Today, I note that the best reviewed movie of the year winning the Academy Award for the Best Picture of the year isn’t a big deal.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.
Ours is an inherently racist society, but the best reviewed movie of the year winning Best Picture isn’t that big of a deal.
Sinners was awesome. I’d have been pumped had it won, but this ain’t Green Book here. One Battle After Another was THE best reviewed movie of 2025. And you know how this shit works, the top movies are always, like, five documentaries that only major film fans could even identify, or some extremely indie films, so it’s very rare for a major motion picture to be THE best reviewed film of the year.
And yet, that was the case this year, and it won Best Picture.
Now, could that just be because movie reviews are inherently racist? Sure. But, again, this isn’t some middle of the road picture winning the award. It was THE BEST REVIEWED movie of the year (Oppenheimer and Anora were both tenth, respectively, in 2023 and 2024).
So even if you want to knock the reviewing industry in general, you’ve still got a long way to go to say that this was such an egregious choice for Best Picture.
Sinners did well. It rightly won some MAJOR awards. It wasn’t a sad night for movies.
The distinction between reviews and awards is an interesting way to frame the discussion. A clear publishing workflow helps a film analysis keep its evidence and argument easy to follow.