Each year, I peek admiringly at a community I sort if wish I belonged to: r/oscarsdeathrace, the Reddit community where extreme movie buffs watch all Academy-nominated films in time for the 98th annual award show on Sunday night. They compare predictions and favorites and share where to stream rare films.
Here’s a sample summary post of the experience:
“stats:
20 films watched in theaters (including shorts)
7 rentals
6 Streaming Service Subscriptions
Edit: I forgot! Most Expensive ticket: $24.99 for Avatar: Fire and Ash
8 for "free" (library card service, Slipstream, on YouTube for free, etc.)
5 theaters I'd never been to before!
Longest drive: an hour, to see Sirat today.”
I’m in for about half of the nominated films. This year the slate is surprisingly compact but pretty wild in tone. Only about 50 different films received nominations across all categories, the smallest pool in years. The same titles pop up everywhere on the ballot. At the top of the heap is Sinners, a blues-soaked supernatural thriller set in 1930s Mississippi. It bulldozed the competition with 16 nominations, the most ever for a single film in Oscar history. Right behind it is One Battle After Another with 13 nominations, a political drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio that’s racked up awards all season.
The Best Picture lineup feels like someone spun a giant genre wheel. Alongside prestige dramas like Hamnet and Train Dreams, there’s the Brazilian spy story The Secret Agent, the Norwegian family saga Sentimental Value, the racing blockbuster F1: The Movie, and a gothic monster movie, Frankenstein. There’s also the oddball satire Bugonia and the drama Marty Supreme.
The standout oddity is Sinners, which critics say broke new ground by getting the Academy to embrace a horror movie in a way that almost never happens. Meanwhile One Battle After Another is the “serious movie” contender expected to give it a run for the gold statue. The result is a slightly chaotic Oscar season where the biggest question besides who will win is whether the Academy is about to crown a vampire movie as Best Picture.
A few pedestrian non-death watch opinions. I did see all the acting nominated films. For women, they’re all brilliant performances. I don’t think Emma Stone will win for Bugonia because it’s too weird of a film and the part isn’t a stretch for her. Ditto Reinsve for Sentimental Value. I think Jessie Buckley was excellent in Hamnet and wouldn’t mind her winning but she has her competition cut out for her because If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was a script made for a best actress nomination and Rose Byrne delivers flawlessly. And though the film is camp, not a bad thing, Song Sung Blue is made better by the layered and haunting performance of Kate Hudson. For supporting actress, I loved Teana Taylor in One Battle After Another.
For best actor, I’d love to see Michael B. Jordan win for Sinners—love to see a psychological thriller nomination and he plays dual roles; it’s also possible Leonardo DiCaprio could pick up the win for One Battle After Another which would be his second Best Actor Oscar. In Best Supporting Actor, though Sean Penn was great in One Battle After Another, I’d like to see Jacob Elordi win for his haunting, physical performance in Frankenstein.
The documentary feature film category is my favorite (after the shorts I covered last week) and the films are amazing; I didn’t have death race cheat codes so I saw 4/5 and encourage you to check these out online too if you can. The Alabama Solution goes inside Alabama’s troubled prison system, where overcrowding and horrific violence have become routine. Incarcerated people tell the story themselves; the result is a portrait of a system under severe strain; a crisis with no easy solution.
In Mr. Nobody Against Putin a Russian schoolteacher becomes an unlikely chronicler of life under tightening political pressure as a simple record of daily classroom life reveals how propaganda and fear seep into the everyday routines and frightening reality of an authoritarian system.
In The Perfect Neighbor, director Geeta Gandbhir builds a documentary from police body-cam footage, interviews, and court records to reconstruct a single conflict neighborhood dispute fueled by racism that spiraled into tragedy.
Come See Me in the Good Light follows poet Andrea Gibson and the loved ones surrounding them during the final stretch of their life. Instead of dwelling only on illness, the documentary leans into humor, art, and the quiet power of love and friendship. Poetry readings and candid conversations give the film a warm, human tone that lingers long after it ends. Because of the darkness of the other documentaries, of which I still understand and appreciate the value, it’s my hope for the category win in its ability to present sadness with a counterbalance of levity and light.