Oscar Seasoning: Nominations I’d Like To See Tomorrow That Probably Won’t Happen

Twas the night before the Oscar nominations, and all through the internet, the discourse reached peak levels of insufferability. One of the highlights of no longer being on Twitter is that I escape the lion’s share of the worst faux-concerned arguments over this year’s awards season darlings. The word salad of smarm and media illiteracy has been especially potent this year (“Why did PTA make One Battle After Another instead of donating the budget to the DSA” is some ice-cream brain sh*t, my friends!)

I’ve had very little to complain about with the 2025 season, to be honest. Usually, I have to contend with a film I despise or a hellscape of offensiveness that haunts me until the ceremony is complete and I can mark myself safe from harm. I was there for the Emilia Perez stuff, man! My first Oscar year was Crash! I’ve suffered. But 2025? I’ve either loved or liked the majority of it, and even the stuff I wasn’t into didn’t piss me off. It simply wasn’t for me (sorry, Safdies together and apart, you’re just never going to gel with my tastes, and that’s okay!) Dare I say it, but this is one of the least stressful awards seasons I’ve covered. Well, I’ve definitely jinxed something somewhere.

It’s a stacked lineup of contenders, and we don’t have a ton of locks at this stage in the game, which is pretty uncommon. There are years when the nominations are announced, and everyone can predict the victors. I’d argue that most of the acting noms are still up in the air right now, even if One Battle After Another is a guaranteed Best Picture and Director winner (if that loses, it’ll be the biggest shock of the century, truly.) Am I expecting some surprises tomorrow? Maybe one or two, but this is the Academy, and they aren’t big fans of risks. Still, I remain stubbornly hopeful.

Typically, my favourite films of the year never stand a chance of getting nominations, and that’s mostly the case in 2025/6, although The Secret Agent could be pretty dominant (Brazilian stans, I ride with you!) But there are a ton of noms I know won’t happen or are highly unlikely, and I wanted to shout them out here. If any of these actually make the shortlist, I want 100% of the credit.

BEST ACTOR: HARRY MELLING (PILLION)

(Image via A24.)

You know what? The internet doesn’t deserve Harry Melling. I see you shallow weirdos who think he’s “not attractive enough” to play the lead role in Pillion, because you think you’re somehow hot enough to pull Alexander Skarsgard? You just don’t appreciate a great face or a talented actor, because Melling has been KILLING IT for years in his post-those-f*cking-wizard-movies career. In Pillion, he gives a career-best performance as Colin, the meek traffic warden who falls arse-first into the world of BDSM and a not-ideal sub/dom relationship with an impossibly handsome but emotionally constipated biker.

Melling manages to strike the right balance between naivety and lust as Colin realises he’s super into being bossed around but also wants a dom who, you know, isn’t a jerk. He’s timid without being weak, awkward but slowly coming into his own skin. Melling gets the lion’s share of laughs in this dom-com (get it?!), navigating the awkwardness of this new life with the “oh well, mustn’t grumble” attitude of a nice English boy who doesn’t want to disappoint his mum. The sweetness of Pillion, which shows this relationship without judgment or commentary, shines through Melling and his big eyes. There are comedic beats here that play like moments from an Alan Bennett monologue, but with more butt plugs.

Also, I love that “meek beta male who finds freedom through a hot leather daddy biker” is a niche in Melling’s career now, between this and Please Baby Please. I think he could end up as the first of the HP kids to get an Oscar nomination at some point (or at least after RPattz), but it sadly won’t be for Pillion.

BEST ACTRESS: AMANDA SEYFRIED (THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE)

(Image via Searchlight.)

The tech category longlists have been pretty bland this year, and the absence of The Testament of Ann Lee was a reminder of how safe the Academy continues to play it. That’s a shame because Mona Fastvold’s historical musical drama, for all its flaws, is an ambitious and stunning-looking piece of work deserving of credit. And it’s held together by one of the best performances of 2025.

Seyfried, no stranger to musicals, plays Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, a religious sect that explores worship via dance. Ann’s life of strife and multiple child deaths has left her adrift, and it’s through praise and movement where she comes into her own, blossoming into a leader of devotees who view her as more than mortal. It’s an impossible role: a benevolent minister whose singing and spasms capture the ecstasy of belief, both charismatic yet tender, and also with a Mancunian accent. Seyfried makes it seem effortful in the best way, so consumed by her passion for God that her body becomes his tool. I have to assume the material was too out-there for voters and that’s why she’s not a frontrunner, even in this stacked year. It’s a shame because oh wow, she is brilliant as Ann Lee.

BEST DIRECTOR: CLINT BENTLEY (TRAIN DREAMS)

(Image via Netflix.)

Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar have built up a small but impressive filmography of indie movies that have critics like me geeking out with joy. Jockey and Sing Sing were both festival darlings, with the latter being one of my favourites of 2024 (Colman Domingo should have won Best Actor, dammit.) Train Dreams, adapted from a novella by Denis Johnson, was accused of being a diet Terence Malick, but that grossly undersells its tender and humane storytelling.

Joel Edgerton, who should also be a Best Actor frontrunner, plays a logger whose quiet and simple life is narrated with poignancy and eloquence from cradle to grave. He works, he loves, he loses, and the world changes around him at a dizzying pace. It should be cheesy, but I was bowled over. Seeing it at TIFF, I could hear the sniffles and sobs from fellow audience goers, and I came pretty dang close myself. How wonderful to see such a “mundane” story of a little life elevated to startling beauty through Bentley’s direction. He and Kwedar are going to be in hot demand very soon. Just give them something better to do than yet another Marvel movie, guys.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: DELROY LINDO (SINNERS)

(Image via Warner Bros.)

Shout out to my friends who are still pissed off that Delroy Lindo didn’t get a Best Actor nomination for Da 5 Bloods. Seriously, he gave one of the decade’s best performances in the COVID year and the Academy still couldn’t be bothered to care. Sinners will surely be dominant this season, and rightly so, but surely we can make a little room in Best Supporting Actor for Lindo? You cannot fake the magnetism and gravitas this man has. We shouldn’t take him for granted.

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BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: EMILY WATSON (HAMNET)

(Image via Focus.)

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal feel like locks for nominations this year, thanks to their stellar work in Hamnet, a film that made me cry like a lost child. Buckley might be the frontrunner to win Best Actress, which I am not mad at. But where’s the love for Emily Watson? She’s long been one of our best actresses, even in thankless roles, and she’s a scene stealer even against Buckley’s dominant performance in Hamnet. As William’s mother, she has a cold exterior of pragmatism hard-earned after a lifetime with a terrible husband and child loss. She may disapprove of the wild and free Agnes, but she is a fiercely loyal in-law when needed, especially as Agnes struggles with her own cycle of love, birth, and loss.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: EDDINGTON

(Image via A24.)

The awards season voters of the year seem to have chosen Bugonia as their “the current era is f*cked up and Emma Stone’s going to talk about it” movie, but I far preferred Ari Aster’s descent into COVID brainrot in that regard. Look, I get why a lot of people, including many critics I respect, hated Eddington. But I’m with John Waters on this one. It’s great and almost too correct about how lockdown broke our brains. This is a movie that is too much in every way, subtle as a sledgehammer and laughing in the face of doom. But it also acutely captures the ways that the pandemic exposed the rot that was already threatening to boil over in our current era. Conspiratorial yet subversive of that, pitch black in its humour but with a Katy Perry needledrop, full of devastating one-liners and fatalism that feels genuinely deranged, there was nothing like Eddington in cinemas in 2025.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: WAKE UP DEAD MAN

(Image via Netflix.)

Rian Johnson already has two Oscar nominations for his Knives Out series, so he’s probably chill about not getting a third, but the more I think about it, the more I believe that Wake Up Dead Man is the best in the trilogy. This is the one where things get dark, serious, and existential, but without losing the wit and intricate planning of its predecessors. Aside from the usual mystery and Benoit Blanc’s debonair charm, Johnson delves into some prickly territory surrounding belief, forgiveness, and duty. I’m no believer but I found this to be a very moving exploration of someone committed to doing good in the name of God and coming up against those using his name for evil. We also see Blanc dealing with the annoyance of not having fun with his latest case, which is a clever touch from his previous outings. I’m happy for Johnson to make as many Knives Out films as he deserves. Star Wars who?

BEST SCORE: THE MASTERMIND

(Image via MUBI.)

It will be a sign of the impending rapture the day that a Kelly Reichardt film becomes an Oscar darling. The minimalist icon of low-budget indies might be too good for the Academy, to be honest. Her films are too sly and grounded, her bullsh*t meter too well-tuned for even the slightest hint of fakery. The Mastermind, her take on the heist thriller, is maybe her most stylized but it’s still rooted in her humane and anti-glitz approach to narrative. It also has the coolest effing score, courtesy of Composer and cornet player Rob Mazurek gets to go full freestyle jazz here, adding a subversive edge and a sense of urgency to this story of a very inept art theft. It adds notes to the story that the lead (played by my boy, Josh O’Connor) is unaware of. As he tries to deny his failings, Mazurek’s music grows twitchier. O’Conner’s character thinks he’s in an Ocean’s movie, and the score is taking the piss out of that.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO

Okay, this one won’t happen because it didn’t make the shortlist (because the Academy’s view of international films largely not in English remains hopelessly limited), but I do want to give it a shout-out because I loved it and think it deserves attention. Chile’s entry is the debut of Diego Céspedes and follows Lidia, a young girl who loves in a brothel in a desert mining town with her mother and a tight-knit community of trans women. The women are loving and fiercely devoted to Lidia, but find themselves increasingly attacked by the men who work in the mines, who fetishize and deride them with equal measure. They claim that the women are spreading a magical disease that unwitting men can catch with a mere glance.

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (maybe the best title of 2025) has a fable-like quality that really wormed its way under my skin. I’m a sucker for LGBTQ+ stories of found family but I was also taken by this quietly surreal but no less crushing portrayal of transphobia and queer panic (it takes place in the ‘80s, which may give you a hint as to what’s unfolding.) It would have been very easy to make this film either cloying in artifice or crushingly grimy in the realism of transphobic violence, but Céspedes displays a remarkably deft control over the material (all the more impressive given that this is the work of a first-time director.)

I’m disappointed it didn’t qualify for the longlist, but it’s also been one hell of a year for big-name international releases. You can’t be mad at a year with no fewer than three Palestinian stories in contention for the top five.

What nominations would you love to see tomorrow that are less than likely? Let us know in the comments!