The movie is about a left-wing activist haunted by the ghosts of his past who is then drawn back into his old world but heals old wounds along the way.
It's a fine film, but was it the best movie of 2025? Not according to Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates both movie reviews for a Tomato Meter score and fan reviews for a Popcorn Meter score. According to those metrics, "Sinners" is the movie that people likely will remember most from 2025.
As of mid-March, 2026, "One Battle After Another" had an outstanding Tomato Meter score of 94% but only a solid Popcorn Meter score of 85%. Movie reviewers clearly liked it more than movie goers.
"Sinners," on the other hand, may someday be considered a classic. It is a horror that movie that also is an exploration of the history of blues music as well as the reality of life Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. It had a 97% Tomato Meter score and a 96% Popcorn Meter score. The average of those two (96.5%), if it holds over time, would put it among the all-time great movies.
The fact that Oscar voters did not pick the best picture for Best Picture is not unusual, in fact that's almost always the case. A quick run through of the Rotten Tomatoes scores for all of the Best Picture winners versus other top movies from those years revealed that only 20 times has the actual best picture been voted the Best Picture. In many cases, the movie best respected today wasn't even a Best Picture nominee.
Of course, there were lots of years where the difference between the Oscar winner and the actual best picture was negligible, a coin flip really, but there were actually more years where the difference between the Oscar winner and the actual best movie were in the "What were you thinking?" category.
Here are the 20 times Oscar voters clearly got it right:
1972 - Oscar winner "The Godfather" had an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 97.5% - a true classic. "Cabaret" was the next best at 89.5%.
1992 - "Unforgiven" had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94.5%. "Howards End" was next at 87.5% in a down year for movies.
1943 - "Casablanca" had a RT average score of 97.0%. "The More the Merrier" was well behind at 90.5%.
1970 - "Patton" had a RT average score of 92.5%. That was easily better than "Five Easy Pieces," which had an average score of 86.5%.
1930 - "All Quiet on the Western Front" had an RT average of 93.5% versus "The Love Parade" score of 88.5%.
1993 - "Schindler's List" had an RT average score of 97.5%, beating out "The Fugitive" at 92.5%.
1945 - "The Lost Weekend" had an RT average score of 93.0% versus the 89.0% of "Mildred Pierce."
2012 - "Argo" had an RT average score of 93.0%. "Django Unchained" was next highest at 89.5%.
1955 - "Marty" scored a 91.5% RT average, which was higher than the better remembered "Rebel Without a Cause" score of 89.0%.
1965 - In a down year for movies, "The Sound of Music" had an average RT score of 87.0%, beating out "Doctor Zhivago" at 85.0%.
1960 - "The Apartment" had an 93.5% average RT score, edging "Inherit the Wind," which had a 92.0%.
1984 - "Amadeus" had a score of 92.5%, which as better than "The Killing Fields" score of 91.0%.
2015 - "Spotlight" had an average of 95.0%. Pixar's "Inside Out" was next highest at 93.5%.
1973 - "The Sting" scored a 94.0% average, while "Paper Moon" was just under at 93.0%.
1974 - "The Godfather Part II" had a 96.5% RT average, beating out another classic, "Chinatown," which had a 95.5%.
2011 - "The Artist" was the top movie in a so-so creative year with a score of 91.0%, edging "Moneyball" at 90.0%.
2013 - "12 Years a Slave" topped "Dallas Buyers Club", 92.5% to 91.5%.
2019 - In the last year that Oscar Voters got it right, "Parasite" won the Oscar with a 94.5% RT average score, slightly better than "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," which had a 93.5%.
1946 - "The Best Years of Our Lives" had a 95.0% average RT score, just better than the far better known "It's a Wonderful Life" and its 94.5% average.
1991 - "The Silence of the Lambs," with its 95.0% average RT score, was slightly higher than the Disney classic, "Beauty and the Best," which had a 94.5%.
There are four years where the scores, as of today, were even for the Oscar winner and another winner. An actual coin flip.
1934 - "It Happened One Night" (98%-93% = 95.5%) won the Oscar over "The Thin Man" (98%-93% = 95.5%).
1950 - "All About Eve" (99%-94% = 96.5%) beat out "Sunset Boulevard" (98%-95% = 96.5%).
1954 - "On The Waterfront" (99%-95%=97%) over "Rear Window" (99%-95%=97%).
1975 - "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (92%-96%=94%) over "Jaws" (97%-91%=94%).
There have been 16 years where the Oscar Winner was within 3% of the better movie. Mistakes perhaps, but not egregious.
Year - Oscar Winner and score versus better movie and score.
1978 - "The Deer Hunter" (86%-91%=88.5%) over "Midnight Express" (90%-88%=89%)
2006 - "The Departed" (91%-94%=92.5%) over "Pan's Labrynth" (95%-91%=93%)
1940 - "Rebecca" (98%-92%=95%) over "The Philadelphia Story" (100%-92%=96%)
2010 - "The King's Speech" (94%-92%=93%) over "Toy Story 3" (98%-90%=94%)
1962 - "Lawrence of Arabia" (93%-93%=93%) over "Days of Wine and Roses" (100%-89%=94.5%)
1971 - "The French Connecdtion" (97%-87%=92%) over "The Last Picture Show" (98%-89%=93.5%)
2021 - "CODA" (94%-91%=92.5%) over "King Richard" (90%-98%=94%)
1969 - "Midnight Cowboy" (89%-88%=88.5%) over "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (89%-92%=90.5%)
2007 - "No Country for Old Men" (93%-86%=89.5%) over "The Bourne Ultimatum" (92%-91%=91.5%)
2003 - "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (94%-86%=90%) over "Finding Nemo" (99%-86%=92.5%)
1942 - "Mrs. Miniver" (93%-84%=88.5%) over "The Pride of the Yankees" (94%-89%=91.5%)
1979 - "Kramer vs. Kramer" (90%-89%=89.5%) over "Apocalypse Now" (91%-94%=92.5%)
1986 - "Platoon" (89%-93%=91%) over "Aliens (94%-94%=94%)
2008 - "Slumdog Millionaire" (92%-90%=91%) over "The Dark Knight" (94%-94%=94%)
2023 - "Oppenheimer" (93%-91%=92%) over "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" (95%-95%=95%)
There were 37 years where fine films won the Oscar over clearly better films.
1967 - "In the Heat of the Night" (94%) over "Cool Hand Luke" (97.5%)
1999 - "American Beauty" (90%) over "Toy Story 2" (93.5%)
2004 - "Million Dollar Baby" (90%) over "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (93.5%)
1957 - "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (94.5%) over "12 Angry Men" (98.5%)
1964 - "My Fair Lady" (92%) over "Dr. Strangelove" (96%)
2009 - "The Hurt Locker" (90%) over "Up" (94%)
1939 - "Gone With the Wind" (91%) over "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (95.5%)
2016 - "Moonlight" (88.5%) over "Hidden Figures" (93%)
1932 - "Grand Hotel" (81%) over "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (86%)
1935 - "Mutiny on the Bounty" (90%) over "Captain Blood" (95%)
1961 - "West Side Story" (88%) over "The Hustler" (93%)
1966 - "A Man for All Seasons" (88%) over "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (93%)
1987 - "The Last Emperor" (87%) over "Full Metal Jacket" (92%)
1988 - "Rain Man" (89%) over "Die Hard" (94%)
1989 - "Driving Miss Daisy" (83%) over "Dead Poets Society" (88.5%)
1951 - "An American in Paris" (87%) over "A Streetcar Named Desire" (93%)
1980 - "Ordinary People" (89%) over "The Empire Strikes Back" (95%)
1959 - "Ben-Hur" (88.5%) over "Anatomy of a Murder" (95%)
1982 - "Gandhi" (90.5%) over "Das Boot" (97%)
2025 - "One Battle After Another" (89.5%) over "Sinners" (96.5%)
1941 - "How Green Was My Valley" (87%) over "Citizen Kane (94.5%)
1968 - "Oliver" (85.5%) over "The Odd Couple" (93%)
1927 - "Wings" (86.5%) over "Metropolis" (94.5%)
1990 - "Dances With Wolves" (87%) over "Goodfellas" (95%)
2000 - "Gladiator" (83.5%) over "Almost Famous" (91.5%)
2020 - "Nomadland" (87.5%) over "Judas and the Black Messiah" (95.5%)
1948 - "Hamlet" (88%) over "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (96.5%)
1953 - "From Here to Eternity" (86%) over "Roman Holiday" (94.5%)
1998 - "Shakespeare in Love" (86%) over "Saving Private Ryan" (94.5%)
1937 - "The Life of Emile Zola" (82.5%) over "Captains Courageous" (91.5%)
1949 - "All the King's Men" (87.5%) over "The Heiress" (96.5%)
1994 - "Forrest Gump" (85%) over "Pulp Fiction" (94%)
2024 - "Anora" (88.5%) over "The Wild Robot" (97.5%)
1996 - "The English Patient" (84.5%) over "Sling Blade" (94%)
2001 - "A Beautiful Mind" (83.5%) over "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (93%)
2014 - "Birdman" (84.5%) over "Whiplash" (94%)
Then there is the "What Were They Thinking?" category, which includes one of my all-time favorites - "Rocky." These are the ones with a 10% over more difference in average Rotten Tomatoes scores.
2005 - "Crash" (80.5%) over "Howl's Moving Castle" (90.5%)
2002 - "Chicago" (85%) over "The Pianist" (95.5%)
2018 - "Green Book" (84.5%) over "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (95%)
1983 - "Terms of Endearment" (82%) over "The Right Stuff" (93%)
2022 - "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (86%) over "Top Gun: Maverick" (97.5%)
1976 - "Rocky" (81%) over "All the President's Men" (93.5%)
1958 - "Gigi" (81.5%) over "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (94.5%)
1981 - "Chariots of Fire" (82%) over "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (95%)
2017 - "The Shape of Water" (82.5%) over "Coco" (95.5%)
1947 - "Gentleman's Agreement" (80%) over "Great Expectations" (94%)
1995 - "Braveheart" (79.5%) over "Toy Story" (96%)
1944 - "Going My Way" (79%) over "Double Indemnity" (96%)
1997 - "Titanic" (78.5%) over "LA Confidential" (96.5%)
1985 - "Out of Africa" (72%) over "Back to the Future" (94%)
1963 - "Tom Jones" (70%) over "8 1/2" (94%)
1936 - "The Great Ziegfeld" (60.5%) over "Dodsworth" (88.5%)
1956 - "Around the World in 80 Days" (64.5%) over "Seven Samurai" (98.5%)
1931 - "Cimarron" (39%) over "Morocco" (76.5%)
1933 - "Cavalcade" (44.5%) over "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (84%)
1952 - "The Greatest Show on Earth" (51.5%) over "High Noon" (91.5%)
1929 - "The Broadway Melody" (31%) over "The Patriot" (79%)
