And the nominees are…

BEST PICTURE
“Challengers”
“La Chimera”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Terrifier 3”
“Twisters”

BEST DIRECTOR
Catherine Breillat, “Last Summer”
Clint Eastwood, “Juror #2”
Damien Leone, “Terrifier 3”
James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown”
Alice Rohrwacher, “La Chimera”

SURPRISE: Catherine Breillat in Best Director
SNUB: Ridley Scott, “Gladiator II”

The directors’ branch here is notoriously capricious—unlike the Oscars, where the nominees reliably line up with Best Picture, it’s common for Film Fun to feature two or often three directors whose corresponding films are nowhere to be found. Such was the case this year, with the 94-year-old Clint Eastwood (Juror #2) and 76-year-old Catherine Breillat (Last Summer) sneaking into the race ahead of the 87-year-old Ridley Scott, who was similarly ignored for the original Gladiator twenty-four years ago. Now that’s what we call a horse race.

Breillat’s film no doubt benefited from the conversation around Age Gap relationships that ran throughout 2024—and with Babygirl, Queer and even Film Fun itself personally caught up in the discourse, Last Summer took it to the brink and was rewarded accordingly. Or maybe it was just all those French-themed brunches at Plein-Air that got them in the mood.

BEST ACTRESS
Lily Collias, “Good One”
Lea Drucker, “Last Summer”
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, “Hard Truths”
Mikey Madison, “Anora”
Saoirse Ronan, “The Outrun”

BEST ACTOR
Timothée Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”
Adam Driver, “Megalopolis”
Haoran Liu, “The Breaking Ice”
Josh O’Connor, “La Chimera”
Jason Schwartzman, “Between the Temples”

Snub: David Howard Thorton and Blake Lively

Much like the Oscars’ infamous snub of Margot Robbie, who played the titular role in the otherwise lauded Barbie, David Howard Thornton’s performance as Art the Clown in Terrifier 3 went unnoticed and became a snub for the ages. With the film earning nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, what kept its most terrifying asset from going all the way? It may not be airing on network television, but this show might still have its limits.

Keeping Art company at the bar is Film Fun favorite Blake Lively, snubbed for her performance in It Ends With Us, which instead settled for a Best Box Office nomination. Not quite the recognition she was hoping for, but the receipts speak for themselves.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Michele Austin, “Hard Truths”
Monica Barbaro, “A Complete Unknown”
Eriko Hatsune, “A Complete Unknown”
Carol Kane, “Between the Temples”
Madeline Weinstein, “Between the Temples”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Faheem Ali, “Stress Positions”
Yura Borisov, “Anora”
Josh O’Connor, “Challengers”
Chuxiao Qu, “The Breaking Ice”
Jon Voight, “Megalopolis”

Surprise: Double trouble in Supporting Actress
Snub: Phyllis Smith, “Inside Out 2”

Supporting Actress turned into a showdown between A Complete Unknown and Between the Temples, with both films landing two nominations apiece: Monica Barbaro and Eriko Hatsune for the former, and Carol Kane and Monica Weinstein for the latter. All four of them are first-time nominees.

But the biggest snub in the category? That would be Phyllis Smith, overlooked for her work in Inside Out 2, where she reprised her role as Sadness—the very performance that won her the Film Fun Award ten years ago. Her victory over Emma Stone (for Aloha) back then sparked one of the biggest controversies in Film Fun history, and with the sequel arriving exactly a decade later, this seemed like the perfect chance for Film Fun to close the circle. But sometimes once really is enough—a lesson that Pixar may still be learning.

BEST SCRIPT
“Between the Temples”
“Challengers”
“La Chimera”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Last Summer”

BEST OTHER LANGUAGE FILM
“La Chimera”
“Megalopolis”

And speaking of animated films getting the cold shoulder…

Snub: “Despicable Me 4”

Best Other Language Film is never a predictable category, but the omission of Despicable Me 4 speaks volumes—or blabbered volumes in this case. The Minions famously triumphed over Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart in 2016, but could the Film Fun Awards finally be turning their backs on Minion-speak? Has it become a language of the lost? Or was the competition simply too fierce? Either way, the absence of those tiny yellow troublemakers has left many scratching their heads. We can only hope we’ll see them again soon in this category—perhaps when Shrinions goes head to head with The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection.

BEST VISUALS
“La Chimera”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Dahomey”
“MaXXXine”
“Terrifier 3”

BEST SOUNDS
“The Brutalist”
“Challengers”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Dahomey”
“Twisters”

SURPRISE: “Mufasa: The Lion King” in Box Office

Days before—and, in fact, after—its release, Mufasa: The Lion King continued to register as something of a non-entity at the box office, with a title that verged on Words, and a bland marketing campaign that left many wondering if Scar should have been fast-tracked into development in its place.

But everybody loves a comeback story, and Mufasa quietly asserted staying power over the holiday corridor and beyond, eventually surpassing running mate Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s domestic total—and, more impressively, flirting with overtaking Wicked’s worldwide box office cume. While it still counts as something of a brand torpedo following the astonishing success of 2019’s The Lion King (Mufasa opened 82% lower than that film’s opening weekend), Quentin Tarantino has also begun to argue recently that 2019 was the last year for Movies—so whatever bones Mufasa’s gnawing on will have to do.

BEST BOX OFFICE
“It Ends With Us”
“Longlegs”
“Mufasa: The Lion King”
“Terrifier 3”
“Twisters”

BEST LEADUP TO A MOVIE
“The Brutalist”
“Longlegs”
“Madame Web”
“Megalopolis”
“Twisters”

SURPRISE: “Megalopolis” in Worst Best and two acting categories

Oftentimes, a Worst Best nominee will also make an appearance above the line in Best Leadup to a Movie—think The Nun in 2019, and now, Megalopolis. After all, a great disappointment requires a great leadup. But never in the history of Film Fun has a Worst Best contender landed in not just one, but two acting categories. To the many preposterous questions posed by Megalopolis, we can now add a few more to the whiteboard: What is worst? What is best? And what, exactly, is acting?

BEST BRILLIANCE
“The Brutalist”
“Deadpool & Wolverine”
“Joker: Folie a Deux”
“Nickel Boys”
“The Substance”

BEST RUNTIME
215 minutes of “The Brutalist”
96 minutes of “Inside Out 2”
125 minutes of “Terrifier 3”
65 minutes of “This Is Me… Now
82 minutes of “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”

SNUB: “Fire Burning” in Runtime

It’s not every year that Film Fun produces and releases a dang movie in its own right. And so it stands to reason that they may have explored the boundaries of their own executive power by nominating Keaton Ventura’s Fire Burning and its notoriously slippery runtime—as long as an hour by some accounts, as short as thirty minutes by others—for some awards shit. But the mysterious short (?) film was shut out completely, as Film Fun’s benevolent dictators kept their power dry for another day.

SNUB: “Furious 7” in Best Movie Not from 2015

In another case of extreme self-reflexivity, this year’s nominees for Best Movie Not from 2015 are all previous Best Picture winners here at Film Fun: Titanic is back in the mix, as usual, competing alongside fellow horror-adjacent heavyweights like The Blair Witch Project, The Passion of the Christ and La La Land. But one key movie was ruled ineligible due to the title of the category itself—Furious 7, which of course was released in the literal calendar year of 2015. Count that as one case where Film Fun seems to actually be paying attention to the facts.

BEST MOVIE NOT FROM 2015
“The Blair Witch Project”
“Frozen”
“The Holiday”
“La La Land”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Paranormal Activity”
“The Passion of the Christ”
“Prometheus”
“The Ring”
“Scream”
“Titanic”
“Twilight”
“Wild Things”

BEST MOVIE NO ONE HAS AN OPINION ABOUT
“The Bikeriders”
“Fly Me to the Moon”
“Harold and the Purple Crayon”
“Inside Out 2”
“The Instigators”
“The Six Triple Eight”
“Wolfs”

BEST OSCAR
“The Brutalist”
“Conclave”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Perez”
“Wicked”

BEST THEATER
Alice Tully Hall (New York, NY)
AMC Lincoln Square 13 (New York, NY)
Cinemas NOS Colombo (Lisbon, Portugal)
Geneva Movieplex 8 (Geneva, NY)
Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto, Ontario)

SURPRISE: Haoran Liu, “The Breaking Ice”

If no one had heard of The Breaking Ice before Film Fun’s official nomination announcement… well, we’re actually still not sure if they have yet, but that didn’t stop Film Fun from pitting newcomer Haoran Liu against crowd favorites Timothee Chalamet and Adam Driver. Never underestimate a love triangle with this awards body, though—they have a deep and rich history of success here, ranging from Sidney/Billy/Ghostface in Scream, to Rose/Jack/Cal in Titanic, to Mia/Seb/Jazz in La La Land.

The Breaking Ice, which takes place in a Chinese province directly on the border of North Korea, intriguingly follows most directly in the footsteps of Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018)—another (Korean) film that takes place on the border of North Korea and which scored mentions for the supporting and lead actor points of its own romantic triangle.

SNUB: Edward Norton and Boyd Holbrook, “A Complete Unknown”

In spite of resting on a towering central performance, A Complete Unknown boasts an acting ensemble that harkens back to some of the most iconic and lauded movies in Film Fun history. (Scream continues to hold the record for most individual acting nominations, with seven, but Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Twilight both gave it some heavy competition.) And we even heard one Film Fun member was spotted in Newport earlier this year. So what gives with the exclusion of Norton and Holbrook? Turns out the more isn’t always the merrier, especially when everyone’s waiting for the headliner.

WORDS
“About Dry Grasses”
“The Fall Guy”
“Janet Planet”
“A Real Pain”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
“Fly Me to the Moon”
“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim”
“Mufasa: The Lion King”
“Piece by Piece”
“This is Me… Now”

SNUB: “The Brutalist” and “Emilia Perez” in A.I.

Despite a last-ditch campaign highlighting their use of A.I.—from digitally altered performances to machine-assisted creative decisions—The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez were shut out of Film Fun’s new A.I. Artificial Intelligence category. Whether the snub was warranted is anyone’s guess—like all of Film Fun’s fresh categories, it may take pundits years to decipher what exactly it’s rewarding.

But neither film walked away empty-handed. Both scored nominations in the Ketamine category, Film Fun’s way of honoring their ability to teeter just outside the bounds of reality, where eerie precision gives way to disorienting effect. Then again, parsing the difference between that and A.I. is a bit of a ketamine trip itself.

MOST PURGE-LIKE
“Conclave”
“Good One”
“Nightbitch”
“Saturday Night”
“Stress Positions”

SNUB: “Civil War” in Purge-Like

Another category that always appears to slip out of the pundits’ grasp is Most Purge-Like, and it continued to be redefined this year with the omission of Alex Garland’s Civil War. The film plays out almost like an extended level of Pokémon snap, with its protagonists lazily floating downriver while an unspecified military coup burns through America. Sounds like the ultimate Purge movie, right? Wrong, apparently, as the likes of Nightbitch, Saturday Night and Conclave gained recognition here instead.

Notably, this year will mark four years without a Purge movie—by the far the longest gap in the franchise since it began back in 2013—so whether you’re a wannabe Pope, a wannabe sketch comic, or Amy Adams the dog, The Purge really is anyone’s game.

COKE
“Anora”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
“Challengers”
“Reagan”
“Saturday Night”

KETAMINE
“Better Man”
“The Brutalist”
“Emilia Perez”
“Here”
“Megalopolis”

SURPRISE: “Dahomey” in Sounds and Visuals

At 68 minutes long, Mati Diop’s experimental documentary should have been a shoo-in for a Best Runtime nomination, but few could predict these twin nods further up the ballot. Obviously voters were impressed by Dean Blunt’s score, and by the film’s central conceit of an ancient, talking statue. Now if only Film Twitter could agree on a pronunciation of the title and let the film finally speak for itself.

WORST BEST
“Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1”
“Megalopolis”
“Night Swim”
“Trap”
“Y2K”

BIRDS
Flying Monkeys, “Wicked”
Cynthia Erivo, “Wicked”
Ariana Grande, “Wicked”
Fowl?, “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”
Dorothy, Twisters”
Headless Pigeon, Nosferatu”
The Crow, “The Crow”
Cuckoo, “Cuckoo”
Penguin, “My Penguin Friend”
Facehuggers, “Alien Romulus”
Franz Rogowski, “Bird”
Eagle, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
Death the Astonishing Talking Bird, “Tuesday”

WORST TALKING
“Wicked”
“Y2K”

SURPRISE: “Wicked” in Worst Talking

The last time Witches show up to these awards was arguably back in 2018, when Suspiria magicked its way to seven nominations, including Picture and Director. (2015’s Blackhat, meanwhile, has nothing to do with the subject matter.)

But the Wicked witches will actually contend as the first musical to be nominated for Worst Talking, leaving one to wonder whether Film Fun accidentally attended an Open Caption screening of the movie, or something else that helped them figure out exactly what Cynthia Erivo is saying during her infamous battle cry. Maybe Wicked: For Good will send our girls Glinda and Elphaba back to the Blair Woods to learn a thing or two.