Best Picture
1. 12 Years a Slave 2. Gravity 3. American Hustle 4. Nebraska 5. Captain Phillips 6. The Wolf of Wall Street 7. Dallas Buyers Club 8. Her (Alt: Inside Llweyn Davis) Here's what we know for sure: 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, and American Hustle will be nominated for Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards. These three films are the only movies that have a shot of actually winning Best Picture and these three films are the only movies that I would bet my insubstantial fortune on as absolute locks. Beyond these three frontrunners, the next two films that I am almost certain will receive Best Picture nominations are Nebraska and Captain Phillips. Both of these movies are widely liked and admired, both by the more middle-brow "meat and potatoes" crowd, and the more high-minded artsy sector of the Academy that tends to align their opinions with critics. The fact that both these different factions can agree on the merits of the movies is good news for Nebraska and Captain Philips, as building a consensus is often the key to obtaining Oscar nominations. The only thing that makes me hesitant in the least on the odds of these films making the Best Picture lineup is that even though they are widely liked, in the somewhat convoluted system the Academy employs to decipher their Best Picture lineup, it is very important to receive a significant number of first place votes on members ballots. If Nebraska and Captain Phillips is everyone's 4th and 5th favorite films, it doesn't do them much again. However, I had these same reservations about the "middle-ranked" films the last two years when the Academy started their new voting system, and in both years, the middle-ranked films still made it in, so I expect no different this year with Nebraska and Captain Philips. Beyond these five films, it gets a little more dicey. Counter-intuitively, I actually think all the furor and controversy over Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, and the seemingly never ending argument of whether the film glorifies or condemns the behavior of its deplorable characters, has actually been a great asset for the film's chances at a Best Picture nomination. Before The Wolf of Wall Street became THE topic of the film blogosphere, the film's generally positive, but somewhat reserved reviews, put it just on the cusp of the Best Picture field. However, after reports came out on some elderly Academy members absolute disdain for the film (including one Academy member who felt compelled to yell out, "Shame on you," to Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio), the film became somewhat of a rallying cry for the younger, more cinematically adventurous members of the Academy. While the cliché is that the Academy is made up of a bunch of old white guys, the fact of the matter is the younger and more high-brow leaning portion of the Academy is a growing sector of their membership, which has been evidenced with nominations for films like Django Unchained, The Tree of Life, and A Serious Man. They have not grown so much that they have been able to dictate who actually wins Best Picture, but they're powerful enough that they can get a nominee or two into the Best Picture lineup, and the cause de jour this is likely to be The Wolf of Wall Street. Now beyond this it gets really tricky. With the Academy's variable nominations in the Best Picture category, you not only have to choose the best option among films, but you have to consider how many nominees you expect their to be total. In the two years since they have used this variable formula that allows anywhere from 5-10 nominees, there have been exactly nine nominees. The safe thing then would be to go with nine nominees, or maybe even ten considering how many movies are passionately admired this year. The complicated algorithm the Academy uses to decide their Best Picture lineup, which I won't go into detail here but is actually a pretty fascinating process, may actually make it less likely for there to be a lot of nominees if passion is truly spread wide over many movies. This is why, after much debate, I decided to go with eight nominees in the Best Picture lineup. This leaves two spots left open for Best Picture. The first of these final two slots I gave to Dallas Buyers Club. The film feels like more of an actors showcase than a Best Picture nominee, but the film has done surprisingly well on the awards circuit, receiving Best Picture nominations from BFCA, SAG, and PGA (it missed a Globe nomination, but the Globes have their own particular taste which doesn't always align with the Academy). The film, with its social justice edge, real-life basis, and indie aesthetic, is the middle-brow type of "edgy" that the more traditional members of the Academy tends to eat up, so when you add this to the success the film has had thus far, and it appears fairly inevitable that Dallas Buyers Club will be a Best Picture nominee. Finally, for the last spot, I decided to go with Her. It's a tough call, especially since one of the films fighting the final spots, Inside Llewyn Davis, is likely to draw from the same crowd that would vote for Her. When you take into account that the other primary contender, Saving Mr. Banks, a film many others are predicting to make the cut, will take votes from an entirely different voting bloc, than the rational thing to predict would be that Her and Inside Llewyn Davis will split votes and Saving Mr. Banks will sneak in. More than any other film this year though, Her has been the critic's favorite and since the Academy has expanded the Best Picture lineup, the critics favorite, even the seemingly difficult ones such as Amour and The Tree of Life, has managed to make it in, so I don't see the tradition changing this year.
