Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher was originally slated for a late 2013 release date and was to be a contender in last year's awards season tumble, but when one big film after another debuted to rave reviews, the film's producers wisely delayed its release. Since then, Foxcatcher has had a rocky awards season trek, vacillating from "sure thing" contender to "lost cause" refugee. Currently, Foxcatcher finds itself somewhere in between these two extremes. The film, which delves deep into the depths of the stranger-than-fiction relationship between eccentric multimillionaire John du Pont and the Schultz brothers, who joined du Pont on his Pennsylvania compound in order to help train the United States Olympic wrestling team, isn't exactly the most entertaining sit. The film is aggressively passive in tone and staunchly detached in sentiment, and while this icy persona will likely appeal to the more high-brow contingency of the Academy, many are likely to be simply bored. The film may have a broader appeal than might be expected though, for while critics have mostly passed over the film in their year's end kudos, Foxcatcher has done quite well with the supposedly more populist awards such as the Golden Globes and PGA Awards. With the preferential balloting system employed by the Academy, if Foxcatcher is merely liked but not loved, it will run into problems. However, if the film has connected with both the artistic wing and the "meat and potatoes" crowd, it is hard to see how Foxcatcher misses out on a Best Picture nomination.
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.
