Josh Watched #29: Oscars Cheat Sheet 2025
Hi! Welcome to this year’s edition of my annual joke: that awards season is my second favorite season, behind summer and ahead of whatever the other three are (who can remember?). Now that that’s out of the way, this year’s Conan O’Brien–hosted Oscars are Sunday night at 7 pm ET, and while I haven’t seen all the nominees — sorry, short films and stuff only nominated for Original Song — I’ve seen most of them. Below I’ll offer thoughts on each in case you need talking points for your watch party, and below that you’ll find my picks for what will win (not what should win) on the big night. There’s a lot to read, so let’s get to it.
Quickly, though, if you’re a longtime reader of Josh Watched — thanks! — you’ll know that for the past few years I’ve run a team in Vulture’s fantasy awards league, which is like a fantasy sports league but for flicks instead of kicks. Longtime readers will also know I never do particularly well in the final tallies, which I attribute to a combination of bad lack and not reading the scoring rules closely. (In other words, it’s mostly not my fault, I swear!) This year I tried to game the system by running three teams, each with a different combination of box office appeal and trophy potential. My savvy strategy, which I felt pretty good about a few months ago…did not work. As of this writing my most successful team is staring up at the leaderboard from (refreshes page) 7,755th place. Alas. Maybe 2026 will be my year.
And lastly, maybe you don’t care about the trophies or the ceremony, and just want to know which nominees I’d most enthusiastically harangue you to watch. For those viewers, folks who straddle the line between discerning and stubborn, here’s the list (hint: it’s the flicks whose write-ups have images): A Different Man, Flow, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Dune: Part Two, The Girl with the Needle, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Better Man, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail, No Other Land. And what the hell, watch The Substance too, because it’s pretty wild. Voilà.
OK, in no particular order, here’s what Josh Watched thinks of this year’s Oscars…
Best Picture Nominees
There are 10 flicks that could take home the most prestigious prize of the night. In alphabetical order:
Anora
Also nom’d for: Director, Leading Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Editing
I liked the first half of this flick, which follows a stripper (Mikey Madison) who’s hired as an escort by and becomes smitten with the son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a very rich Russian man. Their flirtation and courtship are a fun whirlwind of money, sex, and travel, flecked with Eydelshteyn’s weirdo energy. The second half, though, devolves into a long, boring screaming match between the stripper and the rich guy’s goons, which tries to be screwball but is just grating. I do like writer-director Sean Baker (his 2017 movie The Florida Project is exquisite), but I’m not really sure why Anora is so acclaimed. On the plus side, if this one takes Best Pic (it’s widely considered the frontrunner, but there’s reason to anticipate an upset) it’ll be the raunchiest thing to win in years. Remember Oppenheimer’s sex scenes? Oy.
The Brutalist
Also nom’d for: Director, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Score, Production Design
It’s hard not to be impressed by the ambition of the third feature from director Brady Corbet, a tale of wealth, art, immigration, antisemitism, and trauma in postwar Pennsylvania. Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) moves to the US for the hope of a better life, eventually finding himself in the employ of millionaire wannabe-art-patron Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who wants to build a grand community center to help cement his legacy. Conflict ensues between benefactor and benefactee. The story’s setup is promising, but too often you can feel it pointing emphatically at its Big Themes instead of folding them smoothly into the proceedings. I give the flick an A for effort and a B for execution — but extra points since Corbet made this thing for a mere $10 million, so, B+? If you see it, see it on the biggest screen possible.
A Complete Unknown
Also nom’d for: Director, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Sound
If a biopic fails to tell you enough about its subject, or can’t, is that actually a failure? If the subject is Bob Dylan, a famously aloof shape-shifter, maybe not. The only songwriter to win a Pulitzer has long resisted attempts to categorize and contain him, leaving a trail of temporary identities in his wake. Todd Haynes’s excellent I’m Not There skirted the issue by casting six actors to play six of those identities. A Complete Unknown, which chronicles four years at the beginning of the singer’s career, leading up to the 1965 “Dylan goes electric” scandal at the Newport Folk Festival, doesn’t have that luxury. It relies instead on one actor, It boy of the moment Timothée Chalamet, who does all right at aloof and brusque but doesn’t capture the enticing mystery of the man. Which means the character rests on the strength of the songs — and boy, what songs. Still, you get the feeling that if this is all the movie can grok of Dylan, another actor would have done just fine. Better are the various people around Chalamet, and the craft categories. They’re the reason to see this, from the ‘60s production design to, especially, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez; she’s so magnetic and alive that one wishes the movie were about her.
Conclave
Also nom’d for: Leading Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Editing, Score, Production Design
A potboiler that turns the papal selection process into a tense, behind-closed-doors thriller. Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the guy running the show and balancing the egos vying for power, and actually the whole cast is pretty good — Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, and more. The plot keeps you interested without blowing you away (I saw the ending coming about an hour in), which is kind of my main feeling about the picture. It’s all good, but for me nothing here really screams “This needs an Oscar” or “People will be talking about this in 30 years.” I’d still watch it if you haven’t, though. Sometimes just being entertaining is enough.
Dune: Part Two
Also nom’d for: Cinematography, Production Design, Sound, Visual Effects
I found the first Dune underwhelming, but then I realized the things I didn’t like about the movie were actually things I don’t like about the book. That’s still true here, and while the plot remains lackluster — more metaphor than story I’m invested in — the visuals and production design of this flick are staggering. Director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner: 2049) is one of the premier world-builders in the business; there’s a decent chance the next time I watch Dune: Part Two it’ll be with the sound off, vibing to this jaw-dropping universe. If only there were a way to Photoshop out Timothée Chalamet, who lacks the gravitas and charisma to lead anybody to anything or against anyone.
Emilia Pérez
Also nom’d for: Director, Leading Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Score, Song (two nominations), International Feature, Sound
Where to start with this movie, which has been racking up plaudits for reasons unknown to me. I mean, golly — 13 nominations? For this? The story follows Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer in Mexico who’s contacted by a mysterious client for a mysterious job. The client turns out to be a cartel kingpin who’s transitioning and wants Rita’s help to start a new life, which includes sending the wife and kids to Switzerland for safety. Trouble is, a few years later the cartel boss, now known as Emilia Pérez, wants her family back. The movie has been criticized for retrograde trans representation (did I mention it’s also a musical? The song about Emilia’s litany of surgeries is memorably cringey) and for a lack of Mexican anything — actors, locations, and so on (the flick was shot in France). If that’s not enough for you, Emilia Pérez, besides its false progressiveness, just isn’t very good; it’s undercooked and doesn’t hang together; it’s neither serious enough nor campy enough. I’d skip this flick altogether and watch director Jacques Audiard’s far better stuff, starting with crime thriller A Prophet.
Nickel Boys
Also nom’d for: Adapted Screenplay
Director and cowriter RaMell Ross came to my attention a few years ago, when his wonderful documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening was acclaimed by the few movie scribes I trust on the way to being nominated for an Oscar. Like that movie, Nickel Boys is an impressionistic, empathetic portrait of Black lives. In the 1960s Elwood is a high school student who’s hitchhiking to take a college class when the car he’s in is pulled over and he finds out it was stolen. Unfairly blamed, Elwood is sent to a brutal reform school, one based on a real school where the students were beaten, abused, and even killed; years later dozens of unmarked graves were found on the grounds. At the Nickel Academy, Elwood meets Turner, a fellow student who becomes his closest friend, and their bond is part of what gives the movie its power. The other part is the flick’s formal conceit: it’s shot almost entirely from a first-person point of view, alternately behind Elwood’s eyes or Turner’s. That shift in perspective is a remarkable storytelling device, especially given the stories about Black people that usually get nominated for Oscars (say, 12 Years a Slave). It’s one thing to see the atrocities of our country’s history; it’s another to see them happening to “you.”
The Substance
Also nom’d for: Director, Leading Actress, Original Screenplay, Makeup and Hairstyling
A well-established actress is fired from her TV show for the crime of turning 50. She’s offered a drug that makes her birth (via a gaping hole in her back) a dewy, nubile, 20-something version of herself. Every seven days, she’s told, the two versions must trade places, one going dormant for a week. Break that contract and she’ll invite trouble. Wouldn’t you know, spending more and more time as the young one becomes increasingly tempting, and in short order the results are horrific. This satire of ageism and Hollywood cruelty has zero chill; it’s cranked to 11 at all times. Is it a good movie? It’s definitely a lot of movie. For me there’s not quite enough, er, substance here — the flick goes bigger when it should go deeper. The whole thing is metaphorical until it suddenly turns literal, making text of subtext. There’s a difference between sledgehammering beauty standards and sledgehammering the viewer. On the other hand, I’m not likely to forget the movie anytime soon. And I can’t wait to see what Coralie Fargeat (only the, sigh, ninth woman ever nominated for Best Director) does next.
Wicked
Also nom’d for: Leading Actress, Supporting Actress, Costume Design, Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Score, Production Design, Sound, Visual Effects
I haven’t seen the Broadway show, so this was my first experience of Wicked. And I have to say: these songs are mostly forgettable. While the picture’s craft is often impressive — the sets and costumes all look great — this world doesn’t feel as detailed as something like Harry Potter. There’s more than one way to world-build, of course, and not everything can or has to be Harry Potter. But given the ambition on display here, I wanted a little more. Cynthia Erivo is wonderful, Ariana Grande is better than expected, and I was more or less along for the ride — spending time in Oz has always been a gas — until we reach the Emerald City, which is when the movie’s jarring tonal shifts take over. Like, in one scene Elphaba and Galinda are having fun and going from frenemies to besties, and in the next scene the goat teacher is being dragged out of his classroom by racist (animalist?) thugs. The whole anti-animal storyline feels flown in from another movie; the theme of being an outsider probably could have carried a lot of this. Also, the citizens of Oz seem like total dum-dums — any halfway intelligent schemer could have become their revered wizard. Also also, am I the only one for whom “shiz” was teen slang for “shit”? Every time Shiz University came onscreen, I cackled.
Haven’t Seen
I’m Still Here (also nom’d for: Leading Actress, International Feature), which I didn’t have time to see in theaters but is considered a dark horse in all its categories
Other Nominees
And here’s the rest of the bunch.
Inside Out 2
Nom’d for: Animated Feature
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all very polished, and the mechanics of this 13-year-old mind are certainly thought out (they’re both convoluted and explained clearly), but the plot is essentially the same as the first Inside Out — as is my main critique. To wit: brains don’t work this way. Riley feels like a result of the mental representation Pixar devised, rather than a person whose inner workings produced the representation, and that makes it hard to feel like anything is at stake. What, somehow joy et al. are going to be banished from a person’s brain forever? The whole thing is more clever than affecting or emotionally true.
Better Man
Nom’d for: Visual Effects
Of all the nominees about apes, this is almost certainly the best. It’s definitely certainly the best of the musical nominees, the best music biopic since Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and the best music biopic starring an ape that I’ve ever seen.
Alien: Romulus
Nom’d for: Visual Effects
I love the Alien movies, so I’ll never be sad to see a new one, even if it’s unlikely to reach the heights of the OG flick and the first sequel (which the brightest minds in Hollywood dubbed Aliens). Romulus, though, isn’t bad, a reboot-with-young-actors of the franchise led by Cailee Spaeny, who played Priscilla Presley in Priscilla and who here is the heir to OG series heroine Ripley. The flick follows the template: humans discover xenomorph, xenomorph chases humans, humans run and hide and scream. Business as usual, and the sets and creature designs look great. Yet the characters aren’t especially engaging, the callbacks to the earlier flicks are plentiful and pleased with themselves (when a 20-something quotes a famous Ripley line, I eye-rolled hard), and the ending is a…memorable addition to the mythology. Still, it’s worth seeking out for sci-fi/horror fans. I expected this umpteenth sequel to let me down more than it did.
The Apprentice
Nom’d for: Leading Actor, Supporting Actor
An origin story (as opposed to the origin story) of Donald Trump, who Sebastian Stan plays — or underplays, and nicely — in a role that slightly humanizes him while thinking through how he became the person we know. The “how” is largely supplied by Jeremy Strong, whose ghoulish lawyer/fixer, Roy Cohn, gives Trump his three golden rules: always attack, never admit defeat, never admit mistakes. Watching Strong play the Sith Lord to Stan’s, well, apprentice is twistedly fun, but the movie doesn’t ever really get Trump. It’s like someone studied his ideas and mannerisms, then reverse-engineered a script to connect the dots between past and present. We see what he does but not who he is. That said, it’s worth watching for Stan (who’s even better in fellow nominee, and far superior, A Different Man) and for Strong, who’s fantastic and probably doomed to lose Supporting Actor to his Succession costar Kieran Culkin.
Nosferatu
Nom’d for: Cinematography, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design
Writer-director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) is gifted at texture and detail, but less so at satisfying emotional through-lines. He’s a keen crafter of physical worlds, but his narrative ones don’t always hit the mark. While this Nosferatu (the vampire, not the movie) is creepy enough and finds a new, albeit slightly confusing, take on the monster, I found it hard to shake the “Why?” of remaking the classic 1922 horror flick. The characters don’t feel like people so much as templates doing a light update of what they did 100 years ago.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Nom’d for: Animated Feature
Boy, does this movie hit my sweet spot. Lovingly, absurdly detailed stop-motion. Themes of technology run amok (gently roasted by the hand-crafted animation) and hubristic inventors (why even give your evil gnome an “evil” setting??). A sense of humor so wonderfully silly that I guffawed more than once while watching on a train. A criminal mastermind penguin who, at different points, sweats, shaves, strokes its chin thoughtfully, and pets a seal on its lap like a cat. The whole flick is enormously pleasant and gorgeously alive.
A Different Man
Nom’d for: Makeup and Hairstyling
A marvelous, marvelously twisty black thriller on identity and appearance; kind of a body horror movie in reverse. Edward dreams of being an actor, and among the things in his way, besides severe lack of confidence, is neurofibromatosis, which makes tumors grow all over his face. He’s also crushing on his new neighbor, a pretty playwright. Then he takes part in an experimental medical procedure that cures his condition, giving him a new face and a new life. Now unrecognizable and calling himself Guy, Edward is cast in the play; things seem to be looking up for him. One day another man with neurofibromatosis, Oswald, shows up at the theater, and he’s everything Edward/Guy isn’t: confident, funny, smooth with the ladies. People take to Oswald in a way they never did to Edward/Guy — in fact, everything about Oswald seems like a better, more blessed version of Edward. And before long it seems like the newcomer is taking over his life. This is probably my favorite of all the Oscar nominees this year.
Memoir of a Snail
Nom’d for: Animated Feature
With a visual style that splits the difference between grotesque and ugly (I mean that as a compliment), this weird, dryly funny personal history is about dealing with life’s conveyor belt of disappointments by withdrawing into yourself. This was the fifth of the five Animated Feature nominees I watched, and after the others it was a breath of fresh (well, grotesquely fresh) air. Its protagonist’s oscillations between light and dark make the girl from Inside Out look positively two-dimensional. The flick also has moments so shockingly dark that Wallace and Gromit would faint. (Ever seen a stop-motion character get electrocuted?) Where the story ends up, though, is the slow realization that life is what you make of it, and the making of it never ends.
No Other Land
Nom’d for: Documentary Feature
A stark, unflinching look at Palestinian life in Masafer Yatta, a group of villages in the West Bank that have spent years enduring hateful treatment at the hands of the Israeli military. Every week soldiers show up with bulldozers to demolish homes, knock down schools, and even cut water lines (in one case filling a well with cement), aiming to drive out families that have lived there for generations. The Israeli authorities say it’s all within the law because the area has been deemed a military training ground. The movie, made by a team of Israelis and Palestinians (one of whom comes from Masafer Yatta), uses footage they shot themselves to document the atrocities. While the circumstances are unfathomably bleak, there’s an undercurrent of hope running through the flick, with the people choosing to believe that, as one Palestinian puts it, the drip, drip, drip of resistance will, like water eroding a hard surface, lead to a better world in time.
The Girl with the Needle
Nom’d for: International Feature
For the first 90 minutes, this seems like a more-or-less-straightforward drama about postwar Copenhagen, characters living in a bleak world where violence and horror have left their mark. The black-and-white cinematography is crisply beautiful, but the plot seems to lack a direction other than “forward” — what, besides the litany of hardships faced by these women, are we really watching here? What does all this add up to? Then the story takes a turn, and what the flick is about shrieks into awful view. That turn isn’t what you’d think of as a twist ending — there’s still 1/4 of the runtime to go. Still, if you’re going to see this movie, I’d urge you not to google it. Its power comes from both the twist itself and how the event recontextualizes the world it happens in.
Maria
Nom’d for: Cinematography
Until now, I’ve loved director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy-in-the-making that excavates some of the twentieth century’s most famous women, locating the person behind the mythology. Jackie and Spencer (about Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, respectively) both wowed me. Maria, though, feels thematically and narratively thinner than the others. It’s a treat to see Angelina Jolie hold court as Maria Callas, one of the great opera singers. But even though a role like this demands an actor of a certain stature, you wish Jolie had a little more to do, and that the movie had more on its mind. It’s stylish and cutesy and a little bit shallow.
The Wild Robot
Nom’d for: Animated Feature, Score, Sound
A wonderfully animated collection of reheated leftovers from other movies about cute animals and robots overcoming their programming in pursuit of…is “personal growth” a thing for robots? Anyway, I’m in favor of found-family storylines, but I tend to frown on movies about characters having parenthood thrust upon them, only to discover they love it, when parenthood has little to do with the plot otherwise. What is this, Jurassic Park? And I guess it’s nice that all these critters are pals in the end, but what are they going to eat now?
Soundtrack to a Cout d’Etat
Nom’d for: Documentary Feature
A jazz-soaked riff playing at the crossroads of Cold War politics, African history, Congolese independence, Western imperialism, and American music as a cultural export. The flick broadly covers Congo’s push to free itself of Belgian control, which officially happened in 1960, while pulling in any number of related threads and ripples via an astonishing collection of archival footage. The abstract structure, which propels you forward with propulsive energy, weaves together quotes, clips, headlines, citations, and labels that identify a multitude of people and criss-crossed happenings. It’s deeply researched, a collage of dizzying depth — and frankly, it’s a lot. It took me a while to get on the movie’s wavelength, and I can imagine that experience turning some viewers off, especially with the two-and-a-half-hour runtime. But give this flick a chance — it’s a stunning achievement, history told with style and verve. Just sit back, let it wash over you, and come up for air when it’s done.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Nom’d for: Visual Effects
Did you see the first three movies in this revival series? Rise of, Dawn of, and War for the Planet of the Apes are all much better than you’d expect, especially the latter two, which pit newly intelligent apes against humans and each other as they try to build their own society. Kingdom, the fourth installment, looks good and is generally solid, but it’s the first of the four that does feel like an installment, like the next edition of a series rather than a story that moves this world forward. See also Alien: Romulus, which has similar issues, and similarly tries to rejuvenate the franchise with young actors. Also like Romulus, Kingdom is diverting enough but hard to get that excited about. (Which makes me a little nervous since director Wes Ball, whose only other features are the teen thriller Maze Runner flicks, is helming Nintendo’s coming adaptation of The Legend of Zelda.)
Flow
Nom’d for: Animated Feature, International Feature
A pretty, pretty fantastical, and prettily animated disaster movie about five animals warily surviving together in a small boat after an apocalyptic flood. The visual style is halfway between watercolor and ‘90s video game graphics, the wordless plot unfolds with gentle momentum, and the transcendent finale is a striking, earned moment of uplift after an hour and a half in this lush, ruined world. I don’t care how many times I see a movie do it — watching animals hang out together will never get old. And what a pleasure to see the gentle capybara on the silver screen.
Black Box Diaries
Nom’d for: Documentary Feature
The frightening, enraging story of Shiori Ito, a journalist who was raped by a senior colleague and spent years pursuing justice amid Japan’s antiquated sexual assault laws. That colleague was a longtime friend of the prime minister, even writing his biography, so you can imagine the headwinds she was up against. Ito’s tenacity and determination in a culture where the deck was stacked against her are nothing short of awe-inspiring.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Nom’d for: International Feature
A slow-burning domestic thriller where one family becomes a microcosm of the simmering tensions in Tehran over religious control and the ultraconservative government. The basis of the plot is the 2022 and 2023 protests supporting Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died from (allegedly but probably) police-inflicted wounds for not wearing a hijab. Most of the action takes place in one apartment, pitting two teenage daughters against their traditional mother and their father, who works for the authorities. The gun he’s been given in his new job (for his “protection”) goes missing in mysterious circumstances. The cramped confines ramp up the claustrophobia; a cloud of fear, suspicion, and unease hangs overhead. The flick is on the long side, and the ending could be tightened up, but it remains a vital work about a society where the powers that be resist critique, sometimes violently.
Gladiator 2
Nom’d for: Costume Design
You probably already know whether you needed a 26-years-later sequel to Gladiator. I didn’t, but I saw it out of curiosity and because Denzel Washington was supposed to be fun in it. But here’s the thing: hot-shit up-and-comer Paul Mescal (who I do like) plays the protagonist, the new titular gladiator, and I didn’t buy him in the role for a second. The first time you see the indie-movie softboy, he looks like a farmer, which makes sense; a scene later he’s a military leader defending his city against a Roman invasion. Reader, let me be blunt: no. Mescal is wildly miscast, no matter how buff the studio’s physical trainers got him. And the movie as a whole just feels sort of…tired. Ditto Pedro Pascal as the world’s nicest murderous Roman general; Pascal is in everything right now (including two nominees), and for me he’s fast becoming overexposed. Anyway. Every character in this flick is forever talking about “the glory of Rome,” “the dream of Rome,” and I just did not care. I’m not rooting for Rome! The only thing in this picture I did care about was the infamous scene of sharks swimming around a water-filled Coliseum during a fake naval battle. Historical accuracy be damned, that’s the kind of spectacle I came to be entertained by.
Sugarcane
Nom’d for: Documentary Feature
A sobering exposé of widespread abuse in a Catholic-run school for Indigenous children in Canada. We sit with and follow survivors as they search for information about what happened to them, process their pain, and ask what comes next. We also find out there were hundreds more of these schools in the US and Canada, so there’s no way these tragedies were isolated events.
A Real Pain
Nom’d for: Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay
Two American Jewish cousins take a trip to Poland to visit the house of their deceased grandmother and tour sites of Jewish history, especially related to the Holocaust. The two used to be close, but they’ve grown apart. One is outgoing, charming, and a little much; the other is quieter, more serious, more awkward. As the cousins alternately reconnect and clash, they consider what it means to live in the modern world, and how their struggles relate to the cultural pain they’ve inherited. Kieran Culkin is great, bringing the breezy, motor-mouthed charisma he’s shown in everything from Succession to personal fave Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He’s the overwhelming favorite to win Supporting Actor (even if some of us think this performance doesn’t necessarily stretch his talents). Jesse Eisenberg, who starred, wrote, and directed, is nearly as good as the awkward cousin, and he gets a tip of the hat for a script that explores weighty themes without overplaying them. It’s a solid, confident flick that knows it doesn’t need to beat you over the head to get its message across.
Haven’t Seen
Sing Sing (Leading Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Song), Porcelain War (Documentary Feature), The Six Triple Eight (Song), Elton John: Never Too Late (Song), September 5 (Original Screenplay)
I also haven’t seen any of short films, which I’m listing here to not shortchange them: the animated (Beautiful Men, In the Shadow of the Cypress, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder, Yuck!), the live action (A Lien, Anuja, I’m Not a Robot, The Last Ranger, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent), and the documentary (Death by Numbers; I Am Ready, Warden; Incident; Instruments of a Beating Heart; The Only Girl in the Orchestra)
My Picks
Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Here’s what I think you should vote for in the office Oscars pool (the running of which is one of the main things I miss about having a 9-to-5). My best year on record was 2018, when I went 22 for 24. For the past three years I’ve averaged 18 for 23; remember, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing were combined into one award. I doubt my 2025 picks will do way better since a number of categories seem far from settled (among them Picture, Director, Leading Actress, Editing, the two screenplays, and International Feature), so if you happen to have a surplus of good vibes these days, send some my way.
Best Picture — Anora
Directing — Anora
Actor, Leading — The Brutalist
Actress, Leading — The Substance
Actor, Supporting — A Real Pain
Actress, Supporting — Emilia Pérez
Writing, Adapted — Conclave
Writing, Original — Anora
Animated Feature — The Wild Robot
Cinematography — The Brutalist
Costume Design — Wicked
Editing — Conclave
Makeup and Hairstyling — The Substance
Score — The Brutalist
Song — “El Mal,” Emilia Pérez
Documentary Feature — No Other Land
International Feature — I’m Still Here
Production Design — Wicked
Sound — Dune: Part Two
Visual Effects — Dune: Part Two
Animated Short — Yuck!
Live-Action Short — A Lien
Documentary Short — Incident
And that’s it for this edition of Josh Watched! Thanks for reading, and if you’re doing your own picks, feel free to send them over. I’ll toss ‘em into my color-coded spreadsheet and send you a link to follow along.
Until next time!