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I rarely have difficulty finding a lot of movies to love in a given year. More often than not, the Best Picture nominees for the Academy Award represent a nice variety of films that I truly enjoyed (with an outlier or two). For 2017, that just wasn’t the case.

Of the nine Best Picture nominees, there are three that I think stand out as top-notch productions for any year. Beyond that, there are some films that are good-to-great and one that I struggle to understand the accolades it has received. Perhaps it’s just the shift in the way movies are being distributed, or maybe it’s just that there are so many other potential options for entertainment that movies can’t stand up to the outside competition. Regardless, here’s hoping for a better 2018.

9) Call Me By Your Name

I’m baffled by the love this movie has received. I understand a lot of my friends relating to it, but Call Me By Your Name felt like self-indulgent soft porn. I will note that there are a couple of solid performances wrapped up in this package, though. Armie Hammer is memorable as the young 20-something student who comes to spend time with main character Elio’s family in Italy. And Michael Stuhlbarg is delightful in his role as Elio’s father. His conversation with Elio near the end of the film is both heartbreaking and rapturous.

On the other hand, I find Timothee Chamalet a bit annoying. In both this film and in Lady Bird, he just seemed to be trying to play a disaffected youth. Instead of seeing him as sympathetic or relatable, I really just thought he was bratty and fairly obnoxious. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m getting old. Maybe it does. I don’t know.

8) Lady Bird

There might have been a time when I would have enjoyed Lady Bird more. As it was, I did think that Lady Bird was a character I could understand. I think anyone who was once a young woman in high school, wanting to escape the hometown that seems like the most boring place in the world, would have some empathy for her.

Likewise, though I’m not fortunate to be a parent myself, I understood Laurie Metcalf’s Marion, too. She feels a daughter drifting away from her and is hanging on the best she can as the family struggles through financial difficulties and her husband’s depression.

Yet, the pieces didn’t all quite connect for me as well as they should have. Perhaps it’s just that coming-of-age stories are past their prime at this point, having been done so well in projects like Boyhood, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Spectacular Now, The Way, Way Back and Juno. Then again, something delightful will probably come along this year and prove me wrong.

7) Dunkirk
I’m generally a Christopher Nolan fangirl. I count The Dark Knight as one of my favorite films ever, and I don’t think that Nolan has a miss on his resume. In fact, I wouldn’t call Dunkirk a miss. I believe that Nolan set out to do exactly what he wanted to with the film, which is to tell the story of a heroic group of people without singling anyone out and making them MORE interesting or courageous than the others.

Dunkirk’s story is beautifully told, with sweeping scenes, magnificent effects, and a driving score that suits to events perfectly. The performances are all good, with Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy being the real standouts. This little-known story deserved to be told. But still, when it was all said and done, the movie left me a little cold. I’ve heard people make this comment about Nolan’s films before. This is the first time it’s happened to me.

6) Darkest Hour

One thing I will say is that for a historical pair of bookends, you could do a lot worse than Darkest Hour and Dunkirk. Darkest Hour does include the Dunkirk story in its plot, though from the British side of things where Winston Churchill was making the difficult decisions.

I deeply admired this film. The use of shadows and light to assist in telling the story was subtle and powerful. But I would generally agree with the overall sentiment that Darkest Hour is primarily a one-man performance wrapped in a historical narrative. It’s fairly straightforward stuff, but Gary Oldman does indeed deliver one of the finest acting jobs of the year. He allows Churchill to consume him, such that it’s difficult to even see Oldman inside the character.

Still, I’m choosing my favorite film rather than my favorite performance. So, much as I thought Darkest Hour was good, it didn’t knock my socks off.

5) The Shape of Water

I’m a huge sucker for a fairy tale, so I probably should have like The Shape of Water more than fifth best on a list of best picture nominees. I thought that Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins and Michael Stuhlbarg all gave remarkable performances (though Michael Shannon went too far into comic book villain proportions for my liking). The story itself was lovely, a truly singular romance.

Sadly, the film lost me at a point. I don’t think I’m spoiling too much to say that a pet is killed at one point in the film, a device that I always think is lazy storytelling. I’m always oversensitive to it and even though obviously “no animals were harmed in the making of this film,” I got mad. I hate when the purpose of an animal in a movie, book, or TV show is nothing more than a tool.

4) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
I am a huge fan of director Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. It’s one of my favorite movies over the past several years. So, I was extremely excited when I realized that this awards contender was his work.

And Three Billboards is a good movie. In fact, when I started thinking about its themes and ideas today, I found myself appreciating it a great deal more. Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson deserve every accolade they have received.

I guess my problem here is that other than Harrelson’s character, the people in this film are terrible human beings. I suppose I’m supposed to be rooting for them, maybe? I didn’t necessarily find much depth to them (which was not the case with In Bruges, by the way. The hitmen had nuance. They were who they were, but they were also more than they were, with regrets and devastation and sadness).

Perhaps this is a film I’ll like more on repeated viewings. We’ll see.

3) Get Out

And now we reach the upper echelon of the list. I am a huge fan of Jordan Peele, having watched Key and Peele religiously when it aired. So, when I read that he planned to write and direct a horror film, I was intrigued and excited. I had no idea what to expect, of course, but it was still an opening night must-see.

Amazingly, Peele got everything right. Yes, Get Out is a horror film. It’s also social commentary. It’s also blazingly hilarious at moments. As you watch the tension build, it’s clear that something is wrong, but as the reveal happens, the ingenuity and awfulness of it are almost unimaginable.

Daniel Kaluuya is a breakthrough star, and the cast that surrounded him was stellar. At the time of the film’s release, I mentioned to my husband that it felt like it might contend for an Oscar, at least for Screenplay. That felt like an ambitious statement at the time. Get Out is something utterly different from what we typically see on the Best Picture list, and I’m thrilled to see it there.

2) The Post

I’m such a sucker for a newspaper movie. I’ve worked in the newspaper industry for (gulp) 20 years now, and the right to a free press really does matter to me. From All the President’s Men to Zodiac to Spotlight, I truly admire the women and men who put their heart into a story that means something to them – and to the public.

The Post is a timely examination of the Washington Post’s attempt to publish the Pentagon Papers, with much to say about the importance of investigative journalism in a free society. Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are impeccable in their lead roles as Ben Bradlee, editor of the Post and Katharine Graham, owner of the paper. The supporting cast – too numerous to mention – is fantastic. The costuming and makeup is on the nose. And the story, while perhaps a bit more facile than either Spotlight or All the President’s Men, is inspiring and uplifting. It feels like the kind of movie the Academy would traditionally love, but that has changed in recent years and I don’t really think it has a shot at the win.

1) Phantom Thread

The day that I saw Phantom Thread, my husband and I were talking about the fact that there really hadn’t been a “whoa, that’s my favorite” movie. I loved Coco (it’s an absolute treasure and a delight), but I almost always love Pixar projects. I’m a mark, you might say.

So, without any real expectations, I watched Phantom Thread. And I was blown away. Daniel Day-Lewis was so wrapped up in this character that he eventually would feel like he had to retire from acting. It was the darkness and challenge of this movie that pushed him to that point, he says.

Throughout the entire film, I had no idea what would happen next. This is not a formulaic story. It’s a romance, yes, but an exceptionally dark one. It’s also an exploration of the creative process, of a precise personality who must uphold his inner expectations.

Along with Day-Lewis, both Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville are fantastic. The costume design is lush and gorgeous, and the cinematography is deliberate. I can’t wait to see it again, because it made me think so much afterward. I’m a little disappointed it’s not more of a factor, but I’ll just treasure this one as a movie that is an underappreciated gem despite its Best Picture nomination.