A WORST-TO-BEST RANKING BEFORE WINNER TAKES ALL

THE OSCAR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES WILL FACE FINAL SCRUTINY COME MARCH, BUT FOR NOW, WHERE DO THE HOPEFULS FALL IN A CRITIC'S LINE OF SIGHT?

- AMY NICHOLSON FILM CRITIC

THIS WAS A YEAR of big swings and I'm not just talking about Timothée Chalamet's ping-pong serve. The Academy Awards feel like they’re in motion too — a body less affixed to an idea of what a best picture contender is and more willing to race after talent from around the globe. But they can’t all be winners. Here’s my ranking of the 10 nominees, from whiff to smash.

10. HAMNET

Chloé Zhao’s ye olde dysfunctional marriage weepie deserved a supporting actor nomination for 12-year-old Jacobi Jupe, who is so heartbreaking as William Shakespeare’s brave son that he casts a spell over the movie. He turns on the waterworks; his parents Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley just come off soggy. As with Maggie O’Farrell’s original novel, “Hamnet” soft-pedals the reveal that Mescal’s pasty, ordinary-seeming father of three is the greatest wordsmith in English literature. Frankly, even after we find out, it’s impossible to believe. Unlike “Shakespeare in Love,” the script doesn’t have Tom Stoppard punching up the dialogue. Audiences who endured the Miramax era have been browbeaten to believe that the best picture Oscar should go to a period piece that chokes out a sob from audiences. Get me to a nunnery, but I'm weary of presenting filmland’s biggest honor to the kind of movie people rarely want to watch twice.

9. F1

Nominating this popcorn trifle for best picture is silly, but at least it didn’t get a screenplay nod for a script that’s simply: See Brad Pitt go, go, go. Still, I'll admit that I recommended this rumbler to everyone who wanted an excuse to speed to the multiplex. (I elbowed my uncle, a hobbyist racer, to go see it a half-dozen times.) Not once in “F1” does it feel like we're invested in Pitt’s bizarrely constructed character, a throwback fossil with jokey Gen-Z tattoos. The movie is fueled by pure star power and you can't fault Oscar voters for huffing its fumes.

8. SENTIMENTAL VALUE