Ever since the Oscar nominations were announced last week, one statistic has really stuck with me: For the first time since 1978, all five best-actress nominees come from films that are also nominated for best picture.

There are a couple of different ways you could look at that statistic. One is that the recent push to diversify the academy has actually paid dividends: For a long time, female-led movies just weren’t given the same canonical weight as the ones that starred men. Now that more women have become Oscar voters and the best-picture field has expanded beyond five nominees, the kinds of movies that are thought of as the most important of the year have finally changed, too.

That’s the highbrow way of looking at it, anyway. The part of me that simply enjoys a suspenseful Oscar race sees that statistic as proof that this is the strongest best-actress lineup we’ve had in ages. Any one of the five nominees has a competitive case to win and below, I’ll lay them all out.