Oscar snubs

In theaters Friday: Broken City, The Last Stand, Mama
New on Blu-ray: Taken 2, Sleeper

Hate-watch was one of the biggest buzz words of 2012, and few televised events elicit more hate-watching than the Oscars, if for nothing else than the fact that everyone can rattle off at least a few names or movies they feel were royally snubbed by the Academy. Following the Critics Choice Awards last week and yesterday’s Golden Globes, I went through the list of major Academy Award categories and picked one snub from each that I would gladly swap out. And here they are:

This category can have 10 nominees now, so why only 9 this year? Skyfall was a richly acted mood piece led by Daniel Craig and Oscar winners Dame Judi Dench and Javier Bardem, who created the most memorable Bond villain in decades. Plus, Skyfall is 2013 Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakin’s visual masterpiece and the best-performing Bond movie ever on its 50th Anniversary.

He just won a Critic’s Choice Award and the Golden Globe for Best Director and Best Drama. By also starring in Argo he may have hurt his chances in the director’s column, but Ben Affleck could have easily been recognized here over Ang Lee, the veteran director who turned in a visually stunning film with Life of Pi, but one that relies heavily on effects and doesn’t have the historical or character-rich weight that textured Argo throughout.

With The Sessions, just like Winter’s Bone a few years back, John Hawkes continues to prove himself as a chameleon and one of the finest, most versatile character actors in Hollywood today. For this alternately heartbreaking and whimsical role, he should have been nominated instead of Denzel Washington’s overwrought Oscar-bait performance as an alcoholic pilot in Flight.

In a duel of tragic dramas, I’ll take Marion Cotillard’s muted and maimed whale trainer in Rust and Bone (pictured) over Naomi Watts’s tsunami survivor in The Impossible.

P.T. Anderson’s The Master was not a great film, but it was a good one in that it was two fascinating character studies in one. The problem is Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and brings nothing to his haughty, self-absorbed cult leader character—which is really just as much of a lead character as Joaquin Phoenix’s drifter—that we haven’t seen from him multiple times in multiple roles already. So why the recognition? Tom Hardy in Lawless or Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained would have been more inspired choices.

The mid-’90s rise of Helen Hunt was one thing about Hollywood popularity I could never understand, or get on board with. The Sessions is a really solid indie movie, and Hunt is okay in it, but my sleeper pick has to go to the unsung Toni Lysaith in Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer, a colorful and nostalgic look at family and faith in Brooklyn.

Sure a lot goes into it, but the look of the The Hobbit, by definition, is a retread of The Lord of the Rings trilogy—nice work, sure, but nothing new or revelatory to be had. And I know it may seem like overkill for the tiniest of nominees to ask for one more Oscar nod, but for its budget, Beasts of the Southern Wild had the best production design of 2012.

Watch Cotillard in the trailer for Rust and Bone, and bathe in Deakin’s lush cinematography in the Skyfall trailer below: