Foremost Film's 2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees, Ranked

The time is upon us; the 96th Academy Awards are just days away! After a long year in the world of cinema, complete with guild strikes and box office anomalies, industry members from far and wide will flock to Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre this Sunday to witness how the Academy voters have chosen their big winners of the year. While the voting body is far from objective, and their nominated films are not wholly representative of the best movies of the past year, the Oscars still serve an essential function in the mainstream by serving as a sort of “watch list” for the masses, a chance for audiences to engage with works of cinema that they might not have came across on their own.

Moreso than some years, this year’s Best Picture nominees represent a wide range of cinema, spanning different eras of time, historical events, languages, and cultural perspectives. It is possibly pitiful to have to call out, but only sixty percent of the directors of Best Picture contenders identify as white men, a substantial improvement in representation from many past Academy Awards. While this year’s ten Best Picture nominees work on such different scales and registers, the Foremost Film team has decided to rank all of the contenders from worst to best, in our opinion. Please keep reading to find out our hierarchy of the Best Picture nominees for the 96th Academy Awards:

10. ‘American Fiction’

Written and directed by Cord Jefferson in his feature film debut, American Fiction has been considered a Best Picture contender since winning the oddly predictive People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. Adapted from a 2001 novel called Erasure, American Fiction focuses on struggling writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Best Actor nominee Jeffery Wright), who facetiously pivots his next project to write a highly stereotypical depiction of Black life in modern America, only to release the book to tremendous praise and success, much to Monk’s disgust. A solid film that feels more mainstream in its emotional beats than many other BP nominees, American Fiction falters in its satirical criticisms. It works better when its narrative focuses on Monk’s family dynamics, making for a movie that is pleasant but fails to scratch the surface of any complex ideas or statements.

9. ‘Barbie’

The same audiences who thought Saltburn was the most outrageous and unpredictable movie they have ever seen are the same ones who think Barbie is a film of radical feminist ideology. While Barbie’s cultural influence at the time of its release during the summer of 2023 is absolutely undeniable (over $1 billion at the worldwide box office), the movie feels like a watered-down representation of what makes a woman in the contemporary world, which is undercut by its sensation of being a two hour Mattel advertisement. Impressively crafted and directed, Greta Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach’s co-written script often feels like millennial cringe in its humor and emotional beats, and Barbieland becomes grating way too quickly. Barbie has received plenty of well-deserved admiration from its audiences, particularly young girls, but it definitely will not be taking home the Oscar for Best Picture.

8. ‘Maestro’

Where his directorial debut, A Star is Born, felt emotionally authentic and full of narrative peaks and valleys, Bradley Cooper’s latest, Maestro, comes across as a flashy, over-decadent exercise in filmmaking. An alleged biopic of famed American composer Leonard Bernstein (played by Cooper himself,) Maestro never honors or fully embodies its subject, instead feeling like a leeway for Cooper to throw everything at the screen, both in direction and performance. As Bernstein’s wife, Carey Mulligan gives the movie some unpretentious sentiment, but not enough to push this handsomely-made but ultimately vacant film to the Best Picture win.

7. ‘The Holdovers’

Baby Boomer parents (decent representatives of much of the Oscar voting body) love Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, so it might be a more significant Oscar contender than anyone may think. With five nominations on the table, The Holdovers will definitely take home Best Supporting Actress for Da’Vine Joy Randolph and could cause upsets in other categories, particularly Best Actor, which is not necessarily locked at this point. A 1970s throwback á la Hal Ashby, The Holdovers is a feel-good comedy that takes place over a Christmas holiday at an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts. A pleasantly sweet story of three unlikely personalities finding hope and home in one another, The Holdovers is a comfortable movie that does not impress or take the risks many of its fellow Best Picture nominees do. Nevertheless, with the Oscars preferential ballot, The Holdovers could prove more powerful than we think on the night of the ceremony.

6. ‘Oppenheimer’

After winning at the Globes, BAFTAs, SAGs, PGA, DGA, etc.. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is the clear frontrunner for this year’s Best Picture award, not to mention many other prizes at the ceremony. However, these accolades absolutely do not mean that Oppenheimer is the most impressive film in this stack of BP nominees. As ambitious as much of Nolan’s other work, Oppenheimer possesses genuinely epic moments that are offset by just as many examples of dull, uneven exposition and dreadfully drawn-on sequences of white men yelling at each other in office spaces. Oscillating between black and white and color imagery and featuring just about every big-name Hollywood actor, Oppenheimer is so heavyhanded, another example of Nolan tricking us into believing he has more enormous ideas of the world than any feeble human could ever understand. It should never be forgotten that this film’s few female characters are horrendously underwritten and oversimplified, a perfect representation of Nolan’s continued inability to create fully fleshed-out women in his work. Historical American event: check. Biopic: Check. A white man at odds with his position in life: Check. Don’t be at all surprised when Oppenheimer takes home Best Picture this year.

*Courtesy of Paramount Pictures/Apple Original Films.*

5. ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

For Martin Scorsese and his team of collaborators, Killers of the Flower Moon must have been difficult to adapt to the silver screen and even more challenging to imbibe with the truth and historical heaviness of its tragic source material. Nevertheless, the film illuminates a disgraceful moment in the early 20th century when the Osage Nation was systematically picked off by their white neighbors and ignored by the forces of power that were supposed to protect them. Killers of the Flower Moon begins on a high that slowly fizzles out over its three-and-a-half hour runtime, transforming from a showcase of the real-life injustice and violence faced by the Osage into –– well –– just another Scorsese movie. Deep concerns rise when the film’s narrative turns away from its Indigenous perspectives in favor of the director’s typical favorites: Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. This fissure seems to undermine the entire message of the film, leading many to believe that it would have been much more potent and meaningful in the hands of an Indigenous filmmaker. Like Scorsese’s last film, The Irishman, Killers could leave the Academy Awards with no wins despite its ten nominations. However, we expect Lily Gladstone to end up victorious in the Best Actress race, in which the tide has recently turned in favor of the first-time nominee, who wows in the film but deserves much, much more screentime.

4. ‘Poor Things’

Poor Things proved to be beloved out of the gate. Premiering early in the 2023 Venice Film Festival lineup, it quickly became the frontrunner for the Golden Lion, which it ended up winning. Poor Things is the most lush and vibrant world ever created in a Yorgos Lanthimos film, mixing eras of time and peculiar references that culminate in the kooky, heartwarming final product. The early part of the movie feels surprising at every turn, bolstered by fantastic performances from Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and the rest of the star-studded supporting cast. Yet, the last hour of the movie slows to a drag, and the director’s shallow ideas of female autonomy feel much less inspired than his previous film, The Favourite. Kudos to Lanthimos for turning up the dial in terms of his world-building and exploring a more sensitive narrative, but Poor Things does not feel influential enough to take home the Best Picture win.

3. ‘Past Lives’

After making a splashy debut at Sundance way back in January 2023, Celine Song’s intimate and reflective Past Lives had a long journey to its Best Picture nomination, strengthened by raves from critics and audiences alike. Quite a lean film in comparison to other BP nominees, the beauty and elegance of Song’s filmmaking in Past Lives shines through, along with her background in theatre that undoubtedly brought out the best in her stars: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro. Through meditations on her personal history and perspective as an immigrant, Song creates a moving work of cinema, notably her debut feature. While Past Lives for the Best Picture win might be a major stretch, the movie will certainly give Anatomy of a Fall a run for its money in the race for Best Original Screenplay.

2. ‘Anatomy of a Fall’

Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, and now Anatomy of a Fall: Palme d’Or winners have done well in the Best Picture race in recent years! Making French writer/director Justine Triet a big name in America, as well as actress Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall has been a hot title over the past year, inciting fruitful discussions among its audiences. Contemplating the French justice system, family life, and media portrayals of women, Anatomy of a Fall is full of engaging ideas that are supported by the film’s intellectual direction, craft, and performance. Dialogue-heavy, with much of the film taking place in a courtroom, the movie can be quite demanding for some viewers, with its European edge giving off a certain coldness that could alienate some audiences. However, there is a certain alchemy that has spawned around Anatomy of a Fall within the sphere of Academy voters, clearly supported by its five Oscar nominations, including the often Best Picture-predicting Best Editing nomination. While the movie’s most substantial chances of a win will be in the Original Screenplay category, who knows? We would not mind seeing Anatomy of a Fall as a surprise Best Picture upset.

1. ‘The Zone of Interest’

As hypnotizing as it is haunting, Jonathan Glazer’s exquisite direction and creative collaborations on The Zone of Interest beget an audiovisual experience like no other, simultaneously formal and experimental in the most singular manner of any Best Picture nominee this year.

Liberally adapted from a 2014 novel of the same name, The Zone of Interest revolves around the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and their Aryan flock, who are building their quintessential German life just beyond the perimeters of the camp. The Höss family glorifies their success without ever contemplating the violence and brutality upon which it has been built. Glazer sheds the narrative complexities of the source material to create a film that feels so terrifyingly rooted in modern times and, more significantly, humankind’s innate ability to oversee the suffering of others all around. Every facet of the film’s construction comes together to build a jarring sensory journey that is impossible to leave behind. Demanding in the most wicked of ways, The Zone of Interest has slowly garnered respect among Oscar voters –– confirmed through the film’s five Oscar nominations –– but unfortunately, its calculated methods and heavy subject matter will keep it from taking home the biggest prize of the night, since voters rarely go for the high-brow options versus the more digestible choices.

Foremost Film's 2024 Best Picture Nominees, Ranked