The Academy Awards are being held later than usual this year because of the Winter Olympics, and this has likely contributed to some actual suspense with many of the major awards. We present our forecast for the major awards in the print issue, but our website will have a rundown of the mid-major categories, too, which is my way of honoring 2025’s best work in the crafts. As always, any wrong predictions will entitle you to a full refund of Fort Worth Weekly’s newsstand price. Here we go.
Picture: The big question here is, has Sinners had enough time to overtake One Battle After Another? I’m thinking not. In fact, I think the real-life killings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti will tip the scales in favor of the movie where the bad guy commands ICE agents to pursue the heroes. Paul Thomas Anderson’s thriller would be a worthy winner on its own merits, but I think the temptation will be overwhelming to give this award as a middle finger to all the Steven Lockjaws at DHS. You can consult my Top 10 list to see which movies I thought worthy of this award. No Other Choice got lost because its distributor, Neon Releasing, had so many other movies to promote this award season.
Actor: Timothée Chalamet has now acted in eight Best Picture Oscar nominees. That’s as many as Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, or Audrey Hepburn managed over the course of their entire careers, and he’s done it before turning 30. I don’t care that he has come up during a time when there are more than five Best Picture nominees. It’s still amazing. Is it enough to get him the statuette for Marty Supreme? How about the fact that Best Actress winners have historically tended to be much younger than Best Actor winners? Does the young-man vote work for him, or does the old guard hold firm for Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another? Or do their constituencies fracture enough to allow Michael B. Jordan to sneak in for Sinners or Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon? I’m not calling this race.
Actress: Unlike the Best Actor award, this one appears to be in the bag for Jessie Buckley and Hamnet. I’ve got no problem with that vis-à-vis the other nominees, though I’d hate to see Sentimental Value come away with nothing, especially with Renate Reinsve being so great. We should really be up in arms, though, about Amanda Seyfried missing out for The Testament of Ann Lee and Tessa Thompson for Hedda (and for those movies being shut out of the Oscar nominations entirely). They gave Kate Hudson a nomination over those performances? Ridiculous.
Supporting Actor: Another tough one to call. Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn were superlative in One Battle After Another, but a couple of old-timers who have been doing great work for decades might swoop in, between Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value and Delroy Lindo for Sinners. If it comes down to that, maybe Skarsgård has a slight edge over Lindo because he’s made more movies. On the other hand, if it comes down to Del Toro vs. Penn, Del Toro may have an advantage because of the more-than-faint possibility of Penn saying something heinous during his acceptance speech. There are too many variables in play here.
Supporting Actress: Black actresses have won this category nine times out of the past 20 years, with no repeat winners. Doesn’t really make up for the lack of victors in the Best Actress category during that time, but it’s still mighty impressive. They can make it 10 for 21, but Wunmi Mosaku and Teyana Taylor may have the vote split here, and there’s also the fact that Taylor’s character largely disappears from One Battle After Another after leaving behind the “this pussy don’t pop for you” note. Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleeas are probably dividing the Sentimental Value constituency, too. This is probably going to Amy Madigan, who has been around quite a long time (it’s been precisely 40 years since her previous nomination) and who made such a vivid red-wigged villain in Weapons.
Director: The way Oppenheimer felt like Christopher Nolan’s coronation, One Battle After Another feels like Paul Thomas Anderson finally getting his gold man after making quality stuff since the 1990s. The only threat to PTA will be Ryan Coogler, who’s still young enough to qualify as an up-and-comer but has shown astonishing consistency over the course of his five feature films. Will Benny Safdie be sitting at home stewing in rage because his brother Josh got his first Oscar nomination without him? It’s fun to think about.
Casting: For the first time in more than 20 years, here’s a new category! What does it mean? We can’t draw on previous wins to see what voters think the criteria should be. Does this go to Marty Supreme for Jennifer Venditti’s innovative use of nonprofessional actors? Is this for Hamnet because of the two leads? Or does Sinners get this for the superior quality of so many actors’ performances? (And if it doesn’t win Best Picture, does Coogler’s film snag this trophy as a consolation prize?) Or does One Battle After Another win this as a harbinger for a Best Picture win? Whoever comes out with this, we’ll learn something from it.
Original Screenplay: Hmmm, does Sentimental Value win this category as its big prize? The writers’ branch has proved willing to give awards to scripts that aren’t primarily in English. By that token, maybe they give this to It Was Just an Accident, since co-writer Mehdi Mahmoudian was recently jailed by Iran’s government for his part in creating the film, among other things. The American nominees don’t have anything like that going for them and are all up for bigger awards. I smell a foreign-language win here. Despite the caliber of the nominees, the writers missed a trick by failing to honor Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby), Celine Song (Materialists), or even Drew Hancock (Companion).
Adapted Screenplay: Fun fact: Paul Thomas Anderson initially wanted to do a faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland but found it hard sledding until he updated the story to the present day and made some of the characters nonwhite. Hence, One Battle After Another is the frontrunner in this category, though I’m rooting for Bugonia to pull the upset here. Maybe my love for the classics is showing, but neither script is as mind-blowingly revolutionary as Nia DaCosta’s for Hedda, which made Henrik Ibsen’s play newly relevant for our time.
Cinematography: Still no woman has ever won in this category, and Autumn Durald Arkapaw would deserve to break that streak for her work on Sinners. Will she? Possibly this branch will go for the natural vistas of the Pacific Northwest in Train Dreams. Adolpho Veloso’s work in that film sure is pretty, but I’d be somewhat disappointed if that happened. I would rate Mauro Herce’s desert raves on Sirāt and Claudio Miranda’s race photography for F1: The Movie as better than all the nominees. Every year seems to have a bad movie with great cinematography, and my pick this year is Jeff Cronenweth’s work for Tron: Ares.
Editing: Glad to see Stephen Mirrione’s work for F1: The Movie honored here, even if it will surely lose to Andy Jurgensen’s work for One Battle After Another, whose editing is prominently displayed for the audience. I have no complaints about the other nominees, but the editors really should have made room for Sofia Subercaseaux’s job on The Testament of Ann Lee.
Production Design: What the hell, seriously? Every year, one category’s voters seem to have their heads up their asses, and this year, it’s the production designers. Sinners does make the most out of a movie that mostly takes place in a single location, and Frankenstein looks beautiful, but I have a whole slate of films that would make better nominees than the ones here. How about Adam Stockhausen’s neat-as-a-pin designs for The Phoenician Scheme? Klaudia Klimka’s interiors for The Ugly Stepsister could have gone here, though the Norwegian fairy tale got nominated for Best Makeup. Fiona Crombie is nominated for Hamnet when she did more impressive work in Mickey 17. Jørgen Stangebye Larsen also did great work with the family house in Sentimental Value. Given how central the house was to the story, the movie’s omission is puzzling.
Costume Design: Are you surprised that Avatar: Fire and Ash is eligible for this race? It is, because even costumes that are made of pixels instead of fabric have to be designed. Deborah L. Scott’s Na’vi outfits are likely to lose to Ruth E. Carter’s Depression-Era pieces for Sinners. I really would have thought that Paul Tazewell’s looks for Wicked: For Good would make the grade here. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wasn’t a very good movie, but Arjun Bhasin’s costumes deserved a look. The same goes for Susie Coulthard’s Renaissance-style costumes for 100 Nights of Hero.
International Feature: This one’s as much a toss-up as the Best Actor race. Do we think that Donald Trump’s illegal military actions in Iran tip the scales in favor of It Was Just an Accident? (It’s France’s entry, but it takes place in Iran.) Or does this race still come down to Best Picture nominees Sentimental Value (Norway) and The Secret Agent (Brazil)? I wouldn’t put down money on this one. I’ve already sounded off about No Other Choice (South Korea), but Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan) would not have been out of place here, either. Japan at least saw Kokuho make the shortlist when it should have submitted Cloud, but why didn’t China submit Resurrection? Say it with me: The one-country, one-film rule is stupid.
Documentary: This one’s easy. The Perfect Neighbor has Netflix’s marketing muscle behind it and will prevail. That doesn’t mean it’s deserving. Ryan White’s Come See Me in the Good Light is a better nominee about the nonbinary poet and activist Andrea Gibson as they face the last days of their life while dying from terminal cancer. The voters this year went all in on important subjects, and while it’s good to have documentary films about global affairs and such, I found that the best nonfiction movies of 2025 dared to tackle smaller subjects and find the significance in those.
Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters is as mortal as locks get. Predator: Killer of Killers was ruled ineligible for this award. Otherwise, I think it would have merited a nomination. Let’s move on.
Score: Here’s where Sirāt got screwed. I found Kangding Ray’s work to be the best I heard all year and central to the movie’s accomplishment. Who knew that electronic dance music could be the background for unthinkable tragedy like the Spanish film’s? Does the music branch hate EDM like they used to hate rap? As for who will win, Jonny Greenwood has never won an Oscar, and his music for One Battle After Another was terrific. Then again, Ludwig Göransson’s score for Sinners was front and center for much of that film. Max Richter’s work for Hamnet is here mostly because of the film’s use of “On the Nature of Daylight,” which will make you cry. Besides Sirāt, Tron: Ares (Nine Inch Nails), Train Dreams (Bryce Dessner), and Marty Supreme (Daniel Lopatin) all could have easily made the nominees.
Song: This race is closer than it appears. “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters topped the actual pop charts, and it remains the frontrunner, but don’t sleep on “I Lied to You” from Sinners. Göransson and Raphael Saadiq’s blues song benefits from the movie that it’s in and also from being the centerpiece to the one scene from the film that everyone talked about, when Preacher Boy tore a hole in the fabric of space-time. I’d argue that it’s the key to interpreting Ryan Coogler’s whole film. As for the snubbed songs, I’d say The Weeknd’s “Open Hearts” was taken down by being part of the terrible Hurry Up Tomorrow, and “Dina, Simone” from Opus (by The-Dream and Nile Rodgers) deserved a listen. When Diane Warren loses this category (for Kesha’s “Dear Me” from the documentary about her), she will officially become the losingest nominee in Oscar history, with 17 nominations without a win. Good thing she’s cool about it.
