As I did last year, my first review of the 2025 Oscar movies is intended as an overview of the whole slate. At this point, I haven’t seen any of them and haven’t read any reviews of them – I only know about them from the general press and, of course, all the Oscar buzz. I doubt I can eliminate all my biases, but I do my best. In this first analysis, we will just cover some basic patterns in the nomination data. (For more definitions of my terms, see the last section.)
2025 Oscar Movies: Basic Data
There are 35 feature-length movies nominated for an Oscar this year, three less than last year. 14 of them are “special interest” films (international, animated, or documentary), which I treat separately because they are difficult to compare to other films, given their special characteristics. Normally, there are 15 special interest films, 5 in each category; but this year, one movie, Flow, is both an international film (from Latvia) and an animated film. 24 of the films are of “general interest” and are subject to cross-comparison. The sum of these sub-category entries is greater than the total number of nominated movies because three movies fall into both categories: I’m Still Here, The Wild Robot, and Emilia Perez.
2025 Oscar Movies: General Interest Competition
Among the General Interest films, there are several things to look at and to compare with previous years to get a sense of where the Academy has, or has not, changed its thinking. One of them is what I call nomination density. This is the tendency to weight certain films with more nominations. This year, Emilia Perez led the pack with 13 Oscar nominations, tying last year’s leader, Oppenheimer. Interestingly, the movie, from France, was also nominated in the International Feature category, becoming one of our Special Interest movies. The average number of nominations per General Interest movie is 3.9, the same as last year, but higher than in 2023.
And if you further break out the nominations between Major and Minor (see the definitions below) and then look at the number of movies receiving Major nominations, the number went from 14 last year to 15 this year, maintaining about the same Major Nomination Density. Major Nomination Density can be viewed as a measure of how competitive the Oscars are, and the number has, generally, gone up over the last few years.
Another measure revealing the same general pattern is that the average OQI (Oscar Quality Index) has remained the same as last year. The last two years have been competitive Oscar seasons. Based on the OQI, the 24 general interest movies line up this way:
Emilia Perez 21
The Brutalist 17
A Complete Unknown 15
Wicked 14
Conclave 13
Anora 12
The Substance 10
I’m Still Here 8
Dune: Part Two 7
Nickel Boys 5
Sing Sing 5
The Wild Robot 5
The Apprentice 4
Nosferatu 4
A Real Pain 4
September 5 2
Alien: Romulus 1
Better Man 1
A Different Man 1
Elton John: Never Too Late 1
Gladiator II 1
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes 1
Maria 1
The Six Triple Eight 1
The 2025 Oscar Movie Gender Discrimination Ratio
A couple of years ago, I came up with a rather novel way of using the OQI— as a way of measuring sex/gender discrimination in Hollywood, based on the movies recognized in the Oscar competition. Using the OQI, I was able to determine that the movies nominated in the Leading and Supporting Actress categories did not, usually, receive the same amount of quality support as those nominated in the Leading and Supporting Actor categories.
If, as I assume, the OQI is a reasonable way of measuring a movie’s Oscar worthiness, then using it can determine how well Hollywood is doing on the sexism scale. If their treatment of men and women is equal, then the average OQIs for their movies they are nominated in should be similar (within measurement error).
In 2023, the average movie OQI between the sexes was about the same – 11.7 for men and 11.3 for women. Last year, discrimination against women seemed to increase with male nominees in films with an average OQI of 12.9 and female actors in films with a 10.7. But this year, that reverses substantially with a big win for female actors. Emilia Perez certainly boosted the ratios with not only the highest OQI but with two female acting nominations. So this year’s average OQIs are 13.2 for men and 24.6 for women, almost double. Clearly, 2025 is a good year for women at the Oscars.
2025 Oscar Movie Analysis Conclusions
That pretty well wraps up what I want to publish at this point. In the next post, I will compare audience and critic ratings on these films, which has always intrigued me. Then, based on my OQI and what we learn from the audience and critical rankings, we will come up with an initial ranking of the films. Finally, I will follow that with my post of Oscar Winner Predictions. Oscar winner analysis does not always follow what the above analysis suggests, so the predictions might surprise you. Look for these posts in the next couple of weeks.
Footnote: 2025 Oscar Movies: Defining the Terms
Definitions used throughout all essays and reviews this year:
“Feature-Length Movies” – I do not consider the fifteen nominees in the three ‘Short’ categories – Live Action, Documentary, and Animated – because it would add a huge amount to my workload and time. It is also often very difficult to find streaming or rental sources for these films.
“Special Interest” – Movies nominated in the three unique categories of International Feature, Documentary Feature, and Animated Feature.
“General Interest” – All of the feature-length movies that were nominated in any of the other categories. Sometimes a movie falls in both categories.
“Above the Line/Major” Nomination Categories – Those categories most directly associated with the telling of the story (Writing, Directing, Acting, and Best Picture).
“Below the Line/Minor” Nomination Categories – Those technical categories which enhance the story and help make movies a special art form (Cinematography, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Sound, Original Score, Original Song).
“Oscar Quality Index (or OQI)” – A numerical index I created to quantify the number and type of Oscar nominations. It is used as a rough measure of what the Academy thinks of the film and a quantification of its “Oscar Buzz”.
(If you want more details on these definitions and their rationale, go to my 2023 Oscar Movie: Initial Analysis essay.)