20th Century Women
Rank: 20
awardType: screenplayOriginal
Nominated for: Original Screenplay (Mike Mills)
20th Century Women is an autobiography of a cultural moment, driven by stellar performances from Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning. The multigenerational story is light on its feet, funny, and wide-ranging, full of bright performances, evocative music, and the occasional experimental flourish.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Allied
Rank: 58
awardType: costumeDesign
Nominated for: Costume Design (Joanna Johnston)
Allied feels like a relic from a much older age, a serious spy drama that looks and acts more like Hitchcock by way of Casablanca than a Bond movie. It’s gorgeous but curiously empty. There’s style aplenty, but a faltering third act ultimate flattens any substance.
Read our review
Availability: Digital download on Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Captain Fantastic
Rank: 54
awardType: actor
Nominated for: Actor (Viggo Mortensen)
Viggo Mortensen plays a nonconformist father of six whose happy life with his wife and children off the grid is interrupted when his wife dies. So the grieving family loads up in the minivan and starts driving across the country. Though the film tips over toward sentimentality at times, it’s also often very funny.
N/A
Availability: Digital download on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Elle
Rank: 32
awardType: actress
Nominated for: Actress (Isabelle Huppert)
Elle is directed by Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct), which should be the first clue that you're in for a wild ride. The film opens with the brutal rape of Michèle (the great Isabelle Huppert) and then refuses to follow any expected track. It's either a feminist comedy of triumph, a satirical farce of Frenchness, or a twisted fantasy, depending on who’s watching.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Fences
Rank: 33
awardType: bestPicture actor supportingActress screenplayAdapted
Nominated for: Picture (Todd Black, Scott Rudin, Denzel Washington), Actor (Denzel Washington), Actress (Viola Davis), Adapted Screenplay (August Wilson)
Denzel Washington and Viola Davis star in Fences, which Washington also directed. The Pittsburgh-set story of a middle-aged sanitation worker and his family, Fences is adapted from August Wilson's Pulitzer-winning play of the same name. It’s a bit static onscreen, a serious movie most interested in showcasing its stars’ outstanding performances. But its story also feels fresh, as if it were written to slot itself into the concerns of today.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Fire at Sea
Rank: 11
awardType: documentaryFeature
Nominated for: Documentary Feature (Gianfranco Rosi, Donatella Palermo)
Hundreds of African and Middle Eastern migrants arrive on the Italian island of Lampedusa every week. In Fire at Sea, documentarian Gianfranco Rosi shows what life looks like for the island's residents and the rescue crews, cutting between scenes of life on the island and the people who help receive and treat migrants. The film is a deeply humane exploration of the human cost of the crisis and how people live in the midst of it.
N/A
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Hidden Figures
Rank: 45
awardType: bestPicture supportingActress screenplayAdapted
Nominated for: Picture (Peter Chernin, Donna Gigliotti, Theodore Melfi, Jenno Topping, Pharrell Williams), Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer), Adapted Screenplay (Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi)
Hidden Figures is an inspirational historical drama about three black women whose work at NASA was instrumental in putting John Glenn into orbit around Earth. That could have been the recipe for a much hokier film, but the movie — based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly — is just Hollywood enough to stay entertaining, while smart enough to know how important its story is. Hidden Figures blends contemporary conversations about race, gender, diversity in STEM fields, and patriotism, and presents them in a thought-provoking historical package.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Jackie
Rank: 24
awardType: actress costumeDesign score
Nominated for: Actress (Natalie Portman), Costume Design (Madeline Fontaine), Original Score (Mica Levi)
Jackie approaches the legend of America’s Camelot era as a sort of experimental movie, an exercise in real-time mythmaking. Natalie Portman is brilliant as the grieving widow learning quickly how to craft a legend. It’s a revelation, a steady gaze into the early years in which the American presidency was a site for crafting an image not just for the history books, but for the cameras.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Jim: The James Foley Story
Rank: 56
awardType: song
Nominated for: Original Song (J. Ralph, Sting) for "The Empty Chair"
In 2012, journalist and war correspondent James Foley was kidnapped in Syria while reporting on the civil war there and spent two years as a prisoner before his captors beheaded him on camera in August 2014, introducing most of the world to ISIS. In this documentary, made by Foley’s friend Brian Oakes, friends and family talk about Foley, his work, and his legacy.
N/A
Availability: Digital download at Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play; streaming on HBO
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Life, Animated
Rank: 35
awardType: documentaryFeature
Nominated for: Documentary Feature (Roger Ross Williams, Julie Goldman)
Life, Animated is a joyful documentary portrait of a family who’s torn apart by their son’s severe autism and then brought back together through Disney movies. It’s also an instructive glimpse into how autistic individuals can participate in society, and in ways they haven’t always been able to in the past.
Read our review
Availability: Digital download at Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Lion
Rank: 27
awardType: bestPicture supportingActor supportingActress screenplayAdapted cinematography score
Nominated for: Picture (Iain Canning, Angie Fielder, Emile Sherman), Supporting Actor (Dev Patel), Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman), Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies), Cinematography (Greig Fraser), Original Score (Dustin O'Halloran, Volker Bertelmann)
The true story behind Lion is so intriguing that director Garth Davis could have leaned back in directing it: A young boy from the Indian slums is separated from his family, gets adopted by an Australian couple, and, eventually, goes in search of his mother. But the movie takes the tricky way around by shooting something more cinephiliac that audiences can also respect.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Manchester by the Sea
Rank: 5
awardType: bestPicture actor supportingActor supportingActress directing screenplayOriginal
Nominated for: Picture (Lauren Beck, Matt Damon, Kimberly Steward, Chris Moore, Kevin J. Walsh), Actor (Casey Affleck), Supporting Actor (Lucas Hedges), Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Director (Kenneth Lonergan), Original Screenplay (Kenneth Lonergan)
Beautifully shot and full of knockout performances, Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea is a remarkable film in almost every respect. In the film, a janitor with a tragic past (Casey Affleck, whose nomination sparked controversy) returns home to care for his teenage nephew after his brother dies. The film’s greatest achievement is not just portraying but embodying the complicated inner lives of the men at its center. The result is hard to categorize: Is it drama? Melodrama? Tragedy? Comedy? What's certain is this: It's a masterpiece.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Nocturnal Animals
Rank: 43
awardType: supportingActor
Nominated for: Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon)
Tom Ford returns to the big screen with a twisty story-within-a-story, in which a woman is forced to grapple with her past while reading a novel manuscript that her ex-husband sent her. In the manuscript, a man’s family is brutally taken from him while driving across Texas. The link between her story and the novel’s story isn’t obvious at first, but it becomes clearer as she reads on. The film focuses on aesthetics, and sometimes comes up short on substance, but it has all the hallmarks of Ford’s style.
Read our review
Availability: Digital download at Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Passengers
Rank: 60
awardType: score, productionDesign
Nominated for: Original Score (Thomas Newman), Production Design (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Gene Serdena)
What on earth happened here? Passengers has all the glossy elements of a large-scale sci-fi blockbuster, including its two big stars, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. But the screenplay (which languished in Hollywood for years before finally getting made) is queasily tone-deaf, a disturbing wish fulfillment fantasy that someone should have challenged long before it debuted on the big screen.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
The Salesman
Rank: 17
awardType: foreign
Nominated for: Foreign Language Film (Iran)
Asghar Farhadi won't attend the Oscars this year because of President Trump's travel ban, but the film he’s nominated for both recasts Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (one storyline has the film’s characters rehearsing a production of the play) and tells its own empathetic story of life in Tehran.
N/A
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
Sully
Rank: 42
awardType: soundEditing
Nominated for: Sound Editing (Alan Robert Murray, Bub Asman)
When a plane landed on the Hudson River in January 2009, everyone expected the worst. But it turned out to be the result of mechanical failure, and thanks to the skill of the plane’s pilot, all 155 passengers on board were saved. Clint Eastwood's movie smartly sticks mostly to the aftermath from the landing, with a quiet, mature argument for competence over bureaucracy.
N/A
Availability: Digital download at Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play
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availabilitySlug: DigitalDownload
Toni Erdmann
Rank: 4
awardType: foreign
Nominated for: Foreign Language Film (Germany)
The German comedy Toni Erdmann slow-burns its humor, winding up to the punch with care and pathos. Toni Erdmann is about a father who refuses to do what’s expected of him, and a daughter whose drive to be nothing like him has pushed her to the verge of hysterics. Their relationship is a hothouse in which the absurdity of modern life can be both exposed and forgiven.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
4.1 Miles
Rank: 3
awardType: documentaryShort
Nominated for: Documentary Short (Daphne Matziaraki)
The best of the stellar short documentaries nominated, the 26-minute 4.1 Miles follows a group of residents of the Greek island of Lesbos trying to rescue people who flee Afghanistan by boat. The island’s struggles to cope with the influx is placed alongside the tireless rescuers’ work to save those in the water, mostly women and children.
N/A
Availability: Streaming at the New York Times; also in theaters or available via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
Extremis
Rank: 36
awardType: documentaryShort
Nominated for: Documentary Short (Dan Krauss)
Extremis is a simple and heartrending look into an intensive care unit where families, doctors, and patients must make end-of-life decisions in the midst of murky ethical waters. The 24-minute short illuminates the difficulties in such decisions simply by pointing the camera at them.
N/A
Availability: Streaming on Netflix; also in theaters or available via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
Joe's Violin
Rank: 39
awardType: documentaryShort
Nominated for: Documentary Short (Kahane Cooperman, Raphaela Neihausen)
Joe is a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who decides to donate his violin to a girls’ school in the Bronx, where it goes to budding violinist Brianna Perez. The resulting friendship between the two and the music they create, as chronicled by this 24-minute documentary short, is uplifting and moving.
N/A
Availability: Streaming on YouTube; also in theaters or available via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
Watani: My Homeland
Rank: 30
awardType: documentaryShort
Nominated for: Documentary Short (Marcel Mettelsiefen, Stephen Ellis)
This heartbreaking 40-minute documentary short follows a Syrian family through life in war-torn Aleppo to, eventually, resettlement in Germany after the father, a rebel fighter, is abducted by ISIS. Told mostly through interviews with the children, it is a riveting, moving depiction of Syrian refugees and the human toll of extremism.
N/A
Availability: In theaters or via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
The White Helmets
Rank: 15
awardType: documentaryShort
Nominated for: Documentary Short (Orlando von Einsiedel, Joanna Natasegara)
The Syria Civil Defense is a group of ordinary men — former builders, tailors, and artisans — who work to extract victims from beneath the rubble in places like Aleppo. The group has saved more than 58,000 people since 2013. This 41-minute documentary short follows the men as they struggle to prevent the loss of life, and lets them tell us why, as one man puts it, "this job is sacred."
N/A
Availability: Streaming on Netflix; also in theaters or available via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
Land of Mine
Rank: 29
awardType: foreign
Nominated for: Foreign Language Film (Denmark)
After the end of World War II, a group of young German soldiers is sent to Denmark to clear a beach of land mines placed there by Nazi forces. The sergeant in charge — a Dane who hates Germans, since they occupied his country for years during the war — gradually warms to them. Land of Mine pulls off the challenging task of garnering sympathy for soldiers stuck on both sides of the conflict.
N/A
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: InTheaters
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Rank: 59
awardType: soundMixing
Nominated for: Sound Mixing
Even by the standards of "a Michael Bay movie about Benghazi," 13 Hours is kind of a catastrophe. It turns a tragedy into an opportunity for car chases, gunfights, and explosions, and Bay doesn’t know how to turn off his drive to make everything that happens a visually dazzling tribute to manliness. There’s maybe a good movie to be made about Benghazi. There’s probably even a good one to be made that’s critical of the Obama administration’s handling of it. 13 Hours isn’t it.
Read our review
Availability: Streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu; also available on DVD and for digital download
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
Arrival
Rank: 8
awardType: bestPicture directing screenplayAdapted cinematography filmEditing productionDesign soundMixing soundEditing
Nominated for: Picture, Director (Denis Villeneuve), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing
Director Denis Villeneuve’s tale of first contact between aliens and humans became an unexpected box office hit and a powerful metaphor for establishing communication with those who are very different from you. The should-have-been-nominated-for-Best-Actress Amy Adams plays a linguist invited to help translate an alien language, and the process of doing so changes her life in more ways than one. The film is both intelligent science fiction and a deeply emotional story of learning to live with loss — and its truly alien-looking aliens are surprisingly engaging characters.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters; also available on DVD and for digital download
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload inTheaters
Borrowed Time
Rank: 34
awardType: shortFilmAnimated
Nominated for: Animated Short
This tale of a grizzled Old West sheriff who returns to the scene of a boyhood tragedy is clearly meant to be the first few minutes of a feature film, but it’s stylish and moving enough to work all on its own. Made by Pixar employees (though not by Pixar itself), the short has a tone that’s refreshingly sober and adult.
N/A
Availability: In theaters or via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload
Doctor Strange
Rank: 49
awardType: visualEffects
Nominated for: Visual Effects
Marvel’s latest superhero spectacular casts Benedict Cumberbatch as a surgeon who goes in search of mystical solutions to his shaking hands after damaging them in a car accident. Along the way, he meets an eclectic cast of characters and gets into a bunch of mind-bending fights. Doctor Strange’s visual effects are truly impressive — like Magic Eye posters swallowing the proceedings then regurgitating them — but its story is thin.
Read our review
Availability: In some theaters; also available for digital download and on DVD February 28
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload inTheaters
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Rank: 55
awardType: productionDesign costumeDesign
Nominated for: Production Design, Costume Design
This J.K. Rowling–scripted kickoff to a proposed five-film(!) Harry Potter prequel series has many typical prequel flaws. It takes a long time to get where it’s going, its story (of a young wizard heading to 1930s New York in hopes of saving magical creatures) is bland, and it has a serious protagonist problem (in that all of its non-protagonist characters are more interesting). But it has a nice theme, and it’s gorgeous to look at.
Read our review
Availability: In some theaters; available on DVD March 28
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availabilitySlug: inTheaters
Hacksaw Ridge
Rank: 48
awardType: bestPicture directing actor filmEditing soundMixing soundEditing
Nominated for: Picture, Director (Mel Gibson), Actor (Andrew Garfield), Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing
Oscar-winning director (and walking scandal machine) Mel Gibson tells the story of Desmond Doss, the World War II veteran combat medic who received the first Medal of Honor ever given to someone who didn’t fire a single shot. Naturally, he’s filled this tale of walking a difficult line between patriotic duty and religious pacifism with as much carnage as possible. Men explode, blood spatters, and Gibson’s camera delights in it all. That said, the sequence where an unarmed Doss saves as many men as possible is worth seeing.
Read our review
Availability: In some theaters; also available for digital download and on DVD
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload inTheaters
I Am Not Your Negro
Rank: 2
awardType: documentaryFeature
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
Director Raoul Peck turns author James Baldwin’s final book proposal — he died before he could write the full work — into a gorgeous, incendiary deep dive into the history of race in America, or, more accurately, just the history of America. The film is a collage of footage from throughout the country’s history, right up until the present, and its insistence that systemic racism is a disease America must deal with before it can truly be its best self is presented in convincing fashion.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: inTheaters
La Femme et le TGV
Rank: 28
awardType: shortFilmLive
Nominated for: Live-Action Short
A small-town Swiss woman who lives by the tracks for the high-speed TGV train waves her Swiss flag at the train every morning — and soon discovers she’s attracted the interest of someone aboard. The ending of this film leaves something to be desired, but it’s a sweetly winning tale with a beautiful eye for set decoration.
N/A
Availability: In theaters or via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload
La La Land
Rank: 23
awardType: bestPicture directing actor actress screenplayOriginal cinematography filmEditing productionDesign costumeDesign score song soundMixing soundEditing
Nominated for: Picture, Director (Damien Chazelle), Actor (Ryan Gosling), Actress (Emma Stone), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Original Score, Original Song ("Audition"), Original Song ("City of Stars"), Sound Mixing, Sound Editing
Equal parts joyfulness, wistfulness, and bittersweet melancholy, La La Land — a gentle, largely unassuming little musical about two would-be artists who fall in love over the course of one year in Los Angeles — is a disarmingly slight movie to have somehow managed 14 Oscar nominations. But its nomination haul and probable Oscar triumph speak both to how well-crafted it is and how much America could use a little escapism right now. (It’s proved a box office hit too.) But there’s more to La La Land than simple escapism. It’s also a tribute to nostalgia in all its forms — especially nostalgia for the chapters of your own life you can’t quite put behind you.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters
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availabilitySlug: inTheaters
The Lobster
Rank: 25
awardType: screenplayOriginal
Nominated for: Original Screenplay
Probably the weirdest movie nominated for an Oscar this year, this Yorgos Lanthimos film concerns a world in which single people must go to a hotel to seek their perfect mate. If they can’t find said mate within an allotted period of time, they’re condemned to be transformed into an animal of their own choosing. This dry, strange satire of the dating scene won’t be for everyone, but if you can get on its wavelength, it’s a tremendously funny look at the things we do for love.
Read our review
Availability: Streaming on Amazon Prime; also available on DVD and for digital download
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availabilitySlug: streaming
Moonlight
Rank: 1
awardType: bestPicture directing supportingActor supportingActress screenplayAdapted cinematography filmEditing score
Nominated for: Picture, Director (Barry Jenkins), Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Supporting Actress (Naomie Harris), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Original Score
Our choice for the best film nominated for any Oscar this year is this beautiful coming-of-age story, which spends a few days with a boy named Chiron at three different periods of his life: as a child, a teenager, and an adult. Chiron grows up poor and black in low-income housing in Miami, and he’s also slowly trying to come to terms with his homosexuality, something he only confronts in fits and starts. The film’s unusual structure — it’s essentially three short stories about the same character, played by three different actors — makes it unlike anything else out there, and its poetic direction and performances take it to the next level.
Read our review
Availability: In theaters; also available for digital download and on DVD February 28
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availabilitySlug: inTheaters digitalDownload
My Life as a Zucchini
Rank: 13
awardType: animatedFeature
Nominated for: Animated Feature
This Swiss animated film (dubbed in English with a terrific cast led by Nick Offerman) essentially asks, "What if the Peanuts gang lived in a group home for troubled children?" Young Zucchini finds himself a ward of the state after his mother dies, and his darkly whimsical adventures with the other kids in foster care somehow perfectly walk the line between taking Zucchini’s journey seriously and becoming too depressing to bear.
N/A
Availability: In some theaters
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availabilitySlug: inTheaters
O.J.: Made in America
Rank: 6
awardType: documentaryFeature
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
Nearly eight hours long, this documentary played briefly in theaters to qualify for the Oscars before airing in four parts on ESPN (where most viewers saw it). But regardless of whether you saw it in theaters or on TV, it’s a mesmerizing opus that turns the life and trial of O.J. Simpson into a Rosetta stone for understanding America’s troubled relationships with race, celebrity, gender, class, and itself. That director Ezra Edelman has made a movie both this engaging and this long feels miraculous.
Read our review
Availability: Streaming in three parts on Hulu; also available on DVD and for digital download
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availabilitySlug: Streaming
A Man Called Ove
Rank: 50
awardType: foreign makeupAndHairstyling
Nominated for: Foreign Language Film (Sweden), Makeup and Hairstyling
This Swedish film about a grumpy old man who becomes marginally less grumpy thanks to meeting some cute young kids, their winsome parents, and a fuzzy cat is something you’ve seen dozens of times before. But a good cast and some genuine feeling carry the day for most of the movie’s running time — before the ending tips over into unmitigated schmaltz. Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening.
N/A
Availability: Digital download and on DVD
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Silence
Rank: 16
awardType: cinematography
Nominated for: Cinematography
Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese deserved better than a mere one nomination for his long-gestating examination of the gap between faith and understanding. Based on the novel of the same name by Shûsaku Endô, the film follows two priests searching for their mentor in 17th-century Japan and trying to provide sustenance to Christians practicing their forbidden faith in hiding. A small, slow, challenging film, Silence is the kind of movie only Scorsese could make, and it’s too bad how thoroughly the Oscars overlooked it.
Read our review
Availability: In some theaters
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Star Trek Beyond
Rank: 47
awardType: makeupAndHairstyling
Nominated for: Makeup and Hairstyling
This rousing follow-up to 2013’s deeply disappointing Star Trek Into Darkness strands Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and all the rest on a strange planet where mysterious events and danger abound. The film plays like one big, long Star Trek episode in the best way, and it’s filled with knowing winks and nods to the franchise’s 50-year history, stretching back to 1966.
Read our review
Availability: Digital download; also on DVD
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Trolls
Rank: 61
awardType: song
Nominated for: Original Song ("Can’t Stop the Feeling")
Dreamworks Animation’s hit took the famous neon-haired Troll dolls and weaved a weird anti-consumerist message around a film designed explicitly to sell toys. There are some nice musical moments in the film — including the nominated Justin Timberlake tune — but it’s mostly a very confused, pastel-colored nightmare. Your kids will want to watch it over and over and over again.
Read our review
Availability: Digital download; also on DVD
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Tanna
Rank: 37
awardType: foreign
Nominated for: Foreign Language Film (Australia)
This Australian-Vanuatuan co-production cast nonprofessional actors from various tribes around Tanna island in Vanuatu, and then had them reenact a tragic, true love story from the tribes’ past. The story is occasionally slow and very nearly crosses the line between "elemental" and "boring," but the glimpse of a rarely seen culture and the scenes shot in and around an actual active volcano make the film worth a look.
N/A
Availability: In some theaters; also available for digital download and on DVD March 7
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload
Ennemis Intérieurs (Enemies Within)
Rank: 12
awardType: shortFilmLive
Nominated for: Live-Action Short
The normally despair-laden live-action short film category is downright jolly this year, but for this somber look at how the French government turns the screws on an Algerian Muslim applying for citizenship, so that he’ll give up the names of others who attended a men’s group affiliated with a mosque he attended. (The government suspects them of being terrorists, but provides no evidence.) The short feels almost unbearably timely — making it all the more interesting that it’s set in 1996.
N/A
Availability: In theaters or via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload
Silent Nights
Rank: 57
awardType: shortFilmLive
Nominated for: Live-Action Short
A young woman working to help illegal immigrants and the homeless in Copenhagen is surprised to find herself falling for a young Ghanaian man over the holiday season. Though occasionally moving, Silent Nights tries to cram far too much story into just 30 minutes, meaning things happen incredibly quickly. It might have been better served by another hour in which to unspool its story.
N/A
Availability: In theaters or via digital download along with other Oscar-nominated short films, as part of the Oscar Shorts program
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availabilitySlug: digitalDownload
Mindenki (Sing)
Rank: 52
awardType: shortFilmLive
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