Category: Oscars 2025
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Predictions Updated Across All Oscar Categories!
Happy to announce that nearly all Oscar categories are officially updated with our latest predictions for which films and performers are looking good for nominations at the 2026 Oscars! Head over to the Oscar Predictions page and browse through the categories you’re most excited for to find out how the race is shaping up. This…
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Lucy Liu Officially Joins the Best Actress Hunt, as Vertical plots December release for “Rosemead”
There’s a busy few days ahead for everyone trying to keep pace with the awards circuit as a bevy of highly anticipated films will finally be unveiled in Italy at the Venice Film Festival and Colorado at the Telluride Film Festival. With each passing day, the awards race will start to take shape and we’ll…
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TIFF 2025: Who’s The Real Favorite? TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, Its New International Rival, and Our Predictions
The winner of the coveted TIFF People’s Choice Award will be announced tomorrow. I say “coveted” because TIFF and the pundit class like to position the recipients of this prize as a bellwether for Academy Awards success. But how true is that, really? The first People’s Choice Award was handed out in 1978—two years after…
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TIFF 2025 Round-up: The Hits, Misses, and Surprises
The 50th annual Toronto Film Festival is winding down, so here’s a rundown of the chatter surrounding the buzziest premieres, alongside fresh reactions to films that first screened at Cannes, Venice, and Telluride. Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman drew praise for Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst’s grounded performances and authentic chemistry, as well as its quirky warmth,…
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Netflix poised to make a move on “The Testament of Ann Lee”?
By all accounts, it appeared that Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet wanted to apply the same savvy release strategy that they unfurled last year with “The Brutalist,” the runaway talk of Venice, with this year’s “The Testament of Ann Lee.” After its Venice debut, Corbet’s “The Brutalist” would go on to be acquired by A24…
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Venice Film Festival 2025: Contested Winners and a Divided Jury
The winners of the 82nd Venice Film Festival were announced on Saturday, September 6th. As expected, critics and attendees were underwhelmed by some of the jury’s choices in the main competition, while others were outraged that some of the brightest films at the Lido were completely shut out—particularly Park Chan-wook’s widely acclaimed No Other Choice.…
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Final Venice Predictions
The winners of the 82nd Venice Film Festival will be announced this Saturday, so here are our final predictions for which films might take home a prize. Recently, Ildikó Enyedi’s competition entry SILENT FRIEND received a very warm reception — great news, as she remains one of our most prominent surreal humanist filmmakers, a true expert at…
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Venice Day Seven HOT TAKES: The Return of Kathryn Bigelow, The Sealing Of A Best Picture Nominee
The biggest news out of today’s Venice Film Festival screenings was loud and clear: Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in eight years (her last being the under-seen Detroit in 2017) was unanimously adored by critics, earning an impressive 88 on Metacritic and 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Joseph and I predicted this outcome on our last podcast,…
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Venice Day Six HOT TAKES: Acting Contenders Emerge in Dwayne Johnson, Amanda Seyfried, and Emily Blunt
The two biggest premieres on Day 6 of the 82nd Venice Film Festival were without question Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine—his first feature without his brother Josh—and Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, which arrives on the heels of her Oscar nomination last year for co-writing The Brutalist. Both films landed strongly with critics,…
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Telluride Film Festival RECAP: Get Ready For HAMNET
The 52nd Telluride Film Festival (which always takes place over Labor Day weekend) wraps up tomorrow, with most of the heavy hitters now unveiled. Among the standouts already seen at Cannes (and by yours truly) were Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, The Mastermind, Nouvelle Vague, The History of Sound, and…
