Oscars: Every Best Picture Nominee Of The 2010s - Ranked Worst To Best
22. The Grand Budapest Hotel
You know what you’re getting with a Wes Anderson movie, and The Grand Budapest Hotel may just be the most Wes Anderson-y Wes Anderson movie ever made. Naturally, then, it’s a complete delight in just about every way.
From the perfect framing to the unique camera movements, the gorgeous costumes to the lavish production design, the obsession with details, sense of whimsy and wistfulness, a melancholy and a madness, all meshing together to create a movie that basically explains Wes Anderson movies, and tells its only funny, heartfelt story in the process.
JH
21. Get Out
What else is there to say about Get Out that hasn't already been said a million times before? Jordan Peele's breakout horror became a bona-fide phenomon, and for good reason. Not only was it a great, honest breakdown of contemporary race relations, tackled both head on in naturalistic dialogue and through stunning metaphor and horror iconography, but it was bloody scary to boot.
It's definitely more playful than its initial trailer may have suggested, but Get Out can take a turn into pure, unbridled terror territory at a moment's notice. The cracks in Logan as he tells Chris to "get out", or the first trip to the Sunken Place are both ridiculously haunting sequences, for instance, and act as moments which cut straight through the quirky pretences both the film, and the characters in it, lull you into.
It's one of the best horror films of the decade, and yeah, if I could have voted for Obama a third time, I would have. Why do you ask?
JB
20. Nebraska
Make anything in black and white these days and you're already making a statement about your confidence in your material. That's why Logan and Mad Max were released retrospectively that way - because their film-makers knew it, but the studios wouldn't have allowed that sort of tomfoolery.
When you're Alexander Payne and you've got a cast as low-key talented as he had in Nebraska, the confidence is just sort of organic. Ticking the dysfunctional family box and also the road trip one that some at the Academy seems to enjoy, telling the simple story of a man and his elderly father mending their tumultuous relationship entirely by accident on a trip that quite literally takes them back into the old man's past. Well, not literally, it's not Back To The Future.
Watching a mischievous June Squibb spill tea on other people's sex lives and flash her underwear to the grave of a dead suitor is just about worth the admission fee alone.
SG
19. Dunkirk
Seemingly, there comes a point when filmmakers of a certain ilk need to make a war film. Kubrick did it. Spielberg did it. So, of course, Nolan had to do it. He’d also proven himself the greatest blockbuster filmmaker of his generation, this just hammered home the point.
Once again showcasing his gift for large-scale action, playing with your perception of time, and, despite what his critics say, imbuing emotion into the heat of the action, Dunkirk is the kind of film to make your heart pound, ears burst, and eyes bleed. It demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
JH