10 Most Oscar Bait Movies From The 2015 Awards Season

9. The Imitation Game

What's Oscar Bait About The Idea? It'd be hard to make a movie about Alan Turing without catching the attention of the Academy - his life story is incredible (he cracked the Enigma code, a major step in the Allies beating the Nazis) and depressing (he was chemically castrated by the British government for being a homosexual, which led to his suicide) in equal measure. The Imitation Game really steered into that, casting Benedict Cumberbatch, who has now become so popular he's got a substantial anti-fan-base, and snagging seasoned Academy baiter The Weinstein Company as a distributor. Was It Any Good? It's exemplar Oscar bait. It's not a bad movie - Cumberbatch does his best Cumberbatch and Morten Tyldum honours his thriller roots by making cracking Enigma into a pretty tense sequence of events - but as a tribute to Turing, which the film spends too much time trying to be to pretend that it isn't, The Imitation Game fails, all but glossing over his later persecution (no doubt in a bid to widen appeal). Was There Any Major Campaigning? After the Toronto International Film Festival, where The Imitation Game won the People's Choice Award, it was a strong favourite, but since then more and more genuinely worthy films have come up, making the films eight Oscar noms a bit of a consolation prize. In an attempt to combat this, the Weinstein's advertising campaign has really pushed the ignored element, highlighting the movie's gay credentials and imploring voters to "honour the man". Good thing too, because the film itself certainly didn't. Will It Get Anything For Its Efforts? There's an outside chance for both Original Score and Adapted Screenplay, but even if it wins those it's severely under-performed after those early predictions.