The Oscars are coming! Here are some of our favorite nominated films

This special edition of Worth Your Time has everything you need to know about the 2025 Oscars.

The 2025 Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2. Read here to learn what time red carpet is, how you can tune in, who is hosting, and more.

Best Picture Nominees

Following a largely predictable awards season dominated by Oppenheimer, 2025 is looking a lot more open. Here are the best picture nominees that we loved this year:

• A Complete Unknown. There’s something about this film that pushes against traditional Bob Dylan worship and cuts a path toward something far more beautiful, flawed, and human. Read the review.

• Conclave. Even as Conclave captures the allure of Vatican style, it makes a more overarching serious point: the Catholic Church must change, or risk becoming as desiccated as the bones of a long-dead saint. Read the review.

• I’m Still Here. Marcelo Paiva’s story recording his mother’s life and work as an influential human rights lawyer and activist as Alzheimer’s took her memory away took on a greater meaning regarding Brazil’s dark—and largely unspoken—past. Read the review.

• Anora. Sean Baker allows us to relish this romance of gamboling youth—its high point is an impulsive Las Vegas marriage, a betrothal of two kids at play—for a generous chunk of the movie. Then he switches everything around. Read the review.

• Nickel Boys. People who care about movies always say they want filmmakers to take chances, to show them something they’ve never seen before, or at least open their eyes to a new way of seeing. The latter is exactly what RaMell Ross does with this adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s affecting, elegantly written novel. Read the review.

Notable Films

These films aren't up for Best Picture, but were nominated in other categories, and are definitely worth the watch.

• A Different Man. Nominated for Makeup and Hairstyling, the ideas embedded in this film hover somewhere in the milky middle between being too amorphous and too obvious, though by the end, you will most certainly have gotten the point. Yet this is a movie in which the performers make all the difference. Read the review.

• Sing Sing. Greg Kwedar’s true-to-life prison drama asks us: If we believe in our own capacity for growth and change, how can we not extend that good faith to other individuals who have made mistakes? Sing Sing has a nomination for Colman Domingo for Best Actor, as well as nominations for Original Song and Adapted Screenplay. Read the review.

• A Real Pain. This is a road-trip comedy, an observant study of the jangly bonds that keep families together, and a rumination on how events we didn’t even live through ourselves can nevertheless mark us forever. It’s also just a movie about the deep, untouchable sadness in some people. Kieran Culkin snags a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and the film has one for Original Screenplay. Read the review.

• Nosferatu. Robert Eggers’ much-anticipated remake of German filmmaker F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror blends together that film and Bram Stoker’s original Dracula. This film scored nominations for Production Design, Costume Design, Cinematography, and Makeup and Hairstyling. Read more.