10 Movies From 2014 The Academy Must Not Forget

The best movies that shouldn't be forgotten when Oscar season kicks off.

The Academy is notorious for their short memory: in their eyes, any movie released prior to the fall film festival season may as well not even exist. Indeed, more than one in five films nominated for an Oscar are released in the month of December, or in other words, the Academy's long-term memory is about as healthy as Leonard Shelby's from Memento. To be fair to the members of the Academy, some of this end-of-the-year bias is due to the release date strategies adopted by the studios. The idea that the Academy only considers films released in the last quarter of the year has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as studios purposely save films that will most likely appeal to the Academy for the end of the year, in hopes that the extra Oscar recognition will boost the films box office. Even so, it would do the Academy some good to look past all the hype of the winter prestige releases and think back to some of the quality films that graced the silver screen earlier in the year. What follows then is a list of ten films released thus far in 2014 that the Academy would be wise to remember come nomination time. And if any Academy members are reading this list, make a mental note of it, write the list down, email the list to yourself, or do whatever it takes, but please just don't forget these films.
Contributor
Contributor

A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.