Oscars 2014: Final Predictions For All Categories

Best Foreign Film

The Great BeautyThe Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium) The Hunt (Denmark) The Great Beauty (Italy) The Missing Picture (Cambodia) Omar (Palestine) For casual (English-speaking) viewers of the Academy Awards, Best Foreign Film is likely one of the categories they care least about. They probably have not seen, or even heard of, any of the nominees ("What?! You mean I have to read the movie!"), and many are sure to view the category as an opportune bathroom brake. However, if it's part of your pool, it still represents one-twenty-fourth of the competition, which means it pays to have some foresight into the category. Some years, such as last year when the eventual winner, Amour, was not only nominated for Best Foreign Film but also for Best Picture (a huge clue that is was likely to win the subset category of Best Foreign Film), Best Foreign Film is a relatively easy category to predict. However, this year there is no real frontrunner, which means that while it's no easy task to pick the winner, anyone who correctly picks this category could find themselves with a big advantage on the night. Between the five nominees, there is only one that you should absolutely avoid picking: The Missing Picture, a clay figure reenactment of the atrocities of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge (not to say anything against the merits of the film, which I have not seen, but the narrative device of Claymation is unlikely to be an Academy favorite). All the other four films at least have a shot, but the two most critically acclaimed of the nominees, Denmark's The Hunt and Italy's The Great Beauty, probably have a slight advantage. If the Academy finds the former too austere and the latter t0o stylish, they might settle for a more traditional pick in one of the other two nominees. However, it's not the 1990's anymore and recently the Academy has made a bit bolder choices in this category, so I'm betting they will go with the Fellini-esque styling of Italy's The Great Beauty, a country that has tasted Oscar gold more than a few times in this category. Will Win: The Great BeautyCould Win: The HuntShould Win: The Hunt
Contributor
Contributor

A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.