The Oscars

The 98th Academy Awards are this Sunday, and awards season will come to a close with the who’s who of Hollywood gathering to pat themselves on the back with hunks of metal vaguely in the shape of a naked man — and I love it.

Though the box office numbers don’t agree, 2025 was a great year for movies, and the Oscars are going to celebrate some of them on Sunday. Two of my favorites, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” are the clear front-runners this year, amassing 16 and 13 nominations each, respectively. Both films are expected to each win several categories such as writing, directing and music score, with a sprint toward Best Picture at the end.

Meanwhile, other notable favorites from the year — “Frankenstein,” “Marty Supreme” and “Sentimental Value” each have nine nods — may take a surprise statue or two in the acting and production categories. Others, such as Jessie Buckley winning Best Actress for “Hamnet,” have been all but written in stone for weeks. Still, with Conan O’Brien returning as the host, anything could happen in the Dolby Theatre.