This Week: Recapping the Best Movies of 2024
The Listies are back with a brief recap of the 97th Academy Awards telecast, the 9th Annual Bestie Awards, and all the best movies of 2024. Plus, we’ll also spotlight some of our favorite movies of 2025 so far and a few that we think could make a splash at next year’s Academy Awards!
THE 9TH ANNUAL BESTIE AWARD WINNERS 🏆
As always, let’s start with the most important awards of all—our own! 2025 marked the 9th Annual Bestie Awards, and unlike the past two years, we actually disagreed with the Oscars on Best Picture…
While we did love Anora (it was one of our five nominees for Best Picture), our pick for Best Picture went to the audacious and incomparable Dune: Part Two.
Dune: Part Two ended up with four wins overall, tying for the most awards of the night with Challengers and Sing Sing. Interestingly, this is the lowest win tally for a Best Picture winner since 2019 when Roma tied The Favourite and Black Panther with three wins. We pulled together a few more delicious Bestie Award stats below, but you can check out all of this year’s winners on our Facebook page!
Dune: Part Two scored 12 nominations overall, one less than its predecessor racked up back in 2022. Visual Effects is the only category that both Dune: Part One and Part Two won, meaning there was very little repetition in wins from Part One to Part Two.
Challengers received the second-most nominations of the night, with 10, followed by The Substance with eight and I Saw the TV Glow with seven.
Queer was the film this year with the most nominations (6) and zero wins. The record is held by Beanpole with nine nominations, followed by Silence and Dunkirk at seven nominations and You Were Never Really Here, Knives Out, Minari, The Batman, and now Queer all with six nominations and zero wins.
For the second year in a row, all five Best Picture Nominees won at least one of their nominations. Previous Best Picture nominees to go home empty-handed include The Lobster, Dunkirk, You Were Never Really Here, Marriage Story, Beanpole, The Beatles: Get Back, and The Worst Person in the World.
Coralie Fargeat was the 8th woman to be nominated in the Best Director category (for The Substance) and second woman to win the award. Eliza Hittman previously won in 2021 for Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
With his nominations in Lead Performance for Dune: Part Two and Best Soundtrack for A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet became the most nominated actor in Besties history. Since 2018 he has scored five nominations, and won Best Lead Actor for Call Me by Your Name.
THE BESTIES VS. THE OSCARS 🤼
OUR TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE YEAR!
We aligned on Dune: Part Two being the best movie of the year, and both put Anora, Challengers, and Sing Sing in our Top 5. From there, our lists differ slightly, with David favoring Nickel Boys, I Saw the TV Glow, and Flow, while Emily showed some more love for The Substance, Thelma, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
For a look at David’s more extensive Top 51 Movies of 2024, see the linked Letterboxd list below:
TOP 5 MOVIES OF 2025 SO FAR… 🤔
1. Mickey 17
2. Presence
3. Companion
4. Grand Theft Hamlet
5. One of Them Days
It’s been a bit of a slow year at the movies so far, but there have still been a handful of great releases already. The new film from Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17, tops our list after previously appearing on our most anticipated list… of 2024! Four botched release dates later, the Robert Pattinson sci-fi comedy has finally hit theaters and we loved the whole wacky ride.
Next we have Presence and Companion, two films that scratch that horror-thriller itch in their own way, elevating their narratives beyond the usual genre tropes. Grand Theft Hamlet is probably the most unique take on the Scottish play that we’ve ever seen, as two actors attempt to stage a production within the digital world of Grand Theft Auto, and One of Them Days, a January release, rounds out our list thanks to a pair of fun performances from Keke Palmer and SZA.
As for the rest of the spring, keep an eye out for some new releases like Steven Soderbergh’s spy thriller Black Bag (his second movie of the year), the A24-Ayo Edebiri film Opus, the Alex Garland co-directed war film Warfare, and the highly anticipated reunion from Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, Sinners. As unapologetic fans of Tom Cruise, we’re also dying to see the next (and final?) installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning, this May.
The Top 5 Most Likely Best Picture Nominees in 2026:
1. The Life of Chuck (dir. Mike Flanagan)
2. Hamnet (dir. Chloe Zhao)
3. Avatar: Fire and Ash (dir. James Cameron)
4. Wicked: For Good (dir. Jon Chu)
5. Untitled PTA Movie (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Wow, you made it to the end of our newsletter—thanks so much for reading! If you know someone who would appreciate our lists, forward this email! 🤗 To see past Listies, click the link below!
The Listies was born out of The Besties Review, an online movie blog started by Emily Figueroa and David Merkle. For more movie-related content, like The Besties Review on Facebook and follow David and Emily on Letterboxd!
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