Oscar Volley Finale: Best Picture!

The Oscar Volley series concludes with Nathaniel R, Nick Taylor, and Abe Friedtanzer talking Best Picture...

Would the DGA 5 have been the Best Picture 5 if there weren't 10?

NICK TAYLOR: Hello hello! We convene here on the precipice of the 98th Academy Awards to discuss its most above-the-line category, Best Picture! Trade’s reporting says One Battle After Another is leading the pack with Sinners hot on its neck. Rather than starting with the frontrunners, let me ask a different question: who do we think would have made this lineup if Best Picture was still only five nominees?

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Best Picture Nominees ranked by horniness

by Nathaniel R

Since we playin'

As is our annual tradition the Best Picture chart now has a reader's choice poll, some trivia, and multiple kinds of rankings. The titles are listed by nomination count (ties are broken by what kinds of nominations those are) as well as sillier lists for funsies like "most likely to become a Broadway musical", running time, "death count" and more. I hope you'll investigate but here on the front page I thought why not expand on the "Ranked by Horniness" note. Let's take the 10 pictures in tiers of how hot they're running.

Tier 1 'This pussy pops for you'
The tier title is inverted from a brutal kiss-off in the lusty One Battle After Another which practically begins with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) taunting her mortal enemy Captain Lockjaw (Sean Penn) right into a humiliating erection...

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Will "One Battle..." or "Sinners" Tie or Break Oscar Records?

by Nathaniel R

Can One Battle After Another defeat the Oscar Nomination Champs?

When France's Spanish-language trans musical Emilia Perez scored 13 nominations last January I felt an impending dread. The dread spoketh so... "If even this bizarre and divisive non-Hollywood film nearly broke the all time nomination record (14), then it's only a matter of time before it falls!" This is a terrifying development for those of us who cherish the spreading of wealth. If you love more than one or two movies a year it's downright heartbreaking. To date in Oscar's nearly century-long history, only three films have scored 14 nominations across available Oscar categories: All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016). This season honoring the films of 2025 One Battle After Another and Sinners will try to join or surpass them. The first new category in ages (Casting) could help them match or break that record. But will they pull it off?

Since we've just updated every single Oscar chart with late December predictions, it seems like the ideal time to investigate. Let's do that after the jump...

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Oscar Volleys: Best Picture could be more multicultural than ever before!

The Oscar Volleys are back! Tonight, it's time for Eric Blume, Eurocheese and Nick Taylor to discuss the Best Picture race...

HAMNET, Chloé Zhao | © Focus Features

ERIC: Hi gentlemen, I'm looking forward to our three-way... to talk about the ten possible Best Picture nominees. We're just starting to get some clarity on early predictions, so we might as well add our own two cents regarding the big race. Do you both agree that the two absolute lockshere are One Battle After Another and Hamnet? It's fun that they are two very different films that generate very different feelings, OBAA being sort of the "head" movie and Hamnet being the "heart" movie? That's an oversimplification, of course, but I don't think it's untrue…

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Greatest Movies of the 21st Century. Did you join in the fun?

by Nathaniel R

The talk this week in US cinephile circles has been the New York Times interactive "10 Best Movies of the 21st Century". 2025 is a good time for it. Here was my ballot, done on a whim, because how else to do it really? We all know that there are more than 10 "Best" movies in any given quarter century!  Sometimes there are more than 10 "Bests" in a single film year. Nevertheless it was fun to watch friends and strangers sound off this week...

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