15 Movies To Watch Out For This Oscar Season

The summer is finally over, which means the number of huge explosions in our cinematic diet is about to go way, way down, as Oscar season ramps up and studios get ready to unleash their awards hopefuls for audiences and critics to chew over until they're absolutely sick of it all. With the Sundance Film Festival in January and Cannes in May, the Oscar discussion is never really over, but in recent years, the Toronto International Film Festival has proven to be a launchpad for numerous Oscar successes, such as the two last Best Picture winners, 12 Years A Slave and Argo. Now that Toronto has wrapped up, film buffs and Oscar prognosticators can really get stuck into analysing the field and hedging their bets for what might walk away with what on February 22nd. Here's 15 picks from the year's most promising releases, festival and not, screened and un-screened, which audiences can count on to make waves in the lead-up to the nominations announcement on January 15th. As ever, some great films will no doubt draw the short straw, and a few duds might sneak into a potentially 10-strong Best Picture field, but here's 15 films with some serious muscle heading towards the Academy Awards, be it for Best Picture, acting honours or anything else along the way.

15. The Theory Of Everything

The Buzz: Man on Wire director James Marsh helms this Stephen Hawking biopic, based on his ex-wife Jane Hawking's memoir, exploring their life together, Hawking's ALS diagnosis, and his immense success in the world of physics. Following its premiere at Toronto, one name was on everyone's lips: Eddie Redmayne. The actor's performance as Hawking led him to become an instant frontrunner in the Best Actor race, and though many reviewers conceded that the actor was in many respects better than the mostly conventional film he starred in, almost every aspect of its craft (especially Felicity Jones' performance as Jane) was noted positively by most of the press. Oscar Predictions: Nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Marsh), Best Actor (Redmayne), Best Actress (Jones), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score. Reviews suggest the movie itself probably isn't strong enough to scoop Best Picture, and the category with the best chance of actually winning the Oscar is unquestionably Redmayne, even if his field is one of the most fiercely-contested every year. Release Date: November 7th (US), January 1st, 2015 (UK)