Director Report Card: Guillermo del Toro (2025)

13. Frankenstein

 

Like many a young monster kid, Guillermo del Toro had his life changed by James Whale's 1931 version of “Frankenstein.” He has described Boris Karloff's performance as his equavelent to witnessing a saint. Like many a monster kid who has managed to transfer into a successful film making career, del Toro also dreamed about making his own version of the often told tale. Since at least 2007, he's been talking up his epic “Miltonian tragedy” take on Mary Shelley's iconic story. (Which he has also called “his favorite novel of all time.”) Bernie Wrightson's beloved illustrated edition of the book was cited as an inspiration for what the creature might look like with del Toro's regular monster man, Doug Jones, being cast in the part. As with del Toro's adaptations of “At the Mountains of Madness” or “The Hobbit,” it also looked like his “Frankenstein” was destined to remain unfilmed.

That all changed when Guillermo got his Academy Awards for “The Shape of Water” and Netflix stepped up with the offer to fund his dreamiest dream projects. After making his equally long-discussed “Pinocchio” movie, del Toro's “Frankenstein” was on the docket next. As another life-long “Frankenstein” obsessive who also considers the Whale's film his favorite movie of all time, the idea of what del Toro might do with the material tickled my brain. What would an adaptation of the greatest monster story from our greatest modern lover of monsters look like? The director himself has talked about the pressure of adapting such a beloved, frequently filmed story. About whether he could live up to his ambition of making the greatest “Frankenstein” of all time. Well, now the film is done and available for all to see. Reactions have been divided. What do I, as simply another classic horror nerd on the internet, have to say? 

Unlike many past cinematic “Frankensteins,” del Toro's film follows the general outline of Shelley's novel relatively closely. A Danish ship captain attempts to lead his crew on a perilous journey through the frozen Northern corners of the globe. Their journey is interrupted by two figures on the ice. The first is the eccentric Victor Frankenstein, nearly consumed by the cold. The second is an inhuman creation with monstrous strength who pursues the doctor endlessly. Within the bowels of the ship, Victor relates his tale. Of his quest to conquer death by assembling a man from pieces of the dead and reanimating it. Of how he succeeded in his goals but created a monster in the process. Finally, how he and his creation devoted themselves to destroying each other. The Creature tells his version of events too, of how he was brought into this world, how he learned to read and interact, and learned about cruelty and being feared. 

Of all the many films to feature the name “Frankenstein,” only a few have earnestly attempted to adapt Shelley's words. The general concept of the novel has spread through pop culture so far and so wide that the “Frankenstein” legacy is both almost insurmountable seeming and also potentially worthless. Everybody thinks they know what “Frankenstein” is about, even if they actually don't, to the point that there's little novelty to doing it again. At the same time, every meaningful reinvention or run-through of the material must contend with those preconceived notions about the story. For whatever my opinion is worth, I believe del Toro does a decent job of synthesizing Shelley's book with his own ideas and the more iconic elements of what “Frankenstein” is that have emerged over the decades. The narrative is a rough approximation of the book while the director also incorporates lightning animating the monster, a stone tower reaching to the sky, and a Dr. Pretorius-like mentor to Victor into the story. Visuals like the creature crouching among a mill's massive turning gears or being shot very specifically in the eye seem like deliberate homages to the Universal and Hammer versions. 

Of course, the reason why “Frankenstein” has proven so endlessly adaptable for so long is that the themes of the tale are extremely mutable. Purists argue that “Frankenstein” is a reflection of Mary Shelley's specific thoughts and feelings as a young woman and mother to a dead child. At the same time, “Frankenstein's” ideas about creating and being created are as universal as they come. Every adapter zeroes in on the element that speaks the most to them. To del Toro, “Frankenstein” is a story about fathers and sons. Victor's foundational trauma is the death of his mother and being raised by a cruel, perfectionist father. Like many boys before and since, he is doomed to inherit the tendencies of his asshole dad when rearing his own offspring. Just like his dad whipped him with a switch when he was anything less than ideal, Victor smacks the creature around when it disappoints him.  Father and son grimly mirror each other in their quest for mutually assured destruction, on the path towards a resolution of sorts. 

This, to me, is as valid an interpretation of the text as any other. Not the least of which becomes these earthly themes have cosmic ramifications too. Del Toro's lapsed Catholicism often informs his work and its presence is unmissable in his “Frankenstein.” Victor prays to a grand statue of an archangel, which becomes a foreboding symbol throughout. The creature is raised into a crucifix pose as it is brought to life. Adam and Eve are mentioned and a purloined fruit is presented as a symbol of plucked innocence. As Colin Clive observed nearly a century ago, bringing a body to life makes Dr. Frankenstein a lot like God himself. As a hundred dissertations about the references to “Paradise Lost” within the novel have discussed, the Monster is rejected by his creator like Lucifer was rejected by his. He did not request his Maker to mould his clay nor solicit to be promoted from darkness. Neither did any of us. If Victor is God and we are all the Monsters, that means we are all the abandoned children of a father that brought us into this world without ever asking our opinion about it. This is how del Toro grafts his themes of Daddy Issues to Shelley's grander ideas about making and being made. It is an interesting take.
 

Classically, Victor Frankenstein is classified as a Byronic hero, a proud and brooding protagonist whose passions are so great that they inevitably seal his own fate. Frankenstein's quest to create life ensures the end of his own. Del Toro visualizes the irony of Victor and his Creation's link. As he stitched together a man from different body parts, the doctor slowly looses more and more of his own pieces throughout the narrative. This is also a rather heavy-handed visual metaphor for Frankenstein's dwindling humanity. The creature, meanwhile, is given a Wolverine-style healing factor that sees him recovering from any wound, no matter how fatal. In other words, the monster can take any and all abuse Victor dishes out but Victor is inevitably going to break. 

Adaptations of “Frankenstein” have often zeroed in on the homoerotic undercurrents of a story about man trying to remove the feminine from the procreative process. Of two males becoming obsessed with each other. Del Toro's rendition sees Victor actually attempting to rear his offspring, who acts like a giant ripped toddler in a swaddled diaper. He keeps him chained up in the bowels of the phallic castle before ejecting him from the stone womb into the cruel world via an orgasmic explosion. As the two become fixated on punishing one another and destroying each others' bodies, the rivalry takes on a sadomasochistic energy. In its earliest form, the creature is introduced in a kneeling posture. By the end, he refuses to be submissive and punishes his master instead, the power transition being fulfilled. Is “Frankenstein” not a weird incestuous gay BDSM fable? Is Victor Frankenstein not literature's first Dom Daddy? Maybe not but I don't think del Toro is ignorant of some of the images he invokes here. 

How much of that was intended by del Toro is debatable. However, other reoccurring themes of his are certainly present in his “Frankenstein.” Christoph Waltz appears as Harlander, the Dr. Pretorius-like figure that appears to fund Victor's unorthodox experiments. He is an arms manufacturer, a war profiteer, who sees Frankenstein's work as a way to heal his own ailing, syphilitic body. (Another image of flesh falling apart.) The monster is partially stitched together from bodies dug out of a war zone while other parts come from prisoners about to go to the gallows. In other words, this Frankenstein monster is rather literally an offspring of the military industrial complex. Whether than embed with free will by a God above, he is the result of the rich exploiting the poor and the senseless destruction of life on the battlefield. This ties into war as a wasteful, only destructive exercise as depicted in del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” and “The Devil's Backbone.” 

This idea also points to how the creature is destined to be an outsider, assembled from pieces of underclassmen who have already been discarded and destroyed. That leads to a characterization of the offspring as more victimized than victimizer. The observation that Frankenstein's creation is not born a monster but rather made one by a cruel and unaccepting world is the most surface level reading of Shelley's material as possible. Del Toro's telling is so laser-focused on this idea that it almost totally takes the monster out of Frankenstein's monster all together. The creature's bond with a blind man and his subsequent rejection by the other people in the cabin are maintained. Almost every other interaction the creature has with the outside world is excised. The creature's quest to take away everything his creator loves is almost entirely neutered, as Victor's bond with his family is very different here. Frankenstein's monster should be misunderstood. However, del Toro is so determined to make the creature an innocent that is a victim of others' cruelty – mostly his dad's – that it takes a lot of the blood out of the story. 

This represents the film's biggest weakness. Del Toro talks often of his love for the gothic romance as a literary genre. If “Crimson Peak” already bordered on a parody of the style, his “Frankenstein” is an even deeper embracing of baroque melodrama. The climax of Shelley's novel, of Victor's creation being with him on his wedding night, is greatly altered for this telling. The exact machinations of how that plays out border on the improbable and then ends with someone looking at the doctor and literally telling him he's the real monster. This proceeds an ending which is unsightly in its sappiness. To tell you the truth, I've always felt that Shelley's book had an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying ending. Victor dies, the Creature ruminates on the nature of this relationship, and then he walks out onto the ice. Del Toro attempts to come up with a more fulfilling conclusion than this but layers on the weepy emotions instead. It takes a movie otherwise tailor-made to appeal to me out on a disappointing note. 

And what of Elizabeth, traditionally Victor's bride-to-be? Del Toro's reshuffling makes her the intended of Victor's younger brother, her relationship with the doctor more flirtatious and unrequited. In a move all too aware of its Freudian implications, Mia Goth is cast in both this role and as Victor's not-long-for-this-world mother. Much as Victor's mom is a perfect beacon of love and acceptance, whose death leads her son down a path of heartlessness, Elizabeth is a symbol of pure accepting love. She immediately sees the creation as the innocent he is. Bringing the promise of Goth's dual role to fruition, Elizabeth emerges as both a motherly figure and a romantic one to the monster. (Also robbing the movie of a purer example of a Bride of Frankenstein character, which is mildly disappointing.) A lot of very angry people have already pointed out how this treatment under-serves both Elizabeth's role in the story and the Monster's own sexism, in favor of a cuddlier reading. Accusations of sexism have been tossed around but I rather see it simply as making the story a lot flatter, less nuanced and complex than it could have been.
 

This “Frankenstein” is, undeniably, a handsome production. The costumes are gorgeous. Goth, in particular, gets to sweep through her scenes in a succession of colorful, intricately designed gowns. The production design is gorgeous. The elaborately carved caskets that Victor's parents are put to rest in are unforgettable. The sets, especially that towering lab with its vein-like tunnels and ventricular chambers, are impressive. Some have criticized the cinematography as murky or too digital. I think it looks pretty damn good, especially the use of light cutting through dark rooms. The make-up effects are subtle, the creature looking seamless in his undead assemblage but also like something that could actually exist. The performances are strong all around. Oscar Isaac is the right level of blustering ego and bruised desperation as the doctor. Jacob Elordi is extraordinary as the gentle golem of flesh and blood, the actor totally absorbed in the role of an outsider possessed of an animal rage. Christoph Waltz does exactly what you pay him for as the scheming but poetic Harlander. This is a lovingly assembled and acted film.

Ultimately, I have my qualms about this “Frankenstein.” I wish del Toro was willing to make his monster as much of a terror as he is a misunderstood victim. I was looking forward to seeing the director's take on the more alchemic origins for the creature presented in Shelley's writing, something that is reduced to a passing mention here. As grand as the ambitions are, the film ends up feeling rather cloistered instead, trapped so much within the interior worlds of its protagonists and their spurned feelings. One can't help but wonder if this would've been a stronger film if its director had made it twenty years ago, when his work was meaner. However, I also think there's a lot of good work on display here and plenty of interesting ideas. There's going to be many more “Frankenstein” movies made after this one. Another big budget studio take is scheduled to come out in a few weeks already. There's plenty of room for del Toro's interpretation of this age-old tale. For all its flaws, it is still uniquely his version. [Grade: B]

 

OSCARS 2026: Sinners (2025)

 

(In an unlikely turn of events, the bloody vampire movie I reviewed last September has become the most nominated movie in Academy Award history. Please don't held it against me if I reuse my review I wrote last fall during this Oscars season, as my opinion is unlikely to have changed much since then.) 

 

Perhaps I was the last movie nerd in the world to underestimate Ryan Coogler. Establishing himself in 2013 with ripped-from-the-headlines indie drama "Fruitvale Station," Coogler would bring that same level of grit and sincerity to franchise filmmaking with "Creed." "Black Panther" would launch him into the stratosphere but, I felt anyway, at the sacrifice of a lot of his more intimate style. This was truer still of the superhero blockbuster's inevitable sequel, which wasn't all that distinguishable from any other mid-tier Marvel movie. A lot of smaller directors have signed up for massive studio projects with the understanding that this will give them a blank check to fund their weird, personal efforts from now on, an agreement that is increasingly unfulfilled. It seemed like Coogler was going down this same path but, actually, I'm a wrong idiot who is wrong. Coogler came back with "Sinners," a personal, gritty, weird genre hybrid that became a big hit earlier this year. It's also the best new release I've seen in theaters in a while and looks unlikely to be dethroned as my favorite film of 2025. Here, let me ramble about it some more. 

In Prohibition-era Mississippi, twins Elijah and Elias – nicknamed Smoke and Stack – return to their home town. Using money and booze stolen from the Chicago mob, they purchase an old sawmill with the intention of turning it into a juke joint. They recruit several locals to run it, including their cousin and aspiring bluesman Sammie, experienced musician Delta Slim, Smoke's ex-wife and Hoodoo practitioner Annie, and a pair of Chinese immigrant shop owners. The club attracts a crowd, including Stack's white passing ex-girlfriend Mary and Pearline, a singer Sammie takes a liking to. Sammie's soulful playing also draws the attention of Remmick, a white vampire recently chased into the area. Unable to enter the joint without an invitation, he begins to transform anyone who ventures outside into undead bloodsuckers. A tense standout ensues through the night that will change the lives of everyone involved. 

“Sinners” is a movie of great texture and I mean that almost literally. Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot the film on 65mm, ensuring a depth to the film's look that seems much more difficult to achieve with digital technology. Every shot of the film is filled with details, from the extremely precise period costumes to the production design that makes every setting seem like a real, lived-in location. This sense of specificity extends all throughout “Sinners.” The characters' backstories and pasts are discussed naturally through dialogue, suggesting a whole world existed before the viewer sees the events of the film. Whether its the fate of Smoke and Annie's unborn child, the brothers' history as World War I veterans or time working with the mob, or the personal recollections of Mary or Delta Slim's lives, it all adds up to create a world that feels utterly fully formed. The film embraces the shared histories of blues music, the lives of the black community in the American south, how Hoodoo grew out of African mysticism, and a vampire mythology all its own. This pairs extremely well with the Mississippi setting, where everyone is always glistening with a layer of sweat and dirt. 

Honestly, the first act of “Sinners,” devoted entirely to introducing this cast of extremely well realized characters and the world they inhabit, could have gone on longer than it did. However, “Sinners” is also a hard-hitting monster movie/action flick mash-up. A sequence in which the established cast stand in a circle and eat garlic cloves in order to determine if any of them are vampires is clearly inspired by the blood test scene in “The Thing.” It's a logical homage, as “Sinners” captures that same Carpenter-style mixture of anticipation and catharsis. Once the vampires outside become a known factor to the humans inside, “Sinners” turns into a tense stand-off. The undead taunt and interrogate the people inside, attempting to draw them out. This is broken up with some expertly crafted action sequences, of brilliantly devised gun fights, extremely physical close-quarters fights, and lots of spurting blood. When the vampires do make it inside the juke joint, it results in one of the most exciting climax in recent history. And “Sinners” isn't afraid of its status as a low-down horror flick either. These bloodsuckers flash their fangs, have eyes that glint in the darkness, leap eerily through the air, and grow increasingly more grotesque looking as the film goes on. 

By inserting its story into such a layered world, “Sinners” touches on about a dozen fascinating observations about America's racial history. Perhaps the most important idea present in the film is the power of music. Blues and black roots music is depicted as spiritually transcendent, melodies filled with so much emotion and power that they pierce spectral boundaries, time and space. This is fantastically depicted in a jaw-dropping sequence where Sammie's performance causes spectres from the past and present to appear throughout the juke joint. It's almost like a crash-course in the history of African-American music, its relevance as a spiritual and cultural force, all in one spellbinding scene. Coogler's film innately understands how music creates a ritual space and doesn't limit that power to any one culture or race. As wicked as the film's vampires are, they were once human too. Remmick is Irish, implied to be as old as the Roman invasion of the British isles. Him and his trope of vampires play bluegrass and dance jigs, equally driven into an almost religious frenzy by the sense of community created by this music. Their music is good too, the film acknowledging that all traditional folk music has the power to bring people together and create an otherworldly connection. 

Music also represents an escape from the troubles of daily life, of which people of color in the thirties south had more than their share of. The undead creatures pressing down on the juke joint feels, at times, like a metaphor for the pressures of existing as a black person in a racist, white-dominated society. The extended epilogue of “Sinners” establishes that, for a brief moment, they all had a taste of true freedom. Throughout the rest of the film, the white vampires – chased by Native American hunters in their introduction and, later, explicitly aligned with the Klu Klux Klan – attempt to force their way into this space. Remmick uses a need for money, a necessity to exist in a capitalistic culture, to try and worm in. At a key moment, a white authority figure similarly attempts to temps Smoke with an offer of money. Throughout the film, the evils of white Americans are aligned with greed and money. Some have read “Sinners” as arguing for racial essentialism when it seems much more critical of the cash-driven systems of repression than anything else. 

“Sinners” is an all-around work of infectious brilliance. The cast is excellent, lead by two extraordinary performances from Michael B. Jordan, who makes both brothers totally distinctive characters in their own right. Jack O'Connell and Miles Caton, as the villain and Sammie, should become stars based off this. Delroy Lindo, meanwhile, once again proves himself as one of Hollywood's most underappreciated character actors, turning Delta Slim into such a fully realized, funny, tragic character. After being a damn good ensemble piece and vampire thriller for most of its runtime, “Sinners” then turns into a bad-ass action film in its final act, featuring a shoot-out set piece for the ages. Nobody needs me to heap more praise on this one. Plenty of other folks have pinpointed it as the stand-out horror fusion of the year. On the big screen, it played out like a magnificent rush and proves just as thrilling, exciting, and touching upon re-watch. [9/10]

 

OSCARS 2026: Sentimental Value (2025)

This is not a hard and fast rule, for nothing ever is, but: Once a director gets the Academy's attention, they tend to notice you again. The logic is sound as an Oscar nomination tends to make someone a lot more recognized. Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier made a name for himself in his home country, and the international art house scene, with his earlier features. 2006's “Reprise” and “Thelma” were submitted to the Academy as Norway's official selection for Best Foreign Language Film with no success.  However, 2021's “The Worst Person in the World” finally got voters' attention, not only scoring an International Feature nomination but also one in Best Original Screenplay. His latest, “Sentimental Value,” signals Trier truly arriving at last, at least among the American awards show set. It's grabbed nine nominations, including one for Trier in Best Director, which is impressive for a movie mostly in another language. 

And all it took was Trier making a movie about the film industry's favorite topic: The film industry. Norwegian filmmaker Gustav Borg largely walked away from his wife and two daughters, Nora and Agnes, and the family home in Oslo. After his wife's death, he returns to the house with an idea: His latest script is inspired by his mother, a former prisoner-of-war who committed suicide in the home when he was seven, and he wants Nora to play the part. Though Nora is a successful stage actress, she refuses to do so. A chance encounter leads to an American movie star, Rachel Kemp, being cast in the role. This results in Netflix agreeing to fund the film, in contrast to the previous difficulty Borg has had getting budgets for his work. After spending time with Agnes, Gustav decides to cast his grandson in the film as well, straining his relationship with his other daughter. Rachel feels insecure about playing a role so clearly intended for Nora, pushing Gustav to reconnect with his estranged daughters. Overcoming all that baggage will not be easy.

The opening scene of “Sentimental Value,” overseen by an omniscient narrator, is not devoted to introducing any of the film's principal characters so much. Instead, it presents us with the family's home. Much of “Sentimental Value” takes place in this house, a handsome if plain two-story residence. It is where Gustav grew up, where his mother died, where Agnes resides, and where her son is growing up too. A few times, the film flashes back to a prior decade in this building, showing the little details of the home that have revealed themselves to the family over the years. Such as how the kids would ease drop on their mother's therapy session through a vent that runs from the second floor down to the first. These are like quirks to a human being's personality, distinguishing features that make a person and a place unique. If homes can be said to have personalities, they can also be said to have memories. And those memories are long. In its best moments, “Sentimental Value” shows how places stand as quiet observers of their own history. How arguments and exchanges would echo through these walls or how small incidents, like a dropped glass, can make an impression as much as the big events. Saying “the house is also a main character” is a cliché but “Sentimental Value” happens to use it well. 

To use another much abused literary cliché: If these walls could talk, they would surely have a lot to say about the overlapping generations that have made its rooms their home. Gustav and Nora do not get along. As parent and children often are, this might be because they have a lot in common. Both are stubborn and a bit self-centered but also overcome with doubts. Gustav fears that his industry has passed him by, that all his friends are dying, and that he's lost his insight. He suppresses these concerns with alcohol. Nora, despite her success, still has paralyzing bouts of stage fright and is currently involved in an affair with a married colleague. They are, in a sense, shadows and reflections of each other. Gustav's script is inspired by his late mother but he hopes to cast his daughter in the part, later casting his own grandson to play a role inspired by himself. Much of the central drama of “Sentimental Value” revolves around Gustav deciding to cast a movie star in the lead role instead, a person from outside the family having trouble integrating themselves into this web of relations and connections. A key dream sequence in “Sentimental Value” depicts Gustav's face morphing into his daughters and mother's face, back and forth, as shadows pass over them. Yes, if a house a memory, it would notice the way patterns tend to repeat themselves, how people can assume malleable roles back and forth across their own histories.  

Unfortunately, “Sentimental Value” is not a movie solely about the contrasting, and contradicting, ways parents and children and grandparents tend to mirror each other or how places connect different generations. We do not learn too much about the script Gustav has written that motivates much of the plot, aside from its inspiration in his own past. This is Trier hedging his bet: If a piece of writing is suppose to be moving art, that puts a lot of expectations on it. If the resulting script isn't as good as all the characters say it is, the entire emotional center of the narrative falls apart. This, however, becomes a problem when “Sentimental Value's” entire resolution hinges on someone being so moved by the writing. The meaningful climax of the film is a knowing, understanding nod between two people. Keeping the emotions subtle and understated is fine. However, it does make “Sentimental Value” feel a bit contrived during its most important stage. As if the screenwriter is saying “This script is brilliant, brilliant enough to change someone's mind, but, uh, I can't show it to you.” 

It is evident very early on that this project is Gustav's way to process the grief and guilt he feels over his own mother's suicide and his distant bond with his daughters. How grief can be transformed into art – also the topic of another 2026 Best Picture nominee – is a worthy subject. How a piece of fiction can be about multiple things at once is too. However, Trier's film falls a little short in exploring the complexities of that. The last act of “Sentimental Value” is disappointing, in the flat way it shows how the unspoken pain of a parent can strain any bond their child will develop with their own off-spring. Joachim Trier is twenty years older than me but “The Worst Person in the World” showed a keen understanding of the neurosis of the millennial generation. And if everyone else my age is a little like me too, that means their thirties have also included a lot of learning to understand their own parents. You learn more about yourself and realize Mom and Dad surely dealt with that too, likely with the fewer tools their time and place provided. “Sentimental Value” clearly touches on that but I wish it did so with more depth, instead of pushing the thorny business of forgiveness and reconciliation that comes after that realization in-between scenes. 

As far as a drama about one generation's Mommy Issues leading to Daddy Issues for the next and so on, “Sentimental Value” is keenly acted. You need an actor like Stellan Skarsgård in a role like Gustav Borg. You need someone who has lived more than a bit and can accurately convey the feeling of carrying a lifetime of regrets around behind sad but quiet eyes. He accurately brings to life the dynamic of a man who still hasn't figured out how not to piss people off by being himself but is desperately trying to get better. Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are both very good as Nora and Agnes, saying much with an eye roll or nod. “Sentimental Value” is a film of emotions more understated than shouted, a mode both Reinsve and Illeaas excel at. As the outsider in the story, Elle Fanning has an interesting arc as someone floundering to insert themselves into a familial drama that previously existed without them. Fanning is wonderful, resisting making Kemp a spoiled Hollywood brat in favor of someone who chose acting genuinely out of a wish to understand other people. A scene where an interview disparages her latest movie, Skarsgård coming to her aide, shows Fanning can suggest a lot with only her eyes and face too. 

For a handful of moments, “Sentimental Value” becomes a quiet comedy about a clueless grandfather trying to connect with his iPad kid grandson, which ultimately has a rather sweet conclusion. That is a much more charming depiction of how art can bring people together than the resolution. I wish the film mined that element more, playing the weird tension that can only exist between parent and child for uncomfortable but honest laughs. Nevertheless, “Sentimental Value” is an expertly acted film that contains many interesting and fine ideas within. An artier movie told from the house's perspective – think something like Sodenberg's “Presence,” also from last year – probably would've been more my style but take out the film industry angle and I don't know if the Academy would have liked this one as much. [710]

OSCARS 2026: Train Dreams (2025)

Ah, is there any prize in the literary world more treasured than the Pulitzer? I mean, probably. But is there any literary prize with more name recognition than the Pulitzer? The Newbery Medal might be close but I’m going to say “no.” No Pulitzer for Fiction was not awarded in 2012, presumably on account of the world ending, but among the nominees was Denis Johnson’s novella “Train Dreams.” Being able to slap “Almost won a Pulitzer” on the cover of your book surely improved Johnson’s sales. Now, more than a decade later, the prestige film adaptation of Johnson’s work has arrived. After being nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for “Sing Sing,” Clint Bentley has both written and directed the cinematic “Train Dreams.” It has also caught the Academy’s attention, earning nods for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Song in this year’s line-up. 

In the early years of the 20th century, Robert Grainier arrives in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He grows up into a quiet, average man. In time, he meets a woman named Gladys, believing he’s finally found his purpose in life with her. They marry, build a cabin, and have a daughter named Kate. Robert is often away from Gladys and Kate for long stretches of time, at his job clearing the forest for the in-coming railway lines. He meets many interesting and odd men in this time, including the observant eccentric Arn Peeples, and witnesses the changing tide of history. Like when a Chinese rail worker is thrown from a bridge by racist coworkers, an incident that haunts Robert. After the end of the economic boom period of World War I, Robert and Gladys attempt to restart before a wild fire destroys the cabin and seemingly takes the man’s wife and daughter from him. He persists in the woods, often living as a hermit, wrestling with his ever-present grief and continuing to watch the natural world and the changing society around it.

Bentley – whose work also includes an overlooked indie drama about the decadent and depraved lifestyles of jockeys – has sighted Terrence Malick as an influence on “Train Dreams.” Which is about as obvious a connection as can be noted. Much like Malick’s most well known work, “Train Dreams” is a quiet story about observing human life amid a vast and beautiful but pitiless natural world. The sprawling woods of Idaho in the early 1900s is made of towering trees that seemingly stretch on in all direction. Robert and his family, friends, and co-workers often appear as small figures amid these colossuses. Sometimes, a random tree limb falling from above or some other accident will take a man’s life. Because work must always continue, nothing but a quick burial, a short sermon, and a pair of boots nailed to a tree can follow. While the natural world is seemingly indifferent to the lives of those who come and go from this place, small signs of their existence remain. Such as Robert’s memories of them. This depicts “Train Dreams’” quiet but hard-to-resist insistence on one of the great contradictions of being but a frail mortal human. Our little lives do not matter, in the massive stretch of history, and yet they are also somehow the most important things to exist. 

I honestly think “Train Dreams” invokes this idea a little better than the last few Malick movies I’ve seen. Primarily because it never forgets the little insignificant bug at the center of the story, who contains a universe within. “Train Dreams’” story stretches on for a period of eighty years, tracking its protagonist’s entire life. You wouldn’t expect a hermit living out in the woods to have much of a perspective on history. Despite that, “Train Dreams” does quietly track the way industrial development completely altered human life. After the death of his wife and daughter, Robert attempts to return to logging, only to see that rougher men with chainsaws have taken over the job. During the climatic montage, he observes an airplane, a movie theater, and a televised report on the man going into outer space. A key line has one of Robert’s elders, the kind of role he ages into in time, point out that the logging industry will eventually run out of trees to cut down if they keep up at this pace. Others dismiss this observation but it is, of course, inevitably true. 

Robert’s position as a simple man in a rapidly changing time gives him perspectives on other things too. Early on in the film, he recalls the incident of a Chinese worker being seemingly murdered by a group of his coworkers. (In the book, he participates in this act, making his guilt over it much more understandable.) This is a symptom of the anti-Asian sentiment common in the decades after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Robert doesn’t even know if the man who was probably killed was Chinese exactly. During his time in the woods, he also sees a fellow logger shot to death by a black man, avenging the murder of his brother but the same white worker. All of this seems to suggest that racism was still very much a part of the American landscape despite all the technological progress being made during this time. A potent and sad fact about this country. 

While you can argue about how important or thoughtful any of the things “Train Dreams” is doing exactly are, I was wrapped up in the film for possibly a far more shallow reason. There’s something very irresistibly cozy about this motion picture. Robert’s life is one full of hardship and sorrow, especially once those he loves are taken from him. However, those years with Gladys and Kate are joyous ones, of peaceful understanding that only comes around once in a life time. Later, Robert adopts a stray wolf-dog that wanders into his cabin. There is something to be said for the experience of being a forest hermit, hanging out in the middle of nowhere with your love or your dogs. “Train Dreams” goes out of its way to make this as absorbing an experience as possible. Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography is gorgeous, sweeping and large and also as intimate and candle-lit as the material demands. Will Patton’s quiet narration, some of which taken directly from the page, lulls you into a peaceful state of mind. Joel Edgerton’s performance is one of interiority, a man who holds his stormy emotions within. And, hey, here’s William H. Macy as a folksy, wisdom spewing logger who wanders into the story briefly. Excellent use of Mr. Macy. 

In fact, “Train Dreams” had me asking some interesting questions about myself. Such as what I would have ended up doing if I was alive during this point in time. Maybe I liked the movie so much primarily because I saw something of myself in Robert Grainier, an unassuming fella with a lot of thoughts in his head. If born into the same time and place as him, I suspect I would have ended up as a naturalist too, cataloging all the different types of mushrooms or caterpillars or some such thing within the woods. That’s the kind of thing a dork like me would’ve done before computers or comic books were invented. Anyway, I liked this one. Needed more of the wolf man imagery from the book, of howling in defiance against the shadows consuming everything, which is weirdly sidelined for the most part. It remains an expertly made film that worms its way into your mind. [8/10]

Director Report Card: Paul Thomas Anderson (2025)

 

10. One Battle After Another

 

The hardcore movie lover crowd have had nothing but bad things to say about David Zaslav, the much loathed president of Warner Bros. Discovery, and none of it was exactly unearned. However, I'll give the ignorant asshole this much: Probably out of a desire for some award season glamour, he did sign off on big budgets on not the most commercial projects from beloved filmmakers. At the end of the day, all the studio bullshit and behind-the-scenes drama doesn't matter. It's the movies that last. And Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie was always likely to last. He is a highly lauded auteur. When news broke that he would be making a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, much mystery surrounded it. There were some reports that it was an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel, “Vineland.” When the title was finally revealed as “One Battle After Another,” it was finally understood to be more inspired by the book than directly adapting it. After much scrutiny from the folks who treat movies like it's sport betting, “one Battle After Another” was ultimately deemed a box office flop. But who cares, because the movie is there forever now and a lot of people sure seem to love it. 

“Ghetto” Pat was once a member of French 75, a group of underground revolutionaries who pulled stunts like freeing detainees from a prison camp or blowing up cop cars. Pat was the explosive guy and Perfidia, his partner and lover, was a woman of action. They were doggedly pursued by Colonel Lockjaw who, despite his racist beliefs, was sexually obsessed with Perfidia. Pat and Perfidia would attempt to settle down, raising the child she gave birth to together, but she eventually went back on the run. Sixteen years later, Pat – now living under the name Bob Fergusen – is a burn-out who seems widely disliked by Willa, his mixed race daughter. She heads out to a concert with some friends. They don't know that Lockjaw is attempting to join a secret order of white supremacists. That Willa is his daughter, from a forced sexual encounter with Perfidia. That his membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club is threatened by him having a mixed race daughter, that he's leading a police raid into the city to find the girl. Soon, Pat is attempting to locate where the girl has been taken and find her before Lockjaw does. 

I wasn't a big fan of Anderson's previous Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” finding it to be too shaggy and stoned-out in its humor to appeal to me. Comes with the territory with that, I know. Whatever you think about Pynchon, I think you can agree that the author has an ear for cool sounding code names. I haven't read “Vineland” and can't attest to how much of “One Battle After Another” is taken from it. However, the various code names and underground jargon in the film – Rocket Man, Junglepussy, Mae West, Lady Champagne – have that Pynchon-esque quality of being both absurd and... Kind of cool. The same is true of the film's preoccupation with the secret codes the French 75 members used to contact each other, which include a shout-out to the Hooterville trilogy. “One Battle After Another” is a movie with nuns firing machine guns, nun-chucks, skateboards, a dojo, bombs. This shit is, you could say, rad. It's all kind of silly and funny but it's also cool as fuck. 

But do you know what's definitely not cool as fuck? In “One Battle After Another,” the police and the government they work for are depicted as openly racist institutions. The authority figures are obsessed with punishing anyone darker skinned than them, every official action they make merely a flimsy justification to enforce their racist ideology. Ya know, like in real life. Immigrants are depicted as persecuted innocents, simply trying to live, a scapegoat totally outmatched by an infinitely powerful system. And violence against the government who enforces these rules is shown as never less than justified. I'm not smart enough to know if this actually means anything but a 130 million dollar studio movie starring A-listers preaching an openly pro-direct action message like that is surprising, at the very least. 

Like I said, the racist organizations in “One Battle After Another” don't pretend to have any deeper motivation for their relentless persecution of non-white people than preserving their own racial purity. And this is, it almost goes without saying, bullshit. When we meet Lockjaw, he's already lusting after Perfidia. Everything he ultimately does in the second half is motivated by his desire to cover up the fact that he has a mixed race child. In other words, this guy clearly doesn't actually believe the things he's saying. At least not so much that it overwhelms the horniness he feels for a black woman. It's also notable that the white supremacist cabal Lockjaw tries to join is called the Christmas Adventurers Club and says shit like “All hail Saint Nicholas!” This group is depicted as powerful. They have tentacles in all sectors of the government and are able to organize armed responses in minutes. They are a force to be reckoned with... But they are still fucking goofy losers. The film is simply reflecting reality here, as the grotesque absurdities of the Trump era have made it very clear how the most monstrously evil people often tend to also be clownish buffoons.

Lockjaw's uncontrollable lust for a woman of color does not seem to be an especially unusual status for an otherwise highly racist man. I suppose there is something in human nature, where we inevitably eroticize that which we have deemed forbidden. Lockjaw presents himself as a proud macho warrior man, wearing a tight shirt that shows off his guns. When he's around Perfidia, however, he seems to become sexually submissive. In the bedroom is the only place where the racist is willing to give up power. This is not the only example in the film. After Willa is born, Perfidia grows tired of motherhood, of being nothing but a parent now, and leaves. The parallels between the power imbalances and attempts to correct them in the characters' personal lives are impossible to untangle from their struggles for political power too. Maybe that's all it has ever been about. I don't know what that means exactly but it's an interesting observation. 
 

“One Battle After Another” presents Pat/Bob and Colonel Lockjaw as opposites, in many ways. One is a revolutionary, one is a cop and military officer, on opposite sides of the system as two people can be. They also have some things in common. Not only that they both have feelings for the same woman. Pat's relationship with his daughter is stressed. Willa has a nonbinary friend and her dad awkwardly struggles to understand the pronoun situation there. Later, while on the phone with another member of French 75, he expresses exasperation at terms like “safe space.” He is, in other words, an old man who is being left behind by a quickly changing world. As “woke” as an anti-government revolutionary is, he's still out of his depth among today's youth. Statements like these are not too dissimilar with the dismissive comments you'd expect a piece of shit like Lockjaw to say either. It's an interesting parallel, in how these enemies are united in their mutual old white guy-ness. 

One suspects that this is a very self-aware move on Paul Thomas Anderson's behalf. Pat is the story's protagonist. His perspective is the one the audience is aligned with. While you never can say for certain, one assumes that Anderson put a bit of himself into this guy. He's an old white guy too. That the film's hero is repeatedly mocked and humiliated for his own out-of-touch qualities shows that the director has no illusions about this behavior being admirable. Similarly, the younger characters in “One Battle After Another” have an energy and spirit beyond their elders. They are always racing around on skateboards, always energized to speak truth to power and to stand up for what is right. As the title indicates, and the ending further proves, the fight goes on. It never ends. Their parents fucked it up, they couldn't fix things, but maybe the kids will be alright. As bad as things are, maybe there's hope for the future after all. 

Ultimately though, it is intriguing that Pat is both the film's hero and a figure of mockery. Leonardo DiCaprio, once again, happily embraces a schlubby, dad-like image here that defies his years as a sex symbol. He spends almost the entire film in a bathrobe, with scraggly facial hair. He's perpetually stoned out of his mind and frequently frustrated with everything happening around him. It's really funny, DiCaprio having no problem playing the clown. He tumbles, falls, gets tossed around, and seems constantly annoyed by the serious questions being asked of him. “One Battle After Another” is not like “Inherent Vice,” where almost everyone in the story are stoned out of their gourds the whole time. Pat is the fool in a cast full of straight men, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn act like distinctively in-control and cool minded individuals in comparison to Leo's stumbling around. It's an amusing set-up for a film, a guy forced back into action after spending thirty years smoking and drinking his brains away.

At the same time, “One Battle After Another” is regularly powered by Johnny Greenwood's high-strung score. It's made up of escalating notes. Scenes of Pat arguing on a pay phone with someone or fumbling around a dojo are obviously funny. At the same time, a mixture of his own incompetence and the pressure mounting around him means he could get caught. There's a feeling all throughout the film of the walls closing in, of the powerful forces at work in the government zeroing in on the radical heroes. The film explodes into violence frequently in the last third, which actually does little to alleviate this tension. It feels like another set of screws being put to the viewer. The film honestly made me feel rather anxious at times, Anderson and his team doing a great job of making the viewer feel the same jittery uncertainty that the hero is feeling.

It's not an unexpected tone from the director of “There Will Be Blood” or “Boogie Nights.” At the same time, you can almost see why – beyond the award season glamour – a profits-obsessed CEO would sign off on this movie. Is “One Battle After Another,” in fact, Anderson's go at making a proper action movie? From the inciting incident on, the film is in almost constant movement. DiCaprio spends most of the run time in literal pursuit of his daughter, often from the seat of a car. The last third features multiple shoot-outs, an explosion, an acrobatic car crash. The camera is often attached to the front of a moving vehicle as it spends along desert highways. In other words, there's a lot of what you'd call “action” in this movie and it's all very well executed. I don't think this is the director auditioning for a “Mission: Impossible” movie or anything but it's definitely somewhat, kind of abreast with that type of film making. 

As you'd probably expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson production, “One Battle After Another” is simply an excellent looking film. Michael Bauman is back as cinematographer, after gifting “Licorice Pizza” with its textured, deep look. He creates something similarly rich here. Individual shots stick in the mind. Kids on skateboards leaping across roof tops in the golden moonlight, fog behind them. A nun with a gun firing away in the dark. An erection bulging at the forefront of the frame. The editing, from Andy Jurgensen, is similarly precise. A shot of Willa sitting at a table, moments before a heavily armed squad marches into the room, is so perfectly constructed. The comedic timing and anxious mood are both created by cuts that are ideally arranged.
 

I don't think I liked the film quite as much as others did. While not on the level of grand cinematic shit-posting that “Inherent Vice” was at, “One Battle After Another” shares some of that shaggy-dog vibes with the other Pynchon adaptation. The ideas in the film are serious, the performances are very well done, the writing and construction are carefully place. But the silliness on the surface often suggests a looseness. For a film that's 164 minutes long, it certainly moves quickly though. Maybe if Anderson finally gets an Oscar for this one, he'll have another chance to make a film of this scale. If not, this is pretty damn good for his first strike at directing a big budget action flick. And, hey, maybe it'll radicalize some kids or at least teach young people to hate the fucking cops. Maybe there's hope for the future in the real world too, no matter if life is but one struggle after another, on and on until the end of time. [Grade: B+]

 

OSCARS 2026: Nominations and Predictions

 

What was supposed to be the opening paragraph for my annual run-down of the Oscar nominations instead turned into its own lengthy rant. So I won't waste any more time. Here are my sure-to-be wildly inaccurate predictions and reflections upon 2026's slate of Academy Award nominated motion pictures. 

 

BEST PICTURE: 

People who treat cinema too like sports betting have debated whether Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" made enough money to justify what Warner Bros. spent on it. Which is a silly question, as the movie clearly resonated with audiences and was one of the year's best reviewed titles. Now, it has received 16 Oscar nominations, more than any other film this year and more than any other film ever before. 

Predictably, this has led to a backlash, folks who previously loved the movie saying a bloody vampire yarn doesn't deserve Best Picture. Or that it only got so many nominations out of white liberal guilt causing the pasty Academy voters to overrate the movie. That this isn't the right kind of black cinema that should be recognized. There might be some truth to the former point and I'm certainly not going to weigh in on the latter. I'll simply say that "Sinners" was also my favorite film of 2025 and I don't think that's because I'm trying too hard to prove how not-racist I am. I think it's because "Sinners" rocks. 

I'm sure people will continue to argue this point up until Oscar night. If "Sinners" doesn't win Best Picture, I expect the talking point to immediately shift back to #OscarsSoWhite territory. Every prognosticator right now says Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" is the film most likely to spoil the vampire flick's success. It's a fine film, still pulpier than your usual Oscar Bait, and very relevant to the troubled times we are living in. When you combine that with the likelihood of Academy voters turning their noses up at a vampire movie or the sense that PTA is overdue for some Oscar gold, the odds of "One Battle After Another" scooping up the top prize increases. 

That two quirky – by the standard of Best Picture nominees – movies such as these are facing off points towards 2026 being a somewhat unusual slate. Is there any "normal" Oscar Bait this year? "F1," probably. "Marty Supreme" and "Hamnet," being character centric dramas about a difficult sports champ and the personal life of the Bard, would normally classify. However, even those movies are grittier in focus or more indie in their aesthetic than we typically expect from For Your Consideration campaigns. It certainly says something about this line-up that a new "Frankenstein" movie is the closest thing to the usual prestige costume drama, sweeping epic about the courage of the human spirit that is on the plate this year. 

For further evidence of this, look at the flicks rounding up the category. "Train Dreams" is a whispery drama, admittedly one based on a beloved novel. "The Secret Agent" is a Brazilian film. "Bugonia" is surely among the most aggressively off-beat movies ever nominated in this category. "Sentimental Value," a well observed drama partially set in the film industry, would likely be the expected winner in a different year and even it is a smaller production made outside the Hollywood system. 

I can't say if this is a sign of changing taste or anything. Every step forward the Academy makes is usually followed by them giving "Green Book" or "CODA" Best Picture. But it does seem to be indicative of something to me, of either a younger crowd making up more of the AMPAS voting body, a indicator of a studio system utterly afraid of creative risks, or simply a reflection of the chaotic times we are all living in. So who will win? 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
"Sinners"

BEST ACTOR:

"One Battle After Another" and "Sinners" are going head-to-head in most of the top categories this year. Amusingly, Best Actor does not seem to be one where either film is likely to succeed. I think Michael B. Jordan would be my personal pick, if only because he is actually giving two excellent performances. Leo DiCaprio in "OBAA" seems currently to have the buzzier buzz of the performances.

And if Leo hasn't already climbed inside a dead horse, I think he would be a lock. Instead, another award being given out to honor a star's legacy more so than one performance has a lock on Best Actor. I don't mean Ethan Hawke in "Blue Moon," a movie that seems to have gotten little attention outside of Hawke's performance. 

Nah, this moment belongs to Timmy. Yanno, I still don't know if Chalamet is an actor I find enormously compelling. He's pretty good and I've liked him in a couple of things. I have no opinion on the conversation over whether he misled us all by merely cosplaying as a sensitive soft boy, when he's actually a crass, Kylie dating dude-bro. (Other than finding it kind of funny.) However, it seems clear to me that Chalamet has been shaping a narrative around himself as the Next Great Leading Man by keenly picking a smart mix of indie fair and hipper big budget vehicles. Last year's Bob Dylan movie was his big swing for an Oscar and he was on the campaign trail boldly declaring himself the Greatest of All Time. This was a tactic that clearly positioned him as this year's Best Actor winner via pure inertia, whether "Marty Supreme" ended up being any good or not. And Academy voters tend to find narratives like that hard to resist. Sorry, Wagner Moura. Better luck next time.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Timothee Chalamet for "Marty Supreme."

BEST ACTRESS: 

If you had asked me a few months back what the safest bet for Best Picture would be, I would've gone with "Hamnet." A story of Shakespeare's wife grieving the loss of her child and how it influences her husband's creative process seemed like a good mixture of currently trendy elements and evergreen respectable topics. However, the rivalry between "Sinners" and "One Battle" has pushed "Hamnet" into third place or lower in most of the big categories... Except for Best Actress. Jessie Buckley's emotional tidal wave of a performance has been earmarked as an Oscar winner since the movie first showed up on the festival circuit. 

The only name that seems likely a possible spoiler for Buckley's success is Ross Byrne in "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You." Among the Film Twitter, this is definitely the coolest of this year's noms and Byrne is the fan favorite to win. However, the Academy didn't seem to like the movie as much. If the tide of buzz and hype doesn't shift in the next month, I think Byrne is destined to be the runner-up. 

Emma Stone getting nominated for "Bugonia" is further proof the voters liked that one more than I expected. It also feels like residual good will from "Poor Thing's" success last year. Renate Reinsve is the newcomer, an unknown plucked out of obscurity for "Sentimental Value" and suddenly among the industry's biggest names. It's a nice story but I don't think she'll win. 

2026 has been surprisingly devoid of "villain" movies, widely disliked or panned motion pictures that inexplicably charmed Academy members. "Wicked: For Good" and "Jay Kelly" were both locked out. "The Smashing Machine" got pushed into a single nomination in Makeup and Hairstyling. Nobody seems that enthusiastic about "F1" but nobody seems to hate it either. That leaves one movie long proclaimed utterly mid somehow sneaking in a major nomination: Kate Hudson for "Sing Sung Blues," the biopic about Neil Diamond impersonators. I've already seen one person bemoaning that Hudson stole the spot that rightfully belonged to "Sorry, Baby's" Eva Victor and I'm sure there are plenty of other choices that would've rounded out this category. But the Academy's unpredictable tendency to sneak some random bullshit in is part of what makes them fun, at least for me anyway. (At least until I have to watch the bad movies.)

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Jessie Buckley for "Hamnet."

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

One of the things about "Sinners" that so delighted and surprised me was Delroy Lindo's incredibly textured, lived-in, funny performance. It's the type of acting that makes you go "Wow, this guy is great." Despite that, nobody expected Lindo to get an Oscar nomination because he's mostly been left out of award season. Maybe the Academy realized they fucked up when they passed Lindo over for "Da 5 Bloods" a while back. Either way, I'm really happy they selected him. 

Maybe Lindo sneaked in because Best Supporting Actor doesn't have a sure-fire winner this year. The attempt to campaign Paul Mascel in "Hamnet" for this category, despite him clearly being the lead, seemed to have backfired. That didn't only leave room for Lindo but also for "One Battle After Another" to take up two slots. Personally, between Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn, I probably would've nominated the latter. 

Who does that leave to win? Even the people who didn't like Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" that much seemed to praise Jacob Elordi's take on the creature. I liked him too and, obviously, I think it would be awesome if somebody won an Oscar for playing Frankenstein's monster. However, Elordi is still young. He hasn't taken his lumps as a character actor or Hollywood star. Stellan Skarsgård, meanwhile, has been giving memorable turns in smaller productions, worked with a murderer's row of beloved auteurs, sired some famous sons, and lent his particular gravitas to big budget flicks for years now. Somehow, he's never been nominated for an Oscar in all that time. "Sentimental Value" has changed that and I expect that the common idea will be that the 74 year old industry veteran has earned a win too. 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Stellan Skarsgård for "Sentimental Value."

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: 

The Academy, in fact, really liked "Sentimental Value." Elle Fanning's supporting turn in that one has been widely praised and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her was expected. (Kind of surprising that this is the first nomination for anyone in the Fanning Dynasty.) However, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas' nomination for the same film was a bit of a surprise. The Swedish actress was pretty much entirely unknown over here before this film so it was nice that she got noticed.

Elle still has a decent shot at winning but I think a few other names are outshining her at the moment. Wunmi Mosaku has picked up a laundry list of nominations from various critics award shows and ceremonies but not too many wins. This is a bummer, since she's the heart and soul of “Sinners,” in my opinion. There's a part of me that wonders if she'll pull off a surprise win with the Academy.

But probably not. How about another horror movie that managed to move pass the Academy's stigma against the macabre stuff to earn a nomination? My sarcastic prediction that “Weapons” would follow in “Get Out's” footsteps and win a Best Original Screenplay Oscar did not come to pass. However, Creggor's clever tale of witchcraft in a small town did sneak into Best Supporting Actress. This makes sense, as Amy Madigan's turn as Aunt Gladys was one of the few times last year when someone pointed at a character in a movie and shouted, “Oh, this is the one people are going to remember in twenty years.” Essaying such an immediately striking character certainly should be enough to give Madigan the win and there's still a slight chance of that. I still am getting the general impression that, while “Weapons” might be the kind of movie to be nominated for an Oscar, it is not the kind of movie that wins an Oscar.

Alright, so who is the probable winner in this category? Teyana Taylor in “One Battle After Another” has less screen time than any of the other principal characters in the film. However, the impression she makes on the audience is such that her shadow floats over the entire story. That's some real star power, when someone is felt even long after they have exited the story. I suspect this will lead Taylor to a win.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Tetayna Taylor for “One Battle After Another.”

 

BEST DIRECTOR:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are notoriously bad at recognizing generational talent in their generation. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, which is maybe why great artist are inevitably passed over for their best movies and instead get an Oscar as essentially a Lifetime Achievement Award. Call this the “Scent of a Woman” Award. Not that I am implying that “One Battle After Another” is Paul Thomas Anderson hoo-ha-ing it up. I liked the movie, plenty. However, it definitely says something that the Academy forgot to give this beloved, critically adored auteur an Oscar for “There Will Be Blood” or “Magnolia.” That enough time has passed for someone to realize that they fucked up. That a Best Director Oscar is considerably overdue for this gentleman. 

So P.T. is a lock for Best Director, right? People much more clued into these sort of things than me seem to think so. However, there's this gnawing sense in me that Ryan Coogler probably should win. I have no doubt that the heated race between these two will continue up until the night of the ceremony. I would love it if Anderson finally got his Best Director statue. However, I cannot overlook the sense that Coogler is the one that really earned it this year. 

What about the rest of the slate? Chloe Zhao won a couple years back and I don't think “Hamnet” speaks to the moment quite as specifically as “Nomadland” did. Everybody I follow on Twitter loves the Safdie brothers' previous movies. I suspect that the Academy is a bit late catching up with that reputation with these two as well. The brothers are no longer directing together but Josh did grabbed a nom for “Marty Supreme.” This leaves Joachim Trier to round out the slate. The warm reception that greeted “The Worst Person in the World” a few years back was clearly a precursor to the Academy embracing “Sentimental Value.” Trier is also, quite clearly, standing in fifth place.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Ryan Coogler for “Sinners.'

 

BEST WRITING:

I feel like I'm repeating myself here but 2026 truly is looking to be the battle between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” Notably, both films are nominated on opposing sides of the Best Screenplay categories. It seems almost inevitable that the Academy will split the difference, handing “Sinners” Original Screenplay and “Battle” Adapted Screenplay. This showdown is dominating things to the degree that the rest of the Screenplay line-up feels almost uninspired. The voters basically split the two categories between most of the Best Picture nominees. “Marty,” “Hamnet,” “Frankenstein,” “Bugnoia,” “Train Dreams,” and “Sentimental Value” all got their expected nods.

This makes the outliers almost more worthy of discussion. Aside from Ethan Hawke's notice in Best Actor, “Blue Moon” picked up an Original Screenplay notice. One of the more prominent snubs of this season has been “It Was Just an Accident” – among 2025's best reviewed motion picture – being left out of the Best Picture race. It scored a token nomination within the International Film category but, outside of that, Original Screenplay is the only place it managed to reappear. I didn't quite understand that movie, like at all, but I fully expect others to use this exclusion as further evidence of the Academy being out of touch or whatnot. 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.”

BEST MUSIC:

“It Was Just An Accident” is a million miles away, in terms of content and intended viewers, from another much discussed 2025 release. Critics adored the former while a mass audience went absolutely crazy for “KPop Demon Hunters.” However, the two films are united by me not really understanding either of them. I especially did not understand why so many have found the songs in “KPop Demon Hunters” so infectious. They all sounded equally overproduced to me! “Golden” is built on overpowering bass thumps and walls of processed pop sound. This overcomes breathy and soaring vocals that scan to me as more mumbled than distinct and generic lyrics about believing in yourself and realizing your own potential, when you can actually hear or understand what is being sung at all. It's kind of catchy, the same way the flu is, because it's been expertly engineered and designed to hit all the right rises and falls that burrow into your ear. Pop music like this is, to use a Twitter meme, all hype moments and aura and zero substance to my ears. However, “Golden” is a massive crossover hit, the likes of which we haven't seen since at least “We Don't Talk About Bruno.” The Academy fucked up real bad with that one but I don't expect that to be the case here. “Golden” will win Best Original Song because it must. The forces of cultural inertia are simply too powerful to resist. 

That “Golden” is definitely going to win is dispiriting for another reason. Last year, Diane Warren received an honorary Oscar. I had hoped this would bring an end to the running gag of nominating her in the Best Original Song category – for whatever random-ass movie she made a song for that year – but never giving her an actual win. Instead, someone made a whole documentary about Warren. Of course, she wrote a new song for it and, of course, it had to be nominated. “Dear Me,” like so many of Warren's composition, is fine. There's a pretty piano melody in there, under the crushing pop mixing. Kesha's vocals are alright, the lyrics of self-realization and empathy are okay. Not a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Better next year, Diane?

Speaking of random-ass movies! It simply would not be a proper Oscar nomination line-up if some movie not a single soul had heard of before didn't sneak in somewhere. This year's mystery pick was “Viva Verdi!,' a documentary about opera singers that had about forty views on Letterboxd before the nominations were announced. “Sweet Dreams of Joy” is the song. Opera is not typically my genre but this is pretty. Simple but immediately striking piano keys are combined with the kind of singing that impressively dances up and down the musical scale, before the expected inspiring strings join in. Hey, that's nice.

The respected rock poet contributing to the Best Song slate this year is Nick Cave, who performs the title song for “Train Dreams.” Cave's grumbling singing and elaborately twisting words – this is a song about seeing weird shit on the frontier – have almost reached the level of self-parody by now. But I like this kind of bullshit so I can get plenty out of the song. Bryce Dessner's backing music builds on this nicely. 

“I Lied to You” from “Sinners” contributed to probably the coolest moment in what is one of last year's coolest movies. I'm too much of a white boy to have much insight into the nuances of the blues but the guitar picking, soulful singing, and jangly piano keys sound cool as hell to me. That's before “I Lied to You” manages to synthasize about a dozen different styles of soul music from across the last fifty years, turning the song into a concussive history lesson on the evolution of blues' influence. As among 2025's most striking musical moments, it should win Best Original Song but I don't think HUNTRX can be defeated. 

I expect “Sinners'” loss in Best Song will be vindicated by Ludwig Göransson's soundtrack winning Best Original Score. The mixture of traditional blues and folk music with harder rock guitar, bursts of action movie energy, and spiritual choirs is clearly the stand-out among the nominees in this category. Jonny Greenwood's “One Battle After Another” score is a nice blend of sparser sounds, lusher orchestration, and some quirkier intrigue here and there that add a lot of texture. 

Alexandre Desplat's score for “Frankenstein” certainly sounds like what you would expect from a grand, costume drama adaptation of a classic work of horror literature and it's good at it. But I wish it embraced those bolder, more gothic sounds more often. Max Richter's “Hamnet” score is built on waves of emotional strings that swell and swell and suits a film about interior lives and heavy emotions. It's a bit too minimalist to be listen to on its own though. I like Jerskin Fendrix's “Bugonia” score when it builds to grander themes or delves into some electronic weirdness, not so much when it focuses on brooding dissonance or slowly simmering moods of anxiety. 

 

OTHER FILM CATEGORIES:

I do like that the Academy has not stuck International Features entirely to their own category these days. On one hand, it is definitely nice that Academy voters are no longer satisfied to seclude a film to the International Features category simply because it is in another language. Obviously, "Sentimental Value" – the probable winner – and "The Secret Agent" both managed to break out in big ways while "It Was Just An Accident" and "Sirat" at least secured one other nomination. However, the tendency to simply elect the same dozen films in as many categories as possible has ended up limiting International Features a little. If this award is designed to bring attention to other films made outside of the U.S., it has backfired a little if three or four slots are taken up by movies people obviously already know about. "The Voice of Hind Rajab," from Tunisia, is the sole nominee in this category that didn't branch out into any other area. Considering the International Feature line-up is still limited to whatever the other countries around the world submit, this means fewer international movies are going to get the Academy spotlight. 

Animation, on the other hand, is still largely corralled into its own ghetto. Disney and Pixar ate up two slots in Best Animated Feature with "Zootopia 2" and "Elio." While the former is currently the highest grossing animated movie in history, I again expect the pop culture phenomenon of "KPop Demon Hunters" to win. It is nice that two smaller films, "Little Amelie" and "Arco," managed to sneak in. Even if AMPAS members refuse to recognize animation across the board.

I've fallen into a bad habit of not knowing most of the nominees for Best Documentary Feature. That's because streamers like Netflix and Paramount+ have made themselves the home for a lot of buzzy docs. On one hand, that's good because it gives films that probably wouldn't have a wider audience more viewership. On the other hand, you're still not likely to see these docs advertised on the front page of the application. Meaning you won't know they are there unless you already have Heard of them. The only documentaries I see on the top page of my streaming apps are trashy, true crime shit. Excuse me if I tend to filter out streaming exclusives as worthy of less attention. Anyway, the only docs I've heard any buzz about is "The Perfect Neighbor." Does that mean it will win? I don't know.

 

MISCELLANEOUS:

One of my favorite movies from last year was "The Ugly Stepsister," an extremely gruesome and beautifully made Norwegian film that put a body horror spin on the old "Cinderella" story. It was announced a while back that the movie was on the Academy shortlist for Best Costumes and Make-Up and Hairstyling, which surprised me. Shudder exclusives do not typically catch the Academy's eyes. Well, the film was passed over for Costumes. Voters had to make room for "Avatar: Fire and Ash" there, raising questions about whether computer generated costumes count. However, "The Ugly Stepsister" did receive a nod in Best Makeup. It's not as funny as some grisly gore-fest getting that Oscar gold but this one is still pretty gross, so I'm satisfied. Makeup was actually kind of an unpredictable lineup this year. "Frankenstein" – probably gonna win – and "Sinners" were safe assumptions but this is the first I've heard of Japanese Kabuki drama "Kokuho." The Rock's stab at being taken seriously as an actor, "The Smashing Machine," failed to get noticed in any other category but this one. Hopefully Dwayne's mountains of money will comfort him. 

This year also saw the inclusion of the first new category in something like fifty years. It wasn't the much teased Best Stunts category, which still hasn't quite made the cut. Instead, we know have Best Casting to consider. Does this mean hardworking casting directors for otherwise overlooked motion pictures got nominated? Lol no, the Academy just nominated the same five movies here as they did everywhere else. That's starting to become a real problem around these parts. "Frankenstein" is actually the front runner in several technical categories, like Costumes and Production Design. Makes this old monster kid feel proud. (The movie also earned a Cinematography nod, despite how many people I saw online saying the film looked too dark or flat. Who is more full of shit, Film Twitter agitators or Academy members?) "Avatar," of course, is expected to win Visual Effects. However, that category did contain a few surprises. Remember when Paul Greengrass was still a big deal? He made some disaster movie called "The Lost Bus" this year that completely slipped pass my radar but the Visual Effects arm of the Academy must have been impressed by it. Another surprise was "Jurassic World Rebirth" getting a nomination here. This is somehow the first time any entry into the much loathed "Jurassic World" sub-series has gotten an Oscar nomination. I mean, say what you will about those movies but the digital effects in them are always fantastic. I would say "Rebirth's" effects team genuinely does deserve the notice here. But maybe I'm dinosaur bias.

 

 

Realizing that having a host that actually likes movies and enjoys doing bits about them worked out nicely, the Academy has decided to invite Conan O'Brien back to host this year. He was delightful so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to a whole month of movie watching now.