When the nominations for the 98th Academy Awards were released last week, the big story was the uncertainty in the Best Picture race. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners set a new record with 16 nominations across all major categories. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another got 13 noms, which is more than The Return of the King, for example, but less than Titanic. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein got nine nominations, and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet got eight, numbers that in most other years would all but guarantee a Best Picture trophy.
Who’s going to win the big prize? I have no idea, but I would be happy with any of the top three contenders. The 2026 Oscars are apparently dedicated to “Things Chris McCoy Likes,” and I just have to say, it’s about damn time. I am terrible at handicapping the Oscar race (I only beat John Beifuss of the Commercial Appeal once in the decades he has been publishing his picks), but at this point, I think strong entries in the acting categories favors Sinners. With Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn splitting the One Battle vote, the great Delroy Lindo, an actor’s actor who has been plugging away for decades, looks like the man to beat in the Best Supporting Actor category. And while Leonardo DiCaprio is great as a revolutionary gone to seed in One Battle After Another, Michael B. Jordan’s stunning dual turn as twin gin runners Smoke and Stack is pivotal to Sinners’ success, so I expect to see him giving the Best Actor acceptance speech. At that point, you gotta think that some Academy members on the fence are going to start noticing how many times they’re checking the box for Sinners and decide it’s Best Picture.
There are many gems among the 10 Best Picture nominees, even if their chances to win are slim. Train Dreams was written and directed by Clint Bentley, whose previous nomination was as a screenwriter for 2023’s Sing Sing. The Netflix production was adapted from a novella by Denis Johnson. It’s the kind of material that is always iffy to adapt into film, full of beautiful writing and interior thoughts. Bentley enlisted cinematographer Adolpho Veloso to create images as poetic as Johnson’s writing, and uses the steady narration of Will Patton to keep things on track.
Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton) is the kind of person you might look at and say not much happened to them during their 80 years on the planet. As the opening narration tells us, Robert grew up around Bonners Ferry, along the Canadian border on the very Northern tip of Idaho, but even during the many years he traveled the Cascades, first as a logger, then hauling freight and passengers in his horse-drawn wagon, he never made it far enough west to see the Pacific Ocean.
Robert is a modest man, and always something of a loner. His unofficial motto could be “Don’t go to too much trouble for me.” Toward the end of the nineteenth century, he was transported to the Pacific Northwest alone at age 5 after something — Robert doesn’t know what — happened to both of his parents. As a pretty stout guy, he found good-paying work building the Great Northern Railway. He enjoys the camaraderie among the workers, and reacts with a kind of quiet bafflement when he sees the abuse the Chinese laborers endure. One day, a racist incident spirals out of control, and Robert watches helplessly as one of his Chinese co-workers is thrown from the bridge they’re building. It’s the last straw for Robert, who leaves the construction biz and takes up seasonal work as a logger. But the death will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, he meets Gladys Olding (Felicity Jones) outside a church potluck, and decides its time to get more religion in his life. Gladys is the only one who can pull Robert out of his shell, and she appreciates his strong, silent manner and luxurious beard. They build a cabin on the banks of a river where they make love by lamplight and raise a beautiful daughter together. It’s a happy life, but Robert’s work as a woodsman keeps him far from home for months at a time. One fateful day, when tragedy strikes, he’s not there to protect his little family. Robert never recovers from the blow.
Train Dreams reveals Bentley as a big fan of Terrence Malick. He’s got the same reverence for nature, and the patience to let the scenes develop in their own time. Train Dreams is less oblique than say, Tree of Life, with the voiceover going a long way toward providing structure. It’s also got more of a sense of humor than Malick’s relentlessly serious tone. I wouldn’t go so far as to call William H. Macy’s turn as Arn Peeples, a cantankerous old coot who handles the dynamite, “comic relief,” but he does get laughs. As does Paul Schneider as a would-be preacher who just will not shut up.
Edgerton was shut out of the extremely competitive Best Actor category, but in my opinion, his understated work deserved a nomination. Too often, people think “Best Acting” means “Most Acting.” Jessie Buckley’s overwrought work in Hamnet is far from the best in her career, but right now, she’s the frontrunner for Best Actress. Timothée Chalamet is aggro to the point of being grating in Marty Supreme, and he’s probably Jordan’s only real competition. Edgerton is so pitch-perfect as to be almost invisible, like what he’s doing barely registers as acting. But when his guilt and grief finally break through to the surface, his choked-back sobs land so much harder than Chalamet’s theatrical weeping. Like its protagonist, Train Dreams’ quiet eloquence is easily overlooked, but ultimately profound.
Train Dreams is now streaming on Netflix.