2025 Oscar Reviews: The Official Helga Without The H Predictions And Analysis

Almost every year I attempt (with varying degrees of success) to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible before the ceremony. I’ve been posting half-assed reviews here on this blog, and then at the end I write up some sort of unifying post of silly analysis, predictions, reactions, etc. This, ladies and gentlemen, is that post. Unfortunately I am VERY short on time (it’s 5pm on Oscar night as I begin), so this will perhaps be even more half-assed than usual. My apologies to both of my loyal readers.

collage credit Collider. Check their rankings here: https://collider.com/oscar-nominees-2025-ranked/

Here is a list of the movies I managed to watch and review, VERY roughly in order by how much I liked them (* indicate best picture nominees):

Movies I didn’t get to see are:
– A Complete Unknown (8 nominations including best picture)
– I’m Still Here (3 nominations including best picture)
– Sing Sing (3 nominations)
– The Apprentice (2 nominations)
– September 5 (2 nominations)
– any shorts or documentaries
– most features with only 1 nomination

The Official Helga Without The H Oscar Awards

Every year I make up my own stupid awards. Here they are:

Most Important Thing: FLOW!!!
Latvia got its very first Oscar nominations this year, in both best animated feature and best international feature categories. Am I proud as heck? Heck’s yeah! Do I think it deserves wins in both categories? From what I’ve seen so far? Yes, absolutely. Do I think it was good enough that it should have been nominated for Best Picture? Amongst this year’s nominees, yes, absolutely. I always feel that way about some of the international or documentary films, so that’s nothing new. Alas, an unprecedented double-whammy for international and animated is incredible. Turesim ikstus that it’ll actually win something.

Biggest Winner: Explicit Sexual Content
This year’s movies featured a LOT of sex. Sure, sex has always been big in movies. But this year, I dunno, maybe I’m becoming prudish in my old age, but there was just so much of it, and so graphic. Gone are the days of soft-focused love scenes. No, we’ve got naked bodies doing all sorts of crazy shit. The Brutalist, which, I remind you, is about an architect making his way in America after escaping the Holocaust, features a whopping THREE hand job scenes, shows bush, and moments later shows that bush being eaten out. Whoa! Anora is of course about a stripper-turned-escort, so we start off with a medley of lapdances and get more naked from there. The Substance featured more naked boobs than you can shake a stick at. So many boobs that they were literally dropping off of people! A Different Man gave us full-frontal access to Sebastian Stan. Nosferatu (which I am watching as I type) just had a dude banging his wife while she’s having a vampire-induced seizure for some reason. I don’t recall whether Emilia Perez showed anything graphic, but there is a song with the amazing lyrics “from penis to vagina!” which is fun. think there were more examples but it’s been a long awards season, dudes.
Oh God, and now in Nosferatu the vampire and Johnny Depp’s naked daughter are coming together with blood flowing all over the place. I’ve gotta go bleach my eyeballs.

Biggest Loser: Depth and Substance
It was a recurring theme in my reviews this year; very few movies really seemed to have anything serious or real to say. We went skin-deep everywhere. Meanwhile we introduced so many themes that could have

Biggest Snubs: Lily Rose Depp (Nosferatu), Jonathan Bailey (Wicked), Alessandro Nivola (The Brutalist)
In the past I’ve occasionally mentioned a film that I think was amazing but overlooked. Sometimes I’m serious about it (Eighth Grade), sometimes I’m not (Love Tale of Taylors, Bullet Train). I don’t really have any of those this year (maybe I haven’t watched as many movies? or maybe it’s been a weak year in general, hence the kinda weak field of nominations). But I did notice several performances that really jumped out at me, and was surprised at the lack of acting nominations.

Helga Without the H Feminist Movie Award: Wicked
This is an award I give out every year to a film where the female characters are fully-formed human beings who are not defined by their relationships to male characters, nor by the fact that they are women. So feminist movies of the past like Barbie and Women Talking would blatantly not qualify. This year’s very clear winner is Wicked. This movie focuses on women who are learning magic, navigating college cliques, and crusading for animal rights. The closest we see to them focusing on their female-ness is when they both develop crushes on the cute rebel boy at school, but all the male characters in school seem to develop crushes on him, too, so the gender or sex really has nothing to do with it. Sadly, as I look though the other nominees, not a SINGLE other movie comes close to qualifying (unless you count Flow, where none of the animals are human.) The Brutalist’s female characters are wives, nieces, or daughters of our main characters. The Substance is about fixation on women’s ages. Conclave’s female characters are nuns whose jobs are only available to their sex. Nickel Boys’ only female character is a grandmother to our main character. Anora is entirely about a woman trying to survive by using her sexuality. The Six Triple Eight is about a unit segregated by both race and gender. Don’t even get me started on the trashpile that is Emilia Perez. The only other film with human characters that MIGHT qualify is this year’s Wallace and Gromit movie, but the biggest female characters there are too secondary for me to count them.

Wig On Toast Award: Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) in Conclave
Every year I identify a character who is so boring or shallow or pointless that it can be played by a piece of toast wearing a wig. It’s not an insult to the actor playing the character, no, but to the filmmakers who decided to allow characters with zero depth into their film, usually a complete insult to the chops of whatever likely great actor is selected to play the shitty role. It could also be seen as a “biggest waste of talent” award. Amazingly, this year’s winner is actually nominated for her performance! I think Isabella Rossellini is a fantastic actress, and she did a perfectly adequate job in Conclave. That being said, she didn’t actually have to do shit. I’m in complete shock that she is nominated given her complete lack of screen time. She honestly only talks like 2 or 3 times in the film. Any other time we see her, she’s just kinda standing around. It’s a complete waste of such a big name. She’s up for best supporting actress, but meanwhile I’ve just finished watching Nosferatu, where Lily Rose Depp is playing a sweet wife who’s been basically possessed by a vampire. Is it a silly premise in a silly movie? Yeah, it is. Conclave is clearly the more substantive movie. But the talent it took Rose Depp to play this role was lightyears beyond what was required by Rossellini in hers. I just don’t get it.

An Official Announcement: I am dropping the animal cruelty tracking this year. I just don’t feel like doing it, and my stats were never accurate anyway. Also, it’s not really funny or insightful. Okay, it’s 6pm. That only gives me one hour for:

The Official Helga Without the H Oscar Predictions

Here’s how this is going to work: For each category for which I’ve seen the nominees, I will provide:
1. My pick: who do I want to win
2. My prediction: who do I think will win
3. Dice prediction: RMNB (Russian Machine Never Break, my favorite hockey blog) does a thing where the writers each made their playoff predictions, then flip a coin and record the coin’s predictions as well. The joke is that the supposed experts’ picks are rarely any better than random chance. So, I’m going for the same thing here. Will the roll of the dice make better predictions than me? We’ll find out! And for anyone obsessed with rules: 1 is the first movie alphabetically, 5 is the last alphabetically, and 6 is a re-roll. For best picture (10 nominees) , 2 dice will be rolled, and 11 or 12 is re-roll.
4. Other nominees
5. Any pre-Oscar commentary I choose to provide (assuming I don’t run out of steam.)
Tonight while watching the awards ceremony, I will record the real winners, in the order presented, and will provide any reactions or follow-up commentary. At least that’s the plan. I might get bored and run out of steam.

It’s now 6:53, giving me just 7 minutes until showtime. I have gone through and entered all of my predictions, etc, but am yet to write my analysis. I’ll see what I can cram in in (now 6) minutes, but it’ll be super light. My apologies. Okay, here we go…

Best Picture

My Pick: The Brutalist
My Prediction: Emilia Perez
Dice Prediction: Conclave
Other nominees: A Complete Unknown, Anora, Conclave, Dune 2, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, Wicked
This was a very weak field. In all honesty, best animated feature nominees Flow and The Wild Robots were better than all of these films. But of actual nominees, The Brutalist was the only one that had any business ever being nominated for pest picture, let alone winning. So watch it lose everything. Emilia Perez was 100% complete garbage, but it has 13 nominations for some godforsaken reason, hence I’m plugging it in as my prediction pretty much anywhere where I don’t have a compelling reason to predict otherwise.

Best Supporting Actress

My Pick: Felicity Jones (The Brutalist)
My Prediction: Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez)
Dice Prediction: Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)
Other nominees: Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Ariana Grande (Wicked)
The only good thing about Emilia Perez is that the performances were adequate to my non-Spanish-speaking ears/eyes. Zoe Saldana was legit good, so if this movie deserves any award, this would be the only one. That being said, I LOVED Felicity Jones in The Brutalist. And as mentioned in my analysis, I have zero idea how or why Rossellini is in here (despite her talent) when she had to do jack shit.

Best Supporting Actor

My Pick: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)
My Prediction: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)
Dice Prediction: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)
Other nominees: Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Some Russian Guy (Anora), Some Other Guy (The Apprentice)
I only saw 3 of 5 nominees, and I love Edward Norton one of the films I haven’t seen, so I really have no idea on this one. But Culkin brought me to tears in A Real Pain, and the movie was better than most of the best picture nominees largely thanks to him, so he gets my vote.

Best Actor

My Pick: Adrian Brody(The Brutalist)
My Prediction: Adrian Brody (The Brutalist)
Dice Prediction: Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)
Other nominees: Timothy Chalemene (A Complete Unknown), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Coleman Domingo (Sing Sing)
I’ve never heard of Sebastian Stan before this year, and he was pretty dang good in A Better Man, so maybe he deserves this. But I just couldn’t bring myself to purposefully watch Trump-related content, so I have no idea how he did. I also didn’t see A Complete Unknown so who knows. Coleman Domingo continues his streak of being nominated for best actor in a film that barely got any other nominations, so maybe he’s the one who deserves this the most. But of the 2 performances I did see, Brody blew Fiennes out of the water. I love Ralph Fiennes and hope he gets his statue sometime soon, but not for this movie. Too bad he wasn’t nominated for The Menu.

Best Actress

My Pick: Cynthia Ervino (Wicked)
My Prediction: Demi Moore (The Substance)
Dice Prediction: Some Chick (Anora)
Other nominees: The Lady from Emilia Perez, The Lady From I’m Still Here
I really would like Demi Moore to get this one, because I like her. But she just wasn’t good enough. Ervino had to convey a lot more in her performance, all while singing her fucking lungs out. But I didn’t see I’m Still Here, so maybe that would be ok.

Best Director

My Pick: The Brutalist
My Prediction: The Brutalist
Dice Prediction: Emilia Perez
Other nominees: Anora, A Complete Unknown, The Substance
Guys, it’s now 7:01 and I’m out of time to keep going with this post. And honestly I have zero idea how to judge directors. So… I dunno.

Best Adapted Screenplay

My Pick: Conclave
My Prediction: Emilia Perez
Dice Prediction: Sing Sing
Other nominees: A Complete Unknown, Nickel Boys
I’m just throwing spaghetti against the wall here. No clue.

Best Original Screenplay

My Pick: A Real Pain
My Prediction: September 5
Dice Prediction: The Substance
Other nominees: Anora, The Brutalist
I LOVED the screenplay for A Real Pain. It made me feel real feelings, more so than anything else. The Brutalist had moments that blew me away script-wise, but other moments that were just too contrived.

Best Cinematography

My Pick: The Brutalist
My Prediction: The Brutalist
Dice Prediction: Dune 2
Other nominees: Emilia Perez, Nosferatu, Maria
All of these films were beautiful, so no strong feelings from me here. I’d be happy to see Maria win.

Best Film Editor

My Pick: The Brutalist
My Prediction: Emilia Perez
Dice Prediction: Conclave
Other nominees: Anora, Wicked
I dunno.

Best Production Design

My Pick: Wicked
My Prediction: Dune 2
Dice Prediction: The Brutalist
Other nominees: Conclave, Nosferatu
The production design was fantastic in all of these (yes, including Dune 2, ugh), so I’d be happy with any of them winning (except for Dune 2, cuz fuck that stupid movie.)

Best Costume Design

My Pick: Wicked
My Prediction: Wicked
Dice Prediction: Nosferatu
Other nominees: Conclave, A Complete Unknown, Gladiator 2
Was it weird that every single student in the school was wearing a uniform except for our 3 leads? Yes. Otherwise were the costimes in Wicked over the top and whimsical and probably deserving of some sort of award? Yup. Noferatu was good but the costumes liked like the costumes from vistually every single BBC period piece I’ve ever seen, so not much imagination from what I can tell.

Best Makeup and Hair

My Pick: A Different Man
My Prediction: The Substance
Dice Prediction: Nosferatu
Other nominees: Emilia Perez, Conclave
Possible the first time I’ve had an opinion about hair and makeup in movies! They did a crazy good job in A Different Man. See my full review for why I feel this way. But The Substance is the higher-ranked movie so I think they may just give it to The Substance so that it wins SOMETHING, since it’s nominated for best picture but unlikely to win anything legit.

Helga without the H

WARNING: Now entering proofreading-free zone