Saturday, February 27, 2016

From Spotlight to 50 Shades: All 57 Oscar nominees ranked


Usually, something stands in the way. Maybe a film has not been released in this country yet, it has not opened anywhere near me, or perhaps I missed it in theaters and it is in that ever-shrinking window between theater and DVD (or streaming, now). Anyway, I never before had seen every film nominated at the Oscars in a given year. The hardest categories have always been the shorts, the documentaries, and the foreign films because those must be sought out. Well, this year, I sought them out.

Fifty-seven different films, including shorts, have been nominated across 24 categories this year, and I have seen them all. The first one I caught was writer-director Alex Garland’s superb Ex Machina way back on April 10, and the last one was Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s When Marnie Was There just two days ago – in time to finish an analysis of the Best Animated Feature category. Since I have seen them, of course, my immediate instinct was to put them all on a list. So, here is a completely subjective ranking of all 57 2015 Oscar nominees:

5. Ex Machina
6. Embrace of the Serpent
9. Room
10. Anomalisa
12. Shok
14. Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
15. Son of Saul
17. Carol
18. When Marnie Was There
19. A War
21. Cartel Land
23. Shaun the Sheep Movie
24. Creed
28. The Look of Silence
29. Sicario
30. Trumbo
31. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
33. Amy
37. Day One
39. Straight Outta Compton
40. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
42. The Hunting Ground
44. What Happened, Miss Simone?
46. Theeb
47. Boy and the World
49. Spectre
50. Cinderella
52. Joy
54. Youth
57. 50 Shades of Grey

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