There are 44 feature films nominated for the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony. We here at Swampflix are conspicuously more attracted to the lowbrow & the genre-minded than we are to stuffy Awards Season releases, so as usual we have reviewed little more than half of the films nominated (so far!). We’re still happy to see so many movies we enjoyed listed among the nominees, though. In fact, this year’s nominations include three titles from our own Top Films of 2017 list, which is an incredibly rare occurrence, given the Academy’s historic distaste for the weirdo genre films we passionately seek out. In fact, two horror films from our Top 5 for the year are nominated for the highly prestigious categories of Best Picture & Best Director, a phenomenon I doubt we’ll ever see again (not that I wouldn’t love to be proven wrong). The Academy rarely gets these things right when actually choosing the winners (Moonlight’s surprise victory last year was a heartwarming exception to the rule), but as a list this selection isn’t half-bad in terms of representing the cultural landscape of 2017 cinema.

Listed below are the 25 Oscar-Nominated films from 2017 that we covered for the site, ranked from best to . . . least-best, based on our star ratings and where they placed on our own Top Films of 2017 list. Each entry is accompanied by a blurb, a link to our corresponding review, and a mention of the awards the films were nominated for.

1. Get Out, nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Daniel Kaluuya), Best Original Screenplay

“Instead of a virginal, scantily clad blonde running from a masked killer with an explicitly phallic weapon, Get Out aligns its audience with a young black man put on constant defense by tone deaf, subtly applied racism. Part horror comedy, part racial satire, and part mind-bending sci-fi, Peele’s debut feature not only openly displays an encyclopedic knowledge of horror as an art form (directly recalling works as varied as Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Under the Skin, and any number of Wes Craven titles), it also applies that knowledge to a purposeful, newly exciting variation on those past accomplishments. Get Out knows what makes horror effective as a genre and finds new avenues of cultural criticism to apply that effect to instead of just mirroring what came before, no small feat for a debut feature.”

2. The Shape of Water, nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sally Hawkins), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Octavia Spencer), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Richard Jenkins), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

“Although Pan’s Labyrinth wasn’t created with an American audience in mind, U.S. viewers could reject Vidal and his violence as being part of a different time and place, distancing themselves from his ideologies. Not so with Strickland, who lifts this veil of enforced rhetorical distance and highlights the fact that idealizing and period of the American past is nothing more than telling oneself a lie about history. It’s a powerful punch in the face of the fascist ideologies that are infiltrating our daily lives bit by bit to see such a horrible villain (admittedly/possibly a bit of a caricature, but with good reason) come undone and be overcome. It’s a further tonic to the soul to see him defeated by an alliance comprised of the ‘other’: a ‘commie,’ a woman of color, a woman with a physical disability, and an older queer man.”

3. Logan, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay

“The one problem I’ve never had with the film version of Wolverine is Hugh Jackman’s consistently strong performance regardless of the variable quality of the material available, and this is his best work as the character to date. This is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that, for once, we’re not reflecting back on his mysterious past as we have in literally every movie in which he appeared in this franchise and are instead seeing a man at the end of his career and, perhaps, his life. Logan deals with the more mundane aspects of growing old, like obsolescence in a changing world, the dementia of an elderly father (figure), and the betrayal of his own aging body and the disease thereof, despite his much-touted healing factor. This is not a character who is obsessed with learning about (or altering) his past, but one for whom the past is prologue to a slow, painful existence in an all-too-real dystopian future.”

4. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“There’s no Infinity Stone MacGuffin here, and it’s a real break from the MCU’s usual storytelling machine that the narrative of GotG 2 isn’t motivated by set pieces, action sequences, or even plot, but by character. The only real example of this in the franchise thus far has been Winter Soldier, which was motivated by Cap’s desires to save one friend and avenge another, but even that film was organized around the plot of a conspiracy thriller as much as (if not more than) character motivation. Here, however, every choice and conflict is about character.”

5. The Florida Project, nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Willem Dafoe)

“The Florida Project doesn’t dwell on or exploit the less-than-ideal conditions its pint-sized punks grow up in, even when depicting their most dire consequences; it instead celebrates the kids’ anarchic energy and refusal to buckle under the false authority of adults.”

6. Call Me By Your Name, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Timothée Chalamet), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song (“Mystery of Love”)

“This is the first Guadagnino film I’ve seen, and I am immensely impressed by his ability to create an atmosphere that is so appealing to all the senses. I could taste the fresh apricot juice as it was flowing down Oliver’s throat. I could feel the warmth of the sun as it was beaming down on Elio’s face. Even the use of music in the film was phenomenal. From the memorable sequence of Oliver dancing in his high socks and Converse shoes to The Psychedelic Furs hit, ‘Love My Way’ to Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Mystery of Love’ (nominated for Best Original Song) during Elio’s heartfelt moment of self-reflection, all of the film’s musical components add emphasis to these little moments.”

7. Faces Places, nominated for Best Documentary Feature

“Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Faces Places is the way it uses its adorable surface of kittens, friendship, and shameless puns to hide its deep well of radical politics. Varda & JR are very particular about the small-village subjects they select to interview, painting a portrait of a Europe composed almost entirely of farmers, factory workers, coal miners, waitresses, shipping dock unions, and other working-class archetypes. They pay homage to these subjects by blowing their portraits up to towering proportions, then pasting them to the exteriors of spaces they’ve historically occupied. More importantly, they involve these impromptu collaborators directly in the creative process, so they can feel just as much pride as artists as they feel as subjects. The project often feels like a playful, wholesome version of graffiti, which is always a political act (even if rarely this well-considered).”

8. Lady Bird, nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Saoirse Ronan), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Laurie Metcalf), Best Original Screenplay

“It’s by no means one of the flashier filmmaking feats of the year, but there’s a pretty solid chance that something (if not everything) in Lady Bird will resonate with you on a personal level. Although a massive number of people respond to the picture by insisting Gerwig made it specifically for them, they can’t all be wrong. She’s speaking to her audience on a distinctively personal level, especially on issues of teen identity exploration and familial struggles with selfishness & class. The rapid fire editing and believably genuine performances from Ronan & Metcalf only serve to drive that vision home and make room for a memorable, personalized emotional response.”

9. Phantom Thread, nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Lesley Manville), Best Costume Design, Best Original Score

“If you enter Phantom Thread looking for a modernist critique of the tyrannical Troubled Artist type set against a visually interesting backdrop & a sweeping, classy score, the movie is more than happy to oblige you. If you’re not laughing through the tension of the weaponized ‘polite’ exchanges between Reynolds, Alma, and Cyril Woodcock, though, I’m not sure you’re fully appreciating what the movie is offering. This really is one of the finest comedies I’ve seen in a while. It has a wickedly peculiar, distinct sense of humor to it that you won’t find in many other features, a comedic tone Reynolds himself would likely describe as ‘a little naughty.'”

10. Dunkirk, nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

“I’m usually unable to distinguish any particular World War II battlefield picture from the long, uniformed line that marched before it, but Nolan’s auteurist interests in things like time, intense sound design, and muted performances from actors like Tom Hardy & Cillian Murphy make Dunkirk feel like a wholly new, revitalizing take on the genre. Instead of checking my pulse for signs of life at the top of the second act, I found myself holding my breath in anxious anticipation throughout, due largely to Nolan’s technical skills as a craftsman and, in a recent turn starting with Interstellar, personal passion as a storyteller.”

11. Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, nominated for Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

“Rian Johnson disrespectfully throws all fan theories in the trash, along with the consistency in lore that made them possible in the first place. It may sting the ego to discover you can no longer ‘figure out’ the future of a franchise you’ve spent your whole life obsessively studying as if it were a riddle with concrete answer, not a fluid work of art. However, by shaking up the rules & tones of what’s come before, Johnson has created so much more space for possibility in the future, for new & exciting things to take us by surprise instead of following the trajectory of set-in-stone texts. He’s made Star Wars freshly funny, unpredictable, and awkwardly nerdy again, when it was in clear danger of becoming repetitive, by-the-books blockbuster filmmaking routine instead. It’s an admirable feat, even if not an entirely successful one.”

12. Blade Runner 2049, nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

“Remembering details from the narratives of either Blade Runner film is like grasping sand in your palm; over time it all slips away. Blade Runner 2049 lives up to its namesake in that way just as much as it does as a visual achievement. Its surface pleasures are lastingly awe-inspiring, but the substance of the macho neo noir story they serve is ephemeral at best.”

13. Mudbound, nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Mary J. Blige), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (“Mighty River”)

“Mudbound is at its weakest when it’s tasked to convey a sense of grand scale scope it can’t deliver on an Online Content budget. The voiceover narration and scenes of tank & airplane warfare are where the seams of the limited budget show most egregiously. Rees still delivers a powerful punch whenever she can afford to, though, making sure that the muddy & blood details of Mudbound’s smaller moments hit with full, unforgiving impact.”

14. The Big Sick, nominated for Best Original Screenplay

“Real life is obviously more complicated & unwieldy than any two hour romcom plot could contain. If The Big Sick were to capture the entirety of Kumail & Emily’s bizarre story, it’d be twice as long & half as funny than it is in its current, darkly hilarious, emotionally resonant state. I do think that time constraint limited the film’s potential to be its best self, however, since it downplayed a lot of the potential romantic partners in Kumail’s life to instead fully develop his relationship with Emily’s parents, only to double back to the romantic narrative as a convenient genre tool at the last minute.”

15. Loving Vincent, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

“Like Russian Ark, Loving Vincent is a stunning visual achievement that will prove useful as a classroom tool that actually holds students’ attention. Unlike Russian Ark, it could have used more imagination & lyricism in its content to match the intensity of its form. There’s a mind-blowing animated work to be made out of this oil painting rotoscoping process now that the idea’s out there, but much like how The Jazz Singer was never going to be the all-time greatest example of the talkies, Loving Vincent isn’t representative of the extremes where that technique could be pushed.”

16. The Breadwinner, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

“The movie would have been vastly improved if its most striking animation style wasn’t restrained to the piecemealed story-within-a-story fantasy sequences in favor of the more flat, typical CG look that guides most of the runtime. It’s more or less on par with Loving Vincent as the strongest contenders in this year’s anemic Best Animated Feature race, though. Even with my nagging frustrations, that nomination was well-deserved.”

17. The Greatest Showman, nominated for Best Original Song (“This Is Me”)

“I’ll admit that even as crass & silly as this movie is in every single frame, I got a little teary-eyed at the circus performers (especially the bearded lady) singing about how they’re ‘Not scared to be seen’ in the Oscar-nominated tune ‘This is Me.’ The characterizations of the circus performers can be just as insultingly artificial as the romances and the revision of P.T. Barnum’s exploitative history and everything else in the film, but that’s all part of The Greatest Showman’s tacky sense of proto-Vegas fun. It also does little to distract from the endearing, all-accepting, freaks-are-people-too messaging.”

18. War for the Planet of the Apes, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“If it weren’t for the presence of CG apes in its central roles or the movie’s lengthy, silent stretches of sign language communication, War for the Planet of the Apes wouldn’t feel much different from any number of big budget war movies or grim franchise-closers. It’s competently made and visually impressive. It’s got a strikingly sorrowful brutality to it that helps distinguish it slightly from the other bombastic works of calculated studio bloat floating out there in the summertime blockbuster heat. Still, titles like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or, better yet, Okja are exciting reminders that CG spectacle can be something much more idiosyncratic, more passionate, and more memorable than that.”

19. The Disaster Artist, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay

“Without a strong thematic foundation or point of view, The Disaster Artist plays a little like its worst possible self: an excuse for famous people to play dress-up as a funny looking weirdo who made an infamously bad movie. The good news is that if anyone deserves to be mocked by famous people for their moral & artistic shortcomings, it’s Tommy Wiseau. James Franco’s impersonation of Wiseau may be more fitting of a Celebrity Family Feud sketch on SNL than a feature with Oscar-contender ambitions, but he does (occasionally) make a point to highlight his subject’s dark, abusive streak.”

20. Kong: Skull Island, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“Maybe audiences more in tune with the basic thrills of war movies as a genre will feel differently, but I struggled to find anything in Kong: Skull Island worth holding onto. Its stray stabs at silliness didn’t push hard enough to save it from self-serious tedium and its Vietnam War metaphor wasn’t strong enough to support that tonal gravity. Everything else in-between was passable as a passive form of entertainment, but nothing worth getting excited over, much less building a franchise on.”

21. Coco, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, Best Original Song (“Remember Me”)

“I’d be a liar if I said individual family-dynamic moments didn’t pull my heartstrings by the film’s ending, but I was still largely negative on Coco as an overall messaging piece. As soon as Miguel’s first guitar was smashed in front of his crying face, he should have boarded on a bus out of town to find a new, less cruel community elsewhere. The clear dichotomy the movie establishes between either a) the virtue of staying with your family no matter how shitty they are to you or b) ‘selfishly’ branching out on your own to find a more hospitable environment sat with me in the wrong way. It was a thematic hurdle that all the pretty colors, goofy skeletons, and super cute canine sidekicks in the world couldn’t help me clear.”

22. Beauty and the Beast, nominated for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design

“Beauty and the Beast shines brightest when it comes to the musical numbers executed by real people. In the opening sequence the choreography is fun and mesmerizing. Belle’s iconic opening number is full of wonderfully synchronized moves. It’s fun, until it gets to the castle. It’s fun until you have to witness a bunch of 3D animated flatware execute a Busby-Berkeley style number in a movie that’s supposed to be a live action remake. It just feels like such great irony.”

23. Baby Driver, nominated for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

“I just felt let down that Edgar Wright abandoned his central Action Movie Cherbourg concept so quickly after following it to its furthest end in the opening credits. Whenever stray gunfire or gearshifts sync to the music in later scenes, it just feels like a distant echo of a better movie that could’ve been. Without its defining gimmick commanding every moment, Baby Driver feels alternately like post-Tarantino slick action runoff & a made-for-TV mockbuster version of the equally mythic, but infinitely more stylish Drive.”

24. I, Tonya, nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Margot Robbie), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Allison Janney), Best Film Editing

“The violence leveled on Harding throughout I, Tonya certainly makes her more of a recognizably sympathetic figure than what you’d gather from her news coverage. However, the nonstop beatings are near impossible to rectify with the Jared Hess-style Napoleon Dynamite quirk comedy that fill in the gaps between them. The film either doesn’t understand the full impact of the violence it portrays or is just deeply hypocritical about its basic intent.”

25. Three Billboard outside Ebbing Missouri, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Frances McDormand), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

“Given Three Billboards’s Oscar nominations for Best Picture & Best Original Screenplay (among others), I suspect many audiences read its ‘non-PC’ demeanor to be bravely truthful about ‘how things really are’ in the American South. I personally found it to be empty, pseudo-intellectual macho posturing, like watching an #edgy stand-up comedian get off on ‘triggering snowflakes’ in a two hour-long routine that supposedly has something revolutionary to say about life & humanity, but is covertly just a reinforcement of the status quo.”

-The Swampflix Crew