My Passion Vote for Train Dreams in a Wide-Open Oscar Field
By the time the envelope opens tonight at the 98th Academy Awards, the momentum of awards season has already told us a lot. The Best Picture race has settled into a familiar rhythm, with a few clear front-runners and several acclaimed films that feel honored just to be in the conversation.
As I wrote yesterday, I still believe Hamnet is the most likely film to win Best Picture. It has the emotional sweep, the prestige pedigree, and the kind of awards-season momentum the Academy tends to reward.
If that happens, it would also mark a significant moment in Oscar history. Only three women have directed films that ultimately won the Best Picture Oscar: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010, Chloé Zhao for Nomadland in 2021, and Siân Heder for CODA in 2022. While sixteen films directed by women have been nominated as of 2026, those three remain the only winners. A win for Hamnet would therefore mark only the fourth time a Best Picture winner has been directed by a woman.
Prediction, however, is one thing.
Passion is another.
My personal favorite among this year’s nominees is Train Dreams, and I say that knowing full well it probably doesn’t stand much of a chance to take the top prize. Clint Bentley’s quiet, meditative film is the definition of an indie-style underdog in a field full of high-profile contenders. In a race dominated by larger productions and louder storytelling, Train Dreams feels like the little engine that could.
And that’s exactly why I love it.
Directed by Clint Bentley and starring Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, Train Dreams is adapted from Dennis Johnson’s beloved novella about a railroad laborer living in the early twentieth-century American West. The cast also includes Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, Clifton Collins Jr., and William H. Macy.
Edgerton’s performance anchors the entire film. Grainier is a man who carries his life quietly, and Edgerton plays him with remarkable restraint. There are few speeches and very little overt drama. Instead, the performance unfolds through silence, posture, and fleeting expressions.
The film itself feels almost poetic in structure. Bentley allows the story to drift through years and seasons, capturing the rhythms of labor, love, grief, and solitude.
Visually, it is one of the most stunning films nominated this year. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso renders the American wilderness in painterly compositions of forests, mountains, and endless skies. The landscapes feel alive and immense, dwarfing the human figures moving through them.
Train Dreams is haunting because it presents a deeply intimate, “ghost story” portrait of profound grief, isolation, and existential, sudden loss in the American West. The story centers on Robert Grainier’s traumatic loss of his family in a forest fire and his subsequent life in “suspended grief,” making it a powerful exploration of how quickly life can change. As a Medium article describes it, the film feels like an “existential drama” which lingers. WOUB Public Media similarly notes its “poetic and tactile” quality, capturing the weight of silence, memory, and loss in a way that stays with the viewer long after the credits roll. Rarely does a movie explore grief and solitude with such careful, meditative intensity, and it left me thinking about it for days afterward.
That quiet beauty helped Train Dreams earn significant recognition during the season. The film premiered to strong acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win Best Feature, Best Director for Bentley, and Best Cinematography at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. It was also named one of the Top Ten Films of the Year by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review.
Still, the very qualities that make the film special also make it a long shot for Best Picture. The Oscars often favor films with bigger emotional crescendos or broader cultural footprints. Train Dreams is introspective and restrained, a reflective character study rather than an awards-season juggernaut.
But even if it doesn’t win tonight, it remains the film in this lineup that I can’t stop thinking about.
And it sits among a fascinating group of nominees.
Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, adapts Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the death of William Shakespeare’s son and the grief that shaped the playwright’s life and work. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal deliver critically acclaimed, utterly moving performances. Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes has been hailed as a career-defining, award-winning turn, embodying a mother’s profound love and anguish. Mescal provides a restrained, powerful counterpoint as Shakespeare, grounding the film in quiet intensity. Together, they are lauded for portraying deep emotional resonance and grief-stricken realism that lingers long after the credits roll.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. It mixes the novel’s themes of 1960s counterculture and Reagan-era paranoia with modern issues like ICE policies and revolutionary violence, inspired in part by Brian Burrough’s book Days of Rage. The ensemble cast is extraordinary, led by Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson and Sean Penn as Steven J. Lockjaw, alongside Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Junglepussy. It is a sprawling, ambitious, and gripping film that demonstrates Anderson’s mastery of blending social commentary, political satire, and character-driven storytelling. It’s a fantastic movie!
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners arrives as the most nominated film of the year with sixteen Academy Award nominations. The film stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles alongside Hailee Steinfeld and Delroy Lindo, blending genre storytelling with historical themes and striking visual style. Based on the critical and industry buzz leading up to tonight, I predict that Ryan Coogler will take home the Oscar for Best Director, a recognition of his remarkable ability to combine epic storytelling with intimate, character-driven performances.
The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, stars Wagner Moura as Marcelo, a technology specialist navigating political unrest in Brazil in 1977. The supporting cast includes Tânia Maria, Alice Carvalho, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone, Udo Kier, and Carlos Francisco. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Mendonça Filho won the Best Director prize and Moura received the Best Actor award. This is one of those great films recalling the golden age of 70s political cinema—State of Siege (1972), a Costa-Gavras film comes to mind—gritty, down-to-earth, and heartbreaking, with characters we get to know.
Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value stars Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, and Anders Danielsen Lie in a deeply personal drama about family memory and artistic legacy. The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and has been widely praised for its emotional intelligence and performances.
Yorgos Lanthimos returns to the Oscar conversation with Bugonia, starring Emma Stone with a shaved head, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and drew strong critical attention for its surreal tone and Lanthimos’ signature offbeat storytelling.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein brings Mary Shelley’s classic story to the screen with Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the Creature. The supporting cast includes Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, and David Bradley, and the film has been praised for its gothic atmosphere and striking visual design.
Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme stars Timothée Chalamet as real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Tyler, the Creator. Chalamet’s performance has been widely celebrated throughout awards season and earned him major nominations, including Best Actor at the Academy Awards. He also sparked controversy when he commented that he would not want to work in ballet or opera because “no one cares about it anymore,” a remark that drew criticism, though he later clarified he meant it with respect for those art forms.
And then there is F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, and Tobias Menzies. The high-octane racing drama has been recognized largely for its technical achievements and large-scale filmmaking—which, in my opinion, does not belong in this Best Picture lineup. It seems like a vote by the “guys.” I don’t get it. It’s fun, yes, but Best Picture? Nah.
Taken together, this year’s Best Picture nominees represent an impressive range of filmmaking. Sweeping historical dramas sit alongside surreal comedies, political epics, blockbuster spectacles, and quiet character studies.
But for me, the film that lingers the longest is still Train Dreams.
I understand it probably won’t win tonight. In a race this crowded and competitive, the quietest movie in the lineup rarely takes home the biggest prize.
But if I were filling out my own ballot, my vote would be simple.
Not because it’s the most likely winner.
Because it’s the one that stayed with me long after the screen went dark, echoing in my thoughts, leaving me quietly reflective, tenderly moved, and suspended between memory and dream.
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