Oscars 2025

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2025
This year's contest has begun. Good luck!

Any thoughts on this year's nominees? Maybe it's because the nominations are spread around so much, but it feels like a much harder year to predict that usual. Am I wrong?

Evie Totty | January 25, 2025
I have to admit - I'm WAY behind on the films nominated. Like - I've seen Dune 2 (thank you, MAX), A Real Pain (thank you, Hulu), Inside Out 2 (Disney+) and Nosferatu.

I just got access to Peacock so I can watch The Wild Robot and Conclave. Wallace and Gromit is also "somewhere"? Seems like Emilia Peréz is on Hulu? But a buddy of mine hates it so much - it's going to be hard for me to watch lol.

(He gets to vote in the SAGs, so he's seen all of them already, lucky guy.)

Not sure how many more I'll get to see bc school is about to ramp up :/.

Scott Hardie | January 26, 2025
Yeah, Emilia Peréz has the most nominations but seems like it will have an uphill battle to win much. The people who don't like it really don't like it, it's on Netflix which is a handicap in an industry that loathes Netflix, it has been criticized for its negative depiction of Mexico and the filmmakers' decision not to film in Mexico, it's a musical up against Wicked and A Complete Unknown, and at the risk of mentioning politics, it tells a story about being transgender in a way that pisses off both the left and the right. Being so widely nominated is the honor it's going to get, I think.

I, too, haven't seen many of the nominees. Anyone who read my list of the best 2024 movies that I saw should not be surprised that I'm pulling for Flow to win in at least one of its categories. I'm not remotely surprised to see Deadpool & Wolverine, one of the year's most popular films, completely ignored even in the technical categories, but what a hoot it could have been for Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman to host the show.

Erik Bates | January 26, 2025
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Erik Bates | January 26, 2025
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Scott Hardie | January 27, 2025
Thanks for catching that broken link for me. :-)

Kelly and I might watch some of the nominees before the Oscars, but it won't be many. We watched the trailers for all of them in one sitting (excluding the few we've seen already), and the movies look relentlessly bleak and depressing. Life is bleak and depressing enough right now, so I prefer escapism and comfort. Kelly and I don't watch horror movies because they're so miserable and unpleasant to sit through, and what are dramas about war and rape and abortion and forced disappearance and systemic abuse if not real-life horror movies? When the least-depressing Oscar nominees of the year are about a singer becoming an asshole as he becomes famous, racism and misogyny experienced by WWII officers, and a buddy-road-trip comedy about the fucking Holocaust, then it might be a good year to sit out for your own psychological well-being.