The Film Experience

It’s that time again! Lynn Lee and Eurocheese discuss the Oscar race for Best Editing.

the Best Editing nominees

LYNN: Happy peak Oscar season, Eurocheese! Excited to discuss the editing category with you. Overall, this is a strong if relatively unsurprising lineup. I, for one, am absolutely delighted Sentimental Value made it in – that final scene in itself deserves all of the awards. And I can see the merits in the other selections, even if the Academy once again went with all Best Picture nominees (yawn). But then it’s been almost a decade since they included any non-BP nominees. So I will just sit in the corner and shed my own quiet tear for the unsung A House of Dynamite, which deserved more awards love in general but in this category in particular. At least the BAFTAs recognized that!

What are your thoughts on the nominees? And do you think the winner will also win Best Picture (for the fourth year in a row)?

EUROCHEESE: This is my favorite lineup in this category in over a decade. I could make a case for why all five of these would be a deserving winner, even when I don’t care for the film. I do wish Sound of Falling, a criminally underrated film this awards season, could have made the cut, but if we are settling for movies firmly in the conversation, these are excellent choices.

SENTIMENTAL VALUE

Sentimental Value’s unusual choice to introduce the house as an initial character through narration gives the entire film a structure that almost ensures the fractured family will find a way back to their roots, letting us know we are in assured hands from the start. While the film veers into dark territory, the sense of history and place set the audience up to hope for reconciliation. Editor Olivier Bugge Coutté has worked with Joachim Trier on several features including his “Oslo trilogy,” and I was also pleased to discover he was the editor of Beginners, another film steeped in charm and a sense of fate. The way each character’s scenes build to a full arc for the family moving forward really helps those final scenes land. This was my favorite film of 2025, and the ultimate impact was devastating.

I can’t even promise it would have my vote in this category though. Two thrillers are battling for the win in most categories this year, and both feature building tensions that explode in their last act. Considering they may be our frontrunners, do you have a preference between them?

SINNERS

LYNN: I definitely prefer Sinners to One Battle After Another, and that includes the editing. Ryan Coogler’s longtime editor Michael Shawver somehow managed to stitch together genres with typically different tones and rhythms – historical drama, romance, Southern Gothic, musical, and action-horror – into a seamlessly compelling whole; the film doesn’t shift registers so much as it fuses them. And I love how he hooks us immediately with that opening scene, where Sammy bursts into his father’s church with the remnants of his guitar: right from the get-go, his demeanor establishes that something momentous and hugely traumatic has happened, while the quick flashbacks (or, from the audience’s point of view, glimpses of what’s to come) signal it’s something supernatural and terrifying without revealing exactly what. The whole cold open followed by a cut to “24 hours/2 weeks/2 years earlier” has been done to death, yet in this case it works incredibly effectively, as does the decision to slow-roll the reveal of the vampiric element in favor of building out the world and lives it’s seeking to take over. Likewise, all of the brilliant musical sequences are cut and framed in a way that simultaneously underscores the seductive power of the music and the lurking violence it’s only temporarily holding at bay.

And yet, I’m convinced One Battle is going to win, not just because it’s going to win Best Picture but because it has such virtuosic set pieces where Andy Jurgensen’s editing is so clearly propelling the momentum. That hilly car chase scene alone could seal the deal. I also think a lot about that middle-section raid of Baktan Cross, where the editing smoothly and hilariously juxtaposes the cool proficiency and grace under fire of Benicio del Toro’s Sergio and his helpers with the comic bumbling and fretting of Leonardo DiCaprio’s bathrobe-clad “Bob” as he searches for a phone charger and eventually literally falls off a roof. My main complaint about the editing may be more a complaint about the script, in that for a movie that clocks in at 162 minutes, there are both scenes and characters that feel slightly shortchanged and others that I think the movie could have done without: for instance, most if not all of the satiric “Christmas Adventurers” subplot, the kind of thing Spike Lee could do (and has done) better.

Who do you think has the edge? Or could this be a Ford v. Ferrari like year in which F1’s sheer technical finesse carries the day?

EUROCHEESE: I agree that One Battle feels like the frontrunner at the moment, though I don't have a grasp on where Sinners’ record-breaking nomination total could lead to a tipping point. As you point out, both films showcase editing front and center as they build, though I thoroughly enjoyed the surprising comedic asides thrown into One Battle. I imagine this will be seen as an early-evening indicator of the likely Best Picture winner, but I could also see a split decision.

F1: THE MOVIE

It’s strange, looking back, that Ford v. Ferrari managed to take the top prize over Parasite, but the Academy has never given this award to a film that was not primarily in the English language. The nomination itself may have been the victory there. I may not be a fan of F1, but I do find the racing sequences compelling even as someone who is not particularly drawn to similar sequences in other films. Stephen Mirrione is our veteran in the category, previously a winner for his memorable work in Traffic. Flashy work throughout his career has included Oscar nominations for Babel and The Revenant as well as his snubbed work in Birdman, which has never sat well with me (feel free to debate in the comments). All that said, is this going to be one of his most memorable works? Doubtful. Still, even if it's my least favorite of this group, I walked away from the film thinking it stood out as impressive.

It's difficult to talk about Josh Safide without touching on current concerns, but I will say of the four nominations he received this year, this one (alongside frequent co-writer and editor Ronald Bronstein) is the one I applaud most. Marty Supreme is a wild chase of a movie, and while I didn’t personally enjoy every step along the way, the neck-breaking pace while launching from one vignette to the next only comes together if it sticks the landing in its final match. The Safdie films of the past lean on this signature editing style as a defining characteristic, and it would feel wrong to reward this film without including a nomination here. In another year, if the competition wasn't so strong, I could easily see this taking the prize. If it felt like the film even had an outside shot at Best Picture, I might predict it as a spoiler. As it stands now, though, I think the competition will default back to our nomination leaders.

MARTY SUPREME

LYNN: 100% with you on Marty Supreme. I didn’t love it, which is not surprising – I frankly loathed Uncut Gems and find the Safdie house style (ok, maybe it’s just Josh; I haven’t seen The Smashing Machine) exhausting. But the best things about it are clearly Timothee Chalamet’s performance and the editing. Yes, it’s exhausting, but you also can’t look away for a second (that actually describes both Timmy and the editing, haha). It’s wild to me that Bronstein claims he and Safdie don’t actually do a lot of cutting although that might explain why Marty’s careening from one narrowly averted disaster to the next feels weirdly organic, or at least true to his character, rather than a stylistic imposition. And that frenetic quality feels perfectly matched to the subject sport, which comes brilliantly alive in the table tennis scenes, including both the climactic final match and the very different but equally kinetic hustling scene. If the Academy wanted to reward Safdie and Bronstein in this category, I wouldn’t be mad, though like you, I see that as an outside chance at best.

Side note: While this is hardly a novel observation, one thing that always bugs me a little about editing as an awards category is how to evaluate it properly without seeing what was left on the proverbial cutting room floor. (And, at least in some cases, how much it deviated from the working screenplay.) Without actually seeing the process, only the end result, it’s just hard to separate analytically from the other elements of the movie, especially the cinematography, writing, and direction. It’s like trying to evaluate a song’s rhythm independently from the music, lyrics, and performer’s interpretation. That’s of course why there’s so much overlap with the nominations – and wins – for Best Picture. Do you think there’s a way to overcome that challenge, other than having more information available about the editing decisions? I for one would love to see more conversation about editing on the awards circuit! Unfortunately, given its status as a “craft” category that seems pretty darn unlikely.

EUROCHEESE: I completely agree, and while we’re at it, I would love to have the Academy (maybe for their 100th?) challenge the branches to release videos detailing not only examples of their favorite moments in the past, but how they evaluate the category when they are placing their votes. In all cases, we can only pick apart what we see on screen. Directors and writers know the importance of pairing themselves with a like-minded editor, which is why we so often see long term partnerships, as we do with many of the nominees this year. We haven’t seen too many examples of directors winning in this category, but Sean Baker took the prize last year, and I have to wonder if we might see more of that in the future, especially for smaller budget films.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

At the moment, I’m settling on this as the order of likelihood for a win:

One Battle After Another – currently seen as the Best Picture frontrunner...
Sinners – with this film nipping at its heels
Marty Supreme – I can’t say I’d be completely shocked if voters rewarded this high speed chase
F1 – never count out the only previous nominee/winner in the category
Sentimental Value – very happy to have it and I’d love a spoiler

Are you in the same boat?

LYNN: Ooh, I love that idea for the centennial! I would also love to see highlight reels or a “day in the life of” an Oscar nominated film editor or even just stories of editing fights or breakthroughs. Maybe this is something YouTube can explore once they get the Oscar broadcast rights.

I agree with you on the probability rankings. But for personal preference (for the editing, not the film as a whole), I’d rank them so:

Sentimental Value – so artful you don’t realize how artful until long after. The use of the family house to transport us across time, characters, boundaries between performance and reality, is so subtle and so glorious.
Sinners – begins with a bang, moves like a beautiful dream, ends with what may be the best post-credits scenes ever (also clearly an editing choice, which I for one loved)
Marty Supreme – that flophouse bathtub-crashing scene and the rest of the crazy night that follows will live rent-free in my head for a long time.
One Battle After Another – deftly underscores how crucial editing is to both action *and* comedy, and doubly so to the combo. But really a little less Sean Penn, and a little more Regina Hall, would’ve gone a long way. (Again, I realize that’s not necessarily the fault of the editing, but editing did play at least some role.)
F1 – really draws you into the visceral sensations of car racing. But is there more than that?

How about you?

EUROCHEESE: I lean towards One Battle with my vote at the moment, but ask me again tomorrow and I might head in a different direction. Sinners picks up as we grow closer to nightfall, but One Battle’s disorienting opening throws us right into the chaos, and every moment from there had me on the edge of my seat. Sentimental Value is beautifully executed and Marty Supreme never lets up. I’m glad you brought up the post-credits scene in Sinners, though – that finale elevates everything that came before. That film pieces together so many impressive sequences, including the clear best scene of the entire film year in “I Lied to You.”

Loved discussing this with you, Lynn! And I would say if there is a cardinal sin in One Battle’s editing, it is not giving Regina Hall one final scene to clench her a nomination.

Previous Oscar Volleys:

Related: