One Battle remains king of Oscars season, but Sinners rules nominations morning with record haul

The march to glory for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another continues unabated after it picked up a hefty 13 nods Thursday morning when Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman announced the nominees for the 98th annual Academy Awards. It hit in just about every major category, with one notable exception, which we will touch on later. But, for now, the big story of the morning is the record-setting 16 nominations garnered by Ryan Coogler’s musical horror triumph Sinners.

Nominated in every category where it was eligible (it arguably has no Actress in a Leading Role), Sinners blew past the old mark of 14, previously held by La La Land, Forrest Gump, and All About Eve. Breaking the old record by two should quiet those who might want to put an asterisk on the accomplishment by noting that the film is nominated in the brand new Best Casting category. The flipside of that coin, however, is that there used to be two sound categories. 

Regardless, there is no raining on the Sinners parade today. In addition to a Best Picture nomination, which Coogler shares with wife and producing partner Zinzi Coogler, as well as Sev Ohanian, Ryan Coogler becomes just the seventh Black director in history to be nominated for Best Director. Coogler also is nominated for his Original Screenplay.

Sinners nabbed three acting nominations, with Michael B. Jordan picking up his first nomination for Actor in a Leading Role, while Wunmi Mosaku was cited for Supporting Actress and Delroy Lindo earned his long-overdue first-career nomination for Supporting Actor. One Battle After Another and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value each picked up four acting nominations, meaning 11 of the 20 acting slots were taken by just three movies.

One more note on history made by Sinners today: Director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw becomes just the third woman ever nominated for Best Cinematography, and based on some of the precursors, she has an excellent chance to be the first woman to win the award. Ruth E. Carter is now the most nominated Black woman in history, with her fifth nomination for Costume Design. She has two previous wins, as well, both for Coogler films.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who earned his sixth-career Best Actor nomination and eighth nomination overall, also set a record today with One Battle After Another’s Best Picture nomination. He is now the star of more Best Picture nominees than any other actor in history with 12, breaking a tie with his hero, Robert De Niro. Cate Blanchett, Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, and H.B. Warner are the only other actors ever to appear in double-digit Best Picture nominees with 10 apiece.

Joining DiCaprio and Jordan in the Best Actor race are Marty Supreme star Timothee Chalamet, Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent, and Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon. Alongside Lindo in Supporting Actor are One Battle tandem Benecio Del Toro and Sean Penn, Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, and Stellan Skarsgaard for Sentimental Value.

Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, and Sentimental Value each picked up nine total nominations, including joining Sinners and One Battle After Another in Best Picture. The other five Best Picture nominees are Hamnet (eight nominations), The Secret Agent (four), Train Dreams (four), Bugonia (4), and probably the biggest surprise of the morning, blockbuster racing film F1, which also nabbed four nominations.

In Best Actress, Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) and Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You) appear to be leading the way, joined by Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value, and Emma Stone for Bugonia. This was probably the category with the biggest pair of snubs, with Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another) and Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee) both missing out. In Supporting Actress, Mosaku is joined by Amy Madigan for Weapons, Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another, and both Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas for Sentimental Value.

Hamnet director Chloe Zhao becomes just the second woman ever to earn multiple Best Director nominations, sharing the distinction with Jane Campion. Along with Zhao, Coogler, and Anderson, the other two nominees for Director are Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme and Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value.

What made me happiest this morning? The recognition for Train Dreams in the top category, as well as its beautiful screenplay and stunning cinematography, has me delighted, though I would have loved if voters could have found room for Joel Edgerton in Best Actor. Elsewhere, I was thrilled to see The Voice of Hind Rajab make the final five in a highly competitive International Feature category. It’s a bold, heartbreaking film that deserves the kind of boost this nomination hopefully will grant it.

The other International Feature nominees were The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, Sentimental Value, and Spain’s Sirat, which admittedly still remains a total unknown to me, though I am excited to see it. This leaves out flashy options like No Other Choice, Left-Handed Girl, and Sound of Falling.

Also left out of the nominations were Miles Caton, who is remarkable in Sinners and Jesse Plemons, who is the driving force behind Bugonia, and my personal biggest snub, though it was always a longshot, is the sound design for Alex Garland’s Warfare, which might have the best sound of any movie I’ve ever seen.

All in all, these nominations won’t do much to change the calculus of this awards season, which appears to be adding up to a coronation for Anderson and One Battle After Another. But, for one day at least, Hollywood belongs to Sinners. It’s Ryan Coogler’s world, and we’re just living in it.

Jealousy is a disease: Anora crowned queen of Hollywood, Sean Baker is king

To paraphrase the clip played during Mikey Madison’s Best Actress presentation: There are a lot of jealous people in Hollywood tonight who are going to have to go chill in their mansions or whatever. Unless they were involved in Sean Baker’s Anora, in which case it’s champagne and fireworks all night long.

Baker’s fractured fairy tale won five awards Sunday night at the 97th Academy Awards, including Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, and Editing. Baker, who is the sole credited writer, director, and editor on the film, in addition to being one the nominated producers, becomes the first person in Academy history to win four awards for the same film on the same night. (Bong Joon-ho might have a quibble after winning three awards and guiding Parasite to an International Feature win for South Korea, but we’re not here to split hairs or rain on anyone’s parade.)

Mikey Madison was the minor shock of the evening, winning Best Actress over front-runner Demi Moore. Madison had won the BAFTA award, so the win didn’t come out of nowhere. And by the time Baker picked up his third statue of the night, the Anora wave had grown so tall that it seemed inevitable Madison would be carried along to victory.

The only award Anora lost, going 5-for-6, was Supporting Actor, where Yura Borisov lost to season-long favorite Kieran Culkin. Borisov didn’t seem too broken up about it, as he and his wife, Anna, of nominations morning viral video fame, were all smiles and bemused shock as the little New York indie film ran roughshod over the competition.

Culkin saved his best speech for last, quipping that his wife, Jazz, had told him last year in the wake of an Emmy win she would have a fourth child with him if he ever won an Oscar. From the crowd, she wordlessly acknowledged that she had in fact made that deal. “Ye of little faith,” Culkin beamed from the Oscar stage as he held his well-deserved statue.

Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor award for leading Brady Corbet’s American epic, The Brutalist. It’s a towering performance, and Brody’s return to prominence is one of the more delightful side plots of this Oscar season. Despite being the front-runner and having given numerous speeches over the past few months, Brody didn’t quite seem to have it together in his acceptance soliloquy. It was rambling and overly long, and he got played off by the orchestra twice, exactly what Culkin was poking fun at during the SAG Awards (the one place Brody actually lost). But, we can forgive the guy for being a little befuddled during one of the biggest moments of his life.

Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress, as long predicted, and delivered an impassioned, heartfelt speech that ended by emphasizing the importance of immigrants to this nation. It was a necessary acknowledgement and one of the few outwardly political speeches of the evening.

Unsurprisingly, the peak of social commentary on the night came from Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, the Palestinian and Israeli co-directors of Best Documentary Feature winner No Other Land. They called for human rights for all and a peaceful end to the violence in the Gaza Strip, with Abraham stating, “There is another way.” It was a beautiful moment for one of the most important movies of the year. Here’s hoping some American distributor now has the guts to get behind it and give it a proper U.S. release.

Emilia Pérez finished with two awards from its staggering 13 nominations, which is not nothing but represents a stunning fall from grace. Of the 15 films ever to garner 13 nods, two is the fewest wins of any of them. Both awards ultimately felt like recognition for Saldaña – Supporting Actress and Original Song for “El Mal,” which is Saldaña’s show-stopping number in the middle of the film. 

That Emilia Pérez could not even hold on to Best International Feature (Walter Salles’ Brazilian drama I’m Still Here prevailed) is proof of just how effective negative campaigning can be – which is not to say the film didn’t deserve the exact fate it got. It did, but it’s almost dizzying how quickly the film went from “Huh, that’s weird” front-runner to pariah, outside of Saldaña. Ultimately, though, this feels right and should allow the movie to fade into obscurity.

Note: At this point in my writing, Los Angeles was hit by a mild but not insignificant earthquake, centered in North Hollywood. Even Mother Nature had something to say about the Anora win.

As thrilled as I am for the Anora crew – and I genuinely adore that film – my favorite win of the night came in Best Animated Feature, where Gints Zilbalodis and Co. triumphed with the magnificent Flow. A wordless parable about a cat at the end of the world, Flow was one of the best films of the year, one of the most beautifully animated films I have ever seen, and a testament to what a small team loaded with grand aspirations can accomplish. This is the best of what the Oscars can do, stepping outside the usual big studio box and rewarding a glorious artistic achievement.

All the whispers about the potential for a Conclave upset turned out to be nothing but black smoke up a chimney as Edward Berger’s excellent papal thriller was not anointed the new pontiff of Hollywood. Instead, it settled for a single win, with writer Peter Straughan taking home the trophy for Best Adapted screenplay. It’s a tremendous script and highly deserving of the recognition, but I still prefer Straughan’s Frank.

James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown had no such luck, going 0-for-8 and joining RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys (0-for-2) as the only Best Picture nominees to go home empty-handed. And yet, the broadcast found ample opportunity to cut to star Timothée Chalamet, the unchallenged prince of Hollywood. Host Conan O’Brien directed several jokes his way, he was the ultimate punchline of a pretty good Adam Sandler bit, and he was in the front row, decked out in his butter yellow suit, smiling, cheering, and getting on his feet for a pair of Dune: Part Two victories (Sound, Visual Effects).

The Brutalist was the next-biggest winner of the night, with three awards. In addition to Brody’s victory, Lol Crawley won for his VistaVision cinematography, and Daniel Blumberg’s alternately booming and melancholic original score triumphed in that category. Meanwhile, fan favorite and box office behemoth Wicked won a pair of awards for Production Design and Costume Design, and Coralie Fargeat’s feminist body horror The Substance won for Makeup and Hairstyling that absolutely put the horror into the body.

If there’s a complaint to be had, it is that the Academy simply is not nominating and rewarding enough different films. Just 35 feature-length films were nominated for an Oscar this year. Down significantly from most years, which have 40-45 nominees. As for the winners, for the second year in a row, just one non-short, non-specialty feature (International, Animated, and Documentary) won an award without a Best Picture nomination – that was Culkin for A Real Pain. That does not make for a healthy Academy Awards, and the members simply must start nominating more different movies. This kind of stuff leads to elitism, exclusion, and worst of all, predictability.

I mean predictability as a general ill of the awards, not with specific regard to my personal predictions here on the site, which were tanked by a goose egg in the three shorts categories. I Am Not a Robot (Live-Action), In the Shadow of the Cypress Tree (Animated), and The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Documentary) were the shorts champions. I take solace that in my office Oscars pool, only one entrant guessed even a single shorts category correctly. Anyway, remind me never to bet against the uplifting music doc distributed by Netflix.

As for the show, it was a fun, fleet evening, despite a three-hour, 50-minute run time, and Conan O’Brien was a breath of fresh air. I love Jimmy Kimmel as host, but we needed some new blood and O’Brien was ready to draw some, almost always at his own expense first. I thought the opening monologue was excellent. The gags and bits were consistently funny, including a song about not wasting anyone’s time that was designed as a meta-way to poke fun at those complaining about the show’s length.

I’ll have more on the ceremony itself tomorrow, including asking what the heck was going on with that James Bond tribute, the loss of the Best Song performances, and the inclusion of a number of extraneous song performances that had next to nothing to do with the evening’s show. For now, long live Queen Anora and god save the king, Sean Baker, who closed his final speech of the night by holding up the Best Picture statue and declaring, “Long live independent film!” A king indeed.

From Nickel Boys to Boy, That’s Bad: All 50 2024 Oscar Nominees Ranked

On March 11, 2024, I sat down in the IMAX theater at the AMC Universal at City Walk for a screening of Dune: Part Two, and on Feb. 25, 2025, I sat down on my couch with my newly acquired Kino Lorber subscription and fired up Documentary Feature nominee Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. It took nearly a full year, but once again, I was able to watch every feature and short nominated for an Academy Award this year. Here they are, in order, from best to worst:

1. Nickel Boys

2. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

3. Flow

4. A Real Pain

5. A Different Man

6. Sing Sing

7. Anora

8. Conclave

9. A Complete Unknown

10. Incident

11. No Other Land

12. The Girl with the Needle

13. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

14. I’m Still Here

15. A Lien

16. Porcelain War

17. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

18. The Wild Robot

19. The Last Ranger

20. Wander to Wonder

21. Sugarcane

22. Memoir of a Snail

23. The Substance

24. Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

25. Black Box Diaries

26. The Brutalist

27. The Apprentice

28. Anuja

29. Beautiful Men

30. Dune: Part Two

31. I Am Ready, Warden

32. Alien: Romulus

33. Gladiator II

34. Inside Out 2

35. September 5

36. Magic Candies

37. I’m Not a Robot

38. Better Man

39. Maria

40. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

41. The Only Girl in the Orchestra

42. Yuck!

43. Instruments of a Beating Heart

44. In the Shadow of the Cypress

45. Emilia Pérez

46. Wicked

47. The Six Triple Eight

48. Nosferatu

49. Death by Numbers

50. Elton John: Never Too Late

2024 Academy Awards Category Breakdown: The Shorts

I present a truncated version of my usual in-depth category breakdowns. Here are the three shorts categories:

Documentary Short

Nominees

Death by Numbers

I Am Ready, Warden

Incident

Instruments of a Beating Heart

The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Incident is one of the most devastating, powerful, and infuriating short films in recent memory. It shows every possible angle of a police shooting while offering a rarely seen insight into the minds of the officers who perpetrate these crimes in real time. It’s a scathing indictment of our justice system and proof of what most of us knew or suspected. The question now: What are we prepared to do about it?

If Incident is a little too formally radical, with its lack of voiceover, talking-head interviews, or traditional structure, two other films in the lineup tackle similarly pressing issues with a more conventional style. I Am Ready, Warden tells the dual narrative of a convict on death row and the son of the man he murdered as both await the convict’s execution. It’s gripping viewing and visceral evidence of the fact that there are no winners in capital punishment.

Death by Numbers comes at capital punishment from a different angle: the point of view of a school shooting survivor testifying at the sentencing hearing for the murderer. This is an interesting pairing with I Am Ready, Warden, given this film’s framing around a hoped-for death sentence. I found much of Death by Numbers a little shallow and lacking in perspective, which is disappointing for a film about one of our nation’s most devastating crises.

Instruments of a Beating Heart and The Only Girl in the Orchestra are two very different musical documentaries, both quietly delightful in their own ways. It should not go unmentioned that another musical doc short won this category last year – The Last Repair Shop – but neither of these has that film’s artistry or thematic depth.

For the win, Incident may be just too darn experimental for these voters, and since they can give the award to something more easily digestible and still feel like they’re standing up for a cause, expect that to be the case. While a Death by Numbers win would not be shocking, I Am Ready, Warden packs the greater punch, so that’s the pick.

Will win: I Am Ready, Warden

Should win: Incident

Animated Short

Nominees

Beautiful Men

In the Shadow of the Cypress

Magic Candies

Wander to Wonder

Yuck!

I found myself a little underwhelmed by the Animated Short selections this year. In past years, this category has been loaded with bold, brilliant visions that push the boundaries of both animation and storytelling. Recent films like last year’s An Ostrich Told Me the World Was Fake and I Think I Believe It, 2020’s Opera, and 2014’s The Dam Keeper showcase the best of what these shorts can do. This year, only one of these five lived up to that standard.

Wander to Wonder is the front-runner almost by default. It won the Annie and the BAFTA in this category. It’s a beautifully rendered stop-motion piece that tells a story of breaking free from the strictures of the lives we believe we must lead. The animation is key to the execution. It’s funny, surprising, and ultimately inspiring. Would that there were four more of these in the lineup.

Beautiful Men, about three bald brothers at a hair-restoration clinic, comes the closest but ultimately is a little too slight. Yuck! and Magic Candies are both sweet stories of children learning about the world around them. And, if I’m being honest, I found In the Shadow of the Cypress a little impenetrable. It looks good, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Will win: Wander to Wonder

Should win: Wander to Wonder

Live-Action Short

Nominees

A Lien

Anuja

I’m Not a Robot

The Last Ranger

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

This is an excellent slate of nominees, and even the least among them is an endearingly strange ride with more to say than it perhaps first appears. Let’s just do a brief survey of the topics covered by these five shorts: the extra-legal deportation of immigrants from this country; the limited options afforded to children trapped in India’s class structure; our AI future and its moral and ethical implications; rhino poaching in South Africa; and a true story of heroism amid an ethnic cleansing in ‘90s Croatia.

I would say A Lien has the inside track to the win here, given its urgent relevance to the current political situation in this country. It operates like a ticking-clock thriller as a family fights to avoid a trap set by ICE in which the agency explicitly promises a chance at a green card while hoping to lure and round up the most vulnerable among us. A title card at the end of the film tells us this is a true practice used by ICE. This is hardly surprising but no less infuriating.

The Last Ranger is a gorgeously photographed ode to the people who put their lives at risk in South Africa to prevent animal poachers from carrying out their awful work. I thought this was an excellent film – well written, well acted, and wonderfully constructed. 

Another tribute to a fallen hero, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent tells the story of Tomo Buzov, who stood up to call out the injustice of a massacre and was himself brutally killed as a result. The filmmaking is brilliant in the way it puts you on the train with Buzov, not in his shoes but rather those of an observer, challenging you to consider whether you would stand up for what’s right under these circumstances. Tragically, Buzov’s son died just yesterday.

Anuja is a sweet story about a pre-teen girl working in a sweatshop in India who has an opportunity to take a scholarship at a boarding school but doesn’t want to leave her sister. It’s a nice little movie, but it lacks an ending. From a voting standpoint, the big thing in its favor is producer Mindy Kaling. It never hurts to have a big Hollywood celeb on your side in the shorts categories.

Finally, I’m Not a Robot takes a fascinating and comically absurd premise and stretches it out to its darkly logical conclusion. I won’t spoil any of the film’s surprises here, but suffice it to say, it presents a reality that feels just a step or two away from where we find ourselves now.

Will win: A Lien

Should win: A Lien