Awards season is officially underway, and the Oscar pundits have already started going crazy with their predictions. But since there’s still a whole month to go, several upcoming contenders (like Selma and Unbroken) seem to be drawing all their attention, whether or not they end up to deserving it. That means a lot of great films are already being ignored. It certainly seems as though – once again – not enough Oscar buzz is being lobbed at the many exceptional motion pictures that had the grievous misfortunate to come out earlier in the year.
CraveOnline to the rescue: we’ve seen hundreds of motion pictures this year and we’ve narrowed down the dark horses to nineteen films, all of which deserve a lot more Oscar buzz than they’re currently getting. They can’t all make it into contention, but if we can help raise awareness of these damn fine films that seem like Oscar long shots, maybe – just maybe – some of them will have a chance of ending up on the ballot.
Related: 14 Completely Forgettable Movies from 2014
Some of these movies seemed like serious contenders when they came out, only to be lost in the tidal wave of Oscar bait near the end of the year. Some films were unfairly maligned and deserve a second look by discerning Academy members. Others may seem like strange choices, but they feature career-best work from the talent involved.
But whatever their origins, they all deserve a lot more Oscar buzz. So let’s get that started with these, the 19 Films That Deserve More Oscar Buzz.
19 Films That Deserve More Oscar Buzz:
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
19 Films That Deserve More Oscar Buzz
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Blue Ruin
Best Actor: Macon Blair
Best Original Screenplay: Jeremy SaulnierWhat do you do when you need to take revenge, but you lack a certain set of skills? Jeremy Saulnier's troubling, smart drama explores a concept most movies trump up for thrills, and finds instead something honest and sad. Bolstered by an impressively desperate performance by Macon Blair as a man in way over his head, Blue Ruin deserves more attention for finding a remarkable new way to tell an old tale.
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Calvary
Best Actor: Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson plays a preacher who learns in confession that one of his parishioners is planning to kill him. But which one? Gleeson turns in one of his finest performances as a religious figurehead in a town rapidly losing its faith, striving to be good even though nobody seems to care. The Best Actor race is crowded this year, but hopefully there's room for this complicated turn from one of the best actors in the business.
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Chef
Best Original Screenplay: Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau's breakout indie hit earned a lot of acclaim when it was released earlier this year, but the buzz has died down. His engaging screenplay, skewering the Hollywood studio system under the guise of the gourmet restaurant business, deserves more consideration for its sharp observations and believably hopeful conclusions.
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The Drop
Best Supporting Actor: James Gandolfini
James Gandolfini earned several awards nominations for last year's romantic comedy Enough Said, but his final performance in the understated crime drama The Drop is actually some of his finest work. As a former mobster reduced to running a small bar, kowtowing to the town's new masters, he presents an exquisitely relatable tragedy with humor, sadness and impressive sensitivity.
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Filth
Best Actor: James McAvoy
James McAvoy is always at his best when he's playing a total bastard, and no character was a bigger bastard this year than the protagonist of Filth. A drug-addicted, sex-addled, hopelessly corrupt detective using every tool at his disposal to destroy the career prospects of his peers, McAvoy is absolutely unbridled, even when his inner misery is shockingly revealed.
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Fury
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor: Jon Bernthal
Best Original Screenplay: David Ayer
Best Cinematography: Roman VasnayovDavid Ayer's World War II drama Fury was being labeled as a serious Oscar contender before its release, but mixed reviews seem to have scuttled its chances. That's not fair: his vision of WWII as a muddy pit of active psychological trauma is one of the most disturbing and exciting dramas of its kind, with stellar cinematography, a carefully structured screenplay and a career-changing performance from Jon Bernthal as a haunted thug who hasn't completely lost his humanity yet.
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Get On Up
Best Actor: Chadwick Boseman
Best Editing: Michael McCuskerThis summer's James Brown biopic Get On Up received strong notices for Chadwick Boseman in particular, who strikes the delicate balance between impersonating a famous figure and making him feel like an all-new artistic creation. But Michael McCusker's editing is responsible for some of the most energetic storytelling of the year, leaping back and forth through Brown's life with the intensity of a drunken jam session.
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Locke
Best Actor: Tom Hardy
Best Original Screenplay: Steven KnightTom Hardy performs all of the drama Locke alone in a car, telephoning all the people he works with and loves to explain why he has decided to let every single one of them down. It's a nearly impossible challenge, but Hardy pulls it off, keeping Locke exciting based almost entirely on the strength of his performance. Steven Knight's screenplay also deserves credit, however, for avoiding traditional narrative structure without sacrificing a moment of audience involvement.
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Magic in the Moonlight
Best Actor: Colin Firth
Woody Allen's latest film is probably too slight to resonate with all the voters who turned Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine into award-winners, but it boasts a truly remarkable performance from Colin Firth. As an agnostic magician finally come face-to-face with the fantastic, he finds rich shadings in a figure who could have been a one-joke pony, and eventually gives the year's most unexpected and impressive monologue.
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Men, Women and Children
Best Supporting Actress: Judy Greer
Jason Reitman's tedious foray into the suburban strife of the Internet Age didn't impress most critics, but that's not Judy Greer's fault. As a mother whose support for her daughter's acting career has gradually taken a morally reprehensible turn, she constructs a sympathetic figure against a monstrous backdrop. You can't quite hate her, although you probably should. For that, she deserves recognition.
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Neighbors
Best Actress: Rose Byrne
The Oscars don't typically reward comedic performances, but with the Best Actress field looking pretty thin this year, they should take a serious look at Rose Byrne's hilarious turn in Neighbors. Her comic timing is impeccable, and she manages to create a complex character out of a woman who might barely have registered in a lesser film, reminding audiences that women encounter the same growing pains that men do as they venture into adulthood, sometimes kicking and screaming.
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Noah
Best Picture
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky
Best Adapted Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky & Ari HandelDarren Aronofsky's ambitious biblical epic Noah took a relatively simple story and spun it into wild new directions, finding common ground between the scientific evolution of the universe and the notion of Creationism, and acknowledging the horror within a tale often told to children. With startling cinematography and a challenging take on The Bible, Noah deserves at least some credit - and hopefully a few nominations - for imbuing a blockbuster with intelligence and daring to take some serious risks in the process.
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Only Lovers Left Alive
Best Actress: Tilda Swinton
Jim Jarmusch's unlikely vampire film is one of the most beautiful cinematic love stories in years, with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton playing lovers whose many lifetimes of romance have made them perfectly comfortable with each other. It's a dream come true for every relationship, but only capable of being realized in a fantasy environment. Swinton in particular uses her dreamy sensuality to sublime effect, crafting a character of believable experience and ethereal beauty. She deserves more recognition for turning bloodsicles into a totally reasonable plot point.
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The Raid 2
Best Cinematography: Matt Flannery & Dimas Imam Subhono
Best Editing: Gareth EvansThe absolutely stunning follow-up to the testosterone-fueled The Raid brought Kubrickian imagery and editing techniques to a genre that too often feels slapped together. There's an elegance to the presentation of The Raid 2 that rivals the finest straight dramatic productions of the year. It has more than earned the right to be considered an awards contender, if only for its stunning visuals and creative cutting.
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Rudderless
Best Original Song: "Sing Along"
William H. Macy's directorial debut was hit-or-miss with critics, some of whom admired the dramatic chances he took with his story - about a man whose musician son dies in a school shooting, and takes to playing his songs at open mic nights - and others found the film needlessly manipulative. But there's nothing wrong with the music: a series of toe-tapping tunes with deeper meaning gradually revealed over the course of the film. Rudderless is a fine example of how to use original songs to tell a story without turning into a straight-up musical, and "Sing-Along" is probably the finest example.
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The Skeleton Twins
Best Actress: Kristen Wiig
Best Actor: Bill HaderThe character-driven comedy of The Skeleton Twins may be too slight to compete in most awards categories, but as two estranged siblings who challenge each other to better their dreary lives, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig turn in two sly, witty, emotional performances. They wrestle with difficult life decisions but feel just at home lip synching Starship together. These could be just the kind of feel-good performances that sneak into the nominations process, and they would deserve their nominations.
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Snowpiercer
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton
Best Adapted Screenplay: Joon-ho Bong and Kelly Masterson
Best Production Design: Ondrej NekvasilThe smartest action-thriller of the year was teeming with exciting plot points, disturbing revelations and genuinely shocking points of view about the cruel necessities of life on Earth. Set entirely within an extremely long train, with each car visually representing another strange facet of the social experience, Snowpiercer cuts a striking figure as both an art house film and a sci-fi blockbuster. And Tilda Swinton turns in yet another stunning performance as the figurehead for oppression, as evil as she is right about almost everything.
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Space Station 76
Best Production Design: Seth Reed
Jack Plotnick's sci-fi throwback Space Station 76 is an understated film about how dreaming of the future changes almost nothing about the present. It's too subtle to make much an impression during awards season, but the spot-on production design deserves extra attention for simultaneously capturing the implausibly spotless predictions of space travel from the mid-20th Century, as well as the brown, shaggy look of actual 1970s suburbia.
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We Are the Best!
Best Picture
Best Director: Lukas Moodysson
Best Adapted Screenplay: Lukas MoodyssonOne of the most satisfying films of 2014 came out a little too early to reap the awards season benefits of its critical praise, but we hope that voters don't forget about We Are the Best! Lukas Moodysson's adaptation of his wife's comic book, about a group of teen girls who start a punk band despite having no talent to speak of, is a refreshingly honest, hopeful depiction of young dreams and adolescent realities, believably portrayed by a pitch-perfect ensemble cast.
