The Oscars 2025: We rank the nominees for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards

• We are merely one week away from the biggest night in cinema.
• The 97th Academy Awards takes place on March 1 2025, as the Race to the Oscars concludes for another year.
• Flynn Connolly takes a look at this year’s Best Film contenders, offering his suggestions who should do well at this year’s Oscars ceremony.

Awards season is in full swing, celebrating some of the best media produced throughout the whole of 2024.

We’ve had the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, with the SAG awards still to come, but there’s always one that stands above the rest.

The 97th Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, is quickly approaching. On March 2, films will be put into the history books as one of the world’s most prestigious award ceremonies is held in Los Angeles, USA.

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As we look ahead to the event, we’ve ranked the films nominated for Best Picture - according to IMDb ratings and our own verdicts.

1. Dune: Part Two – IMDb Rating 8.5/10

The IMDb rating speaks volumes and most people are calling this the film of the year - myself included.

There’s a very poor excuse as to why this film won’t be getting the recognition it deserves in award season, though, and that is because it was released in March 2024. Almost all the other films within this category have been released within the last couple of months or towards the back end of the year.

The film won awards for its visual effects and sound at the BAFTAs, but the famous Hans Zimmer lost out on score to the Brutalist - which I believe was daylight robbery.

The film is a sequel to the first Dune film, which came out in October 2021. It follows Paul Atreides, who lost his father to a corrupt empire and is believed to be an ‘Anakin Skywalker’ type figure.

With a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.4/5 on Letterboxd, don’t be fooled by awards season into thinking this film isn’t one of Director Denis Villeneuve’s best. You can’t miss out on such a masterful creation.

2. The Brutalist – IMDb Rating 8/10

We have been provided with some of the best cinematography of the 21st century in The Brutalist and it all came in Vista Vision. This film stock has rarely been used since some of Alfred Hitchcock’s films from the 1960s, and has now returned for this three-and-a-half-hour epic.

It follows the life of brutalist architect Laszlo Toth and his transition to America after escaping post-war Europe. Although the film is not a biopic, it has a non-fictional tone to it as we learn much about what it was like to be a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor. An incredibly important story and young director Brady Corbett has done a brilliant job of telling it.

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With a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes, 4.1/5 on Letterboxd and already having won Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes, this could easily be the universal favourite for Best Picture winner.

But for me, and I’m sure for many others, it just doesn’t live up to the standard set by Dune: Part Two.

3. The Substance – IMDb Rating 7.3/10

Demi Moore has made a return to the screens in what has rightfully been deemed the performance of her career.

She walked away from the Golden Globes with the award for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy motion picture. Don’t let this award category fool you though. There are funny elements, but all-in-all this is a horror. It’s worth noting there are some scenes of possibly the most graphic nature and those you wouldn’t expect.

The graphic scenes mostly spawn from the base plot of the film which follows a former superstar with her name on the Hollywood Walk of fame, who is getting older and loses her job on the screen. She takes a drug which births a new version of herself. The only way this works, however, is if the two versions of herself accept a limited amount of time being alive at a time. Things go wrong when they don’t respect each other.

This strange but interesting picture scored 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and 3.8/5, no doubt because of the underlying messages in the plot.

4. Anora – IMDb Rating 7.8/10

This one felt like a struggle to get through for the most part, but the ending was so rewarding, it made the wonderful headache worth it.

Mikey Madison, who was probably best known before this for getting set on fire in Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, does a hell of a job playing a sex worker who marries into an oligarch-ran family without the head of the family knowing. Once the boss knows, he demands the marriage to be annulled and the boy that Anora marries, runs away. Much of the film is spent picking up a trail of crumbs to find him.

With a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4/5 on Letterboxd, this film is certainly one you’ll want to watch. But bear in mind the age restriction, as there are some graphic scenes throughout.

5. Conclave – IMDb Rating 7.4/10

The task has been set for Ralph Fiennes, who played Voldemort in Harry Potter, to become the overseer of a conclave, which is a group of high-ranking Catholic popes brought together to select a new pope.

An ensemble of fantastic cinematics, excellent casting, phenomenal acting and spectacular set design earned this picture eight nominations, which is one of the much higher scoring out of the ten best picture nominees.

In terms of the film's cinematic release, Conclave had a decent amount of success. It was reported by The Numbers that it made over $90 million worldwide, which was more than four times the film's budget. The film scored 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 3.9/5 on Letterboxd, showing it was obviously enjoyed by the audience.

My favourite part about this film were the monologues - they were very well spoken, but I can also see how it takes a pretty solid attention span to stay focused on what everyone is saying as a great degree of the film is centred around chats between the conclave.

6. A Complete Unknown – IMDb Rating 7.6/10

How does it feel? I’ve had the words to Like a Rolling Stone stuck in my head since release day in December, when Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan hit our screens.

From the director of the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, we have been given another musical non-fiction story about the folk/rock musician. It covers the period in Dylan’s life where he broke out in the streets of New York and made his way to multiple Newport Music Festivals.

It’s not unheard of for actors to win a Best Actor award for musical biopics, as Rami Malek won one for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The film scored 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.6/5 on Letterboxd.

The reason this didn’t make it higher on the list is partially due to the failure at getting me to really care about Bob Dylan, but I can also appreciate the realism behind him not being the absolute god that some make him out to be.

7. Wicked – IMDb Rating 7.6/10

Although this film comes in at number seven, there’s no denying that Wicked was one of the biggest events of the year, in terms of it getting people out of their homes and back to the cinema.

For those who don’t know of the famous story, it follows the events that occur in the world-renowned film The Wizard of Oz as we get a prologue about the ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ and the ‘Good Witch of the North’ and their relationship. The film is also based on a musical that has been running on the West End and Broadway for many years.

Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba and Ariana Grande plays Glinda in this musical, which showcases their serious talent both vocally and through their cunning and humorous acting. The film only falls short in the sense that it doesn’t do a fantastic job with continuity from The Wizard of Oz, but this could all change when the film’s second part is released in the next year.

8. Nickel Boys – IMDb Rating 7.4/10

Nickel Boys follows the story of Elwood, an African-American boy who is transferred to a deep-south reformatory school called Nickel as he got into a wrong-place, wrong-time type crime. The film takes a revolutionary standpoint on how it is shot, as it is either from the point of view of Elwood or the friend that he meets in Nickel, Turner.

Some truly pleasant cinematography compliments this group of rising stars in its cast and has an unseen turn of events late on. With a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a solid 4.1/5 on Letterboxd, it’s certain that this film impressed the public. This also scored 5 stars from the Guardian, Empire Magazine and 4 stars over at the website of the late, great film critic Roger Ebert.

For me, what was missing from this film was some punchier scenes to really emphasise how bad things were at Nickel, which is based on the Florida school, The Dozier School for Boys. It would be no shock to see this film take the win for Best Adapted Screenplay, as it is based on a book of the same name.

9. I’m Still Here – IMDb Rating 8.9/10

You may be thinking, ‘how is a film with a higher rating than Forrest Gump sat at 9 in this list, only just above Emilia Perez?’

Well, there’s no denying how tough the competition is, but it’s also worth noting this film is yet to be released to the public. Out in the UK from today (February 21 2025), the rating is likely to significantly change. So, why take my advice? Well, The Light in Bradford held an advance preview screening which I managed to attend. If you don’t trust me, note the Rotten Tomatoes score being 96% when most world class films have a 100% this early on in its release.

This sombre Portuguese biopic tells the story of a Brazilian family who suffered at the hands of members of the Brazilian military who forced disappearances on members of the public that were suspected of political dissent. The film does a fantastic job of catching the dark tone but ultimately turns out to be a relatively basic plot. No doubt, an important story to be told though.

10. Emilia Perez – IMDb Rating 5.5/10

This Mexico-based fictional musical, which follows a drug lord going through gender reassignment surgery, may have the most nominations at this year’s ceremony.

However, the film has been highly slated by the public. With an IMDb rating of 5.5, a rotten tomatoes rating of 72% and a Letterboxd rating of 2.2/5, the film stands as the lowest rated of the 10 Best Picture nominations.

The Netflix original, available to anyone with a subscription, sits dead at the bottom of this list as the least recommended by me - frankly because of it being a dumpster fire of a film.

But it could well come away with wins for Best Supporting Actress with Zoe Saldana, who played Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy Films, and Best Original Song for El Mal, as both of those nominees took the wins at the Golden Globes.

Check out our updated leader board for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress ahead of the Oscars ceremony on March 2.