Welcome to our final Oscar picks! Here’s part three in case you missed it: Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Three)
Remember, these aren’t the movies that will win, these are the movies that should win. Here are our picks for Best Director and Best Picture…
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson — One Battle After Another
Josh Safdie — Marty Supreme
Ryan Coogler — Sinners
Joachim Trier — Sentimental Value
Chloé Zhao — Hamnet
Every director in this category did phenomenal work and deserves to win. One Battle After Another isn’t Paul Thomas Anderson’s best directed movie, but it’ll probably be the one he wins an Oscar for. Better late than never. I love the energy he conjures in the first act and the way it sets the tone for the rest of the film. The car chase scene stands out too with the first person shots of the road and the way the intensity builds to a fever pitch. And of course there’s Leonardo DiCaprio in full-on hysteria mode leading the way through every scene. This is Anderson’s first real action movie and he makes every explosion count. I hope it’s not his last.
Josh Safdie smartly embodies the frenetic feeling of Marty’s mind in every choice he makes as a director for Marty Supreme. The shots are quick and restless. One minute, we’re in a hotel room with two people talking and the next a bathtub is falling through the floor and we’re plunged into chaos. The ping-pong games are fast and exciting. We hang on every crack of the ball. This is a movie filled with memorable moments in every scene, and Safdie gets us to each one as efficiently as possible. I’ve never seen a shorter 2 1/2 hour movie. Just like Marty, it’s the work of a winner.
Ryan Coogler deserves to win an Oscar for Sinners based on two scenes alone. The first is the Irish jig that the vampires perform outside the bar — a perfect combination of music and dance with a tantalizing layer of creepy underneath. The second is the surreal jaunt through Black music history that might just be the best scene of 2025. Coogler begins with a performance in the present, and then weaves in the spirit of the past and the future all existing at once in the same magical space. It’s breathtaking, especially in a theater. And those are just two scenes. There are so many other highlights and they all hinge on Coogler’s eye for detail, from period piece authenticity to vampire mayhem. This is easily his best work to date.
The primary job of directors is to get great performances out of their actors. Everything else is secondary. Whatever method Joachim Trier uses to accomplish that, it’s clearly working because Sentimental Value has four acting Oscar nominations. And the performances all live up to the hype. These are deep, nuanced characters with strengths, flaws, and fascinating contradictions that linger in our minds long after the movie is over. But acting isn’t the only thing that Trier excels at. This is a well-directed movie from start to finish, beginning with the gorgeous opening scene personifying the family house and ending with the powerful wordless scene between Gustav and Nora. In a word: perfection.
Chloé Zhao also combines great performances from her actors with outstanding directing, but she adds an additional layer that makes Hamnet stand out from the rest. She guides us through a depth of emotion unmatched by any other film in 2025. And no emotion is left unexplored. There’s the beauty of love as William and Agnes lock eyes and dream of a future together. There’s the miracle of birth as life emerges into the world in all of its joy and agony. And then there’s death; cold, merciless death that comes for us all no matter how much we kick and scream. These are the biggest emotions life gives us, and they’re all represented here. And through it all is the power of art. Just like Sentimental Value, Hamnet is about art and the movie is art. Because perhaps only art can make sense of all of the emotions we wrestle with the most.
Best Picture
F1
Frankenstein
Train Dreams
The Secret Agent
One Battle After Another
Bugonia
Sinners
Marty Supreme
Sentimental Value
Hamnet
What is F1 doing here? Why does the Academy feel the need to thrown in a “mainstream” pick every year, and why couldn’t this year’s slot be filled by a movie that was both popular and artistic like Weapons? Creating a pitch clock didn’t bring in more baseball viewers, and nominating F1 will not bring in more Oscar viewers. Stop it already. This is supposed to be a category for great movies and F1 isn’t even a good movie. Yes, the cars go really fast. Yes, Brad Pitt is still hot. No, the screenwriting, acting, and directing aren’t even close to Oscar-worthy.
There is a lot to like in Frankenstein, but not a lot to love. The whole film feels emotionally removed — all gloss and no substance. And yet, in typical Guillermo del Toro style, the visuals are impeccable. The acting is excellent, if occasionally over the top. And the themes explored are important, especially in the age of AI. What responsibility do we have toward the things we create, and what responsibility do they have toward us? Jacob Elordi’s performance embodies those questions, and it’s the closest this movie comes to greatness. We just needed a better narrative structure and a deeper well of emotion to steer those questions from the head to the heart.
Train Dreams reminds us of how much we take for granted. So many men like Robert have come and gone. They spent months building something with their hands only to see them demolished and turned into something else. They loved, laughed, and cried. And then they died. The cinematography is breathtaking. One stunning shot after another of nature. Another thing we take for granted. Not everything in the movie works. The voice-over is an unnecessary crutch that ties back to nothing. The tone and pacing grow stale eventually. It’s always good, but only occasionally great. The poor man’s Terrence Malick. But Robert was a poor man by today’s standards. An ordinary man. As Robert flies in a plane overlooking the forests he helped cut down, the final line from the pilot rings true about both his own life and the lives we lead in his wake: “You better hold on to something.”
I was invested in The Secret Agent from the opening shot. Wagner Moura is the perfect leading man because he’s an everyman. He’s the stand-in for all of us who are trying to do the right thing in a world where corruption reigns supreme. The city has a lived-in feel to it with the heat radiating off the screen. I like how the pacing takes its time without sacrificing tension. We feel the evil closing in around Marcelo and all we want is for him to live a normal life. I just wish there was a little more. An extra scene or two to bring it all together. The killer amputated leg was a quirky change of pace. The movie could have used more of that energy. I also wasn’t sold on the anti-climactic ending after such a long investment. I get the reason for it intellectually, but that doesn’t make it satisfying. As political thrillers go though, this one feels especially timely.
Speaking of timely, One Battle After Another feels tailor-made for present-day America despite being based on a book from 35 years ago. History keeps rhyming. The French 75 want to take down fascism, but really they’re performative activists. Blowing stuff up and accomplishing nothing. The real hero of the movie is Benicio del Toro’s Sergio. He quietly tends to his underground railroad for immigrants, doing the unglamorous work of actually helping people. His name will never make it into the history books, but he’s the true revolutionary. This is as mainstream as Paul Thomas Anderson gets. The characters are bigger than life, it’s funny and action-packed, and Sean Penn gives us a villain to remember. I just wish Anderson had more to say about the times we’re living in. Like the French 75, the movie is far more flash than substance. But when the flash is this entertaining, it’s easy to forgive.
Bugonia also feels unusually mainstream for a Yorgos Lanthimos movie. Yes it’s still weird, but so is the world right now. Everyone knows a guy like Teddy, a true believer in a conspiracy theory that finally explains everything. It’s more comforting to believe in a puppet master pulling the strings than a world of random chaos. Because if we can just destroy the puppet master, we’ll finally all be free. Or maybe we’re wrong and Teddy is right. That’s the trick at the heart of the film. Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone play off each other perfectly. But it’s Lanthimos who feels the most dialed in. We’re used to big, weird films from him with a lot going on. Bugonia, by contrast, feels lean and crisp. And the ending is the exact sucker punch the movie needs to bring everything home.
Sinners was the theater experience of 2025. I went in knowing nothing and walked out in movie heaven. I love how Ryan Coogler takes his time. If it wasn’t for the opening, we would think this is just a period piece about twin brothers who open up a nightclub and invite their cousin along for the ride. That first hour proves essential as we get to know each character and their motivations before the story takes its turn. And oh what a turn it takes. Yes, this is a vampire movie. But what makes it more than just a genre pic is how the vampire element ties in perfectly to the themes established in the first half. The two musical scenes underscore the point. In the first, we see the beauty of black culture come together in triumph. In the second, we see the vampire version of “color blind” as everyone’s identity gets swallowed up into the whole. It’s just another form of oppression. And yet, the Irish were an oppressed people too. That’s a lot to unpack, but Coogler does it effortlessly. He’s out to entertain us first and foremost, but he also has a lot to say. Something tells me he’s just getting started.
After a lifetime of working together, the Safdie brothers parted ways last year to make two very different films. Benny Safdie made The Smashing Machine which received one Oscar nomination. Josh Safdie made Marty Supreme which earned nine Oscar nominations. That might create some unfortunate tension at Thanksgiving, but it gave us one of the best movies of the year. Marty Supreme is as entertaining as movies get, anchored by one of the all-time great performances from Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet has come under fire lately for his off-screen antics, but there’s no question he deserves an Oscar. Marty is a terrible human being, but we can’t take our eyes off him. Here is a man completely without shame who will do whatever it takes to win. At first we enjoy the wild ride as he expertly manipulates each person and situation to achieve his goals. But then the costs start piling up. We see the people he hurts along the way, and the inherent consequences of a life lived solely for self. People have criticized the movie for not giving Marty his comeuppance, but that’s entirely the point. This is America. Land of the Martys. And one of them is currently our President.
Sentimental Value is a movie about home. Both the homes we inhabit and the feeling of home from our childhood that we spend a lifetime trying to find again. The movie opens with the former, and from the very first shot we know we’re in the presence of greatness. The voice-over is pure poetry as it describes what a house might feel like if it was alive. Does it prefer being empty or being full? And then we meet the characters who are all searching for the home they lost, even though their literal home is still standing. Each character we meet is unique and full of contradictions. They share a complicated history of pain and trauma which they’re all trying to heal from with minimal success. There is only one thing that can still bring them together: art. Sentimental Value is a tribute to the power art has to transform these characters and, in so doing, transform us. Only art can break through the cement walls of our heart and bring us back home. This is a deep, tender, beautiful film that grabs us from the start and never lets go. I love this movie.
The best part about Hamnet is that it’s not really about Shakespeare. If we went in cold, we wouldn’t even know we were watching a movie about his life until halfway through. The man we meet is simply “William” — a Latin tutor who meets a woman named Agnes. Agnes is very different from the women of her day and William is smitten. They fall in love and children follow. Director Chloé Zhao doesn’t rush these early scenes. She lets them breathe. We fall in love right along with them. And then tragedy strikes. Once again, Zhao is in no rush. She dwells on the grief in a way most filmmakers wouldn’t. She lets us sit in the raw, primal agony of losing a child. One of the cruelest moments life has to offer. And where is William while this is happening? Off in London making plays. That’s when we put it together. This isn’t just a man making plays. This is William Shakespeare. And while we blame him just like Agnes for not being there when his family needed him most, we also realize that the art he’s making in 16th-century England is still being performed in 2026. It’s the art that Shakespeare used to make sense of his own grief and transform it into something that still touches the grief-stricken today. The final scene of the movie is incredible. For the first time, Shakespeare’s words make sense. This was a time when death struck every household, which is why everyone in the theater — rich and poor — raise their hands in solidarity as Hamnet dies. Just like Sentimental Value, the moment reminds us of how important art can be. And Hamnet itself is tremendous art. The acting is some of the best you’ll ever see. The cinematography is stunning. This is the best movie of 2025. I’ll never forget hearing the sniffles of my theater companions as the credits rolled. We sat in silence, collecting ourselves. Afterward, I drove home to find my children sleeping. I kissed each one of them on the head, remembering what it looked like to lose one. I had been touched by great art. The very reason we still go to the movies.
Join Us…
The Oscars are this Sunday, March 15, at 6:00 PM CST! Watch the show and then listen to the Cinema Faith podcast at the end of the March where Jon and Tim will be break down the highlights of the night and give their final thoughts on 2025.
