The Golden Globes have been handed out, and the Academy Award nominations have been announced. Most of the best films of the year will receive some type of award, yet, two awards have had everyone waiting to hear the winners announced even before the nominations were released: Best Director and Best Picture, the most sought after awards at both the Oscars and at any award ceremony celebrating great cinema.

I have a bit of a rocky relationship with the Oscars. Ninety percent of the time I don’t agree with the recipient for either category. Every year I get my hopes up, but I am usually disappointed with the outcome. However, I will still get my hopes up this year because rooting for your favorite film and director is what watching the Oscars is all about. Here are the nominees for director. Let’s get started, shall we?

Nominees for Best Director

Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant (winner), George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road, Adam McKay for The Big Short, Tom McCarthy for Spotlight, Lenny Abrahamson for Room

I have to tell you, this was a tough choice. I enjoyed all of these films. I truly believed any one of these men deserved the award. That is, until I saw The Revenant.

I must say right off that I was originally rooting for Mr. Abrahamson. I loved the film he had made before, a fantastic musical black comedy entitled Frank, and I was astonished at the heart of this new beautifully directed film.

The other choices did grab my attention, especially that of Tom McCarthy’s inclusion. An actor turned director, his previous films The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win were all positively received by critics and audiences, and Spotlight was no different. His knack for mixing drama and comedy has cemented his status as a wonderful indie find.

I say all this, but the award should no doubt go to Mr. Iñárritu. His first four films, Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful were absolutely wonderful to experience. You might also remember the last film he made, Birdman, which won Best Picture last year as well as Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. I didn’t agree with any of those awards going his way, as I felt Richard Linklater’s magnum opus Boyhood was 2014’s best film. Yet this year, Iñárritu deserves this award. He has possibly created one of the most beautiful and intense films I have personally seen. Filming on location in Canada and Argentina during harsh winters, his direction created a brooding atmosphere in which star Leonardo DiCaprio gives a performance worthy of a Best Actor win. This coupled with Emmanuel Lubezski’s breathtaking cinematography makes for a wonderful film to watch.

Nominated for Best Picture

Spotlight (winner), The Revenant, The Martian, The Big Short, Brooklyn, Room, Mad Max: Fury Road, Bridge of Spies

This may come as a surprise because of all of my raving for The Revenant and Room, but let’s face it, Spotlight was the best film of the year. For those who have not seen it yet, Spotlight tells the heartbreaking true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, which shook the entire Catholic Church to its core. This film includes Mark Ruffalo (Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shutter Island, Now You See Me), Michael Keaton (Batman, Beetlejuice, Jackie Brown, Birdman), Liev Schreiber (Defiance, The Omen, TV’s Ray Donavan), and Rachel McAdams (Sherlock Holmes, Mean Girls, Southpaw, The Notebook) starring as the central members of the “Spotlight” news team.

This already sounds like a controversial film (it was slightly), yet it wasn’t overly criticized, especially when the Catholic Church praised it for its honesty. We have writers Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy to thank for that.

McCarthy, as I said earlier, is a wonderful indie find. Even while directing, he was acting in films such as George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers. Once he got behind the camera, though, he was nothing short of a genius. Am I saying the other seven films don’t deserve the title of Best Picture? Not in the slightest. In fact, The Martian and Brooklyn were absolutely brilliant works. Several films not nominated absolutely deserve the title, such as Sicario, Ex Machina, Carol, Girlhood, and Inside Out. However, I have to work with what I am given, and what I am given is a list of seven phenomenal films, and Spotlight is the best of them all.