This year, Bugonia (and Emma Stone in Bugonia) marks the only overlap between the Weirdcademy Awards and Hollywood’s annual lipstick-on-a-pig hootenanny, the Most Conventional Movie Awards. This follows a trend dating back all the way to 2024-2025 of Hollywood recognizing one and exactly one (usually whatever Lanthimos directs in a given year) weird film for awards season. Sure, Arco, the story of a boy from the distant hippie future who time-travels to the distant past of 2075 using his magical rainbow cape, got a nomination in the animated film, but that’s only a marginal, weird-adjacent title. Aside from that, weird movies got about as far with the Academy as they normally do: nowhere. The Academy won’t even consider Baby Invasion, the first Harmony Korine movie based on a fake video game where all the armed assailants wear baby-face masks while invading SoCal McMansions and occasionally a white rabbit pops up for no reason, or Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League, which is almost certainly one of the top five animated movies about Batman Ninja facing off against the yakuza ever made—just because neither ever played in real movie theaters.
Instead, the Academy wants to feed us movies about a ping pong speed freak who never actually takes speed, Shakespeare’s wife mourning the death of her kid for two hours, and Brad Pitt remaking Top Gun: Maverick with a race car. (Though to be fair, One Battle After Another and Sinners are really good.)
The Oscars are a joke, and everyone knows it. But you, my friend, you aren’t content with the same-old same-old. You want weird in your movies. The Weirdcademy Awards are for you, the moviegoer whose friends roll their eyes and sigh loudly when you suggest movie night should feature a low budget Greek flick about three brothers who smoke the talking flowers growing from their mother’s grave so they can perfect their time travel machine.
Although the editors of 366 Weird Movies select the nominees from the pool of available movies, the Awards themselves are a naked popularity contest, and do not necessarily reflect either the artistic merit or intrinsic weirdness of the films involved. The Weirdcademy Awards are tongue-in-cheek and for fun only. Ballot-stuffing is a frequent occurrence. Please, no wagering.
The Weirdcademy Awards are given to the Weirdest Movie, Actor, Actress and Scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.
Who makes up the Weirdcademy? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. If you can figure out how to vote in the poll, you are qualified to join. You can not be turned down because of your age, sex, religious or political affiliation, immigration status, pronouns, or whether you still use “X.” There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see any of the movies listed before voting. You can vote for any or all categories.
You can only vote once—so choose carefully. We’ll keep voting open until March 15, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.
Be sure to also vote for Weirdest Short Film of 2025. To watch all five nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.
Your ballot for the 2025 edition of the Weirdcademy
Awards is below:
Continue reading YOUR VOTE DETERMINES THE WINNER OF THE 16TH ANNUAL WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS
Play Fight! (dir. Katrina Larner; 8 min.)—There are countless gaps in my personal experience, and one reason I’m drawn to animated shorts is in order to fill those gaps. Herein, Katrina Larner explores the vagaries of ‘tween girl sleepovers, and the mental impact of homosexual preferences at that age. A 5th-wheel girl is dropped off for a night of party-playing, and so we observe a cavalcade of cacophonous color and craziness. A giant mother mother shoots a knife and fork from her eyes and pursues what she views as wayward behavior. But!, things wrap up well enough for our pentad of party people, ’cause it’s only a play fight.
blinks in mimi’s singing voice (dir. Natalie Xie; 6 min.)—Is this but an elaborate series of notebook doodles brought to life? Perhaps, but maybe not. I can’t say I understood just what this was or where it was going, but Natalie Xie kept my eyes occupied throughout as the image shifted from clusters of kitty faces to jumping jacks to desks, chairs, and birds. On its one-and-a-half second course across the screen, a green dot kept my rapt attention.
Also nominated (listed ranked in final order of votes): Sinners, Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Marty Supreme, Weapons, No Other Choice, Hamnet, Train Dreams
Winner: KPop Demon Hunters