The 14th Annual Team Experience Awards: “One Battle After Another” is our champion! Three cheers for PTA!!!

by Cláudio Alves

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER | © Warner Bros.

Later tonight, we’ll have a new batch of Oscar winners to celebrate. But, for now, let us rejoice for the Team Experience Awards, voted on by the site’s writers, sans Nathaniel, who has his own Film Bitch Awards. It’s likely some of these victors may echo AMPAS’ picks, as One Battle After Another is our champion, after having tied with Sinners in nominations, twelve apiece. As ever, there are some ties to report as our voting body is quite small, with Supporting Actress and Costume Design the tightest races of the lot. Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent fans will also have reason to rejoice, with each flick scoring three prizes. Indeed, half of our winners come from international cinema...

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98th Academy Awards: FINAL PREDICTIONS!

by Cláudio Alves

Ryan Coogler's SINNERS is the most Oscar-nominated film ever! But will it win the most awards at the 98th Academy Awards? ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is tough competition.

The 98th Academy Awards are almost upon us, so, on this last day before the festivities, let’s put our pundit hats on and try to suss out whom AMPAS has picked. Nine Team Experience writers, including Nathaniel(!), have provided their best guesses, evidencing some interesting trends, some even more interesting conflicts. One of the big questions is who’ll reign supreme between the two Warner Bros. Best Picture frontrunners. Will it be the all-time nomination leader or the critical darling whose director has been due for ages already? Nat is betting on Sinners getting the biggest haul of the night, including Best Picture, while others, like Eric Blum and Juan Carlos Ojano, don’t even think the vampire flick will beat Frankenstein in sheer number of victories. Presently, I’m the only one predicting Sinners getting the most wins with One Battle After Another still taking Picture. Only time will tell who’s rightest among us. 

Without further ado, please venture, after the jump, to see the full prediction charts, plus some added commentary from the team…

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The 14th Annual Team Experience Awards: "OBAA" and "Sinners" lead the nominations

by Cláudio Alves

SINNERS | © Warner Bros.

One Battle After Another and Sinners lead the 14th annual Team Experience Award nominations. Both films scored twelve nods each, a bit below their Oscar haul in the horror flick’s case, but still respectable. However, neither beat the Team Experience Awards record set by The Favourite, which scored 13 nominations in 2019. As ever, it’s worth reminding that these honors are voted on by The Film Experience writers, excluding Nathaniel, who does his own Film Bitch Awards, wholly separate from this list. He probably wouldn’t have allowed the tie that expands this year’s Best Director roster to six slots. Oh well, it’s more cinema to celebrate, more artistry to cheer and applaud. So, let’s get to it!

Discover the full list of nominees, in our 20 categories, after the jump…

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Best International Film: And Then There Were Two...

The Oscar Volleys continue. Today, ERIC BLUME and NATHANIEL R discuss the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film. 

NO OTHER CHOICE, Park Chan-wook | © NEON

ERIC:  Hi Nathaniel, I feel lucky getting you all to myself to discuss Best International Film.  I do think the slate is ultimately very strong overall, but before we get to our five nominees and an assessment on the race, can we take one last brief moment to mourn the EXCLUSION of a film in both of our Top 10 lists, Park Chan-Wook's No Other Choice?  It's no easy feat to make a film that's both political and funny, and he really nailed his tiny little bullseye.

NATHANIEL:  Maybe it's a tiny bullseye but I bet if you zoom way in that bullseye is as intricate as the lines in a diamonds or as multi-colored and weirdly patterned as an iris. Which is to say that not only was it my favourite of the submissions but it's quite literally my #1 film of the year. (Why leave everyone in suspense since it takes me so long to post my awards). I really am just obsessed with it and Lee Byung Hun absolutely deserved a spot in the Best Actor lineup too. The Korean superstar is so confident in his gifts that he's able to be goofy and pathetic and sad without ever losing his Movie Star-ness. It's really a miracle performance if you ask me because he does all that while feeling utterly spontaneous in each scene. Anyway I could talk about this movie for days...

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2025 in Review: Nathaniel's "Best" List (Pt 1)

by Nathaniel R

Begonia, Marty Supreme, Nouvelle Vague, and Kill the Jockey were among the best films of the year

PART ONE. One of the greatest and worst things about the cinema is that it is a perpetually overflowing cup. Discourse about Hollywood always leans toward sky-is-falling “end of” cinema/moviegoing due to horrid socioeconomic and public behavioral reasons. Yet at the  same time we can never keep up so it’s a fact that artists all over the world are still making cinema like the artform will never go out of style. There is literally always more to see and more in any given year than can be seen by any person, on any size of a screen. (If you love catching up on older films this pleasure/problem is exponentially more true.)

In that spirit of “overflowing” here are some darlings and honorable mentions before we get to the Top Dozen tomorrow and at least one of the ways in which they surpassed reasonable expectations...

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