Look, I've been waiting for this damn August: Osage County movie for years. Years! Of course I want to see the film version of one of Broadway's most acclaimed plays, but more importantly, I need to know where Meryl Streep's performance as crazed Oklahoma matriarch Violet Weston fits within the untouchable echelons of her Oscar-nominated roles. Because we know Meryl is going to pick up her unprecedented 18th nomination for this, right? Right.

To prepare for that event, let's look at the upper tier of Meryl's work. Here are the 10 best Oscar-nominated Meryl performances. Apologies to all of you Music of the Heart superfans.

10. Julie and Julia

It was between this and Postcards from the Edge for the 10th spot, and I opted for the (direct) biopic. As Julia Child, Streep is buoyant and self-possessed as the familiar culinary legend, and for some reason the act of carving up a chicken is more engrossing and endearing than anyone can reasonably expect. With Streep as Child, Amy Adams' Julie has a rightful and glorious icon to copy, and Meryl's untouchable energy gives the time chasm between the titular characters a meaningful sense of vastness.

9. The French Lieutenant's Woman

It's a bizarre and not always gripping concept, but The French Lieutenant's Woman -- during its best moments -- is about being Meryl Streep. She plays an actress named Anna in the present day who is preparing for her role as a mysterious Victorian-era outcast named Sarah Woodruff, but Meryl gets the added fun of playing Woodruff herself in a parallel storyline set in the past. Both characters end up leaving their male love interests (both played by Jeremy Irons), but both also show a firm sense of resolve and command. It's heartbreaking when Meryl opines as the maligned Sarah, "My only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins."

8. Ironweed

This could be a stretch, but I think Meryl's preparations for her work in August: Osage County began with Ironweed. The woozy, stumbling, quasi-conscious state of Helen Archer is riveting not just because of Helen's relationship with a ruined homeless man (Jack Nicholson), but because it often turns to anger or happy nostalgia. It's a complicated role in a movie dotted with sublime, unreal moments, and I suggest you watch Helen's "performance" of "He's Me Pal" before you go on with this article.

7. The Bridges of Madison County

Controversial opinion: Meryl's accent in this movie is her all-time best. I could listen to her Italian accent all day. As Iowan war bride Francesca Johnson, who enjoys an affair with the photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) in the 1960s, she embodies the isolation of the quiet Midwest and pairs it with an intense sense of longing. Her long exchanges with Kincaid are beautiful because of their pleasant pacing, and because of that energy the movie bristles with unexpected liveliness.

6. Adaptation

One of the weirdest masterpieces of the past 15 years, Adaptation is a peerless movie that for some reason isn't discussed enough now. The nutty examination of the reality and surreality of the creative process gives us a shocking performance from Meryl as the real-life author Susan Orlean, whose arc is utterly insane and nonetheless gripping. My favorite moment, right before things become, er, swampy, is a post-coital line by Meryl, whose naughty aside to Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper still sits with me like an undigested meal. It is just wild. God, this movie.

5. Silkwood

With all due respect to Cher and her gruff accent, the only truly excellent thing about this movie is Meryl's performance, which gives the noted and doomed chemical technician and labor union activist a harsh sense of urgency. The term "Silkwood shower" may inspire a few jokes, but watching them take place in this movie is nothing but bracing. Silkwood simply offers up the perfect Streep role: a proactive, sympathetic, and empowered woman who is an evident hero but not always a saint.

4. The Devil Wears Prada

A friend of mine made this note (hello, Kiki!), and I think of it every time I recall Meryl's performance in The Devil Wears Prada: You can tell that her character Miranda Priestley's dialogue probably ended in exclamation points in the script, but Meryl's deadly dismissiveness is more powerful and funnier because of the vocal power she doesn't use. As the casually dictatorial editrix who bosses around an assistant named Andie (Anne Hathaway), Meryl glides through this movie with the ease of a runway strut and the casual terror of a wolverine.

3. A Cry in the Dark

The movie that contains Meryl's most famous line ("The dingo took my baby!") is also her most underrated performance. As Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman convicted of murdering her infant daughter despite her (eventually vindicated) claim that a dingo ate the child, Streep is mesmerizing as a woman who seems like a simple family matriach but reveals herself to be a nervy, well-reasoned thinker who doesn't flinch when an ensuing media frenzy paints her as insolent, aloof, and worthy of punishment. A very unusual character, but not in a broad, obvious way, Lindy Chamberlain earns our sympathy even though she's utterly unconcerned with getting it from us.

2. Kramer Vs. Kramer

It's not the meatiest Meryl role or the one with the most screentime, but Streep's first Academy Award was justly earned for her supporting role in the excellent divorce drama Kramer Vs. Kramer. When Joanna Kramer abandons her husband and young son to "feel like a person again," the audience's instinct is not to hate her immediately, but to resign itself to not understanding her. That comfortable distance disappears when Joanna gives a testimony in divorce court that teems with self-revelation and sincerity. It helps that Streep wrote most of her dialogue herself for the scene (as the original version painted Joanna as more of an enemy), but Joanna's reckoning monologue is powerful because of its straightforwardness. "I'm his mother," she concludes, nodding, and then repeats herself with hushed conviction.

1. Sophie's Choice

Roger Ebert famously called Sophie Zawistowski's accent the first one he "ever wanted to hug," but our reaction to her cunningly unraveled backstory -- the painful, unresolved past that haunts Sophie's every glance and every frame of the movie -- is fearful, sympathetic, confused, and loving. As a Polish woman living in Brooklyn who befriends a young writer named Stingo (Peter MacNicol), Streep exudes the gentleness and subtle exasperation of a woman who has already lost herself to unbearable torment. If her exchanges with a terrifying, hotheaded lover (Kevin Kline) don't stick with you, you'll be downright traumatized as you hear her lilting voice relay one of the most harrowing personal narratives ever recounted on film. It's the best Meryl movie and the most complicated, spellbinding performance. A rightful Best Actress winner, and perhaps the greatest screen performance of the past 30 years. It is inconceivable to think of anybody else in this gigantic, yet painstakingly comprehensible role.

What are your favorite Oscar-nominated Meryl roles? Don't tell me you'd have included The Iron Lady here. It's an effectively impersonated take on Margaret Thatcher, but we learn nothing about her from that terrible movie. C'mon.