20 Best & Worst Movies From 2017 Oscar Nominees

Best: Moonlight (2016)

As good as Mahershala Ali is as drug-dealer with a heart Juan is, Naomie Harris' performance is arguably the best thing about Moonlight. She is the personified cost of Ali's decision to follow a criminal path - which is perhaps why he's drawn to her child, a mixture of compassion and guilt guiding him - and her itching drug addict is horribly compelling.

She is a monster of crack's creation, a shadow of a person, a lie of a mother, but still completely sympathetic as a villain, and she's another in the film's gallery of morally ambiguous character portraits.

Worst: Ninja Assassin (2009)

While Moonlight is artful and considered and beautiful, James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin is vulgar, inelegant and fatally boring for something so driven by action. Harris' supporting role is entirely forgettable and - presumably - entirely regrettable, since she struggles so helplessly to add personality to the torrent of blood and gore.