Welcome to the 2025 SiftPop.com Sifties!
This year, the SiftPop writers came together to nominate five ensembles for Best Film Ensemble. An acting ensemble is often an important ingredient to a successful film, and we wanted to recognize that with this award!
Weapons is a film that largely succeeds because its cast is so good. It has a good premise, but a cast to bring that premise to life the way it does is essential. Each section focuses on one actor in particular, and there isn’t a weak link in the bunch. Julia Garner is great as a complicated teacher who is ultimately innocent, but not without her own demons. Josh Brolin is the perfect choice for a conservative-coded father who wants his son back. Alden Ehrenreich continues playing lovable dweebs, Austin Abrams’ section brings us some extended levity, and Benedict Wong is welcome in any cast. The heaviest hitter is Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys, who’s already an icon. And Cary Christopher, who plays the only remaining schoolkid Alex, also carries a lot of complicated emotions and themes on his back for a good chunk of the movie. Greatness all around.
Over three decades into his career, we’re used to Leonardo DiCaprio giving great performances, and he does so in One Battle After Another, but his performance is buttressed by many other greats here. Sean Penn commands the camera in every scene he appears in as the already iconic Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, but the young, relative newcomer Chase Infiniti steals just about each one of her scenes. The supporting trio of Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor each have their own moments or sequences of showing why they’re some of the best performers around, and each one of the Christmas Adventurers even gets a moment to shine. It’s a cast that stands among Paul Thomas Anderson’s best; and he’s had some great ensembles over the years!
We’ve heard plenty about Timothée Chalamet as the centerpiece of Marty Supreme’s propulsive story about a young man pursuing greatness at any cost, but while the film doesn’t have an anchor without him, even an anchor needs an ocean to secure itself. Marty Supreme is massively successful when it comes to Josh Safdie’s deployment of an unconventional ensemble, which does wonders in making his vivid 1950s world feel infinitely more lived-in and naturalistic. Apart from well-established performers like Fran Drescher and Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler the Creator (best known for music), Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank), Abel Ferrara (an accomplished director), Larry Sloman (a prominent New York author), Koto Kawaguchi (a deaf Japanese table tennis champion who fulfills that same role in the film), and Penn Jillette (one half of Penn and Teller) are just a few examples of Safdie’s well-crafted company that make up the world that doesn’t want Marty Mauser to succeed, despite it being the only world he’s ever known.
The Knives Out movies are known almost as much for their star-studded ensemble casts as they are for their mysteries at this point. Wake Up Dead Man is the most top-heavy of the bunch, with the returning Daniel Craig and newcomer Josh O’Connor bearing the brunt of the standout performance moments, but everyone else still comes to play. Josh Brolin is the easy standout as the hate-spewing priest of the church where the film is set. Eschewing the coolness or suaveness that they’ve come to be known for, Jeremy Renner and Andrew Scott are the kind of losers you love to hate, as is Daryl McCormack. Cailee Spaeny and Kerry Washington are much more sympathetic, and their performances back that up. Add in some more complicated turns from Thomas Haden Church, and especially Glenn Glose, and the main ensemble doesn’t miss. But you can even go down the line to Jeffrey Wright, Noah Segan, and Bridget Everett to see some of the best performances with the least screen time of the year.
Headlined by a great Michael B. Jordan twin performance, the entire cast of characters comes to play in Sinners. Jordan’s dual role as Smoke and Stack provides a pair of central characters that have their own distinctive characteristics outside of their differing color schemes. Each of the characters have their own unique love interests (Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku) who are more than just one-dimensional characters in their own right — particularly as the horror unfolds. That complexity extends to our villain in what was a banner year for Jack O’Connell, as his motivation runs much deeper than a generic vampiric threat. Delroy Lindo and Miles Caton are mesmerizing musicians at the opposite ends of the arc, one dealing with his demons from a life lived, and the other that just can’t wait to show off his true talent. Whether it’s them or the Chows (Yao and Li Jun Li) trying to make a go of their business, every performer brings a depth to their character that helps build out the world. Even to the smallest performer, everyone plays their role perfectly.
Make sure to check out the previous 2025 Sifties winners, and check back on Monday for the winner of Best Audio Experience!