The 2024 Best Picture Nominees Ranked (and the Five Films that Should’ve Made it In)

This year is uncharacteristically stellar in the Best Picture category. Other years have had perhaps stronger individual films in their lineups, but so too have they included some real duds. The quality of a Best Picture lineup is not in the individual films but in the average quality across the board. Sometimes the two overlap; we may never see a better year than the 2020 Oscars, in which Best Picture was crowded with at least five all-time masterpieces. But often there’s just one or two shining stars amid a sea of solid, competent cinema. This year is not only unique for its remarkable consistency in quality, but for its incredible variety. Two of the biggest films of the year are both in contention, one a three-hour historical biopic and the other a summery family comedy. Among the group exists also a quiet indie romance, a bizarre Victorian sex fantasy, and an experimental observation of the horrors of the Holocaust. There’s also a new cozy Christmas classic and a gripping legal drama in the mix.

Here’s how things shake down for me. The best of the best, and the worst of the best. There is, unlike many years, not one bad film in the bunch, only films less deserving of their spot. Counting up from last place at number ten, we have…

10. Maestro

Bradley Cooper’s years-long passion project presents a sprawling tapestry of Leonard Bernstein’s life with breathtaking technical mastery and wonderfully captivating performances. Cooper himself is unrecognizable in an ambitious and precise embodiment of the legendary composer, and Carey Mulligan is utterly captivating as his wife, Felicia. At times, the film can feel burdened by its structural complexity and emotional detachment, and Cooper’s decision to focus on Bernstein’s romantic life is a frustrating sidestep of his numerous career achievements, but it’s hard to deny the remarkable craft on display at any given moment, even if nothing really registers under the surface.

9. American Fiction

A whip-smart satire of the literary world and white guilt, Cord Jefferson’s debut film balances relentless humour and affecting drama in an audacious story of deception and wit. Held together by a wonderfully understated performance from Jeffrey Wright, this scathing commentary is smart and observational, with an endearingly pleasant aesthetic and a likeable ensemble of performers. It is admittedly a bit one-note in its mockery of guilt-ridden white readers eager to consume “powerful” stories of Black suffering, but a cleverly subversive ending and some inventive stylistic flourishes prove Jefferson as a bold new voice to look out for in the cinematic realm.

8. Anatomy of a Fall

An intricately complex and entirely transfixing courtroom drama with a steel-drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” ringing throughout, Justine Triet’s film escapes the tired tropes of true crime thrillers by more closely interrogating the delicate relationships of its central characters. This captivating murder investigation is tightly wound and ice cold, buoyed by its central performance from Sandra Hüller who is both enthralling and calculated. Meticulously and systematically confronting the very notion of factual objectivity, Triet’s film features one of the most astonishing screenplays of the year, allowing its audience to take part directly in this nuanced interrogation of truth.

7. The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer presents the horrors of the Holocaust in the peripherals of his experimental, observational examination of the Commandant of Auschwitz and the idyllic life he built for his family. Relegating the greatest tragedy in human history to offscreen sound effects and distant background visuals only highlights the banality of evil that make these atrocities so unfathomable, and with a deeply distressing score from Mica Levi and a firm grasp on tone and atmosphere, Glazer’s masterful film roots itself deep in the mind and refuses to be too easily forgotten.

6. Barbie

A glitter-coated summer-fun blockbuster comedy, Greta Gerwig’s playful reimagining of the Barbie brand is an effortlessly charming journey into plastic paradise that is as consistently funny as its is wonderfully imaginative. Margot Robbie gives career-defining work here as the titular doll, and Ryan Gosling is an undeniable scene-stealer as the hopelessly smitten Ken. An absolute joy from its very first frame to its last, this delightfully camp meta-comedy is one of the most intricately crafted films of the year — from its stellar production design to its remarkably ambitious screenplay — and is a reassuring sign that Greta Gerwig is only just getting started.

5. The Holdovers

A sweetly nostalgic portrait of the seventies, Alexander Payne’s film is warmly sentimental and an instant Christmas classic. A boarding school dramedy whose unrelenting charm and endearing sincerity is outdone only by its palpable coziness, this familiar story is breathed new life through the nuanced and memorable performances from its core trio — Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Emulating its era in every facet of its visual and sonic presentation, Payne’s film delivers a touching throwback that balances both the comforts of its simple New England setting and the piercing melancholy of its well-rounded characters.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

The masterful Martin Scorsese once again delivers a sprawling epic of greed and violence with a sizzling condemnation of complicity, matched in its enormous scope and scale by its profoundly affecting intimacy. This harrowing retelling of the tragic Osage murders is handled with gripping urgency and great sensitivity, its focus narrowed in on a relationship built on deception and manipulation, inhabited by two truly captivating performances of equal commandment and force from Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. With the most memorable film ending of the year and a bold narrative perspective that bridges the past and the present, Scorsese’s latest is among the filmmaker’s most complex works, and a feat of rhythm and pacing at over three hours in length.

3. Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest invention dials up all his most wonderfully weird tendencies to an eleven and jolts it to life with a bolt of electricity. A bizarre Victorian fairytale odyssey of self-actualization, this Frankenstein sex fantasy-comedy marries its sumptuously odd and magnificently lush craft with an unrestricted exploration of the scope of the human experience, grounded by a committed lead performance from Emma Stone that feels under-praised even when calling it a career-best. Brazenly absurd and vibrantly singular in every respect, with astounding prosthetics and production design as the most obvious accomplishments in a film overflowing with technical achievements.

2. Past Lives

A breathtaking and heart-wrenching meditation on first love and missed connections, Celine Song’s pseudo-romance is the rare masterpiece that both devastates and life-affirms; a contemplative, tender embrace of a film that finds poignant universality in the quiet specificity of its core relationship. As exquisitely performed as it is wonderfully presented, with particular emphasis on Greta Lee’s entrancing lead performance, Song’s directorial debut has the confidence and force of a seasoned filmmaker, and is among the most affecting and powerful stories about the human experience in recent memory.

1. Oppenheimer

Even an IMAX frame feels too confining for the magnitude of Christopher Nolan’s monumental epic. A harrowing examination of hubris and obsession, this blockbuster-sized biopic about the inventor of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, is a jaw-dropping spectacle of tension and intensity. At once both utterly horrifying and strangely beautiful, Nolan’s latest is a technical masterwork that simply must be seen to be believed, and is so astonishingly complex in its structure and emotionally anchored by its seemingly never-ending Rolodex of skilled Hollywood A-listers, it is quite honestly hard to fathom how such an achievement even got made.

But despite this excellent crop of nominees, several of the year’s very best did not make the cut. Here are five of my favourite films of the year, any of which would have made a greatly deserving Best Picture nominees.

The Boy and the Heron

The greatest storyteller in the history of animation and one of the most singular voices in the cinematic medium has gifted this world another breathtaking masterpiece — an awe-inspiring and soul-shattering marvel that examines enormous narrative and thematic complexity through the visual lens of Hayao Miyazaki’s distinct style. Set against gorgeously vibrant hand-drawn animation and a devastating score by Joe Hisaishi, the latest Studio Ghibli film is mesmerizing and poignant, a transportive epic filled with crushing emotion and soaring artistry. Its world-building is absorbing, its characters are multifaceted, and its presentation is masterful. Like the very best, it does not feel meticulously constructed, rather birthed fully formed.

Asteroid City

Painted with the pastel-coloured storybook presentation that has become his signature style and imbued with the rich thematic depth and emotional poignancy his recent work has sorely lacked, Wes Anderson’s latest is a magnificently whimsical and effortlessly charming meta-story about stories themselves. Loaded with an enormous ensemble cast of A-list talent and crafted with the filmmaker’s trademark intricacy and detail, this extraterrestrial tale of theatre-stars and Star-gazers is Anderson once again at top-form, and is among the most finely crafted films in the auteur’s wide-ranging catalog.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

An explosive feast for the (spidey) senses, this superhero sequel is a staggering achievement in animation storytelling, and a wholly entertaining second-outing for Miles Morales’ Spider-Man. A blast through some of the most inventive visuals the cinematic medium has ever seen, this super-sized sequel opts for a more textured, mature story than its origin-story predecessor, expanding Miles’ world both outward and inward in fresh, innovative ways. With electrifying music by Daniel Pemberton and an enormous heart at its centre, Lord and Miller’s second trip across the Spider-Verse is the kind of ambitious, boundary-pushing movie magic bliss we are far too rarely gifted.

May December

Todd Haynes’ elusive drama examines media sensationalism and the most innate motivations of human behaviour with a layered and nuanced story of an unspoken duel of wits between the middle-aged subject of a tabloid sex scandal and the Juilliard-trained actress set to portray her on film. It lends itself wonderfully to analysis and deconstruction with a rich and textured screenplay (one of the year’s very best) that manages to balance both chilling discomfort and humorous levity. Remarkable performances across the board, though special attention must be given to Charles Melton who steals the whole thing.

All of Us Strangers

Coated in an otherworldly, etherial sheen of sunset oranges and melancholic blues, Andrew Haigh’s quietly devastating film is loneliness itself distilled to cinematic form, tangled with the intoxicating thrill of fledging intimacy and spun around by its literal supernatural workings. Somehow capturing the entire emotional scope of the human experience in 105 minutes, this genre-bending romance finds strange comfort in hyper-specificity, as a young man juggles a new romance with the only other resident in his building, while grappling with his parent’s unexpected (and unexplainable) reemergence in his life. It leaves off with so much to ruminate on and contemplate, it almost demands a second viewing.