Sentimental Value (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress x2, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing     Content warning:  suicide, torture (in photographs)

Nora (Renate Reinsve) is a working theater actress estranged from her father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a famous director.  Gustave approaches her about starring in his new narrative feature, but she refuses, so he hires American Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) for the part instead.  Rachel is initially game to be taken more seriously as an actress but soon grows more and more convinced that Gustav doesn't really want her for the role, which is ostensibly about Gustav's mother, Karin (Vilde Søyland), a member of the Norwegian Resistance, but which Rachel realizes is actually about Gustav's relationship with Nora.

I don't know if I can describe how this movie made me feel but it did make me feel.  Everybody in it is phenomenal.  It's so quiet and so deeply emotional.  It could have felt sluggish or melodramatic but it never does.  It's my third favorite Best Picture nominee.  Someone in Movie Club said that they didn't want it to win because it deserves to find its own audience and not be constantly compared to other Best Picture winners, and I agree.  Would not be mad if it got Best International Feature, though.  It's so hard because Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is so good as Agnes and she deserves all the accolades, but Fanning blew me away.  Her character could have been a total joke but she never treated it like one.  Just a truly beautiful film.

It's still in limited theaters but also on Amazon and AppleTV as Video On Demand.  This is actually worth the money.

Marty Supreme (2025)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Casting, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Costume Design     Congrats to Josh Safdie on being the Joel.  Condolences to Benny for being the Ethan.  Content warning:  antisemitic slurs, racial slurs, violence

It is the 1950s and Marty (Timothee Chalamet) is hustling as hard as he can to get the money to compete in international table tennis competitions while avoiding any and all responsibilities.  Nothing matters except achieving his goal of being the top-ranked ping pong player in the world, not a hypochondriac mother (Fran Drescher), not an inconveniently pregnant girlfriend (Odessa A'zion), and especially not the various friends and acquaintances Marty cons or cajoles out of cash.

I had never seen any of the Safdie Brothers' previous works so the only thing I have to compare this to is The Smashing Machine, and you know, every other sports movie ever made.

I did find it interesting that both brothers chose a loose period piece biopic about a forerunner of a niche sport that is a victim of their own hubris.  I think Marty Supreme is the more successful story, even if I disliked the movie, but it is still not great.  It's overly long and haphazardly written.  Y'all, it's not even a good ping pong movie.  No idea why it's being so highly lauded.  Personally, I am not a fan of unpleasant characters being unpleasant.  I think there's enough of that in real life; I don't also need to see it in my escapism.  

This had a cast filled with cameos, some more successful than others.  Apparently, that is a hallmark of Safdie's work, but I wouldn't know.  Everyone seemed very frenetic so it was hard for me to tell who was doing a good job with their parts.  I would be okay if this lost every category.  Right now, it's my second least favorite of all the Best Picture nominees.

It's currently still in theaters and just dropped on Amazon as Video On Demand.  Don't pay money to see this.

F1 (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects    Happy President's Day.  Here's a completely unrelated movie.  Content warning:  car crash, fire

Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is pretty aimless for a racecar driver.  He's a solid workhorse, just happy to be on the track, any track, but missing a certain spark.  His old racing buddy-turned-team-owner, Ruben (Javier Bardem), has a solution: come fill in as a replacement driver for Ruben's Formula One team.  They have a young hotshot (Damson Idris) with a lot of potential, but he needs someone steadier to balance him.  The catch is, if they don't win at least one game of the nine remaining in the season, Ruben will lose the team.

There is zero reason this needed to be three hours long, so throw out that Film Editing nomination right now.   There's a completely unnecessary romance sub-plot and at least three separate training montages that could have be condensed or just cut altogether.  Also, how are you going to make a movie about one of the fastest sports in the world and have it be this slow?  

As a Dad Movie, this is pretty solid.  It's not Ford v Ferrari or Rush, but it's fine.  Plenty of places for Dad to "rest his eyes" in between racing sequences.  It's very gentle and surprisingly quiet, minus the obligatory crash scenes. 

Kerry Condon is totally wasted, as is Bardem.  Pitt is seemingly very happy just to coast along this latter half of his career, and I can't fault him for it.  I don't love that the movie's overall message seems to be "just let the old people have this; your time will come."  I get why the target audience would respond well to it, but I am not that guy.  It feels very "forced slow clap."

There are way better racing movies out there, but F1 is streaming on AppleTV.

The Secret Agent (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Actor, Best International Feature, and Best Casting     Not gonna lie, this was a little hard to follow without a lot of culture-specific context, but it was probably one of the more entertaining entries this year.  Content warning:  violence, blood, dead animal (shark)

Armand (Wagner Moura) is in hiding from the CEO (Luciano Chirolli) of a tech company with ties to the Brazilian government.  He's living under an assumed name in a safehouse but putting everything on the line to keep seeing his son (Enzo Nunes) until he can get forged passports so they can get out of the country.  Meanwhile, a pair of assassins are looking for him.

The title is a bit of a misnomer.  The protagonist isn't involved in anything clandestine or undercover or related to spying.  He's a professor at a university working on energy products.  At the time, the CEO was working for Electrobras, the government-run electricity company, and pressuring the professor to can certain projects, or give up patents, in order to make himself wealthy in the private sector.  There's probably more to it but I don't know enough specifics about Brazil's military dictatorship.  Anyway, I think the title is a reference to the TV show Armand and his kid are watching, but I'm just guessing.  

I thought this was really entertaining, despite how little I understood.  There were so many weird little characters living fully fleshed-out lives.  It's great.  Best casting, if you're counting everybody.  Everything else is kind of a miss.  But super worth watching.  I rented it on Amazon because I had credits.  Otherwise, it would have been $20, which is ridiculous.  Just wait a couple of weeks and it'll drop on Hulu or HBO Max.

Bugonia (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score    Happy Valentine's Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie.  Content warning:  blood, violence against women, allusion to sexual abuse, suicide (gun)

Teddy (Jesse Plemmons) has figured it out.  There are aliens amongst us and they have been fucking over the planet.  He knows this because he did his own research on YouTube and Reddit.  And he has a plan.  He is going to kidnap a high-ranking alien who just so happens to look exactly like the CEO of the company he works for, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), whose experimental drug almost killed his mom (Alica Silverstone), and use said alien to negotiate the peaceful surrender and retreat from Earth of all aliens.

The premise makes the movie sound light-hearted and funny but it's really not.  It's probably the tamest Lanthimos film yet, which is also not great.  It ends up just being fine, instead of interesting or cool or provocative or even just weird.  

Stone is great but isn't doing anything really new.  Plemmons nails the tone of desperate dipshit that's just a little too unhinged to be sympathetic but didn't score a nomination.  Could easily have replaced one of the two Supporting Actor noms OBAA got, but whatever.  Nobody asked me.  Silverstone is damn near unrecognizable.  

I will say, this is the first Lanthimos film I've seen that didn't have a completely unnecessary scene of animal abuse (unless you count actors as animals).  Progress?  I haven't seen the original Korean film this is adapted from, so no idea on that.  Score is good, though.  

Train Dreams (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Song   Content warning:  racist violence, animal death (elk)

Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) searches his life for meaning in the face of tragedies while working as a logger in the late 19th century Pacific Northwest.

On paper, this is not a film I thought I would enjoy.  It's paced very deliberately, the characters are bare sketches, and the cinematography centers on nature.  I hated Tree of Life for less.  But Train Dreams resonated in a way none of Terence Malick's films ever have.  Maybe Clint Bradley is just a better director for me.  

It is slow and incredibly sad, interspersed with sudden violence.  Bit like life, really.  Edgerton doesn't have a lot of lines but he does a lot of emoting.  It is heavily Vibes-based and will not be for everyone.  I recently had a death in the family so that may have been a factor in how well I responded to it.  It's probably my second choice for Best Picture but I seriously doubt it's actually going to win.  I don't think it will get anything, honestly.  It's too quiet and unassuming.  I will say that I absolutely hated the Nick Cave song at the end.  It felt so jarring tonally and did not work for me at all.  

It is streaming on Netflix.

The Ugly Stepsister (2025)

Nominated for:  Best Hair and Makeup    Ah, our first Women's Horror entry of the year.  This was a total surprise to see on the Oscar list.  Content warning:  medical horror, body horror, worms/maggots, some gore, blood, vomit

All Elvira (Lea Myren) wants to do is marry Prince Julien (Isac Calmroth), but she is plain of looks and poor in class.  There's a chance that her mother, Rebeka's (Ane Dahl Torp) new husband (Ralph Carlsson) can raise their social profile but he already has a beautiful daughter, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess).  And then he dies and it turns out he had a title but no money.  With the ball to determine Prince Julien's bride coming up, Rebeka ruthlessly makes over Elvira to compete with her stepsister --who has literal magic.  

This movie is very funny in the way it highlights how fucked up it is to pit women against each other.  It is a deeply feminist retelling of Cinderella that surprisingly keeps a number of supernatural elements from the original fairy tale.  It does change the ending slightly, which is nice, but amps up the gross-out factors with a trip to a plastic surgeon and a, shall we say, all-natural approach to a miracle weight loss drug.  If you are at all squeamish, this is not for you.  Pretty hurts, y'all.  

The Swedes are much less prudish than American audiences so there is some full-frontal nudity in case the words "violence" and "torture" weren't enough to convince you not to let your children watch this.  It's not Disney's Cinderella.  (One sex scene in the barn is made even more awkward by constant cuts to reaction shots by the horses.  They are not involved but the editing suggests that they are enthusiastic voyeurs.)

Myren carries this movie admirably.  You can visibly see her desperation to stand out and her crushing despair when none of her efforts are deemed worthy.  Special shoutout to Flo Fagerli, who plays Elvira's younger sister, Alma.  She doesn't get a lot of lines, but her facial expressions convey everything you need to know about her.  

The Ugly Stepsister is streaming on Shudder and Hulu.  Hulu also has an English dub, if you're a coward.