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I go to the movies after a long week. I go on hot days when the air conditioning and the dark are reason enough. I go because it is one of the few places left where my mind actually slows down, where I stop moving between twelve things and settle into one — one story, one room, one world someone built entirely to hold my attention for two hours. Usually sitting next to my best friend, Jack, fountain Coca-Cola in hand and my own bag of buttered popcorn. Cinema Salem. The Warwick. Occasionally the AMC when nothing else will do. These are, without apology, among my favorite places on earth.
The Oscars, then, are the one night a year when the rest of the world agrees to care about what I care about all year long.
So indulge me.
I’ve been going down Academy Awards rabbit holes long enough to know that Meryl Streep holds the record for the most Oscar nominations of any performer in history — 21 in total, 17 for best actress alone. I know that Emma Thompson remains the only person in Oscar history to win for both acting and writing. I know that Katharine Hepburn won more acting Oscars than anyone who has ever lived — four — and never once attended the ceremony to collect a single one. She won four times and sent her regrets four times. That is either the most glamorous act of indifference in Hollywood history or the most clarifying possible statement about what these awards actually mean. Probably both.
I know that the very first Oscar ceremony, in 1929, lasted 15 minutes. I stay for every minute of the modern ones. I get sentimental when the memorial montage rolls — “oh yeah, he died,” I’ll say, and suddenly I’m back in a theater somewhere watching a film I loved. The Oscars have always been as much about memory as movies.
I know these things the way some people know batting averages. I am not embarrassed about this.
What I want to share on this Oscar-night eve isn’t a ballot. It’s a short list of moments from this year’s films that reminded me why sitting in a dark room with strangers and a large screen remains one of the most reliable forms of grace I know.
In “One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson shoots his finale across rolling California hills with a propulsion and beauty that made me grip my armrest. Anderson has always had a gift for drawing original, fierce and funny performances from actors you thought you already knew — Benicio Del Toro finds a register here that feels entirely new, calm and meditative while DiCaprio’s world unravels around him, and Regina Hall brings a fire that reminds you how consistently underestimated she is. Sean Penn, as a fascist military commander with a bad comb and a foul temper, is simply otherworldly. Jonny Greenwood’s score drives it all forward like something trying to remember its own tune. One critic called it “a xylophone humping a coffeepot.” That is not wrong.
In “Hamnet,” Jessie Buckley’s Agnes walks into the Globe Theatre and watches her grief performed back at her from a stage. Director Chloé Zhao frames it with such restraint that the moment lands harder than any speech could. Buckley will win best actress Sunday night. That is not a prediction. It is a certainty, and we should riot if she does not.
“Marty Supreme” hasn’t left me. Timothée Chalamet plays a 1950s ping-pong hustler who treats everyone around him as an instrument for his own ambition — sleeping with married women, stealing from his uncle, offering to pick up the check for the man whose wife he just cuckolded. Pure id. Charismatic, repulsive, impossible to look away from.
“Bugonia” is just strange and alive in the way only a Yorgos Lanthimos film can be — a conspiracy theorist beekeeper kidnaps a big pharma CEO and greets her when she wakes up in his basement with “Welcome to the headquarters of the human resistance.” Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons spend the rest of the film taking turns backing each other into corners — and the more the movie goes on, the less certain you are about who the monster actually is.
“Sinners” is a horror film about twin brothers who spend one long afternoon building a juke joint out of a sawmill, filling it with catfish and music and community. The film’s centerpiece is a single continuous shot in which their cousin Sammie begins to play the blues and the room fills with spirits across time — African drummers, hip-hop DJs, dancers from eras not yet born — all summoned by one song.
“One Battle After Another” wins best picture because it’s a full package of excellence, with “Sinners” the most worthy challenger Hollywood has produced in years. Anderson wins best director — 14 nominations, no wins, a long-overdue correction. “Sinners” takes original screenplay, original score and casting. Amy Madigan wins best supporting actress for a role buried under prosthetics in “Weapons,” in what would be one of the more quietly satisfying moments of the night. “Frankenstein” takes production design, costume and makeup, because Guillermo del Toro built something extraordinary and the Academy knows it.
Lastly, the best ballot I have ever turned in was 19 out of 24. The five I missed haunt me still. Here is my 2026 ballot.
— Best Picture: “One Battle After Another”
— Directing: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
— Actor in a Leading Role: Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
— Actress in a Leading Role: Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
— Actor in a Supporting Role: Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
— Actress in a Supporting Role: Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
— Casting: “Sinners”
— Writing (Adapted Screenplay): “One Battle After Another”
— Writing (Original Screenplay): “Sinners”
— Cinematography: “One Battle After Another”
— Film Editing: “One Battle After Another”
— Production Design: “Frankenstein”
— Costume Design: “Frankenstein”
— Makeup and Hairstyling: “Frankenstein”
— Sound: “F1”
— Visual Effects: “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
— Music (Original Score): “Sinners”
— Music (Original Song): “Golden,” “KPop Demon Hunters”
— International Feature Film: “Sentimental Value”
— Animated Feature Film: “KPop Demon Hunters”
— Documentary Feature Film: “The Perfect Neighbor”
— Animated Short Film: “Butterfly”
— Documentary Short Film: “All the Empty Rooms”
— Live Action Short Film: “Two People Exchanging Saliva”
That’s my card. Nineteen or better, or I’ll hear about it from myself.
The 98th Academy Awards air live Sunday on WCVB Channel 5 — Boston’s ABC affiliate — with red carpet coverage at 3:30 p.m., the official red carpet show at 6:30 p.m. and the ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brien, at 7 p.m. It also streams on Hulu.
