A Ranking Of Every Single Movie Nominated For An Oscar This Year

Whenever the question of “What good are the Academy Awards” gets thrown around, I tend to let people bluster their way around subjects like out-of-touch voters and million-dollar ad campaigns and vanity and spectacle and hostility to art. And then I come to the conclusion I always do: for me, the Academy Awards have always been about making people aware of, and excited for, good movies. It’s why we care about what gets nominated, and what wins, and who is doing the choosing.

It’s also why I find it deeply rewarding to try and see every single nominated film before the Oscars. It’s a daunting challenge, one that likely wouldn’t be possible outside of New York or L.A., but it’s also a project that has consistently forced me to go outside my comfort zones and seek out movies that I maybe would have ignored. That it’s usually the documentaries, foreign-language films, and short films that I end up needing to catch up on in the weeks between the Oscar nominations and the Oscar ceremony says a lot about viewing habits (my own and the culture’s at large).

So take this ranking of all 57 nominated films — features, shorts, all of them — not just as a statement on their quality, but also as an enthusiastic list of recommendations. This was a strong overall group of nominees! Aside from the bottom ten or so, these are good movies that I would highly recommend. The Oscars can be a wonderful spectacle, yes. They can also be a guidebook. Let me guide you through the class of 2015.

57. Trumbo: Because Trumbo was directed by Jay Roach, whose top credits as of late have been HBO films like Recount and Game Change, a lot of the criticisms leveled against the film have slighted it as a glorified TV movie. Which seems more than a little tone deaf to the fact that good TV movies have much better pacing, characterizations, and insights than this disappointing movie that really drops the ball on an interesting figure from Hollywood’s blacklist.  Nomination: Best Actor
[Where to stream Trumbo]

56. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared: This year’s designated out-of-nowhere nominee plays like a Scandinavian Forrest Gump, weaving into and out of history while commenting on it in only the most banal terms. Nomination: Best Makeup/Hairstyling
[Where to stream The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared]

55. Racing Extinction: A few years ago, an activist environmental documentary called Chasing Ice nabbed a surprise Best Original Song nomination for songwriter J. Ralph. That film turned out to be quite good, so my hopes were high for Racing Extinction, another activist environmental documentary that nabbed J. Ralph another surprise Best Song nomination. This one from the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, no less! Unfortunately, Racing Extinction feels insular and is preaching way too heavily to the converted. Nomination: Best Original Song
[Where to stream Racing Extinction ]

54. Fifty Shades of Grey: Sure, it doesn’t feel sporting to use the occasion of the Academy Awards to bust on something like Fifty Shades of Grey. But as much as I wanted to be the guy to buck the trends, I can’t defend a movie this flat-out uninterested in the ways people actually talk/behave/interact/exist. Nomination: Best Original Song
[Where to stream Fifty Shades of Grey]

53. Spectre: Dull as dishwater, and that goes double for Christoph Waltz as an impish Blofeld. It wouldn’t have been that great anyway, but coming on the heels of the rather fantastic Skyfall, it’s an even bigger disappointment. What a bummer way for the Daniel Craig 007 era to end. Nomination: Best Original Song
[Where to stream Spectre]

52. Ave Maria: The slightest of the live-action short films, one which seemingly wants to coast on its Middle Eastern culture-clash premise. But it doesn’t do much of anything at all with its confluence of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures in a Gaza nunnery. Nomination: Best Live-Action Short

51. The Danish Girl: Tom Hooper’s film is undeniably well-intentioned and laudable for its sensitivity, but it’s just far too flat to be engaging, and Eddie Redmayne’s performance, while respectful, is a mannered misfire throughout. Nominations: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design
[Where to stream The Danish Girl]

50. The Hateful Eight: The interminable tedium of the first half of the film is only matched by the second half’s fervent hope that its bloody reckoning will have been worth the wait. It’s not. Kudos to Quentin Tarantino’s ambition in scope and score, but they’re ultimately window dressing for an indulgent mess. Nominations: Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score
[Where to stream The Hateful Eight]

49. The Revenant: Handsomely assembled and gorgeously photographed, the most trying aspect of watching this year’s probable Best Picture winner isn’t enduring the bear attacks, equine corpse mutilations, or midnight snacking on organ meats; it’s simply trying to figure out why we’re seeing what we’re seeing. “How many times can a human body be mauled, mutilated, and thrown onto rocks before it ceases to function?” is a subject for coroners, not filmmakers. Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup/Hairstyling, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects
[Where to stream The Revenant]

48. Prologue: The Revenant of animated short films. If you see one beautifully hand-drawn animated short wherein an ancient warrior meets his death by getting stabbed through the taint and bleeding out onto a gorgeously animated field of waving, pencil-drawn grass, well, this would have to be it.  Nomination: Best Animated Short

47. Cinderella: Easily the earliest correct predictions of Oscar success came when people first saw Cinderella last winter and started pencilling Sandy Powell in for a Best Costumes nomination. She deserves it, too, particularly for her attention to all the garments beyond the title character’s head-turning ball gown. Nomination: Best Costume Design
[Where to stream Cinderella]

46. Joy: Joy is a real mess, often seems like the first draft of something rather than its final product, and doesn’t seem to have the first clue what to do with its starry supporting cast. But it has its moments, and when it’s good — like when Jennifer Lawrence’s title character is vamping on QVC to demonstrate her miraculous mop innovation — it’s really good. And then it’s not again. I found it endearing, but I can’t guarantee you will. Nomination: Best Actress
[Where to stream Joy]

45. Anomalisa: Gorgeously animated and featuring a pair of brilliant vocal performances by Tom Noonan and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anomalisa would almost certainly have been more successful as a short, as Charlie Kaufman’s insular self-pity wouldn’t have had time to curdle quite so much. Nomination: Best Animated Feature
[Where to stream Anomalisa]

44. Day One: I wavered so often between “brilliant” and “terrible” while watching this story of an interpreter embedded with U.S. forces in the Middle East who must deliver a baby under insane circumstances that it feels like kind of a cheat to list it lower-middle like this. No film that kept me that engaged from end to end should be dismissed with a shrug. Nomination: Best Live-Action Short

43. Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom: Netflix’s latest documentary nominee plays a lot like their first one. Just as The Square gave viewers a you-are-there view of unfolding history in Egypt, so does Winter on Fire transport you without much of an intermediary into Ukraine’s violent strife. Nomination: Best Documentary Feature
[Where to stream Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom]

42. Sanjay’s Super Team: I have to admit, I was let down by this Pixar short, after hearing so many good things about it after it played theatrically in front of The Good Dinosaur. The narrative there I think benefitted a lot from how much people hated TGD. Seen on its own, Sanjay is cute and certainly refreshing from a representational standpoint, but the superhero-y middle section feels low on imagination. Nomination: Best Animated Short

41. Cartel Land: Immersive and eye-opening, this look at the drug trade in Mexico would be a great companion to Sicario, particularly in that it places so much focus on the local governments and enforcement agencies in Mexico. Nomination: Best Documentary Feature
[Where to stream Cartel Land]

40. Youth: Youth is annoying as hell, the kind of navel-gazing film that finds great meaning in the ogling of a perfect female body, but there are just enough wonderful moments peppered in there — Rachel Weisz’s monologue; the song at the end — to keep you from writing the whole thing off entirely.  Nomination: Best Original Song
[Where to stream Youth]

39. Chau, Beyond the Lines: It’s always daunting to be the last of five documentary shorts to be watched in a row. By that point, the weight of the soul-crushing themes does begin to take effect. This story of Vietnamese children born with deformities caused by Agent Orange is unflashy to the point of unambitious, but the subject matter is undoubtedly compelling. Nomination: Best Documentary Short

38. Claude Lanzmann, Spectres of the Shoah: A little long — imagine THAT for a movie about the making of the 10-hour Holocaust documentary — but illuminating, as much about the mercurial director of Shoah as it is about the treacherous terrain he crossed to make it.  Nomination: Best Documentary Short

37. Bear Story: This year’s requisite wordlessly-sad animated short is a pretty good one, making great use of its mechanical diorama conceit to enhance its simple, touching story.  Nomination: Best Animated Short

36. Shok: Viewing military conflict through the prism of children is a recurring theme in this and many other Oscar years. In the case of Shok, that means the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s remembered as a story of two friends growing up together but in different ethnic circumstances. It’s inevitably sad, but no matter how much we expect something bad to happen, Shok is determinedly bracing when the moment actually arrives.  Nomination: Best Live-Action Short

35. When Marnie Was There: Very possibly the final film from the legendary Studio Ghibli — which took home the 2002 Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away — this is a sweet, almost slight tale of a girl who feels estranged from her family finding solace with a new (imaginary?) friend. The twists are telegraphed far in advance, but the tenderness of emotion is fairly irresistible.  Nominations: Best Animated Feature

34. The Big Short: Good ideas and some inventive directorial choices (he wouldn’t have made my top 5 by a long shot, but I am really not mad at that Best Director nomination for Adam McKay) mask a film that constantly thinks itself to be about three times smarter than it is. And the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the SAG membership that the Big Short ensemble was worthy of a Best Cast nomination instead of an active drag on the film at all times.  Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing
[Where to stream The Big Short]

33. Theeb: Gorgeously shot and composed, this parable-like story about a Bedouin boy and one of the soldiers responsible for a personal tragedy sometimes feels slow to catch up to where the audience knows it’s going, but the look and sweep of the film are rewards in and of themselves.  Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film
[Where to stream Theeb]

32. Shaun the Sheep Movie: Based on the Nick Park TV series, the film accomplishes the daunting task of producing a dialogue-free feature film that’s more compelling than 90% of this year’s far wordier animated fare. Fun, funny, and probably deserved a Best Original Song nomination to boot.  Nomination: Best Animated Feature
[Where to stream Shaun the Sheep Movie]

31. Bridge of Spies: Often, the dominant characteristic of Steven Spielberg’s Cold-War film seems to be steady, parental competence. Spielberg isn’t going to drop the ball, nor is Tom Hanks in the lead role. It’s not a daring film, but there are some real highlights here, from Mark Rylance’s nominated turn as a Russian spy to scenes with Hanks engaging in some decidedly street-level diplomacy. More than makes up for the film’s hokier moments in its home stretch. Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing,
[Where to stream Bridge of Spies]

30. Body Team 12: The beneficiary of some incredibly compelling interviews with members of corpse-removal teams on Ebola-plagued Africa, Body Team 12 gives the audience a first-hand look at the uncomfortable crossroads between public good and private grief. Nomination: Best Documentary Short
[Where to stream Body Team 12]

29. A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness: This year’s documentary shorts are as grim as their reputation suggests. This year’s subjects included the Holocaust, PTSD, the death penalty, Ebola, Agent Orange, and this film’s subject: honor killings in Pakistan. Candid, contentious interviews with the perpetrators of the crimes are incredibly unsettling. Nomination: Best Documentary Short
[Where to stream A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness]

28. The Hunting Ground: A kind of follow-up to director Kirby Dick’s 2012 film about sexual assault in the military, this one turns its eye to the fraught battlegrounds of college campuses. They make for a potent, eye-opening double feature, and I’d venture to say this probably belonged among the films nominated for Best Documentary Feature as well as for its Diane Warren-penned song. Nomination: Best Original Song
[Where to stream The Hunting Ground]

27. Straight Outta Compton: The fact that Compton was only nominated for its (white) screenwriters this year was a major point of contention during the #OscarsSoWhite aftermath of the nominations. But as important and unassailable as arguments for diversity are, this particular film is an odd fit for canonization. Its sense of mood and setting are strong, as is the cast (of all the awards attention it did get, that SAG nomination was the most on-point), but it really falls apart in its final half-hour. Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
[Where to stream Straight Outta Compton]

26. Everything Will Be Okay: Two years ago, a live-action short called Just Before Losing Everything told the story of a woman preparing to leave her husband and run away with her kids. It was fantastic and it should have won and it didn’t. I’m worried the same fate will befall this short film with a similar (though crucially gender-swapped) plot. It’s expertly tense and genuinely harrowing.  Nomination: Best Live-Action Short

25. Embrace of the Serpent : For a film this artsy and intent on exploring the fractures between native South American populations and white interlopers, it’s also quite entertaining, with some eye-popping visuals and the kind of plot twists that keep you riveted every bit as much as you would be in a Fast and Furious movie.  Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film
[Where to stream Embrace of the Serpent]

24. Brooklyn: I wish Brooklyn were about 30% more dramatic in the dilemma that faces its central character Saoirse Ronan plais Eilis with incredibly insight and openness, and that really helps get the audience onboard with her homesickness and romantic conflicts. But I can’t pretend that the stakes at play when the choices are the nice Italian boy in the outer boroughs and the nice Irish boy back home are something I’m going to get truly invested in. But for a movie without stakes, my GOSH what a handsome, beautifully filmed, well-acted, and marvelously charming little movie without stakes it is.  Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay
[Where to stream Brooklyn]

23. Boy and the World: Here’s a feature with the kind of impressionistic sensibility of a short film. That’s a very good thing. In this story of a boy who ventures out into an ever-more-industrial world to find his father, director Ale Abreu makes fantastic use of contrasting animating styles, from its crayon-colorful beginnings to its stark expressionistic cities. One of the very best things about the Academy Awards is the way they encourage anybody who cares to pay attention to the beautiful array of animation styles that are out there.  Nomination: Best Animated Feature

22. A War: Tobias Lindholm, co-writer of the 2012 Best Foreign Language Film nominee The Hunt, directed this Danish film about an army captain charged with a war crime. At its best, Lindholm’s film welcomes a great many perspectives and cuts between them in a way that builds empathy on all sides.   Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

21. Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Heard of it? Had the Oscar ballots been cast the weekend that The Force Awakens opened, we may well have ended up with this as a Best Picture nominee. Would that have been justified, strictly speaking? Probably not. It’s a fantastic piece of popcorn adventure and franchise-building, but a Best Picture nomination would have been the product of hype. …Though it would have at least meant one Best Picture nominee with a lead character of color.  Nominations: Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects
[Where to stream Star Wars: The Force Awakens]

20. Mustang: This story about five sisters growing up in culturally conservative Turkey plays like The Virgin Suicides without the dreamy ’70s soft-rock. The film is France’s entry in the foreign film race though it’s incredibly a tale told in and of Turkey.  Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

19. The Last Day of Freedom: One day in 1980, Manny Babbitt broke into the house of a stranger and murdered her. He was executed by the state of California in 1999. In this, the best of the nominated documentary shorts, Manny’s brother tells his brother’s story, in particular how he returned from Vietnam with PTSD and the further chaos that emanated from there. The film is animated, which allows for a stronger emotional pull to the story, while not sacrificing the incredible openness of the narrator.  Nomination: Best Documentary Short

18. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos : This Russian short tells the story of two cosmonauts and best friends who compete together for the chance to go to space. The unself-conscious depiction of a friendship that’s expressed wordlessly but so openly is disarming and incredibly beautiful.  Nomination: Best Animated Short

17. Ex Machina: Screenwriter Alex Garland made an incredibly auspicious directorial debut here with a sci-fi story rooted in the most base human concerns of control, desire, independence, and honesty. Featuring a trio of top-notch performances by Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, and Domhnall Gleeson, Ex Machina comes tantalizingly close to reaching the lofty ambitions of its filmmaker, and it’s damned exciting to watch them all try. Nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Visual Effects
[Where to stream Ex Machina]

16. The Martian: Lost in all the hubbub over whether Ridley Scott’s film was rightly or wrongly categorized as a comedy at the Golden Globes is the fact that this movie <em>is</em> really funny … for an action blockbuster. It’s also pretty low on action. It’s honestly refreshing that a movie can do this kind of business ($228 mil domestic) while being mostly about a guy growing potatoes on Mars and his colleagues back home debating whether they should go rescue him. Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects
[Where to stream The Martian]

15. What Happened, Miss Simone?: Netflix’s documentary on the turbulent life and career of the jazz/soul singer Nina Simone is chock full of insights about the woman that might as well be playing out in today’s current political climate. There is so much in Simone’s story that is relevant today, so much anger in a song like “Mississippi Goddamn” that could apply today. This movie does nothing so effectively as make a case that Nina Simone ought at least to be remembered for the life and career that might have been as much as the one that was. Nomination: Best Documentary Feature
[Where to stream What Happened, Miss Simone?]

14. Sicario: Denis Villeneuve’s grimy depiction of U.S. law enforcement’s any-means-necessary war against Mexican drug cartels is filmed with the kind of precision and technical artistry that it’s almost beside the point whether the story itself is something you care to get swept along with. I did, though, mostly by virtue of Emily Blunt’s lead performance, which never quite lets her character find her footing long enough for the things she’s seeing to be normalized. It’s all a horror show. Nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing
[Where to stream Sicario]

13. Stutterer: My favorite of the live-action shorts was this humble little story about a man with the titular affliction and his modern-day attempts to live and love despite it. The contrast between the man’s inner monologue and outer vapor-lock is sad but endearing, and it’s the rare film that treats modern technology as the key to a lock that might otherwise never have been pried loose. Nomination: Best Live-Action Short

12. Inside Out: It’s kind of interesting that the Pixar heat in the Best Picture category would have died out for this particular movie, since I find it to be more consistent than something like Up and more insightful than something like Toy Story 3. It’s not perfect, but what it does well — with Sadness; with the funny moments in the memory corridors; with sweet Bing-Bong — is transcendent of almost anything Pixar has delivered in a decade.  Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Screenplay
[Where to stream Inside Out]

11. Amy: Asif Kapadia’s documentary benefits greatly from the sheer amount of footage available from Amy Winehouse’s younger years, the better to show the contrast between the young, shy, wildly talented girl who started out in the business to the tortured and tormented soul who she was at the end. The humanization of a tabloid fixture is the least this film can do. At its best, it’s also an eye-opener in terms of the enabling and punishing ways we treat our idols. Nomination: Best Documentary Feature
[Where to stream Amy]

10. Creed: Ryan Coogler pulled off the improbable with Creed, resurrecting the Rocky franchise, rebooting it with a charismatic and compelling new leading man, all while leaving room for Sylvester Stallone to participate in his own story, all while filming some of the most vital and technically eye-popping boxing scenes on record, all while placing the story of Adonis Creed squarely into the politics. culture, and geography of this moment. It’s a true stunner.  Nomination: Best Supporting Actor
[Where to stream Creed]

9. World of Tomorrow: “Now is the envy of all of the dead.” That line comes late in Don Hertzfeldt’s 17-minute futurist comedy about a young girl who is visited through the imprecise science of time travel by her third-generation clone from the future. By the time that line is uttered, it’s hard to parse just how sincerely you’re meant to take it, after the clone Emily has revealed the wonders, peculiarities, and horrors of the world to come. I chose to take it at face value. As skewed as Hertzfeldt’s perspective is, there is an unmistakable streak of humanity running through his film, grounding the arch humor and reaching out to any audience members who will respond to it. Nomination: Best Animated Short
[Where to stream World of Tomorrow]

8. 45 Years: Andrew Haigh’s follow-up to Weekend is another quiet, intimate story of two people in love and the limitations that have been placed upon that love. In Weekend, it was the world at fault. In 45 Years, it’s a long-dormant secret that’s been hiding in plain sight all this time. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay play a married couple whose stasis won’t be tenable for much longer unless they fight for it, and both actors do tremendous work in communicating to the audience why that may or may not be equipped for that fight. Sad, yes, but beautiful and more relatable than you’d expect. Nomination: Best Actress
[Where to stream 45 Years]

7. Mad Max: Fury Road: We’re all better for the massive success of Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that will do so much good for the film industry if any of its elements filter down into the blockbuster industry in years to come. Whether it’s the bright primaries of the color palette, the insightfully choreographed action, or the brazenly feminist characterizations, a film industry that takes its cues from Fury Road is an industry that will continue to fight to remain vital for filmmakers with vision.  Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Makeup/Hairstyling, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects
[Where to stream Mad Max: Fury Road]

6. Steve Jobs: Aaron Sorkin’s operatic dialogue finally meets a character whose self-aggrandizement lives up to it. It’s not that Steve Jobs lines up behind its title character as the last true innovator (which is how Jobs has often been painted in the culture since his death). Sorkin has done the lionization-of-great-men thing recently (The Newsroom), and he’s also done the glib-takedown-of-internet-warped-maladjust thing too (The Social Network). With Steve Jobs, he manages to walk the path between those roads to tell the story of a complicated man, and to tell that story nearly exclusively through the prism of his work. It’s unexpectedly thrilling, and chock full of actors who can really nail that bombastic dialogue to the floor. Nominations: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress
[Where to stream Steve Jobs]

5. Room: Harrowing and uplifting in equal measure, the true accomplishment of Room is ultimately one of geography. The nooks and crannies of that small space are so well mapped out in the film’s first half that we end up sharing Brie Larson’s character’s unease with the vastness of the populated world outside. The first half is a perfectly realized duet between Larson and Jacob Tremblay, but it’s in the second half where the audience truly gets to see how transformative that confinement was. Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay
[Where to stream Room]

4. Spotlight: What’s left to say about Spotlight that hasn’t been said. A sturdy depiction of a dedicated crew of reporters working to nail down a story with some high stakes. We can discuss how perfectly cast it was — Stanley Tucci’s live-wire of an attorney impatient for you to catch up to his level; Billy Crudup’s inherent slickness; John Slattery’s slight air of unintentional privilege — or how it declines to let its own team off the hook for the very institutional failures they’re uncovering. This is aggressive filmmaking masquerading as workaday, and all credit to Tom McCarthy for pulling that off.  Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing
[Where to stream Spotlight]

3. Son of Saul: Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes has produced a Holocaust film here that, rather than pulling back to reveal the global-scale horror, pushed in ever more tightly on one character, to show that the horror doesn’t abate when the millions of victims are boiled down to however many you can see with your own limited perspective. There’s a claustrophobia to this filmmaking, a sense of being trapped by circumstances and by the awful choices that must be made by Geza Rohrig’s lead character. It’s a difficult subject matter, but the filmmaking makes this one vital for anybody who values film. Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film
[Where to stream Son of Saul]

2. The Look of Silence: Director Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to 2013’s The Act of Killing is no less effective for being a simpler, more straightforward documentary than its more innovative predecessor. In fact, that Silence is a more stripped down series of confrontations with the perpetrators of Indonesian genocide only makes it more immediate and more daring. The audience becomes more and more aware of the danger that simply asking questions poses for those asking the questions, and the film is audacious enough to demand that we keep asking.  Nomination: Best Documentary Feature
[Where to stream The Look of Silence]

1. Carol: Todd Haynes may never be fully embraced by the Academy, and that’s fine. Six nominations is nothing to sneeze at, but a shutout in Best Picture and Best Director says a lot about the niche sensibility that Haynes works from. Which is no excuse for anybody who sees Carol and brushes it off as cold or mannered. Not when there are white-hot infernos, tightly coiled as they are, burning inside of Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, hell even Sarah Paulson smolders with vested interest from the sidelines. There is exquisite beauty in things like sets and costumes and music, yes, but it all comes down to those few hopeful shots of Carol and Therese meeting each other’s glances, perfectly captured by Haynes’ camera at the point where the possibilities of something forbidden might just come true. Carol features the best ending of any film this year. Would that its awards narrative had ended so perfectly as well.  Nominations: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design
[Where to stream Carol]