8. Youth
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86% (7.8/10) Why It Deserves Best Picture: Writer-director Paola Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) teams up with two venerable Hollywood legends for this riveting meditation on aging, teasing out of Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel two of their strongest performances in years. Beautifully filmed, darkly hilarious and emotionally resonant regardless of your own age, this is existential cinema done right. It deals with weighty themes without deigning to become misery porn, and if that's not enough of an endorsement for the Academy, it features probably the most jaw-dropping nude scene of the year. Why It Won't Get Nominated: The quiet, intimate, character-driven approach will probably make this one a little too unassuming for Oscar glory, even though films about aging have been shown to strike a chord with Academy voters before (Michael Haneke's Amour for one). It's just too niche and outside-the-box, unfortunately.
Jack Pooley
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
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