Yep, it’s that time of year again. That time when those of us who see lots of movies and like to write about them compose our lists of just how right, or, far more often, just how wrong the members of the Academy are.

While I freely admit that there are a lot of problems with the way the Academy works – 2020 is yet another year proving that they still have many, many miles to go to even address, much less solve, their glaring diversity problems – I’ll also admit that I look forward to and enjoy the Oscars.

Below is my ranking of this year’s nominees. Note that this isn’t in any way my predictions as to which of these movies will win; that post will be coming in a few weeks.

9. The Irishman

I’ve seen every Best Picture winner for the last 33 years (someday, I’ll get around to seeing The Last Emperor), and I’ve gone a step further and seen all of the nominees for Best Picture for most of that time period. 2020 is the year the streak of seeing all of the nominees ends, and unfortunately there’s a chance it might end the other streak as well. Sitting through any 3 1/2 hour film in the theater seems like a special kind of torture, so I didn’t really make much of an effort to see The Irishman when it was oh-so-briefly in theaters at the end of last year. But if sitting through 209 minutes of old white men trying desperately to remain relevant in the theater is bad, doing it at home is worse.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t try. I really didn’t want my streak of seeing all of the nominees to end just because the Academy members saw Scorsese, DeNiro, Pacino, Keitel, and Pesci’s names on the same poster and nominated the film without watching it (which is my only explanation for how this happened), so I tried watching the movie. I think I made it through about an hour (so, halfway through the opening act). I know I dozed off at one point and when I woke up I didn’t feel like I had missed anything, because in order for that to have happened, this movie would have had a story.

The Irishman isn’t just the worst of this year’s nominees. It’s without question the worst Best Picture nominee in living memory. In fact, it’s quite possibly the worst nominee ever. Even Boyhood, another way-too-long exercise by a fading director that was more style than substance, was more watchable than this.

8. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Because nominating one film where the director’s ego prevented him from doing any editing at all wasn’t enough, the Academy voters this year had to do it twice. It’s not surprising that either of these two films made the cut, since there are certain directors who will get a Best Picture nomination for directing literally anything, and Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are both near the top of that list.

Hollywood has the added advantage of being about Hollywood’s favorite topic: itself. But the oh-god-kill-me slow pacing of this movie, along with the orgiastic, unearned, there-only-because-it’s-Tarantino violent ending, is only slightly forgiven by Margot Robbie’s truly great performance. (And no, sorry Brad, this isn’t the Oscar you deserve.) Plus, let’s not forget the casual racism that was thrown in for good measure.

7. Ford v Ferrari

The good news: I liked the rest of the movies on this list. So there’s a huge gap here between numbers 8 and 9.

Driven by performances far superior to anything that actually got nominated from those other two movies, Ford v Ferrari manages to somewhat transcend the normal racing movie tropes by focusing much more on the characters than on protracted racing scenes (although there are enough of those to keep the adrenaline going, if that’s your thing).

6. 1917

1917 is a small, intimate film about a big impersonal war, and in doing that, it mostly succeeds. And yet at the same time it’s also its biggest failure.

The movie revolves around a gimmick: it’s filmed to appear to be two long takes. The camera is literally in the face of one or both of the movie’s main characters throughout the film, only very occasionally pulling away to show the bigger war that surrounds them. It creates the intimate feel that makes this much more than a normal loud war film, but at times it becomes distracting, pulling you out of the movie as you start to think more about how the movie is being made rather than what the movie is trying to say.

5. Little Women

I used to have a boss who wouldn’t even want me to say whether or not I liked a film, because the expectations set by that could influence how he approached the movie when he saw it. Expectations can be tough, and going into a movie with higher expectations than it might deserve can make it almost impossible to see the film on its own.

I say all of this because I absolutely loved Lady Bird, and so the follow-up film from director Greta Gerwig and star Saoirse Ronan, based on a classic work of literature, set the bar pretty high. And try as I might to let Little Women stand on its own, I couldn’t help but compare it to Lady Bird, and that of course wasn’t ever going to be fair.

So, on its own, Little Women works. Ronan and costar Florence Pugh (both of whom received well-deserved acting nominations) carry the story of a group of sisters navigating life in 19th century New England. And honestly, without those too-high expectations, there’s probably a good chance this movie makes it higher on this list.

4. Marriage Story

The other Netflix movie that wasn’t in theaters long enough to actually be seen by most people, but this one, a full normal movie shorter than the studio’s other nominated film, is actually pretty good. It helps that Marriage Story works better on TV, but it really, really helps that it’s a decent movie with things like a plot and characters you care about.

Its one problem is, I’ll admit, a personal one for me: I don’t like Adam Driver. I know he has his fans, and that’s OK, but there’s some intangible thing about him that drives me crazy.

Marriage Story manages to redeem him in my eyes somewhat. The story of a director and his actress wife trying to navigate their cross-country divorce has plenty of touching moments, lots of other great performances (including Laura Dern and Alan Alda as their attorneys), and mostly avoids the normal end-relationship tropes that normally define the genre (except for the out-of-character, very weird Adam Driver singing bit at the end), and so, in the end, it works pretty well.

3. Joker

That part about expectations I talked about with Little Women I think have helped Joker. DC set the bar so fantastically low with all of its other films that if Joker was even mostly OK, it would have been enjoyable. That it turns out to be a much-better-than-OK film is why it’s getting so much attention and the kind of recognition at awards time that the other superhero films that probably deserved equal attention didn’t get.

Of course, what really drives the film is Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. I’ll admit I was among the people who thought it was a fool’s errand for anyone to try to do the character again after Heath Ledger, but Phoenix pulled it off, and if he joins the list of actors who win for playing a role someone else previously won, it’ll be well-deserved.

2. Parasite

My friends know that I usually don’t like reading movies. But every now and then a movie comes along that is good enough for me to overcome that and still enjoy it.

While the story has some plot holes, they are more than made up for by the phenomenal acting (again, please explain how Pesci and Pitt got nominations over anyone from this movie?), which absolutely carries the story forward. Add to that some of the best set design and cinematography of the year and you have a movie that truly deserves whatever accolades it gets.

1. Jojo Rabbit

The comedy about the Nazis with the kid who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend isn’t exactly the film I would have guessed would be at the top of my eventual Best Picture list, but here we are.

If there were any question in anyone’s mind that Taika Waititi is just about the best filmmaker in Hollywood right now, this movie should put that to rest. The movie is silly and ridiculous and touching and makes you go from laughing to crying between scenes and basically does everything a movie should do. I would quibble with the voters by saying that of everyone in the film, Scarlett Johanssen is probably the last actor I would have nominated for an award (did they just sleep through Sam Rockwell’s parts?), but getting that acting nomination certainly boosts Jojo’s chances, so I’ll take what I can get.

(Ed. note: A previous version of this post incorrectly identified one of the actors in Marriage Story as Alan Arkin, not Alan Alda.)