2014
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 2014
Best Picture
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/birdman.jpg)
BIRDMAN or (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)
(2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/americansniper.jpg)
American Sniper (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/boyhood.jpg)
Boyhood (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/grandbudapesth.jpg)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/imitationgame.jpg)
The Imitation Game (2014, UK/US)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/selma.jpg)
Selma (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/theoryofeveryt.jpg)
The Theory of Everything (2014, UK)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/whiplash.jpg)
Whiplash (2014)
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Best Animated Feature Film
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/bighero6.jpg)
BIG HERO 6 (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/boxtrolls.jpg)
The Boxtrolls (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/pictures/howtotraindragon2.jpg)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/songofsea.jpg)
Song of the Sea (2014, Ire./Den./Belg./Lux./Fr.)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/covers/titles-taleofprincess.jpg)
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013/14, Jp.)
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Actor:
EDDIE REDMAYNE in "The Theory of Everything," Steve
Carell in "Foxcatcher," Bradley Cooper in "American
Sniper," Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Imitation Game," Michael
Keaton in "Birdman"
Actress:
JULIANNE MOORE in "Still Alice," Marion Cotillard in "Two
Days, One Night," Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything," Rosamund
Pike in "Gone Girl," Reese Witherspoon in "Wild"
Supporting Actor:
J.K. SIMMONS in "Whiplash," Robert Duvall in "The
Judge," Ethan Hawke in "Boyhood," Edward Norton
in "Birdman," Mark Ruffalo in "Foxcatcher,"
Supporting Actress:
PATRICIA ARQUETTE in "Boyhood," Laura Dern in "Wild," Emma
Stone in "Birdman," Keira Knightley in "The Imitation
Game," Meryl Streep in "Into the Woods"
Director:
ALEJANDRO GONZALES INARRITU for "Birdman," Richard Linklater
for "Boyhood," Bennett Miller for "Foxcatcher," Wes
Anderson for "The Grand Budapest Hotel," Morten Tyldum
for "The Imitation Game"
This
year marked the first time that the Best Picture category had
only eight nominees. Ever since 2009 when the Best Picture field
could be between 5 and 10, there had always been nine contenders.
For Oscar predictors, every Best Picture winner in the past 60
years has also been nominated in a screenplay category - except
for The Sound of Music (1965) and Titanic
(1997). In this year, the winning Best Picture won in both
categories.
For the most part, the Academy bypassed a large
number of this year's sci-fi films, fantasy epics, action movies,
and lots of other independent films. Some of the major hit movies
of the year were virtually ignored in the Academy's voting, with
only a few nominations in secondary, more technical categories,
and only one win among them:
- Un-nominated: The Hunger
Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Transformers: Age of Extinction, The
Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla
- One nomination: the animated The LEGO Movie, Gone
Girl, Maleficent, Captain America: The Winter
Soldier, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of
the Planet of the Apes
- Two nominations: Guardians of the Galaxy
- Five nominations: Interstellar (with
one win, Best Visual Effects)
Up to the time of the nominations, the eight nominees
grossed only $205.2 million collectively - the lowest since 2009
(the previous low was in the year 2011, at $519 million). This
was the first time since 2007 that no Best Picture-nominated
film collected $100 million domestically by the time nominations
were announced. Most of the films were underperforming, art-house
independent films. The Grand Budapest Hotel was the top
grossing Best Picture nominee (at $59.1 million domestically),
mostly because it was released in March of 2014.
At the time of the awards, the only major
Hollywood mainstream film, Warner Bros.' American Sniper (with
six nominations - and only one Oscar win) was the top grossing
film at $316.2 million. It had a tremendous boost of over $300
million from the time of the nominations.
Half of the eight finalists for Best Picture were
biopics - they were mostly tales of lone-heroes (some Great Men)
who were on journeys searching or striving for something seemingly
unreachable.
The awards were fairly evenly spread out between
the top three Best Picture contenders (two had four wins, and
one had 3 wins). This marked the first year since the academy
expanded the Best Picture field in 2009 that every nominee
won at least one Oscar. [The second time this occurred was in
2018.]
The winner of Best Picture was:
- director/writer Alejandro González Iñárritu's
unconventional Broadway drama Birdman or (The Unexpected
Virtue of Ignorance) (with 9 nominations and 4 wins - also
Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay).
It featured Michael Keaton's comeback title role as a fading
star questing for redemption. [Note:
Fox Searchlight Pictures, which won Best Picture last year
with 12 Years a Slave (2013), represented the film. Birdman was
the third film in four years to win Best Picture with its story
about show business (and backstage).]
The other two closest films were:
- director Wes Anderson's off-beat historical
comic drama The Grand Budapest Hotel (with 9 nominations
and 4 wins, including Best Production Design, Best Costume
Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Original Score).
It was also represented by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It was
the Best Motion Picture (musical or comedy) at the Golden Globes,
although it had no acting Oscar nominations.
- director/writer Damien Chazelle's (and Sony
Classics) directorial debut film, the musical drama Whiplash (with
5 nominations and 3 wins, including Best Supporting Actor,
Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Mixing). It told about a
domineering music conservatory teacher (Oscar winner J.K. Simmons)
and his torturous relationship with one aspiring student (a
jazz drummer).
The remaining five nominees all had only one win:
- director Morten Tyldum's (and the Weinstein
Company's) biopic about British code-breaking cryptographer
Alan Turing during WWII, The Imitation Game (with 8
nominations and only one win, for Best Adapted Screenplay (based
upon Andrew Hodges' 1983/2000 biography)).
- director/writer Richard Linklater's innovative
coming-of-age indie film Boyhood (with 6 nominations
and only one win, Best Supporting Actress). It was filmed over
12 years about a boy's (Ellar Coltrane) journey to adulthood.
- director Clint Eastwood's Navy SEAL war drama
about a deadly sniper, American Sniper (with 6 nominations
and only one win, Best Sound Editing). It was based upon the
2012 best-selling autobiographical memoirs of real-life lethal
US Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle who went on four tours. This
was the first time that one of Eastwood's directorial efforts
had been nominated for Best Picture but not also for Best Director.
- director James Marsh's and Focus Features' biopic The
Theory of Everything (with 5 nominations and only one
win, Best Actor), about Stephen Hawking (based upon wife
Jane Hawking's 2008 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My
Life With Stephen).
- director Ava DuVernay’s Selma (with
only two nominations and only one win, Best Original Song, "Glory"),
distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was a biopic about the
famed voting rights march (seen over a 3-month period) led
by civil rights leader Dr. MLK (David Oyelowo) from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 which spurred President Lyndon
B. Johnson (portrayed by Tom Wilkinson) to pressure Congress
to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
[Note: Oprah Winfrey received her second Oscar nomination, just
29 years after her first, for her producing credit for the film.]
In the Best Director category, four of the directors
of Best Picture nominated films were missing from the directorial
nom lineup, including Clint Eastwood, Damien Chazelle, Ava DuVernay,
and James Marsh. Bennett Miller, the director
nominated for Foxcatcher, was the first director (since
the Best Picture category was expanded) to score a spot for a
film that was not also nominated for Best Picture. 84 year-old
Clint Eastwood (with his 11th career nomination this year) would
have been the oldest Best Director nominee ever, if he
had received a directorial nod for American Sniper.
The winner of the Best Director Oscar was:
- 51 year-old Mexican film-maker Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu (with his fourth Oscar nomination, and first Oscar
win), for Birdman. The film was a miraculous feat -
it appeared to be comprised of a single, seamless, unbroken
shot.
[Note: Inarritu had three previous Oscar nominations: Best Foreign
Language Film Amores Perros (2000, Mex.), and Best Director/
Best Picture for Babel (2006).]
He was the second consecutive Latino (Mexican) director
to win after Alfonso Cuaron last year for Gravity (2013).
The Mexican director became the fifth consecutive non-American
to win Best Director, following Britisher Tom Hooper for The
King's Speech (2010), Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius for The
Artist (2011), Taiwanese-born Ang Lee for Life of Pi (2012),
and fellow Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity (2013).
The other four Best Director nominees were:
- 54 year-old Richard Linklater
(with his first directorial nomination), for Boyhood
[Note: Linklater's film was also nominated for his Best Original
Screenplay and lost. He was also nominated previously for two
Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars: Before Sunset (2004) and Before
Midnight (2013).]
- 48 year-old Bennett Miller (with his second
nomination), for Foxcatcher, a bleak crime drama with
two acting nominations
[Note: Miller's nomination in the category was a surprise -
his film wasn't nominated for Best Picture. This has never
happened since the field was expanded to 10 nominees in 2009.
Miller's only previous nomination was Best Director for Capote
(2005).]
- 45 year-old Wes Anderson (with his fourth nomination,
and first nomination for Best Director), for The Grand Budapest
Hotel
[Note: Anderson was previous nominated three times: Best Original
Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and Moonrise
Kingdom (2012), and Best Animated Feature Film for Fantastic
Mr. Fox (2009).]
- 48 year-old Norwegian-born Morten Tyldum (with
his first Oscar nomination, and the Academy's first Norwegian
nominated for Best Director), for The Imitation Game
Every single nominee in the performance categories
(20 in all) were white, raising again the diversity question
for the Academy. There were no non-white contenders for the first
time since the Oscars honored the films of 1995. [Note: this
was only the second time in 14 years that the Academy nominated
no actor or actress of African heritage.] Also, this year's Oscars
saw five directors, five cinematographers and 14 screenwriters
nominated, all men - the first time since the 1999 Oscars. One
of the more notable omissions was a nomination for Gillian Flynn's
adaptation of her own 2012 best-selling novel for Gone Girl.
Nine out of 20 performers
in the acting categories were first-time nominees. Five of those
nominated were British performers. Only four of this year's
acting nominees had won Oscars before: Marion Cotillard, Robert
Duvall, Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon, and none of them
repeated with a win this year. All four performance Oscar winners
were first-time winners, and were widely predicted: Eddie Redmayne
in The Theory of Everything, Julianne Moore in Still
Alice, J.K. Simmons in Whiplash, and Patricia Arquette
in Boyhood.
In the Best Actor category, the winner was:
- 33 year-old Eddie Redmayne (with his first career
nomination and first Oscar win) as Cambridge University cosmologist
and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (in his later years)
who was diagnosed with ALS in 1963, in the biopic/love story The
Theory of Everything. Redmayne's win was the 7th instance
in the past ten years that the Best Actor Oscar has been awarded
to someone playing a real-life person.
The other Best Actor nominees were:
- 52 year-old Steve Carell (with his first nomination)
as wealthy philanthropist/plutocrat and big-nosed wrestling
enthusiast John E. du Pont, in Foxcatcher
- 40 year-old Bradley Cooper (with his third nomination
as actor) as real-life Navy SEAL lethal sharpshooter Chris
Kyle on four tours of duty in Iraq, in American Sniper
[Note: This was Bradley Cooper's third acting nomination in three
years - the last male actor to do that was Russell Crowe 13 years
ago, from 1999-2001. He was previously nominated as Best Actor
for Silver Linings Playbook (2012), and Best Supporting
Actor for American Hustle (2013) - thus he has appeared
in three Best Picture nominees in a row.]
- 38 year-old Benedict Cumberbatch (with his first
nomination) as British math genius Alan Turing who broke the
Nazis' Enigma Code that helped win WWII, framed by his 1952
arrest and conviction for his alleged homosexuality, in The
Imitation Game
- 63 year-old Michael Keaton (with his first Oscar
nomination) as washed-up Hollywood actor Riggan Thomson, who
portrayed the costumed, comic-book superhero 'Birdman' from
decades earlier (his alter-ego) that was attempting a Broadway
comeback, in Birdman [Note: Keaton's role mirrored real-life
- he was the title-role star of Tim Burton’s Batman
(1989) more than 20 years ago.]
In the Best Actress category, the winner was:
- the favored front-runner, 54 year-old Julianne
Moore (with her fifth career nomination - and first Oscar win)
in co-directors Richard Glatzer's and Wash Westmoreland's Still
Alice (Moore's nomination was the film's sole honor). She
portrayed early-onset Alzheimer's-suffering, 50 year-old Columbia
linguistics professor Alice Howland
[Note: Moore had two previous Best Actress nods, for The End
of the Affair (1999) and Far From Heaven (2002), and
two Best Supporting Actress nominations, for Boogie Nights
(1997), and The Hours (2002).]
The other four Best Actress nominees were:
- 39 year-old Marion Cotillard (with her second
nomination, with one previous Best Actress win) as desperate
Belgian factory worker Sandra Bya who discovered she was dismissed
from her job and then pleaded with her 16 co-workers to reinstate
her by giving up their bonuses, in the French-speaking film Two
Days, One Night (aka Deux Jours, Une Nuit)
[Note: Marion Cotillard was one of only two women to win a Best
Actress Oscar for a performance in a foreign language film - she
won the Best Actress Oscar for her role of Edith Piaf in La Vie
En Rose (2007, Fr.). The other was Sophia Loren in Two Women
(1960, It.).]
- 31 year-old Felicity Jones (with her first nomination)
as deteriorating Stephen Hawking's delicate first wife and
caregiver Jane Wilde Hawking, a young literature student, in The
Theory of Everything
- 35 year-old English actress Rosamund Pike (with
her first nomination), as scheming, enigmatic deadly wife Amy
Dunne, in David Fincher's thriller Gone Girl
- 38 year-old Reese Witherspoon (with her second
Best Actress nomination) as Pacific Crest Trail hiker Cheryl
Strayed on a painful inward/outward journey of grief, drugs,
and sex topped by a 1,100 mile solo hike, in director Jean-Marc
Vallée's Wild (with only two nominations); it
was based on Cheryl Strayed's own 2012 trip memoirs
[Note: Reese Witherspoon previously won Best Actress for Walk
the Line (2005).]
In the Best Supporting Actor category, the winner
was:
- the favored front-runner, 60 year-old J.K. Simmons
(with his first nomination and first win, and best known for
his Farmers Insurance TV commercials) for his role as
sadistic, intimidating music school teacher Terence Fletcher
and his torturous relationship with one of his students, aspiring
jazz drummer Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), in director Damien
Chazelle's Whiplash
The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were:
- 84 year-old Robert Duvall (with his seventh
career nomination, and one previous Oscar win), for his role
as a taciturn town lawyer and murder suspect Joseph Palmer,
in director David Dobkin's The Judge
[Note: Duvall's nomination made him the oldest actor ever nominated
for Best Supporting Actor. It was also his fourth nomination
as a fearsome father. Duvall had six previous Oscar nominations:
three for Best Supporting Actor (The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse
Now (1979), and A Civil Action (1998)), and three
for Best Actor (The Great Santini (1980), Tender Mercies
(1983) - his sole win, and The Apostle (1997).]
- 44 year-old Ethan Hawke (with his fourth nomination
and second supporting role nomination) as the main character's
Dad Mason Evans Sr., in Boyhood
[Note: Hawke was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor
for Training Day (2001), and has two other Best Adapted
Screenplay nominations for Before Sunset (2004), and Before
Midnight (2013).]
- 45 year-old Edward Norton (with his third nomination,
and second supporting nod) as chief rival actor Mike Shiner,
in Birdman
[Note: Norton was previously nominated as Best Supporting Actor
for Primal Fear (1996) and Best Actor for American
History X (1998).]
- 47 year-old Mark Ruffalo (with his second supporting
nod) as Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler Dave Schultz, in Foxcatcher
[Note: Ruffalo was previously nominated as Best Supporting Actor
for The Kids Are All Right (2010).]
In the Best Supporting Actress category, the winner
was:
- the favored front-runner, 46 year-old Patricia
Arquette (with her first nomination and first win), as the
main character's divorced mother of two, Olivia Evans, in the
family saga Boyhood
The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were:
- 47 year-old Laura Dern (with her 2nd career
nomination), as Cheryl's doomed, adoring mother Bobbi who died
of cancer, causing her grief-stricken daughter to take a 1,100
mile trek, in Wild
[Note: Dern was previously nominated as Best Actress
for Rambling Rose (1991).]
- 26 year-old Emma Stone (with her first nomination),
as Riggan Thomson's daughter Sam in rehab, in Birdman
- 29 year-old Keira Knightley (with her 2nd career
nomination), as Alan Turing's 'love interest' and fellow code-breaker
Joan Clarke, in The Imitation Game
[Note: Knightley was previously nominated as Best Actress for Pride
& Prejudice (2005).]
- 65 year-old Meryl Streep (with her record 19th
career nomination, 4th supporting nomination, with three previous
Oscar wins) as a singing, curse-uttering, vengeful sorceress
Witch, in director Rob Marshall's fairy-tale musical Into
the Woods
[Note: Streep's first Best Supporting Actress nomination was
for The Deer Hunter (1978), three and a half decades ago.
She has 15 previous Best Actress nominations at this point (with
two wins for Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady
(2011)), and now has four Best Supporting Actress nominations
(with one win for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). With this
- her 16th Oscar loss, no other actor has lost more Oscars than
Streep.]
Most Obvious Omissions or Snubs:
Best Picture:
Films that were not nominated in the category included: Disney's
musical Into the Woods (with only 3 nominations and no Oscar
wins) - a retelling of numerous fairy tales, Foxcatcher (with
5 nominations and no Oscar wins), Angelina Jolie's epic Unbroken (with
three minor nominations and no wins) - her second feature film
as director, a true story about valiant WWII bombardier Louie Zamperini's
(Jack O'Connell) struggle to endure as a POW after his plane was
shot down by the Japanese, Dan Gilroy's portrait of a sociopath
in Nightcrawler (with only one nomination for the director's
Original Screenplay), and writer/director J.C. Chandor's 1981 NYC
period drama A Most Violent Year (with 0 nominations total).
And Gone Girl was snubbed in the Best Picture and Best Screenplay
categories, receiving only one nomination for Rosamund Pike as
Best Actress. Director Christopher Nolan's Interstellar had
five nominations (all secondary): Production Design, Score, Sound
Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects (its sole win). Although
bypassed for Best Picture, Foxcatcher became one of the
most-nominated sports films in film history, with five (but did
not win a single Oscar).
Best Director:
Ava DuVernay’s moving MLK biopic Selma received
only two nominations, Best Picture and a sole Oscar win for Best
Original Song (Common and John Legend's recent Golden Globe-winning
song "Glory"), while the director did not receive a
nomination in the Best Director category - she would have been
the first African-American female to be nominated. It
appeared that director Bennett Miller's nomination for Foxcatcher in
this category (but not a Best Picture nod) took DuVernay's spot
for Selma. Also not in the list of directorial nominees:
Angelina Jolie for the drama Unbroken about a 1936 Olympian
world-class runner who became a Japanese prisoner during World
War II, Damien Chazelle for Whiplash, James Marsh for The
Theory of Everything, and Clint Eastwood for American
Sniper.
Best Actor:
British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo was denied a nominaton
for his role as Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Other actors
who missed out in this category were Ralph Fiennes as the hotel's
devoted concierge Monsieur Gustave H. in The Grand Budapest
Hotel, Jake Gyllenhaal as creepy news-camera man Louis Bloom
in Nightcrawler, and Timothy Spall as cantankerous, Victorian-era
English seascapes painter J.M.W. Turner in UK director Mike Leigh's
biographical Mr. Turner (with a total of four nominations
and no wins), and Brendan Gleeson as rural Ireland's questioning
Catholic Father James in British writer/director John Michael McDonagh's
religious drama Calvary.
Best Actress:
Jennifer Aniston was edged out for her performance as chronic-pain-suffering,
car-accident-survivor Claire Bennett in director Daniel Barnz' Cake,
by the unexpected nomination for Marion Cotillard in Luc and Jean-Pierre
Dardenne's foreign language film Two Days, One Night. Amy
Adams (with five career nominations) was snubbed for her lead role
as painter Margaret Keane (of large-eyed waifs) whose husband took
credit for her work, in Tim Burton's Big Eyes (shut out
of nominations), as was Hilary Swank as strong-willed pioneer woman
Mary Bee Cuddy in Tommy Lee Jones' western The Homesman,
and Emily Blunt as the Baker's Wife in Into the Woods. Nominated
Marion Cotillard's best role of the year was as newly-arrived immigrant
prostitute Ewa Cybulska in writer/director James Gray's historical
drama-romance The Immigrant (2013, UK), not the film she
was nominated for.
Best Supporting Actor:
Josh Brolin for the 1970s LA cop drama Inherent Vice (with
only two nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, and no
wins), two actors from Selma (Henry Sanders and Tom Wilkinson),
and Albert Brooks as lawyer/consigliere Andrew Walsh in J.C. Chandor's A
Most Violent Year, were missing from the five nominees.
Best Supporting Actress:
Laura Dern's nomination as Cheryl's mother Bobbie in Jean-Marc
Vallée's Wild (her second career nomination) was
a surprise nod, nudging out Jessica Chastain as scheming wife Anna
Morales of Abel (Oscar Isaac) in A Most Violent Year. Three
other possible nominees in the category might have been Rene Russo
as Louis Bloom's (Jake Gyllenhall) TV-news abettor Nina Romina
in Nightcrawler, Vanessa Redgrave as John du Pont's (Steve
Carrel) cold-blooded mother Jean in Foxcatcher, and Imelda
Staunton as Hefina in director Matthew Warchus' Pride.
Best Animated Feature Film:
The biggest surprise of all was that the blockbuster
domestic hit, The LEGO Movie wasn’t nominated in
this category (it had a sole nomination for Best Original Song: "Everything
is Awesome") - it was edged out by the unreleased Song
of the Sea.
In addition, Steve James' documentary about film
critic Roger Ebert, Life Itself, was not nominated in
the category. Twenty years earlier, the same director was controversially
denied a nomination for Hoop Dreams (1994).
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