Best Picture and the Critics – It’s a Cliffhanger

One of the strangest aspects of 2014 is how so many films have been harpooned by critics, especially those aimed for the Best Picture race. At the same time, Oscar bloggers have been winnowing down their list based on what they think milquetoast softies in the Academy, otherwise known as “they” will choose. In so doing, we’re looking at a doozy of a Best Picture race – one that inadvertently omits the most daring while huddling up to the least daring.

Three very big Oscar movies were mostly zotzed by the critics – Interstellar (74 on Metacritic), Unbroken (with a 61 so far, with 14 critics ringing in) and American Sniper (66 on Metacritic so far with 16 critics ringing in). Both both Interstellar and Sniper are hitting top ten lists throughout the net, proving that people really do love those movies. Unbroken was chosen by the Critics Choice for Best Picture and Best Director, while all three were inexplicably put on AFI’s top ten American films of the year.

So what gives? Do the critics just have a bug up their butt? Are these really good movies despite what the critics say? And will Academy voters go for them or not. If so, all three of them? 20 out of 22 pundits at Gold Derby have Unbroken predicted to be nominated. Only 2 out of 22 have Amrican Sniper predicted, 4 out of 22 have Interstellar predicted. Two of these films have fallen from a high place as once being predicted to win Best Picture before anyone saw them.

The Golden Globes did not nominate them, which is the only indication that these aren’t primed and ready for the Best Picture race. Dave Karger has all three films predicted to be nominated for Best Picture. That tells me a couple of things worth noting for the Oscar race moving forward. Maybe this is the moment that the critics and the industry at last part ways. After all, other than Boyhood, the critics have mostly embraced either foreign films like Ida or movies way too obscure for Oscar voters, like Under the Skin.

Here is the LA Weekly’s Critics Poll for Best Picture:

Now let’s just do a quick rundown of the critics and Best Picture going back to when they expanded to ten from five, 2009.

2009
The Hurt Locker – 94
Up – 88
An Education – 85
Avatar – 83
Up in the Air – 83
District 9 – 81
A Serious Man – 79
Precious – 79
Inglorious Basterds – 69
The Blind Side – 53

2010

The Social Network – 95
Toy Story 3 – 92
Winter’s Bone – 90
The King’s Speech – 88
The Kids are All Right – 86
127 Hours – 82
True Grit – 80
Black Swan – 79
The Fighter – 79
Inception – 74

2011
Moneyball – 87
The Artist – 86
The Tree of Life – 85
The Descendants – 84
Hugo – 83
Midnight in Paris – 81
War Horse – 72
The Help – 62
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close – 46

2012
Zero Dark Thirty – 95
Amour – 94
Argo – 86
Beasts of the Southern Wild – 86
Lincoln – 86
Django Unchained – 81
Silver Linings Playbook – 81
Life of Pi – 79
Les Miserables – 63

2013

12 Years a Slave – 97
Gravity – 96
American Hustle – 90
Her – 90
Nebraska – 86
Dallas Buyers Club – 84
Captain Phillips – 83
Philomena – 76
Wolf of Wall Street – 75

So far in 2014

Boyhood – 100
Selma – 92 (11 critics)
Birdman – 89
The Grand Budapest Hotel – 88
Whiplash – 87
Foxcatcher – 82
Gone Girl – 79
Nightcrawler – 76
Interstellar – 74
Theory of Everything – 72
The Imitation Game – 72
Into the Woods – 71 (7 critics)
American Sniper – 66 (11 critics)
Unbroken – 61 (14 critics)

I’m a little perplexed how my Oscar pundit pals think this is going to play out overall.  Perhaps the Unbroken and American Sniper will see their reviews rise – that’s certainly possible since they don’t have very many so far.  But if it stays this way you start to see how films with these scores end up with in terms of nomination counts – Extremely Loud with 2, The Blind Side with 2, The Help with 4. They are movies that appeal to actors overall and thus, they end up, usually, with one acting nomination and one Best Picture nomination.  But no more than that. At least, that’s how it’s gone since 2009.

So then the other weird way Best Picture is being measured this year, in terms of how pundits are predicting films, is that they’re ignoring the critics (kind of) and they’re also ignoring box office. We’ve gone over this before but it is highly unusual to have a Best Picture lineup with hardly any films that made money in it.

Unbroken and American Sniper are hoping for huge box office and I feel strongly they will get it. So perhaps box office is a negligible point. Though it is kind of ass backwards to nominate the film and then watch it make money.

Blogger Tim J. Krieg ‏@FiveStarFlicks noted the oddness in the Best Picture / box office disconnect a while back and built this chart to illustrate if 2014 was like Best Picture since 2009:

I’m not really sure how Best Picture is going to end up. But I do know that I am genuinely perplexed by how it seems to be going, at least so far, with the critics having rung in.  There is a vague kind of consensus forming but other than that it represents no other Oscar year I’ve seen.

I’m not sure if it means that the Oscars will embrace films that the public might – we don’t know what their reaction will be to a lot of these films. Or if everyone in my job has just decided critics no longer matter where Best Picture is concerned.

Or perhaps the review scores will start to climb and this will all be moot.

I do find it interesting, though. This year reminds me of: if Oscar bloggers and studios decided the Best Picture race.  For my part, I always look at reviews and box office as indicators of where Best Picture eventually might be found.

But what do I know? We’re just making this thing up as we go. One thing I kind of think I know at this stage of the game, I think a lot of the major pundits could be underestimating Gone Girl. And if they gave it any thought, they’d probably say I was underestimating Unbroken. I’m also wondering about Interstellar making a rally at year’s end as its international box office starts to climb the way Life of Pi’s did.

So many questions, yet no answers. Not yet.