Ranked: 2025 Best Picture Nominees
The 2025 Academy Awards are here, which means the 2025 movie year is almost officially over. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners leads this year’s pack of nominees with a record-setting 16, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another with 9.
This year’s group of Best Picture nominees is one of the best we have seen in quite some time. While only three of the ten nominated films landed in my personal list of the ten best movies of 2025, with my two favorites being the frontrunners for Best Picture, there is no movie nominated for Best Picture that I would consider a bad or unworthy movie; something seems to happen almost every year, it seems. Would I have nominated some other films in their place? Sure. But I respect all of these movies on a cinematic level and understand why they were nominated.
Here is my ranking of the 2025 Best Picture nominees.
1. Sinners
It’s always a nice feeling when your favorite movie of the year is nominated for Best Picture. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a layered epic about music, Black history, and vampires that was as original and brilliant as movies got in 2025. Coogler’s direction is masterful, filled with several jaw-dropping sequences, most notably the “I Lie to You” sequence, which takes us on a musical journey while also opening the gates of Hell. Technically outstanding and filled with stellar performances from the best cast of the year, led by a superb dual performance from Michael B. Jordan, Sinners is one of the finest movies of the decade and would be a great Best Picture winner.
2. One Battle After Another
This year’s Best Picture frontrunner just also happened to be my second favorite movie of the year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is arguably the funniest and most entertaining film of the renowned director’s career. Leonardo DiCaprio leads one of the year’s best casts as a former revolutionary trying to find his daughter before a military psycho (an unbelievable Sean Penn) finds her. One Battle After Another is a rich, masterfully crafted, and timely thriller that is made with passion, heart, and skill.
3. Train Dreams
I’ve loved Train Dreams since first seeing it at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Clint Bentley’s American drama about a logger and rail worker (Joel Edgerton in the best performance of his career) as he witnesses loss and change at the turn of the 20th century. Train Dreams is a beautiful movie in every way, with some of the best cinematography of the year and a score that matches the film’s beauty and pain perfectly.
4. The Secret Agent
Wagner Moura gave one of the best performances of 2025 in The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller set in 1977 Brazil. The Secret Agent is a slow-burning thriller about a technology expert (Moura) who returns to his hometown after fleeing from a mysterious past, only to find his town might not be as safe as he thought. Anchored by Moura’s performance, The Secret Agent is a captivating and thematically rich film deeply rooted in Brazilian history.
5. F1® The Movie
F1 probably lands near the bottom of lists like this, with many people seeing this film as far and away the weakest of this year’s Best Picture nominees. But not this critic. F1 is blockbuster filmmaking at its best. Joseph Kosinski’s Formula 1 sports drama is a big, glossy, and expensive spectacle with thrilling races, outstanding sound, editing, and camera work, and a killer score from Hans Zimmer. Led by Brad Pitt, in full movie star mode, F1 is why we see movies on the big screen.
6. Frankenstein
Frankenstein is a movie director Guillermo del Toro has been wanting to make for decades, and he knocked it out of the park. This gothic horror film, based on Mary Shelley’s iconic novel, stays faithful to the novel by giving us two stories: one from Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) about his life and the creation of his monster, and one from the Monster (Jacob Elordi), going through his journey after being left for dead by Dr. Frankenstein. While I feel Isaac is miscast, the film is another visual treat from del Toro and features one of the year’s best performances from Jacob Elordi, who would be my pick to win Best Supporting Actor if I were to choose.
7. Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier’s latest is a powerful family drama that looks at generational trauma and forgiveness. It’s a quiet and tender movie that was emotionally effective, just not as much for me as others. That said, the core four performances by Stellan Skarsgard, Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning, all of whom are nominated for Oscars this year, are uniformly great.
8. Bugonia
I’ve never been the biggest fan of Yorgos Lanthimos as a director, but Bugonia is one of his films that I enjoyed quite a bit. It’s a very strange movie and feels emotionally distant, like most Lanthimos movies. But I loved the performances by Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, and the bold swing it takes in its finale worked for me.
9. Hamnet
Jessie Buckley is the heavy favorite to win this year’s Best Actress for Chloe Zhao’s emotional powerhouse Hamnet. Buckley plays Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), who struggles with the loss of their son, which ultimately leads to Shakespeare writing Hamlet. Buckley’s performance is undeniably great, and she will be a great winner. The film is incredibly devastating, especially in the middle, but I found the third act very rushed, which ultimately made the film’s climax fall flat for me.
10. Marty Supreme
I’ve been lower on Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme since I first saw the film. There are elements I liked, such as Timothée Chalamet’s performance, the production design and costumes, and the kinetic pacing. Yet the film is a bad sports movie, has a bloated runtime, and a rough script. By the beginning of the third act, I was tired, bored, and wondering when the movie was going to be over.
The 98th Academy Awards air Sunday, March 15th, at 7:00 PM EST.
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