As the film industry enters the golden period of awards season, various movie recommendations are springing up like mushrooms. Faced with a dazzling array of choices, viewers often find it difficult to decide how and which films to watch. Some high-profile movies are still in theaters, while others have already finished their run. Some films, such as "The Substance," didn't even have a theatrical release, going straight to streaming platforms instead.
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02-22, 2025While many popular films can be purchased or rented online, the prices are often high. However, viewers can enjoy high-quality films without spending extra money. The following Oscar-nominated films can be watched for free on streaming platforms. "The Substance" tells the story of an aging movie star who exchanges her body for a younger one, leading to terrifying consequences.
"The Substance" has received five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coralie Fargeat), Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Original Screenplay. The film's makeup and hairstyling design has already been recognized at the Critics' Choice Awards and the British Academy Film Awards. Director Coralie Fargeat won the Best Original Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Critics' Choice Awards. For star Demi Moore, the Best Actress nomination is particularly significant, as she previously won the same award at the Critics' Choice Awards and also won a Golden Globe for the role, generating widespread attention.
"Dune: Part Two" is Denis Villeneuve's second installment adapting Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel. The first film grossed $407.7 million worldwide and won five Oscars in 2022, including Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. Therefore, the arrival of its sequel is highly anticipated. The story picks up where the previous film left off, depicting the spice-rich desert planet Arrakis controlled by invading evil warlords who have annihilated their rivals, the noble House Atreides. Paul (Timothée Chalamet), the prince of House Atreides, and his pregnant mother, Lady Jessica, are sheltered by the Fremen, the local inhabitants of Arrakis.
Paul is determined to reject his lineage and lead the local people in rebellion to avenge his father's death. But Jessica is determined to see her son fulfill his messianic destiny. "Dune: Part Two" is grand in scale and stands on its own, which the Academy has also acknowledged, nominating it for: Best Picture, Best Cinematography (Australian Greig Fraser), Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects.
"Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl" is another Wallace & Gromit adventure, featuring automated gnomes and an old villain. The story sees Wallace finding himself in financial trouble once again. "Perhaps I've just made too many contraptions," he muses, as an automated hand pours milk over Gromit's head, missing the cereal bowl below. Naturally, his solution to the predicament comes in the form of a new invention: an automated "smart gnome" named Norbert.
Feathers McGraw—"one of the most terrifying villains in fiction"—has been plotting his revenge in prison since 1993's "The Wrong Trousers." He manages to infiltrate Norbert's system and take control of it. It's hard not to love the claymation antics of this goofy duo, and the Academy agrees, nominating it for: Best Animated Feature Film.
"No Other Land" is a documentary set in the West Bank that chronicles the attempted expulsion of residents. "I see it as a responsibility to be with my people with my camera or with my body," says Basel Adra, a journalist and activist from the West Bank. He is one of the two co-directors of "No Other Land," the other being Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. Together, they document the lives of residents in Masafer Yatta, a region in the southern West Bank, who have been facing expulsion for decades after Israel designated the area as a firing zone.
The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024, winning Best Documentary and the Audience Award, and has since garnered other accolades at smaller award ceremonies. Although the film has been released in 24 other countries, the filmmakers have been unable to find a distributor in the United States, but the film had a one-week run in New York City, making it eligible for the Oscars. Fortunately, "No Other Land" is among the films nominated for: Best Documentary Feature Film.
"The Wild Robot" tells the story of a robot stranded on a desolate island who finds herself caring for a gosling. It's a simple story about ROZZUM 7134 (Roz for short), a robot whose original mission was to help humans with their daily tasks, but whose mission is derailed after a storm strands her on an island. It's a rich fable about a robot unexpectedly grappling with motherhood amid a broader evolutionary struggle. Its simple story is enriched by expressive CGI animation and grand ideas that explore adaptation on intimate and cosmic scales, coalescing into a call for new, unconventional forms of coexistence in the face of extinction.
The film missed out on the four Golden Globe awards for which it was nominated, but has already won numerous other awards, including Best Animated Feature at the Critics' Choice Awards. The Academy was clearly moved by this simple story, nominating it for: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score, and Best Sound.
"A Real Pain" is a buddy road trip comedy interspersed with subtle reflections on how generational trauma trickles down. The film follows two very different cousins, David and Benji (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin), as they embark on a Holocaust tour of Poland to honor their recently deceased grandmother and reconcile their fractured relationship. Eisenberg has built a career out of bringing his neuroses to the screen, whether playing a directionless youth in "Adventureland" or Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," but the anxieties in "A Real Pain" come from modern characters trying to reconcile their everyday problems with the historical atrocities of their ancestors.
But don't let the Holocaust talk fool you into thinking "A Real Pain" is a drama; it firmly belongs to the comedy genre. Culkin's endearingly manic performance enlivens the film's solemn backdrop, and Eisenberg mines big laughs from David's annoyance as he realizes he'll never be as charming as his cousin. Culkin's performance as Benji earned him nearly every major award this season, including the Critics' Choice Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Eisenberg won the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts International Award for Best Screenplay and the Sundance Film Festival's Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and the film also won Best Comedy at the Critics' Choice Awards. For the big show, "A Real Pain" has received the following nominations: Best Supporting Actor—Kieran Culkin, Best Original Screenplay.
"The Other One" is a darkly funny psychological drama about an actor with a rare genetic disorder who undergoes a miraculous face transplant. After playing Donald Trump (also Oscar-nominated and streaming on Stan from March 3), Sebastian Stan commits fully to another transformation in "The Other One." He plays Edward, an actor suffering from neurofibromatosis: a rare genetic disorder that manifests as the proliferation of benign tumors on the face.
With his ambitions thwarted and a crush on his neighbor, he embarks on a brutal experimental treatment to alleviate his condition, faking his own death and starting a new life. But another actor with the same condition (played by breakout star Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis in real life) appears and gets everything Edward always wanted. Stan won a Golden Globe for his dual performance, as well as the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival.
But it's the visual transformation, recognized by the Academy and designed by "The Penguin" makeup maestro Michael Marino, that earned the film a nomination for: Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
"Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is a sequel to the "Planet of the Apes" trilogy, in which a new leader sets out to crush his enemies and eliminate the remnants of humanity. Civilization has collapsed, culture has been lost, and humans have been reduced to savage, dull-witted creatures incapable of forming coherent words anymore. And what better place to film all of this than in Australia? Filmed at Disney Studios Australia in Sydney and on location in the wilds of New South Wales, "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is a sequel to the ape trilogy from 2011 to 2017, set many generations after the reign of the legendary chimpanzee Caesar.
While the film's reviews have been mixed, there's no denying the high level of visual effects executed by Wētā FX from New Zealand/Aotearoa, who have offices in Melbourne. In fact, VFX artists have said that the effects used in this film are "pushing us into the next level." "The bar is set so high with 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' that other films can't really be fairly compared," said Wren Weichman. As a result, they are considered a strong contender for the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
The 97th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 3, 2025, at 11:00 AM AEDT.
