13 Awesome 2018 Movies That Deserve Best Picture (But Won't Get Nominated)

4. Leave No Trace

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100% (8.5/10)

Why It Deserves Best Picture: Writer-director Debra Granik's follow-up to her Best Picture-nominated Winter's Bone is one of the year's most emotionally raw and subtly affecting dramas.

Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin McKenzie are stunning as a father and daughter living off-the-grid, and behind only Paddington 2, it has the most reviews of any movie to score 100% on Rotten Tomatoes to date.

Tenaciously acted and deeply affecting despite its lack of melodramatic grandstanding, Leave No Trace is a wonderfully low-key instant classic.

Why It Won't Get Nominated: Again, this is another movie that's just not obvious enough for the Academy. Rather than signpost emotional touchstones and have characters slobber all over themselves as they reel off overwrought monologues, most everything here is internalised and left for the viewer to parse themselves.

Like Eighth Grade, it did at least scoop some Spirit Award nods.