Once more we are at that time, the time where we all take a guess if the Academy of Motion Pictures is going to do something really cool or be their usual kind of boring selves. It’s been a pretty good year for film and certainly for the nominees. A new record has been set for the number of nominations a single film can get. We have a brand new category to deal with and several major international films are in discussion for some of the biggest awards. It’s also the first year where every single voter is contractually obligated to watch every film (because that was apparently not a thing up to this point)… I am not contractually obliged to see every film, in some cases I literally physically can’t but I saw as many as I could and now will use that to make my predictions for what will win, what I think should win, and what would cause some glorious chaos.
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The Smashing Machine (2025) – Oh, Smashing
Released: 2nd October 2025
Seen: 9th February 2026
Over the last several decades, one of the biggest names in cinema has been The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson. His films have grossed billions of dollars; he is currently the 10th-highest-grossing actor of all time, and he did all that without having to appear in a Marvel film or anything involving Avatar. He’s one of the highest paid, most recognisable and most beloved film stars of recent years… but he’s not a great actor. Let’s be honest, no one’s ever accused him of giving a transformative performance in his entire career; the man is a personality who effectively plays himself in every single film he ever appears in. Now this isn’t a bad thing per se, a lot of very famous actors are kind of known for playing themselves in every film that they do (Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Will Ferrell just to name the first three that come to mind). With Dwayne Johnson, however, it comes with the fact that he not only plays the same character, but he’s doing it at a time when his wrestler-turned-actor contemporaries John Cena and Dave Bautista are delivering genuinely great, layered acting performances that demonstrate a range that Dwayne just hasn’t been able to do. What Dwayne’s been needing for quite some time is a chance to show off his skills, to stretch himself and prove that he isn’t just a one-trick pony… The Smashing Machine does kind of prove that, but in a way that also really shows off his limitations
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Sentimental Value (2025) – Intriguing
Released: 25th December 2025
Seen: 28th February 2026
It’s often hard to figure out how to open these reviews; the style developed almost a decade ago out of an understanding that a single paragraph would be placed above the fold, and I’ve just carried that on like it was a standard element of writing. Something that just happened several years ago for no particular reason is now locked in, will probably be standard until something dramatic changes, and I’m forced to re-evaluate how things are done… You could consider that process to be something of an imperfect metaphor for Sentimental Value, a film that revolves around the idea of how things that happened in the past can still have a massive impact on people several years later. Is it the best metaphor out there? No, is it the best I could do for this opening paragraph that inevitably means nothing other than tone setting for the rest of the review? Also no, but it’s what we’ve got.
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