Every year, one of the most unenviable tasks in all of entertainment befalls the thousands of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members who have to choose the winners of that year's Oscars. Choosing between Steven Spielberg and Todd Field, Angela Bassett and Stephanie Hsu, or between one of the greatest action films ever and one of the best Batman movies, seems like torture. But their difficult decisions are our plethora of possibilities, as there are hundreds of hours of great cinema to watch, including these 16 Oscar-nominated films you must watch.

This year's Academy Awards is making history predicated on cinematic breakthroughs. A24, long considered the next Hollywood giant, received 18 nominations, the most in the 10-year-old company's existence. That was all thanks to Everything, Everywhere All At Once, and The Whale, two films that served as Asian performers' long overdue reclamation of the spotlight stolen from them for decades and a triumphant return for Brendan Fraser. Tom Cruise revived the action genre (and maybe saved Hollywood, if you ask Steven Spielberg) with Top Gun: Maverick, while proving a sequel is never too late. And you're just one long binge day on the couch from being up to date on all of these Oscar favorites.

Netflix made sure its stellar slate of Oscar-nominated films like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Blonde spent time in theaters, but it didn't take too long before it offered them up for your streaming pleasure. From Colin Farrell's finger-cutting friendship drama The Banshees of Inisherin to Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, here are the 16 best films nominated at the 2023 Oscars you can (mostly) stream.

Oscar nominations: Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis), Director, Costume Design, Original Score, Original Song, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, and Best Picture

Where To Stream: Showtime and Shop Now

Since its March 11, 2022 release, the greatness of Everything Everywhere All At Once’s multifaceted sci-fi family drama has been hard to describe correctly, inspiring nearly every superlative known to man. The best multiverse movie of 2022, a tear-jerker masterpiece, and the best use of rocks of the 21st century. Co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert gave their actors a cinematic world bound only by a script and the lengths they were willing to go to transmogrify. The only superlative left for the most-nominated movies at this year’s Academy Awards is: “Oscar-winning.”

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Oscar nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Actress (Cate Blanchett), Director, Best Picture

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Sexual predation, suicide, and cancel culture are not what you would typically associate with the pristine world of classical music. However, Todd Field’s first feature film in 16 years drudges up those exact dark secrets of manipulative conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett). It creates a truly breathtaking film about the corruptive influence of power.

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Oscar nominations: Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects, Best Picture

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In modern-day Hollywood's superhero franchise industrial complex, Paramount managed to find box office success in a sequel released 35+ years after its original. That's an achievement tantamount to flying in an F-18 fighter jet and not throwing up all over the original film's legacy.

Turning that same action film into a critical darling and Best Picture nominee is like flying the jet yourself and sticking the landing on a bombed taxiway. Top Gun: Maverick did all of that and then some with a sequel powered by the ageless charisma of Tom Cruise and a supporting cast—Jay Ellis, Miles Teller, Danny Ramirez, Glen Powell— that more than lives up to the high-octane lineage of Top Gun action heroes before them.

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Oscar nominations: Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Only In Theaters

To be honest, at one point, we didn’t think this movie would ever be made. After over 13 years of promises, delays, and an ambitious four-sequel plan, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water proved once again why he’s the pre-eminent authority on box office blockbusters. The world of Pandora is visually arresting and makes the film almost a shoo-in for the Best Visual Effects award, at least. The movie may clock in at over three hours, but it could easily take you an extra hour to get through because of how the CGI perfection almost commands you to pause and truly take in the wondrous world that Cameron has created.

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Oscar nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Streaming on Shop Now, YouTube, and Shop Now

Based on the eponymous 2018 novel, director Sarah Polley delivers an uncomfortably irresistible and complex depiction of women's agency in the face of patriarchal domination. With well-versed actresses like Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, and Claire Foy, the film eschews any monolithic woman experience. Instead, it masterfully shows different ways women would approach a decision to either overthrow their male counterparts, remain subservient, or take their futures into their own hands and leave. You also be able to stream it on Amazon Prime for free until the night of the Oscars this Sunday at 9pm PT/12am ET if you try a 30-day free trial subscription.

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Oscar nominations: Best Actor (Colin Farrell), Best Supporting Actor (Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan), Best Supporting Actress (Kerry Condon), Best Original Score, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture

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Friendships end and lives change, and The Banshees of Inisherin co-stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson wrestle with the immutability of both. The film takes dramatic measures—burning down an old friend’s house and cutting off a finger whenever they try to contact you—to tell a genuine story of loss and disillusionment with an emotional depth seldom seen in the depiction of male friendships.

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Oscar nominations: Best Actor (Austin Butler), Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Shop Now, Shop Now, Shop Now

From doing better than simply Elvis karaoke to the Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley-approved performance, Austin Butler had one the most transformative acting jobs ever as the titular star in Elvis that lasts for a lifetime. He's already taken home the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, and now has a realistic chance to do the same at the Oscars.

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Oscar nominations: Best Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch), Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Director, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Not Streaming Yet. Available To Rent or Own On: Shop Now, Shop Now, YouTube

When an accomplished filmmaker such as Steven Spielberg considers a film the one story he’s yet to tell in his illustrious 54-year career, you know you’re in for something special. Inspired by the true story of the Academy Award-winning director’s formative childhood and teen years, The Fabelmans doubles as both Spielberg’s most personal work of art yet and a love story to the revelatory powers movies can have on how we understand the real characters in our own lives.

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Oscar nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Shop Now, YouTube, Shop Now

Directed by an award-winning filmmaker, this satirical dark comedy analyzes privilege, social media obsessions, and survival skills on a dysfunctional cruise that leaves its guests stranded, attacked by pirates, and making Survivor-style alliances. It’s a bit of The White Lotus' detestable luxury mixed with The Menu’s dark humor, with a lot more diarrhea and fatal social Darwinism than both.

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Oscar nominations: Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best International Feature Film, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Picture

Where To Stream: Netflix

The Academy loves a good war film, and Your Honor director Edward Berger gives a worthy update to a World War I classic. This coming-of-age tale follows 17-year-old Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), who enlists in the German army with a few of his friends, looking to become men forged through the heroism of war before the bullets, blood, and broken brotherhood become their reality. The 1930 version of the film took home the Academy Award for Best Director, and the 2022 version did the same at the British Academy Film Awards. Oscar or not, it’s lived up to its pedigree.

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Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Angela Bassett), Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Song (“Lift Me Up”), Best Visual Effects

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After the original Black Panther broke barriers and became the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards, its sequel is looking to make its own history. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever takes us into a post-Chadwick Boseman Wakanda early and often, without needing to lean on it for too much of the film’s emotional core since nuanced performances from Angela Bassett and Letitia Wright keep the kingdom as resilient as ever. While no Best Picture nomination this time, Bassett’s regal yet empathetic performance as Queen Ramonda earned her a historic Best Supporting Actress nomination, the first acting nomination for a Marvel film. If she doesn’t win after one of the most shocking scenes in all of Marvel history, we may need to riot.

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Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Hong Chau), Best Actor (Brendan Fraser), Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Where To Stream: Not Streaming. Available To Buy Or Rent On: Shop Now, Shop Now, YouTube

Brendan Fraser could not win the Best Actor statue for portraying morbidly obese English professor Charlie and still won at life. In one of his first starring roles since his 2018 allegation of being sexually assaulted by Philip Berk, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Fraser delivers one of the most important performances of his career. His character’s weight isn’t for comedic relief but instead as an embodiment of the pain of losing his gay partner to religion-inspired guilt over his sexuality. He fights to reconnect with a daughter who may be too far gone. The Whale is a tender ode to the frailty of human connection and the innate drive to want still to piece those broken parts of you back together.

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Oscar nominations: Best Animated Feature Film

Where To Stream: Netflix

There’s the lighthearted wooden truth-teller Pinocchio from our childhood, and then there’s Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, a stop-motion masterwork. Pinocchio is laced with an emotional flesh that helps him appear as lifelike as he ever has and inspires anyone who watches to see themselves in a character on a self-discovery journey we’ve all taken. Pinocchio took home the Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globes this year and is the frontrunner for the award at the Oscars.

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Oscar nomination: Best Adapted Screenplay

Where To Stream: Netflix

Janelle Monae pulling exquisite double duty, Daniel Craig solving mysteries with a seasoned Kentucky accent, and Rian Johnson placing some of the best actors in the most complex situations is a recipe for Oscar love and a good binge. Solving the murder mystery is only half the fun. Watching as the weight of each person’s past decisions peel away the facade they’ve constructed to stay in the orbit of megalomanic wealthy Elon Musk wannabe Miles Bron (Edward Norton) is what makes Glass Onion an instant classic.

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Oscar nominations: Best Visual Effects, Sound, Makeup and Hairstyling

Ways To Stream: Shop Now, Shop Now, Shop Now

The DC Extended Universe has oscillated between being a disjointed mess and a universe of superhero character studies, and The Batman may be the best version of the latter. Nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the Oscars, Matt Reeves mucks around in the seedy (and somewhat sociopathic) aspects of Bruce Wayne to uncover a Batman whose darkness illuminates the superhero’s very existence. The excruciating workout and diet plan Robert Pattison endured was worth it to make one of the best Batmans of the last 20+ years.

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Oscar nomination: Best Lead Actress (Ana de Armas)

Ways To Stream: Netflix

Similar to fellow Oscar-nominee Austin Butler’s transformation into Elvis Presley in the biopic Elvis, Knives Out standout Ana de Armas embodies the look, essence, and gravitas of one of the most fawned-after public figures in American history, Marilyn Monroe in the (based on a work of fiction) biopic Blonde. The trauma that formed the Marilyn Monroe character that Norma Jeane Mortenson created as a defense mechanism and way to gain control of her reality is laid bare in uncompromisingly true fashion, making it ripe for the sort of emotive acting worthy of the golden statue.

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