2 PS: Favorite 2026 Hindsight-Looking Award-Worthy Movie [Limited Releases] (Oscar Week)

I expect some of these not to be on the on the final eligibility list, although I couldn't find any of the movies that were released before in another country or were on the festival circuit on the two prior years' Oscars eligibility lists (and therefore disqualified). The plan was always to cull the weaker options to get down to 35 options. But, I now may split the list into two list along those films produced in the USA and the films produced by the Rest of the World with about 20-30 options on each. I open to any suggestions to using another way to divide the options to more manageable packets.

That's a good question. Maybe alphabetically? I'll think of other manageabilities.

I see there are only a few movies rated lower than 6.5. I would put them on second list, especially when there are only a few hundret ratings. My personal experience checking rates time after time is that rating mostly ever get lower with time. They decrease with time. The second part of sorting is to make thoughts about the title, the content, the length and again the rating. If long running titles (about 2h+) are rated only 6.5, they might lose more with time, especially when they still have just three digit counts of ratings. Just a little theory of my checks I often do on titles I like. These are often movies I saw in cinema. It might be helpful to watch the trailer to guess if it could be Oscar-worthy. I think it's really a bunch of work doing all these checks and guessings. Amd all which is guessed still can be wrong. Another good way could be to read all press about to guess. Some swear on metacritics or rotten tomatoes.

Thanks, for the feedback. I feel comfortable with the listing even for the lower rated movies as being Oscar-worthy, or at least as good as prior films that have been Oscar-nominated. I have seen 18 of the 24 films released so far. I am pretty good at keeping current seeing most within a month of their release and I will see the other six by the time this poll goes live. I only rated two films of the eighteen, a six and those I thought were more on 65-69 range on a 100 point scale, everything else I rated a seven or higher.

According to Wikipedia,"...The Oscars represent a rare slice of Hollywood where independent film distributors with their moderate and low-budget films can best the major studios and their blockbusters. Because Oscar voters gravitate to serious content that is abundant in indie films, the glossy major-studio films are usually passed over."

I knew that. Just for special effects, sound mixing, sound editing, the Oscar often goes to bigger productions. And often even the indpendent movies you talk about are more often picked from U.S. or U.K. than other countries.

I agree, the rest of the world productions are still under represented, but to be fair the Oscars has improved 1000% in the past decade. Over the Oscars first 75 years, when the nominee was not a USA one, more often than not it was from the UK or another English-speaking country.

Like humankind, also movie awards will have to melt together. The world shrinks with internet and techniques around. I think we all will federate some time in future. I hope our leader will be someone like Kirk or Picard, not someone like Anaiken Skywalker. Ohh ... listen ... I hear the fanfare ... ;) Please Splay your hands between middle- and ring-finger, and between pointing finger and thumb, gentlemen. ;)

Cute, but for now the split for Oscar-qualifying, limited US distribution movies in 2025 turned out to be 17 that were soley American produced films and 37 film made by the rest of the world or that were multi-nationally produced. Thanks, splitting the poll made the lists more manageable.