So, 2025 was a big year in movies. I saw more movies from 2025 than any year since 1991. And I was especially pleased to hear Paul Thomas Anderson, accepting Best Picture for “One Battle After Another” note that the Best Picture nominees in 1975 were “Dog Day Afternoon,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,” “Jaws,” “Barry Lyndon, and “Nashville” — five cold stone classics. And he’s right, the winner (“Cuckoos Nest”) was more about the mood while people voted than any long-term crowning of a champion.

In fact, you could pull apart 1975 a little more to note that “Shampoo,” “Mirror,” “Jeanne Dielman,“ “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Grey Gardens,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “The Passenger,“ “Dersu Uzula,” “Fox and His Friends,” “The Man Who Would Be King,” “The Story of Adele H.,” and “India Song,” also came out that year, and every one of them received votes in the last critics poll for the greatest film of all time (with “Jeanne Dielman,” a movie on nobody’s nomination radar that year, now listed as the all-time greatest film.)

So, I like to see quality awarded and I’m glad that someone who loves film (and who loves my favorite contemporary author, Thomas Pynchon) ended up the big winner tonight.

But I hope people don’t take the awards or even the nominees too seriously. Because 1975 was followed by 1976, when “Rocky,” “Taxi Driver,” “Network,” “All the President’s Men,” and “Bound for Glory” were nominated … more all-time classics, more vibe voting that now feels like it should have gone another way.

The important thing is just to celebrate great movies no matter where they are made and how people get to see them — and to feel grateful that people are still dedicating their lives to making them.