Summary

• The 2024 Oscars' Best Picture nominees consist of a diverse range of genres, ranging from biopics to sci-fi satire.
• While some nominated movies are well-crafted and thought-provoking, not all of them are equally impressive.
• Maestro stands out as the weakest link due to its indulgence, tedious pacing, and obvious Oscar-bait tactics.

The nominations for the 2024 Oscars include one of the most genre-diverse Best Picture slates in recent memory, but some of the nominees are better movies than others. This year’s Best Picture nominees include a bleak anti-western, a World War II-set biopic, a ‘70s-set feel-good comedy, a sci-fi satire about a dead woman resurrected with the brain of her unborn baby, and an existentialist story about a doll discovering herself in the real world. The directors of these movies range from long-time legends like Martin Scorsese to first-time filmmakers like Celine Song.

While the Best Picture nods are supposed to be a definitive list of the greatest movies of the year, that’s rarely the case. The 2019 Academy Awards notoriously overlooked such masterpieces as Roma, BlacKkKlansman, and The Favourite to give the controversial Green Book the top prize. There aren’t a ton of weak links in this year’s Best Picture nominees – and none as baffling or scandalous as the 2019 winner – but some of the nominated movies are a lot more well-crafted and thought-provoking than others.

10 Maestro

Bradley Cooper Directs Himself In A Painfully Indulgent Biopic

The only obvious weak link in this year’s roster of Best Picture nominees is Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s tedious and indulgent biopic of Leonard Bernstein starring himself. Whereas Cooper’s debut feature A Star is Born was made for audiences to enjoy – and audiences responded with enthusiasm – Maestro seems to have been made purely for Oscar voters. With its black-and-white sections, changing aspect ratios, and interminably dull pacing, Maestro is this year’s most shallow and egregious example of Oscar bait.

Watch On Netflix

9 The Zone Of Interest

Jonathan Glazer Highlights The Horror Of The Holocaust With The Mundanity Next Door

Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest boldly tells its story from the perspective of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss, who tries to build a perfect life for his family next door to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Zone of Interest is more Son of Saul than Schindler’s List; rather than trying to capture the scope of the entire tragedy, Glazer conveys the horrors of the Holocaust through the shocking everyday mundanity of normalized genocide. It’s a cold study of willful ignorance, but it doesn’t hit quite as hard as some other movies about the same horrific war crimes.

The Zone of Interest is currently playing in cinemas.

8 American Fiction

Jeffrey Wright Lampoons Stereotypes In A Sharply Written Satire

Jeffrey Wright stars in American Fiction as a struggling Black author who writes an absurdly stereotypical novel to satirize the burdens faced by Black writers, only to find that the book is a huge success when the satire goes over the heads of critics and readers. American Fiction doesn’t have the cinematic visuals of some of its fellow nominees, but it is a razor-sharp satire of the fetishization of Black voices in the media. First-time director Cord Jefferson has proven himself to be a filmmaker to watch with this stunning debut.

American Fiction is currently playing in cinemas.

7 Anatomy Of A Fall

Justine Triet's Gripping Murder Mystery Keeps Its Focus On Family

Sandra Hüller stars in Anatomy of a Fall as a writer trying to prove her innocence when she’s accused of murdering her husband. Justine Triet’s movie is a gripping murder mystery that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, but that procedural storyline is just a backdrop to focus on the interpersonal issues within this family. Triet uses the familiar whodunit formula to explore power dynamics in a marriage and what an artist’s work says about them as a person.

Anatomy of a Fall is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

6 The Holdovers

Paul Giamatti & Alexander Payne Reunite For Another Touching Happy-Sad Comedy

Paul Giamatti reunited with Sideways director Alexander Payne in 2023 for The Holdovers, another pitch-perfect blend of heartfelt drama and feel-good comedy. Giamatti plays a classics teacher at a New England boarding school who reluctantly agrees to chaperone a bunch of students who have nowhere to go during the Christmas break. The Holdovers isn’t just set in the ‘70s; its grainy aesthetic and intimate focus on character dynamics make it play like a lost movie from the ‘70s.

Watch On Peacock

5 Barbie

Greta Gerwig Managed To Make A Movie About A Toy Into An Existential Masterpiece

Margot Robbie might have been snubbed for her incredible performance in the title role and Greta Gerwig might have been snubbed for making this zany idea work from the director’s chair, but Barbie still earned its much-deserved Best Picture nod. This musical fantasy comedy uses its pink, utopian setting to point out everything that’s wrong with the real world. Barbie is both crowd-pleasing blockbuster entertainment and a poignant meditation on human existence, and it’s very tricky to pull off both in the same movie.

Watch On Max

4 Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos & Emma Stone Deliver Another Work Of Surreal Profundity

After working together on previous Best Picture nominee The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone reunited and earned another nomination for Poor Things, their quirky, steampunk-infused, fiercely feminist take on the Frankenstein story. Stone gives a fearless, breathtaking portrayal of the expedited development of a woman resurrected with the mind of a child. Lanthimos managed to make an arthouse-type movie – with all the gonzo visuals and thought-provoking themes of arthouse science fiction – that is completely accessible to the casual moviegoer. Poor Things is darkly hilarious, hugely entertaining, and oddly empowering.

Poor Things is currently playing in cinemas.

3 Killers Of The Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese Upends The Whitewashed Myths Of The Western Genre

Killers of the Flower Moon runs for a whopping three-and-a-half hours, but it doesn’t feel a second too long. Martin Scorsese upended the whitewashed myths of the Western genre to tell the quintessential American story of greedy white people infiltrating the peaceful Osage Nation and slaughtering native people to usurp their oil fortune. This is a bleak, brutal movie – it’s certainly not an easy watch – but after countless Westerns painted white settlers as heroes and native people as villains, Killers of the Flower Moon finally presents America’s history of white supremacy in a suitably unflattering light.

Watch On Apple TV+

2 Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan Turned A Scientific Landmark Into A Cinematic Landmark

In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan turned one of the most significant events in human history into a mind-blowing cinematic landmark. Anchored by Cillian Murphy’s mesmerizing performance capturing the psychological intricacies of the father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer feels like the culmination of Nolan’s entire filmmaking career. It has the parallel color and black-and-white timelines of Memento, the rich history of Dunkirk, the complex duality of The Dark Knight trilogy, and the profundity of Inception and Interstellar. It’s as if Nolan’s entire cinematic crusade has been building towards this.

Oppenheimer is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

1 Past Lives

Celine Song Tells A Deeply Personal Love Story

This little indie darling is unlikely to win the actual award, but it’s arguably the finest film out of the 2024 Oscars’ Best Picture nominees. First-time filmmaker Celine Song bared her soul with this beautiful, semi-autobiographical love story about two childhood friends spending a weekend together in New York after 24 years and pondering what could have been. Song takes the time to flesh out the characters’ relationship in the first half, so their reunion in the second half has the appropriate emotional oomph. It might be Song’s first movie, but it plays like the work of a seasoned master.

Past Lives is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.