Best Picture 2017: Oscar Nominees Ranked

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:

My Top 10 Favourite Films of 2017

In many ways, 2017 was a year of regeneration for popular cinema. Despite the continuing blight of forced franchise-building and the existence of The Emoji Movie, there was also a shocking outpour of artistry in studio tentpoles: Get Out, Logan, Wonder Woman, Baby Driver, War for the Planet of the Apes, Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, among others, all provided the year with a ceaseless procession of ambitious and intelligent blockbusters, and Netflix provided a flawed but ambitious and well-crafted alternative in Okja, which has all the excitement and visual prowess of a studio tentpole while also packing much more of a personal vision. In an era where so many alternatives to the inconvenient and expensive world of cinema entertainment exist, studios saw losses on many pictures, but where the product delivered, audiences showed up. In that sense as well as many others (most notably the #TimesUp movement), this was also a year of upheaval. For the industry, there's work to be done, and lessons to be learned, but for moviegoers, there was a wealth of riches to experience. Here, from A to Z, are my ten favourites of this lot.

Movie review: "Lady Bird"

THROND'S CHOICE
dir. and written by Greta Gerwig
Teenagers can be terrible. Last year's The Edge of Seventeen understood that, and mined it for a lot of pathos and humour, presenting a character who's just beginning to see the world outside of her own mind. Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, Lady Bird, plays on many of the same themes, but imbues them with even more detail and specificity, with a more ambitious lead character and a much wider thematic range. It's just as funny, and boasts both more pathos and more irresolution, and by a wide margin it manages to eclipse last year's already wonderful entry in the genre.

But that's not to say that this is an iteration on already-explored themes. Here, Gerwig shows potential to be just as accomplished a writer and director as she is an actress, with a nuanced script which boasts loads of specificity, strongly developed characters, and powerful insight into the relationships between parents and their children. Specificity has a way of revealing universals, and as much as Lady Bird works simply as an uproarious teen comedy, the way it ends isn't with a big laugh but with one final note of soulful contemplation. This is a wonderful movie.