Like, I get being an antisocial curmudgeon.  The sound of children's laughter also grates on my nerves.  Do I feel like the Grinch looking down over Whoville every time children scream with joy as they sled down the embankment behind my house?  Yes.  Do I go out and threaten them or yell racial slurs?  No.  Because I am an adult who recognizes that they are CHILDREN and that it is a fucking privilege to have them feel safe enough to play.  And this bitch destroyed a group of children's safety because they were Playing While Black.

This is streaming on Netflix but I am honestly cautioning you if you are sensitive to children being threatened.  It felt a little exploitative when it lingered on the grieving relatives, but I get it.  They're trying to show the extent of the impact.

Blue Moon (2025)

Nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay    Lyracist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) prepares to congratulate his former writing partner, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), on the latter's smash success on Broadway.  

I was really skeptical but this might be Hawke's best performance in 30 years.  This is everything Maestro tried to be and couldn't.  Hawke is pitch-perfect as Hart, desperate to be loved but terrified of being seen, hiding his aching vulnerabilities under a mask of sarcasm and flippancy.  There are other people in the movie, sure, but none of them hold a candle.   As much as I would love to see Michael B. Jordan win, if there's any justice in the world, Best Actor goes to Hawke.  

I think there are stronger contenders for Original Screenplay but I'm not on the Academy.

Production design is great, but the costumes do most of the work establishing a setting and time period.  Especially good is the way they used forced perspective and set design to make 5'10" Hawke into 5'0" Hart.  Best of all, most of it looked practical.

This is not going to be for everyone.  There's a weird Venn diagram of theater diehards and Linklater fans.  But if that's your bag, you are in for a phenomenal performance.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Hamnet (2025)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Production Design, and Best Costumes    Content warning: death of a child, dead animal (hawk)

Agnes (Jessie Buckley) meets and marries her half-siblings' tutor (Paul Mescal) despite a large disparity between their social statuses.  They have three children and the husband finds some success as a playwright in London.  Then their 11-year-old twins catch the plague and one dies.  Grief consumes the family.

I did find it interesting that at no point in the film is Mescal's character named as William Shakespeare.  Even in the subtitles, he's only identified as Husband.  Unfortunately, that's the only interesting thing I found about the movie.  I didn't feel anything except boredom while watching it.  It's very pretty and Mescal and Buckley are putting in work, but one of my biggest pet peeves in a movie is when it focuses on a better piece of art.  The entire last 20 minutes is the finale of Hamlet and it's really good.  Shoutout to Noah Jupe for playing the actor playing Hamlet.  Fun fact: he is the older brother of the kid playing Hamnet.

And I get the impulse to not focus on Shakespeare.  But there's just not enough there to have Agnes be the main character and then also have the final act of Hamlet...which brings the focus back to Shakespeare.  It just felt really scattered.  This is another one of those films where I do not understand the amount of praise being heaped on it.  It felt almost revisionist, like it was trying too hard to tell a story about an unsung Woman of History.  I don't know if that's what it was trying to do but it was a swing and a miss for me.

It's currently still in theaters and available for streaming as Video On Demand on Amazon.

If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You (2025)

Nominated for Best Actress     Content warning:  medical horror, child endangerment, animal death (hamster)

Linda (Rose Byrne), a chronically sleep-deprived mother, is trying to fight a number of battles.  The ceiling of her apartment has collapsed, forcing her and her daughter (Delaney Quinn) to move into a run-down motel.  Her daughter has a feeding tube and requires constant attention, while also weaponizing her condition to manipulate the adults around her.  Linda's job as a psychotherapist is unfulfilling, and her husband (Christian Slater) is absent much of the time while doing his job as a cruise captain, leaving Linda to handle everything in his absence and berating her for not doing it perfectly and without complaint.  Then one of her patients abandons a baby in her office and goes missing.

This was the most claustrophobic movie I have ever seen.  The camera stays so tightly on Byrne, it makes you feel like you are nose-to-nose with her.  Honestly, this would be such a good double-feature with The Babadook.  I'm counting it as horror, even though Wikipedia is claiming this is a comedy-drama.  There was not a single moment of comedy for me, though, so I have no idea what it is talking about.  Just skin-crawling anxiety and stress.  So much more effective than Marty Supreme even though Linda is also an unlikeable character making bad choices, but crucially, remained somewhat sympathetic.  I can't claim that I liked this movie but I can recognize that it worked.

It's currently streaming on HBO Max.