Are you taking bets on the 2025 Academy Awards? We'll have to see if your hot tips pay off on the big night itself (March 2nd).
However, before we get there, we're thrilled to announce the return of seven major Oscar contenders during our Cineworld Awards Season. Even more amazingly, you can enjoy each of these incredible awards contenders for just £5, allowing you to catch up on films you may have missed, or simply presenting the opportunity for another awestruck glimpse.
Scroll down in the following blog post to discover each movie, the dates they're screening and the Oscars they're competing for.
The Substance (screening 22nd February)
Nominated for five Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Coralie Fargeat)
- Best Original Screenplay (Coralie Fargeat)
- Best Actress (Demi Moore)
- Best Make-Up and Hairstyling
It's very unusual for a horror movie to emerge as a significant Oscar contender. The last genre offering to succeed in this regard was 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. (One might also stretch to 2011's Black Swan, which garnered a Best Actress Oscar for Natalie Portman.)
The Silence of the Lambs is the only horror movie to win the 'top five' (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay), and is one of only three films overall to win the top five awards (the others being It Happened One Night in 1934 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975).
Hence why The Substance is making history at the Academy Awards. The provocative nature of its themes over identity and ageing, the outrageously gross and imaginative body horror effects, which act as a throwback to a bygone age, and its uncompromising skewer into the heart of Hollywood have struck a chord.
Writer-director Coralie Fargeat has made history all on her own as the first woman to be nominated for a horror movie. Plus, all hail the comeback queen Demi Moore who has never enjoyed a role this ferocious in her 40-odd-year career. She attacks it with all the gusto of her character Elisabeth angrily cooking up recipes from a French cookbook.
That said, will The Substance win? The film is likely too gross and outré to appeal to a broad spectrum of Oscars voters, but even the squeamish are likely to recognise the timeliness of its themes, and the gusto with which it addresses them.
Maybe it's a question of Best Actress for Moore (the Academy does love a comeback story), already the recipient of an advantageous Golden Globe win, and a win for Fargeat in the screenplay realm, as opposed to director?
Anora (screening 23rd February)
Nominated for six Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Sean Baker)
- Best Original Screenplay (Sean Baker)
- Best Actress (Mikey Madison)
- Best Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov)
- Best Film Editing
Sean Baker is one of America's singular filmmaking talents, exploring the lives of those on the margins with commendably raw energy and empathy. This approach has been demonstrated in the acclaimed likes of Tangerine (2015), the multi-Oscar-nominated The Florida Project (2017) and the controversial Red Rocket (2022).
Anora exemplifies all of these qualities and then some. It's among the least 'flashy' of this year's Oscar crop (no Monstro Elisasue bodies on display here). However, one shouldn't underestimate the film's ability to transfigure believable situations into painful, and painfully funny, tableaux of escalating chaos and heartache.
The film's lack of obvious visual and storytelling gimmicks appeared to relegate it to a lower rung on the Oscars race. However, Anora recently scored big at the Directors Guild (a win for Baker) and Producers Guild (a win for Best Film) awards, both of which are seen as key influences on a film's Oscar chances.
Anora has therefore catapulted back up the ranks to assert its punchy, foul-mouthed yet deeply affecting dominance. The film lives or dies on Mikey Madison's superb performance in the title role, assaying a stripper who is attempting to save her sham marriage to the feckless son of a Russian oligarch. Her Ani is brash and bullish and yet brimming with sadness.
Madison may well yield to Demi Moore, but one can now consider Baker as a serious contender given his recent wins and past track record with The Florida Project.
Conclave (screening 25th February)
Nominated for eight Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Edward Berger)
- Best Adapted Screenplay (Peter Straughan)
- Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes)
- Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini)
- Best Original Score
- Best Film Editing
- Best Production Design
- Best Costume Design
Many of this year's Oscar contenders are clearly driven by a love of character, atmosphere and the written word. Breakout hist Conclave, adapted from Robert Harris' bestseller, embodies all these strengths, having emerged as another critical success for German director Edward Berger whose 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front won several Oscars.
Conclave is a film that derives suspense from hushed conversations amidst the Papal corridors of power. On paper, it doesn't sound too gripping but thanks to an impeccable cast, Berger's acute sense of claustrophobic pressure and, crucially, Peter Straughan's layered script, the film emerges as a profound meditation on faith and doubt.
Straughan has past form: he was Oscar-nominated for the 2011 adaptation of John Le Carré's espionage thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. As with that film, Conclave highlights Straughan's skill in dramatising male weakness amid a fiercely hierarchical structure (the Vatican substituting for MI5).
The script also delights in rich contradictions and the power play that emerges between the various liberal and hardline conservative candidates for the new papacy. One should consider Straughan as a frontrunner in the Best Adapted Screenplay field: the script is a foundational structure akin to the faith felt by Ralph Fiennes' central character Cardinal Lawrence.
Does Fiennes have a chance of claiming his first Oscar for Best Actor? It's remarkable to think he's never won one, but he faces stiff competition from the likes of Adrien Brody and The Brutalist (more on which below).
A stronger bet may be Isabella Rossellini for Best Supporting Actress: she gets limited screen time and only one significant speech, but it packs one hell of a punch and embodies all that is thematically compelling about Berger's film.
Dune: Part Two (screening 26th February)
Nominated for five Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Cinematography
- Best Production Design
- Best Sound
- Best Visual Effects
It wouldn't be the Oscars without at least one controversy. Case in point: Denis Villeneuve has once again been locked out of the Best Director field for the staggeringly ambitious Dune: Part Two.
It's a repeat of the situation with the first Dune movie: in both instances, the films have been nominated for Best Picture (let's take that as a win – sci-fi, like horror, is often ignored by Oscar voters), but to overlook the craftsman who brought it all together?
One can practically hear all the Frank Herbert fans up in arms: this is likely the best adaptation of the complex Dune saga that we're ever likely to get, Villeneuve recognising both the physical nuances of Arrakis and the tragically dark undertones of the narrative that point toward his planned Dune: Messiah remake.
Villeneuve not only understands this world on an aesthetic basis, but he also perceives its deeper meaning. Sadly, it wasn't enough to bag a nomination but the film's eye-widening sense of scale means it's got a chance of succeeding in most, if not all, of the so-called 'below the line' technical categories.
(Not for composer Hans Zimmer, though: despite winning his second Oscar for Dune, he's been locked out of this year's Oscars owing to rules about how much material was shared between the two soundtracks.)
Wicked (screening 28th February)
Nominated for 10 Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Actress (Cynthia Erivo)
- Best Supporting Actress (Ariana Grande)
- Best Costume Design
- Best Film Editing
- Best Makeup and Hairstyling
- Best Production Design
- Best Original Score
- Best Sound
- Best Visual Effects
Dune: Part Two isn't the only slice of spectacle cinema that has wowed the Academy branch this year. The all-conquering musical sensation Wicked has added to its critical and commercial success with 10 Oscar nominations, putting it among the most-nominated films in this year's Oscar race.
Musicals often find favour at the Oscars given the operatic symphony that can occur between well-judged visuals and memorable show tunes. Landmark successes range from The Sound of Music (1965), still one of the highest-grossing films of all time when adjusted for inflation, and Steven Spielberg's recent remake of West Side Story (2021).
Movie musicals are all about the craft, and ensuring that audiences are acutely aware of said craft. Wicked is a classic example, knocking it out of the park in most regards from the casting of the central Elphaba/Galinda duo (Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande) to the cinematic restaging of Stephen Schwartz's stage numbers (credit to composer John Powell).
The film's carefully considered aesthetic, which arranges verdant, Elphaba-themed greens and pastel, Galinda-style pinks, stands a very good chance of winning in the production design, cinematography and costume stakes.
As with Dune: Part Two, the director has been controversially overlooked. Filmmaker Jon M. Chu, whose vision has secured the film's success, has been shut out of the competition, meaning that the film's best chance of 'above the line' success resides in its nominations for Erivo and Grande.
Do they stand a chance against the likes of Demi Moore and Isabella Rossellini? If we consider musicals a statement of technical intent, then maybe Wicked can derive its greatest achievements from those areas.
A Complete Unknown (screening March 1st)
Nominated for eight Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Director (James Mangold)
- Best Adapted Screenplay (Jay Cocks and James Mangold)
- Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet)
- Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton)
- Best Supporting Actress (Monica Barbaro)
- Best Sound
- Best Costume Design
Music biopics regularly crop up at the Oscars, from Walk the Line in 2005 to Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018. The director of the former film, James Mangold, now turns from Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan to helm A Complete Unknown, dramatising the enigmatic musician's early success stories before he controversially went electric in 1965.
Biopics of popular artists regularly adhere to broad and palatable narrative structures that lend well with mainstream audiences and awards bodies. A Complete Unknown takes great care in re-staging the pivotal, early-sixties New York folk scene while arranging Dylan's initial career highs with a genuine sense of tactile atmosphere.
The film has a big advantage in the form of Timothée Chalamet, truly an actor who can do no wrong at the moment, and who resonates appeal both with younger audiences and more discerning awards voters. Chalamet has ranged across the populist and arthouse fronts in the last few years, from the Dune films and Wonka (2023) to the cannibal romance Bones and All (2022).
A Complete Unknown is the latest film that showcases Chalamet's willingness to take risks, both with his choice of material and his approach. He convincingly simulates Dylan's speaking voice but even more critically does his own singing, fully immersing us in the character portrayal.
The Academy loves an actor's deep-seated commitment to their craft: think of Robert De Niro going from pugilist to pudgy in Raging Bull (1980), which won the actor his second Oscar. That said, Chalamet faces strong competition from the likes of Adrien Brody who has already stormed ahead at the Golden Globes.
All eyes are on the Screen Actor's Guild awards on February 24th, which are said to cement an actor's chance at an Oscar. In recognising this, the Academy may well throw open the film's chances to Supporting Actress contender Monica Barbaro who has been praised for her role as noted folk singer Joan Baez.
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The Brutalist (screening March 2nd)
Nominated for 10 Oscars
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Brady Corbet)
- Best Original Screenplay (Brady Corbet)
- Best Actor (Adrien Brody)
- Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce)
- Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones)
- Best Original Score
- Best Cinematography
- Best Editing
- Best Production Design
The sheer cinematic canvas demonstrated in The Brutalist has inevitably yielded a massive batch of Oscar nominations. Brady Corbet's film does not require passive spectatorship but active involvement, resurrecting not only a rich sense of character-driven drama but technical aspects of old including VistaVision projection and an intermission.
The movie's self-reflexive qualities, both mirroring and deconstructing a history of epic widescreen cinema, have likely chimed with Academy Awards members. The Oscars love a bit of Hollywood introspection as the industry interrogates (and maybe congratulates) itself via the medium of a new release.
Movies that are self-consciously about the art of moviemaking have regularly done well. Think of the recent likes of The Artist (2011), which won Best Picture and Best Director (for Michel Hazanavicus).
Although The Artist and The Brutalist are very different stories, one about the silent Hollywood studio system and the other about an immigrant architect, both films compel the audience to reckon with the sheer construction of the so-called 'Dream Factory'.
It just so happens that The Brutalist acknowledges these themes more implicitly through its direction, production design, costumes, cinematography and score. The film is being tipped by many to win across the board at this year's Oscars, where Adrien Brody, already an Oscar winner for The Pianist (2022), is set to capitalse on his award season momentum.
Brody has already won the Golden Globe for Best Drama whereas the film itself has played strongly on the wider awards circuit, landing five wins for Corbet at the 2024 Venice Film Festival alone.
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