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Every Single Movie Nominated for a 2017 Oscar, Ranked

One of the craziest things about the Academy Awards — and Oscar season in general — is the importance we place on what film ends up winning Best Picture. Is that really what all this fuss and pomp and circumstance is for? To anoint one film as the best, above all others? The only one worth remembering?

The truth of the matter is that the day the Oscar nominations get announced, dozens of movies are enshrined into history. “It’s an honor just to be nominated” became a cliche of insincere humility, but it’s also very much the truth. This year’s set of Oscar nominees got their spot in the record books. It’s one of the reasons why, every year, I endeavor to see every nominated movie in every category. It’s not always easy to track down every documentary feature and every foreign language film (though today’s streaming age does make that a good bit easier), but every year I’ve managed to pull this off (this will be the 5th straight year), I’ve found it incredibly rewarding. Great filmmaking lurks all over the Oscar ballot, often from films that are clinging to a single nomination.

You should take this ranking of all 62 nominated films — features, shorts, all of them — not just as a statement on their quality, but also as an enthusiastic list of recommendations. Taking a look at the final ranking, I’d say it was an especially good year for the Best Picture category, but there was greatness to be found in animation, in foreign films, and especially in documentaries. The Oscars can be a wonderful spectacle, yes. They can also be a guidebook. Let this list guide you through the class of 2016.

62

'Suicide Squad'

It almost feels too easy to place Suicide Squad at the bottom of this list. By the time I’d seen it, the response to it was so bad, I was almost looking for redeeming features simply to keep myself interested. But not even Margot Robbie’s performance rises to the level of “interesting,” the action and visuals are beyond muddy, and both Cara Delevigne’s Enchantress character and every music cue qualify as embarrassments.
Nomination: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Where to stream Suicide Squad

61

'Trolls'

trolls
photo: Everett Collection

Ooof. Everything about this movie, from its murky visuals to its poor balance of whimsy and pathos to its irritating lead characters is unsatisfying, and that’s even before you get into the Satan’s Spotify Playlist nature of the soundtrack. Why were these songs picked to be in a Trolls movie? Why are only some of them tricked out with troll-specific lyrics? Why does the movie seem to be writing itself to fit “Can’t Stop the Feeling” instead of the other way around? Why?
Nomination: Best Original Song

Where to stream Trolls

60

'Nocturnal Animals'

nocturnal-animals
photo: Everett Collection

This garbage barge of a movie. Empty style, hollow themes, and at least one terribly miscast lead, all filtered through the eye of a sneering aesthete. It outranks Suicide Squad for two reasons: 1) Laura Linney’s cameo as a big-haired Texas matriarch is something worth seeking out, and 2) Michael Shannon’s Oscar-nominated scenery chewing is not un-enjoyable.
Nomination: Best Supporting Actor

Where to stream Nocturnal Animals

59

'Passengers'

passengers
photo: Everett Collection

Handsome production design, sure. And I’d have honestly recognized the visual effects if only for the zero-gravity pool scene alone. But the rest of the movie is characterized by a shocking deficit of chemistry between the leads and a story that deep-sixes any kind of investment you could possibly have in their relationship.
Nominations: Best Production Design, Best Original Score

Where to stream Passengers

58

'Silent Nights'

silent-nights

I’m often reluctant to slam the short films, because they’re already fighting such an uphill climb for visibility and because there are people who know far more about this artform than me who are doing the nominating. But I am at an utter loss as to how Silent Nights got nominated, aside from the good intentions of its premise. A white woman in Denmark sees a black refugee at a shelter, and they forge a connection. If there were any attempts made to un-savior this problematic concept, they got lost in the clumsy, preachy dialogue and the fairly insulting turns of plot. This one’s a real disaster.
Nomination: Best Live Action Short Film

57

'13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'

13-hours-secret-soldiers-of-benghazi
photo: Everett Collection

I expected 13 Hours to be more objectionably political than it turned out to be. Michael Bay’s skill in putting together a series of harrowing scenes of chaos is ultimately undone by his obsession with telling every beat of the story as a courage versus cowardice tale.
Nomination: Best Sound Mixing

Where to stream 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

56

'Hacksaw Ridge'

The film equivalent of burning the outside of the chicken while leaving the inside completely raw. The first half of this movie is so hokey you’d almost believe it’s camp (until you realize that Mel Gibson’s religion doesn’t believe in camp). The second half is a cartoonish orgy of blood that tries far too late to shoot for inspirational. Garfield was nominated for the wrong performance.
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

Where to stream Hacksaw Ridge

55

'Pear Cider and Cigarettes'

pear-cider-and-cigarettes

I guarantee that this animated short will really appeal to a good many people. I’m just not among them. It is the longest of this year’s animated shorts by far, probably because it plays more like an animated documentary, telling the story of the author’s friend and his debilitating battles with addiction. The animation is striking but the storyis grueling and indulgent.
Nomination: Best Animated Short Film

Where to stream Pear Cider and Cigarettes

54

'Sully'

sully
photo: Everett Collection

This is a watchable movie, featuring a good Tom Hanks performance as the title character. But its problems are exactly what you’d expect when you hear the phrase “feature-length movie about the Miracle on the Hudson.” The climactic action of the movie involves running a flight simulation THREE times. After we’ve already seen the crash depicted twice. Director Clint Eastwood seems to want to turn this into an examination of how we value heroism, but it never gets there. Also: an ending that would qualify as parody if I thought Clint Eastwood were capable of parody.
Nomination: Best Sound Editing

Where to stream Sully

53

'Captain Fantastic'

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, from left: Charlie Shotwell, Viggo Mortensen, Annalise Basso (back), Shree
Photo: Everett Collection

That this movie managed to hang around in the awards conversation from Sundance until Oscar nominations is one of the great puzzlers of 2016. It’s … fine? Viggo Mortensen plays a survivalist father who’s raised his kids to be self-sufficient and self-important in equal measure. The movie never seems to want to do more than scratch the surface of what this might mean for any of the characters, and Mortensen’s downbeat performance is just not that interesting.
Nomination: Best Actor

Where to stream Captain Fantastic

52

'Blind Vaysha'

blind-vaysha

This Canadian short has its virtues — chief among them the striking linocut animation style and also the narration from actress Caroline Dhavernas (Hannibal). But the story itself, about a girl born with one eye seeing the past and one eye seeing the future, plays so heavy-handedly; it’s not even a parable, it’s a sermon. You half expect there to be a questionnaire at the end.
Nomination: Best Animated Short Film

51

'Deepwater Horizon'

deepwater-horizon
photo: Everett Collection

Say what you will about Peter Berg’s determination to be the Patron Saint of American Grit, he made one hell of a disaster movie for the final 40 minutes of Deepwater Horizon. I can’t defend the first half, full of groaning premonitions, goopy family scenes, and John Malkovich playing Bill Hader playing James Carville playing Dennis Nedry.
Nominations: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing

Where to stream Deepwater Horizon

50

'A Man Called Ove'

A MAN CALLED OVE, (aka EN MAN SOM HETER OVE), from left, Rolf Lassgard, Nelly Jamarani, Bahar Pars,
Everett Collection

Another round of Scandanavian geriatric whimsy, after last year’s 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window. This one’s a better movie by degrees, but it’s remarkable how similar they are. Ove (the movie and the man) manages to forge a better emotional connection with the audience, if not with his fellow characters.

Nominations: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Where to stream A Man Called Ove

49

'The Jungle Book'

THE JUNGLE BOOK, from left:  Baloo (voice: Bill Murray), Neel Sethi as Mowgli, 2016. © Walt Disney
Photo: Everett Collection

The CGI work in this movie was truly remarkable; absent an award for Best Voice Performance (for which Idris Elba’s terrifying performance as Shere Khan would have been richly deserving), this movie got exactly the one Oscar nomination it should have.
Nomination: Best Visual Effects

Where to stream The Jungle Book

48

'Allied'

allied
photo: Everett Collection

The trailers made this one look awful, and the fact that it wasn’t shouldn’t be twisted into thinking it was great or anything, but I had a good time with it. It’s a straightforward spy yarn with a couple action setpieces that are VERY well done, and because it doesn’t overdo it with the twists, Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard’s characters are able to build up to some strong moments.
Nomination: Best Costume Design

Where to stream Allied

47

'Jim: The James Foley Story'

james-foley

This documentary of journalist James Foley — whose brutal beheading at the hands of ISIS was documented on video and seen all over the world — is told through the words of the family, friends, and colleagues who knew him. It’s not a novel approach, and the film isn’t particularly strong as a historical document, but the stuff with his family (particularly when they recall disagreements they had with James) is strong.
Nomination: Best Original Song

Where to stream Jim: The James Foley Story

46

'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM, from left, Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, 2016. ph:
Photo: Everett Collection

This brand extension of the Potter-verse mostly overcomes its cash-grab origins. The change of setting to the United States is exciting, the visual design is inventive, and certain characters (Dan Fogler’s muggle — er, no-mag — baker; Ezra Miller’s darkly troubled young man) pop. The chemistry and relationship between the leads is a weakness.
Nominations: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design

Where to stream Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

45

'Ennemis Intérieurs'

Many of this year’s short films have taken on added significance in the wake of recent political developments. Chief among them is this French movie about an Algerian immigrant being grilled about his possible connections to terrorists. It’s a sobering, direct take on the subject and will likely resonate with a lot of voters.
Nomination: Best Live-Action Short Film

Where to stream Ennemis Intérieurs

44

'Borrowed Time'

If we still screened shorts before feature films other than Pixar, this would be a good short to have screened before Hell or High Water. Both are Westerns with heavy themes of regret and familial responsibility. The handsomeness of the animation and that recognizably Pixar-ish sheen (this one isn’t a Pixar production but its directors are alums) leaves you not quite prepared for the shocking climactic moment.
Nomination: Best Animated Short

Where to stream Borrowed Time

43

'Doctor Strange'

Of the two big MCU event movies of 2016, Captain America: Civil War was more engaging and satisfying. I’m not sure whether it was Cumberbatch’s reserved portrayal of the title character or the film’s attempts to build urgency off of moral correctness, but it never quite rose above the Marvel baseline. But in the context of the VisFX category, Doctor Strange is the right nominee, with its ever-shifting visual environments and dazzling action scenes.
Nomination: Best Visual Effects

Where to stream Doctor Strange

42

'Le Femme et le TGV'

So it turns out that the Oscars did nominate a movie about a woman who spins out an elaborate fantasy out of the things she glimpses as a commuter train goes by the same spot every day. Only in the case of this Swiss short, it’s the woman in the house who fantasizes about the man on the train. A bit airy but otherwise a sweet film.
Nomination: Best Live-Action Short Film

41

'Timecode'

This year’s crop of live-action shorts were not the best, and in a better year, Timecode could have come off as slight. Instead, this Spanish short about employees at a parking garage feels rather beautiful given its surroundings.
Nomination: Best Live Action Short Film

40

'My Life as a Zucchini'

my-life-as-a-zucchini
photo: Everett Collection

This animated feature feels like a dozen shorts I’ve seen nominated over the years. Sad, French little boy gets sent to an orphanage, makes friends, goes through some melancholy times. The tonal balance never tips towards whimsy here, which ends up serving the film well.
Nomination: Best Animated Feature

Where to stream My Life as a Zucchini

39

'Toni Erdmann'

toni-erdmann
photo: Everett Collection

You can see why many critics totally fell out for Toni Erdmann in a festival setting. My guess is the theatrical experience keeps the audience in the film’s peculiar mindset a lot better. As a home viewing option, the episodic nature of the story — about a career woman whose struggles up the corporate ladder are made all the more frustrating by the pestering presence in her life of her forcibly whimsical dad — loses momentum easily, and the big moments near the end seem a bit more gimmicky.
Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

Where to stream Toni Erdmann

38

'The White Helmets'

The Syrian civil war was a major topic among this year’s documentary features and shorts. This film is about volunteer rescue workers in the Syrian Civil Defense, who race towards the sounds of bombs falling and pull survivors out of rubble and face their own losses and struggle to make sense of it all. Powerful stuff.
Nomination: Best Documentary Short Film

Where to stream The White Helmets

37

'Elle'

Paul Verhoeven’s reputation as a master of provocation was certainly burnished by this French film about a woman — Isabelle Huppert, earning her first Oscar nomination with a performance that’s equal parts scary and seductive — who survives a rape in her own home and then spends the rest of the film setting a leisurely trap for her unseen attacker. It’s a bold statement about female agency, particularly when Huppert’s authorial voice has say, though it’s tough to shake a touch of smugness in Verhoeven’s male gaze.
Nomination: Best Actress

Where to stream Elle

36

'Star Trek Beyond'

star-trek-beyond
photo: Everett Collection

Very quietly (and to disappointingly middling box-office), we got the best Star Trek movie of the revived franchise this year, with a thrilling adventure yarn that served as a fine tribute to series stars Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin, who both died before the film was released. For being one of the rare summer sequels that was not a pale reflection of its predecessors, it deserves a decent bit of credit.
Nomination: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Where to stream Star Trek Beyond

35

'Florence Foster Jenkins' 

florence-foster-jenkins
photo: Everett Collection

Meryl Streep’s 20th Oscar nomination may not have been for career-best work, but she’s got nothing to feel ashamed about in Florence, a movie that’s about half as irritating and twice as sensitive and affecting as you expect it will be. With a strong comedic ensemble (Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Nina Arianda), the film tells a sweet, sad, slight little tale about a woman whose limitations never mattered as much to her as they did to everyone else.
Nominations: Best Actress, Best Costume Design

Where to stream Florence Foster Jenkins

34

'Watani: My Homeland'

Another Syrian Civil War movie, this one about the wife and children of a commander in the Free Syrian Army who is presumed dead. His family must emigrate to Germany, and we see them adapt to life there.
Nomination: Best Documentary Short Film

33

'Joe's Violin'


This is a very simple, very moving story of a Polish Holocaust survivor who donates the violin he’s had for 70 years to an instrument drive. It winds up in the hands of a 12-year-old girl from the Bronx. It’s their meeting that provides the film with the big moment that might be the one that moves Oscar voters most.
Nomination: Best Documentary Short Film

32

'Sing'

sing
CATEGORY: Best Live Action Short Film
WINNER: Kristof Deák and Anna Udvardy for Sing
[Where to stream Sing]

This Hungarian short — about a young girl who comes to a new school, joins choir, and is soon after told by the teacher that she should not sing out in recitals but rather only mouth the words — can feel TV-ish at times. But the performances by the two young girls are quite winning, and it stands pretty tall among this years live-action shorts.
Nomination: Best Live-Action Short Film

31

'Hidden Figures'

This is a wildly likeable movie, in ways that shouldn’t be discounted. Glossy, digestible inspiration isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it sells, and Hidden Figures has managed to sell without leaving too much buyer’s remorse, and that — in addition to the uniformly excellent cast — deserves to be celebrated. Celebrated as a Best Picture nominee? Wouldn’t be my choice, but I won’t complain too loudly.
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay

Where to stream Hidden Figures

30

'Tanna'

tanna
photo: Everett Collection

A Romeo and Juliet take told through the lens of the indigenous people of Vanuatu, Tanna allows the culture-clash aspects of its existence play out as background so that in the foreground are these characters whose desire to be with each other proves to be destructive.
Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

Where to stream Tanna

29

'Piper'


The Pixar short that screened before Finding Dory might be the one that wins Pixar — a powerhouse in the Animated Feature category — its first award for Best Animated Short since 2001. The animation — incorporating water, surf, sand, feathers, all manner of textures — is impressive, and the story is cute without ever pushing it into cutesy. It’d make for a worthy winner.
Nomination: Best Animated Short

Where to stream Piper

28

'Life, Animated'

life-animated
photo: Everett Collection

A young autistic boy only responds to the world through Disney movies. Like Best Picture nominee Lion, you expect this documentary to become a product-placement nightmare, but it never quite does. Instead, we see the grown up Owen dealing with some real-life struggles in a way that feels honest. Sure, Gilbert Gottfried shows up to voice Iago in a made-for-TV kind of moment, but that stuff never really detracts from the whole the way you fear it will.
Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Where to stream Life, Animated

27

'Moana'

MOANA, Moana (voice: Auli'i Cravalho), 2016. © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / courtesy

Disney’s latest princess narrative takes on a few refreshing flavors this time around, from its Pacific Islands setting to its decidedly feminist storytelling (you’ll note there’s nary a prince, or even a love interest, to be found). The songs, co-written by Hamilton phenom Lin-Manuel Miranda, are delightfully catchy, too.
Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song

Where to stream Moana

26

'Loving'

loving
photo: Everett Collection

The true-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving, who were the center of the landmark Supreme Court case that struck down laws again interracial marriage. Director Jeff Nichols delivers a movie that is admirably restrained and avoids the kind of melodrama that you might get from traditional “Oscar-bait.” As Richard, Joel Edgerton is tightly-coiled, and as Mildred, Oscar-nominee Ruth Negga is the eye of a hurricane.
Nomination: Best Actress

Where to stream Loving

25

'Land of Mine'

land-of-mine
photo: Everett Collection

Of all the questions that have arisen while watching the Oscar movies until the Trump regime, one I wasn’t expecting at all to encounter was “is it morally correct to be kind to Nazis?” Then came Land of Mine. There are few beats that you won’t see coming from a mile away in this Danish movie about a sergeant assigned a squad of teenage German POWs to dismantle the land mines that the Nazis buried on a beach. But the movie makes its case for empathy for these teens amid the fog of war (boys, really, conscripted to Hitler’s army) persuasively and with a great cast.
Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

Where to stream Land of Mine

24

'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'

It’s thrilling to watch Gareth Edwards’ movie wrestle with being both a Star Wars movie and something totally unlike any Star Wars movie. Digging into the forgotten corners of the Star Wars universe yields some very exciting results, including a climax that’s as emotional as anything you’ve seen in the series. (Uh, until that very last thing.)
Nominations: Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

Where to stream Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

23

'Extremis'

extremis
Netflix

The day-to-day workings of hospital dwellers — doctors, nurses, patients and family members — who have to make incredibly difficult end-of-life decisions might seem like a parody of documentary short nominations, but it is an incredibly powerful and sensitive portrait of people in incredibly tough circumstances.
Nomination: Best Documentary Short

Where to stream Extremis

22

'The Red Turtle'

red-turtle
photo: Everett Collection

This beautiful Studio Ghibli co-production is a wordless little folk tale about a shipwrecked man and the beautiful red turtle who becomes a woman, who becomes his wife, and the life and family they build on the island. One of the straight-up prettiest movies you will see all year.
Nomination: Best Animated Feature

Where to stream The Red Turtle

21

'Fire At Sea''

fire-at-sea
photo: Everett Collection

Gianfranco Rosi’s feature documentary views the European migrant crisis from the vantage point of a Sicilian island in the Mediterranean, focusing on a young local boy on the island and a doctor who treats the refugees, primarily. The ways in which the film slowly immerses you into the lives of these people recalls the best of documentary masters like Frederick Wiseman. It’s really quite a remarkable achievement, and in this year where many films placed a watchful eye on refugees, Fire at Sea may have been the most compelling.
Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Where to stream Fire at Sea

20

'The Salesman'

salesman
photo: Everett Collection

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won the Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2011 for A Separation; he stands a great chance of winning again for The Salesman, despite the fact that he won’t be there to accept the award, as he’s protesting Trump’s proposed travel ban on Muslim countries. The film would be a worthy winner, politics or not. Farhadi examines the impact on a marriage of an act of violation in the home.
Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

Where to stream The Salesman

19

'I Am Not Your Negro'

i-am-not-your-negro
photo: Everett Collection

Director and activist Raoul Peck assembled this film from footage of the celebrated black writer and intellectual James Baldwin, creating a passionate persuasive argument about America’s history of racism. Baldwin’s voice and his place in history come shining through.
Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Where to stream I Am Not Your Negro

18

'4.1 Miles'


This documentary about a crew about a Greek ship who essentially fish Syrian refugees out of the Aegean Sea is breathtakingly immersive and often unbearably harrowing. What’s even more remarkable is that this potential Oscar winner was director Daphne Matziaraki’s student thesis film.
Nomination: Best Documentary Short Film

17

'13th'


Director Ava DuVernay may have been snubbed for a Best Director nomination two years ago, but she was duly recognized this year for helming Netflix’s searing documentary about mass incarceration of black people in the United States. There’s an urgency to 13th that immediately grabs your attention, but it’s DuVernay’s grasp in history that provides the film its bedrock.
Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Where to stream 13th

16

'Hell or High Water'

hell-or-high-water
CBS Films

Director David Mackenzie followed up the gritty Starred Up with this modern western about a pair of brothers who go on a bank-robbing spree to get the money to buy back their late mother’s home from the bank. It’s a setup that could have been straight out of the 1950s, but Mackenzie, working off of Taylor Sheridan’s Oscar-nominated script, makes the action zip artfully by and the themes resonate with great immediacy.
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

Where to stream Hell or High Water

15

'Zootopia'

zootopia
Photo: Everett Collection

Disney’s surprise hit of early 2016 managed to infuse a cute story about animals who act like people with a timely notion of the dangers of assuming the worst about each other’s nature. Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin’s vocal performances elevate the already strong story, and the whole thing together is a zippy delight.
Nomination: Best Animated Feature

Where to stream Zootopia

14

'The Lobster'

colin-farrell-lobster

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos found unexpected success with one of his most outlandish concepts: a fantastical near-future where single people have 45 days to find a mate, or else they will be turned into an animal (of their choosing!). Featuring a heap of great performances from Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw, and Olivia Colman, The Lobster manages to thread the needle between dry comedy and an intelligent meditation on the way we socialize love.
Nomination: Best Original Screenplay

Where to stream The Lobster

13

'Kubo and the Two Strings'

Yet another masterwork from the severely undervalued Laika animation studios (The Boxtrolls; Coraline). Kubo would probably rank higher if it hadn’t stumbled by casting exclusively white actors to voice Asian characters. The film itself is a stunning visual achievement, telling a mythological story with tremendous flair.
Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Visual Effects

Where to stream Kubo and the Two Strings

12

'La La Land'

la-la-land
Everett Collection

The film is neither as flawless as its 14 Oscar nominations might imply, nor is it nearly as bad as its most vocal detractors have said. It’s a movie with very visible flaws — mostly in its saggy, predictable middle section — but the film’s first moments (“Another Day of Sun”; “Someone in the Crowd”) and final moments (“Audition”; the what-if finale) were some of the more transcendent movie moments of the year.
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song (x2), Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

Where to stream La La Land

11

'Pearl'

pearl

The year’s best animated short is also the most daring, utilizing a virtual-reality 360-degree scope to tell the story of a dad and his daughter, bonded by the music they share, all from the inside of the same car. It’s the one animated short this year guaranteed to move you.
Nomination: Best Animated Short Film

10

'Lion'

First-time feature filmmaker Garth Davis didn’t exactly come out of nowhere; he’d directed the acclaimed miniseries Top of the Lake, after all. With Lion, he adapts a true story that could have easily played as sappy, saccharine, or condescending. Instead, he tells the story of young Saroo, his separation from his family in India, and his adoption by a Tasmanian family as a kind of push-pull between the intimidating vastness of the world and the bonds that pull us close.

Nomination: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score

Where to stream Lion

9

'Fences'

Denzel Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s play was as close to a sure thing as we got in 2016. After all, Washington and Viola Davis had already pulled this off on Broadway, to the tune of massive acclaim and some Tony Awards. But that doesn’t take away from their accomplishment on this film. “Simply” shepherding a play from the stage to the screen often gets brushed off, but then why do so many films do it so poorly? Washington brought Wilson’s story to life with clarity and resonance.

Nomination: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay

Where to stream Fences

8

'Jackie'

Pablo Larrain and Natalie Portman engage in a delicate waltz here, walking a tightrope of tone that suggests the archness required of a woman who had the mantle of the American ideal thrust upon her, only to see the American real come crashing down on her in a moment of terrible violence. This is a movie that announces itself as cold and aloof and waits for your temperature to adjust to it. When it does, it’s so worth it.

Nomination: Best Actress, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design

Where to stream Jackie

7

'O.J.: Made in America'

Is it TV? Certainly most people watched it like it was TV. Is it a movie? It certainly premiered like it was a movie. Is it worthy of taking home the Best Documentary Oscar on Sunday? It certainly is. In a year that was not short on O.J. coverage, Ezra Edelman’s examination was illuminating, providing damning context and eye-opening perspective.

Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

Where to stream O.J.: Made in America

6

'Silence'

The surprising failure of Martin Scorsese’s latest to pull in any significant box office or more than a solo Oscar nomination should not affect our appreciation for how good it is. It’s a committed, rigorous, and deceptively complex story about faith and imperialism, anchored by an Andrew Garfield performance of such thoughtful vulnerability that it makes you incredibly grateful that Marty took a break from Leonardo DiCaprio. Rodrigo Prieto’s nominated cinematography is breathtaking.
Nomination: Best Cinematography

Where to stream Silence

5

'Hail, Caesar!'

Bolstered by phenomenal performances from Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, and Channing Tatum, the Coen brothers delivered a deceptively light film that possessed an honest affection for people who dedicate their lives to something as silly and often contradictory as the movie business. At least three scenes in this movie are among the top 10 of 2016, if not more.
Nomination: Best Production Design

Where to stream Hail, Caesar!

4

'Manchester by the Sea'

Kenneth Lonergan infuses his movie with so much more humor, so much more complexity, so much more recognizable feeling than you’re expecting by the description. The relationship between Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges’s characters defies any kind of prescribed arc, instead presenting two characters who fit at impossibly odd angles.
Nomination: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay

Where to stream Manchester by the Sea

3

'Moonlight'

Moonlight features such strong, simple storytelling, and that economy of language is all Barry Jenkins. There’s something truly remarkable when strong filmmaking meets revelatory acting meets the kinds of stories and lives that we are STARVING for. There’s sadness here, yes, and tragedy, but I can’t help but feel an undercurrent of celebration just for the radical act of making poetry out of lives that are usually not even afforded prose.
Nomination: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing

Where to stream Moonlight

2

'20th Century Women'

In his follow-up to Beginners, director Mike Mills casts a spell from moment one. Annette Bening is superb, playing a woman who’s both incredibly wise and incredibly aware of how much she doesn’t know. Any shot of her silently reacting to another character is to be treasured forever. Greta Gerwig does such wonderful, beautiful work as a scene partner here, taking her moments when they come but also as supportive an ensemble player as she’s ever been. But it’s those moments of narration, where the plot of the movie gives way to the longview, and we get to ponder a bit about the long arcs of time, that truly linger.
Nomination: Best Original Screenplay

Where to stream 20th Century Women

1

'Arrival'

When I first saw Arrival, I was blown away by its emotion and intelligence in service of a sci-fi story that became a story about language and bridging unbridgeable gaps. I next saw Arrival a few days after the election, when the film’s ideas about facing fearsome and unknown futures and seeing the end from the beginning were all the more moving. What’s beautiful about Arrival — besides the photography and the music and Amy Adams — is how our only salvation grows out of achieving complete and total empathy and nothing less. Thats what unlocks everything. It’s a beautiful message in a movie that might normally have merely been an exquisitely crafted, deeply emotional sci-fi tale. I didn’t see anything else that year that blew me away so thoroughly.
Nomination: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

Where to stream Arrival