Ten Films, One Long Conversation
A Blogger’s Reflections on This Year’s Best Picture Nominees
I’ve been writing online long enough to know that movies don’t just reflect the year they’re released in, they reflect the year we’re living through. When I started blogging, award seasons felt cleaner, more ceremonial. Over time, they’ve become messier, more revealing. The films that rise to the top now tend to ask harder questions and offer fewer easy answers.
This year’s Best Picture nominees feel like that kind of collection. Different genres, different tones, but all circling familiar themes I’ve written about for years: ambition, loss, memory, power, and the quiet ways people endure.
Here’s how these ten films struck me not as a critic, but as someone who has spent a long time watching stories change alongside the world.
1. Sinners
I’ve learned over the years that the most unsettling stories aren’t about evil people, they’re about ordinary people making small compromises. Sinners lives in that space. It doesn’t hand the audience a clear villain. Instead, it lets responsibility diffuse across institutions, relationships, and moments of silence.
Watching it, I was reminded of how often history softens accountability with time. That’s why this film feels important. It doesn’t let us look away.
2. One Battle After Another
This one felt personal in an unexpected way. It’s structured around struggle, then another struggle, then another. No grand resolution. Just persistence.
As someone who has kept writing through personal and public uncertainty, I recognized that rhythm immediately. Life rarely offers clean endings. This film understands that, and that honesty alone makes it awards-worthy.
3. Frankenstein
I’ve revisited the Frankenstein story more times than I can count, and I’m always surprised by how contemporary it feels. This version leans into what has always mattered most to me about the story: not the act of creation, but the act of abandonment.
In an era of rapid technological ambition, the film quietly asks a question I’ve returned to often on this blog, just because we can, does that mean we should?
4. Marty Supreme
I’ve watched enough public figures rise and fall to know that success is often more isolating than failure. Marty Supreme understands that. It strips away the mythology and leaves us with a person shaped and warped by expectation.
What stayed with me wasn’t the spectacle, but the loneliness beneath it. That’s a harder story to tell, and a braver one.
5. Sentimental Value
This film surprised me with how much it did using very little. Family stories, aging parents, inherited objects these are themes I’ve written about more often than I expected to over the years.
Sentimental Value understands something important: meaning accumulates slowly. It doesn’t announce itself. This film earns its place by honoring the emotional residue of a life lived.
6. Bugonia
I’ll admit, this one made me uneasy and not just because of its dark humor. Bugonia captures the feeling of living in a world where reality feels increasingly negotiable.
As someone who has blogged through the rise of social media, misinformation, and collective anxiety, the film felt less like satire and more like diagnosis. That relevance makes it impossible to ignore.
7. F1
I’ve never been drawn to sports films for the victories. What interests me is the cost. F1 is honest about that cost, the physical strain, the psychological pressure, the way identity becomes fused with performance.
It’s thrilling, yes. But beneath the speed is a meditation on control and fragility. That balance is why it belongs here.
8. Hamnet
Grief is something I’ve learned you don’t outgrow, you learn to live alongside it. Hamnet understands that better than most films I’ve seen.
It doesn’t dramatize loss; it respects it. Watching it, I was reminded why some stories don’t need to be loud to be devastating. This is one of them.
9. The Secret Agent
I’ve written for years about power, trust, and institutions that claim to protect while quietly surveilling. The Secret Agent taps into that unease with precision.
What struck me most was how little certainty anyone in the film has. Loyalty is provisional. Truth is unstable. That feels very much of this moment.
10. Train Dreams
If I had to choose one film that felt closest to why I started blogging in the first place, it might be Train Dreams. It pays attention to a life that history barely pauses for.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that quiet lives deserve as much narrative care as famous ones. This film understands that and treats memory itself as something sacred.
Closing Thoughts
After all these years of writing, I’ve stopped looking for a single “best” film. What I look for instead is honesty, stories that respect the audience enough to sit with complexity.
This year’s nominees do that. They don’t offer escape so much as recognition. And for a longtime blogger, that’s often the highest compliment I can give.
- Netflix: Frankenstein, Train Dreams, The Perfect Neighbor (Documentary), KPop Demon Hunters (Animated).
- Peacock: Bugonia, Jurassic World Rebirth.
- Apple TV+: F1, Sentimental Value (also Rent/Buy), The Secret Agent (also Rent/Buy), Sirāt, The Smashing Machine.
- HBO Max (Max): One Battle After Another, Sinners, The Alabama Solution.
- Prime Video (Rent/Buy): Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, Marty Supreme (Pre-order), Blue Moon, Diane Warren: Relentless, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.
- Theaters: Hamnet (focus features), The Secret Agent, Song Sung Blue.
- Cinemark Oscar Movie Week: Select theaters will feature nominated films, including Best Picture nominees and shorts.
- 98th Academy Awards: The ceremony airs live on March 15, 2026, on ABC and Hulu.
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