Picking the Winners of the 2025 Critics' Choice Awards

 by Rob DiCristino

It’s time for me to tell you what to like.

As a voting member of the Critics’ Choice Association, it once again falls to me to act as the ultimate arbiter of cinematic quality in this Year of Our Lord 2025. Remember, aesthetic value is a binary: Art is either good or bad, and one asshole’s musings on a Blogger post should definitely determine your personal appreciation of this year’s big screen offerings. You should treat both the CCA’s nominees and my chosen winner as the only legitimate choices for any available superlatives. If you found yourself appreciating a film from 2025 that doesn’t appear on this list, you are objectively wrong, you should forget that said film exists, and you might even consider enlisting the support of a mental health professional. Again, I remind you that if I cast a vote for a nominee and you disagree with my choice, it means I hate your chosen nominee, and I hate you.

Cool? Cool. Here’s what I think was good this year. As with last year, I’m just including a few major above-the-line categories and excluding Best Film, which would tip my hand for our Top Ten coverage in January.

1. Best Actor

CCA’s Nominees: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme), Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams), Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon), Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent)

Barring any shocking upsets— specifically Michael B. Jordan snagging a few apology awards for Creed or Black Panther — the Best Actor campaign feels over before the season even begins in earnest, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s career-best performance in One Battle After Another looking more and more likely to earn him his second Academy Award. And why not? He’s great in the PTA masterpiece, a movie with all the mainstream appeal that Anora and The Brutalist lacked. It’s a big, loud performance in a movie that a lot of people saw. I get it! But Ghetto Pat only walks because Rick Dalton crawled before him, so my CCA vote is going to an actor who genuinely elevated his game this year: That’s Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme, a new American classic — Review next week! — that represents a major step up for an actor about whom I’ve always had my share of reservations. Chalamet is next-level great in Josh Safdie’s epic, taking hold of the self-consciousness that has always limited him and transmuting it into something truly fearless.

2. Best Supporting Actor

CCA’s Nominees: Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), Paul Mescal (Hamnet), Sean Penn (One Battle After Another), Adam Sandler (Jay Kelly), Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value)

Supporting Actor is a catastrophically weak category this year — All love to the Sandman, but what are we doing? — so the only real issue is deciding which of the One Battle After Another performances is most deserving of a win. Sean Penn and the stick he jammed up his ass are both doing something really special as Col. Steve Lockjaw — I’ve definitely shouted “I am a Christmas Adventurer!” at unsuspecting passersby at least once a week since I first saw One Battle — but I’m giving my vote to Benicio because of how much harder it can be to calibrate his energy. PTA gives us exactly as much of the actor as his film requires and not one drop more, a feat that feels all the more impressive now that we’ve learned how instrumental del Toro was in developing what’s easily that film’s best sequence. “But wait,” you might be protesting: “Weren’t you devastated by Paul Mescal in Hamnet?” No, Mr. Strawman, sir. I wasn’t! Hamnet is insincere bullshit, and anyone who paid full price for that snake oil needs to have their head examined as soon as possible.

3. Best Actress

CCA’s Nominees: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You), Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee), Emma Stone (Bugonia)

Now THIS is a dogfight. I’m shocked to not see Jennifer Lawrence on this list — her turn in Die My Love is still my Oscar frontrunner despite no longer being my favorite performance in this general category — but, with due respect to Amanda Seyfried, it’s possible that some residual Brutalist affection earned The Testament of Ann Lee a bit more attention than it really deserves. Anyway, we once again find ourselves dealing with the One Battle After Another of it all, and it’s hard to deny Chase Infiniti’s breakthrough performance as Letterboxd’s new favorite American Girl. I like Infiniti; I really do. She’s great! But if I’m talking about leveling up, I’m talking about Rose Byrne in Mary Bronstein’s spectacular If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, a film that already earned Byrne a Silver Bear in Berlin and gives the talented Australian actress a chance to demonstrate the dramatic range that twenty years of action comedies have never required. She’s absolutely heartbreaking in If I Had Legs, playing a character who demands our sympathy and revulsion in equal measure.

4. Best Supporting Actress

CCA’s Nominees: Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value), Ariana Grande (Wicked: For Good), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value), Amy Madigan (Weapons), Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)

Look, I really wanted to vote for SZA in One of Them Days or Odessa A’zion in Marty Supreme for this award, but since I can’t, the process gets a little trickier. Elle Fanning is having a fine year — Sentimental Value kind of hinges on her performance, and she’s a lot of fun in Predator: Badlands — and obviously Amy Madigan is receiving a good deal of traction for getting her shit absolutely wrecked by those kids in Weapons. None of these performances really knocked me out, though. Does that make me a bad person? I mean, I am a bad person, but is THIS what really seals the deal? No? Okay. Thank you. Anyway, I think I’ve stalled enough to cast a mildly ambivalent vote for Teyana Taylor, whose One Battle character unfortunately embodies the one sphere of legitimate criticism I’ve seen of that film. She’s great at what she’s given to do, of course, but it’s hard to argue that it’s her performance and not her absence that makes Perfidia Beverly Hills so compelling. She’s got a few great bits, though, and in this weak a field, that’s enough to earn a vote.

5. Best Young Actor/Actress (Under 21)

CCA’s Nominees: Everett Blunck (The Plague), Miles Caton (Sinners), Cary Christopher (Weapons), Shannon Mahina Gorman (Rental Family), Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet), Nina Ye (Left-Handed Girl)

This has to be Miles Caton in Sinners, right? It might feel a little unfair to pit the twenty-year-old actor against, say, the nine-year-old Nina Ye — who, to be fair, is very charming in Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl — but is there really any argument that Caton’s Sammy “Preacherboy” Moore isn’t one of the most immediately iconic characters in a movie full of immediately iconic characters? Come to think of it, when is the Sinners awards campaign rolling out? Where the hell is my vinyl of Ludwig Göransson’s score? My Sinners-branded wooden stakes? A vial of Hailee Steinfeld’s saliva? I mean, what are we doing? I’m writing this on December 8th, and my house is lousy with awards swag. Nothing for Sinners, though! What’s Warner Bros. waiting for? Did the Netflix deal put the kibosh on their lust for Oscar gold? Hell, I’ve got a Bluetooth speaker shaped like Springsteen’s Nebraska demos and a sleeping mask with Wake Up Dead Man branding — get it? — but no Sinners stuff? MY VOTE IS RIGHT HERE WAITING TO BE BOUGHT! BRIBE ME, DAMMIT!

6. Best Director

CCA’s Nominees: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value), Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)

We all know I’m voting for Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another — which, after my fourth viewing, I’m thinking might represent the apotheosis of his entire career — so let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about why I DIDN’T pick other nominees: I’m with Patrick on the whole “Guillermo del Toro is dangerously close to becoming Tim Burton” thing (sorry, Mike), and without even the political subtext that gives his shaky Pinocchio some texture, Frankenstein is just a wholesale miscalculation. Let’s see. I love Sentimental Value, obviously — Joachim Trier’s self-indulgent navel-gazing is the very definition of Rob Shit — but it’s more in the screenplay than the direction (same with Marty Supreme). Sinners is all about the performances and production design, though I will say Coogler is choosing his visual flourishes with more deliberation than he used to — Rarely am I standing up and cheering for an aspect ratio change, after all — which is nice to see. Oh, and I didn’t pick Chloe Zhao for Hamnet because I fucking hated Hamnet.

7. Best Original Screenplay

CCA’s Nominees: Noah Baumbach, Emily Mortimer (Jay Kelly), Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Zach Cregger (Weapons), Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby), Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)

I highlighted the Best Comedy category in this spot last year, but since that field isn’t as strong this year — For the record, I voted for Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville — I’m taking the opportunity to draw attention to Eva Victor’s debut feature, Sorry, Baby in the Best Original Screenplay category. This is a stacked group, and it’s tough for a plot-obsessed robot like me to resist the clean dramatic symmetry of Sinners and Weapons — Seriously; good story structure is practically stimming — but those films are from budding auteurs working in their established wheelhouses. I expect greatness from them! On the other hand, I haven’t been able to shake actor and comedian Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby — a film I took a flyer on after hearing very little buzz — since I first saw it back in July. First features are usually overstuffed (Together, The Chronology of Water) or undercooked (Anemone, Eleanor the Great), but Victor’s remarkable debut demonstrates the kind of discipline most artists don’t find until much later. Hell, some never find it at all.

See the full list of nominees here, and watch the 31st annual Critics' Choice Awards on E! and USA Network at 7 PM EST on Sunday, January 4th!