Our Chief Film Critic’s Picks for Every Oscars 2025 Category — In Review
The following article is an excerpt from the new edition of “In Review by David Ehrlich,” a biweekly newsletter in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the site’s latest reviews and muses about current events in the movie world. Subscribe here to receive the newsletter in your inbox every other Friday.
Judgment day is nigh!
Awards season is so long that America was able to become a crypto-fascist autocracy faster than Hollywood was able to decide which “Emilia Pérez” song Diane Warren should lose to, but good news: At least one of those things will all be over by the end of the weekend.
The votes have been cast, the campaigns have been campainful, and the predictions have been made and, then re-made, and then scrambled by the SAG Awards at the last second. At this point all that’s left is to hand out some trophies and see how many bracelets Kieran Culkin decides to wear on the big night.
As a professional film critic, the Oscars are obviously beneath me. And, as a professional film critic, I am also physically incapable of not sharing every single opinion I have about them as if my life depended on it. So, in lieu of any exciting new movies to cover, this week’s edition of “In Review” will be entirely devoted to an exhaustive rundown of who I think should win in every feature film category.
OK, let’s get into it:
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
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Monica Barbaro (“A Complete Unknown”)
Ariana Grande (“Wicked”)
Felicity Jones (“The Brutalist”)
Isabella Rossellini (“Conclave”)
Zoe Salda?a (“Emilia Pérez”)
I love Isabella Rossellini. I respect Isabella Rossellini. I treasure Isabella Rossellini. I have… no recollection of Isabella Rossellini actually doing anything in “Conclave.” I’m pretty sure there’s a great shot of her glaring at someone, and no one on Earth can place a folder on a table with such eternally damning side-eye, but I don’t know… Much as I would enjoy a return to the days when Dame Judi Dench could earn a nomination from a few withering minutes of screentime, I don’t think I can give this category to my favorite of the actresses nominated. Which is a shame, as the lineup is so brutal this year that it feels like it was chosen by the same lunatics who choose the contenders for Best Original Song — you could probably swap out Felicity Jones for Diane Warren without anyone even noticing.
Ariana Grande was terrific, but tragically in “Wicked.” Zoe Salda?a has given no fewer than five better performances as an alien than she does as a lawyer in “Emilia Perez.” Monica Barbaro… is there anyone alive who wasn’t completely wowed by her in “A Complete Unknown”? Much as I was endeared to Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, Barbaro’s Joan Baez is the only person in that movie who doesn’t seem to know that she’s in someone else’s biopic. She sings like an angel, she brings a vivid sense of history into every scene, and her sheer force of will is simply too strong to be folded into Bob Dylan’s ever-inflating myth. Much as I wish this film had been half as interesting or committed as Timothée Chalamet’s lead performance, Barbaro does a miraculous job of supporting his efforts however she can.
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
“A Different Man” (Mike Marino, David Presto and Crystal Jurado)
“Emilia Pérez” (Julia Floch Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier and Jean-Christophe Spadaccini)
“Nosferatu” (David White, Traci Loader and Suzanne Stokes-Munton)
“The Substance” (Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli)
“Wicked” (Frances Hannon, Laura Blount and Sarah Nuth)
In most years, I would recuse myself from weighing in on this category because — and I have the MRI scans to confirm this — I tragically never developed the part of the human brain that allows people to notice when someone is wearing a wig. The realization that Cate Blanchett wasn’t sporting her own hair in “Carol” was the closest thing I’ve ever personally experienced to the last scene of “The Usual Suspects.” If you told me that Cousin Itt actually looks like that in real life I’d believe you without hesitation.
Having said that, certain scenes in “The Substance” did lead me to suspect that some minor adjustments had been made to the cast’s natural appearances. While the Oscar shouldn’t necessarily be awarded to the movie with the most makeup and hairstyling, I do think special consideration should be given to the movie that does the most with it, and there’s no comparison among the other nominees to the amount of story and detail that Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror masterpiece conveys through the appearance of its characters.
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You could watch “The Substance” with the sound off and still understand every self-loathing facet of Elisabeth Sparkle’s de-evolution from middle-aged stunner to nightmarish swamp thing, as Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stépehanie Guillon, and Marilyne Scarselli’s merciless attention to detail makes every new “defect” feel like a stain upon her soul. No disrespect to the decrepitude on display in “Nosferatu,” but the pursuit of agelessness has never been uglier, squishier, or more spectacular than it is here. Long after most of this year’s nominated movies have been forgotten, memories of Monstro Elisasue will remain.
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
“I’m Still Here”
“The Girl with the Needle”
“Emilia Pérez”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”
“Flow”
I’ve been happy to see this category become something of an afterthought in recent years, because 1.) It’s still totally borked that the Oscar goes to the winner’s country of origin rather than the filmmakers, and 2.) The category has only become so boring because one of the nominees is now reliably in the running for Best Picture as well (and thus all but guaranteed to win), which is a very positive reflection of the Academy’s growing attention to the world beyond America’s borders.
But the plot thickens. Now, for what I think is the first time ever (I don’t know, I’m not one of you sick Oscar freaks, leave me alone), two Best Picture nominees are up for Best International Feature. One is a sober, serious, and widely respected true story that has become the Cinderella story of this year’s awards season (“I’m Still Here”). The other is an absurd, asinine, and widely deplored soap opera whose story has no actual basis in lived human history, and struck me as the villain of this year’s awards season long before we learned that its lead actress has a terminal case of poster’s disease (“Emilia Pérez”).
Which to choose! I say neither. Both of these films pale in comparison to the other three nominees, even if one of them pales a hell of a lot harder, but my vote belongs to “Flow,” which deserves to make history as the first animated film to ever win this prize (I fact-checked that one).
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