20 Best & Worst Movies From 2018 Oscar Nominees

4. Denzel Washington

Best: Training Day (2001)

Washington's performance as notorious, corrupt cop Alonzo Harris definiely isn't the most nuanced or deep character he's ever played, but that's not the point. There's no artful subtlety here, he's not a devastating humanist or an important political figure, but it is easily his most explosive and his most transformative.

This was Washington showing he could do something different, and boy did it come off? He's done nothing at all like it since, which makes you wonder why when you watch it. He's dangerous, animalistic and a bully, but beneath his surface is a coward teetering on a knife-edge and Washington sells every level of the character.

Worst: Heart Condition (1990)

Who has ever wondered what a ghostly Denzel Washington haunting Bob Hoskins would look like in a film? Well, this, basically.

Someone in Hollywood obviously wanted that question answered, as well as what would happen if a horribly racist man was given a black man's heart in a bypass and was followed around by his ghost with "funny" results. The answer to that is no laughs and an awful lot of awkwardness - presumably especially for Washington, every time he looked back at it in the next three decades of work.