The 97th Academy Awards Ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), is taking place on March 3 2025 8:00 AM Philippine time, and now that we are a stone’s throw away, the buzz in the air is growing electrifying. It has been a while since nominees for the top awards have been neck and neck, with multiple nominees up for contention. To make sense of it all, here are a few key points of discussion worth knowing ahead of the ceremony.
Riding the Momentum
Several nominees in the top categories are backed with compelling narratives that would make their wins spectacular. Timothée Chalamet, who is nominated for Actor in a Leading Role for his work on A Complete Unknown, is on his way to being the youngest actor to win the award, having also won the same acclaim in the 31st Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. Coincidentally, the record holder for the youngest actor to win the award, Adrien Brody, is also nominated against Chalamet. With his riveting performance in The Brutalist, Brody may well be able to hold onto the record after Monday’s ceremony.
Conversely, Mikey Madison is also on track to become the youngest to win the Academy’s Actress in a Leading Role category for Sean Baker’s Anora. While she is the current favorite to take the award, of equal importance is the nomination of Demi Moore for The Substance who is up for the Award on her first-ever Oscar nomination. Moore winning the award would bring home the idea that perseverance prevails and that one is never too old to strive for greatness, especially for an actress as experienced and well-known as her.
Coming in with peculiar timing is the nomination of Karla Sofia Gascón as the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for Actress in a Leading Role in the Academy for her role in Emilia Pérez. There is no denying that her nomination is saddled with political intrigue as the Trump administration rolls out a nationwide crackdown on Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US, along with a declaration that the country will only have male and female genders. Gascón, whether intentionally or not, is representing both gender diversity and racial minority issues, in light of the US’s new radical immigration policies. While a win for Gascón is of political importance, there is still room for discussion as to the quality of her performance as the titular Emilia Pérez and whether or not she stands above her fellow nominees.
Messy Guest List
Looking through the nominations, there are clear frontrunners bafflingly absent from the categories they excelled in. Let’s start with the work of the visionary Italian Director Luca Guadagnino, who got universal praise for 2017’s Call Me by Your Name. The Italian director gave the world two films released in 2024 – Challengers and Queer. Both films received critical acclaim, with the former becoming an instant cult classic, and yet neither have been nominated for awards. At the very least, Challengers is a clear shoo-in for the Best Score award, with the hypnotic retro-electronic work of Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, and should easily be able to bump out other nominees, like Emilia Perez, from this category.
Another significant absence from the list is Denis Villenueve for Best Director. Dune: Part Two is a step above its predecessor Dune (2021) in every conceivable way. Villenueve has managed to take his multiple Academy award-winning work to almost unimaginable heights in terms of cinematography, score, make-up and hairstyling, and film editing. However, to the surprise of the majority of critics, Dune: Part Two is absent from all of those categories, including Villenueve for the Best Director nomination. The running joke for the film community is trying to figure out what Directors Denis and Luca did to the Academy to deserve such treatment.
Now for the elephant in the room. Perhaps arguably the biggest mess in this year’s Oscars is the record number of nominations across the board for the film Emilia Perez. With a staggering 13 total nominations, Emilia Perez joins the likes of 1939’s Gone with the Wind, 2001’s The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, and most recently 2023’s Oppenheimer. The difference between Emilia Perez and the rest of these films is that most of them have been critical successes, with dominating praise from both the audience and critics alike. Emilia Perez, however, has been met with laborious discussions on its dominating nominations, raised eyebrows, and evolving controversies. Other than the well-deserved performance of Zoe Saldaña, every other category where Emilia Perez is nominated is sure to be met with contemplative criticism on the awards night. Read more on Emilia Perez by checking out our review here.
Related posts:
Closing out our entry for this year’s Academy Awards, here are my quick-fire speculations for the top and selected categories:
Directing: Sean Baker for Anora
Both Sean Baker and Brady Corbet have expressed their creativity and love for the art of filmmaking, both opting to use traditional film cameras to great effect, with inspired scenes in Anora and The Brutalist that not only justify the use of film camera, but moreso celebrate them and pushes them to the limit.
Cinematography: Dune Part Two
Greg Fraser and Director Denis Villenueve put in an incredible amount of work in visual effects and cinematography that transports us to alien planets, making them immersive as much as they are awe-inspiring. On the flip side, a discussion can also be opened regarding the questionable inclusion of Emilia Perez in this category.
Actress in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldaña
Ariana Grande (Glinda in Wicked) being nominated for an Academy Award started talks about her potential to start her journey to an EGOT status. Unfortunately, Saldaña is the clear choice for this award in what is definitively the best performance of her career and stands out as the only outstanding performance to come from Emilia Perez.
Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin
This category merits a longer discussion on the performance of Kieran Culkin. Other nominees are Jeremy Strong for The Apprentice and Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown have given more obvious Oscar-leaning performances than Culkin. However, the momentum is absolutely on the side of Culkin, having won multiple awards for his role in A Real Pain, including the SAG Awards for Supporting Actor. Culkin’s portrayal of Benji Kaplan is nuanced, sincere, and a real pain to watch, which checks all the boxes of what Director Jesse Eisenberg has been seeking for the role. Looking more closely, however, Culkin’s Benji is not too dissimilar to his portrayal of billionaire Roman Roy in HBO’s Succession. The HBO series gave us four long seasons of material to make the connection and arrive at the painful conclusion that perhaps Culkin is only good at one particular stereotype and he managed to play it to perfection in A Real Pain. Does the lack of distinction between his two most prominent characters still warrant an Academy Award?
Actress in a Lead Role: Mikey Madison
This category is a toss-up. Both Mikey Madison and Demi Moore have given compelling performances in their unique characters. Madison edges out Moore by an almost imperceptible margin, possibly thanks to the cinematography and visual storytelling in Anora. But Moore winning over Madison is equally acceptable. Unfortunately, with both Madison and Moore in the running, Karla Sofia Gascón is now more of a dark horse in this race, and Cynthia Erivo may only win this Award if her vocal performances are given more weight than acting in an acting category. Should Erivo win, she will become the youngest artist to earn EGOT status.
Actor in a Lead Role: Timothée Chalamet
With the performances all worthy of the Award, timing might play a bigger role in this category. Ralph Fiennes gave an inspiring performance in the Conclave, and with the news of the Pope’s recent health concerns, Conclave might gain a bit more fuel to stay in contention. Oscar Winner Adrien Brody is the initial favorite to win this category with his performance in The Brutalist as an immigrant visionary architect, and while the immigration policies in the US continue to target minorities, Brody’s win may resonate stronger with the current political landscape for the better. However, public hype is definitely with Chalamet, having won the best actor equivalent in the SAG Awards just days prior.
Best Picture: Anora
The Best Picture category this year is thankfully an open book, with no obvious single dominant film to walk away with the award over others. If the nominees list is trimmed into five, just as it was a couple of years back, only Anora, A Complete Unkown, The Brutalist, Conclave, and Dune Part Two would probably remain. Director Guadagnino’s Challengers is a head-scratching snob for nomination in this category as it can easily take the spot of the likes of Emilia Perez. My personal choice is Dune Part Two simply because of favoritism for Villenueve’s work and the masterful execution of Frank Herbet’s legacy into the big screen. But clearly, the critics disagree.
Ultimately, I choose Anora for Best Picture over The Brutalist because of the dynamic storytelling of Director Sean Baker, along with its successful portrayal of the sex industry without the added perversion or sensationalization of it all – a feat perhaps only Anora can achieve. Read more on Anora by checking out our review here.
There are certainly enough snubs, highlights, and controversies in this year’s nominations to warrant hours of discussion. Catch the 97th Academy Awards over at Disney+ on March 03 2025 at 8:00 AM Philippine Time. See how many of our choices we got right, and let us continue the discussions in our socials.
Click here for more stories like “The 97th Academy Awards”. You may also follow and subscribe to our social media accounts: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Kumu.
