Hollywood is predominately about heroes. As a result their stories can be often very predictable. No matter what happens during the story, one can almost be assured that our central hero will be victorious by the end. It reflects our desire for popular culture to be more optimistic and positive than real life, which can often be cruel and random instead of neatly ordered and morally correct.

In the 40s, things took a drastic change with the b-movie and film noir, where the line between hero, anti-hero and outright villain was blurred. Further revisions took place in the era of New Hollywood, with directors often featuring moody anti-heroes at the forefront of their story.

The horror genre was also unafraid to embrace the darkness. Yet with the rise of the blockbuster, popular entertainment remains (with a few notable exceptions) exclusively centred around heroes, telling their story of triumph over seemingly impossible odds.

Therefore, whether or not you are an Avengers fan, the conclusion of Infinity War came as an almighty surprise. The snap — as it came to be later known — was perhaps the most shocking moment in popular culture since the end of The Empire Strikes Back, leaving audiences completely shaken. Thanos was revealed not to be just the gang’s nemesis, but the central character all along; his arc providing the structure for the unwieldy story.

With Endgame coming up, and the almost guaranteed return of order to the Marvel universe, it’s worth revisiting those stories where the villain is really the hero, and where evil is stronger than love.

Spanning from tragicomedies to film noir to horror, these films are perfect if you are in the mood for seeing the villain get what they want for a change. Read on below to see what we picked. If you disagree with any of them, please feel free to suggest your favourites in the comments below.

It’s worth saying that spoilers will inevitably follow.

1. Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)

A sultry re-imagining of Double Indemnity that must surely qualify as one of the sexiest films ever made, Body Heat stays completely true to the spirit of film noir. The genre, born out the despair of 1940s America, saw nearly all men as saps, and women as femme fetales, able to crush them through sheer sexiness and manipulation alone. William Hurt plays a lawyer who seduces a beautiful woman in the midst of a heatwave, only to be duped into a scheme to murder her husband.

As he is a lawyer who thinks highly of himself, he believes that he is in control of the story: that the murder is his idea and he will get away with it. He couldn’t be more wrong. The ending is one for the books, finishing with Matty alive and well, lying on a tropical beach.

Staying true to film noir structure, it reveals the scheming Matty — now revealed to be Mary Ann — to be the true hero of the story. She is so sexually confident and bold that we believe anything that happens to him, Kathleen Turner’s performance truly commanding every scene that she’s in.

2. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

Played with delicious delight by Anthony Hopkins, Hannibal Lecter is one of the creepiest men in cinema. The centrepiece of The Silence of the Lambs is a simple dialogue scene between him and Clarence Starling, played by a fantastic Jodie Foster.

A cannibal with a veneer of respectability, he rattles off lines like “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti” with relish. He is horror squared, a full-blooded villain who shows you who he really is from the start and still manages to get away with it.

Horror has often been ground zero for successful villains. As it is the genre most likely to face evil head on and try and milk it for all its cathartic glory, horror fans expect more than any other for the darkness to eventually triumph. The Silence of The Lambs is so clever because it combines elements of the horror genre with the thriller, the initial terror of Starling’s meeting with Lecter being trumped by the presence of a serial killer that only Lecter can help defeat.

In this respect Lecter, for all his evil, becomes something of a hero himself. Still, he is not meant to actually escape from the clutches of the FBI. Nonetheless, he still worms his way out, his evil unable to be contained by the forces of good.

3. The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)

A complex and densely plotted crime thriller, The Usual Suspects thrives on misdirection. Using a combination of flashback and unreliable narration, it tells of a secret crime lord named Keyzer Soze who is one of the most cold-hearted men in the world.

After dozens of men have been killed in a boat fire, the police apprehend Verbal Klint, a con man with cerebral palsy, and grill him about the events that led up to the murders. After a long and protracted story, Klint is lead free, only for his limp to slowly get better until it becomes apparently obvious that he in in fact Keyzer Soze himself.

With the extra knowledge that both director and star are sexual predators, The Usual Suspects might be a hard film to re-watch with this in mind, nonetheless it still holds up as containing one of the most iconic twists in film history.

This effect is maintained by Spacey’s brilliant performance, being able to truly convince us that behind this mild-mannered man with cerebral palsy is in fact an evil crime lord. Despite the film’s complicated plotting, this final twist is still deliriously entertaining.

4. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)

Fincher knows a thing or two about endings that change the entire meaning of a film. Whether it’s The Game, Gone Girl or Fight Club, he uses them to truly transform everything we have understood before.

Nonetheless, Se7en still stands out for its utter bleakness. Not only have they failed to stop the killer before it’s too late, but cop David Mills, played with great howling pain by Brad Pitt, is confronted by the horrific fact that his wife’s head has been cut off.

Another masterclass in villainy by Kevin Spacey, his serial killer feigns a sort of childlike innocence, roping our protagonists into believing they are smarter than him until it is too late.

It’s all the more shocking considering the empathic performance by Morgan Freeman, which really makes us think that mankind can defeat the darkness. Instead it ends on those immortal lines: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part.”

5. Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanksi, 1968)

The third film on the list by a man accused of sexual assault, it leaves one to wonder whether getting away with it on screen and getting away with it in real life are somewhat connected. Here Roman Polanski truly ramps up the villainy, telling the story of a pregnant woman who unwittingly gives birth to the antichrist!

Rosemary’s Baby is so effective because it grounds itself in real themes of gaslighting and women not being believed. Her husband, played with perfection by John Cassavetes, is at first assumed simply to be an uncaring man, but he is in fact aiding and abetting the antichrist’s arrival upon earth.

Mia Farrow does a brilliant job as the pregnant woman overcome with paranoia, making her fears feel viscerally real. The ending is truly shocking; Rosemary has not only stopped the baby from being born, but in fact eventually welcomes him, leading to a despairing message for the rest of mankind.

Since bursting onto the film scene with Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has transformed the popular film landscape with smart-talking gangsters, pop culture references and non-linear storytelling devices. Working at a video store in Manhattan Beach for five years, he absorbed hundreds of different exploitation movies, Hong Kong pictures and various b-movie Westerns and Film Noir, giving him an incredibly wide knowledge of film.

A true cinephile turned director, his movies combine various different genres together, all peppered with his unique talk-heavy style that features innumerable references to other works and songs from popular culture. He is perhaps the most influential director of the 90s, and easily one of the most recognisable names in film worldwide.

He is a relatively slow working director, only directing three films in the 90s, all of which could loosely be described as an LA trilogy. After Jackie Brown, he waited six years to return with the Kill Bill duology, which saw the director pay homage to many tropes of East Asian cinema.

This was followed by Death Proof, released as part of a Grindhouse double-bill with Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror. Since then, he has been interested in repurposing the past, releasing a WW2 movie, Inglorious Basterds, and two revisionist Westerns, blaxploitation movie Django Unchained and Stagecoach meets Agatha Christie homage The Hateful Eight.

Any Tarantino movie is truly an event, because although he has many imitators, only he can make dialogue sing in quite such a satisfying way. Additionally, his films always court controversy — whether its his penchant for exploring racism, or using gratuitous violence, no one provokes discussion quite like him. Yet he has explicitly expressed that he will only make ten movies, making Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, slated for release later this year, his penultimate effort.

In honour of his unique filmography, we have decided to rank all of his films. This list only includes the films he directed himself, therefore True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born Killers are not on the list. Additionally, his failed short film My Best Friend’s Birthday — half of which is still missing — will not be included in this list, or his short film from Four Rooms: “The Man From Hollywood”.

We have also not included his television work or his special director credit for Sin City. Read on below to see how we ranked his work. If you disagree with anything we said, please sound off in the comments below!

8. Death Proof (2007)

The only Tarantino film to truly feel like a minor-league effort, Death Proof is simply too long. Split into two parts, and featuring two different sets of characters, its a difficult film to get invested in.

While Tarantino’s rambling dialogue in previous films was also pertinent to the plot either thematically or metaphorically, here he simply revels in it for its own sake — one particularly egregious scene at the beginning seeming to go on forever. While Kurt Russell pulls in a decent shift as a stunt-car driver hellbent on murder, and the final sequence is particularly impressive, it doesn’t really seem to add up to anything.

It’s one half of Grindhouse, a joint effort by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez (who directed the other half with Planet Terror) to replicate the experience of a double-feature in a b-movie cinema. An interesting concept to revive the double feature, it didn’t really inspire any copycat efforts.

When the characters aren’t endlessly talking, the film suddenly veers into overdrive, giving one the feeling of being on a broken rollercoaster. Still, even if it Tarantino’s worst movie, its still not an outright bad one, giving Tarantino one of the best batting averages in cinema.

7. The Hateful Eight (2015)

If you like Tarantino’s dialogue-led scenes, there’s a lot of language to appreciate in The Hateful Eight. Running over three hours long, and set mostly in one location however, the chamber-box Western seems unnecessarily long and eventually becomes rather exhausting.

It functions like an Agatha Christie novel; eight people rock up to a roadhouse in the snow named Minnie’s Haberdashery and have to stay due to the ongoing storm. Quickly it becomes apparent that someone in the group is being less than honest, leading to a slow-burning thriller where you never know who to believe.

The cinematography, filmed (and presented in selected cinemas) in 70mm is gorgeous, but it goes to waste considering it mostly captures interior scenes. Here Tarantino’s penchant for violence tides over into outright nastiness, lacking little of the moral backbone found in his previous films.

While an entertaining watch — partly thanks to a catchy score by none other than Ennio Morricone — it lacks the purpose of of his best work, leaving little to think about after the film is over. In addition, it never seems to go anywhere fast, becoming rather dull just when it should be ramping up the tension.

6. Django Unchained (2012)

After rewriting World War Two history with Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino turned his eye to the American slave trade. A postmodern Western, Django Unchained tells the story of a slave rescued by a mystery benefactor who decides to take revenge on those who have wronged him. Like in Inglorious Basterds, there is great pleasure to be found here in giving evil, racist men their comeuppance, Tarantino pulling no punches in his total disdain for them.

The Western has rarely been so glorious, Tarantino obviously inspired by the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and the grisly Sergio Corbucci film Django. It is relentlessly lurid and audacious, Tarantino’s politically un-correct tone taking the viewer to truly bizarre yet endlessly satisfying places.

Jamie Foxx excels in the main role as a man discovering his ability for blowing away his enemies, while Christoph Waltz turns in another masterclass as bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. All scored by an ahistorical soundtrack courtesy of artists such as Rick Ross, John Legend, and Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton, Django Unchained may not be as sophisticated as Inglorious Basterds, but it may be even more fun.

5. Jackie Brown (1997)

The only adaptation of Tarantino’s career so far, Jackie Brown perfectly transplants the world of Elmore Leonard to the Tarantino-verse. Based off the novel Rum Punch, it revitalised Pam Grier’s career.

Once a star of blaxploitation films such as Coffy and Foxy Brown, her role in Jackie Brown paid homage to these black female-focused films, wrapping it up in a typically complex Tarantino-esque plot. Flipping the ethnicity of the novel’s central character to pay homage to these genres was a smart move for Tarantino, expanding his vision of Los Angeles as seen in his previous two movies.

Pam Grier plays an airline attendant who smuggles money from Mexico to the United States for a black-market gun runner, excellently played by Samuel L. Jackson. When she decides to swindle him out of his money, she finds herself in over her head, needing to use all of her resolve to find a way out.

Running a leisurely two and a half hours, its Tarantino at his most generous, exploring Los Angeles in all its glory. Perhaps the quintessential Elmore Leonard film, after Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight, released the following year.

One of the most influential American directors of all time, Martin Scorsese has left an incredible mark upon popular culture. Growing up in the Little Italy district of Lower Manhattan, he became a keen chronicler of Italian-American life through films such as Look Who’s Knocking at My Door, Italian-American, Raging Bull, Mean Streets and Goodfellas.

Perhaps best known for his depictions of gangster life, his films deal predominantly with themes of religion and masculinity, unafraid to be violent in pursuit of a higher truth. His style, especially in Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed and Wolf of Wall Street, is so energetic and well recognised that it is even easy to parody. As a result of this deeply personal yet accessible style, he has influenced a wide swathe of directors, both in New York and USA and across the entire world.

He is also one of the world’s biggest cinephiles, as seen in his documentaries My Voyage To Italy and A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. His influences are wide and far-reaching; spanning from the very early days of cinema (as seen in his film Hugo) to the ascetic arthouse cinema of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson.

In honour of his incredible filmography, we have assembled ten films to watch if you are a fan of Martin Scorsese’s work. Spanning from his collaborators and mentors to directors directly inspired by and even paying homage to his work, this list is the ultimate guide to Scorsese-esque cinema. Read on below to see what we have picked. If you disagree with anything, or think we missed something major, sound off in the comment section below!

1. Through a Glass, Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961)

Before Martin Scorsese became a director, he seriously considered becoming a priest. He even attended a preparatory seminary before failing in his first year. Yet through his films, especially works like The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun and Silence, he has used his inquisitive faith to really explore what it means to be a man committed to and challenged by his faith.

One director that had a direct influence on this religious cinematic journey was Ingmar Bergman. As he says, during the 50s, if you were “a teenager on your way to becoming an adult, and you wanted to make movies, I don’t see how you couldn’t be influenced by Bergman”.

Through a Glass, Darkly, the first film in Bergman’s Silence of God Trilogy, is a great primer into the religious aspect of Bergman’s work. It takes place on the Swedish auteur’s native island of Faro. It tells the story of a dysfunctional family taking a vacation, and a younger schizophrenic woman who believes she sees God in the form of a spider.

As the title suggests, Bergman believes that finding God is no easy feat, and man’s understanding of him is always tainted by their own personal experience. Silence, Scorsese’s last film, directly evokes Bergman in its idea of God as a negative entity, and the difficulty of faith in testing circumstances, showing how the Swedish auteur still influences his work.

2. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)

Paul Schrader was one of Scorsese’s key collaborators, writing the screenplays for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing out the Dead. He is also a major director in his own right, his latest film, First Reformed, winning him an Oscar nomination for best Original Screenplay.

His undoubted masterpiece is Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, an unconventional biopic depicting the life of legendary Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima. Combining both episodes of his life with dramatisations from his novels, it’s one of the rare examples of perfect cultural cross-pollination, both American and Japanese cinematic traditions combining to create something even greater.

Like his screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters tells the story of a man preparing to enact great violence, except this time the main character (played by Ken Ogata of Vengeance of Mine fame) attempts to overthrow the Japanese constitution in order to support the emperor. A unique yet endlessly fascinating film that truly displays how Schrader learned from working with Scorsese to become a great director in his own right.

3. As Tears Go By (Won Kar Wai, 1988)

With a structure that directly evokes Scorsese’s breakout hit Mean Streets, As Tears Go By marked Hong Kong auteur Won Kar Wai’s directorial debut. The main plot elements are remarkably similar: a small-time gangster has to keep his volatile friend out of trouble.

It even shares similar stylistic elements, especially the use of luscious popular music from around the same time. Take for example the Cantonese version of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” used to score a pivotal scene, similar to the use of “Be My Baby” at the start of Mean Streets.

Nonetheless, it is still a Won Kar Wai movie, so the gangster story is quickly folded into a much more romantic vision, the beautiful Maggie Cheung playing a visiting cousin and love interest. Here Won Kar Wai repurposes the genre for his own ends, building upon Scorsese’s work to magnificent effect.

4. A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

Without John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese’s career may have been very different. After watching Boxcar Bertha, a fun yet oddly impersonal exploitation movie set during the Great Depression, Cassavetes bluntly told him: “you’ve just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit.

It’s a good picture, but you’re better than the people who make this kind of movie. Don’t get hooked into the exploitation market, just try and do something different.” Considering that Scorsese’s next movie was Mean Streets, his harsh but fair criticism seemed to have worked.

In honour of Cassavetes’ lesson, it’s worth putting one of his own films on the list. Perhaps one of the most significant independent directors in America during the 60s and 70s, his work, mostly featuring his wife Gena Rowlands, is psychologically piercing and emotionally lacerating.

His best work, A Woman Under The Influence, released in the same year as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Scorsese’s only female fronted film to date, is a fascinating depiction of mental illness that doubles up as critique of masculine culture and what society deems as normal.

5. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)

When it comes to tracking shots and perfectly pairing visual and musical cues, Paul Thomas Anderson is the true heir to the work of Martin Scorsese. This is especially true in the case of Magnolia and Boogie Nights, both unwieldy dramas that owe more than a lot to the work of Martin Scorsese.

Boogie Nights in particular is basically Goodfellas, but charting the rise and fall of the porn industry instead of the Italian-American New York mafia. Yet its not just in structure that both films are similar. Whether it’s the similarity in long takes — like the Copacabana and Hot Traxx nightclub scenes — a quick arrangement of close-ups, the use of whip pans, or using popular tracks to inject urgency into a scene — “99 Luftballoons” in Boogie Night’s case and “What is Life” in Goodfellas’ — both films share similar stylistic tricks that make them such accessible and enjoyable classics. Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson brings a lot of his own personality as a director to the film, helping Boogie Nights to easily stand on its own two feet.

For the most part, brevity is a virtue of cinema. Being able to say something profound in the least amount of time is a great way of distilling it down to its purist essence. Many films, especially blockbusters, are bogged down with filler scenes which add nothing except minutes to the experience. Howard Hawks sums it up well when he says that a good movie is “three good scenes and no bad scenes”.

In some rare cases however, some films are simply too short, not giving the audience the opportunity to really get a hold on the material. Length and theme are intrinsically linked — its why, for the most part, comedies are shorter than dramas. But some films, which tackle rather serious topics or introduce us to new and exciting places, leave the audience wanting more due to their relatively short running time.

Below is a list of films that I believe could’ve benefited from being longer. Whether it is a case of tying up confusing plot elements, allowing the audience to be further immersed in the unique cinematic world, tackling different elements that would make the story stronger, or allowing the narrative space to breathe, these 10 films — some of them great — all could’ve been improved if they’d had a more generous runtime that truly complemented their themes. Do you think that we missed something? Or do you think that we’re totally wrong? Please sound off in the comments below.

1. Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)

Spanning 15 years across three different countries, the tumultuous relationship between musicians Wiktor (Tomasz Hot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) has a true Dr Zhivago-esque vibe. But while Dr Zhivago was over three hours long, Cold War is a mere 85 minutes.

Featuring ambitious jumps in time and predominantly wordless audio-visual storytelling, Cold War is the work of a truly intelligent director that knows exactly what he is doing with each movement of the camera. Yet the motivations behind the two central characters are a complete mystery, leading to bizarre decisions that are presented like the inevitability of fate despite us not knowing why they happen.

While the film should be lauded for not spelling out everything and allowing the images to speak for themselves, its final ending is more bizarre than genuinely moving. If there were only a couple of extra scenes allowing us to see what really makes these characters tick, then Cold War could’ve been a stone cold masterpiece. Instead it’s more baffling than truly heartrending.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)

Wes Anderson’s films are known for their brevity, with not a single one lasting over two hours. A primarily comic director, his films zip along rather nicely. But with The Grand Budapest Hotel, his most successful film so far, he creates such a unique and visually interesting world that its a shame we only get to spend 100 minutes in it.

The hotel is one of the most interesting places in cinema. Inspired by the hotels of Central Europe, especially Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic, he uses a gorgeous colour palette of pink, blue and purple to really bring the fictional kingdom of Zubrowka to life.

Instead of allowing us to really see every nook and cranny in his obsessively designed hotel, Anderson focuses primarily on complicated plot machinations. While the story is enjoyable and visually witty, its luxurious setting is put on the back-burner in favour of wild chases and crazy schemes.

A longer length could’ve really allowed Anderson to explore the fascinating world he has created, thus helping to really stress the film’s main theme of maintaining civility in the face of encroaching barbarity.

3. Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)

There’s two types of people in the world: people with PhDs in complex physics and people who don’t understand Primer. The low-budget time travelling movie pulls no punches in its maddening complexity, coming the closest of any film to really grappling with the paradoxical nature of time travel.

For the casual viewer however, Primer is nearly impossible to understand, its characters speaking completely in mathematical terms that require either some form of higher education to really get a grasp of.

Running only 77 minutes on a budget of only $7,000 dollars and all directed, produced, written, scored and edited by its co-star Shane Carruth, it is a truly singular film. But would it have hurt if Carruth extended the runtime a little longer just to explain to the audience what the hell is actually going on?

Exposition is a necessary evil in many a time-bending or science-fiction heavy movie, allowing the audience to digest complex ideas with simple metaphors. While Carruth was probably afraid of dumbing down the actual truth of what he was trying to represent, it leaves the audience scratching their heads at the numbing complexity of everything going on. By giving the viewer nothing to hold onto, Primer is more of an academic experience than a truly enjoyable one.

4. Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

Perhaps the quintessential film noir, Detour’s images are part of the very fabric of B-movie cinema. Nobody making the movie had any idea of the acclaim it would later receive. Shot in only a few days and on a budget of $100,000, it shows how much you can do with just a few camera tricks and the right editing. Depicting the story of a nightclub pianist in love with a cocktail singer who travels to California, meeting a strange woman along the way, its imperfections only add to his warped psychological perspective.

Yet the film was cut down from a much longer shooting script. It would be fascinating to see the extended cut, considering how alluring the film is. While the original is an undeniably great film standing by itself, a longer cut may have added to its intriguing vibe, allowing us to learn more about its central two characters.

5. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)

Often considered one of the greatest films of all time, L’Atalante’s influence can be seen on directors as diverse as Francois Truffaut, Emir Kusturica and Bernardo Bertolucci. Telling the story of a river barge captain who travels across France with his wife and six cats, it is the quintessential proto-New Wave film. A truly affecting love story, it evokes the life of the barge dweller with great romanticism, shooting on location when most directors were still shooting in the studio.

It is a film more about moments than plot, evoking specific times in love rather than imposing anything exterior upon the central couple’s relationship. This gives it the vibe of a true classic, one whose images lodge long in the mind well after the film has ended. Running 89 minutes — before it was restored in 1990, it was shown at 65 minutes — its visuals amaze but its character work is still paper-thin. If it had a little more time to really dig into their motivations, it could’ve been even more affecting.

Virtuosic single take scenes are one of the key hallmarks of cinema. Whether it’s filming an entire scene in one distanced take or making use of steadicam or handheld cameras, an extended sequence with no cuts can immerse the viewer into the film, allowing us to process reality as the characters may see it.

There are many good effects of using this approach. Whether it’s to build suspense, show off the life that the characters have found themselves in, or simply to create a sense of spectacle and majesty, single takes are one of the most useful tools a director can have up their sleeve. And with advances in technology, including handheld cameras, steadicams, cranes and drones, expect long takes to rise in popularity.

In the list below we have assembled the ten best uses of a single take in cinema. We have chosen them not just because of their technical virtuosity, but for how they complement the film as a whole.

Whether its an extended shot that lasted an entire movie, or one inside a traditionally edited film that stands out as a remarkable sequence in itself, these scenes shot in a single take represent the very best of what cinema can do. Read on below to see what we have picked. Think we missed something important? Sound off in the comment section below!

10. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) — Car Ambush

Alfonso Cuarón, often working with Emmanuel Lubezki, is the modern master of the long take. We could’ve easily included Roma’s beach rescue or Gravity’s opening scene, or even other scenes from Children of Men on this list, but we’ve gone for the iconic car ambush scene from Cuarón’s dystopian thriller.

Spanning over three minutes, it goes from banality to mayhem in just a few seconds. It’s a truly shocking moment to see Julianne Moore’s character die so suddenly, especially considering that she was so alive and playful just before and the relative fame of the actress.

By allowing everything to happen within the same take, Cuarón shows how happiness and tragedy are never too far away from one another. It works perfectly for the film’s themes, which is all about trying to survive and maintain humanity in the face of such devastation. By filming it all in one take, all of these emotions are intrinsically linked, giving Children of Men its extraordinary power.

9. Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) — Traffic Jam

Jean-Luc Godard often panned his camera from left to right, then back again. Sometimes for dramatic effect, sometimes just for the sake of it. But in Weekend his long tracking shot provides nothing less than summation of Modern France itself.

Telling the story of a young couple who decide to escape from Paris for the weekend, it is by far the best of his picaresque adventures. At its centrepiece is an interminable tracking shot of jammed cars that runs on for three-quarters of a mile.

Ever the cryptic director, Godard himself remarked that “Politics is a traveling shot”. The idea with this sequence is to see France as a country that has become so jam-packed with useless stuff that it simply cannot move on. Additionally, it means that the couple must leave their car, setting in motion the bizarre, highly politicised journey to follow. Possibly the most famous sequence in his entire filmography.

8. Oldboy (Park Chan-Wook, 2003) — Corridor Fight Scene

The genius of Oldboy’s massive fight scene —in which our protagonist takes on scores of enemies equipped only with a hammer — lies in its simplicity. The camera only has one perspective, giving us a full glance into what is happening like it is a 2D action game. When the fists start flying, it is the choreography of bodies slamming together that gives it its bone-crunching feel.

Dae-su Oh might be able to defeat scores of enemies, but there is a real sense here that it comes at great physical cost. This dovetails nicely with the themes of the movie, where he tries to persist against all costs to do what he thinks is right. If it was shot in a traditional way, this feeling would’ve been lost and his strength unrealistic. The inspiration of this hallway fight scene can be seen more recently in the TV show Daredevil, which featured more than one epic close quarters encounter, and The Raid.

7. The Player (Robert Altman, 1992) — Opening Scene

The most meta-tracking shot on the list — even referencing Touch of Evil through its tongue-in-cheek dialogue — The Player’s opening scene is a homage to the power of tracking shots themselves.

The brilliant eight minute shot takes place in a production studio itself, starting with a secretary picking up a call, then following our protagonist — a soulless producer — and various players as they discuss the business of movies. Robert Altman’s overlapping dialogue is in full force here, allowing us to really get a sense of what Hollywood was like at the time.

This tracking shot perfectly suits the themes of the film, which is all about the inner machinations of the movie business. Ironically the skill of this shot belies one of the themes of the film, which believes that modern cinema has lost its way. Like Touch of Evil, it has a narrative point too, finally resting on the threatening letter the producer receives from an anonymous source, thus setting into motion the themes of the movie.

6. Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov, 2002) — Entire Film

Taking place almost entirely in the Winter Palace of the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russian Ark is not only the best virtual tour of a museum you could ever hope for, but a stunning, experimental dreamlike exploration of the city’s history. Shot entirely on steadicam in a one-take 96 minute sequence, it is probably the most virtuosic tracking shot of all time — taking in grand balls, imperial audiences, modern day tour guides and more in its imperious sweep.

It is a truly experimental film. The film is shot in the first person, with the narrator meeting a strange character known as “The European” who shows him around the different rooms of the majestic Winter Palace. Time collapses here, moving between past and present with ease. The flowing camerawork gives the film an uncanny feel. This is a true example of where theme and form link together perfectly.

The most famous director to ever come out of the Soviet Union, Andrei Tarkovsky has had a massive influence on both auteurist filmmakers and the science-fiction genre. Known for his long and austere takes, serious inquisitions into the nature of the human spirit and enigmatic endings, his relatively short filmography — spanning only seven features — is easily one of the best of all time.

But what if you have seen all of his films and are in the mood for more moody dramas about the impermanence of life and the impossibility of connection, shot against a bleak backdrop of decay or nostalgia?

We have the perfect list for you. Covering both the Russian and Soviet filmmakers who related to and were inspired by his style to mainstream Hollywood cinema and the wider global auteurist scene, this eclectic list is the perfect showcase of what Tarkovskesque film is outside of the great man himself.

It shows that the director is not somebody who can be easily put in one box or another, but someone with a variety of techniques and themes that is one of the most diverse in cinema. Think we missed anything important? Give us your suggestions in the comments below.

1. The Secret of the Third Planet (Roman Kachanov, 1981)

A true Russian cult classic, The Secret of the Third Planet is a traditionally animated tale based upon the novella by children’s writer Kir Bulychev that shows the best of what Soviet science fiction can do. While light, bouncy and colourful where Tarkovsky’s two science fiction outings Solaris and Stalker were dark, austere and brooding, both The Secret of the Third Planet and those two films have the same fascination with uncovering the unknown.

Produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow, it tells the story of a space crew on a mission to find new animal species for the city’s zoo. Along the way they discover all sorts of strange creatures, ranging from talking birds to flowers that act as mirrors to strange floating jellyfish.

While ostensibly a Yellow Submarine-style children’s tale about exploration and discovery, its boundless imagination easily asserts it as one of the most memorable animated science-fiction films to come out of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

2. Kin-dza-dza! (Georgiy Daneliya, 1986)

A truly bizarre science-fiction tragicomedy that doubled up as a critique of the absurdity of the Soviet regime, Kin-dza-dza! was Georgian director Georgiy Daneliya’s biggest hit.

Similar to how the search for the zone in Stalker was a metaphor about the search for meaning in a fractured society, the desert planet of Kin-dza-dza! is the Soviet Union through the looking glass. While approaching their material in very different ways — and Kin-dza-dza! is remarkably silly, even by Daneliya’s standards — both directors utilised the sci-fi genres to hide broader critiques about the Soviet Union.

It tells the story of two Muscovites who suddenly find themselves transported to a strange land. There they encounter a society governed by completely bizarre rules. As funny as it is satirical, it showed Daneliya at the height of his tragicomic powers.

Never breaking out of the Soviet Union apart from a small release in Japan, Kin-dza-dza! is the true definition of a cult film. Basically begging a rerelease, its shows that Soviet science-fiction went to far stranger — and funnier — places than just Stalker and Solaris.

3. Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German, 2013)

Legendary Soviet director and contemporary to Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksei German had a torrid time getting his films off the ground during the communist era. Both directors were deeply harmed by censorship, making one wonder what could’ve been if they were allowed to carry on uninhibited.

His sixth and final film, Hard to Be a God is German’s masterpiece and shares direct similarities to Stalker. Both films are based on novels by co-writers Akardy and Boris Strugatsky, science-fiction authors whose works were characterised by a highly intellectual and philosophical bent.

Hard to Be a God tells the story of scientists who travel to a nearly identical alien planet which is stuck in the middle ages. One scientist assumes the persona of Don Rumuta, a nobleman living in a castle. There he comes into contact with a completely and backwards world.

Darker and more grotesque than any of Tarkovsky’s visions — which although obsessed with falling textures such as rain and snow were generally quite uncluttered — its slow pace and science fiction theme makes Hard to Be A God one of the best Russian films of the past ten years.

4. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2017)

If any modern living Russian director was to assume the mantle of Tarkovsky’s successor, the eternally depressing Andrey Zvyagintsev is the closest heir (after Aleksey German Jr). His films are slow and melancholic, characterised by long, looping tracking shots and characters seemingly shut-off from expressing positive emotions.

His latest film, Loveless, telling the story of two bickering parents who don’t notice when their child has gone missing, is a great case in point, using the metaphor of a lost child to comment on the state of Modern Russia and the country’s controversial conflict with Ukraine.

While not quite as pointed as the work of Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, Zvyagintsev’s latest film is a no-holds-barred critique of a country that has seemingly lost its way.

Made with international support after the government was less than pleased with his anti-corruption tome Leviathan, Loveless is characterised by its bleak portrayal of Moscow as a land without hope or love. Alternately moving, intimate and dark, its tragic landscapes bring to mind Nostalghia and The Sacrifice. It’s not an easy film to watch, but rewarding in spades.

5. Come and See (Elim Klimov, 1985)

One of the definitive anti-war films, Come and See can be directly compared to Tarkovsky’s first feature Ivan’s Childhood. Telling a Second World War story through the eyes of a child, Come and See is a harrowing depiction of the brutal cost of war.

Telling the story of a young Belorussian teen who joins the resistance against the Nazi occupation, it portrays a complete descent into madness and despair. A direct inspiration on Steven Spielberg — who screened it before starting both Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan — it is the true heir to The Cranes are Flying in the way that it marries anti-war concerns with bravura filmmaking.

Ending with a dash of inspiration that figuratively moves backwards in time, it truly counts the cost of the most terrible war of all time. Accompanied by a brutal score by Oleg Yanchenko, Soviet Marching songs and classical music such as Mozart’s Requiem and the Ride from Wagner’s Die Walküre, Come and See is one the rare 80’s Soviet films that has become required viewing across the world of cinema.

This year’s Oscar ceremony will be the last of the 2010s. The past decade has seen many innovations in storytelling, technical prowess and diversity. While the Oscars cannot claim to be at the forefront of these innovations, the Best Picture awards paints a fairly good picture as to what direction the world of cinema is going in.

Whether it has been the mainstream acceptance of gay love, as seen in Moonlight winning Best Picture, or the groundbreaking dreamscapes in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, the remarkable experiment behind Boyhood, a new spin on the horror genre with Get Out, or possibly the first ever Foreign Language film to win Best Picture, with Roma, the Oscars have seen a remarkable change in the past ten years.

It helps that the number of films up for the award was expanded from five to a potential ten in 2010 after the outcry following The Dark Knight’s snub, allowing more diverse films to sneak in against traditional fare. As a result, one could even argue its the best decade for Best Picture nominees since at least the 1970s.

With nearly a hundred films nominated in the past ten years, there’s a lot to go through when discussing which films are the best. This list has narrowed them down to the ten nominees that we think rise above the rest. Do you agree with our selection, or have we got it terribly wrong? Please sound off in the comment section below!

10. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

A horror movie with a difference, Get Out exploited the natural fear black people have of powerful white people in the USA and used it as the basis of an incredibly smart film. It doesn’t simply go after cops or politicians, but sees how racism is embedded within seemingly the most liberal families.

With a screenplay to die for, in which every element seems to become more pertinent later on, and pitch perfect performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Alison Williams, Get Out hit the zeitgeist on its head, becoming arguably the most buzzy non-blockbuster movie of the decade.

It was also further proof that horror could be used to explore touchy issues instead of simply providing scares, laying the groundwork for future films like Hereditary and TV series like The Haunting of House Hill. The first horror film to be nominated since Black Swan, it seemed like Get Out would usher in a new era, but we’ll have to wait for Jordan Peele’s Us to come out before we can expect the same level of success once again.

9. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

A bizarre love story with shades of Rebecca and Alfred Hitchcock, the sheer existence of Phantom Thread feels like a minor miracle. It features Daniel Day Lewis in what may be his last ever role. Let’s hope not, considering the brilliance he brings to the role of Reynolds Woodcock, a tailor in 1950s London who falls for a stumbling waitress named Alma. With a gorgeous score courtesy of Johnny Greenwood, Phantom Thread seduces the viewer into its strange and weird love story.

It treats true love as something of a mystery, starting as a delightful comedy of manners — “I cannot start my day with a confrontation” — before quietly moving into a dance of ever-shifting romantic behaviours, with Alma slowly gaining the upper hand in the relationship.

Here Paul Thomas Anderson doubles down on his esotericism, creating what might be his best ever film. It’s a miracle something this unique was ever nominated, but such is the power Day Lewis brings to the screen.

8. The Fighter (David O’Russell, 2010)

A boxing film with a difference, The Fighter recalls Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull in the way the conflicts in the ring reflect wider personal and societal issues.

Starring Mark Wahlberg in his best ever role as Micky Ward, a boxer seen as a stepping stone for better players, and Christian Bale as his crack addicted brother, it shows the power of loyalty and sticking up for yourself no matter what happens. A true against-all-odds story, it’s conflicts have the ring of real life, making The Fighter an uncommonly absorbing experience.

It helps that the fights themselves are incredibly rousing, helping Micky Ward to slowly making his way up the leaderboard. These are aided by great supporting performances by Amy Adams and Melissa Leo, showing the importance of family in achieving one’s own success. Despite being released in a year that also included Black Swan, Inception and The Social Network, The Fighter still lost to Oscar bait The King’s Speech.

7. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)

Currently the frontrunner to win Best Picture this year, Roma is a stunning work of art and the summation of Alfonso Cuarón’s career. Telling the story of a domestic servant working in a middle class household in Mexico City, Roma gathers its power through its stunning camerawork, black-and-white images and the strength of its performances.

It’s a radical act of empathy, allowing us to imagine what it’s like to live a life vastly different from ours. With some of the most amazing mise en scène ever committed to celluloid and an astonishing depth of frame, Roma is a simply transportive experience.

It asks difficult questions about the value of family and whether you can ever be a part of one if you only live to serve them. Combining the personal with the historical, it plays out against the political backdrop of 70s Mexico, suggesting that people’s lives are always caught up in the bounds of history.

If it wins, it will be a landmark moment for the Oscars, presenting the Best Picture as a truly global event as opposed to merely an anglo-centric phenomenon.

6. La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

A homage to old school musicals boasting brilliant songs, excellent choreography and a heartbreaking narrative, La La Land proved a massive step up in quality for director Damien Chapelle from his sophomore effort Whiplash. Pairing Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone together for the second time after Crazy Stupid Love, its a tale not only about falling in love but trying to find your own sense of success in a world where it seems all but impossible.

Coming at a time when traditional musicals have lost their way in the face of shouty Opera-style weep-fests such as Les Miserables and the upcoming Cats adaptation, La La Land reminds you of when they were good. With a precise sense of momentum, gorgeous colour palette and cinematographic choices to die for, La La Land was the frontrunner to win Best Picture, eventually losing to Moonlight, a far different but also very accomplished film.

The Oscars is in a crisis. While normal Americans (and devoted fans around the world) would easily watch the Superbowl for over four hours, The Academy believe that one way to drive ratings up is to make the entire process shorter.

The news that the Best Cinematography Award would be announced during the adverts shocked pundits, with some people boldly declaring that they would boycott the entire ceremony. But why does the Oscars have to be under three hours? Wouldn’t it be better just to embrace the excess of the whole thing with a show that seemingly never ends? After all, people can easily binge four episodes of Game of Thrones without having a second thought. Why can’t the Oscars be that long (or even longer)?

In that spirit, perhaps its time to introduce even more categories. This would give the Oscars the largess it deserves, as well as bring in new eyeballs thanks to inclusive categories, especially for emerging talent and action films.

Below we have included ten potential categories that could make the Oscars great again and drive in viewers. Spanning from the obvious to the more obscure, it would potentially liven up a ceremony that is way too focused these days on brevity. Do you agree with what we have to say? Or think we got it totally wrong. Please give us your thoughts in the comments below.

1. Best First Film

First films don’t get much Oscar love. Of the current eight nominees for Best Picture, only one directorial debut, A Star Is Born, is included. In many ways it doesn’t even count, considering the immense respect Bradley Cooper has already garnered in the industry — and he wasn’t even nominated for Best director.

A Best First Film Award would help to inspire debut filmmakers to continue their career— after all, there’s nothing like winning an Oscar with your first ever time behind the camera.

Obvious nominees this year could’ve included Eighth Grade, Hereditary, Wildlife, Mid90s and Sorry to Bother You. These are all bold and risky debuts that took big risks but were nonetheless not nominated for a single Oscar. Considering however that they were immensely popular among younger viewers, and included a variety of often ignored genres, this award would easily help to draw in a more diverse audience.

2. Best Casting

Casting is an essential part of making a film great. So many otherwise fine films cannot quite reach the level that they were supposed to by having the wrong person in the lead. Conversely, average material can be elevated by getting the right person to make it sound good. By figuring out which actors are correct for certain roles can really help bring a screenplay to life.

This is all the work of a casting director, who either sees many different auditions for a role before picking the right person, or specifically works with the director in order to headhunt a particular talent.

This skill in casting goes all the way from the lead role to the 100th extra. Casting directors really should be given more credit for helping a director realise their vision. This award would also help new and diverse films get an Oscar nomination.

For example, The Rider, which made use of an entirely amateur cast mostly playing themselves, is a great example of a bold casting decision that pays off in spades. It’s time this kind of work got some recognition.

3. Best Soundtrack

The work of a music supervisor is long and complicated, combining both an understanding of cinematic language and legal expertise. While it may look like a director simply takes songs from her iTunes account and scores the action, they usually collaborate with a music supervisor who helps them find the perfect song for different cues and cinematic moments. Getting the rights to these songs is also very difficult, with supervisors using every skill in the book in order to pay the license fees.

Some songs are notoriously expensive to purchase or impossible to get; this is part of the reason why you rarely hear bands such as Led Zeppelin or The Beatles in a film. For some artists, a letter explaining why the music suits the quality of the film and is in keeping with the band or singer’s spirit is needed. To actually achieve this requires a lot of skill.

Some great films — think the work of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, or George Lucas’ American Graffiti — cannot be extricated from the songs that feature in them. To honour these soundtracks, a specific award seems very necessary.

It also goes without saying that it could honour original soundtracks composed for a film, such as this year’s A Star is Born and Black Panther. This is a slightly different task that requires roping in artists, recording original songs, and figuring out the right moment in the film to deploy them.

4. Best Stunt Work

Stunt work is one of the most unsung parts of any production. It does not merely refer to big explosions or people jumping from planes, but simply any time that an actor is replaced by a professional for a potentially dangerous scene or an actor attempts a physical act particularly skilful or daring. Like CGI, it happens more often than people think.

A Stunt Work Oscar is a great idea because not only does it honour action films, but it pays special attention to the use of practical effects. As big Hollywood films often gravitate more and more to using computers instead of real people, a Stunt Work Oscar could easily bring people back to stunts that really make us lose our breath.

The most obvious film that would be deserving of this kind of Award this season is Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which saw Tom Cruise run, duck, jump and fly helicopters all in the name of cinema. Is action acting not acting? If so, it definitely deserves an award.

5. Best Ensemble

The best films require teamwork. It’s not just the work of one or two established actors, but the entire cast that rouse everyone together in service of something great. That’s where the Best Ensemble Award could come in handy, giving credit to those excellent actors that help round out a piece but can’t quite get Best Acting nominations themselves. Good examples include Nicholas Hoult in The Favourite or Andrew Dice Clay in A Star is Born.

This can also help films that don’t have any nominations for individual acting, but deserved to be recognised for the collective effort — Black Panther’s excellent ensemble immediately springs to mind, as does Crazy Rich Asians, which didn’t get any Oscar nominations. Other awards bodies such as the Screen Actors Guild and the Satellite Awards, recognise the power of an ensemble — it’s time for the Oscars to get with the program.

The Oscar nominations for best acting came with lots of happy surprises and lots of egregious snubs. Yet what remains is a lively and diverse list, spanning from utter brilliance to derivative caricature. In honour of their announcement, we have decided to rank them all, both male and female, supporting and lead, from best to worst.

This list will not only evaluate performances by themselves but how well they impact the overall effect of the movie. There can be wasted and smart performances in poor movies, just as there can be underwritten performances in otherwise great movies. Our ranking takes both things into account. Read our full ranking below and tell us what you think in the comments!

20. Rami Malek (Best Actor, Bohemian Rhapsody)

Freddie Mercury was one of the most dynamic and inspiring people that ever lived. A bisexual immigrant from Zanzibar who took an unknown band named Smile and helped them become the musical juggernaut known as Queen, he deserved a story that did his brilliance justice. Instead we got Bohemian Rhapsody, a queer-shaming mess that portrayed Mercury as a self-hating gay man.

The most common defence of the film — despite its egregious editing, CGI crowds, cheesy musical cues, shameless biopic clichés and misrepresentation of the truth — is that Rami Malek’s performance is the best thing about it. That’s not true.

The best thing about the film is the music, as this was the only thing Bryan Singer — accused by multiple people of being a pedophile — couldn’t physically ruin. Malek’s performance is Mercury as a drag act, a vapid caricature that does and says nothing good about the iconic singer. You’d be better off watching clips of the real Freddie on YouTube.

19. Sam Rockwell (Best Supporting Actor, Vice)

Sam Rockwell’s inclusion on this year’s Oscar ballot suggests he made some kind of deal with the devil. His performance of George Bush isn’t particularly bad. It’s just not really enough to be considered one of the most important performances of 2018.

Considering that he appears in about two or three scenes, the most important of which involves him eating chicken, depressingly edited alongside footage of Dick Cheney fishing, he has no business actually getting nominated for an Oscar.

Despite being the worst film of 2018, Vice is ostensibly about how Bush was a massive side-character to the Dick Cheney show. A nomination for Rockwell is a classic misrepresentation of the whole point of the film!

18. Amy Adams (Best Supporting Actress, Vice)

Amy Adams has been the bridesmaid too many times. With six nominations, she is more than overdue for an Oscar. But for the love of God, let’s hope she doesn’t get it for Vice. Her performance as Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne is hackneyed, cloying and overwrought, from the fake wig to the cringe-inducing Shakespearian dialogue. This isn’t entirely her fault.

Adam McKay has no idea how to direct this kind of serious material, and considering the poor editing, which doesn’t allow anyone to breathe, Adams’ brilliance is never really given a chance to shine through. With Joe Wright’s The Woman in the Window coming up this year, let’s hope Adams wins for something she actually deserves.

17. Adam Driver (Best Supporting Actor, BlacKkKlansman)

Adam Driver’s character in BlacKkKlansman, a Jewish cop who never had to experience the power of racism before, is a necessary way in for many white audience members. Racism in America hasn’t always just been anti-black. Even once safe people such as Italians and Irish were considered not to be ethnically pure, Driver’s performance allowing white people to better imagine the dangerous effects of racism.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t really stand up next to Driver’s best work. He can do subtlety well, but he’s more exciting when he goes crazy — for example, Kylo Ren in Star Wars or Adam Sackler in Girls. One day he will get a performance that really, really suits his crazy ability. His turn in BlacKkKlansman is just fine, but star John David Washington really should’ve been nominated ahead.

16. Mahershala Ali (Best Supporting Actor, Green Book)

Mahershala Ali is possibly the most exciting actor of the moment. From his gorgeous turn in Moonlight to his current TV gig in True Detective, he has a wide and expressive palette of skills that draw the viewer in. In Green Book, he takes a problematic role — the perfect suffering gay black man in a nonetheless racist society — and manages to draw out a lot of nuance.

Sadly, he cannot quite survive the hamminess of the screenplay, some corny lines getting the better of his skills, forcing him to overact. Overall, its a good performance, but hardly the kind of thing that should be dominating the Best Supporting Actor category.

15. Christian Bale (Best Actor, Vice)

Christian Bale is a shapeshifter, able to lose or gain massive amounts of weight for a role. To play Dick Cheney he gained 40 pounds for the role. It’s an audacious and bold performance, uncannily replicating everything about the former Vice president.

The only real problem is: its in a terrible movie, a glorified lecture that feels more like a self-congratulatory Ted Talk than a genuine work of cinema. The full horrifying scope of what Dick Cheney achieved is not really imbued with any thematic weight. This epic misfire in direction gives Bale’s performance an SNL skit quality, just when it should really be making us think.

14. Viggo Mortensen (Best Actor, Green Book)

There is a certain charm to Mortensen’s cannibalisation of Italian-American mannerisms in Green Book. From eating an entire pizza like a sandwich to over-emphasising every word in the screenplay, his performance as Frank Anthony Vallelonga bursts with force and enthusiasm.

The conclusions he may come to regarding race and sexuality and self-knowledge may be a little pat, but Mortensen seems to really enjoy himself in the main role, making the viewer enjoy the admittedly old-fashioned film in the process. If the film itself was handled with a little more subtlety, this easily could’ve been higher up in the rankings.

13. Marina de Tavira (Best Supporting Actress, Roma)

Roma is mostly the Yalitza Aparicio show, her subtle portrayal of a domestic servant in a well-off Mexican household, propelling her to fame. Yet Marina de Tavira, an established actress in Mexican film and television, provides her necessary counterpart as a mother whose life is falling apart. Her relationship with Cleo drives the film — showing just how familial these relationships can be.

For that reason she more than deserves her nomination, its unlikely inclusion (she’s not a big name who got nominated just because people like her, like Sam Rockwell) perhaps indicating that Roma can go all the way.

12. Regina King (Best Supporting Actress, If Beale Street Could Talk)

If Beale Street Could Talk is a gorgeous, thoroughly American film that should’ve been in the Best Picture conversation. The way Barry Jenkins lights scenes, frames close-ups, uses focus and edits gives his films a dreamy flow — If Beale Street Could Talk is a great example.

Regina King excels as the mother-in-law trying to do right by her daughter. Her desperate trip to Puerto Rico to get a woman to rescind her accusation is so poignantly done, it definitely deserves to be a part of the awards conversation.

11. Richard E. Grant (Best Supporting Actor, Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

Richard E. Grant’s turn in Can You Ever Forgive Me? might be his most quintessential performance since Withnail and I. Playing a hard-drinking gay man who mostly makes all his money from selling cocaine, he hides deep reservoirs of sadness by playing the role of the fool.

It’s a loud yet nuanced performance, containing many different layers. Additionally, it is a classically weighted supporting role — adding lots of depth to the film without distracting from Melissa McCarthy’s fine central role.

This year’s Oscar ceremony will be the last of the 2010s, leading us to reflect on what a fascinating and diverse bunch of films and cinematic modes have appeared in the past decade. The Best Picture race is no longer dominated by prestige projects or heartbreaking true stories, but often won by diverse and challenging movies.

Whether it’s the stunning success of indies like Moonlight, the necessary messages found in films like Spotlight, or the pure joy in watching something like Birdman, the 2010s have been a great decade for the Oscars. Nonetheless, nearly every year something gets nominated that really stands out amongst the rest due to its poor quality and simplistic messaging.

This year was special: with Green Book, Vice and Bohemian Rhapsody, all divisive in their own way, nominated, many called it one of the worst line ups of all time. In honour of the decade’s end and this year’s particularly egregious selection, let’s rank the worst films to be nominated for a Best Picture in the past ten years.

Not every movie is terrible, only their selection does not seem warranted as one of the best eight to ten movies of the year. Spanning from big budget sci-fi to musicals to traditional Oscar bait, we have it all laid out here. Don’t agree with what we have to say? Sound off in the comments below!

10. Vice (Adam McKay, 2018)

There are few films that inspire more scorn than the self-congratulatory biopic. Told in a strange meta style (which can work in the hands of a more skilled filmmaker) Vice is basically Adam McKay mansplaining why the the Iraq War happened for over two hours while indicting the audience for liking… Britney Spears. It makes little sense, all of the talent and insight brought to The Big Short used to tell people things they already know.

It’s a shame, especially considering the gravitas Christian Bale gives to the central role of Dick Cheney. He put on a lot of weight for the role and has an uncanny ability to replicate his mannerisms. Sadly, all of this is lost under McKay’s manic direction — using every trick in the box to make it an impossibly debilitating experience. A complete failure from start to finish.

9. Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer, 2018)

Never mind the accusations that Bryan Singer has repeatedly raped young boys. Never mind the fact that the story portrays gay sex as leering and perverse. Never mind that the film was made with the remaining members of Queen involved in the production process, making sure that they were spotless good guys while Freddy was seen as the villain.

Never mind the poor CGI crowds or the fact you can just watch the Live Aid performance on YouTube and have exactly the same time. Ignoring all of those egregious elements of Bohemian Rhapsody that seems to have been bypassed by the Academy in favour of nominating it for Best Picture, the film is simply terribly, terribly, terribly made.

Look at the editing (which has also won an Oscar nomination). One never gets a sense of where the bandmates are in relation to each other in just a regular scene, never mind while they are playing together. The average shot lasts less than a second, while the entire runtime is well over two hours, making it an exhaustive exhumation of somebody who deserves a proper telling.

Rami Malek has been given a lot of praise for his drag impersonation of Freddy Mercury, but it’s really better suited to Vegas than the big screen. A disaster on every level.

8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017)

At one point a strong contender for the top spot itself before eventually losing its place to The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was an incredibly divisive film. Some called it a racist redemption movie that cared more about a white man’s feelings than black people being tortured, others called it a barnstorming and deeply feminist tale of one woman’s search for justice at any cost.

What was lost in a lot of the conversation was simply how poorly made the film is. From the CGI deer to the fake character development to the complete misrepresentation of how Midwest Americans speak, Three Billboards is a misfire every step of the way.

Combined with a dishonest redemption arc, its style seemed to excuse racist behaviour and equate all murders — even those committed in cold blood — as morally equal. Hardly the message one needs in the age of Trump.

7. The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015)

The Martian is the perfect film if you’re a teacher and want to put on a movie instead of class and want to justify it by picking something vaguely scientific. Based on the novel by science-fiction writer Andy Weir, it stars Matt Damon as a man who gets stranded on Mars.

While it’s based in many scientific ideas, and prioritises action and practicality over faith and traditional Hollywood cliché, its very insistence on empirical solutions make it something of a protracted lecture rather than an entertaining film in its own right.

This insistence of methodical solutions robs The Martian of any real suspense or his character of any real depth. We learn little about him other than his taste for cheesy music and love of science while he tries to figure out a way to survive, making it ideal for learning how to grow potatoes in space but hardly one of the best films of that year.

6. Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)

For some Room was a devastating, heart-wrenching tale about a mother and her son struggling to stay alive. In reality, it’s a limiting and rather airless drama featuring one of the most annoying kids in cinematic history. Brie Larson may give an emotionally charged (although overwrought) performance as a mother trying to do good by her child, but it’s really Jacob Tremblay who rings in every note up to ten. How could anyone stand him?

With a bifurcated storyline, set before and after our protagonists leave the accursed titular room, the film lacks any real momentum, ultimately leaving little impression upon the viewer.

The theme is loud and obvious — how terrible it is to be stuck in a room alone — without any real sense of mystery, perspective or complication, making Room’s inclusion alongside classic films such as Spotlight, Max Max: Fury Road and Brooklyn seem rather misguided.