As a movie snob (something some of my friends have dubbed me as), it was hard for me to admit that the Oscars were…pretty good this year? Obviously, my beloved One Battle After Another won many of the major awards, but even the upsets felt well deserved. I would’ve had a hard time complaining about any Best Actor winner, because they were all strong contenders this year! However—as I am wont to do—I’m here today to point out the less recognized. The performances that the Academy overlooked or, perhaps, were too cowardly to nominate. So with that, here are the five best performances of 2025 that you didn’t see Oscar clips for:
Amanda Seyfried – The Testament of Ann Lee
Perhaps the biggest failure on the Academy’s part this year was their failure to recognize Mona Fastvold’s period musical about the rise of the Shaker movement. Seyfried plays the titular character, the leader of the Shakers who believes herself to be the second coming of Christ. Not only is this performance impressive on an emotional level (just as much crying as Jessie Buckley in Hamnet), it’s impressive on a technical level. One need only watch one behind the scenes video in order to recognize how much Seyfried’s giving in this role, physically (the Shaker dances are breathtaking). She perfectly serves the film’s grander themes about religion and devotion and it’s astonishing that her performance wasn’t recognized by more of the major awards bodies.
David Corenswet – Superman
No, I’m not kidding. The role of Superman is a deceptively tough one and Corenswet handles it beautifully. Much like Seyfried, the technical aspects of the performance shouldn’t go unmentioned (like, how easy can it be to have real chemistry with a CGI-dog?), but what really makes the performance is Corenswet’s unabashed sincerity. In a world where so many of our action heroes are cynical and snarky, Corenswet sells Superman as goofy and well-intentioned. Not many actors could pull off Superman’s monologue to Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult in another performance that went mostly unrecognized) about what it means to “be human,” but Corenswet does it and that’s no small feat.
Ebrahim Azizi – It Was Just an Accident
Few actors would be able to give a convincing performance, blindfolded, tied to a tree, in a single, unbroken take for thirteen minutes, but Ebrahim Aziz does this towards the end of Jafar Panahi’s 2025 masterpiece It Was Just an Accident. Azizi is a lingering presence throughout Panahi’s film, but only really gets screentime at the beginning and end. The film hinges on his final scene being good and he pulls it off spectacularly. Azizi’s performance is just one part of It Was Just an Accident that went criminally undermentioned during awards season this year.
Lee Byung-hun – No Other Choice
No Other Choice, much like Ann Lee, is another film which went without one nomination from the Academy. I could go on about how it was snubbed for Director, Cinematography, Casting, Editing, Picture, but what we’re gonna focus on today is Lee Byung-hun’s lead performance as a man named Man-su who’s fired from his job at a paper company. This causes him to spiral and eventually go down a path of violence. Lee makes what could be an exclusively distressing character into an actual human being who we feel conflicted about rooting for. On top of this, it’s clear that Lee’s a very gifted comic actor as well, for there are just as many scenes in which he trips and stumbles goofily as there are scenes where he delivers an emotional monologue to one of his victims. Lee also voiced Gwi-Ma in KPop Demon Hunters this year!
Rebecca Hall – Peter Hujar’s Day
If we’re talking 2025 movies that went criminally underrated, we can’t go without talking about Ira Sachs’s film Peter Hujar’s Day, which visualizes a real interview that happened between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Hall) in 1974. Whishaw gets the more meaty role (part of what makes the film so impressive is how cinematic it feels despite mostly being Whishaw giving monologues), but Hall makes the movie great by utilizing her real-life friendship with Whishaw to make her portrayal of Rosenkrantz feel like a real person, rather than a caricature. Every shot of Rosenkrantz listening to Hujar recount his day has a strange beauty about it, which could only come from a genuine affection that Hall clearly possesses. And few other actors alive would be able to make that role as entrancing as Hall does.
