The Best Picture category has a pretty solid crop this year, with even the most polarizing of the lot enjoying no shortage of popularity. Of course, there's some prime targets for backlash, but there's nothing like American Sniper this year, let alone something along the lines of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Last year, I missed several of the nominees, but this time around I've managed to see everything, at least in the running for the top award. Here is how I would personally rank them:
9. The Post
Notoriously rushed into production, Steven Spielberg's glorified hot take on the Trump administration occasionally does show glimmers of the kineticism which defines his best work. Spielberg is one of cinema's greatest visual storytellers and a master of atmosphere, and alongside typically committed starring performances from Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, he gives the film the sheen of an accomplished production, but faced with endless scenes of thematic exposition and a cast entirely consisting of symbolic caricatures, he often sinks into autopilot, tossing flaccid comic relief into otherwise intense scenes and tediously panning into conversation after conversation after conversation. The Post, with its predictable character arcs and deeply impersonal stakes, is more political tract than film, and one wonders if its undeniable highs would prove less fleeting if Spielberg and his team had taken more time to get it right.
8. Darkest Hour
The most surprising joy of Joe Wright's crowd-pleasing Winston Churchill biopic is that, for a long time, it resists the sort of hagiography which is so common in these films. Not only is the Churchill of Darkest Hour is recognized for many of his faults, the film even paints him as a pariah, and as long as the film stays out of his head, the film remains a terse and genuinely entertaining portrait of a brutal man whose fierce convictions make him the perfect fit for a brutal time. Wright demonstrates a lot of fun visual showboating, best exemplified by the moody shadows which cloak every corner of the frame, and it's only when Anthony McCarten's script gives in to phony populism in the climax that the film finally embraces the bland tastefulness it had until then avoided, its refreshing pragmatism thrown largely to the wayside. Oldman's performance is terrific, and he rises to the call even when the tone goes sentimental, but for an until-then solid picture to not stick the landing leaves a bad taste.
7. Phantom Thread
Largely known as Daniel Day-Lewis's final role, Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread is such an aesthetically precise and inspired picture that its opacity is all the more puzzling. Although the film notoriously comes into clearer perspective upon a second watch, the film's appeal is fundamentally based on an acceptance of its central relationship, which is so transparently toxic as to promise a tragedy which never quite comes. The ultimate theme here, only revealed at the very end, gives a twisted new perspective to everything preceding, but the protagonists are so outwardly controlling and abusive that their view of love is difficult to accept. None of that is to say that the film isn't genuinely entrancing, with its gauzy visual style, an offbeat sense of humour, and an enjoyably unpredictable narrative, but it's also cold and distant, and its sheer reliance on eccentricity tends to dampen the humour if one doesn't find the characters' antics charming. Mostly, though, it's that ending which will make or break the film, and alas, it lacked the necessary emotional truth for me.
6. Get Out
Arguably the biggest populist phenomenon of the lineup, and easily the most pointedly relevant, Jordan Peele's creepy and hilarious social satire applies a wide variety of familiar horror tropes and wraps them in an incisive wrapper. Although the satirical elements rarely mesh comfortably with the horror ones, the imagery of Get Out is consistently inventive, and its sheer nerve is admirable compared to its often conservative peers in the horror genre. Few studio films are willing to tackle contemporary American race relations this directly, and Peele's film has the additional benefit of being propulsive and deliriously entertaining, anchoring all of its skin-crawling creepiness on a terrific everyman performance from Daniel Kaluuya. On top of all of that, the sharp humour Peele displayed on his old skit comedy show shines through, with reams of funny dialogue and tight pacing both in the film's gags and its scares. As commendable as the film is for its daring, its greatest success lies in its purest cinematic pleasures.
5. Call Me By Your Name
Luca Guadagnino's same-sex romance is such a funny, intelligent, and elemental picture as to transcend its ultimately directionless narrative. Although the narrative trajectory is familiar and lacking in stakes, there's a visceral physicality to the film which truly elevates it. The emotional journey of protagonist Elio is so deeply felt in every motion, every shot, every cut as to have an overpowering cumulative effect, and all of that is tied to an insightful character arc of finding one's own identity, not only cultural or sexual but in all senses. With its two-hour plus length, the film's ethereal quality can become tiring, but it's also buoyed by charming humour and entrancing intimacy. Moreover, it's that length, as well as the film's languid pacing, which allows the film to really build Elio as a person, and he's imminently recognizable as someone who's finally gaining the confidence and independence to assert his own individuality. Mostly, though, Call Me By Your Name is all about that cumulative effect, the slowly building emotional punch which comes from that transformation; if the much-lauded conclusion didn't have the same emotional effect on me as it did on others, that hardly diminishes the sheer warmth and closeness the film achieves.
4. Dunkirk
In distinct contrast with the increasing bloat of his previous films, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk runs a lithe 106 minutes, and yet it captures the same staggering sense of scale as the director's other recent works. For the most part, this comes down to its astonishing technical acumen, scrambling three scenes of already significant tension into a queasy miasma of violence, a film where the possibility of blood feels far too real for anyone to notice its absence. Nolan designed the film for IMAX screens, and in that environment the film achieves staggering heights of claustrophobia, but in any context it would be an astonishingly anxious tone poem, its soundtrack of ticking clocks and queasy drones generating an unease which is as beautiful as the gorgeously enveloping cinematography. While the film is by far the coldest in the competition, its unfathomable technical and emotional accomplishment trumps whatever hollowness one might find in its confusion.
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Martin McDonagh's mournful Three Billboards is understandably the biggest backlash target of the lot, with its insistence on universality rather than topicality and its clear sympathy for racist, violent police officers among other unsavoury characters, but its that willingness to pierce through deliberately off-putting characterization in which its greatness lies. McDonagh's unpredictable comic sensibility lends levity to what is in many ways a genuinely downbeat film, concerned more with pain and how people externalize it than with anything more insidious. Those praising it as a welcome critique of the anger prevalent in modern society undersell it: the point here isn't that anger is harmful or even unrighteous, but that it cannot make pain go away, and that even if your convictions are correct, the only way to heal is to move on. My biggest concern is that if Three Billboards sweeps the Oscars, it will be for all the wrong reasons, when much more this film deserves to be recognized for the insight and empathy of its character study.
2. The Shape of Water
Guillermo del Toro is a towering force in American cinema, but his works since Pan's Labyrinth have struggled to achieve the recognition of that most prestigious work. As someone who has long had sympathy for monsters, his peculiar fascinations are perfectly suited to social commentary, and in The Shape of Water, he has devised an emotionally enveloping work which operates within the confines of a 1960s period piece to deconstruct the power structures upon which America is founded, and which have so often emerged in Hollywood's cinematic traditions. While the film's anti-nostalgic stance is arguably safe, it's that comforting wrapper through which del Toro smuggles an almost mythic, pseudo-Pagan tale of the disenfranchised resisting their oppressors, and more importantly, he inverts a wide range of cinematic references without compromising the film's consistency. It's an earnestly radical film with mass appeal, and that's perhaps its greatest achievement.
1. Lady Bird
Already sweeping many prior awards is Greta Gerwig's directorial debut Lady Bird, a high school film which takes the strengths of those teen films before it and merges them into something altogether warmer, more honest, and more nuanced. Gerwig, having built her career as the star of indie movies like Frances Ha, brings honesty and emotional depth out of her actors, and while the titular character begins realistically insufferable, the film wrings that nastiness for all of its depth, rendering its protagonist a chameleon of social identities, stumbling through life until she finally finds herself. And while that may sound cliched, it's the specificity and the detail of Lady Bird's story which gives it the whiff of authenticity, and it's that truthfulness which elevates the film above its peers. On top of that, the film renders its supporting cast with equal depth to its protagonist, and as endearing and funny as they can be, their struggles are real and lived-in. Everyone in this film is on a precipice, and Gerwig's greatest success is that she emphasizes just how real that precipice is without abandoning the unreal pleasures of cinema.
It's not as strong a slate as, say, the 2015 competition, but there are a lot of heavy hitters here, and it will be interesting to see which way the Academy swings, especially with recent expansions to its membership and internal changes. As always, some bets are probably safer than others, and some movies of last year are conspicuously absent (I still love you, The Florida Project). But this is one of the tightest competitions of recent years, and whichever choice is made will be easily understandable. Well, maybe not The Post or Darkest Hour. But still.
Todd Throndson
VioletWisp
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