20 Best & Worst Movies From 2017 Oscar Nominees

Best: The Others (2001)

Nicole Kidman has starred in bigger, flashier films than The Others, and they've been far more critically lauded, but her subtle take on a woman haunted by grief and one hell of a dirty secret is a triumph of performance. She is breathlessly captivating as a mother flirting with complete despair and teetering on the edge of a breakdown, whose deceit over her family and the audience is so perfectly played that watching the film a second time yields an entirely different performance by Kidman.

The big wow of the film's twist also relies on a lot of work she does up to that point: though you're utterly taken in by her fear at being "haunted", the revelation that she and her children are the ghosts explains all of the complexity and the doubt hanging on the almost imperceptible cues that something is amiss in her performance. And it's one that deserves far more credit than it tends to get.

Worst: Grace Of Monaco (2014)

Biopics are supposed to peel back the layers of the subject, laying them bare in a way that justifies such attention even being lavished on them. This is absolutely not the case with the vacuous Grace Of Monaco, which is unbearably slight, unfeasibly boring and hinges on a performance of such impenetrability from Kidman that you get absolutely no grasp on who her character is.

It's an airhead of a film, attempting to look pretty and appeal to historical junkies, but it lives up to precisely none of its promises.