The Unofficial Academy Awards Thread ( 2025 Nominations / 97th Oscars )

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Original Score

Volker Bertelman- Conclave
Daniel Blumberg- The Brutalist
Clément Ducol - Emilia Pérez
Kris Bowers - The Wild Robot
John Powell and Stephen Schwartz - Wicked

Best Animated Feature Film

The Wild Robot
Flow
Inside Out 2
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Memoir of a Snail

Best Visual Effects

Alien: Romulus
Better Man
Dune: Part Two
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
Wicked

Best Cinematography

The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Maria
Nosferatu

Best Adapted Screenplay

Peter Straughan - Conclave
Jay Cocks and James Mangold - A Complete Unknown
Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John “Divine G” Whitfield - Sing Sing
Jacques Audiard - Emilia Pérez
RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes - Nickel Boys

Best Original Screenplay

Sean Baker - Anora
Jesse Eisenberg - A Real Pain
Brady Corbet & Mona Fastvold - The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat - The Substance
Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David - September 5

 

[Wor-Gar]

The Substance...!? Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress...and Best Screenplay???

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best International Feature Film

Emilia Pérez
I'm Still Here
Flow
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
The Girl with the Needle

Best Original Song

El Mal - Emilia Pérez
Mi Camino -Emilia Pérez
Never Too Late - Elton John: Never Too Late
The Journey -The Six Triple Eight
Like a Bird - Sing Sing

Best Production Design

The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part 2
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Film Editing

Anora
The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked

Best Sound

A Complete Unknown
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Costume Design

A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Gladiator II
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

A Different Man
Emilia Pérez
The Substance
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Documentary Feature Film

Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Sugarcane
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Best Live Action Short

A Lien
Anuja
I'm Not a Robot
The Last Ranger
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Animated Short

Beautiful Men
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Magic Candies
Wander to Wonder
Yuck!

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Oscars: Conan O’Brien Will Host Hollywood’s Biggest Night

The beloved comedian will emcee the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2, 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and its broadcasting partner ABC

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/conan-obrien-host-oscars-2025-1236062805/

 

[Khev]

That's got to be the worst line-up of nominees I've ever seen.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Hollywood is really transitioning.

 

[choombaz]

Yeah half of those best picture nominees are amazing. The other half are complete trash.

Plus voters have very short memories. Challengers completely shut out. My fav movie of the year.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Animated Short

‘In the Shadow of the Cypress’ - Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi, Iran

A former ship’s captain is suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. He lashes out violently against his daughter, who lives with him in a small oceanside home. He’s taken it so far that she’s ready to pack up and leave when a whale washes ashore. She rushes to help, and her quest to save it becomes a potential lifeline for her father and their relationship — if he can muster the strength to take action.

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‘Wander to Wonder’ - Nina Gantz, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, France

In this delightful stop-motion animation short, Billybud, Mary and Fumbleton are the tiny human stars of “Wander to Wonder,” a 1980s children’s TV show. They are left to their own devices when the show’s full-sized human creator dies. Food is running out — they are down to their last pickle — and giant flies buzz around the house, but the trio remains committed to recording more episodes of the show (and watching old ones). Full-frontal animated nudity is involved, so maybe not for young kids, but this short, which just won a BAFTA, seems like a clear Oscar frontrunner for its sheer originality, exuberance and instant ability to tug on our ’80s and VHS-based nostalgia.


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'Yuck!' - Loïc Espuche, France

A coming-of-age short set around a group of children’s introduction to — yuck! — kissing. They laugh and point at the couples kissing around them until their lips also start glowing pink — are they next?!?


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'Beautiful Men'- Nicolas Keppens, Belgium, France and The Netherlands

This stop-motion film is about three brothers who travel to Turkey to get hair transplants. Things go haywire soon after their arrival, and there’s definitely a laugh or three to be had during their pursuit for lustrous locks. (This is another one with full-frontal stop-motion nudity.)


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‘Magic Candies’ - Daisuke Nishio, Japan

A boy named Dong-Dong is a bit of a loner, since he’s left out when other kids play. He gets a bunch of what he thinks are marbles, but are actually magic candies. Dong-Dong discovers that the candies have a transformative effect on people, animals and objects around him — each candy unleashes a different special power when he tastes them. He engages in some life-altering conversations as the magical sweets cut through silence to reveal previous unheard truths.

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/20...r-nominated-shorts-and-what-theyre-about.html

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Live-Action Short

‘A Lien’ - Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz, United States

A possible Oscar frontrunner for its handling of a subject that is very much in the news. This short is based on the harrowing reality that people have been detained and arrested by ICE when they show up for their green card appointments. A family — wife, husband and young daughter — rushes to the husband’s green card appointment in New York only to face the threat of being permanently separated. It doesn’t matter that he’s lived in the city for almost his whole life, or that he was summoned to an office to be considered for a green card. His “alien” status as an undocumented immigrant is like a lien, a debt that he can never pay.

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‘Anuja’- Adam J. Graves, United States

This Hindi-language film, whose producers include Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is about a young girl named Anuja and her sister Palak. They both work in a clothing factory in Delhi, India, but Palak knows her brilliant sister should not be confined to this work. Everyone is telling Anuja to take a boarding school exam that could change her life, but when the opportunist factory owner tries to capitalize on her genius, she has a choice to make.

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‘I’m Not a Robot' - Victoria Warmerdam, Belgium and The Netherlands

Are you a robot? It’s a familiar question to anyone who has taken a captcha test to fill out a form online or access a website. And if you’ve taken a captcha test, chances are you’ve also failed a captcha test and had to take it again. But what happens when you just can’t pass? Are you indeed a robot? Lara faces just this predicament one day at work. A series of failed captchas has her questioning the very nature of her existence.

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‘The Last Ranger’ - Cindy Lee, South Africa

This Xhosa-language and English-language film set during the COVID-19 pandemic is based on a real story of rhinoceros poaching at the Amakhala Game Reserve in South Africa. Khuselwa, the “last ranger” on the reserve, guards the rhinos against poachers. She takes a girl named Litha with her to work one day, then sees poachers on the hunt and tries to thwart an attack in progress. Litha, who watches the horror unfold, makes another unsettling discovery on the trip.

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‘The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent’ - Nebojša Slijepčević, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and France

This Croatian film, another standout at the Oscars that could well win, already won the Palme d’Or for short film at the Cannes Film Festival. The story is based on the Štrpci massacre of 1993 in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Bosnian Serb paramilitary group boarded a train and detained 24 Muslim Bosniak passengers, later killing them. “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” is told from the perspective of the passengers on the train. As the militants interrogate civilians and demand documents, one man bravely stands up to them and is taken off the train. The man represents Tomo Buzov, a Croatian retired officer from the Yugoslav People’s Army who stood up to the paramilitary group and was killed for doing so. Because Buzov resisted their orders, he saved the life of a 17-year-old boy.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Documentary Short

‘Death By Numbers’ - Kim A. Snyder, United States

This film won the documentary shorts competition at the Montclair Film Festival. “Death By Numbers” follows Sam Fuentes, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as she prepares to confront the shooter when she testifies in court. Fuentes wrote the film, which takes place four years after she was shot with an AR-15.

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‘I Am Ready, Warden’ - Smriti Mundhra, United States

This film follows the last days of John Henry Ramirez, who was on death row in Texas after being convicted of murder. Before his execution in 2022, Ramirez tries to make a connection with the son of the man he killed in 2004.

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‘Incident’ - Bill Morrison, United States

The film examines the 2018 police shooting of Harith “Snoop” Augustus in Chicago by officer Dillan Halley using bodycam footage and surveillance video.


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‘Instruments of a Beating Heart’ - Ema Ryan Yamazaki, Japan

This film follows Japanese elementary school students who create an orchestra and rehearse for a performance. The short examines the dynamics of teamwork and the cultural expectations of working together in harmony.


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‘The Only Girl in the Orchestra’ - Molly O’Brien, United States

This film is about the trailblazing double bassist Orin O’Brien. In 1966, she became the first woman to join the New York Philharmonic. Her niece, Molly O’Brien, directed the short.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

No Other Land is a 2024 documentary film directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut. The film was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activists in what they describe as an act of resistance on the path to justice during the ongoing conflict in the region....On 23 January 2025, the film was nominated at the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Feature Film.

Premise - A young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra has been resisting the forced displacement of his people by Israel's military in Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, since he was a child. He records the gradual destruction of his homeland, where Israeli soldiers are tearing down homes and evicting their inhabitants in order to create a military firing zone. He befriends Yuval, a Jewish Israeli journalist who helps him in his struggle. They form an unexpected bond, but their friendship is challenged by the huge gap between their living conditions: Basel faces constant oppression and violence, while Yuval enjoys freedom and security.

The documentary was filmed over four years between 2019 and 2023, wrapping production in October 2023....Although the film could not find a U.S. distributor after being picked up for distribution in 24 countries, it had a one-week Oscar-qualifying theatrical run at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City

Critical response - On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 63 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "An elegantly assembled diary of the Palestinian experience, No Other Land is a harrowing document that leaves traces of hope for a better future."

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Anora is a 2024 American comedy drama film produced, written, directed, and edited by Sean Baker. It follows the beleaguered marriage between Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a sex worker, and Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch....Anora premiered on May 21, 2024, at the 77th Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, and was released theatrically on October 18 by Neon. It grossed $38.1 million worldwide on a $6 million budget, becoming Baker's highest-grossing film...It also received six nominations at the 97th Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and five nominations at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical).

....The director, Sean Baker, said Anora was inspired by a story from a friend about a Russian-American newlywed who was kidnapped for collateral. He was also inspired by his work in 2000 and 2001, when he edited wedding videos, including ones of Russian-Americans in New York...On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 326 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10.

Reaction from sex work community - Others felt that the film reverted to regressive stereotypes about sex workers as downtrodden and "in need of saving."....A UK-based sex worker commented that the film "rehashes the 'traumatized, vulnerable sex worker' trope, which we've seen a thousand times before"..... Marla Cruz opined that little is revealed about Ani's life outside of sex work, and that an exploration of the "boundary between Ani the person and Ani the worker" is absent.....wrote that it is debatable "whether Ani becomes more clear-eyed about her relationship to power, men, and money throughout the film"....