Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

‘The Brutalist’ is the first big winner of the 2025 Oscar season

The Brutalist is an epic about a man building a massive building in the aftermath of World War II

By
Adrien Brody in The Brutalist
A24

The 2025 Oscar season is starting to take shape, filled with movies that are all hoping to become awards season favorites. The Brutalist, Brady Corbett’s historical epic, just got a big boost in that regard when it was awarded best film at the New York Film Critics’ Circle Awards.

The movie also won for best actor for Adrien Brody’s lead performance, suggesting that it was one of the strongest movies of the year with the critics group. The NYFCC is the oldest critics group in America, and while their tastes can sometimes be more high-brow than the Academy, the group has been a reliable bellwether for the Oscars for years. Since the Academy expanded its list of Best Picture nominees, there have only been two instances where the NYFCC winner didn’t secure a nomination (Carol in 2015 and First Cow in 2020).

The Brutalist | Official Trailer HD | A24

Elsewhere, the NYFCC awarded Ramell Ross best director for his work on Nickel Boys, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste with best actress for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths.

Recommended Videos

The Brutalist‘s success with this critics group offers the film some momentum headed into one crucial stretch of awards season, but the movie’s long runtime and slightly inaccessible plot have some wondering if it might be too high-brow for some in the Academy. The film tells the story of a man escaping from Eastern Europe after World War II who settles in Pennsylvania and eventually begins work on a massive building. The movie has been seen as a potential awards season favorite for one time, and this victory further cements that status.

Editors’ Recommendations

Joe Allen
Joe Allen
Contributor
Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…
The first trailer for the live-action ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ suggests the movie might not suck
Gerard Butler is reprising his role from the animated films, but the rest of the cast is new.
Mason Thames in How to Train Your Dragon

Live-action remakes have been dominant in Hollywood for almost a decade now. The live-action remake of The Lion King made more than $1 billion even though everyone who saw it thought it was bad. Given that level of box office return, though, it was only a matter of time before the How to Train Your Dragon franchise got its own live-action treatment.

The franchise, which kicked off with 2010's first film has become a new animated classic, and now, we've got our first look at the live-action remake. This remake is being written and directed by Dean DeBlois, who also directed the original animated film, and it features the most familiar characters in the franchise, many of which are being played by new actors. Mason Thames will play  Hiccup, Nico Parker will play Astrid, and Julian Dennison will play Fishlegs Ingerman. Gerard Butler, who voiced Hiccup's father, Stoick, in the original trilogy, is reprising his role for this live-action adaptation.

Read more
Tom Cruise is back in the first trailer for ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’
The trailer features plenty of the death-defying stunts that have made the franchise so successful.
tom cruise mission impossible final reckoning trailer in the

It seems like the Mission: Impossible franchise might be winding toward its conclusion. The Tom Cruise franchise has existed for nearly 30 years, and in that time, it's already produced seven films. Now, we've got the trailer for the eighth: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

The trailer is pretty light on plot and heavy on explosive set pieces, including Cruise hanging off a propeller plane and doing plenty of running across various European locales.

Read more
HBO is eyeing a British Oscar-winner to play Dumbledore in their ‘Harry Potter’ series
The casting is not yet official, and negotiations haven't even begun.
Mark Rylance in Dunkirk

There have been questions swirling around the Harry Potter TV series ever since it was first announced. The series will adapt the same novels that were already adapted into a hugely popular film franchise, so adapting the same story again struck some as foolhardy. Even so, Warner Bros. is proceeding with the adaptation, and Variety is now reporting that they are eyeing a British legendy for the role of Dumbledore.

The publication is reporting that Mark Rylance, who won an Oscar for Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, is in the mix for the crucial role in the new adaptation. While negotiations aren't underway yet, Variety is reporting that the studio has reached out to the actor's representation to gauge interest.

Read more