We’re less than two weeks away from the 2025 Academy Awards, and there’s no clear frontrunner for Best Picture.
This year is a complete 180 from the last two years, when everyone — even people who don’t watch movies — knew for months that Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All at Once were going to win the award. It seems like change in the odds-on favorite every week, and your guess is as good as mine as to who will come out on top.
The crowded Best Picture race seems to be the result of two things: 1) The lack of a clear standout film that everyone is getting behind and 2) The strengths of the nominees, with a good balance of quality films on the ballot. The result is one of the closest races we’ve ever seen for the Academy Awards’ biggest prize.
The Academy Awards expanded from five to 10 nominees in 2010, then has fluctuated between eight and 10 nominees in the years since. The past four years, including this year, 10 films per year have been nominated, and this appears to be the new standard. While not all 10 of 2025’s nominees are on equal footing, they all got here somehow and are all deserving in their own right — yes, even Emilia Pérez.
Let’s take a look at the 10 films up for Best Picture this year and how they stack up against one another in this tightly contested race.
Anora
Anora took home the Palme d’Or and has been dominating awards shows as of late. With all of the success swirling around it, is Sean Baker’s screwball comedy the best bet for Best Picture?
Anora seems to have all the momentum right now. It began its run by winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in May 2024, then it lost some momentum, and it’s beginning to peak again at the right time. Imagine a sports team that starts strong, hits a slump, then regains its composure in the playoffs. Anora is basically the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs.
I will say that, of all the films up for Best Picture, Anora was the only one that — as I left the theater — I said this should win Best Picture. I didn’t have that same reaction to The Brutalist or Conclave, two films that I liked a lot but had some faults with. Anora seamlessly balances a range of emotions: It’s hilarious, heartwarming, exciting, enraging, and heartbreaking, all in the same movie. Director Sean Baker is at the top of his game.
The Brutalist and Anora reflect current trends in the Academy toward more artistic and ambitious works winning Best Picture. In the past decade alone, Moonlight, Parasite, and Everything Everywhere All at Once have laid the groundwork for one of these films to win in 2025. Voters are holding these types of films in high esteem, and I expect most to rank The Brutalist and Anora within the top five spots on their ballots — a handful will likely rank them first and second.
So if we had to compare the two, Anora has stronger characters, a stronger script, and a stronger resonance with viewers. Plus, a screwball comedy has more appeal than a 215-minute drama. It feels like a good sports team righting itself at the right time, and the odds are favorable for Anora. But in this crowded of a field, the race is still open.
The Brutalist
The Brutalist won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama and for a while held best odds of winning Best Picture at the Oscars. If it’s the grand epic everyone claims it to be, what stands in its way?
If you’ve seen any marketing for The Brutalist, you may recall a harkening back to the days of Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur. It branded itself as an epic. But I don’t feel like that’s a fair comparison. You’re comparing a character drama made for under $10 million to two of the greatest blockbusters of all-time (seriously, though, how was this film made with that small a budget?!).
Yes, The Brutalist is a really good film. Voters at the Golden Globes agreed, awarding the film Best Motion Picture – Drama. But it didn’t have to compete with Anora, which was up for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and lost to Emilia Pérez (a terrible decision, by the way).
But I do think some voters will have a hard time with The Brutalist. I’m not just talking about its daunting runtime — even if this does dissuade some voters, Oppenheimer won last year at a mere 30 minutes shorter. The film will alienate some who expect an exciting epic or redeemable characters, as The Brutalist has neither.
Instead, it’s a slow-moving drama about suffering and trauma. The first half of the film, in which László Tóth finds his footing in America, is much better than the second, in which it struggles a bit to hone its central narrative and themes. Its ending may frustrate some voters, too.
Overall, The Brutalist is a very good film of massive scale with impressive performances, cinematography, and music. It’s as good a Paul Thomas Anderson imitation as anyone in cinema could pull off in 2024. But it has some things going against it, and its AI controversy won’t help either.
Conclave
Conclave seems like the safe pick in a crowded field. Why wouldn’t this straightforward, well-scripted, well-acted political drama win Best Picture?
If Anora and The Brutalist are the bolder picks for Best Picture, then Conclave is the safer, more traditional pick. That’s not a bad thing, either. Previous winners Spotlight and CODA fit this mold and were both very deserving of the grand prize.
Conclave is a mostly effective political drama about the election of a new pope, including all of the politics that goes into the voting process. There’s plenty of gossip and drama — in a way, it’s like Real Housewives of Vatican City. It also features some of the better performances of the careers of Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini, all of whom got acting nods for the film.
However, while it became an early frontrunner for Best Picture upon its release last October, it’s lost a bit of steam as other films Anora, The Brutalist, and Emilia Pérez have racked up wins across awards season. This is despite eight nominations and three in acting categories.
Director Edward Berger wasn’t nominated for Best Director either, another suggestion that Conclave is a longshot for Best Picture. Only seven films have ever won this award without a Best Director nomination, and only three times since 1927’s Wings (Driving Miss Daisy, Argo, and Green Book). That’s not exactly great company to be in.
Wings is the only film to win Best Picture and no other awards, so Conclave would need to pull off a win in at least one other category, such as Best Film Editing or Best Adapted Screenplay. Basically, it would need to follow the path of Argo or Spotlight — two films that walked away with just two awards, one of which being Best Picture. It did pick up Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards on Sunday, and while that doesn’t necessarily translate to Best Picture success, it’s a sign that the field has become level once again.
Does Conclave have a shot? Sure, but I would still consider it an outside shot.
A Complete Unknown
A Complete Unknown is another straightforward, well-scripted, well-acted drama. It’s been gaining steam lately and is Variety’s current #2. Why not a Bob Dylan biopic for Best Picture?
In the last 25 years, we’ve had biopics on Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Freddie Mercury, and Elton John, and none have sniffed Best Picture. So why should a biopic on Bob Dylan be any different? After all, the only music biopic to ever win Best Picture is 1984’s Amadeus.
For a while, it looked like James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown would end up similar to his 2019 film Ford v. Ferrari, a solid historical piece just happy to land a Best Picture nomination. But the Bob Dylan biopic has gained significant ground in the Best Picture race in the past month, and it appears to have a few paths to victory.
For one, this is a crowded field without a clear favorite, boding well for a more run-of-the-mill, crowd-pleasing drama. Remember, Best Picture relies on ranked choice voting, so this can negatively affect films that polarize voters such as The Brutalist or Emilia Pérez. A film like A Complete Unknown is likely to land in the top half of most voters’ ballots — a potential path to victory in a year without a powerhouse film like 2023’s Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer also provides a path to victory for A Complete Unknown, as it followed up its win for Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) with a win for Best Picture. Timothée Chalamet is a current favorite to win Best Actor this year, suggesting that history could repeat itself if Chalamet is to win.
If A Complete Unknown were to win for both categories, it would join some pretty impressive company: It Happened One Night, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs to name a few. The problem is that while it’s a good film, it’s not nearly as good as the classics that I just named. Since it’s not a powerhouse, it would need to take advantage of this year’s balanced field.
Wicked
A musical hasn’t won Best Picture since 2002’s Chicago. Why could Wicked succeed in this category where heavily nominated musicals like La La Land and Les Misérables haven’t?
Musicals used to win Best Picture all the time. Four times in the 1960s alone, a musical won the award, including classics like West Side Story and The Sound of Music. But as cinema entered the gritty realism of the 1970s, that began to change. Since 1968’s Oliver!, only Chicago has won Best Picture as a musical.
There were moments when it seemed like that would all change this year. With its electric female performances, enjoyable sing-alongs, and impressive world-building, it looked as if Wicked could realistically win Best Picture as the year’s most beloved movie. But it currently sits in the same place as many good films have: solid enough to win a few technical awards but not the grand prize.
If La La Land couldn’t win Best Picture, the odds seem stacked against Wicked. After all, it’s directed by the guy who made Crazy Rich Asians (I apologize to those who liked it, but I refuse to consider it a good movie). Wicked was the fifth-highest grossing film of 2024, and high-grossing films simply don’t overlap with Oscar success like they used to — gone are the days of Titanic and Gladiator triumphing at the box office and the Oscars.
So, while Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have decent chances of winning acting awards (Grande seems more likely to swing Best Supporting Actress for her role as Glinda), it’s probable that’s where Wicked‘s Academy Awards run ends. That is, unless voters are tired of harsh realist dramas and crave a crowd-pleaser for a change.
Emilia Pérez
Emilia Pérez leads the way with 13 Academy Award nominations, more than The Godfather, Schindler’s List, and Lawrence of Arabia. Yet, I think most of us agree: It’s a stinker. Can a film this bad actually win Best Picture?
Oh, I almost forgot, there are two musicals up for Best Picture this year. That’s probably because Emilia Pérez has no business sharing the stage with the other nine nominees. Okay, I’ll try to give a little grace to this headscratcher of a film, or at least the people who helped it get nominated for a whopping 13 Oscars — the most of any film at this year’s ceremony and tied for the third-most ever behind All About Eve and Titanic.
I’ll let YouTuber Patrick (H) Willems, who initially enjoyed the film when he saw it at Cannes, sum up why I think it gained Oscar buzz to begin with: “I was just excited this movie was taking these big, wild swings. I was like, ‘Oh shit, it’s a musical? About this? This is wild.'”
But after the appeal of a French-directed, Spanish-language, American-acted musical about a cartel leader’s gender transition wears off, it’s clear that Emilia Pérez is a mess. I thought there was some cultural barrier that caused me to not get it, but it largely offended both the Latin American and LGBTQ+ communities. Its takes on trans issues and Mexican culture are distasteful, its Eurocentric melodrama is clumsy and shallow, and as a musical, it’s not even a good one. Don’t even get me started on the song literally titled “La Vaginoplastia” (“The Vaginoplasty”).
Emilia Pérez reeks of the sort of identity politics that Hollywood liberal elites fawn over, which may be why it got so much support from the Academy. But fortunately, the same shameless pandering that gave it a platform at the Oscars is coming back to bite it. Lead actress (and the first trans woman ever nominated for an Oscar) Karla Sofia Gascón has been in hot water recently over racist and Islamophobic tweets, all but killing the film’s Academy Awards hopes.
Garnering the most nominations is usually a good omen for Best Picture contenders (see the previous two winners Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All at Once). But while it still has the opportunity to pick up wins for Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña) and Best Original Song, hopefully Emilia Pérez is out on the biggest award of the night.
The Substance
Horror movies and the Oscars haven’t always walked hand-in-hand. But this year saw a rare three films from the genre nominated, including The Substance for Best Picture. Could it be the next Silence of the Lambs?
The last thing I was thinking about when I saw The Substance in theaters was, “This is going to nab a bunch of Oscars.” The last time a true horror film fared well at the Academy Awards was 2017’s Get Out (not counting The Shape of Water that year, which is more horror-adjacent).
The David Cronenberg-inspired body horror spectacle is both an artistic apex for the genre and a career resurgence for Demi Moore. In fact, there’s a good chance Moore will walk away with Best Actress — before this year, she had never even been nominated for an Oscar, and her Golden Globes acceptance speech says it all. “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor, and I’m just so humbled and so grateful,” Moore said.
But while horror nominees The Substance and Nosferatu could pick up an award or two, the former is doubtful to pull an upset for Best Picture. I wouldn’t say it has zero chance, but a win would be nearly unprecedented. The Silence of the Lambs is still the only horror movie to receive Best Picture, and it took an all-time classic to pull off the win (you could even argue that film is mostly an investigative thriller, save Hannibal Lecter’ face-eating escape scene).
The mere fact The Substance got a Best Picture nomination should be affirmation enough for the merits of horror cinema, especially for cinema as bold as this one. Perhaps another film will eventually join The Silence of the Lambs as a Best Picture winner, but it more than likely won’t be this year.
Dune: Part Two
I stand by my take: Dune: Part Two is the best film of 2024. So it should win the award for Best Picture, right? Why couldn’t it be this year’s Titanic or Gladiator?
In a perfect world, Dune: Part Two would win Best Picture. After all, we should be awarding the best film of the year, right? It’s hard to dispute a film that holds a 4.4 rating on Letterboxd and an 8.5 rating on IMDB — both among the highest of any film this decade.
Yet, somehow most oddsmakers give Dune: Part Two the worst odds of any Best Picture nominee. So a movie that should’ve ended up like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King or Braveheart is instead going to end up like, well…2021’s Dune. The fact Emilia Pérez received 13 nominations to Dune: Part Two‘s mere five tells you everything you need to know. As this article states, “The Academy is taking Dune: Part Two for granted.”
What hurts Dune: Part Two is that the Academy tends to pigeonhole films that don’t fit the traditional Oscars mold — namely sci-fi and action films — as more technical films that don’t have the same credibility as a moving drama. They’re limited to compete mostly for Best Production Design, Sound, and Visual Effects, and may occasionally get a Best Picture or Best Director nomination.
It didn’t help that Dune: Part Two came out last spring, so the Oscars are taking place nearly a year after its release date. As you may remember, it was pushed back from its original fall 2023 release date. Unfortunately it feels like the Academy is mostly are overlooking the film, with voters paying more attention to a more recent Timothée Chalamet performance (in A Complete Unknown), which could just land him his first Best Actor win.
If Denis Villeneuve can make a film as spectacular as Dune: Part Two and barely crack the top 10 for Best Picture, it’s clear the Academy just doesn’t value these kinds of films the way we do.
Nickel Boys
Nickel Boys deals with an important subject but takes a major creative risk in its first-person narrative. Would voters be willing to go for a more ambitious artistic pursuit, or does this film have no chance?
Nickel Boys is one of 2024’s most acclaimed films, sitting at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.1 rating on Letterboxd. Inspired by the story of the infamously abusive Dozier School for Boys, director RaMell Ross took a bold creative risk in telling the story through a first-person POV lens. The film goes back and forth narrating its events through the eyes of its two main characters, Elwood and Turner, often switching perspectives in the same scene.
It’s a pioneering choice in narrative storytelling, and while it does make you feel closer to the characters, it also has the reverse effect of making you feel distant from the story. Clearly audiences had a hard time with it as well, as reactions from the general public have been a bit more polarizing than from critics.
Remember, the Academy uses the ranked choice voting system for Best Picture. I can see this as a hurdle to a film like Nickel Boys, as I’m sure a chunk of voters will rank it near the bottom of their ballots. The more traditional storytelling of dramas like A Complete Unknown and Conclave will likely win over more voters, who may have not had the patience or open mind to fully appreciate Nickel Boys.
I’m torn on the film as well, because despite some overambition, it does handle its intersecting issues of race relations and systematic abuse well, and it’s an admirable adaptation of a highly praised novel. But just getting a Best Picture nomination should be enough for a film like this — there’s no shame in Nickel Boys not breaking through on this big of a stage.
I’m Still Here
It’s the seventh-straight year an international film is up for this award and the second-straight year multiple films are nominated. Is it possible for Brazil to get its first Best Picture winner with I’m Still Here?
We’re experiencing a renaissance for international films at the Academy Awards. For the first 90 years of the awards ceremony, just 10 international films were nominated for Best Picture. Since then, we’ve had 10 in the past seven years alone. This includes a record three last year and two more this year.
While Emilia Pérez has received the bulk of the attention, positive or negative, and will still likely take home Best International Film, I’m Still Here has quietly become one of 2024’s best movies — and one of Brazil’s best films of all-time (perhaps only trailing City of God as the country’s magnum opus).
I’m Still Here didn’t get its American release until a few weeks ago, so it hasn’t gotten the buzz in the states that it would’ve if it had come out on, say, Christmas. But its nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress — and lead actress Fernanda Torres’ surprise win at the Golden Globes in January — show that it’s not just winning over its fellow Brazilians, it’s also winning over industry insiders. I can attest that the love it’s receiving is well-deserved, as I’m Still Here is a magnificent family and political drama.
Parasite is still the only international film to receive Best Picture, so I’m Still Here would be claiming a historic victory if it could somehow pull off the upset, and that doesn’t seem likely. But like The Substance and Nickel Boys, the mere fact I’m Still Here was nominated should be an achievement in and of itself.
The Verbatim 