The 2026 Oscars are this weekend, and chances are, you’ve seen this year’s two big frontrunners, One Battle After Another and Sinners.
Those films are great, but there are other nominated pictures worth watching, too.
Watch With Us has curated a list of under-the-radar Oscar-nominated movies to watch this weekend before the ceremony airs Sunday night.
At the top of our list is Sentimental Value, a moving family drama starring Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård.
‘Sentimental Value’ (2025) — Mubi/Prime VideoFamous Norwegian director Gustav Borg (Skarsgård) hasn’t made a film in years, and he’s getting restless. Dreaming of the critical acclaim he received in the past, he writes a screenplay about his dead mother, who committed suicide years ago. He wants his estranged actress daughter, Nora (Renate Reinsve), to play her and film it in Nora’s childhood home, which she still lives in. But she still hasn’t completely forgiven him for abandoning her and her younger sister in their childhood. Can father and daughter find some way to reconcile before it’s too late?
Up for nine Oscars, including major awards like Best Picture and Best Director, Sentimental Value is a terrific drama that shockingly avoids being too sentimental or simplistic. The director, Joachim Trier, doesn’t paint in black and white but really shades of grey, resulting in a movie that doesn’t choose sides. Gustav had his reasons for leaving, and Nora isn’t as moral as she’d like to be. The film deals with complex people intelligently, but isn’t afraid to let their messy emotions take center stage.
‘The Secret Agent’ (2025) — HuluArmando Solimões (Wagner Moura) loves his son, but his life is too chaotic to spend much time with him. A former professor-turned-political dissident, he’s on the run from two hit men who want him dead. Using a variety of disguises and false names, Armando lies low, but he soon realizes he can’t keep running forever. To save himself and his son, he’ll have to face his assassins and find out who ordered his death and why.
Oscar pundits believe the Best Actor race is between Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan and Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet, but in my book, the Oscar should go to Moura for his terrific performance in The Secret Agent. Tired and afraid, Armando still makes time to spend some quality time with his son and friends to remember what he’s fighting for. The movie itself is terrific, with a great recreation of 1970s Brazil and a supporting cast of veteran and amateur actors that’s so good, it was nominated in the inaugural Best Casting category.
Cinderella as a horror movie? Count me in. In the bizarre reimagining The Ugly Stepsister, one of the famous fairy tale’s evil stepsisters, Elvira (Lea Myren), takes center stage. She’s not as pretty as her new sister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), so she undergoes a series of brutal beauty regimens to try and “fix” her looks. With Prince Julian’s (Isac Calmroth) ball quickly approaching, Elvira’s desperation mounts as she tries anything — including ingesting a large tapeworm and wearing a crude mask to change her imperfect nose — to look as pretty as Agnes. Will this twisted sister find the beauty and acceptance she longs for?
Deservedly nominated for Best Makeup, The Ugly Stepsister doesn’t embellish the original fairy tale too much. The horror is already there, and the genius of director Emilie Blichfeldt is to let it surface with a few feminist tweaks that cleverly comment on female body issues and the often destructive male gaze. This is a horror movie with something to say about the lengths some women go to be loved, but it’s also a gruesome gross-out that connects sex, identity and self-harm. It’s one of 2025’s buried treasures, and the most unlikely nominee of this year’s impressive pack.
