Add Category
With a huge cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, this weighty material is in safe hands.
Where to watch: There’s still a scattering of cinema screenings, and it’s streaming on Apple TV+.
Lily Gladstone (left) with director Martin Scorsese on set of Killers of the Flower Moon. Gladstone is favourite to take out best actress, but faces stiff competition from Emma Stone.Credit: Apple
4. Maestro
Let’s break up the long historical epics about white men with a slightly less long historical epic about a white man. Bradley Cooper co-writes, directs and stars in this biopic of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Cooper and co-star Carey Mulligan, playing Bernstein’s wife Felicia, are doing some of the wildest accents in the industry here, and the black and white cinematography is frequently beautiful.
Where to watch: Netflix.
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein.
5. Oppenheimer
A worried-looking Cillian Murphy is roped into pioneering the ultimate weapon. As well as the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer has to balance his relationship with his wife (Emily Blunt), his lover (Florence Pugh), and communism in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-bait epic. It’s a busy three hours.
Where to watch: It’s still in many cinemas, and it’s also available for rent or buy digitally. I saw it at the IMAX, meaning I had to crane my neck to look from Cillian Murphy’s pensive lips to his beautiful, tortured eyes.
Cillian Murphy in a scene from Oppenheimer.Credit: Universal Pictures/AP
6. Barbie
The twentieth century’s other ultimate weapon. In the hands of director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie, Mattel’s proportionally-challenged plastic doll became an unlikely beacon of pop-feminism in this anarchic romp full of very funny performances and wild visual flair. If it doesn’t win there’ll be riots.
Where to watch: It’s finished its reign of cinematic dominance, but it’s available to rent or buy digitally.
Ryan Gosling, nominated for best supporting actor, on set with Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig, who missed out on best actress and best director nominations.Credit: Warner Bros Pictures
7. Past Lives
Have you ever been in love, and it’s slipped away? Has old love come back to haunt you? Of course you have, because you’re human.
Greta Lee and Teo Yoo star as old flames whose bond endures over two decades. Celine Song’s mature, assured debut is guaranteed to leave a trail of emotional devastation in its wake.
Where to watch: It’s still in cinemas, and it’s available to rent or buy digitally.
Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) and Na-young (Seung Ah Moon) were childhood sweethearts in Past Lives.Credit: A24
8. Poor Things
A plaything caricature of a woman escapes her closed world and discovers real womanhood in all its complexities. No, it’s not Barbie. It’s weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos’ uncompromising, disgusting and hilarious feminist bildungsroman, featuring Emma Stone as a perpetually horny Frankenstein.
Where to watch: Cinemas, and it’s available to rent or buy digitally.
Emma Stone will never have another role like Bella Baxter in Poor Things.Credit: Searchlight Pictures
9. Anatomy of a Fall
A murder trial is complicated when the accused refuses to yield to the law’s simplified view of things—of victimhood, of morality, and of her marriage.
Director Justine Triet and star Sandra Hüller are perfectly in sync in this captivating, complex French drama.
Where to watch: Cinemas.
Sandra Hüller plays Sandra Voyter, who is accused of murdering her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis).
10. The Zone of Interest
Nazi concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss (played by Christian Friedel) lives an idyllic life of family, nature and duty. But over the garden wall, the horror of Auschwitz unfolds. Jonathan Glazer’s first film in a decade takes Hannah Arendt’s observation of “the banality of evil” and compounds it into a painstaking domestic horror.
Where to watch: Cinemas.
Jonathan Glazer, centre, and Łukasz Ża on the set of The Zone of Interest.Credit: A24
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.