Oscar-Ready: 2018 Nominees on Streaming
From record-breaking satires to sci-fi sequels, now’s your chance to catch up.
From baby drivers to libidinous mermen, 2017 was a very good—and very strange—year at the movies. For those of you planning to spend the weekend engaged in a non-stop Oscar marathon, here are 11 of this year’s most WIRED nominees available to stream. See you on the red carpet.
Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment01Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s car chase-filled heist flick fishtails its way in between *Drive* and *La La Land*, its accelerator pressed to the floor. Getaway driving has never felt so musical.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: Nicole Rivelli, Lionsgate02The Big Sick
There’s something to be said about writing what you know, as husband-and-wife writing team Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon prove with this semi-autobiographical accounting of the almost-tragic evolution of their relationship.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon Prime, iTunes**
Photo: Warner Brothers03Blade Runner 2049
While Denis Villeneuve’s stark, dystopian vision of the future is technically a sequel, it feels more like a spiritual companion piece. Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as Agent K, a young blade runner desperately trying to track down Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford’s blade runner from the Ridley Scott original, who has been missing for 30 years.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: A2404The Disaster Artist
After more than a decade as a Hollywood punchline, Tommy Wiseau—the eccentric writer/director behind the so-bad-it’s-kind-of-amazing cult film *The Room*—finally got his critical due when James Franco turned the making of that film into a movie all of its own. Eat your heart out, Ed Wood.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: Warner Brothers05Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s World War II thriller, which details the hectic evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, might be made for IMAX, but it’s great on your TV too. Once again, Nolan adeptly combines action and nuance—but it’s composer Hans Zimmer who ratchets up the anxiety, note by ominous note.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: Universal Pictures06Get Out
Jordan Peele’s directorial debut redefined the modern horror movie while making a bold statement on race in America—and its timing couldn’t have been better.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, HBO Go, iTunes**
Photo: A2407Lady Bird
Like most teenagers, Christine “Lady Bird” MacPherson (Saoirse Ronan) never feels like she quite fits in with her fellow classmates. In her portrait of Lady Bird’s senior year of high school, writer-director Greta Gerwig—who is now one of a small handful of women to be nominated for Best Director—manages to capture the reality of the transition into adulthood with all the pain and humor that comes with it.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: Ben Rothstein/Marvel08Logan
James Mangold has entered the pantheon of superhero filmmakers not only by crafting a deeply nuanced character drama that breaks the shackles often associated with the genre, but by being recognized by the Academy (alongside co-writers Scott Frank and Michael Green) for his efforts. It’s a well-deserved tribute for Hugh Jackman’s last outing as a retractable-clawed mutant.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, HBO Go, iTunes**
Photo: Netflix09Mudbound
Netflix continues to show it can play with the the major studios with Dee Rees’ epic drama where class and race collide in rural post-WWII Mississippi. Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison has since lent her eye to the year's biggest film so far: *Black Panther*.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Netflix**
Photo: Fox Searchlight10Shape of Water
In Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical fairy tale, a mute cleaning woman at a top-secret government research center stumbles upon—and falls in love with—an amphibious creature. Yes, that means merman sex, but strip the prurient aspects away and it’s a tale about love and otherness with a wonderfully humanist, if not entirely human, soul.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox11Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
When a young woman is raped and murdered in small-town Missouri, her mother (Frances McDormand) takes justice into her own hands. Though it would be easy to paint this kind of story in broad brush strokes—an angry woman gets even—playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh doesn’t go for easy.\ \ **Where to Stream It: Amazon, iTunes**
Jennifer M. Wood writes about movies, television, and pop culture. She is the editor of The Curious Viewer: A Miscellany of Bingeable Streaming TV Shows from the Past Twenty Years and the author of The Curious Movie Buff: A Miscellany of Fantastic Films from the Past 50 Years. ... Read more
