Feature Picks and Predictions: Academy Awards 2025

A spectre is haunting the Academy this year: the spectre of Challengers. Snubbed in a lot of categories, it’s being mentioned now so I don’t have to relive the pain of its absence later.

Anyway, it’s that time of the year. The full list of nominees can be found here.

Best Picture

Demi Moore in The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat

PICK: The Substance

PREDICTION: Anora

Things are, in the best way, up in the air for Best Picture this year. Nickel Boys especially is wonderful to see here.

Much as The Substance is not the epoch-defining cinematic moment that some online would hold it up as, it’s still my pick, purely because of how good of a direction it is for the Academy to contain at least one horror in the running for Best Picture. We all know the odds are stacked against The Substance in this regard, though, and Nickel Boys is the much more exciting underdog. It is a novelty pick more than anything. (Read my long-form discussion with Jon Greenaway here for some extended thoughts!)

Its Palme D’Or does give Anora wind in its sails to win the big one.

Best Actor

Left: Ralph Fiennes in Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger. Right: Adrien Brody in The Brutalist (2024) dir. Brady Corbet

PICK: Ralph Fiennes - Conclave

PREDICTION: Adrien Brody - The Brutalist

Fiennes gives a career-highlight performance in Conclave. All the more sad that this time, he’s outshone (in bookie hype much more than raw talent, I hasten to add).

That said, Brody’s offering in The Brutalist is very strong. Borne on the favourable winds of an astonishing score and bold VistaVision camerawork (more on both below), Brody is back to Pianist-level commitment and complexity with László Tóth. It’s definitely between him and Chalamet — a funny twist of fate, considering that Chalamet is the same age (29) that Brody was when he broke the record for youngest actor to win in this category in 2002.

Best Actress

Mikey Madison in Anora (2024) dir. Sean Baker

PICK: Mikey Madison - Anora

PREDICTION: Mikey Madison - Anora

Going into I’m Still Here, I “wanted to want” Torres to win. On reflection, Madison’s dynamite magnetism can’t be denied. It’s career-making stuff.

Best Supporting Actress

Left: Monica Barbaro in A Complete Unknown (2024) dir. James Mangold; right: Felicity Jones in The Brutalist (2024) dir. Brady Corbet.

PICK: Felicity Jones - The Brutalist

PREDICTION: Monica Barbaro - A Complete Unknown

Isabella Rossellini is in the running here more as a career nomination (as with Edward Norton below). Barbaro’s work in A Complete Unknown was one of the key parts of making that film as affecting as it was. But Felicity Jones’ Festen-esque confrontation near the close of The Brutalist is one of the great scenes of the year.

Best Supporting Actor

Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain (2024) dir. Jesse Eisenberg

PICK: Kieran Culkin - A Real Pain

PREDICTION: Kieran Culkin - A Real Pain

This is probably the most fraught pick of the list, and the only one where any winner’s a good winner. It’s close, but a lifelong admiration for Guy Pearce (yes, Memento is that good) can’t quite compete with what Culkin has achieved in A Real Pain: excruciating, oddly alluring, totally convincing.

Best Director

PICK: Brady Corbet - The Brutalist

PREDICTION: Sean Baker - Anora

Where is Villeneuve? I hear you, me and literally everyone else ask. I’m still glad that he received the nomination for Arrival (his best film) in 2016, but his absence here is very marked. Because he’s not here, I don’t have strong thoughts on this one. Corbet pulling off The Brutalist for $10 million is an achievement in itself.

Best Adapted Screenplay

PICK: Conclave - Peter Straughan

PREDICTION: Nickel Boys - RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes

Conclave’s religious thriller-text is both punchy and intelligent. The fun of its twists and turns outweighs any sense of contrivance. The film’s very specific, closed world is deftly exposed.

Best Original Screenplay

PICK: A Real Pain - Jesse Eisenberg

PREDICTION: The Brutalist - Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Culkin’s not the only strong point of A Real Pain. Eisenberg strikes such an exquisite balance between awkwardness and real poignancy — as well as taut efficiency.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Corbet and Fastvold’s work on The Brutalist is to have managed so biographical a tone. It’s an enthralling fiction.

Best Original Song

PICK: Like a Bird - Sing Sing

PREDICTION: El Mal - Emilia Pérez

A lot of people have very strong opinions on how bad the music in Pérez is. It was less offensive, more forgettable (bar the gender affirmation surgery number, I suppose). Any of the other three nominations would suffice.

Best Original Score

PICK: The Brutalist - Daniel Blumberg

PREDICTION: The Brutalist - Daniel Blumberg

Academy, please don’t mess this one up. Daniel Blumberg’s rousing, resounding, at times terrifying work on The Brutalist is one of the best scores I’ve heard in years. It’s triumphant, but never without an edge of uncertainty, confusion, even fear, just like the American Dream it’s emulating.

Best International Feature

PICK: I’m Still Here

PREDICTION: I’m Still Here

How the tide turned against Emilia Pérez. It’s by no means whatsoever a thirteen-nomination film; the sheer number of its nods is one of the many reasons it’s the villain of this year’s Oscars. I’m Still Here is much finer work across the board — with some outstanding work from the child actors.

Best Animated Feature

Have you seen this chicken? Still from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) dir. Nick Park

PICK: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

PREDICTION: The Wild Robot

This pick is more than a little nostalgia-driven, granted. But in the aftermath of Chicken Run’s staunchly disappointing sequel, Aardman’s return to form with Vengeance Most Fowl is gratifying to the extreme. Feathers McGraw is the all-time great stop-motion screen villain. It always had the BAFTA in the bag.

Best documentary

PICK: Black Box Diaries

PREDICTION: Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat

This is a category that often feels the most weighted by marketing reach. Black Box Diaries was my top film of last year’s LFF, for good reason. It’s an astonishing piece of work and an important contribution to an ongoing political conversation. Shiori Itô’s confident, composed direction invites (and easily earns) a deep empathy.

It’s well known that the Academy likes gesturing to a kind of racial and political awareness that is shown up to be very limited (if only we could forget Green Book’s win). The complex, challenging, bravura work of Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat will have attracted a lot of votes.

Best costume design

Singin’ in the rain. Willem Dafoe in Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers

PICK: Nosferatu

PREDICTION: Wicked

Three words: Willem Dafoe’s coats. But Wicked is Wicked…

Best make-up and hairstyling

PICK: The Substance

PREDICTION: The Substance

Monstro Elisasue is impossible to ignore — the Academy’s aforementioned aversion to horror notwithstanding.

Best production design

PICK: Conclave

PREDICTION: Dune: Part Two

Building the Sistine Chapel virtually from scratch? Gets my vote. A shame that it edges out one of the best aspects of Villeneuve’s latest.

Best sound

PICK: Dune: Part Two

PREDICTION: Dune: Part Two

I wonder what Frank Herbert thought the worms sound like.

Best film editing

PICK: Anora

PREDICTION: Anora

The Safdie Brothers-style delirium is one of the best parts of Anora. Baker’s a dab editing hand by this point.

Best cinematography

Still from The Brutalist dir. Brady Corbet. USA, Universal.

PICK: The Brutalist

PREDICTION: The Brutalist

VistaVision was an inspired choice. There are a couple of lulls, like in Van Buren’s house during the early dinner party, with its run-of-the-mill shots of smoking and card-playing. But those moments vanish in the wider grandeur and elusive tone that Lol Crawley conjures.

Best visual effects

Still from Dune: Part Two (2024) dir. Denis Villeneuve

PICK: Dune: Part Two

PREDICTION: Dune: Part Two

Everything in Alien: Romulus, except the slightly derivative workers-rights-nightmare planet, was fabulous. But Dune’s scale, combined with its own kind of rugged earthiness, is simply on a different level.

And that’s a wrap for feature predictions. Any glaring disagreements? Leave a comment on my Patreon post for this article!