As we enter winter, awards-bait films are poised to dominate our cinema screens. Several star-studded, big budget features are already touted as potential Oscar frontrunners, such as the Steve Carrell-Channing Tatum drama Foxcatcher, the Benedict Cumberbatch World War II film The Imitation Game, and the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.

It’s instructive to note the difference between the “buzz” for films that enjoy the promotion and campaign backing from big studios, and the films that are receiving recognition from awards and festivals where critics decide who wins.
Unlike the Oscars, which allow producers like Harvey Weinstein bombard voters with well-funded campaigns, independent events like The Gotham Awards don’t just reward the films that have the budget for parties and fliers and posters and ads. The Gothams instead look at independent films, and their recent list of nominations highlights not only movies and performances audiences should keep an eye out for, but ones the Academy should also look to, if they’ve any sense.
Several films ran away with Gotham nominations, with Best Picture nods going to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s incredible and inventive showbiz satire Birdman; Richard Linklater’s 12-year-long coming-of-age tale Boyhood, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel; Ira Sach’s tender drama about a middle-aged gay couple, Love Is Strange; and Jonathan Glazer’s deliciously weird, evocative and enigmatic sci-fi drama Under The Skin. Meanwhile, Bill Hader got a well-deserved acting nomination for his role as a sarcastic gay man battling demons of depression and familial alienation in The Skeleton Twins. He’ll be competing with Michael Keaton, Ethan Hawke, Miles Teller and Oscar Isaac who got nods for their roles in Birdman, Boyhood, Whiplash and A Most Violent Year.
Meanwhile Patricia Arquette, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Julianne Moore, Scarlett Johansson and Mia Wasikowska all got nominated for Boyhood, Beyond The Lights, Still Alice, Under The Skin and Tracks, respectively. Of these, so far Boyhood is the only film receiving Oscar chatter – proving that while Oscar “buzz” may be in the air, it’s not coming from critics, and it’s definitely not reaching the wide range of incredible, inventive, evocative and deserving films that comprise independent cinema.
Let’s see if this is the year the Academy finally moves away from its beloved categories of biopics, period dramas and dramatic true stories, and looks beyond – because there’s a wealth of wonderful cinema waiting to be acknowledged.