January 23, 2025
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Arts & Culture

Where to Stream ‘The Substance’, ‘Wicked’ and Other 2025 Oscar Nominees

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Arts & Culture

Where to Stream ‘The Substance’, ‘Wicked’ and Other 2025 Oscar Nominees

The nominees for the 97th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday morning and an unusually high number of them are still exclusively in theaters, including the best picture contenders “A Complete Unknown,” “The Brutalist,” “I’m Still Here” and “Nickel Boys.” But many more major nominees are currently a click away on streaming and rental platforms, most notably the Netflix musical “Emilia Pérez,” which leads the field with 13 nominations, the Broadway-to-Hollywood hit “Wicked,” and a pair of American indie provocations, “Anora” and “The Substance.”

Other titles should become available in the lead-up to ceremony on March 2, but for now, here’s a complete rundown of where to find all the major awards hopefuls.

Nominated for: Best picture, director, actress, supporting actor, original screenplay, editing.

How to watch: Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.

The writer-director Sean Baker’s rambunctious film concerns the whirlwind romance between a sex worker from Brighton Beach and the son of a Russian oligarch. It somehow channels both the madcap energy of classic screwball and the unfiltered emotion of John Cassavetes. Much of that liveliness is owed to Mikey Madison’s firecracker of a performance as Ani, a stripper whose time with a handsome young party animal, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), at first seems like a “Pretty Woman” fantasy. But a quickie marriage draws attention from Ivan’s minders in the states and his parents abroad. Ani’s fight for their relationship, which turns literal at times, is alternately slapstick and touching.

‘Emilia Pérez’

Nominated for: Best picture, director, actress, supporting actress, adapted screenplay, international feature film, original score, original song, cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, sound, editing.

How to watch: Stream it on Netflix.

Undeniably audacious in its plotting and conceit, Jacques Audiard’s musical about the wild odyssey of a transgender cartel boss in Mexico goes to places most movies wouldn’t dare, including a showstopper set during a transition surgery. Though stylish and briskly entertaining, “Emilia Pérez” is not short on other provocations, too, starting with the physical and moral transformation of a kingpin (Karla Sofía Gascón) who hires a lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to arrange a new life to go along with her secret shift in gender identification. When she emerges as a philanthropist seeking to locate the bodies of cartel victims, her past sins inevitably (and toe-tappingly) collide with the present.

Nominated for: Best picture, actress, supporting actress, original score, production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, visual effects, sound, editing.

How to watch: Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.

Splitting the Broadway musical hit into two parts seemed like a mercenary ploy that might make “Wicked” play like half a movie stretched perilously thin, but the director Jon M. Chu, who most recently brought “In the Heights” to the screen, keeps his adaptation remarkably fleet afoot. Much of that buoyancy is owed to the mismatched buddy chemistry between Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, a green-skinned loner with a talent for sorcery, and Ariana Grande as Glinda, a bubbly good-witch-to-be who befriends Elphaba at a university. As Glinda strains to boost the outcast among her peers, Elphaba starts to get a better sense of her powers and how they might be wielded in the Land of Oz.

‘Conclave’

Nominated for: Best picture, actor, supporting actress, adapted screenplay, original score, production design, costume design, editing.

How to watch: Stream it on Peacock. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.

To the outside world, the selection of a new pope is a solemn and mysterious ritual that ends with white smoke emerging from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. In the lively drama “Conclave,” however, the gathering of the College of Cardinals is full of paranoia, back-stabbing and other political intrigue, as the direction of the Catholic Church naturally sets various cliques against each other. Ralph Fiennes stars as a cat-herder responsible for running the election through multiple ballots and ever-shifting alliances, all while the world outside the Vatican rumbles with violent discord.

‘The Substance’

Nominated for: Best picture, director, actress, original screenplay, makeup and hairstyling.

How to watch: Stream it on Mubi. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+ and Fandango at Home.

For Coralie Fargeat’s delectably nasty fusion of feminist satire and Cronenbergian body horror, Demi Moore draws on her past as one of the most glamorous stars of the ’80s to reveal the agonies of public women aging naturally. When her grotesque network boss (Dennis Quaid) marks her 50th birthday by firing her from a popular TV aerobics show, Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore) pursues a new technology that will allow her to coexist with a younger version of herself. But tension quickly develops between Elizabeth and this perky new creation (Margaret Qualley), sparking a metaphysical battle that takes a toll on both of them. The intoxications of celebrity and vanity play a role in “The Substance,” but the film is just as much about a society that sets women against each other — even if, in this case, they’re sort of the same woman.

‘Dune: Part Two’

After doing the vexing work of successfully bringing Frank Herbert’s novel to the screen with the first part of “Dune” in 2021, the director Denis Villeneuve faces a complicated balancing act in “Dune: Part Two,” which contends with the potentially destructive consequences of its hero’s ascendence. Picking up after the powerful Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) joins forces with the Fremen, the native people of the resource-rich desert planet Arrakis, the film continues Paul’s education in leadership, including one thrilling ride atop a sandworm. But as Paul starts to meet the prophetic expectations of his most fervent followers, there are signs of a holy war that could have terrible consequences.

‘A Real Pain’

Nominated for: Best supporting actor, original screenplay.

How to watch: Stream it on Hulu.

In a performance that embodies the dual meaning of the writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg’s unsettling comedy-drama, Kieran Culkin carries over much of the agitation and unfiltered language that made him a standout as Roman Roy on HBO’s “Succession.” But there are distinct pockets of vulnerability to his character in “A Real Pain,” a lonely drifter who joins his cousin (Eisenberg) on a group tour of Polish-Jewish heritage sites in the wake of their grandmother’s death. His tendency to speak his mind even in the most delicate situations gives the film a high cringe factor, but his honesty has a profound impact on the people around him and he proves more sensitive to his surroundings than he appears to be.

‘The Apprentice’

Nominated for: Best actor, best supporting actor.

How to watch: Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+, Fandango at Home and YouTube.

The phrase “humble beginnings” doesn’t necessarily apply to the second son of a wealthy New York real estate magnate, but the young Donald Trump of “The Apprentice,” played by Sebastian Stan, was still trying to find his footing on the scene in the 1970s. To that end, his meeting with the notoriously rapacious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who’d successfully prosecuted the Rosenbergs and served as Joseph McCarthy’s right hand in anti-Communist hearings, sets off a lucrative and sinister mentorship. As Trump’s ego swells along with his fortunes in the ’80s, however, the relationship between the two men starts to strain and “The Apprentice” evolves into a cautionary tale about the price of ruthless ambition.