Here are the films that have been making waves and scoring awards at this year’s Golden Globes and Oscars. Catch them on KrisWorld.
A Complete Unknown
Nominated — Best Actor in a Leading Role at Oscars 2025 (Timothée Chalamet)
Nominated — Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Monica Barbaro)
6 other nominations at Oscars 2025
The title of this film is taken from a line in “Like a Rolling Stone”, a song that cemented Bob Dylan’s reputation as a true-blue artist. When it was released, the track was a seismic moment in culture, a signifier to the wider public that Dylan, as they knew him, had changed for good. He had morphed from a folk icon to a rock star.
How did that evolution happen? A Complete Unknown shows how Dylan became one of music’s most beloved artists. Directed by James Mangold, who previously helmed biopics Walk the Line and Ford v Ferrari, this film takes audiences back to the early ’60s, when a conflicted and divided America found glimpses of hope for the future in its protest artists — folk singers who sang about modern times while invoking the country’s communal past.
Dylan is quickly made the poster boy of protest artists once his music gains traction. However, what A Complete Unknown masterfully captures is the conflicts between ‘Dylan the protest artist’ and ‘Dylan the young man’, and how he unshackled himself from those labels by simply becoming ‘Dylan the rock star’.
To add a layer of realism to the film, lead actor Timothée Chalamet rigorously learned Dylan’s music with the guitar and harmonica. Chalamet revealed in an interview with Apple Music that he spent five years learning the harmonica with a coach, along with studying 13 different Dylan songs and working with a movement coach to mimic the icon’s physical mannerisms. Now, that’s dedication.
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New York, 1961. A young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, forging relationships with music icons on his meteoric rise…
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Wicked
Winner — Best Production Design at Oscars 2025
Winner — Best Costume Design at Oscars 2025
Nominated — Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at Oscars 2025 (Cynthia Erivo)
Nominated — Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at Oscars 2025 (Ariana Grande)
6 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Loosely adapted from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (which is itself a revisionist take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), the musical Wicked has enchanted theatre fans for more than two decades. As one of the most commercially successful Broadway musicals ever, it was a matter of time before it found its way to the big screen — but it certainly took a lot of time. And after more than a decade (!) in the works, during which development hit major road bumps, the Wicked movie, which covers Act 1 of the musical, has materialised.
The film transposes the theatre production’s musical numbers to a CGI world but retains their pomp and majesty. But it also plays to its medium’s strengths, deepening the story’s intimacy and its characters’ relationships by liberally using close-up shots. The result is a vibrant but moving movie that will resonate with anyone who’s felt misunderstood or mistreated by society.
Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is a young woman with the uncommon traits of having green skin and exceptional talent for magic. After enrolling in a school she had no interest in joining, Elphaba meets Glinda (Ariana Grande), a popular but flighty student who is, at first, disturbed by Elphaba’s appearance. Soon, however, the two find common ground and become close friends.
Wicked’s all about finding the humanity in the villains we love to hate. It makes us see people — or at least unpopular characters — differently. Elphaba, largely known in pop culture as the Wicked Witch, is shown in a sympathetic light and performed with both ferocity and vulnerability by Erivo. “Characters like this don’t come along very often,” the actress tells The New York Times. “It’s a real privilege to be able to play these women because they’re so much more than just iconography. You can help people understand … hurt and love and pain. And the grey areas that we all have.”
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The untold story of the witches of Oz, Elphaba and Glinda. The two forge an unlikely friendship — before their lives take different paths following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
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Nosferatu
Nominated — Best Cinematography at Oscars 2025
3 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Vampires are anything but new in the horror genre. We’ve seen plenty of them in the movies. And yet Nosferatu digs deeper into the psychology of a predatory immortal — someone who feeds on not just human blood but also human desire.
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Robert Eggers (The Northman and The Witch), Nosferatu is set in a dark, frigid, and unsettling world. A young girl named Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) sparks a connection with a supernatural being, who swiftly manipulates her into pledging her life to him. That being is Count Orlok/Nosferatu (Bill Skarsgård), once a man who made a pact with the devil to live forever and ended up as a demonic monster.
Ellen, all grown up and married to Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), starts getting disturbed by visions of Nosferatu. And she’s unaware that her husband, leaving town for work, is unwittingly walking into Nosferatu’s plan to possess Ellen for himself. What happens is a struggle of good against evil — and it’s up to Ellen, Thomas, and their friends to foil Nosferatu’s scheme once and for all.
Previously, Skarsgård disturbed audiences with his iconic portrayal of the maniacal clown demon Pennywise in 2017’s It. Yet, ironically enough, it’s also his classically Hollywood looks that attracted director Eggers to him for Nosferatu. “He’s gross,” Skarsgård says of Count Orlok to Esquire. “But it is very sexualised. It’s playing with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has to you. Hopefully, you’ll get a little bit attracted by it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.”
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A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.
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A Real Pain
Winner — Best Actor in a Supporting Role at Oscars 2025 (Kieran Culkin)
1 other nomination at Oscars 2025
Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and starred in A Real Pain, a film that will hit close to home if you’ve had relatives you don’t quite know if you love or hate.
David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) are cousins who were once close as kids but couldn’t be more different from each other as adults. Yet, they find themselves reunited in Poland after the passing of their grandmother. Their adventure through the country unearths past tensions between them and their families.
Culkin turns in a heartfelt and acclaimed performance as Benji, a character wildly different from Roman Roy, which he played on HBO’s Succession. But Culkin almost didn’t star in A Real Pain. In an interview with Vulture, he revealed that the film’s producer, Hollywood star (and Culkin’s one-time girlfriend) Emma Stone, did an “almost reverse-psychology thing” to get him on the plane to Poland for the shoot. He might be glad he was convinced to accept the part, seeing as it earned him a Best Supporting Actor prize at this year’s Academy Awards.
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Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honour their grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd couple’s old tensions resurface.
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Emilia Pérez
Winner — Best Actress in a Supporting Role at Oscars 2025 (Zoe Saldaña)
Winner — Best Original Music — “El Mal”
Nominated – Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón)
10 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Who is Emilia Pérez? Well, the eponymous character of Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical crime film used to be Juan ‘Manitas’ Del Monte, one of Mexico’s most feared drug lords. Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón) identifies as a woman and ropes in lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) to secretly perform gender-reassignment surgery, stage the kingpin’s death, and whisk unsuspecting wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their kids away to Switzerland. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, even for that of a reformed gangster, and the newly christened Emilia seeks a family reunion as Manitas’ distant cousin.
Emilia Pérez has attracted its fair share of controversy. Audiard has been criticised for inaccurately portraying Mexico in the movie. And in January, Gascón came under fire for tweets dating back years that had controversial views on religion and the Oscars. Despite Gascón’s fallout from her gaffes, the 52-year-old made history as the first openly transgender actor nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. The star was also the first transgender woman to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actress award, shared with co-stars Saldaña, Gomez, and Adriana Paz.
And while Gascón is the star dominating headlines, it’s another cast member that steals the show: Zoe Saldaña. The actress won the Best Supporting Actress award at this year’s Oscars — her first Academy Award.
Reviews have also been overwhelmingly positive, with The Wrap saying Saldaña “blazes across the screen”, Entertainment Weekly calling the film “genre-defying”, and Vogue France declaring it “the best musical of the decade”.
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Overqualified and undervalued, Rita is a lawyer at a large firm in Mexico that is more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice. One day, she is given a way out.
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Conclave
Winner — Best Adapted Screenplay at Oscars 2025
Nominated — Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes)
Nominated — Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini)
5 other nominations at Oscars 2025
The pope is dead. The Vatican throne is vacant. And one and a quarter billion souls are watching the gathering of the College of Cardinals, led by British Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), to choose the next bishop of Rome.
Within the sacred walls of the Sistine Chapel, 113 princes of the Church from around the world gather for the papal election, or conclave (from the Latin word meaning ‘a locked room’). Among the lead candidates are Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), an American liberal; Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian traditionalist; and Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), the dark-horse archbishop of Kabul.
But, as the doleful-eyed Thomas would soon discover, a few of the cardinals had sinned, and the deceased pontiff had been holding scandalous secrets. As the accusations and betrayals mount, the contest for the next leader of the Catholic world culminates in an explosive revelation.
Director Edward Berger, who won an Academy Award for his last film, All Quiet on the Western Front, has earned rave reviews from critics for this pulpit pulp thriller, adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by Robert Harris. The film, written for the screen by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy co-scribe Peter Straughan, won the Golden Globes for Best Screenplay and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, with Variety calling the ending “one of the most satisfying twists in years”.
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Conclave follows one of the world’s most ancient events—selecting the new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope.
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The Substance
Winner — Best Makeup and Hairstyling at Oscars 2025
Nominee — Best Actress at Oscars 2025 (Demi Moore)
3 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Demi Moore makes a triumphant Hollywood return — at age 62! — after years away from the big screen, to star in a film that is both discomfiting and hilarious. She plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress-turned-aerobics star fired from her TV gig due to her age. Desperate, Elisabeth comes across ‘The Substance’, a mysterious serum that promises to grant youthfulness to the old.
What it actually does is quite different: it allows one to live in another, much younger body. The younger Elisabeth (Margaret Qualley) adopts the new identity of Sue while the real Elisabeth languishes at home. However, the formula demands a rigorous routine of injections and body switches in order for it to work.
When Sue starts developing a mind and ego of her own, a battle for autonomy between the two ensues. This tug of war continues until one of them, in a disturbing climactic scene, morphs into a horrific, monstrous creature. (This hideous transformation was achieved largely via practical effects and minimal CGI — the movie rightly won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.)
‘The Substance’ here is a metaphor for Hollywood’s obsession with beauty and youth, taken to the extreme. The film questions this fixation and points out that women are both victims of and willing participants in the upholding of beauty standards.
Demi Moore is perfectly cast here. That Moore won her very first award through this performance, which involves grotesque physical behaviour, is almost dramatic irony, since she’s 62 — proof that she’s not ‘past her prime’, as her character believes.
The second film from French filmmaker Fargeat, The Substance is a riveting watch with its dark humour and thrilling sequences, even as you’re squirming in your seat.
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Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey, is drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug.
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Dune: Part Two
Winner — Best Sound at Oscars 2025
Winner — Best Visual Effects at Oscars 2025
3 other nominations at Oscars 2025
The space-opera saga of Dune continues in director Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction novel. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, the exiled heir of the deceased Leto Atreides and prophesied messiah of the Fremen, the indigenous people of the desert planet Arrakis.
As war looms and alliances are forged with love interest Chani (Zendaya) and mentor Stilgar (Javier Bardem), Paul must face a new enemy in Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), the bloodthirsty potential successor of House Harkonnen. This second instalment — which also stars Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, and Furiosa star Anya Taylor-Joy in an uncredited cameo — features unforgettable sequences like Paul riding a sandworm for the first time. With Dune 3 set for release in December 2026, there’s even more reason to (re)visit the beautiful and brutal world of Arrakis.
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Explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.
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The Wild Robot
Nominee — Best Animated Feature Film at Oscars 2025
2 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Helmed by Chris Sanders, the co-director of Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, this DreamWorks film adaptation of Peter Brown’s beloved novel is about kindness and connection — and how those things are essential for survival.
A mysterious box washes up on a remote island. Inside is a lone survivor named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) — only this castaway is no human but a state-of-the-art robot. Roz is eager to help the animal inhabitants of her new home, but the feeling isn’t mutual with her frightened and hostile neighbours. When she stumbles upon a goose nest, she takes up the task of raising its single remaining gosling, Brightbill (Kit Connor), with the help of mischievous fox Fink (Pedro Pascal).
The Wild Robot is DreamWorks Animation’s final feature produced entirely in-house, and Sanders has fittingly gathered “an amazing cast”. Among the line-up are Stephanie Hsu as Vontra, another robot sent to retrieve Roz; Mark Hamill as Thorn, a grizzly bear; and Ving Rhames as Thunderbolt, a peregrine falcon.
Nyong’o describes the movie, lauded for its impressionistic art style and humanist themes, as “not afraid to pull at your heartstrings”.
“People are going to enjoy watching a robot learn to be wild,” says the Academy Award-winning actress.
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Rozzum 7134 (“Roz” for short), a futuristic robot, washes ashore on a deserted island. A tale of survival begins when she becomes the protector to an orphaned gosling, which she names Brightbill.
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Gladiator II
Nominated — Best Achievement in Costume Design at Oscars 2025
“Are you not entertained?”
You may know the iconic line that Maximus (Russell Crowe) shouted in Ridley Scott’s historical epic, Gladiator. Well, it appears modern audiences can’t get enough of ancient Rome’s “bread and circuses”, as poet Juvenal would call it, because the 87-year-old Blade Runner director decided to complete a long-awaited sequel after over two decades.
Taking place a generation after the events of the first film, Gladiator II introduces us to Lucius/Hanno (Paul Mescal), a refugee made homeless and a widower by Roman soldiers led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal). After being talent-spotted by wealthy power broker Macrinus (Denzel Washington), Hanno is brought to Rome to fight as a gladiator and, hopefully, get his revenge against Acacius and corrupt twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).
Audiences commended the film’s elaborate set pieces — including a full-scale naumachia (naval battle) — as well as Washington’s captivating presence as the manipulative and conniving Macrinus. Film critics were entertained too, with the entertainment journalist Scott Menzel claiming that Gladiator II is “a big, bloody … action spectacle that builds upon the legacy of the original”.
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After his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum and must find strength to return the glory of Rome to its people.
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Maria
Nominated — Best Achievement in Cinematography at Oscars 2025
Director Pablo Larraín’s biopic drama of the eponymous American-Greek soprano Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) begins with the end: her body is obscured by the furniture in her palatial Paris apartment as cops, funeral workers, and her staff respectfully keep their distance.
The film then tracks the events in the week leading up to her demise on 16 September 1977, as the 53-year-old opera singer grapples with her fading voice, health, and sanity due to her medication’s side effects.
Larraín is no stranger to telling the tragic tales of famous female figures: His last two English-language (and Academy Award-nominated) features, Jackie and Spencer, were biopics as well. Jackie followed Jacqueline Kennedy in the wake of her husband’s assassination, and Spencer surveyed the period when Princess Diana mulled over a divorce with Prince Charles.
Maria has garnered critical accolades. Variety called it “absolute perfection”, and The Independent praised Jolie’s performance as “career-defining”. At the time of writing, the film earned a nomination for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards, and Jolie was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama at the Golden Globes.
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The film follows the American Greek soprano as she retreats to Paris after a glamorous and tumultuous life in the public eye. Maria reimagines the legendary soprano in her final days.
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The Apprentice
Nominated — Best Actor at Oscars 2025 (Sebastian Stan)
Nominated — Best Supporting Actor at Oscars 2025 (Jeremy Strong)
As Frank Sinatra sings about New York, if you can make it in there, you can make it anywhere. Ali Abbasi’s fictionalised dramatisation of Donald Trump’s early life tells the mostly true story of how the property mogul and incumbent United States President became “the king of the hill” and “top of the heap” in the Big Apple around the late 20th century.
The flick follows a young Donald Trump, played by Captain America: The Winter Soldier actor Sebastian Stan, as he navigates the treacherous real-estate world of the Nixon and Reagan eras. The more he strays from his dysfunctional family led by Fred Trump Sr (Martin Donovan), the closer he grows to his mentor, notorious attorney and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), and future first wife, Czech model Ivana Zelníčková (Maria Bakalova).
Abbasi’s bawdy tragicomedy earned an eight-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Cannes last May, but Trump and his legal team were far from impressed. The President’s lawyers sought to block the US release (to no avail), with the man himself calling the movie a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job”.
Critics held the film in higher regard: The Hollywood Reporter praised Stan, saying he went “beyond impersonation to capture the essence of the man” while The Times declared it “the Donald Trump movie that you never knew you needed”. Stan even scored his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Actor in a Leading Role, at this year’s Oscars.
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The story of how a young Donald Trump started his real-estate business in 1970s and '80s New York with the helping hand of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn.
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Sing Sing
Nominated — Best Actor at Oscars 2025
2 other nominations at Oscars 2025
Sing Sing has been praised for the performance of its lead actor, Colman Domingo, who was nominated for the Best Actor Award at this year’s Oscars. But apart from its star power and excellent acting, this engrossing film about injustice bursts with energy and emotion, especially since it’s based on a true story.
Divine G (Domingo) is a prisoner at the notorious Sing Sing Correctional Facility for a crime he did not commit. While trying to figure out how to prove his innocence, he finds an outlet for his frustrations: theatre. It turns out Divine G is not only eager to dive into it, but he’s also incredibly gifted at it.
Domingo tells Curzon about why the story resonates with him: “I am a Black man in this world who could be wrongly accused of a crime and end up in one of these institutions”. That connection to the film translates to the big screen: you’ll see Domingo give his all in Sing Sing.
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Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men, including a wary newcomer.
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A Different Man
Nominated — Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling at Oscars 2025
In 2024, Sebastian Stan played a young, complicated Donald Trump in The Apprentice. However, in A Different Man, Stan undergoes a physical transformation not unlike Demi Moore in The Substance. But a body horror movie, this is not.
Edward Lemuel (Stan) is an aspiring actor with a physical condition called neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that causes tumours to grow in the nervous system. He’s mostly alone, save for his daily conversations with neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a budding playwright.
However, he gets a chance to radically change his face thanks to plastic surgery. Years later, Edward has a chance encounter with Oswald (Adam Pearson), another man with neurofibromatosis, and the latter challenges everything Edward once believed about himself.
Pearson, an actor and disability activist, lives with the condition in real life. And it’s with this film that Pearson found the role of a lifetime: “We don’t have enough high-profile people with disabilities or disfigurements,” he tells GQ. “And there comes a point when you’ve got to stop looking for role models and try and become one.”
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Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to transform his appearance. But his new dream face turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play.
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Heretic
Nominated — Best Leading Actor at BAFTAs 2025 (Hugh Grant)
Sometimes, actors take on roles that challenge the public’s perception of them. Comedy legends will find a dramatic role they can chew on. Heroic-looking stars may search for a complex role that requires more than charisma. Once the bumbling star of romantic comedies, Hugh Grant is now comfortably entrenched in his villain era, which he first introduced by playing the rakish Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
He doesn’t switch off his charm — and that devastating smile — even when he’s playing a cruel antagonist, making his portrayal of Mr Reed in Heretic even more devious and effective. His character is a smooth-talking recluse with a terrifying secret. Two young Mormon missionaries, played by Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher, knock on his door, hoping to find another convert.
He greets them warmly and invites them in. However, it’s not long until his fatherly disposition becomes slightly uncomfortable, and the two women find themselves trapped in his home. As they go deeper into it, they find more mysteries they must solve to stay alive.
Come for Grant, stay for Thatcher, a fast-rising actor who also acted in this year’s horror-romance film Companion.
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Two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
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