The Oscar nominations are in, and it must be said that the Best Picture category is completely over-crowded this year. The Revenant and Spotlight are obvious standouts, while small-scale prestige movies like Room and Brooklyn have the potential to run away with Academy voters' hearts and minds. Then there's the dark horse that is Mad Max: Fury Road, a technical achievement as well as an engaging, engrossing action movie which proves that the Academy can still show a little love for bombastic blockbusters every now and then. It goes without saying that every one of the films nominated is a great movie - otherwise it probably wouldn't be nominated, obviously. What can be said is that some of them are a little better than the others; a little more captivating, a few better performances, more style and verve. It's not necessarily a slight against the films that appear on the bottom of this list, as comparing movies from different genres is like comparing apples and aardvarks. Nonetheless, for your reading pleasure is this list which works on two levels; the ranked order suggests not only the (subjective) quality of the movie but also it's chances of blagging that Best Picture Oscar. In a perfect world, the gong would deservedly go to no. 1 on this list...
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
